am enjoying 3 body problem pt 3. mass evacuations, lightspeed travel, 4d spaces. 350 pages to go.
but he's spent absolutely 0 time explaining what happened in the previous books, expecting us to remember despite having read 40 things in the meantime.
― koogs, Monday, 6 September 2021 09:46 (three years ago) link
Gretchen Felker-Martin - Ego Homini Lupus
I try not to look at online speculative fiction controversies too much but I've undeniably found a lot of promising authors from doing so. I really enjoyed Felker-Martin's opinions and found her insights really refreshing, touching on some things I've not heard many people talk about.
Tom Horstmann's cover art grabbed me, one of my favorite cover arts I've seen in recent years. This is the first time I've read a digital book of any real length, usually physical books take my priority but so far a digital copy on Gumroad is the only option.
I guess this is folk horror (in 12th-century Northumbria). It goes through different modes of horror: grueling traumatic real life horror (in the home and on the battlefield), extreme gore/body horror and supernatural horror, much of it on a small scale, sometimes eerie in a down to earth way but several scenes take it to the level of a very grand Zdzisław Beksiński painting. You get a good feel for the main setting because there's so much richly textured description of Joan's daily work. The characters and structure are brilliant. There were a few scenes that really stopped me in my tracks when I realized what was happening, usually something harrowing or deeply sad or both; one or two scenes got my eyes filling up, on the edge of crying. I had to look up a lot of period terminology and it even got me looking up how high chickens can fly.
Even some of the really glowing reviews are underselling how good this is, I'm sorry I'm underselling it, but it's already among my favorite horror stories and I think it should be looked back on as a classic of its time, I hope that even horror fans not used to this level of sex and violence will not be dismissive. Publishers should be fighting to get the first paper version of it (hopefully with the original cover, it won't be easily topped), get in there!
Looking forward to her other books.
https://melmoththewanderer.gumroad.com/l/rnidm
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 9 September 2021 21:11 (two years ago) link
I read Ringworld fairly recently, and found it a colossal hard SF bore. Bob Shaw's Orbitsville, covering similar ground, is much more entertaining.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 10 September 2021 06:08 (two years ago) link
Valancourt books said this "We've been trying to contact Jane Gaskell for years. Her agent can't locate her and she's not responded to family members from what I understand. A couple of others in publishing have been trying too. :("
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 11 September 2021 16:55 (two years ago) link
lool
The opening chapter of the original paperback edition of Ringworld featured Louis Wu teleporting eastward around the Earth in order to extend his birthday. Moving in this direction would, in fact, make local time later rather than earlier, so that Wu would soon arrive in the early morning of the next calendar day. Niven was "endlessly teased" about this error, which he corrected in subsequent printings to show Wu teleporting westward.
― mookieproof, Saturday, 11 September 2021 17:43 (two years ago) link
That is pretty funny; the other errors about the ringworld not actually orbiting its star, the seas filling up with gunk, and the breeding for luck and pak stuff just generally flying in the face of science, not so much.
― ledge, Saturday, 11 September 2021 18:51 (two years ago) link
More Plunkett/Dunsany rewilding newshttps://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/irish-baron-offers-home-at-his-castle-to-animals-released-from-wildlife-hospital-1182651.html
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 11 September 2021 23:30 (two years ago) link
I've always kinda meant to check out James Branch Cabell---big stash now digitally accessible via Virginia Commonweath University.
Where Should You Start? incl. several thread-relevant suggestions (lotta links in here):...the Neil Gaiman Presents audiobook collection (available for purchase) includes three of Cabell’s fantasies: Figures of Earth, Jurgen and The High Place....If you enjoy science fiction, you should know that a number of science fiction writers read Cabell and admired his use of science fiction tropes and narrative devices. Robert Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice gives explicit homage to Cabell, taking its subtitle from Jurgen. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series contains a library of “novels their authors never wrote or never finished, except in dreams” including a Cabell title, Poictesme Babylon. Larry Nivens wrote a hard sf/horror story “Night on Mispec Moor” (a reference to Cabell’s Something About Eve) and A World Out of Time in which the character “Jerome Branch Corbell” is cryogenically frozen, then revived years later by an oppressive totalitarian government.
dust jacket Something About Eve with naked eve and man in 18th century costumeSomething About Eve, first English printing, 1927Image: Thorne and Lloyd, An Illustrated Bibliography of Works By and About James Branch CabellIf you’re interested in weird fiction, sword and sorcery fantasy or pulp fiction, that can also be a way into Cabell. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, read and admired Cabell’s books, once writing a review of Cabell’s Something About Eve in which he called Cabell the ablest writer of the present age. Howard also mentioned Cabell in several letters.
If you’re a Led Zeppelin fan, you might want to visit VCU Libraries Special Collections and Archives to read Aleister Crowley’s letters to Cabell, and see the adaptation of a Crowley illustration on the cover of Kalki: Studies in James Branch Cabell, vol. IV, no.1 (Winter 1969). Chapter XXII of Jurgen is said to contain elements drawn from Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. Crowley called Jurgen one of the “epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy."More: https://jamesbranchcabell.library.vcu.edu/cabells-writing/getting-started/Press release mentions: The site pays special attention to the censorship drama surrounding Cabell’s most famous novel, “Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice.” In 1920, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice seized the printing plates and copies of the book, and its publishers were charged with obscenity on the grounds that “Jurgen” was “offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent.”
A section on “Speaking Cabell” offers a glossary of literary terms Cabell employed in his writing, but that might be unfamiliar to many readers. It explains terms such as “demiurge” (an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe), “domnei” (an Old Provençal term meaning the attitude of chivalrous devotion of a knight to his lady, and “rondelet” (a French poetic form with seven lines, of which three are refrains).
It features several maps of Poictesme (pronounced “pwa-tem”), the fictional medieval French province that serves as the setting for several of Cabell’s works known collectively as “Biography of the Life of Manuel.”
For visitors seeking research material on Cabell, the site links to archival collections, including those held by VCU Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives. These include the James Branch Cabell collection, which contains letters Cabell received from American and British authors, some original writings, and items the author placed in the volumes of his personal library; and the Margaret Freeman Cabell papers, which include correspondence between Cabell’s second wife, Margaret Waller Freeman Cabell, James Branch Cabell, and their friends, colleagues and business associates.
“We look forward to working with a new influx of researchers, fans and creators excited about Cabell and welcome anyone from the VCU community and beyond to reach out to us about accessing our unique collections,” said Yuki Hibben, interim head and curator of books and art for Special Collections and Archives.
― dow, Tuesday, 14 September 2021 17:34 (two years ago) link
I read that REHoward review once. I have Nightmare Has Triplets in my unread pile but it's maybe not the ideal place to start since it's a trilogy.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 14 September 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link
flann o'brien also a cabell fan i seem to recall. have only read jurgen & found it all a bit overly whimsical.
― no lime tangier, Wednesday, 15 September 2021 06:43 (two years ago) link
reading sheri s tepper, the gate to women's country:
Even in preconvulsion times it had been known that the so-called “gay syndrome” was caused by aberrant hormone levels during pregnancy. The women doctors now identified the condition as “hormonal reproductive maladaptation” and corrected it before birth. There were very few actual HNRMs – called HenRams – either male or female, born in Women’s Country, though there was still the occasional unsexed person or the omnisexed who would, so the instructors said, mate with a grasshopper if it would hold still long enough.
hmmm
― ledge, Wednesday, 15 September 2021 09:09 (two years ago) link
I've heard there's some strange views in her books and some say her dissatisfaction with readers not getting her intentions made her write messages clearer and clearer to the detriment of the books.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 15 September 2021 14:20 (two years ago) link
Alistair Rennie - BleakWarrior
I didn't like the cover much (although it isn't a bad evocation of parts of the book) and the title seemed a bit self-parodic (after reading the book, the parody might have been intended) but I remember some genuine excitement when this book came out that went beyond the routine plaudits.
Two of the chapters originally appeared in the Vandermeer's New Weird anthology and the Ann Vandermeer era of Weird Tales. Rennie credits them with getting the novel started.
Most reviewers have been reaching for tons of comparisons and I think Ross Lockhart gets it right with Jack Vance meets Mortal Kombat. It has Vance's fondness for odd societies and the humorous eloquent back and forth dialogue. But here the deliberately overcomplicated dialogue sometimes has a similar effect to really creative cockney rhyming slang delivered with a dour face. Immortan Joe from Mad Max 4 would envy the speeches of Lord Brawl. In an audio interview Rennie said the animated version of Go Nagai's Violence Jack was an initial influence and the Scottish highland moors were the basis for some settings (you see this in his photography) but more of the book is urban. Much of the book is Meta-Warriors stalking each other and getting into death matches, their ways of life and sense of purpose explained inbetween. I'm not sure how much of the sex was supposed to be sexy, some of it seemed like part of a general commitment to excess.
Anna Tambour hinted this could be the start of a series and she mentioned characters I don't remember in the novel (Smart Brutality and The Piper Who Calls The Tune are great names), maybe she read parts of an intended sequel? Or maybe they were introduced and killed so quickly that I forgotten them. I'm going to have to track down Rennie's short stories to see if any of them are set in this world and for the pleasure of more Rennie too. He hasn't written a huge amount and seems to have mostly focused on music since the novel (5 dark ambient albums under the name Ruptured World). Several characters are left with their stories feeling unfinished so I hope there will be more. I really enjoyed Big Sister and Little Sister's speech patterns and how the existential ideas were developed (some of it whooshed over my head and I'm not sure all of it was supposed to make sense) and hope to see that continued too.
It's a really nice evolution of sword and sorcery but I'm sure half of the fans of that genre will hate this but that's a pity for them. I'd like to see more talk about this book and maybe it could influence new directions for other writers.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 15 September 2021 15:12 (two years ago) link
In The Gate to Women's Country towards the end there's a big reveal, a secret that the women have been keeping, and it becomes clear that it's been hinted at throughout the book, hints that I didn't pick up on. Then one of the characters says "We put clues here and there, for those with the wits to see them."
Me: *sucks teeth*
― ledge, Friday, 17 September 2021 08:23 (two years ago) link
This from Valancourt
We're putting together a companion volume to World Horror Stories 1 & 2, which will feature horror stories from endangered languages. UNESCO estimates that of the 6500 languages in the world today, half will vanish in the next century. What do we lose when a language dies out? Well, great horror stories, for one thing! From the Friulian language comes Raffaele Serafini's "Anaxum", a folk horror tale about a young man's encounter with something weird and ancient in the forest, while Low Saxon author Chris Canter contributes "Moenen", in which a babysitter takes on the wrong gig, looking after a creepy child with a creepier doll. In Frisian writer Willem Schoorstra's "For Sale", a woman finds her dream house, which seems too good to be true (until she finds out what's living inside it!), and Scots skriever Stephen Pacitti's "Dunnottar" takes us on a bone-chilling journey to a Scottish castle haunted by the ghosts of the past. The volume will also include stories from Occitan, Basque, Romansh, and others, and has an anticipated release date of late 2022.
UNESCO estimates that of the 6500 languages in the world today, half will vanish in the next century. What do we lose when a language dies out? Well, great horror stories, for one thing!
From the Friulian language comes Raffaele Serafini's "Anaxum", a folk horror tale about a young man's encounter with something weird and ancient in the forest, while Low Saxon author Chris Canter contributes "Moenen", in which a babysitter takes on the wrong gig, looking after a creepy child with a creepier doll. In Frisian writer Willem Schoorstra's "For Sale", a woman finds her dream house, which seems too good to be true (until she finds out what's living inside it!), and Scots skriever Stephen Pacitti's "Dunnottar" takes us on a bone-chilling journey to a Scottish castle haunted by the ghosts of the past. The volume will also include stories from Occitan, Basque, Romansh, and others, and has an anticipated release date of late 2022.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 19 September 2021 19:54 (two years ago) link
Yeah, Tepper was a homophobe. Still a great novel tho imo.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 20 September 2021 10:21 (two years ago) link
Lucius Shepard's super angry review of the first X-Men filmhttps://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/ls0012.htm
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 20 September 2021 21:31 (two years ago) link
It's also highly gender essentialist, but undercuts its own message that men are violent by nature by having them brought up from the age of 5 in a male only militaristic environment. Still a worthwhile read (could have done without the Iphigenia at Ilium parts though) and an interesting thought experiment, but not the one the author intended.
― ledge, Tuesday, 21 September 2021 07:50 (two years ago) link
> Iphigenia at Ilium
see, you've made me more interested now
anyway, halfway through the second of the Spider planet books (Children of Time / Ruin) and it's now spiders and octopi in space.
― koogs, Tuesday, 21 September 2021 08:31 (two years ago) link
It's also highly gender essentialist, but undercuts its own message that men are violent by nature by having them brought up from the age of 5 in a male only militaristic environment.
I think when I read it I assumed that was the point - that men are violent because of their socialization.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 21 September 2021 09:45 (two years ago) link
maybe that's what tepper intended but it's odd that the women who are in all other respects preternaturally far-seeing and successful in their plans are blind to this glaringly obvious flaw.
― ledge, Tuesday, 21 September 2021 10:08 (two years ago) link
preternaturally far-seeing
i mean even without the benefit of their telepathic pals.
― ledge, Tuesday, 21 September 2021 10:09 (two years ago) link
I've read A Voyage To Arcturus and a few other (anthologized) things by weirdo Lindsay, but hadn't heard of this:THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021A Centenary of The Haunted Woman by David LindsayAfter David Lindsay's first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, was published in 1920, his next novel was serialized in The Daily News newspaper of London from the 30th of August 1921, through the 23rd of September. Thus today marks the centenary of the completed serialized publication of The Haunted Woman.
An extensive analysis of "The Haunted Woman in The Daily News" appears at The Violet Apple.org. (Direct link here.) https://www.violetapple.org.uk/hw/serial.php#f_ref_7
A brief announcement of the serial, together with a photograph of Lindsay and his baby daughter, appeared in the newspaper on 29th August. Considering the take on gyny in AVTA, his having a daughter is scary. The newspaper clip is in here, also mentioning their previous serial, The Red House Mystery, by A.A. Milne, of Winnie The Pooh fame, says that Lindsay's is *also* special---no doubt; I'd like to take a look at it.http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-centenary-of-haunted-woman-by-david.html
― dow, Saturday, 25 September 2021 01:30 (two years ago) link
I don't think I ever knew it was serialized but I heard the first edition only sold under 50 copies and that was a real blow to Lindsay's confidence.
To this day I don't know what's keeping most of his novels from seeing print, they are super rare.
https://www.nyrsf.com/2016/07/brian-stableford-nightmares-of-a-utopian-the-science-fiction-of-r%C3%A9gis-messac.html
Author’s note: The English translations of the various Messac works indicated and cited in the above essay do exist, and their publication was scheduled by Black Coat Press for 2016. Even though the works are all in the public domain, the author having been dead for seventy years, that publication was blocked by the threat of legal action by his grandson, Olivier Messac, which BCP could not afford to defend no matter how certain the eventual victory might be. Evidently, Olivier Messac feels that the best way to conserve his grandfather’s legacy is to extend the inaccessibility of his work in the English language for as long as humanly possible. We can, of course, only speculate as to what the fervently anti-capitalist utopian Régis Messac might have thought of copyright trolls, although we do know that the Nazis murdered him in order to prevent him communicating his ideas to his fellow human beings, not because he posed any kind of military threat to them.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 25 September 2021 10:56 (two years ago) link
Finishing the first book in Julian May's Saga of Pliocene Exile. I could probably do worse than to keep checking used bookstores for SF/F books blurbed by Zelazny.
― lukas, Thursday, 30 September 2021 20:21 (two years ago) link
At the bottom of this page there is a bunch of his blurbshttps://www.fantasticfiction.com/z/roger-zelazny/
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 30 September 2021 21:27 (two years ago) link
He wrote blurbs for a surprising number of books by women.
― lukas, Thursday, 30 September 2021 21:58 (two years ago) link
that series is *fantastic* imo (if slightly homophobic)
― mookieproof, Thursday, 30 September 2021 22:22 (two years ago) link
Yeah it's great imaginative stuff, a lot of balls kept in the air. Just bought book 2.
― lukas, Thursday, 30 September 2021 22:49 (two years ago) link
Interesting. Maybe will check out, if I ever regain my ability to read again.But also came to the Thread of Wonder to wonder if anyone has actually read the books from which came The Expanse.
― He POLLS So Much About These Zings (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 1 October 2021 02:48 (two years ago) link
i read the first expanse book despite certain vows regarding authors with multiple middle initials. it was fine.
that julian may series is better
― mookieproof, Friday, 1 October 2021 03:13 (two years ago) link
I’ve been somewhat curious about those Julian May books for a long time. Will grab.
― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Friday, 1 October 2021 11:20 (two years ago) link
I believe Jane Lindskold lived with Zelazny in his last years, but they collaborated a few times, she was interviewed recently on Geek's Guide To The Galaxy.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 1 October 2021 18:06 (two years ago) link
Oh wow I want to listen to that. She also wrote a biography of him (I discovered yesterday, listening to a different podcast)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkbPnhnWzJUBought the guy's book, will report back.
― lukas, Friday, 1 October 2021 21:35 (two years ago) link
er, same podcast
― lukas, Friday, 1 October 2021 21:38 (two years ago) link
There is a beloved but rare (in english) collection called Mirror In The Mirror by Michael Ende (Neverending Story), one of his books for adults and surrealist too. It has been reprinted recently as a print on demand version with a new translation, but a review says they taken out the paintings by his father Edgar Ende (presumably the rights weren't available?), which inspired the stories, so some would say it's not a proper reprint. I ordered it because the alternatives are too expensive (hundreds).
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 2 October 2021 13:33 (two years ago) link
omg---as Science Fiction Encyclopedia says ov May:
n the 1980s May turned her attention once again to sf, making an immediate and very substantial impact with her Saga of Pliocene Exile, which serves as an extensive prelude to the Galactic Milieu sequence: The Many-Colored Land (1981), which won a 1982 Locus Award, and The Golden Torc (1982), both assembled as The Many-Colored Land & The Golden Torc (omni 1982); plus The Nonborn King (1983) and The Adversary (1984), both assembled as The Nonborn King & The Adversary (omni 1984); and supplemented by The Pliocene Companion (1984; vt A Pliocene Companion: A Guide to the Saga of Pliocene Exile 1985). The Galactic Milieu sequence begins with a transitional volume – Intervention (1987; vt in two vols The Surveillance 1988 and The Metaconcert 1988) – and continues with Jack the Bodiless (1992), Diamond Mask (1994) and Magnificat (1996). (I've got these last three, seem promising in random read.) Underlying the increasingly complicated storyline of this four-volume prelude is what might be described as a Planetary Romance set on Earth: the protagonists have left a Utopian twenty-second century society from which they have felt estranged, via one-way Time Travel six million years into deep prehistory (see Prehistoric SF), where they discover not only that the Pliocene is rich in potential but that two apparently Alien species are in a state of deadly conflict over the young world and over the humans who have already arrived there. Much additional material – from archetypes out of Celtic myths (see Mythology) to the introductions of various Psi Powers to intimations of Hard SF – is fed into this vision, leavened intermittently by a Trickster protagonist or two. The effect is at times reminiscent of the Planetary-Romance Baroque of Roger Zelazny.
With Intervention the overall sequence moves into an Alternate History version of contemporary times which segues into the Galactic Milieu tales, where the family romance of the Remillard clan intersects with explanatory narratives set deep into the past, and with the melodramatic course of the assessing of humanity's potential role (if any) in the Galactic Milieu (see Galactic Empires) itself. The narrative is increasingly charged with metaphysical intonations, linked to a sustaining concern with the attractive theme of psychic Evolution; in the end, Zelazny seems at times less clearly evoked than Doris Lessing. But wait, there's more!http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/may_julian
― dow, Saturday, 2 October 2021 15:50 (two years ago) link
Yeah, 8 books.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 2 October 2021 16:45 (two years ago) link
Finished the much celebrated Light by M John Harrison, after three chapters I thought I was going to love it but my enthusiasm dwindled - it was too sordid, the technology too magical, the antagonist too vague (till the very end), too much of a sense of words put on the page because they sound cool and for no other reason.
― ledge, Monday, 4 October 2021 07:58 (two years ago) link
Still I preferred it to Joan Slonczewski's A Door into Ocean, almost its exact opposite.
― ledge, Monday, 4 October 2021 08:11 (two years ago) link
read 'a matter of oaths' by helen s. wright -- solid space opera that i thought packed quite a bit into its short one volume
particularly notable for having been written in 1988, when that sort of thing was unfashionable, and for being remarkably diverse, in the modern parlance: the main character is non-white, the kickass commander is a woman, there is gay sex, etc.
this no doubt explains why it fell out of print and was recently republished with a forward by becky chambers (#hopepunk). pretty weird how the brief author's note mentions that she, who still lives in the uk, 'never married' though!
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 5 October 2021 22:05 (two years ago) link
anyway i liked it, it was worthwhile!
(i will simply never not reference hopepunk because come on)
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 6 October 2021 04:15 (two years ago) link
https://www.tor.com/2019/04/18/quiltbag-speculative-classics-a-matter-of-oaths-by-helen-s-wright/
I must have seen it in this article (quite a good article series by Bogi Takacs) and on the Cherryh blurb list but I don't recall it. I can't find any biographical info, even on her personal site. Only one book then done, but it seems to have quite a strong fanbase considering that.
I don't have a very good handle on how publishers and readers treated gay sex back then. I was quite surprised by how much there was in Somtow's early 80s books in what are pretty much mainstream novels, maybe that's part of why Inquestor wasn't the hit I think it should have been.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 6 October 2021 17:53 (two years ago) link
Fun interview, he speaks so fasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hplcp-fragments-ep-05-interview-with-nick-mamatas/id1508892873?i=1000501553249
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 8 October 2021 21:28 (two years ago) link
That guy is good.
― He POLLS So Much About These Zings (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 8 October 2021 23:07 (two years ago) link
I just (very) belatedly discovered Ursula Le Guin -- read Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Atuan in quick succession — they are so incredible!
My problem with most SF/fantasy is the bad sentence writing, so she’s obviously like the diametric opposite of that — but she’s so good at the “ripping yarn” part too. Especially in the first book, I love that dissonance between the subdued elegance of her prose and the extreme metalness of whatever’s going on in the story.
Also love that feeling when you read a great author for the first time and realise you have a whole new catalogue to explore.
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 9 October 2021 22:07 (two years ago) link
Yeah I rediscovered A Wizard of Earthsea a couple years ago, hadn't really appreciated it at 12.I was pretty stunned. AWoE >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
― lukas, Saturday, 9 October 2021 22:19 (two years ago) link
Just to give one example, just before the final confrontation in the book, there's a cozy, funny, relaxed domestic scene. It's such a striking shift of tone, so unexpected, and yet it works.
― lukas, Sunday, 10 October 2021 05:02 (two years ago) link
Yes, I was grateful for that moment, like Le Guin was saying "just in case you were concerned - I can do people and dialogue too". The relationship between Ged and Tenar in the 2nd book is very convincing too
― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, 10 October 2021 13:52 (two years ago) link
My problem with most SF/fantasy is the bad sentence writing, so she’s obviously like the diametric opposite of that — but she’s so good at the “ripping yarn” part too. Especially in the first book, I love that dissonance between the subdued elegance of her prose and the extreme metalness of whatever’s going on in the story. Struck by how otm this is also re last night's bedtime reading, Joanna Russ's "My Dear Emily": an Emerson-reading collegian, who's made prim-and-proper her eyes-lowered hot-cool style, obediently returns to old San Francisco and encounters the vampiric sole survivor of one the city's really olde families---with his aristocratic, Old Worldly male triumphalizm suitably enhanced, let him show her how---the erotic spiral of exhilaration and damage, incl. acting out, is jolting, esp. with slightly "disjointed" sentence momentum, clear as a cracked bell can be (real clear, turns out).This from a Best of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, copyrights 1961-62-63---must have caused a stir back then---what else should I read by her---?
― dow, Tuesday, 12 October 2021 16:20 (two years ago) link