Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

Cool, except PLEASE change "Sci-Fi" to "Science Fiction"; true headz will respect it more.

Seriously, change that shit.

If a mod wants to a mod can, now to read some skiffy some I can make a real contribution to the thread.

some

In thee beginning (not really, butt a big ol goodun, where I came in)
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

That rolled from 2011 to 2014, I believe.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/B08F9XYGVQ.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX500_.jpg

Kindle daily deal today. seems odd that it doesn't mention Gagarin by name.

also listed, a Tchaikovsky book, Doors of Eden. anyone? i liked the one about the spiders, i didn't like ironclads.

just finished The Ministry For the Future. almost comically unsubtle and didactic in its politcs. the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad. first half is excellent.

started that -- the first scene is harrowing, but i instantly lost all interest when things shifted to the ministry itself. i suppose no one dramatizes vast bureaucratic processes better than KSR but it's a low bar, and i'm not really up for doom right now

read 'hench', which has a jokey premise -- underemployed young woman seeks placement as a villain's henchman through a temp service -- but turned out to be fierce as well as funny

started jo walton's 'the just city'; it's a little precious but i'm liking it a lot so far

as everyone says about recent KSR, it's actually very optimistic. the first scene though good grief.

Yeah, if the future is remotely like that KSR projects I'd be a hell of a lot more hopeful than I am now.

the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad.

I am struggling with this sentence.

Yeah.

ha! do you mean you're struggling with it syntactically or morally?

Uh, aesthetically? The scouring of the shire is a highlight!

I'm more bothered by the lack of a comma in 5,000 than I am abt sci-fi tbh

Commas are only for numbers of five figures and up as far as I'm concerned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0
x10

Almost posted that embed 10x ina old-school JW Noizeborad style.

I'm sure I talked about some of this in the previous thread about hanging out with horror people mostly then SFF people and then when you go back to horrorland, most people in SFF land start seeming really uptight and conversations have so many restricted areas and I have to respect what people aren't willing to discuss but I find it occasionally frustrating. And then there's this area of horror which is like the children of Dennis Cooper and it's lovely how relaxed they are and talking about what drugs they're taking all the time.

https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/
https://www.clashbooks.com/
https://expatpress.com/shop/
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/books.html
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/books

I generally like SFF fans but I do feel like a lot of them (even a lot of the progressive ones) still want stories that are easy to swallow and are probably afraid to look at their dog's anus.

Only thing is, the blurbs for some of these authors can be completely ridiculous and leave you hanging, not knowing what it's like or about. "Britney Spears singing love songs to you while Baudelaire gives you an enema" or some nonsense like that.

Ha, exactly.

Think I started a thread about that once.

When Author X was Compared to Author Y by Author Z

nothing more riveting than people talking about their drug regimens, very transgressive

I'm a complete teetolaler and I'm not even into drug talk but my point is it's nice to hear writers talking in a more carefree way. It's probably significant that the horror genre largely escaped the culture war and there's less people out to get each other.

Like this crap is still going on in SFF land
https://dorisvsutherland.com/2021/04/06/baens-bar-the-utterly-incompetent-case-for-the-defence/

i haven't the patience to delve into what you consider 'culture war' 'crap' that's 'easy to swallow'

tbh i've seen way too much of my cat's anus, but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

honestly you are fucking creepy as hell; maybe you should stick to to 'open-minded' horror boards where you can discuss what you want to do to your waifus with no judgment

but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

Does anyone do this?

Old Lunch was asking maybe two years ago about problems with reactionary horror people but as far as the fiction/poetry side goes it's really minimal compared to SFF, it's been said they're more easy going and get on better together.
The drawback is maybe the low brow attitude, too much easy amusement with juxtaposing high and low culture and the shit eating grins (see lots of horror author photos) and it does annoy me when people feel they have to present dark or gross subject matter in a jokey way, I'm regularly guilty of it too and it's often my first instinct to joke about some of these things. I think people do this because if they keep a straight face about it, they're worried people will think they're crazy.
But I think sometimes humor and punky attitude doesn't let people process things as well, I'd rather the subject matters weren't considered so transgressive or frightening, it makes peoples lives more difficult. So it's nice when people are just more at ease with it all, but the transgression is undeniably part of the appeal of some of these writers.

There's been a lot of good buzz about this one
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/negativespace.html

Going to be weird hearing “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)” read out at a ceremony.
https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/announcing-the-2021-hugo-award-finalists/

https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/a-brief-guide-to-the-extraordinary-fiction-of-vonda-n-mcintyre/

http://file770.com/discon-iii-declines-to-comment-on-code-of-conduct-issue-about-hugo-finalist/

A little bit heartbreaking how many SFF authors despise each other and the awards nominations intensifying it all.

How many people nominated for a Hugo alongside Isabel Fall this year celebrated the removal of her story or contributed to the harassment campaign against her?

I think I count 3 so far. I really hope she wins.

— Experiencing A Significant Poggers Shortfall (@mechanicalkurt) April 13, 2021

The entire SF/F community came out and said "if you don't write about being trans in the way we think you should, we will attempt to harm you."

This is especially angering because it was an open secret that literally all of Chuck Wendig's writer friends were sex pests.

— Qualia Redux (@QualiaRedux) April 15, 2021

and some nice animals. What's weirder than the giant bunny in the first picture, is the way that guy is holding the pilot's head

One great sub-genre of retro sci-fi art: Confusingly Placed Animals pic.twitter.com/P0rmh9WG7I

— 70s Sci-Fi Art (@70sscifi) April 15, 2021

Jess Nevins - Horror Needs No Passport

This starts with Nevins explaining his frustration that there has been very little survey or study of international horror fiction and that he did this book because nobody else had. It sticks to the 20th century (with occasional background and influential writers from further back), skips USA, UK and a few other english speaking countries but there is still a bunch of english fiction included from other countries. Nevins doesn't say which writers he has actually read himself, he quotes other scholars evaluations quite a lot but I did get the impression he was voicing his own opinions about most of the japanese writers (who are surprisingly well represented in english translation) and these were some of the most enjoyable parts.

It might have been inevitable that many of the writers end up sounding very similar and my eyes often glazed over the descriptions of their approaches (what subgenres, where the horror effects are coming from). But every once in a while there's really tantalizing or unusual sounding stories about Africa, Indonesian martial arts horror, a story about a shepherd, Tarzan starring in Israeli horror adventures, italian extreme horror and amazing sounding gothics from all around the world.

It notes a handful of comic artists, Suehiro Maruo is oddly absent but I was pleased to discover Daijiro Morohoshi who I might have seen a little of but most of what I found on search was new to me.

The political/cultural background for every country is detailed, if horror was frowned upon or even outlawed (often in soviet countries, Germany and Japan censored under post-war occupation, some people writing horror only in exile), whether what each writer was doing was considered high art or trash from the gutter. It seemed like quite a lot of the South American writers were politicians.
A few times Nevins writes about authors not pursuing just "mere fear" and it seemed as if it was his own opinion (?), I don't understand why someone so devoted to horror would feel that being scary for it's own sake wasn't enough, given how that approach can be as intense and memorable as anything else when it's done well.

It is mentioned that Ewers was a Nazi but not Strobl, somehow.

No cover credit for Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

I do wish there was some sort of guide about the availability in english of these books. Perhaps Nevins was concerned it would date the book too much and that people might not bother searching for newer books if they weren't already in an english list? I spent a while checking isfdb and amazon for many of the writers but I didn't have the patience to research every writer that sounded promising. A few were indeed published after this book.
Sad that I probably won't hear about most of these authors again. If a particular writer has sufficiently high status, there's a good chance Penguin or some other classics publisher has them in english, a good deal of this stuff goes unnoticed by most horror fans and I can't blame them too much for not catching them all.

This could and should be an important building block for the future of horror. It's pretty great and I bought Nevins' Horror Fiction In The 20th Century, which can be considered a companion to this.

I can't remember who the writer was but one of the unique ideas I came across in the above book was from a writer in exile from a dictatorship who wrote a novel in which even gods are powerless against the goverment, which just seems like a horribly depressing idea. Quite a few south american stories were mentioned in which all the characters are completely fucked and have nothing but terrifyingly bad choices available.

I didn't know that books aimed at railway travelers was such a big thing in India. Which makes me wonder about "airport novels", do publishers and even writers really spend a lot of time thinking about what people want to read at an airport?

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-society-of-time-by-john-brunner/

I like the idea of Brunner but haven’t really been able to read.

Brunner’s supporting cast, including the Jesuit time-travel expert, Father Ramon

Another one for my 'Catholics in spaaaaaace!' list.

Never read any Brunner meself, sounds intriguing but this (re: Stand on Zanzibar) puts me off: Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armoured police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude), "bivving" (bisexuality, from "ambivalent") and "mucker" (a person running amok).

Elizabeth Moon's Remnant population: emo sf in the Le Guin mould. Good aliens and bad humans, though the humans aren't all that bad, and the dice are stacked rather heavily in favour of the aliens - not that Le Guin didn't indulge in a bit of dice stacking herself. Enjoyable but somewhat cosy and convenient.

Also for fans of (at least) 5000 posts, this Rollin Speculative looks like the first, b. 2011, and is where I came in: (hey thomp, get back here):
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Didn't mean to drop the g, sorry.

Or jump the gun on :

will jump gun for dinosaur

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb8IN53dfBQ

Good Ray Bradbury rundown and intro to new exhibit at Chicago's American Writer's Museum.

There's a free talk by his autobiographer tonight:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sam-weller-telling-bradburys-story-tickets-149947169019?aff=CCSamWellerProgram

re: the recent KSR opening scene

The risk of a heat wave and blackout striking a major U.S. city simultaneously is growing -- and it "may be the deadliest climate-related event we can imagine."https://t.co/Iw5COIAizQ

— Christopher Flavelle (@cflav) May 3, 2021

To say something slightly more substantial about many SFF readers wanting simplistic and easy to swallow stories, see some of the commentary on hopepunk. Noblebright (another dumb genre name) is the conservative version but I don't know if there is any actual writers who call themselves that. But many people have found hopepunk stories to be deeply conservative. Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor in particular.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1268544277

Some people accused Becky Chambers of racial stereotyping in her hopepunk space operas.

Peter Watts has been very supportive of Kelly Robson but he still ridiculed the hopepunk genre because he found the idea of hope being subversive to be laughable. Hope is the default he says.

As much as I enjoy this kind of mockery, I do actually want to enjoy Goblin Emperor and Chambers if and when I read them because a lot of people genuinely loved them, so I'm kind of hyped.

Don't know about racial stereotyping but the one becky chambers thing I tried to read was so pollyanna-ish I couldn't finish it.

Peppy protagonist: hey evil space pirates, don't rape and murder us and steal all our supplies, it makes more sense for you to just take what you need and leave us in peace!
Evil space pirates: Ok sure!

I hate hate hate the -punk construction, yes even cyberpunk and steampunk. Basically if you haven't been in the pit at Agnostic Front or, er, The Exploited don't call yourself punk, whippersnappers. Hopepunk is the worst yet, although noblepunk would beat it if anyone had been mad enough to moniker the 'genre' thus.

Found this in the sample of Paul Kincaid’s book about him:

In a long 1981 review of Lester del Rey’s The World of Science Fiction, Priest declared: ‘I am Lester del Rey’s professional adversary, the antagonist of his literary dreams’ (IT, 110), before going on to skewer del Rey’s vision of science fiction as something opposed to everything Priest himself believed in and worked towards. As Priest said: ‘I am challenging his perspective, his impartiality, his accuracy, his writing ability, his ideas and attitudes, and even his spelling and vocabulary. There is nothing here for him’ (IT, 110).

damn dawg

Reminds me of Hollywood Henderson vs. Terry Bradshaw although you probably didn’t hear about that in the UK.

Maybe Tracer heard it when he was coming up though.

Hmm. Adam Roberts liked The Evidence, maybe I should add that to my Infinite SummerQueue.

TS The Dream Archipelago vs Viriconium

Mike Harrison has made a blog post in more than a month, mostly been retweeting stuff including Nina’s tweet.

Hasn’t

Dig this origin story of Non-Stop being the book that set him on the right path or firmed his resolve, made him stick to his guns, blew his mind or whatever.

Now on a completely different tip, wonder if I need any of the $1.99 Poul Anderson ebooks?

*Chris turns over in his grave*

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-134-cody-goodfellow-on-his-new-novel-vertical/id1524359471?i=1000640902593

_But n Ben A-Go-Go_ is what I’m talking about.

So about M. John Harrison’s memoir, Wish I Was Here.

Is there an omnibus version of the Elric saga? The currently available versions are individual hardbacks with about three words per page.

What I really want are the 80s paperbacks in the sliver covers I used to gaze at in Waldenbooks, but they are $$$.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Thursday, September 7, 2023 8:04 AM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I recently reconnected with one of my oldest friends after about 5 years. I casually mentioned to him the Elric editions I referenced above. Several weeks later I received a package from him in the mail with his copies of those editions from his teens and a handwritten note where he drew a picture of Stormbringer :)

What a nice friend. A pal of mine, no longer with us, used to have a parody character called Eric of Marylebone (an area of Central London with a big old train station). And of course Dave Sim had a character called Elrod, based on Barry Smith's version of Elric from the Conan comics, with the speech patterns of Foghorn Leghorn.

So about M. John Harrison’s memoir, _Wish I Was Here_.

I wanna say the way I read the first Elric trilogy (?) was in a Science Fiction Book Club omnibus, ca. early 80s. Got to be a slog, maybe too soon after The Urth of The New Sun, and I'm not really a fantasy series reader by nature, it seems. Got hooked on Urth, but long ago forgot most of it.
Do remember Lord of The Rings, which I read all in one volume, as author intended, and sure enough it was all one novel. (This was a 90s edition, with a lot of corrections, according to the editor and some of my friends who have read it.)
Good overview of the 2023 Hugos scandal, from the guys who got the leaks and broke the news---two posts, one a brief intro, the second goes into more detail, cogently, and sparing us screen shots, email etc., although some of that may be forthcoming or already teeming elsewhere(this can be dl as epub or pdf or just read here):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/2023-hugo-awards-98498779

watched the quite poor Moonfall last night. the most interesting thing in it was the alien presence which looked and acted a lot like i imagined the inhibitors from Revelation Space would look. there was also a shot of something that looked like an Orbital. and a bit of the sky falling like in Seveneves.

How come I never knew about the Clute library in Telluride before?
https://www.tellurideinstitute.org/clute-science-fiction-library/

that led me to the cover scans available at the sf encyclopedia: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?sample

Did you happen by any chance to see this cover there?
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/0/0f/FSFDec1955.jpg

no, is it notable?

Dunno, I just like the presence of the last two author names

ok yes lol

The Wodehouse story is apparently "Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo."

You can listen to an adaptation here if you like: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vhgyr

Charles Platt - An Accidental Life volume 3

This volume is mostly concerned with Platt moving to America, various bad choices, disastrous relationships and desperate situations. Quite a few road trips and convetions too. I had already read about his unhappy meeting with Damon Knight in the expanded editions of Dream Makers but this goes into even more depth. It seemed to destroy his confidence in his ability to write science fiction, which is surprising because because he's normally defiant about most things but eventually he snaps out of it near the end of the book when he's starting to work on the Dream Makers books. And it's a relief when things start looking better for Platt.
There's quite a lot of Thomas Disch and Norman Spinrad in here. Disch deliberately introducing Platt to people who didn't like him was very funny. Brian Aldiss goes into a bizarre tantrum when Platt teases him about acting like a sex pest (which is an unpleasant surprise in addition to the unsurprising story about Asimov).

I got the Immanion tribute anthologies to Tanith Lee (Night's Nieces) and Storm Constantine (Pashterina's Peacocks) and they are mixes of stories, non-fiction and photos. Some unexpected names too and it's kind of great to see memories of what seem like lost decades sometimes. There's a bit about Constantine's contribution to a Fields Of Nephilim album.

Charles Platt - An Accidental Life volume 4

This book stops at 1990 and I don't think he will write any more because his involvement with science fiction is much smaller after that point (to be honest I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy a book about his time at Wired magazine, even though they seem to be some of his happiest years, but I would try to read it if he eventually does write it, I'd like to know about his prehistoric novels he written as Charlotte Prentiss).
This is my favorite book in the series. Platt gets addicted to computers, involved with cryonics and there's a lot about his meetings with most of the famous cyberpunks, especially his friendship with Bruce Sterling.
Harlan Ellison, Susan Wood, Jerry Pournelle and Arthur Byron Cover get violent. Platt writes his favorite novels and tries to write a Warhammer book. Lots of fun little stories about people in science fiction, nice photos of them hanging out.

A big part of my reason for reading this series is trying to figure Platt out. I still don't understand a lot of his opinions. He criticizes a lot of SF for having a lack of rigor/explanation but praises Ballard for not explaining much and he likes Marvel superheroes! He doesn't like horror but he loves Stephen King and has quite a morbid imagination. He offers very little reasoning for disliking french people so much. Why did he make his porn videogame sound so controversial? It looks pretty standard, there's hundreds of games like that today and it even looked quite classy by comparison, especially for a game in the 80s (looked like Uno Moralez!)
I think I understand Andre Norton's complaints about how Platt was portraying her in the early drafts of their interview, perhaps she didn't want to look like a nice cozy granny next to younger, more radical writers.

I don't know how defensible it was but I thought his prank on Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling was brilliant and funny.

I want to read his Patchin Review collection and then Silicon Man and Free Zone when I can, probably some others too.

Wondering if I should try Shadrach in the Furnace

Did we ever discuss this historical dictionary of sf?
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1090/pocket-universe

Kuttner had eight firsts!
https://sfdictionary.com/author/452/henry-kuttner?firstquotes=1

Although I lurked on I Love Music for a long time, I didn't look beyond that sub and only recently joined ilxor.

I look forward to reading this thread, as well as those that preceded it.

Although it has been many years since I read Armor, I am surprised that a search of this website for John Steakley turned up zero results, as I enjoyed the book back then.

What was I missing?

never heard of it/him, but i am confident that james redd can weigh in

Thanks for the quick response!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_(novel)

I will try to weigh in on other favourites as well...

never heard of it/him, but i am confident that james redd can weigh in

Although I have never read it, as I am not a vampire fan, Steakley's other novel "Vampire$" was adapted into a movie starring James Woods...

Currently (re)reading the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. I'm in the middle of The Wandering Fire, which is the second book.

Although I had previously read Kay's Tigana and thoroughly enjoyed it, I was always more of a SciFi fan, and despite being Canadian, I was originally offput by the first novel being set in 1980s Toronto.
"
That said, this trilogy is a nice mix of Arthurian legend, high fantasy and "modern" day (80s) fiction.

A solid 8/10 for me.

i like the fionavar series a lot; there are Consequences

wouldn't say the first one is set in toronto any more than the first narnia book is set in england

Recently read my first K.W. Jeter, Mantis: rude, speedy hyperfocus of ov narrator who has just discovered the joy of typing on his first 1980s computer (green words on black screen, whirling away as he shuts it down, coming back when he does), hovering anxiously over the latest nightly escapes of his schizoid brain child (also has a daylight sperm-egg child and ex-wife who still cares about him, and vice-versa). These last provide welcome change, also the narrator has a downstairs neighbor somewhat like Jeter's buddy PKD, but mainly this mines a narrow vein among nerves, if w/o that 80s "splatter" horror effect---planty stanky though, in cold sweat way. Violence against certain women, the ones who supposedly seek it out. However, there's a twist at the end (with another implied).
Ugh, but it's usually not that hard to read, at least for (old male) me. Would like to see Jeter's talent and skill applied otherwise. May read his one Star Wars bounty hunter books that the local library still has

"books" got in there because was thinking of Jeter's Star Wars bounty hunter trilogy---may have been more, but that's what the library used to have (think he's also written at least one Star Trek tie-in)(and SF Encyclopedia says that he seems to have been the first to use "steampunk" in print, re what he and Blaylock etc. were doing).

Sharon Green died two years ago but her obituary only appeared recently in Locus because she must have been distant from the SFF scene