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

Not at all, unless showing off museum worthy collectables is making people rage with jealousy.

Think this is a re-upload here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU0CowrJl0

https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/tod-051-the-secret-life-of-molly-tanzer/
Had a lot of fun listening to this, especially when she talks about Thomas Day and Roald Dahl

https://www.tor.com/2015/11/16/the-coode-street-podcast-episode-256-suzy-mckee-charnas-and-pamela-sargent/
Making me bump Charnas up my list, because she said the third book of Holdfast put almost everyone off the series. She says it's the proudest mistake she's ever made. They both seem calmly pessimistic.

trying to find some decent escapist space opera, tried adrian tchaikovsky's children of time - 1/4 of the way in and i'm giving up. not enough space, not enough opera, high on the Reynolds scale of 'all the human characters are awful' and i'm not particulary keen to learn more about the giant spider pro/antagonists.

i burned through leigh brackett's the big jump in an hour or so - it was like reading the 'in all old movies' thread: "say bud, don't get sore" * 1000.

next up: ksr's 2312 (loved aurora & the mars trilogy); elizabeth bear's ancestral night.

trying to find classic sf i haven't read before, especially by women, and my god how much of this stuff is 'set in a post-apocalpytic future'? not keen, especially not right now.

i assume you've already read the stars my destination

kindle monthly deals often have whole series of SF things that look interesting, but could be shovelware of the worst kind

this month, for instance

Evan Currie's Odyssey One series

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Black-Remastered-Odyssey-Book-ebook/dp/B005ML0EZS/ref=sr_1_30

that's 500+ pages and there are currently 7 books, all with 4+ star reviews, but there's no accounting for taste.

cheap though.

my only other recommendations would be Banks (which you've read) or (early) Reynolds, which you don't like. 8)

M john Harrison: Light
I did not really get the acclaim this received

not hugely keen on bester or most stuff from that era.

i don't hate reynolds! he does a great sensawunda. I've been harsh on him upthread, i just tired of his characters holding lifelong grudges schtick. prob should give house of suns a go, or whatever is latest multivolume blockbuster is.

i'm not particulary keen to learn more about the giant spider pro/antagonists.

― Paperbag raita (ledge), Monday, April 6, 2020 9:33 AM

A lot of people particularly loved the spiders.

are they better than the spiders in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep"?

I have no idea, I haven't read either, I didn't know there were spiders in Vinge's book.

re: Light - I think that was the first M. John Harrison novel I read, prior to that I'd only read short bits from the New Wave period. I don't think its a masterpiece but I do like that cycle of novels, its a good mix of cosmic phantasmagoria and noir and I find his prose very sharp and dense.

the only two Vinge books I've read are that one and its prequel and they were both very good, solid relatively hard-science/space opera hybrids. Not been inclined to check out anything else of his though. Haven't read any of his ex-wife Joan's stuff either.

Trying to filter some of the things you don't like, ledge, I cautiously suggest Lois McMaster Bujold and Galactic Empires, the 2-volume Aldiss anth, from '76 or so, that helped pave the way for Bujold (and lesser talents).

The spiders were always going to be a controversial choice given arachnophobia exists. I enjoyed it, but haven't bothered with the second one (and didn't like his ironclads thing). He seems to have like 10 books out all of a sudden.

I've reached the point with Reynolds where I'm not anticipating the next book and I do see your point. You should probably stay clear of Revenger then! House of Suns is iirc more clans with feuds. Terminal World might suit. Or Century Rain (both less space opera-y).

I was more invested in the spiders than the humans, for sure

started john scalzi's interdependency series. haven't read anything by him before, but this one seems to have some 'foundation' in it

Trying to filter some of the things you don't like, ledge, I cautiously suggest Lois McMaster Bujold and Galactic Empires, the 2-volume Aldiss anth

thanks! for parental reasons i do 99% of my reading on an ereader in a dark room - I've been waiting in vain for some bujold to be available, might have to go back to dead trees for her.

Scalzi seems like a decent guy, but I find his prose irritating

I had Galactic Empires Vol. 1 as a kid but have not seen it as a legit or illegit ebook

P sure all the Bujold is on Amazon as e-books because I went through a phase of reading most of her catalog last year.

ok, i have a kobo not a kindle but should be able to convert if i can get hold of them, thanks.

found them. jesus, these covers:

https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2060

just roll w it u will come to love them, i am going to make t shirts out of captain vorpatrils alliance

xp No way! Those covers are peak mass market luridness. The story goes on for generations btw, and I guess probably offer diminishing returns but I held on for like 15 books between Amazon and what the public lib had.

adam otm iow

The Penric omnibus has a decent cover.

Don't recall the cover, but paperback of Bujold's Memory was very impressive as something deep in series yet w pellucid, portable and plain handy layers of What Has Gone Before, mainly how any of that relates to what's happenin' now, in this scene pressing down and gliding by---always well-timed. Matters of class and social obligations, at home and in ceremonies, parties, etc. like filed-down Jane Austin, mam-talk on the job more broadly sardonic and gossipy (Le Carre kind of): plenty of intrigue, with somewhat bloody stakes, but this is a big transition for Miles V. and I would like more shit blowing up in space, so must check earlier vols. Don't think quality of this one is a fluke (though it may well be a peak): She's won a bunch of awards, has long-faithful stans, and see entry in sciencefictionencyclopedia.com

"man*-talk, that is!

The men are snarkier/more gossipy than the women.

the whole memory-komarr-civil campaign stretch is incredible, pulling in threads of detective stories and interstellar political machinations and georgette fuckin heyer

actually trying to read the most recent one right now, gentleman jole and the red queen. no commute means no reading time as i have a 2 year old to wrangle sunup to sundown.

https://www.tor.com/2020/04/07/announcing-the-2020-hugo-award-finalists/

One of the best related works being a speech from the previous year seems like a really bad idea to me. Movies are awful as usual.

Seemingly it's all going to be online this time and I'm curious how they'll do that. Poor New Zealand.

https://www.tor.com/2020/02/20/announcing-the-2019-nebula-awards-finalists/
I guess it's worse when SFWA members are choosing Marvel films.

This interview is eight minutes longer than ten, but the Robert Shearman collection sounds like an insane undertaking. Sadly the cheapest edition of it is £45 but it's a massive three volumes.
https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-370-ten-minutes-with-ian-mond/

Finished Falling Free - a pretty tight action adventure but I don't see it winning any awards. Oh right it won the Nebula :/ - I'll give The Warrior's Apprentice a go but now on to Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear which is more my cup of big dumb object tea, though it has a narrator who drones on too much and is at least 1/3 longer than it should be.. Coincidentally like Falling Free it has people with hands instead of feet for superior zero g agility.

Here's what I mean about the narrator droning on too much:

I didn't have any illusions about my ability to take her in single combat, For one thing, while humans traditionally divided themselves up into lovers and fighters, I considered myself living evidence that that was a false binary, having no skill with either set of tools. I belonged to a third group, equally useful: I was an engineer.

For another thing, I was pretty confident that Farweather hadn't come to this alien environment unarmed. Unlike me. Because she was a fighter, every centimeter of her.

Everything between For one thing and Unlike me is redundant. You might say this is developing character but when you have to read para after para of it on page after page it becomes increasingly tiresome. Also, the narrator was brought up in and escaped a 'clade', a commune that practises extreme neural programming to make everyone get along; but she's happy to accept the neural programming of criminals and sociopaths practiced by the galactic government - unlike the pirates who prefer liberty over equality. These contradictions are largely the driving force of the book, which is fine; but the endless discussions of systems of government, free will, liberty vs security, her traumatic upbringing and current mental state, hammer out the same points over and over again.

Trying to filter some of the things you don't like, ledge, I cautiously suggest Lois McMaster Bujold and Galactic Empires, the 2-volume Aldiss anth, from '76 or so, that helped pave the way for Bujold (and lesser talents).

J G Ballard (from a review of Galactic Empires in the New Statesman):

"Brian Aldiss is a tireless anthologiser, but for once he is recycling more waste matter than a space shuttle's latrine"!

ha. well i would probably take ballard over aldiss...

Yeah, I don't think Ballard had any of the same fondness for space opera pulp that Aldiss did.

Searching for the Aldiss I found this instead for free: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29285022-galactic-empires - seven novels, probably trash but i'll give them a go, fully prepared to bail out early. From a goodreads reviewer:

Ch 5-10 The Use of the Word “Shit” is very oddly placed through out the book thus far and does not seem necessary.

"I hope all these writers have a day job"

yeah, you seemed to be looking for some light spacecars-that-go-boom reading is why I suggested it. Seemed like at the time, after New Wave etc,, that anth had some readers going o hey yeah the old stuff---like when prog and jams came back---so young Bujold was among those who could start playing with the form (come to think of it, there's a also an operatic hard sci in spaace LeGuin 1969 Grand Finale to xpost The Future Is Female, but might have been too soon; she went all-planetary again after that, far as I know).

Tim Maugham, Infinite Detail: another book praised to the heavens which was... fine, I guess? A bit second-tier William Gibson with added grunge.

Made the mistake of reading an issue of Locus again, which always depresses. Part of the problem is it seems determined to mention EVERY SINGLE BOOK published in the SF/F fields, and this means covering a hell of a lot of derivative, depressing, shat-out crap. Reading, say, the TLS means encountering a certain quantity of rubbish lit-fic books, but not ALL the rubbish lit-fic books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ-r0bilzhU

I've never bought Locus but I'm pretty sure they miss a lot of small press stuff.

They're pretty conscientious, and there's a lot of small press stuff in there.

2019

- severance by ling ma: funny!
- the dispossessed - le guin: quite good? not my favorite of hers.
- melmoth by sarah perry: absolutely loved this! ridiculous camp gothic. great fun.
- where late the sweet birds sang by kate wilhelm: complete pony, nearly threw in the towel around 50 pages, shouldn't have bothered finishing it.
- interference/semiosis - found these quite bleak but very good

2020 so far

- Borne: not as good as the southern reach trilogy, won't bother with the rest of the series
- Roadside Picnic: wonderful obviously, but especially good because I listented to the audiobook, which is read by robert forster!!!
- the city and the city: very good!