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

Wow---didn't know her or know much of her writing and other activities, but after reading that, I miss her too.

Objectifying books
https://www.instagram.com/theblackjoke/
https://www.instagram.com/mountabraxaspress/
https://www.instagram.com/weird_dark_fiction/
https://www.instagram.com/zagavabooks/

Was just going to excerpt this, but here's your Christmas feast of paste:

M R James and The Folk-Song Collector

In a bound volume of the London Mercury I have, its binding faded to madder red, there is an essay in the May 1921 issue, by I.A. Williams, entitled ‘Notes on a Small Collection of Folk-Songs’.

Williams was a regular columnist for the journal under the heading ‘Bibliographical Notes & News’, on recent book auctions, catalogues and discoveries, and was evidently himself a keen book-collector.

However, in this contribution he celebrates another interest of his. Williams recalls how last Christmas Eve two ragged and hungry children had come to his door in Surrey and sung a carol, ‘The Moon Shines Bright’, which went well enough until the last three verses, where ‘ . . .something appears to have gone wrong. The beauty is there right enough, but it has got mixed up and broken somehow’.

Indeed, a graveyard song seems to have obtruded itself on the carol with an unseasonal memento mori (‘there’s a green turf at your head, good man’), before the duo ended with more conventional hopes for a Happy New Year, and were rewarded with the food they preferred to coin.

These visitors reminded him of ‘a small collection, of about a hundred folk-songs, which I had made a few years ago during the very ample “vacs” of my undergraduate days.’ He was in fact a student at King’s College, Cambridge, during the period when M R James was Provost. His notes were contained in three notebooks, which he began to browse through, remembering the (mainly) old men and women who had sung the songs to him, in return for a sixpence or, at Christmas, half a crown.

The first thing he looked for, he tells us, was another carol, ‘taken down on Christmas Day, 1912, from a gipsy man and woman who came to our house singing to the accompaniment of a tambourine and a concertina.’ This was called ‘King Pharaoh’ and, though also muddled, proved to contain a rather curious myth.

‘King Pharaoh sat a-musing,/A-musing all alone,/Up came our blessed Saviour,/And it was to him I own.’ Where have you come from? asks Pharaoh: ‘out of the land of Egypt’ is the reply. If it is true, says the Egyptian king, that you are sprung from the Holy Ghost, why that roasted cock there will crow three times.

The bird restores all its feathers to itself and duly obliges: ‘Three times the roasted cock did crow/On the plate where [he] did stand.’ The song then veers off to another legend, about how corn was miraculously sown and reaped the same day.

‘To what antiquity does this carol carry us back?’ asks the essayist. Well, ‘Dr. M.R. James has written in the Cambridge Antiquarian Society’s Communications, Vol X’ of ‘the roasted cock crowing, and thus bringing about the conversion of an unbeliever’. The latter, it seems, is more usually King Herod than King Pharaoh. This would make more sense in the context of the song, since it looks odd to go ‘out of Egypt’ to find Pharaoh.

(Though another possibility occurs to me, which is that by King Pharaoh the gypsy couple meant, not the Egyptian ruler, but the King of the Fairies, which would make the song more interesting still . . .)

‘Dr James,’ continues I A Williams, ‘records versions of this legend from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Sweden, as well as similar miracles among pilgrims and travellers in France, Italy, and Spain. He also tells of earlier forms of the tale in some copies of the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus.’ In this case the cock is in a pot being cooked by Judas’s wife and pops up alive and feathered to announce the Resurrection.

Williams then quotes M R James’ theory about the story: ‘I am inclined to think’, says James, ‘that the incident has been elaborated out of the story of Peter’s denial, and that the first step taken was to connect the cock with Judas, and then possibly with Herod.’

The essayist then goes on to discuss other folk songs he has collected, some of them somewhat bawdy, others with a smattering of seemingly ancient myth. He was evidently part of the surge of interest in folk song that is now associated in particular with Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and in the next number of the London Mercury he has a letter to the editor telling readers about The Folk-Song Society.

Iolo Aneurin Williams (1890-1962) was, despite his Welsh name, born in Middlesbrough to a family of Liberal politicians, and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Liberal candidate himself, though in forlorn hope seats. He published several volumes of poetry, and his other interests are reflected in volumes on Elements of Book-Collecting (1927), English Folk-Song and Dance (1935), Flowers of Marsh and Stream (1946) and Early English Water-Colours (1952).

I could not help wondering what M R James might have made of the first carol discussed by Williams, which so oddly changed its tone towards the end. Just as James thought that a Punch and Judy show, a Christmas cracker and a children’s game, offered opportunities for a ghost story, so might carol singers with a strangely muddled song.

The cheerful householder, perhaps with a secret past, goes out to listen with a glad heart to the youthful carollers, only to find the words of the song suddenly turning macabre and invoking the grave. And when he peers more closely at the pale ragged children glimmering in the winter dark, why they almost look as if . . .

Compliments of the season to one and all!

(Mark Valentine) w image of songbook pages etc. http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2020/12/king-pharoah.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Mostly posting this for the clip

I am now at liberty to announce that @CLASHBooks will be publishing a new novel of mine in 2022. It's called PEST and it's about architecture and yaks. pic.twitter.com/avsSMlWWX4

— Michael T. Cisco (@MichaelTCisco) December 23, 2020

D. P. Watt -Beatific Vermin

Watt is one of the current small press strange authors I've been most eager to read and was surprised to find that most of the stories are a very contemporary urban horror which I've mostly not been much fond of, which seemed totally at odds with the titles and presentation of his books and what I had heard about his writing. Some of the other stories are often disembodied philosophical explorations of surreal concepts.

It is all very well written but more often than not, I just wasn't that interested. Two exceptions:
(1) "Serendipity" (about a highly specialized brothel from a grim future) is miserable like a lot of the other stories but it has a fashion sense, art design and an almost cartoonish brutality that I enjoyed.
(2) "Distillate Of Sin" (about a troubled boy who dreams of an orgy pit floating on human waste which creates perfumes) was quite gripping.

I've another collection by him and I'm stubbornly ready interested in some of the others which I'd heard such good things about, I'm hoping for better.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/296318/484521573
I've read a couple of stories and found them very mixed but still haven't tackled his Kane books. The omnibuses annoyingly never got cheap paperback versions.

I like that neglected dark 1970s fantasy author looks EXACTLY how you'd expect

It is sad seeing that clip of Etchison talking about writing all those scripts that will never be read (do studios own them?). There's probably a treasure trove, mountains of unproduced film scripts and all studios want is franchises, adaptations and biopics of famous people.

Some notes about Wagner for anyone unfamiliar:
It seems like Kane was fairly successful, a lot of sword & sorcery fans put it up there with the big names (I just saw that the philosophy youtuber Gregory B Sadler did a video about Kane, he is an old metalhead so it isn't too surprising).
Wagner edited Year's Best Horror for DAW for over a decade and that might be what he is best known for. Perhaps America's most famous horror anthology editor before Ellen Datlow had done so much of the same?
"Sticks" is widely guessed to be the inspiration for Blair Witch Project. It was based on an experience artist Lee Brown Coye told to Wagner (but Coye made up some stories he told people). It starts off well but I think Wagner seriously drops the ball in the second half and it becomes cthulhu mythos fluff.

I read 'Sticks' last year and immediately thought of The Blair Witch Project, without knowing that others had made the same connection. It's pretty inescapable. Wikipedia also mentions the first season of True Detective:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_(short_story)

Forgot to mention the some of the Kane books had the advantage of Frank Frazetta.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61w%2Biz9yoUL.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/d/d7/DTHNGLSSHD1978.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/86/BLDSTNPJQG1975.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/2d/DRKCRSDGZS1976.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/4/40/NGHTWNDSC31978.jpg

Frazetta said the Dark Crusade painting was what Clint Eastwood pointed to when he was getting him to paint a film poster.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/2020-in-review-part-one/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/2020-in-review-part-two/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/2020-in-review-part-three/

Love the original cover to Dragonflight
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/1/16/DRGNFLGHT1968.jpg

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/storm-constantine-1956-2021/

Oh wow I'd never seen that Dragonflight art.

Just finally got around to the Marlon James book, got about 40-50 pages left. I loved Seven Killings and I don't think this is quite on that level, but I really love the worldbuilding and the way he played with time, memory and narrative through Tracker's retelling of his adventures. The "African Game of Thrones" thing was kind of ridiculous, even James himself said it was "a joke", but if it helped steer even a few new readers his way maybe it isn't the worst marketing decision ever. I'd say the only thing the two have in common is an overload of graphic sex and violence that might not all be strictly necessary to advance the plot.

guessing "x game of thrones" in mainstream literary circles right now just means "this is about a made up world with swords and stuff".

yeah i found that james book laughably grimdark

Paul McAuley's War of the Maps: rubbish, unless you like fantasy masquerading as SF (genetically transformed monsters, a far far future that is largely pre-industrial), picaresques/fetch quests, evil geniuses and lawmen honour bound to take them down no matter the cost. Also way overwritten, e.g. "He extracted his spyglass from the flap pocket of his coat and shot it to its full length and applied it to his right eye', jfc gimme a break. and everyone wears loose white cotton tops and trousers.

I definitely prefer science fantasy to regular science fiction.

love to extract my spyglass

Lol

I definitely prefer science fantasy to regular science fiction

an entirely legitimate preference, though it wasn't that it lacked scientific credibility, more that it could have been rewritten as classic fantasy - mediaeval period, monsters, a dash of magic - with very little effort. which again is fine, just not my cup of tea!

I think his Confluence trilogy was in a similar mode.

I really miss the blog and forum world of speculative fiction before twitter and facebook.

his Confluence trilogy

this better have been set in pittsburgh

i don my wizard's hat

i extract my spyglass

i liked Wool, i liked the fact that the situation they found themselves in thousands of people living in a silo underground wasn't really explained, it just was.

now reading the sequel, Shift, and it's doing ALL the explaining. oh, well.

Re: story blurbs. I'm curious if people see "Love and Betrayal" and think of themselves and get excited? "Derring-do" is the one that amuses me the most, how often I see it and think of some readers saying "Derring-do! I fucking love me some derring-do"

https://kittysneezes.com/im-not-here-to-make-friends-on-unlikable-female-characters/
Quite fun, I laughed a couple of times. Gretchen Felker Martin and RS Benedict

http://file770.com/kathleen-ann-goonan-1952-2021/

I was listening to the latest Geek's Guide To The Galaxy podcast about Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020 and the Ken Liu story they were talking about sounded fascinating. I'm usually not that interested in near future topical stuff but when it seems to ask enough big questions I guess I'm enticed.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/thoughts-and-prayers-ken-liu-short-story.html
But I'm not fond of how it's formatted like an article on the original Slate publication, so I just hope getting it in book form will stay enough of a priority that I don't leave it forever.

Use reader mode in your browser?

Or use this https://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/

Thanks, I might, but really, when a book version is available its hard for me to choose anything else.

Fair

I had totally forgotten the e-reader webpage option existed but I'm still haunted by the couple of times I've seen it fail to pick up the whole page.

I'm interested to find out that there are two DAW authors who were dropped by the publisher but were successful enough in foreign languages that they could keep writing their series: EC Tubb and Ansen Dibell. Eventually the Tubb books appeared in english years later but the Dibell ones never appeared in english despite being written in english.

How often does this kind of thing happen?

gave up on stapledon's Star Maker after almost 100 pages, it didn't seem to be getting any better.

"The crowds that streamed along these footpaths were as variegated as our own. The men wore cloth tunics, and trousers surprisingly like the trousers of Europe, save that the crease affected by the respectable was at the side of the leg."

all that way and this is what he focuses on?

there's also a lot of this:

"How can I describe in a few pages the distinctive character of a whole teeming and storied world, so different from my own, yet so similar?"

and

"It would be tedious to tell of the experiments by which we acquired and perfected the art of controlled flight through interstellar space."

basically excuses for not having to think anything up.

so i started the Wyndham short stories thing instead, Seeds of Time, the second of which could be a martian chronicles out-take. (alternating that with Aichman's Dark Entries (which is probably off-topic))

You wanted more science behind it?

I think Aickman is relevant here.

"It would be tedious to tell of the experiments by which we acquired and perfected the art of controlled flight through interstellar space."

well it probably would, also he's going for something quite different. I thought by the end it was the most convincing description of a kind of deism, the fact that the god of the book creates not just intelligent creatures but an entire sentient universe, and dismisses it as unworthy of his attention is a lol for sure and a good refutation of an interventionist god.

seeds of time was a favourite as a youth, wonder if it holds up.

I'm reading Hyperion, lol wtf.

B-b-but I thought you...

What - had read it already? Unconditionally loved all space opera?

I don’t think anyone will convince me to read Hyperion again. Yes I was only 20 at the time and might not have had the right goggles but... not happening.

I'm 1/4 of the way in, nearly gave up and read a synopsis last night. Seems very much in the 'author should really be writing fantasy' mould, as discussed above with Paul McAuley's War of the Maps. Also going to put it on the list in my head of 'CATHOLICS IN SPAAAAACE!' along with The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, A Canticle for Liebowitz (not in space but you get the idea), and Grass by Sherri S. Tepper (which at least gives them some considerable side-eye).

What - had read it already? Unconditionally loved all space opera?

That might be Peter F Hamilton.

Oh right, exactly, sorry.

This Dan Simmons is a real piece of work. In the first part of Hyperion he invents a punishment worse than crucifixion, in the second part one worse than pretty much anything, and in the third a fate for parents worse than the death of their children. Sometimes I just want a bit of escapism ya know?