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

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

recently been looking at SF anthologies over the last 40 years -- mostly gardner dozois, but a few others as well

dozois took it upon himself, in the intros, to opine on the State of SF each year. i haven't fully read them -- they're extremely lengthy -- but based on the introductory paragraphs i'd break them down as such:

55% THIS WAS A TERRIBLE YEAR AND SCIENCE FICTION IS DOOMED
25% THIS WAS AN OKAY YEAR, BUT THERE ARE STORMS ON THE HORIZON
20% SCIENCE FICTION RULES AND ANYONE WHO DOUBTS ITS STAYING POWER IS A CLOWN

tbf he apparently felt that his core audience was SF Magazine Publishers, and they really were ultimately doomed