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

Has Peter Beagle's Last Unicorn been out of print for a while? Because I had to search around amazon several minutes to find a cheap copy. I just imagined it was perpetually in print.

Dunno, but you've gotten me to dig up a thrift store find, The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle (Viking, 1978): "Lila and the Werewolf" (from the 60s, really liked it, only one of these I've read), with "The Last Unicorn," "Come, Lady Death," and "A Fine and Private Place." Have you read these?

Also, as mentioned upthread, in 2019: one of my faves from Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, guest edited by Charles Yu, series Editor John Joseph Adams: "The Story of Kao Yu," by Peter S. Beagle, might or might not have come from an actual Chinese folk tale, but has no "translated" quaintness: it's about a circuit-riding judge and his staff, in some Empire, some century or other, but there's nothing vague about the characters or their situations--fantasy element is the entity that sometimes appears in the back of whatever courtroom, observing. I guess it *could* be considered topical, in the sense that gender roles, incl. suddenly hapless maleness, can still be news, somehow.

No, I haven't read any of his stuff.

This is an appealing overview, I think, although does have some spoilers, but for me it's all about the telling--goes toward 1997, when the Encyclopedia of Fantasy stopped updating:
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=beagle_peter_s
He doesn't write SF, but here's a group of links to SFE references:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/beagle_peter_s

That makes him sound interesting. I'd always for some reason mentally grouped him with Andre Norton and Piers Anthony as writers of crap I could safely ignore.

That category keeps getter smaller for me. Christopher Paolini and Terry Brooks are about the only writers left who I've never really heard much defense of.

Lol

There's been so so many writers I've written off but later on heard a compelling recommendation for them by someone who seems to know what they're talking about.

peter s beagle is very good indeed, i try to reread last unicorn every few years. i've tried recommending it in the past but haven't really found a good way to convince ppl to read a book about a unicorn.

i found an old paperback copy of a fine and private place in a used bookstore last year and decided to buy it because it matched my copy of last unicorn -- same publisher, same size, similar illustration. when i got home i realized that beagle himself had signed and personalized it to someone -- in 1969!

Worst Tolkien cover in existence? pic.twitter.com/kW2XlpKqKb

— Landry Lee (@_LandryJLee) August 22, 2020

Lol

https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/07/11/undula-a-newly-discovered-story-by-bruno-schulz/

xpost

lol that was the copy my middle-school library had. this one's even worse:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/SKLUBOOKS2014/22525284458.jpg

Love these
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2014/07/jan-parker-paintings-of-witchcraft-and.html

Great interview, I like this idea of reading everything possible and "seeing the forest, not the trees" and whatever that reveals.
http://www.scottedelman.com/2020/08/28/farah-mendlesohn/

https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/interview-michael-cisco-on-weird-fiction-cheerful-nihilism-and-sex-in-literature/
Quite good interview. I still have 3 of his books waiting to be read.

Same! One day.

Charles Saunders, pioneer of African fantasy and black sword and sorcery
https://www.facebook.com/milton.davis.52/posts/10214005770897028

David Gullen - Third Instar

I bought this at the same time as the paperback of The Girl From A Thousand Fathoms and I was way more eager for that but this is so short and I seen a good review of it on The Bedlam Files, so I just started here.

It's about a city on the edge of (the/a) world and people like to fly around the sky by means of kites. There's some fantasy creatures but it's mostly about a city love story and a man repeatedly restarting his life.

I found it a little hard to visualize everything that happens with the cauldron, just how fast and rough the journey is that allows the main character to do everything he does in it.

It's quite good. Occasionally I felt like I needed more description of the gods, some of the settings and clothes but I'm looking forward to The Girl From A Thousand Fathoms.

as aldo nova once asked, can you live this fantasy life?

We're excited to launch the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic - the first research centre in the world to focus solely on #fantasy! 🌍

The centre will bring together the biggest group of academics working in this field

More 👉 https://t.co/NgNCv4JYFR @UofGFantasy pic.twitter.com/FGzh06ppCZ

— University of Glasgow (@UofGlasgow) September 14, 2020

Nice. I seen some of their blog a while ago.

Lesbian adventure fantasy (possibly similar to Ellen Kushner?), could be good.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cantina/silk-and-steel

Am reading (and enjoying) A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, a murder mystery very much in the Ancillary Justice mould - diplomatic, procedural, largely dialogue driven, set in a self-satisfied and borderline xenophobic empire with elaborate systems of language, manners, social mores.

Gave up on reading Velocity Weapon by Megan O'Keefe after 5 of about 800 chapters. Too long, too slow - three pages of airlock repair killed it for me.

Martine said that CJ Cherryh was a huge influence on it, some people said Foreigner in particular.

Yeah still haven't managed to find any cherryh ebooks, or not ones i want to read anyway. am strangely reluctant to get even second hand hard copies from an author i haven't read before.

i'm also unable in the uk to purchase an ebook (not kindle) of robert crowley's last novel, though they exist. wtf take my money! i will have to get a hard copy of that.

I've been reading the third Dying Earth book by Jack Vance and I'm getting a feeling that Vance (or at least this series) is all about the diversions and not the main quest. Tipping off waiter boys' hats, sneakily cutting off beards, Cugel generally trying to take advantage of or escape a situation.

Yeah, Vance is all about texture, not plot, for me.

Totally

The plot is there because it has to be in order for Vance to dance

Stop the presses:
One hundred years ago today, on 16 September 1920, the most remarkable novel of the twentieth-century was published by Methuen of London: A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

I've read the novel and a few other things (incl. Christmas play) by this strangely strange, somewhat fun author---did not know about the film, the opera, the heavy metal stage musical all based on novel---links to and/or about those in this blog post:

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-centenary-of-voyage-to-arcturus.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Spoiler alert---...a tale whose apocalyptic intensity – and whose refusal of any balm or loving-kindness as its protagonist scours an alien world in search of a savage Transcendence – marks it as a work written in the aftermath of World War One; the last word spoken in the book, the true name of the deformed Virgil figure who goads the protagonist to the stars, is Pain (see Horror in SF). The story may be called sf, or Scientific Romance, because there is little point in describing a tale involving a Spaceship and a Fantastic Voyage to another planet of well-described Archipelagos filled with ever-changing beings (see Evolution; Life on Other Worlds) as fantasy. However, it is superficially modelled on the fantasy novels of George MacDonald. Several books I didn't know about!
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lindsay_david

Welp, there goes that space romance cooking in my head 😂. pic.twitter.com/3NJsVKmWDB

— Mims the Word (@mims_words) September 17, 2020

"could", have they not tested it? we've had people sleeping in space for years, all it takes is a strip of postage stamps.

I'm reading Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and it's fucking bananas and I love it

I'm looking forward to that series and Alix E Harrow, they seem to both be storming successes right now.

I know these are pieces of writing advice (arguably a bit off-topic) but both impressed me and I've been meaning to read both writers for a while. Davidson is New Weird and Christian writes varieties of sf and horror.

https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-216/feature-rjurik-davidson/
http://www.autumnchristian.net/why-i-ruined-my-writing-career/

Usman T Malik's debut collection
https://www.usmanmalik.org/product/midnight-doorways-fables-from-pakistan/

First Zambian winner of the Arthur C Clarke prize:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/23/namwali-serpell-wins-arthur-c-clarke-award-the-old-drift?fbclid=IwAR3kBq7W96b4TKWtjcyfEIUnZga2ryav9KeNpBWZhzhuxT9JjbaRwxMgYpU

I've seen appealing reviews of that for quite a while, is it good?

RIP Ron Cobb---good overview/taste of his freewheeling thang here, starting with cover art for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/

Also in here, with good stuff via other heads and hands:
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2018/04/27/the-artists-of-future-life/

I suddenly remembered in my sleep last night that Durnik was granted magical powers, and how disappointed I felt when this was the case. I thought it was elegant that a lowly blacksmith was part of the party and felt betrayed that David Eddings felt the need to imbue him, too, with the power of magic. Weird dream

Pointing its dreamfinger right at why I've fairly rarely gotten into/given fantasy a chance, compared to sf.

Really liking this drowned world setting in Cherryh's second Morgaine book.

Interesting that Douglas Lain, Ben Burgis and Laurie Penny are all science fiction writers.

Thomas Ligotti is releasing his first work (a book of poems) since 2014, which will have a companion album by Current 93. There was a general expectation that he wouldn't write anything again for health reasons but there has been signs that he might be able to write a bunch more.

Excited about the C93 portion!

I love Ligotti deeply but mainly for Grimscribe/Noctuary

Nicoll doesn't care for the first cover (which I've never seen before) but I think it's awesome.
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-flame-thats-in-her-eyes
I have the first omnibus of this series.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds
http://file770.com/the-legislative-body-problem-gop-senators-criticize-netflix-plan-to-adapt-liu-cixin-hugo-winner/
I was wondering how long before something like this came up and it happened last year and I didn't hear anything about it. Liu being supportive of the what China are doing with the Uighurs. I don't know what people can reasonably expect so maybe that's why there wasn't a bigger deal about it. Lots of people say there's huge pressure for big authors to agree with the government.

From the comments

Even supposedly progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just announced the celebration of brutal war criminal Yitzhak Rabin, guilty of ordering the breaking of bones of children, of ethnic cleansing and of organising death marches for civilians.

Not this one, though she's since withdrawn from participation in the commemoration btw.