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

There’s a funny bit in Frederik Pohl’s memoir, The Way the Future Was, about when he was writing blurbs.

I got that in a charity shop recently.

I guess if a proofreader hasn't been near it then the blurb writer probably hasn't read it either. But still lots of reviewers I admire go into lengthy plot synopses that I find totally useless.

Re: My posting of Ian Sales' review of Corey's Leviathan Wakes some months ago; even back then I knew Sales' tastes were at odds with mine in many ways but more and more I'm finding his reviews pompous and silly and his blind spots seem bigger than ever. But still, when he loves something it usually sounds really cool, so I still value him.

Did you ever read the Apollo Quartet?

No, but I do want to.

Did you post a link months ago or years ago?

I think it was months ago

I love Ian Sales's fiction, which is perceptive and subtle and clever, which is why I am so puzzled as to why his reviews are almost brain-damaged. He repeatedly assumes that the presence of something bad (ie racism, slavery, etc) in a book means the author approves of it.

I'd credit him with slightly more than that. He's worried about the normalization of certain depictions and subjects but I still think he's wrong. He might have half a point about people enjoying fascistic things in fiction but I think we're healthier to find a place to enjoy that kind of stuff rather than trying to go without it entirely; it's a balancing act that can be done with care.

And he criticized a writer for having detailed descriptions of the way characters look, as if that were old fashioned.

I seen something similar with another reviewer assuming that Somtow thinks child abuse is funny because he written about child exploitation in an extreme absurdist black humor way. But I think they were probably being dishonest about that.

From early last year. Peter Nicholls being the guy who started the SF Encyclopedia.

‘Science fiction writers are the hounds of hell. They raise their shaggy black heads and sniff the wind, and feel the future coming,’ the late critic and editor Peter Nicholls once said. ‘And then they howl.'

Can the same be said of writers of other forms of speculative fiction? What do the future and alternative worlds imagined by Australian authors say about our country today?

At this special event at the Wheeler Centre, we hear readings from some of this country’s leading contemporary writers of speculative fiction – Claire G. Coleman, Rjurik Davidson, Marlee Jane Ward, Jack Dann and Peter Nicholls's children, Jack Nicholls and Sophie Cunningham. They share thoughts on the foundational Australian fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian texts, and consider how local writers are expanding and subverting genre traditions.

https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-476-twenty-one-minutes-with-peter-watts/
Bleak and angry but good

This science talk from two years ago manages to be scarier than the interview above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I

Oh yeah, Peter Watts is always a trip; we talked about him some, up this thread and maybe the prev. Rolling Speculative. What's a good anthology of/or other gateway to Australian science fiction?

Yeah, I've seen another one since with him talking about data privacy and it was also good. There's a bunch more talks and interviews I want to get to.
I heard someone say Starfish is a great novel of underwater horror so I'm considering starting with that instead of Blindsight, but I'll probably go for Blindsight.

The way I look for those kind of anthologies is searching the country or whatever region on isfdb on both "fiction titles" and "all titles" categories; I've never quite understood how/why these are categorized exactly. Ctrl+F search "anthology" and see whatever takes your fancy.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=australian&type=Fiction+Titles
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=australian&type=All+Titles

Thanks! Might have known Hartwell would get in there, maybe I'll start with this:
Title: Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction
Editors: Damien Broderick and David G. Hartwell
Date: 1999-07-00
Although User Rating: This title has no votes

Kind of interesting defense of Heinlein's Starship Troopers by David Gerrold.
https://www.facebook.com/david.gerrold/posts/10220700705479880

🧐

Now, putting aside the observation that all science fiction since Heinlein is either imitation of Heinlein or reaction to Heinlein

do go on

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/JGBallard.jpg
HI DERE

Maybe I shouldn’t go there but wonder if DG’s Heinlein fetish is discussed on this thread

this is kind of funny because david gerrold's most famous work is a star trek episode with a concept that he (inadvertently, he says) stole from an old heinlein novel

Oh yeah, totally forgot that once completely obvious to me fact. D’oh!

I've never read Starship Troopers (or any Heinlein yet) so I don't have any dog in that fight but I don't buy that at all that Heinlein was that important that you're inevitably dealing with him because there's already so many SF traditions that have nothing to do with him.

When I've been reading about international science fiction it seems that multiple countries had their own right wing militaristic SF writers and I wonder how independently they are developing. Sometimes one author gets too much credit for something that was in the air at the time; see people (admittedly a miniscule number) discussing how many weird fiction authors developed very similar ideas independently of each other, in different languages.

I've wanted to start Heinlein with Door Into Summer and Moon Is A Harsh Mistress but despite all the warnings I've had, somehow the beautiful cover art of Stranger In A Strange Land gives me a good feeling about what all my better judgement tells me will probably be a terrible slog (it's a big book), sometimes a cover speaks to me in a way that makes me feel it was powerfully inspired by the text.

Here's Blaylock for Jon Lewis, but this one really doesn't go much over 10 minutes. I hope they expand them to 15 minutes because I'm often disappointed when they do stick to the time frame.
https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-477-ten-minutes-with-james-p-blaylock/

i think gerrold's post is ludicrous. heinlein was not a deep thinker or even an interesting one, and only someone already inclined to hero-worship him (like gerrold) could think that the ideas in books like starship troopers were nuanced. he was basically just a standard-issue goldwater republican -- someone who hated the government except when they were bombing the shit out of other countries. i like some of his early novels and stories ok, but stranger in a strange land is one of my least favorite novels by anyone.

^^^

/Now, putting aside the observation that all science fiction since Heinlein is either imitation of Heinlein or reaction to Heinlein/

do go on

Although I did get this thread title from RAH so perhaps he is right.

NOT!

anyone read the Nine Realms series?

Which writer? A quick goodreads search shows a few writers have a series called that.

speaking of "User Rating: This title has no votes", has anybody read "One Way Once" by Christopher Langley? Apparently it was his sole novel back in 1968 and he later submitted a draft script for what wound up becoming the Doctor Who episode "The Ark in Space". The brief plot description in the infotext for the episode intrigued me - the sort of thing that I'm kind of a sucker for science fiction wise.

xp the Kozloff series, starting with A Queen in Hiding

ah - the fourth book of the tetralogy was recently published, so I assumed the series had been out for a while. Didn't realize they published it (nearly) Netflix-style.

it is totally a different publishing landscape from that i once knew

i mean seriously four books in seven months all featuring Queen in the title?

so is it good or what, lukas

i'll get back to you on that real soon

Nothing to do with books (apart from his art book) but this guy is one of the most jawdropping artists I've seen in a while
https://www.instagram.com/iBenSack/

Wow---even pix of some in progress---wonder how long it takes him start to finish---and if he does any other kind of art---? If I bought books, I might buy one for his cover design (ditto LPs).

As far as I know, he just does what you see there.

Back in the 80s. I was disappointed by the intriguingly-reviewed Mythago Wood---novel, not the shorter, previous version in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Maybe I would have liked that better (maybe I should get myself back to the novel, either way): was just now very impressed by Holdstock's "Earth and Stone," which is an excerpt or mixdown or something related to Earthwind, the second novel as by RH---Science Fiction Encyclopedia says before that, under various house and other pen names:
he published [see Checklist] at least twenty novels, novelizations and works of popular sf "nonfiction", almost all of them hasty commercial efforts but most of them infused, nevertheless, with a black intensity of action that gave even clichéd Sword-and-Sorcery plots something of a mythic intonation. At the same time, under his own name, he began to publish sf novels like Eye Among the Blind (1976) and Earthwind (1977), in both of which he uneasily attempted to accommodate the compulsive mythologizing of his dark fantasies within the frame of "normal" sf worlds. The result was a series of books whose narrative energies seem greyed down with decorum...Earthwind utters slow-moving hints at the powers of a "chthonic" atavism...(Yadda-yadda, but raves for Mythago and its most closely related kin).
So, maybe I hit it lucky with this compression of Earthwind (in an old anthology; more about that later). It does seemed like contents under pressure, shifted through data and metaphor, observation and insight, fear, anger and other things, according to what the main character is going through (via first and third person) moment to moment, and other units of time: he's researching the area around what will have been Newgrange, with fades in and out (also swift flashbacks) of his future past---he remembers that his wife will have had his number: "You won't be coming back, you'll finally get to escape." Escape the Twenty-First Century! Yes, he's a weird one.
The "greyed" cover goes with the territory, which breaks on through. Finale vision is grand (neighboring peoples view the ones our man is mainly among as "insane"), but seems earned, by traveler and his creator (the authorial one, I mean).
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/holdstock_robert_p

Does "seem," I meant: no McNultyism intended for once in there.

I know the Tiptree, don't know the other two titles mentioned:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/27/penguin-science-fiction-review-a-fresh-look-brave-new-worlds-james-tiptree-jr-andreas-eschbach-angelica-gorodischer

Eh, John Self?

Gorodischer is fairly well known because Le Guin translated Kalpa Imperial. I got the Small Beer edition of Trafalgar at a charity shop last year.

Andreas Eschbach is entirely new to me.

Am hugely pleased learn that The Valancourt Book Of World Horror Stories will feature the first english translations of Pilar Pedraza and Attila Veres.

Sadly Valanncourt said that they've been trying to get Jane Gaskell reprinted for years but she's not really interested in talking to anyone.

SP Somtow got his first new short fiction in Years Best American Fantasy & Science Fiction. He's still got it!

Reading series books is a relatively new thing for me. I wish I could read them all in a row but I always want something very different each time I finish a book. Does anyone else feel this?

I counted all my unread books and it's a terrible embarrassing number and it has stopped me buying so much but I'm also wondering why I cling to wanting to read some fiction for important context about the genres. Why do I want to be an expert when I'm so bloody slow?

Think that may well be what a lot of us are asking ourselves, despite covid isolation taking away some distractions. Time for serious self-interrogation re how many of these books, given likely lifespan, am I ever going to read, how many/which ones should I go ahead and try to sell, or just dump at the thrift stores and library? Some of this is well under way, but how to continue?

There was an interesting quote about this phenomenon in some Richard Roud book I read about Alain Resnais- and still have, I think - maybe I posted it here once or twice already, have to find.

The sad thing is for me is that there really are about 2000 books I'm genuinely itching to read.
There's maybe only 20 films I want to see that badly but most films I enjoy I could probably live happily without. But for books and music it's just really scary thinking of how many things I might never get around to.

I do try and mix it up a bit with reading, a month at a time generally.

Just finished 2nd part of the Cixin Liu* trilogy, Dark Forest and the first part of the Tade Thompson trilogy, Rosewater, who is Nigerian, but now London based. Both interesting enough and I'll continue with them both of I see them cheap.

(But august will be Dickens, as every month divisible by 4 has been for the last 5 years, or so. September, I'm not sure yet)

* Looking up Liu's name, because I can never remember if it's iu or ui only to find it's more properly Liu Cixin. Family name first.

I was going to start a whole bunch of new series but I think I'll try and finish more omnibuses that I've started.

(But august will be Dickens, as every month divisible by 4 has been for the last 5 years, or so. September, I'm not sure yet)

i want to know the rest of your schedule!

November is traditionally the month when I realise I haven't read any female authors all year and set about remedying that. Spring is large foreign book squeezed in around the other monthly reading (Anna Karenina this year, just finished part 7 of 8)

But those and the Dickens are the only semi-fixed things. Themes for a month often suggest themselves based on the to-do list, some are looser than others.