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

Should say it really is mostly about Emily; he just starts her up...

read 'the praxis' (millennia-old multi-species galactic empire falls apart when its ruling race dies out) by walter jon williams

military sf is not my thing -- stopped reading the mazalan book of stuff early on because i do not want to have to know who is commanding the 47th brigade of strike force nine or whatever -- but this one was recommended by jo walton, whom i like

anyway, it was pretty good -- akin, perhaps, to 'the expanse' minus the protomolecule? maybe a little too much of ships and missiles trying to maintain delta-v, etc. etc. but the two main characters (one male, one female) are interesting and not cardboard. it has sequels that i might read sometime

The Best Ghost Stories Of Algernon Blackwood

There's only one or two Blackwood stories I've read that aren't on this so I can hardly be an authority, but despite his expertise I think E.F. Bleiler probably left off a lot of highly deserving stories (the ones I've heard mentioned often, such as "The Man Whom The Trees Loved") that tend to get on the other Best Ofs. I can't tell you if there is a better collection of Blackwood, the huge Centipede Press editions are too rare/expensive for most people to consider but I have a feeling there are other better introductions.

I slightly prefer "The Wendigo" to "The Willows" (his two biggest classics), I find the setting and particular creepiness of the former a bit more enchanting but they're both great. "The Glamour Of The Snow" is a little beauty. "The Empty House" is more chilling than the garden variety murder of the story would suggest. "Ancient Sorceries" is spoiled slightly with the too insistent reminders of how shy the main character is and the revealed Satanism is underwhelming.
I was struck by "The Transfer" because of how it describes an unwittingly oppressive man having an effect on people that sounds strikingly like how people today describe oppressive systems of power; and I like the line "It seemed a few hours had passed, but really they were seconds, for time is measured by the quality and not the quantity of sensations it contains".

I think in terms of prose, Blackwood is head and shoulders above most of the other classic horror writers, he's so deft with delicate details and nuances of moments in a way that makes a scene come alive in a way M.R. James and Lovecraft couldn't pull off as well. But sometimes like in "Max Hensig", he explains the details in such a longwinded manner that the effectiveness is lost. I hear his novels can be more challenging for this reason. He's not without his prejudices but there's something refreshing about how outgoing and positive he is compared to the writers he is often mentioned beside. I'd only consider a few of these stories essential though.

Crime vet tries her hand at folk horror crossover:
The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935) by Gladys Mitchell draws on the tradition of the Victorian inheritance mystery, but with added folklore and witchcraft thrown in. Three babies were born in the remote village of Saxon Wall, one to the family of the local manor, another to a woman reputed to be a witch, and another to a woman regarded as a simpleton. Only two of the children survived: but which two?

Hannibal Jones, a writer of sentimental novels, comes to the village to convalesce from nervous trouble and becomes unwillingly involved in its affairs, which include stories of changelings and impersonations and missing heirs. The pub, the Long Thin Man, is named after a local spirit connected with a tumulus on the downs above. There are spells, potions, the evil eye, and propitiation rites to bring much-needed rain.

A full cast of characters, as well as the witch and the supposed simpleton, includes a couple of Ivy Compton-Burnett-esque sister spinsters with brisk, brittle dialogue (we could have done with even more of them), a volatile vicar with a Japanese valet, and of course Mitchell’s reptilian psychiatrist-detective, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange. These vivid characters and the deft twists in the plot are the novel’s main strengths.

Gladys Mitchell was the author of over sixty crime novels, and they are uneven in quality, as she herself admitted. At her best her books are vigorous, eventful, sly, full of rich colour and eccentric characters. But even Mitchell experts seem divided about this book...
---from Mark V.'s latest post:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-devil-at-saxon-wall-gladys-mitchell.html

interesting looking afro-futurism(?) set in Kindle daily deals today, but all only 20-40 pages long.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/amazon-black-stars-chimamanda-ngzoi-adichie-excerpt

(would probably fit in nicely with this month's reading but the size makes them expensive)

https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7791/Artykul/2789010,British-writer-unveils-his-gnome-in-Poland%e2%80%99s-Wroclaw
Graham Masterton once said his sex guides were so successful in Poland that strangers approached him in the street to thank him. I'm pretty sure the creature coming out the book is Manitou, from his horror series. I wonder who else has a gnome?

Bought Andy Weir's 'Project Hail Mary' as it was on offer, this may have been a mistake. (I have not read The Martian.) 500 pages ffs, does no-one write short books any more?

Just finished that. Quite enjoyed it but it's basically The Martian in new clothes: (very mild spoiler) character all alone has to solve lots of science problems in order to survive

i also bought that (on saturday when it was cheap). and this is meant to be a return to form after the (slight) artemis. but we shall see.

(martian was similarly long but a very quick read fwiw, i think you'd enjoy it. it reminded me of a.c.clarke in that it was physics-led storytelling)

(i think the martian may've suffered from having only been seen as 'popular' (read 'hyped') because the film was good, but the book was good enough in itself)

i liked the martian and project hail mary, but the martian was better. that's my review.

(the martian was 300 pages, and read in a weekend)

yeah i read the martian in like 4 hours. PHM is arguably overlong.

500 pages ffs, does no-one write short books any more?

― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Monday, October 18, 2021 10:39 AM

I don't think all of these are in paper form, but some of the ones labelled as ebooks are actually available in paper. Some of them have become hits.
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/tor-novellas

Small press novels tend to be shorter though.

i would be interested to know what fraction of readers of something like PHM listened to the audiobook. has to be a lot.

it's a thing though, isn't it - big selling book followed up by a larger book - editors less likely to tell them to cut it down.

(thinking of harry potter here, and the dark tower books)

But isn't it usually the publisher that demands bigger books? Small press (usually with minimal editing) and self-published books are not known for being longer, big publishers want big books and King is just a long book writing guy.

ha, maybe. i wonder where the profit / effort maximum is?

king literally refuses to be edited iirc? although i don’t know when exactly he became big enough to get his way on that

einstein on receiving his (only) referee's report

"We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorised you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the – in any case erroneous – comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere."

xps thanks Robert, I'll ake a look at those - have read the first two, 2/5 and 3/5.

Alastair Reynolds was on radio 4 this morning after the 08:10 interview talking about the new Dune film.

... that he hasn't seen yet.

All the better to allow him to have an unbiased response.

i saw footage from the leicester square thing earlier this week (er, yesterday)

but yes, most of it was background - the book, the previous film and mini-series.

Enjoyed this oral history of the Marvel comics adaptation of the Lynch movie:

https://www.tcj.com/marvel-comics-1984-dune-movie-adaptation-an-oral-history/

Forgot about that! Lots of infotaining discussions here though: DUNE: c/d and of course some threads on ILE, my fave being the one about Jodorowsky's Dune, w artwork I hope is still on there.

I just finished my latest self-prescribed 1 story-per-night bedtime reading, the aforementioned Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, Twelfth Series, (Avram Davidson ed., Doubleday, 1963): xpost "My Dear Emily" still the winner, but also James Blish's "Who's In Charge Here?" has the pre-Steely Dan Effect via withheld information x streetscape characters, Ron Goulart's "Please Stand By," Will Stanton's "The Gum Drop King," and Sasha Gilien's "Two's A Crowd" tight and bright w the wit, and undercurrents too, v. pleasing to middle-school minds, as recalled.
(Now I see that RG's investigation of a were-elephant on national holidays also incl. a couple known for paintings of "bug-eyed children" (as in Any Adams' fact-based Big Eyes(2014) and they've both taken the name Eando, from their initials (Eando Binder is a good olde science fiction pseudonym :https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/binder_eando). Stanton's shortie is kinda poignant, Gillien's kinda scary. Ditto deft ending of "Hop-Friend," by 24-yr.-old Terry Carr, otherwise known to my only as editor of the good old Universe series of anths.
(Vance Aaandahl, author of striking-to-ok "When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed," was 19, and already had several stories published---SFE says he's done 30 in all, but never collected them.)
Edgar Pangborn's "Davy" kicks off a series about a somewhut twisted postnuclear "frontier" America, kind of an ancestor to Robinson's The Wild Shore, with the narrator being a bond servant who gets around, a pubescent Huck Finn, with even more ethical conundrums, incl. those resulting from conditioning and maybe nature (raised for instance to kill a "mue," a mutant, on sight, but also what id he himself is a brain mue, seemingly normal, 'til his true nature comes out.)
"A Kind of Artistry," by Aldiss, is like a Clarke story I read with mission to a convincingly developed situation in space, plus situation behind the assignment, but then spoiled by sour notes of misogyny and trick ending, like some others in here.
JG Ballard's "The Garden of Time" is a bit sentimental, unique in my non-expert knowledge of his work, but he earns it here.
A few other offerings are meh or a littlw worse.

Don’t know where to put this so:
https://roulette.org/event/scott-robinsons-higher-powers-a-richard-m-powers-centennial-concert/

finally found a copy of Mary Staton’s from the legend of biel. Had been looking for it ever since seeing it on this list which I think was linked to itt: https://lithub.com/10-great-reads-from-the-feminist-lesbian-sci-fi-boom-of-the-1970s

But the ultimate test was if we’d read From the Legend of Biel. It is an odd, obscure, not easily (or ever) understood novel that resonated with all of us hardcore fans. If there was a copy on your shelf, you were automatically way cool. I hope that still works.

Great list---where did you find Staton's book?!

this place in fullerton, California: https://hobrf.com/

Ah cool, thanks.

Sounds a little disappointing but I'd still like to check it out
https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/hellstroms-hive/

Project Hail Mary was probably the daftest 'hard' sf I've read, but quite fun. I can see how the endless 'problem! problem solved!' story style might work better in a slightly more realistic setting but I won't be rushing to read the martian as I don't think I can take a few more hundred pages of that narrator. (Though I understand the martian narrator is much swearier, this one limits himself to 'gosh darn' and 'dang' which is quite tiresome but i did lol (in a wtf sort of way) when someone follows another 'gosh darn it' with 'language!') Something very pollyanna and mary-sue (are there no derogatory terms for male protagonists?) about the belief, and its vindication in the story, that every problem can be solved with a little bit of thinking.

It's pretty handy how he manages to learn the language of a species with a completely different sensory modality with just a vocab primer, no worries about grammar, and he learns perfect pitch into the bargain. Lem would be spinning in his grave. And I'm not entirely clear how a species with apparently no knowledge of electromagnetic waves managed to detect the astrophages or navigate to another star. And one more thing... how did the taumoebi who burrowed into the xenonite then breed so that their adaptation could proliferate?

(on the plus side, you were worried about the size and yet it took you a week)

yeah, in the martian he was only ever talking to himself and all the problems were ones of survival and rooted in physics - "what if i take this laptop outside?" "how long can i live eating only potatoes?"

Something very pollyanna and mary-sue (are there no derogatory terms for male protagonists?)

― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Monday, October 25, 2021 9:17 AM

Gary Stu is the male equivalent that people use but I think there should be a better one. It mostly gets used for Wil Wheaton's character in Star Trek

Horace Walpole - The Castle Of Otranto

just started this (is ~90 pages and it's approaching hallowe'en and it was mentioned here recently, oh, by R.A.G.) except... it's not the gothic horror i had it pegged as, the castle is more like the setting of a fairy tale - young prince gets killed by [thing], evil king sees [thing], young princess escapes by [action]... (am at end of chapter 1, things might change, but the only creepy thing so far is the father's change of marriage plans)

I can see how the endless 'problem! problem solved!' story style might work better in a slightly more realistic setting but I won't be rushing to read the martian as I don't think I can take a few more hundred pages of that narrator.

the martian is much better for that reason, and it's also shorter. not saying you should prioritize it, but it's a fun few hours if you're stuck in a reading rut.

https://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/misha_redspiderwhiteweb.html

Wish I could get this but it only mails to american buyers

are you in the uk? can't promise it will be quick at this time of year i can forward if you can cover my costs by transfer to my old uk bank account.

I am but I've bought too much stuff recently. Thanks for the offer though

sure. let me know if you change your mind. i have to mail stuff to the uk every few weeks anyway so no bother.

Thankyou. I will keep it in mind

spent a month reading ada palmer's 'terra ignota' series

the only person to whom i could fully recommend it without caveats is our beloved max read, who loves political economy

nevertheless i really liked it

I am two thirds of the way into Shadow of the Torturer and I am suddenly VERY CONFUSED

I'm really eager for Palmer's series. She gives really great interviews and I like her so much it will be a big comedown if I don't like her books.

(The Martian on film4 at 18:15 tonight btw)

Jack Vance - Tales Of The Dying Earth

I had a Gollancz edition but some of the first printing had the text sinking towards the spine and made it difficult to read, so I bought the Orb edition, which has a spaceship which really poorly sells the contents, there are flying ships and space travel but no spaceships like this, a completely different aesthetic. This series is far more fantasy than science fiction.
Note that the first 3 novels have different titles in Vance's preferred Spatterlight editions.

The Dying Earth is made of loosely connected stories (this was a minor controversy when it came to awards categorization) following different characters who sometimes appear in each other's stories. It establishes an atmosphere for the series nicely and there's some beautiful scenery but I'll never understand why some people like this book best from the series or even from Vance's entire oeuvre. I wasn't immediately aware that this book was supposed to be be funny. Liane The Wayfarer is the best character.

The Eyes Of The Overworld makes an important shift in the series: the comedy is increased, the destination becomes less important than the journey, typical action/adventure is dialed down in favor of farce and now we have main characters we follow all the way. Cugel seems like a recycled but less sinister version of Liane, much of the comedy comes from his regular displays of outrage as he dishonestly tries to paint himself as the victim of wrongdoing in any situation he tries to take advantage of.

I thought Cugel's Saga retconned a bit of the previous novel's ending, it's the longest book in the series and by the end of it I was glad for a new bunch of characters in Rhialto The Marvellous. There's a scene in one of the earlier novels with wizards showing off to each other and I was happy that this has more of that; it's about a pompous group of wizards who are prone to backstabbing each other and the dialogue is more flamboyant than ever. It's even more questionable for the classification of novel than the first book, this is a collection of three stories and one is much longer than the other two.

I've got mixed feelings about the series, it did make me a Vance fan and I plan to read many more of his books but I found this really uneven at times, I lost interest in a lot of the situations eventually; the imagery is sometimes really lush but often uses generic fantasy imagery and there's too many gaping voids through lack of description, many of the creatures are left completely blank. Later on there's quite a lot of made up words that I didn't get the gist of. The spell names are wonderful, I love the long dialogue exchanges and the idea that one of the wizards has disturbingly expressive feet. All in all I don't think I can give it less than 4 stars.
I think Eyes Of The Overworld is probably the best of them but I maybe liked Rhialto The Marvellous just as much because it increased most of the best qualities of the series and Vance excels with arrogant characters.

After reading other reviews I'm amazed that some people don't seem to realize that Cugel, Rhialto and friends are supposed to be very unpleasant people.

The modern reader has a ton of trouble with the concept of the asshole protagonist

Dying Earth is not my favorite Vance (Vance is possibly my favorite writer) but I do love it and it will always loom large as the place where he staked out his territory and the secret soul of much early D&D