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

I like some Poul Anderson here and there. Don’t really remember liking that one from long ago but tried to read again because I thought maybe there was some cool trippy stuff as they approached the speed of light but I just couldn’t make a dent in it.

Lol the Hugo awards were sponsored by Raytheon this year and Twitter is filled with small time authors of dystopian science fiction taking about how it’s important to acknowledge the shades of gray in the arms trade. pic.twitter.com/jo6wAXXozT

— isi baehr-breen (its pronounced ‘izzy’) (@isaiah_bb) December 19, 2021

What gets me about that screengrab is it's not "they did some horrible things but also saved lots of lives" or anything of the like, it's they did terrible things and also helped put a man on the moon. I know it's a sci-fi writer but how does that make matters grey??

I think the full story behind all this haven't been revealed yet but it's been a big one.

Patricia A. McKillip - The Riddle-Master's Game

I'm not sure how much of a good idea it is to guess why a book was written but I have a feeling the original publisher wanted this trilogy more than McKillip. It was the late 70s when the trend of fantasy trilogies really started booming, far too intent on following the success of Lord Of The Rings. McKillip says in the introduction that it was inspired by Tolkien but thankfully there's not many overt similarities beyond enlisting the help of an army of the dead.
I looked at the Locus polls from decades ago and it seems like this was considered one of the all-time greats for several years at least. It's still one of her best known books but I think that maybe her biggest fans rate much later books like Ombria In Shadow higher. The Gollancz reprint series (the Gateway Omnibuses in particular) tend to focus on her later books.

I loved the whole land ruler concept, the way the rulers are connected to their lands; the story is really mysterious for a long time but by a certain point I didn't find most of the plot and the journeying that interesting at all. The saving grace was the atmospherics, the way the magic of transformation, wind and fire are described. There's an incredible magic fight near the start of the third book that was just far more impressive than anything before that point, the way the magic powers are working against each other was the highlight of the book for me, some of the coolest wizard stuff I've ever seen. And oddly the quality of writing in the third book is head and shoulders above the previous two. Even though I was wanting to be done with the book, there's so many beautiful moments in the last third.

I'm a bit relieved that after this trilogy she never did anything longer than a duology and I'll probably be going for Ombria In Shadow and Changeling Sea next. Some people speak of Mckillip as being at the very top heights of the fantasy genre but I don't think Riddle-Master is quite there.

I was a bit disappointed the riddles don't rhyme but I didn't hold that against it.

Is Riddle-Master's Game a new omnibus title for the three books?

I've only read her stories in anths, other than Winter Rose, which won Locus and Nebula (didn't know until just now about the sequel). Some people speak of Mckillip as being at the very top heights of the fantasy genre : Seems plausible! Appealing post on the trilogy, thanks.

The omnibus has had quite a few titles, this one is from 2001

She's one of the few big sff writers who has no social media presence at all. Her writing is so green, quiet and whispery that I not surprised she's evaded all that noise

Sweet, hope she has!

'I don't recall if I saw my first gunman in my childhood nightmares or on my childhood streets. There were plenty in both and they looked very much like each other.'
The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise, Undertow Publications / The Black Dreams: Strange Stories From Northern Ireland, Edited by Reggie Chamberlain-King, Blackstaff Press / Albertine's Wooers:http://panreview.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-ghost-sequences-by-ac-wise-undertow.html

Short history of Russian SF
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/shvartsman_05_21/

Nicola Lombardi - The Gypsy Spiders And Other Italian Tales Of Horror

This starts with the titular novella, set in Italy at World War 2, big spiders are coming through mirrors and there's a whole family crisis a soldier is returning to. The other best stories "Professor Aligi's Puppets" and "Striges" have some memorably ghastly moments. The writing is very careful and thorough (maybe sometimes too thorough?) and Lombardi makes some really good observations. The stories are bleak and there's usually some naïve character (often children) wandering into a horrible trap they probably can't escape. It's a strong collection, sometimes a bit more set in realism than I would have liked but the introspection and most horrific moments won me over. I'm a little sad that the sex worker with the spider in her eye never reappeared but it was a good moment.

This is among the nicer looking books I own and I'm glad Tartarus are trying to increase their translated output.

Sounds tempting, I'll never spend £40 on a book but £5 ebook is good value.

The Employees by Olga Ravn is a pretty good experimental-ish short novel, a series of interview statements by the titular employees, some human some maybe not, on board a spaceship and working with alien 'objects' that provoke unusual emotional reactions. There's a narrative of sorts but it's more of a mood piece, it was in the guardian's best of 2021 though outside their (and my) usual more traditional remit, would happily read more like it.

Speaking of Russian SF, this is from the first Rolling Speculative etc:

Latest thrift store scores:
Path Into The Unknown--The Best of Soviet Science Fiction. No creds for ed or trans. Dell PB '68, orig MacGibbon & Kee Ltd, UK '66. Reputable? Intro by Judith Merril, which I've just skimmed because I don't want to be prejudiced (she's v. opinionated). She mentions some are late Stalin-era, compares them to the post-(most of 'em, I think). Is sometimes frustrated by translations, but cites several pushing their way through, especially "Wanderers and Travellers," by Arkady Strugatsky. He and brother Boris wrote "An Emergency Case." Plus, two by Ilya Varshavsky, one each by Vladislav Krapiivin, Sever Gansovsky, G. Gor, and Anatoly Dneprov. Didn't Sturgeon edit (or get his name on) an another collection of Soviet S.F.? What other Soviet of post-Soviet antholgies should I check?

― dow, Saturday, 19 May 2012
...Speaking of the 80s, I read the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic and Hard To Be A God back then, both very festive.

― dow, Saturday, 19 May 2012
Checking Path Into The Unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction, from the mid-60s. No ed or translator credits, though intro by Judith Merrill. She's frustrated by some of the translations, but so far so good, with no text in/ knowledge of Russian for comparison anyway (had more trouble w The City..., which maybe was supposed to seem "translated" from tough-guy East Eurosky)Translation may have added to the effect of a key passage in one of the Russian stories, Ilya Varshavsky's "The Conflict": a robot housekeeper reduces the lady of the house to tears, and hubbie requires an explanation. Cybella the robotess recounts:
"I caught a glimpse (of "two essential errors"or in the wife's thesis). It would have been stupid of me not to tell Martha about it. I simply wanted to help her. "
"And what happened?"
"She started crying and said she was a live human being, and that to have a machine lecturing her all the time was just as repulsive to her as kissing a 'fridge.' "
"You, of course, answered back?"
"Yes, I said, that if she could gratify her progenitive instinct with the help of a fridge, she would probably see nothing reprehensible in kissing it." O snap! But she just means in the most helpful fashion, "Pray wake up and smell the coffee, Mistress, you got your hard drive too/ " But if that weren't bad enough, Martha might be taking it like, "yeah you'd kiss a fridge if your p-drive was strong enough--but it's not! You're more frigid than the fridge!" This being the era, at least in neurotic Amerikan suds fiction and too much "nonfiction", when women might be labeled frigid. But this is worse than for those broads, cos I take it "progenitive" means having progeny, not just sex for sex's sake. But that's not the end of "The Conflict."

― dow, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 01:50 (nine years ago) link

It's close to it though. Unless my edition is missing some pages. I prefer the next story, 'Robby', it's excellently droll although the actual punchline, if intended as such, is weak.

― ledge, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:41 (nine years ago) link

The Odessa joke loses something in the translation, perhaps.

― ledge, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:42 (nine years ago) link

You're right, the fridge incident is close to the end, but not the end. I'll have to look at the Odessa bit again, but reading the one about "my brother" now, in between pesky other activities.

― dow, Wednesday, 4 July 2012 00:38 (nine years ago) link

"Meeting My Brother"--another from xpost Path Into The Unknown, The Best of Science Fiction, no ed listed, intro by Judith Merril, US pb '68. Russian as hell, a moment-by-moment track of several time lines, topographies, can pratically hear Borodin or Shostokovich for that matter. Good oontrast of contemplation and acerbic exchanges. As usual, Merril's somewhat frustrated by the translation, but also says this story is " a romance<" pretty sure she means in the late 19th/early 20th Century sense of "a scientific romance, " as Wells tagged his. Also, "The central emotional problem involves elements which did more to shake my own preconceptions (especially about the regimentation of private life in the U.S.S.R) than anything I have read in a long time." Well,this is from the mid-60s apparently (anybody ever read the Soviet-era SJ mag Novy Mir? Is it still around?) Stalin was considered really really dead enough by then, that many years after Khrushchev's speech, acknowledging Stalin's "mistakes."

― dow, Saturday, 11 August 2012 14:58 (nine years ago) link

It's a great story. The idea of the real life impact of time dilation is a simple but powerful one. What are her problems with the translation though? There's no intro in my edition.

― kmfdotm (ledge), Monday, 13 August 2012 21:46 (nine years ago) link

Sorry ledge, she didn't find fault with the translation of "Meeting My Brother" (by Vladislav Krapivin, have to look up some more by him). She was was talking about the two stories I prev mentioned, "The Conflict" and "Robby", both by Ilya Varshavsky--the ones preceding "Meeting"-- and the one that comes after it, "A Day of Wrath, " by Sever Gansovsky. Haven't read that one yet, but don't see what her prob was w the Varshavsky translations. She doesn't indicate actually knowing Russian, but maybe the anonymous translator's English irritated her editorial eye. No editorial credit for anybody in my edition, but I mainly know her as an editor, the earliest I've found to mix contemporary (50s/60s)genre and non-genre,just whatever seems to work.

― dow, Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Any of you read Sturgeon's anthology of Soviet science fiction? What's it like?

Chairman of the Commission: You can read in several languages, are acquainted with higher mathematics, and can carry out certain kinds of work. Do you consider this makes a man of you?
Other: Certainly. Are people capable of anything else?
In "A Day of Wrath" (by Sever Gansovsky, another from Path Into The Unknown--The Best of Soviet Science Fiction), manimals have busted out of their Island of Dr. Moreau-type confines, having eaten one of their creators, reportedly also sometimes eat each other, and take over remote, densely wooded areas, where peasants (oops, ex-peasants) may collaborate them out of a pervasive climate of fear, of terror. The Govt. is nowhere to be seen, the manimals don't care and mostly don't bother to be seen, a popular reporter comes looking for a bit of morning edition sensation, with a quietly intelligent, all-too-expert guide ( talkin bloody, hard-won expertise). Shadowy yet blythe spirits of menance, vs. rational self-defense and somewhat capricious self-risk: traces of Orwell and Matheson. The guide/hunter is methodical like a Matheson hold-out, the high I.Q. critteroids strut around like O'Brien in 1984; might be some correspondences to Animal Farm as well. Those fuckers really are scary, but when they call, "Hey journalist, have you come to kill us? Come out and talk to us", I find myself wanting to second that--yeah, you're stuck there anyway, might as well ask a few questions. Might flatter the manimals enough to get back to your desk, and the guide could toss them a few copies of the published results. Also, I'd like to read the beasties' answers. Can see how they might lure/lull old school (our kind of) humans. Everyday dread can have its own droning. perversely attractive undercurrent--it's a system, the way these competent monsters generate it.

― dow, Saturday, 20 October 2012
http://retrobookshop.com/images/products/detail/105176.jpg

― dow, Saturday, 20 October 2012 14:48 (nine years ago) link

Direct from Russia today! Crazy person dancing on shoulder of party robot!

― ledge, Saturday, 20 October 2012 16:28 (nine years ago) link

Da!

― dow, Saturday, 20 October 2012

I think Sturgeon only wrote introductions to a series of soviet books. There's loads of soviet anthologies, maybe as many as 20 but I haven't dug into any yet.

xpost That cover image is long gone, alas, but koogs linked a later one w info etc.:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5290556-path-into-the-unknown

Glad to know there are at least 19 more, thanks!

"They put on their vacuum suits directly on top of the protective suits. Then they made their way back to the chartroom through the long gloomy tunnel with black walls which used to be the corridor. The walls of the tunnel were undulating slightly." Yes, because the walls, like the rest of the ship, incl the light fixtures, are covered with black eight-legged flies, stowaways from a recently visited planet. That's the Strugatsky Bros' "Ab Emergency CaseP", another one from xpost Path Into The Unknown. You can see the advantages and disadvantages of the translation here. I like how the walls undulate, but just slightly, quite enough. You also get to consider whether the biologist is more enlightened than his shipmates (very pragmatic they are, though one's sardonic as hell, another is spacey, if helpful). Seems like some 60s ambiguity re progress etc. sneaks through what Merrill's intro calls "s typical mid-Forties Astounding -type puzzle story and a 'pamphleteering' message against xenophobia."

― dow, Wednesday, 31 October 2012 15:27 (nine years ago) link

Weird--"An Emergency Case", that is.

― dow, Wednesday, 31 October 2012 15:28 (nine years ago) link

The translation's awkwardness mainly comes through towards the beginning of this story, ditto in some others.

― dow, Wednesday, 31 October 2012

rereading the bridge trilogy and the second one is not set on the bridge and only includes two people from the first one. have just paid full price (well 5 quid) for a digital copy of the third part, and will leave the hardback on the shelf.

funny what he imagines and what he doesn't. virtual reality / metaverse stuff, nano builders, deep fake revenge porn. but no mobile phones - they go to a love hotel for the internet connection...

This is really shit. I've been seeing this increasingly and I used to hold off buying print-on-demand stuff, assuming it would be there forever
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/s0phie/publishing_news_amazon_shuts_down_account_of/

Lulu tends to keep things up thankfully, but you never know.

Absolutely racist bullshit from Amazon, and daylight theft of their customers' royalties into the bargain.
More here: http://file770.com/oghenechovwe-donald-ekpeki-calls-out-amazon-kdp-for-shutting-down-his-account/

https://kittysneezes.com/a-guide-to-squeecore/
I've not read a great deal of the current core of the genre so I don't know how accurate this is but it definitely backs up things I've seen in the discourse and makes me think of the increasingly disneyfied art and YA aesthetics gaining greater dominance. Feels like there's been a culmination of criticisms that have been around for at least a decade, intensified in the last two years.
This caused quite a stir back when it came out...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-widening-gyre-2012-best-of-the-year-anthologies/#!
...and now there's been no slowing down of writers riffing on classic stories, hugo speeches and blogs about hugo ceremonies get hugo nominations now. Things that are short and get retweeted a lot have a huge advantage and some are saying it has really damaged the quality of the nominated short stories, seemingly reminiscent of oscar-bait?
I think the podcast might mention Clarion workshops but it doesn't go into it much. But there's been criticism of how it gives wealthy people too much of an advantage and that workshops like these are possibly damaging to even the quality of writing.

finished Gibson's bridge trilogy which was perhaps better in my memory.

annoying that all ebooks now seem to be the American version whereas my copies of the original trilogy, certainly, were English with different spelling and punctuation.

and ocr errors as well. the central character is Rei Toei but is reduced to Rci Toci in at least one place. left single quotes instead of apostrophes about half the time.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2021-in-review-part-one/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2021-in-review-part-two/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2021-in-review-part-three/

Absolutely racist bullshit from Amazon, and daylight theft of their customers' royalties into the bargain.
More here: http://file770.com/oghenechovwe-donald-ekpeki-calls-out-amazon-kdp-for-shutting-down-his-account/

― the great replacement bus service (Matt #2), Monday, 10 January 2022 22:44 (one week ago) link

Oy, this is really awful. Even if he had opened the multiple accounts, just randomly impounding someone's royalties is huge corporate thuggery

https://intermultiversal.net/athena-andreadis-desert-island-space-operas

Really dreadful story

Thread time. Well, the cat's out of the bag and I've been getting questions about this, so I guess it's time to break cover. As many of you know, for 3+ years I've been the all-consuming obsession of a small but dedicated cyberstalking group. 1/

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) January 24, 2022

Christ

Not sure if I should click or not.

https://intermultiversal.net/athena-andreadis-desert-island-space-operas

'space operas' in the link piqued my interest but i guess i'm just not in the mood for this combination of chandler style world building and desperate eco worthiness:

The youngster, eyes as smoky as her mother’s, felt unrepentant. She already knew starfire – they spent many nights on the foam. She knew of the landers, too. They had not been here long, said the Elders. They could not understand the People’s singing – yet they trod as lightly as the whisper of a calm sea. Many came to rest in her people’s domain, bearing the gifts of their kin. She longed to catch more glimpses of them. She wanted to encompass the whole world, sea and land, for her lays.

I don't know what Chandler style worldbuilding is but I think I get what you mean otherwise. Haven't read Athena's fiction yet but I've found her blogging interesting at times. I think I'd have some major disagreements but that's the usual. I happened to buy Kingsbury's Courtship Rite a bit before I read that interview.

I've been casually following the "squeecore" eruptions, which are amusing; essentially arguments about parochialism while firmly embedded in it. Anglophone SFF in all media has always leaned heavily towards YA/hero's journey w/ its associated attributes. #fantasy #sciencefiction

— Dr. Athena Andreadis (@AthenaHelivoy) January 15, 2022

Another writer, critique of techno-optimism
https://bloodknife.com/inadequacy-of-inspirational-scifi/

I don't know what Chandler style worldbuilding

https://chrisroutledge.co.uk/2006/06/28/raymond-chandler/

it's an old chestnut and an easy target but, well, it's funny because it's true.

(maybe you already know about that letter, i wasn't exactly transparent in my description)

I kind of like that stuff sometimes when it has a kind of jargon poetry, because really technical stuff is going to fly over my head. I did recently read a story about a submarine that was a bit like that and just pretty dull

had a quick look at the squeecore podcast, definitely think they've picked up on an aesthetic that we've noticed here before, more problematic when they talk about the politics and the intentions behind it.

holy shit on that Chandler thing being from 1953

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/s5mtre/whats_up_with_squeecore_and_superversive/hsyoqgn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
This person does a pretty good job of summing up the major points. I think the podcast is doing a sequel because there's been a lot of response. There's a writer called Simon McNeil who had a lot of interesting points but I think his hopepunk piece suffered from a lack of fiction examples, he just focuses on manifestos
https://simonmcneil.com/2022/01/15/notes-on-squeecore/
https://simonmcneil.com/2021/12/30/hopepunk-a-genealogical-sketch/

Something I find really strange is how people (including Athena several years ago) talk about this trend and much of YA fiction having an aversion to a lot of deeper emotions. Aren't fans of this stuff all about "all the feels"?

I've never read Wendig but when people complain about him it sounds like a similar but different set of problems. I can't think of another SFF writer who gets dunked on for their style so much.

I listened to that podcast ep too, do wish they'd paid a bit more attention to the ahem craft of podcasting, yeah lag happens s but that's why you edit!

Initially thought there was a bit of a disconnect between the argument that SFF has become professionalised and that economics have made it so only financially secure ppl can write it but depressingly the more I think about the idea that well off ppl would nonetheless gravitate towards the kind of writing that makes them billionaires the more plausible it seems.

Whatever the faults of the argument tho the backlash certainly seems to have validated their critiques, a lot of "I guess you hate diversity" strawmanning at an argument put froth by a woman of colour and "I'm not gonna dignify that with a response" dissimulating.

A tweet thread

I have no idea if there is such a thing as squeecore as an overriding genre, but I do know most of the books that get pushed at me (I write for the Washington Post) tend to come with PR letters that emphasize fanfic terminology (shippable, etc), often position books in comparison

— Silvia Moreno-Garcia (@silviamg) January 18, 2022

Although this stuff might not always be the most successful in the wider world, it is in some of the online short fiction markets. I kept on thinking "there's more than 50 short fiction magazines and lots of variety between them", I keep discovering new ones, amazing how many have been going for years, but most of them probably have a very small audience. And it seems people who like fanfiction and YA most have become influential in the organized core of the genre. So Benedict got put on an industry predators list by the SFF Codex group for making fun of fan fiction and I think that's the most damning things about all this. Apparently there were even therapy sessions for people upset by what she said but she never got any apologies after she suffered a week of death threats and hacking attempts.

holy shit on that Chandler thing being from 1953

Just happened to pick up Jeff Vandermeer's nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures today (I read it a decade ago and surprised by how much I've forgotten) and found this article in a slightly different version
https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2007/10/16/the-triumph-of-competence/
Yet another piece about recently discussed complaints from years ago. There's links and many comments that are going to take me down rabbit holes.

xpost it's what ledge posted above: https://chrisroutledge.co.uk/2006/06/28/raymond-chandler/

Thanks. I saw it later. It’s the same thing, but it’s missing the punchline!

Barry N. Malzberg wrote a story called “Playback” with the whole letter at the front and then repeating the narrative part as the beginning of his own story.

You know, that IS a great punchline ...

There is also this.

What a line up for the two day @CityLightsBooks symposium, DANGEROUS VISIONS & NEW WORLDS: RADICAL SCIENCE FICTION, 1950-1985. Online & free to attend. Full agenda (which may be subject to change) & registration details here: https://t.co/JIxpseJGwF pic.twitter.com/G7KanCeTN9

— Andrew Nette (@Pulpcurry) January 29, 2022

Cool. I liked what I've read from Nick Mamatas. Assuming it's the same Mike Stax as Ugly Things MIke Stax.

read Tevis' Mockingbird. can't think what it reminded me of but was a pleasant (and shortish) read. maybe Asimov's robot stories. felt kind of 50s even though it was 1980.

same bloke more famous for writing The Hustler, The Colour Of Money, The Man Who Fell To Earth and, lately, Queen's Gambit, but I'd not heard of him before this.