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

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

read 'the moon moth & other stories' by him gradually over the past year or two and thought they were great

“The New Moth” itself and “The New Prime” are both grebt. Been meaning to read the rest but, um, well…

Jon- which Dying Earth book do you think is the best? I think Rhialto The Marvellous is really underrated and it might have been the best if the overall shape of the stories was more satisfying. Eyes Of The Overworld is better structured and Cugel is probably the favorite character, so ultimately it wins.

I love it in the 3rd book when Cugel says "you may remove my shoes"

Probably Cugel’s Saga but in a very me type move I still haven’t read Rhialto! I’ve been “saving it for the right time” for about twenty years

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/dlnw.htm

Speaking again ov xpost David Lindsay, here's a new post by Tolkien etc scholar Douglas A. Anderson:

Of the small number of books ever written on David Lindsay (1876-1945), author of A Voyage to Arcturus (1920), I wrote about the first one in Wormwood no. 36 (Spring 2021), "David Lindsay: The Forging of a Literary Reputation." This covers the multi-authored volume The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (1970), by Colin Wilson, E.H. Visiak and J.B. Pick.
The next important appraisal of Lindsay came out in 1981, The Life & Works of David Lindsay (Cambridge University Press), by Bernard Sellin, translated from the French by Kenneth Gunnell. This was a reworking of Sellin's thesis at the Sorbonne, David Lindsay (1878 [sic]-1945): sa vie, son oeuvre (1977). I learned of Sellin's book via a review by Humphrey Carpenter in the TLS of 19 June 1981. I was then in regular correspondence with Humphrey, and mentioned my interest in Lindsay in my next letter to him. By transatlantic return mail, came his review copy of the book (with a short presentation inscription, "Doug-- hope it's of interest! Humphrey"), and I was very grateful. If not the foundation of my forty-plus years of David Lindsay obsession, it was certainly a milestone, a bedrock book with lots of new information on Lindsay's life (and a rare photograph of Lindsay on the dust-wrapper), and an extensive analysis of his writings. In 1981, the book was priced £17.50, which seemed exorbitant, but it quickly went out of print and became a sought-after item in the rare books trade. Finally, in February 2007, a print-on-demand trade paperback facsimile (also priced high at £25.99) was made available.

I had some contact with Professor Sellin, beginning in 2005, when he had heard about the publication of Lindsay's "A Christmas Play" in my anthology Tales Before Tolkien* (2003), and wrote to me asking for details. We swapped books and articles over the next few months. Sadly, I just learned that he passed away in August of this year, so I post this as a small memorial to him for his work on Lindsay.
Posted by Douglas A. Andersonat 1:00 AM
graphics etc.:http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2021/11/bernard-sellin-and-david-lindsay.html
*excellent anthology!

Also:
Wormwood 37 has just been announced. This issue includes:

John Howard on the many dimensions of Fritz Leiber

Tom Sparrow on Henry Mercer, author of antiquarian ghost stories

Oliver Kerkdijk on Dutch fantasist Henri van Booven

Colin Insole on the modern ghost stories of Robert Westall

Adrian Eckerseley with a new view of Machen’s The Hill of Dreams

Mark Valentine on the figure of Arthur in the 1970s

In our review columns, Reggie Oliver discusses books where the past haunts the present, and John Howard looks at books with settings ranging from Atlantis to Zurich.
More info, links: http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2021/11/wormwood-37.html

Just now noticed that local library has Cixin Liu's (The adults are dying. In one year, the children will be all that's left of humanity. And so begins the...) Supernova Era, translated by Joel Martinsen, who did the same for CL's Dark Forest---are they good??

I've read the trilogy and even at 500+ pages each they had almost too many ideas in them. maybe in the standalone novels he'll have calmed down and investigate a single idea more.

anyway, 1st December which means another Amazon (uk) kindle monthly deal list to wade through and this month's scifi list seems to be full of bangers. easily about a dozen things I'd buy if i didn't already have copies (and probably 5 i will buy / rebuy digital copies of)

specifically:

Neuromancer
Revelation Space
Wool
The Dispossessed
Rendezvous With Rama
The Forever War
Roadside Picnic
Doomsday Book
Inverted World
A Scanner Darkly
Mockingbird
and all the short afro futurism things i mentioned previously.

Doomsday Book and Mockingbird are Sci Fi Masterworks which i've not read. anyone?

Half of Doomsday book involves a time traveller struggling to survive during the black death and is quite moving, half of it is a farce set in a (not very) futuristic Oxford and is absolutely dreadful. If you want a taste of her style and her strange obsession with 'mufflers' try this, set in the same universe as Doomsday Book: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/firewatch.htm

i've just seem how long that book is and am no longer interested 8)

ledge deeply otm

I'm halfway through Termination Shock and I've gotta say, so far it's mostly what I want from Neal Stephenson... in the vein of Cryptonomicon or the first half of Seveneves, a nerdy fun propulsive story with the dumb libertarian bullshit kept to reasonable levels.

Lavie Tidhar and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's choices
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/18/best-science-fiction-fantasy-horror-novels/

A whole load of people, but as you might expect, Tor's own books often get a lot of attention
https://www.tor.com/2021/12/07/tor-com-reviewers-choice-the-best-books-of-2021/

http://chomupress.com/uncategorized/farewell-from-and-to-chomu-press/

Not all of their books are still available (Cisco, Tem and Pulver), but they're all gone in two months. I bought 14.

Khlopenko & Hofer (ed) Best Of Three Crows: Year One

This magazine seems open to most kinds of speculative fiction, leaning darker than most that aren't exclusively horror magazines. I recently saw Khlopenko on social media complaining about the seeming non-existence of truly experimental speculative fiction these days, so I guess he wants submissions like that.
Every story had something of interest, some were pretty strong, but a few felt underdeveloped or like a chapter from a longer story.

Anna Smith Spark's "Stones" is the most satisfying, she has a knack for writing miserable old men. A selkie story.

Gerard Mullan's "The Necromancer's Garden" is a comeuppance story and I've seen too many of those (probably from so many horror comics and martial arts films) but I liked the style, it's like a goth tinged pre-raphaelite aesthetic. This seems to be Mullan's only story and I hope he gets more published.

One story is missing from the table of contents, but it is in the book.

I'll probably buy the second annual.

someone just snagged tau zero off me on slsk; felt compelled to tell them that it sucks

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