ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

thx shakes, you make a good argument that ilx is sexist after all :) if nothing else you've given me lots of names to check out.

ILX or not, thing that bugs me a lot is that after Kuttner died and C. L. Moore got remarried she stopped writing altogether.

surely we can figure out some way to blame that on ILX

Maybe the time tourists in “Vintage Season” were actually ILX0rs.

DO U SEE?

tbf half the sff books published since 1970 are by piers anthony, necessarily driving down the percentage of those published by women

There's an N.K. Jemisin profile in the New Yorker btw

Always frustrates me wondering how to handle short stories and poetry into these polls and lists, often collections and anthologies are too uneven to put forward with confidence.

As far as I know about CL Moore, she did tv writing until her health prevented her writing but she did attend conventions. I don't know if there's a firm basis for stories of her last husband discouraging her from writing (very grim if true).

jeez, Silverbob's Time of Changes has to be the worst of his New Wave-period novels. A clumsily executed central premise (a culture where the first-person is grammatically verboten) that doesn't make any sense, tons of exposition, cardboard characters, tons of lame sexual stuff. I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/joanna-russ-the-science-fiction-writer-who-said-no

thought provoking piece on russ & feminist sf - spoilers within.

saw that yesterday, great piece

kinda ignores how funny Russ could be though. I think her image as a dour and strident ideologue (at least in her fiction) is a little overstated.

The opening also gives a rather misleading impression of The Female Man - it's almost nothing like 'John Wayne’s wet dreams with the sexes reversed'.

haha yeah that is not a blurb I would put on the back cover

that piece about going back in time to fix her relationship with her mother was in that collection I read recently ("The Hidden Side of the Moon"), really great in its emotional depth, all these conflicting impulses and desires about how she wants to be seen by (and see) her mother. I'm glad a bunch of her stuff has come back into print recently, would love a comprehensive collection of her short fiction and/or criticism.

I picked up Jeff Vandameer's Dead Astronauts in the library, and it passed the totally unfair, ruthless Random Read Test, which rarely happens. So far so good: he fuses show and tell via starlit, pungent, burnt-in imagery, which can also turn slippery, like wet tattoos and brands---the bitterness of many defeats/continuations, also the idealism and love of common cause and deep connection/metamorphosis, revelations along the way---the three principals have been through a lot together, incl. killing themselves and each other--- story now: once more unto the breech, for another assault on the City and the Company:

The equation of the Company eluded Chen, perhaps because he had been lost within it once upon a time (he used to work for it, was maybe created by it; assaults tend to or maybe always incl. Chen vs. Chen, physically and every other way.)Or as he said sometimes, the system abhors source, makes its mapping into a maze, a mockery, and the more you think you understand it, the more you are colonized by it, and lost.
So, the "affecting poetic compression" I mentioned re that story by early New Waver Sonya Dorman, but also like he's been smoking Ballard, Malzberg, early Delany, Peter Watts. Maybe PKD, we'll see (ontology figures, but don't yet know how much or how).

*Vandermeer's"!

sounds promising

It sure did, but now the occasional bits of poo are starting to accrue, and just ruined a whole chapter. Think I'm done.

A few interviews with Brian Stableford on his productivity, translations (including which ones he likes best) and quite a few bleak pronouncements about what he's doing. Most of these are getting old.

"If your august predecessor Charlie Brown was correct when he declared that print-on-demand books don’t really count as publications, but only as ‘‘potential publications’’ then I suppose I ceased to exist ten years ago, when I was finally relegated from the commercial arena, but if physicists are right in deeming that even the hardest vacuum is a seething chaos of imperceptible subatomic particles, I guess there’s some potential even in the virtual vacuum in which I’m working nowadays. At present I’m trying to produce 24 volumes of translation and a quarter of a million words of fiction per year, which would be quite a lot of potential if anyone ever paid enough attention to any of it to cause it to materialize; but if no one does, it hardly matters; I don’t have anything else to do."

https://locusmag.com/2011/11/spotlight-on-brian-stableford-translator-and-author/
https://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=4408
http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.com/2011/01/brian-stableford-new-worlds-of-fantasy.html
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intbs06.htm

Recently learned he's written a bit about Sopor Aeternus and other goth music!

Where would you suggest someone start with Stableford, and why?
xpost The finely tuned approach of Vandermeer's latest (my first by him) leaves no room to stumble, without disturbing the vibe and groove toward overwrought solemnity and facefalls--even though he gets up and continues, the story's arrived at some very bad precedents. My life's too short.
Random Read Test is ready for these possibly tasty Tors:
http://view.mail.macmillan.com/?qs=ad7ebe31fa0cbca348929a951f49ab8d7e63a7353658c4af53b6b3c037b182dca03a5517118da7e82ecc9f824aa4de4052873b96c0ea45151a38114a6642a62ffcb717a31636300a1845c1459e069e43197eb9992fb1e6a3

is altered carbon good

No

thanks. lol

altered carbon (the novel) has some of the worst sex scene i have ever read, like 40 yo virgin "bag of sand" bad

Yeah the writing is appallingly bad and all the ideas are one-dimensional riffs on old cyberpunk tropes

is there even any good cyberpunk besides Gibson?

KW Jeter’s Dr. Adder, Glass Hammer and Death Arms, early Bruce Sterling (Islands in the Net, Schismatrix, Crystal Express), handful of other things

thanks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLlj_GeKniA

omg

Lmao

Maybe we should poll that

Thats from... 1993?

(A Cybernaut I Should Turn to Be)

Simak was such a weirdo: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2020/02/08/book-review-the-werewolf-principle-clifford-d-simak-1967/#more-19629

Dow- Again ashamed to admit that aside from some articles written by him, I haven't started on Stableford yet, so it's questionable that I own 5 novels by him (some were charity shop finds and some might have been going scarce).

He's written all kinds. He's a specialist in biological hard SF; he's done a fair amount of stuff in the vein of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula and Moore's League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, sometimes with characters, writers and trends even more obscure and out of fashion; he written a bunch of Warhammer and vampire/werewolf stuff in the 90s for cash but it's some of his most acclaimed work; he done a lot of decadent, Lovecraftian and dying earth stuff.

I was originally going to start with Curse Of The Coral Bride but I want to read all my Clark Ashton Smith first (it's a sort of tribute).

Then I was going to start with Empire Of Fear (his most popular book) and Young Blood, but they're quite long and I've been getting plenty of vampires recently.

But right now I'm decided on Cassandra Complex (the start of a bio-tech series that was published out of order, but can seemingly be read in any order) and his anthology Scientific Romance (pre-pulp writers from france, usa and uk). Maybe then some of his Maurice Renard, Jean Lorrain and Jacques Spitz translations.

Walking Shadow was chosen by Pringle for 100 Best Novels and Cassandra Complex was in Di Filippo/Broderick's 101 Best Novels.

I found these two overviews extremely helpful.
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/stableford_brian_m
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=stableford_brian_m

Are those two (noticeably? completely?) different?

I thought so. Second is much shorter.

First one's his SF, second one's his fantasy work.

Much more colorful and appealing track record than expected, Robert! I've read a few things, incl. a whole novel, that I can't remember the titles of, only left with faint impression of work way too reined in: maybe he was overcompensating for vampire/werewolf etc.? The Scientific Romance anth def up my alley, will check for that, thanks.

There's also this one coming next month that looks really cool.
https://blackcoatpress.com/forthcoming-weird-fiction-in-france.html

And this which really exemplifies what I said about his delving into forgotten trends
https://blackcoatpress.com/fiction-tales-of-enchantment-and-disenchantment.html
He's written fanfiction about some of these writers and their creations.

Awes---although will have to think about digesting 38 fay stories in one slab---but that other anth---!

https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/aniara/

Sounds interesting

https://www.abc-clio.com/Praeger/product.aspx?pc=A5676C
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2020/02/interview-jess-nevins-author-of-horror.html

This should be impressive. His previous books are very highly praised and extensive.

There was an opera of Aniara composed by Karl Blomdahl, it’s really cool actually. Some bits got used in 2001 iirc.

Nevins is a good 'un, loved his LOEG annotations.

I am reading Foundation and good Lord the writing is abysmal.

Yeah I tried awhile ago and just couldnt

He makes Andy Weir read like Faulkner!