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

the stories in that collection that i'm reading - so far - are entertaining enough, but one thing i notice when i read (a lot of) new SF short fiction is how little of it actually surprises me. not that i've read a TON of new SF. but the new tropes/cliches/ideas are as firmly entrenched as the old ones. and are often just the old ones gussied up with slightly newer ideas on what a green eco-corporate post-warming/apocalypse/space travel/VR world is gonna look like. they are a smartphone upgrade away from the old ideas, basically. so, i tend to like the stories that are just good...stories. good storytelling. which is, duh, ageless and cliche-proof. because i don't often come across stories with ideas that make my head explode and these kinda ideas were everywhere in the old stuff i read. just endlessly inventive nutsto theories and imaginative exercises. maybe it was the drugs.

Think that's more on Dozois' narrowing interests, or maybe the publisher's. Hartwell is erratic, but provides much higher highs: his annuals have turned me on to extreme sports like M. Rickert and Peter Watts...

yeah, it could be him. a real lack of weirdness so far.

i'm intrigued by this one:

http://www.constablerobinson.com/images/book/large/9781472111661.jpg

would read.

hopefully it's newer stuff?? would love a women who sci-fi collection that is somewhat current. though i am all for new collections of old stuff too. especially if its been out of print for a long time. or forgotten never-anthologized stuff. (i ask a lot...)

MAMMOTH! always with the size...

It seems to be almost all post2000 stuff

Don, Damon Knight anthology, which has full title The Golden Road: Great Tales of Fantasy & the Supernatural, is pretty good, some very famous stuff that you might expect to find, such as Arthur Machen's The White People, Heinlein's Magic, Inc., a Lovecraft, an H. G. Wells, check by jowl with some lesser known things, such as an Alfred Bester story called "Will You Wait?" I mainly got a hold of it because it had C.M. Kornbluth's first story, "The Words of Guru," and an R.A. Lafferty I hadn't seen anywhere else, "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite." The latter is another sui generis Lafferty story, kind of hard to summarize, although it does feature quotations from his stalwarts Diogenes Pontifex and Audifax O'Hanlon. Knight explains in the intro that when he was a child he did believe in ghosts and magic, although after his dad got him a magic set and he learned some tricks he saw a different dimension to it. He decided at some point that most of the stuff he read in Weird Tales was poorly written, but he was never one to deny a well-written tale.

saw a ben bova-edited hard sci-fi collection called Carbide Tipped Pens today that looked interesting. but i bought paperbacks of perdido street station and 2312. also actually ORDERED the area x trilogy from an actual bookstore. can't remember the last time i did that. a long time ago. but i like to keep things local when i can.

Think the only Bova anthology I would get would be the Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume he edited.

Thanx, Scott & James, both those anthologies are intriguing. The Mammoth collections I've read around in---one of mysteries, the other short horror novels---were pretty darn good, need to finish those.

so far in the dozois collection i'm reading the robert reed story is one of my faves. i guess it kinda reminded me of ben bova or someone like that. it was pretty old-fashioned, but entertaining. makes me want to read more stories about his big ancient ship the size of a planet. also, i enjoyed the story by lavie tidhar who i had never heard of before. an old world future kinda thing. sci-fi tel aviv and a guy who sells rare books. he also writes about this world in lots of stories. the Central Station stories. and tidhar has apparently edited collections of world sci-fi:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Apex-Book-World-SF/dp/0982159633

there are three volumes. reviews seem mixed. and apparently the stories are a mix of sf and horror and fantasy. so, not strictly sf.

Good to know about Robert Reed's return to form---he's a lifer, and so darn prolific he's bound to have some dry spells. But, especially in novellas and novels, he combines bright, dark, mobile shiny objects with creative psychology---humans, humanoids and others have never been in this place before, let's see how they respond! Action and character develop each other, rollin' & tumblin'. Probably learned a thing or six from Alfred Bester. So prolific I haven't kept up very well, but dig Hormone Jungle, Down The Bright Way, and Beyond The Veil of Stars(thinking writers of the Battlestar Galactica reboot might've learned a thing or six from these), plus a bunch of stories in mags and anths, though I need to read my stockpile of his collections too.
SF Encyclopedia provides a good overview: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/reed_robert

Good to know about those world SF collections too; probably something so wide-ranging would be bound to get mixed reviews, if done right.

yeah, i'm not really familiar with Reed. i do love the idea of a world on a ship for some reason.

are you guys alastair reynolds fans? i forget. i know he's popular...

anyway, haven't read his story in this thing yet. but i've been meaning to read him. i have a big novel of his at home.

also, i liked the greg egan story in this but it was one of those cases where you kinda wished he had fleshed it out into something longer like a novella or novel. it was rushed at the length it was at. he probably has too many ideas and characters in his head. that's a question, actually, which greg egan novel should i read? if anyone here has read any. i'll bet you have!

we have. we mentioned it upthread. 8)

diaspora would be the pick of the three or four i've read. i should read more.

okay found the mentions. you liked diaspora and james said the non-human trilogy is boring. so, if i see diaspora i will pick it up.

hmm never heard of this Robert Reed guy before, will investigate

just getting to the end of V4 of Silverbob, last few stories are incredible, peak-form stuff (Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies etc.)

one of the guys in this anthology comes in my store. i see him around all the time. did not know he was a SF writer.

Oh yeah there's a Reed "Great Ship" story in a mammoth (small m) dozois new space opera collection I picked up a while back. Was good enough to make me want more but then I forgot, thanks for the reminder! Did not know there was a second 'ancillary' novel either. Would read, except I've mostly forgot the pertinent details of the first one.

might get this collection:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Greatship-Robert-Reed/dp/0786753668

self-published even...

so that guy who lives around here won a hugo and everything. might pick up one of his books for the local color. now i know why i SEE his books around town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Steele

could've sworn we'd talked more about egan other than 3 mentions by me and one from james (and a comment from ledge which was a bit scathing, but probably true).

there are two mammoth dozois new space opera books, 2007 and 2009 by the looks.

Mine's the first one. Not really tempted to get the second, I don't really tend to get lasting satisfaction from these anthologies.

Just got that Greatship collection though.

i've mentioned it MORE than once but to give props to dozois this is one of the most entertaining collections i've ever read:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-New-Stuff-Adventure/dp/0312198906

i loved that thing. and it was the perfect book to read whenever i read it because it really did its job as far as making me want to go out and search for more.

and now that i look the good new stuff had robert reed in it too. can't remember his story in it though:

Stephen Baxter, Tony Daniel, R. Garcia y Robertson, Peter F. Hamilton, Janet Kagan, George R. R. Martin, Paul J. McAuley, Maureen F. McHugh. G. David Nordley, Robert Reed, Mary Rosenblum, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, George Turner, John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Walter Jon Williams

Browsing the kobo store, God there's a whole load of space opera novels being churned out. Lee Fuller, Ben Bova, Michael Cobley, James Corey, Gavin Gibson, Gary Smith... it's probably mostly terrible, right? Sample spiel:

For nearly a century mankind has been at war with an alien race that no one has ever seen. The war has reached a stalemante. Lieutenant Commander Stuart of the solo scout ship Pegasus is ordered to transport a group of scientists outside of the galaxy to test a device that could turn the tide of war to mankind's advantage. It is outside of the galaxy that Stuart discovers a star with a single planet hidden from the galaxy by intergalactic dust. On the planet lies a secret that will answer questions of human origins and ultimately decide the fate of the entire galaxy.

Ho hum, another day, another chance to decide the fate of the entire galaxy.

i loved ben bova's exiles trilogy. that last book killed me for some reason. emotionally.

but yeah space opera is a big deal now. that and post-zombie stuff. and eco-sf.

i never actually finished the last book of blish's cities in flight when i was reading it last year or whenever. feel kinda bad about that. i'd had enough. enjoyed the first two a lot.

I liked the two Vinge books I read, too bad about the whole Kurzweil/singularity thing

how often do you guys start a book or story and go: yeah, fuck this. and not read it. just wondering. with this collection i'm reading it's happened twice. once with alternate history shakespeare story. *yawn* and another where for some reason people are riding around in jeeps on mars and they don't explain the whole "air" thing. which just seemed weird to me and i couldn't tell if it was a loving homage to olde tyme sf or what. there was a john carter-themed casino on mars, so, i'm guessing that was the case. but i stopped reading.

something's gotta be really terrible for me not to finish it. can't remember the last time it happened tbh

I try not to but if I do stop reading, I skim it to see if anything interesting happens later.

i think i've gotten to the life is too short part of my life. middle-age. i've got a zillion books at home i haven't read...i never would have done it when i was younger.

Last time I remember doing it was with a Manly Wade Wellman story about Byron (one of my pet hates is horror stories that mythologize older writers in a supernatural way).

I skimmed some Henry James too.

I'm all about abandoning books these days. Gave up last year on a Kundera, some huge post 9/11 novel, and an overwritten cognitive science book.

totally uninhibited about abandoning novels the minute something unforgivable happens. usually it's something to do with prose style. or something that tips the scale into 'this author is a sexist/racist brute'.

is right-wing space opera published by baen books still a thing?

Oh yeah, Allen Steele's pretty good with the mainstream/"hard" SF(but really more of a fun clever action-adventure approach). Wrote one for the new stories about Old Mars Martin-Dozois colletion I mentioned upthread (breathable air is a given in all these deliberately retro yarns, sorry Scott). He doesn't usually do deliberate(or maybe any) retro, though. He's not major, but okay (or maybe he is major, since he wins Hugos, I dunno).
Think Reynolds was mentioned more than once on the previous Rolling SF etc thread.

I've tried Allen Steele a couple of times, but not had much luck--he wasn't awful, just a bit jack mcdevitt-like in that everyone in the future acts like 1980s californians. but this is based on only a couple of books, and he seems to have written a lot, so may not be fair.

Baen is still very much a thing, with their ongoing quest to create the worst covers in SF history.

I couldn't get The Good New Stuff from the library, so I'm taking a look at The Good Old Stuff.

I reread "Who Goes There?" for the first time in about 30 years the other night. Campbell was weak on characterization and style even by 1938 pulp standards, but he puts the story across anyway. John Carpenter's "The Thing" sticks closer to the source material than the Howard Hawks version, recycling the character names and getting more of the funky, claustrophobic feel of the Antarctic research station, but the short story is more gruesome, paranoid, and cosmic than either movie.

Many lols at the Things landing on Earth in a magnesium spaceship -- wtf John W. Campbell

Good Old Stuff has got some good, old stuff in it.

Have abandoned books all the time, but these days even ones that I like, since I have so little time to read, with the hope that one day I would return to them.

I tend to enjoy people of the future who act like Californians of the 1980s, long as they're not too much like Ronald Reagan or some lifeguard, but so far much prefer Reed to Steele.

I've got a book of Campbell stories somewhere, incl. several he wrote as Don A. Stuart (which may incl. "Who Goes There?"--don't remember, although it's in there). Agree that he was one mighty worm, tunnelling through pulp conventions and his own limitations--can see how that made him such an effective editor of younger, better writers--"Fine, you did that much, now consider this--can also see how it drove some away, and others simply outgrew him. Welp, we all gotta leave the nest some time.
gruesome, paranoid, and cosmic Him and L. Ron, bros 4 life (after life)

Lol, good description of Campbell.

Came to post that John Crowley has good essay in the current Harper's that discusses not finishing books.

Not finishing reading them or not finishing writing them

Ha, reading them, although he at makes at least one joke about this kind of misunderstanding.

The magnetic fields and serum tests in "Who Goes There?" sit oddly next to straight-faced acceptance of telepathy ("Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists") ... it's weird but somehow not surprising that Campbell's determination to harden science fiction could coexist with eager interest in Dianetics ... under both impulses, perhaps, was the same sort of worship of mind power.

Didn't abandon Nicola Griffith's Ammonite but I did skim read the last 100 pages. Got a bit fed up with the all female colony who revert to the soil after being abandoned for a few dozen generations following the male destroying plague, apparently forgetting about or not seeing the need for either money or reading and writing. Instead they have a system of bartering that is so culturally entrenched you can't do anyone a simple favour without them becoming beholden to you, plus some tokens of exchange that are easily forged and impossible to authenticate without destroying. Communication is accomplished via storytellers, and a language of knots which fascinates our off-world anthropologist protagonist but is obviously error prone enough to precipitate a major plot point.

I also had trouble with the strange mix of science and mysticism, on one page the main character trances into her partner's ovaries and manages to literally manipulate the chromosomes of her egg as it emerges, then we're hit with this: "chromosomes began their stately dance, pairing and parting, chromatids joining and breaking again at their chiasmata, each with slightly rearranged genetic material. But the chromatids did not then separate again and migrate to the cellular poles in a second anaphase; instead they replicated." Add to this a fascination with telling us the colour of the sky and clouds (usually unsurprising shades of blue and grey) and giving the characters transparently symbolic dreams, and I felt like she was in dire need of an editor.