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

VANCE

Top 5 singletons

Big Planet
The Languages of Pao
Space Opera
Maske: Thaery
The Dragon Masters/The Last Castle (novella 2fer)

Top 3 Series that aren’t The Dying Earth

The Demon Princes (5)
Lyonesse/The Green Pearl/Madouc (3)
Planet of Adventure (4)

Note: I’ve not read the Durdane trilogy… I’m saving it. Of the well known singletons, I’ve never read Emphyrio. And I’ve not read any of his genre mysteries yet, which were impossible to find until the Integral Edition - I have them as ebooks now and I’m sure they’re going to be GREAT given Vance’s particular strengths.

Been wondering if my Gateway Omnibus edition of Big Planet is the restored version.

Some collectory stuff I just bought

Kokain boxed set (a shortlived german magazine)
http://www.siderealpress.co.uk/

This new Brendan Connell book looks lovely
http://www.egaeuspress.com/Heqet.html

i read 'big planet' last night and . . . it was okay. (sorry jon)

not sure if it's because it's a fix-up, or because it's early work, or because it was the first stepping stone for that type of novel, but i thought it was a clear step down from 'moon moth + stories'

i give it props for its lack of wide-eyed idealism and for the fact that the protagonist is (mentioned once as being) dark-skinned, but a lot of it seemed, at this remove, pretty boilerplate

Jon - How about Araminta Station?

The trilogy starting with Araminta Station is great, kind of a grand finale to his imperial era (IIRC, toward the end of this trilogy is when his blindness starts to really affect his ability to produce)

I think the yellow edition of big planet is restored but not as careful editorially as the vie edition - is google to be sure

I get what you are saying mp I just have a hearty appetite for this kind of meat and potatoes Vance idk

Maybe you would dig the related Showboat World more?

This stuff about getting a good edition makes me tear my hair out, always thinking about this and I often check sf-encyclopedia (which doesn't have everything of course). I was checking my Dover edition of Lewis's The Monk to make sure it wasn't the censored version and it suggests it's the full thing but I wanted it clearer; but I think the censored version hasn't had a printing in over a century apart from print-on-demand.

<3 jon

With that one you get extra juice from Vance’s strong personal enthusiasm for boats- him and Frank Herbert and their families lived on two houseboats for a couple years (in Mexico iirc)

Poul Anderson has a few best of collections, look through the more recent ones probably

There's kind of a memoir thingie that looks good with a bunch of stories in it called something like Slouching Towards Infinity.

Going for Infinity: A Literary Journey.

I remember his 'Queen of Air and Darkness' being quite a clever fantasy/SF mash-up, and the early Time Patrol stories are entertaining enough (Kingsley Amis was a big fan of them) but otherwise I'm drawing a blank ...

"Goat Song" was far and away better than his usual dumb prose.

"Goat Song" is in that excellent Hartwell anthology The Science Fiction Century but I still haven't read it. It's also in Going for Infinity.

http://georgekelley.org/forgotten-books-363-the-science-fiction-century-by-david-hartwell/

This week I went back to Robert Sheckley and read 3 of his early 1950s stories.

Zachary Jernigan - A History Of The Defeated

I meant to finish the highly acclaimed Jeroun before I started this, but this was so thin, fresh and new. This is set in the same world with some of the same characters appearing.

It's about a man looking after a super powered dog in his own ascension to incredible power and his difficult relationships in the past. There's a lot of solitary training, reflection, everyday simple pleasures and explicit heavy muscled gay eroticism. It seemed to me an unusual mixture of fantasy setting that has much of our current day things in it, real songs and books are referenced. The fights are brief but exciting.

I've got quite a few leads with Poul Anderson, definitely more interested in his fantasy

excited to share that we've sold over 5000 copies of MANHUNT this past month, with no sign of slowing down. When I heard the numbers earlier I was bowled over by such a warm and excited reception for such a controversial book. Thank you, readers <3https://t.co/ZOzhcBMMLq

— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) March 25, 2022

Haven't bought Manhunt yet but it's gratifying to see this after Ego Homini Lupus was so brilliant

Brian Stableford just released his 100th novel and I recall him saying it has long been a goal to reach that number, but why? Never understood Rhys Hughes saying he'd never write another short story after he reached 1000

Been really enjoying looking through isfdb for the art of foreign publishers.

If you know Noriyoshi Ohrai it's probably for his film posters or the couple of Metal Gear Solid images he made but found some book covers I've never seen.

Shirley Jackson - Haunting Of Hill House
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/8e/QJRDPTSLCJ1972.jpg
EE Doc Smith
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61GAFKY580L.jpg
Mariko Ohara
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51FYJKCKYNL.jpg

Cover by someone else for Bruce Sterling's Mirrorshades anthology
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61OzgLsAubL.jpg

Some of them won't load for me but if you open image in new tab it should work

Beauties

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/4/4f/LVNDRCKTSJ2010.jpg

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/3/38/BTRPLNTGQK2005.jpg

Never read any Jack Vance except perhaps for a story or two in a random anthology, thought i might take a look at the dying earth but then i saw this quote on your goodreads page, Robert, and thought hmm maybe not;

“Hold, hold, hold!" came a new voice. "Hold, hold, hold. My charms and tokens, an ill day for Thorsingol ... But then, avaunt, you ghost, back to the orifice, back and avaunt, avaunt, I say! Go, else I loose the actinics; trespass is not allowed, by supreme command from the Lycurgat; aye, the Lycurgat of Thorsingol. Avaunt, so then.”

Just finished The Machine by Elizabeth Bear, it almost gave me insight into the sad puppies mindset - i am of course all in favour of sf being more inclusive, more tolerant, more understanding, more questioning, in short more woke - but reading this took some emotional labour that i was just not in the mood for.

That's the kind of thing that makes the books funny, I love that bit. I find the series really uneven but the pompous wizard talk is some of the best stuff

What kind of emotional labour in the Bear book?

I believe it has to do with some kind of alien parthenogenesis.

Oh you.

I've been trying to pin it down. The narrator has a chronic pain condition which is managed with a sort of exoskeleton and advanced neurological tinkering, it's very much a defining feature of her personality and she goes on about it endlessly. Complaining about this might make me sound like an arsehole but it's somewhat hard to take seriously when the rest of the story is so far fetched. She's very much concerned with doing the right thing, and whether other people are doing or not doing the right thing, and she's sort of hyper aware of but averse to fixing some personality issues ("yes I don't trust people or let them get close, but hey that's me" (not an actual quote)). The combination of all these things just seems exhausting.

Found quite a few appealing mentions of stories in Hartwell's Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, but only a couple in his also ace xpost The Science Fiction Century:

Recent time travel story I enjoyed was "The King and The Dollmaker" by Wolfgang Jeschke, which can be found in David G. Hartwell's Science Fiction Century, a gaslight melodrama featuring secretive scientists, a regal succession struggle and eighteenth century automata. Rave reviews from Franz Rottensteiner. Not much of the guy's stuff is translated into English, may check out The Cusanus Game.

― Erdős Number 9 Dream (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, August 2, 2014 8:31 AM

This morning before breakfast (trying to beat the heat, hit the library early), I read Tiptree's "Beam Me Up," killer opener of Hartwell's The Science Fiction Century You'll guess the basic plot from the title, and it's early, even has an old-timey tacked-on ending, but the damage is already done: nobody but JTJR, leaving her calling card and a dark buzz for the rest of this glorious suburban summer day, like many days in the story.

― dow, Friday, August 22, 2014 1:51 PM

Those are from
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

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

Recently got Grossman's anthology Sense Of Wonder and it is one of the biggest heaviest books I own, so I'm surprised I never see it mentioned among landmark anthologies. It's quite expensive but difficult to say there isn't enough bang for buck. Type is a little small so I may read all the stories I can from other books.

It has some essays in there and I was quite fascinated by Betsy Wollheim writing about her dad Donald (who I've always found intriguing). She talks about how difficult he was but still lovable and that many authors taken their frustrations with him out on her and then acted as if nothing was wrong when they met him afterwards.
She said that CJ Cherryh was like a second daughter to him and that they spent a long time talking in the office together. How common was that for a publisher to spend that amount of time with an author? (admittedly one of the DAW star authors)

That book is good, but I still haven’t finished it;) I have an ecopy and there used to be something wrong with the font, think it’s been fixed. I recall Frederik Pohl giving it a very positive review.

the kindle edition has a "Print length" of "5645 pages" (probably reflecting the type size, given the paperback is about 1000pp)

list of contents here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?354562

I love the extra essays in that book like the one you mentioned. I once started a thread and a little while later found an essay in that book on exactly the same time. Also just looked at that Betsy Wollheim essay and holy smokes at

Betsy Wollheim is the President and Publisher of DAW Books. She lives with her husband, musician Peter Stampfel, and their family in New York City.

Leigh Ronald Grossman. Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (Kindle Locations 60080-60081). Wildside Press LLC. Kindle Edition.

Oh yeah. One of my fave xgau features ever takes us to their loft life in '99--the most thread-relevant passage:

Peter Stampfel and Betsy Wollheim got their corner loft in Soho because Betsy's dad needed a place to store his books.

now a coop but originally a bargain rental. Its $10,000 key money was advanced by Wollheim père with an eye to his science fiction library, the third largest in the world, as well as the cartons of discontinued titles that constituted his backlist. Donald A. Wollheim was the first person to edit a collection designated "Science-Fiction"--the hyphenated cover is framed on their wall. He conceived Ace Books, home of Burroughs's Junkie and Philip K. Dick and mountains of crap, including the gothics that preceded romances--he is credited with discovering that a light in one window of the house on the cover gooses sales. Eventually he founded his own company, DAW, which his daughter took over in 1985. A division of Penguin these days, DAW puts out 40 new fantasy and science fiction titles and 40 reissues a year. Peter works there full-time as an associate editor, doing first readings and correspondence. Betsy, the president, goes to the office three days; often she edits manuscripts at home till five in the morning.

speaking of xgau, and threads of wonder, 'the only ones' by his wife carola dibbell is pretty pretty good and . . . somewhat more immediately relevant in the seven years since she wrote it

I’ve been meaning to read that for …seven years I guess? Also wondering what her nephew is up to.

Julian's still around, in his way(s). I corresponded with him a little bit, long ago (snail mail, even). Nice guy.
he's around Twitter and has an updated (to 2010 or so) self-named site.

That is the second unexpected stampfel connection i have learned in the past week (the other one: he worked at the Brill Building at the desk next to Roger McGuinn)

I saw something about Roger McGuinn being in the Brill Building- working for Bobby Darin, I think - but nothing about Stampfel.

Welp, speaking of Donald A. Wollheim, I fairly recently read his (and Arthur W. Saha's) The 1981 Annual World's Best SF (a DAW hardback! Maybe because Book Club Edition, and sturdy, with no page age, cover art drolly indifferent)
Here's the Big Four, the ones that made the most lasting impression, from several months ago:

John Varley, "Beatnik Bayou": that's where the kids go to hang out, in this little shack they've built, to play like beatniks or whatever--but one day their reverie is interrupted by a crazy lady, who is totally stressed out about her toddler's life being ruined by being passed over for a chance at the right schooling---and she zeros in on Trigger, a 7-year-old girl, the gang's leader/group's teacher, who until recently was a thirtysomething man, currently going back to roots and trying to rekindle romance with narrator, who is 13 and was a girl (boy before that). Trigger, under duress, admits to having a Peter Pan problem, but that's not why in trouble.
It's because of way group dealt with this lady, who brings charges, and each member is interviewed and judged by a very empathetic entity, one-on-one and simultaneously, though penalties for assault cases, which this is, can go all the way to death.
So this sublunar, post-Earth, All-Ages Sex Change On Demand, Capital Punishment Nanny State seems like it might be based on the Singapore of that era, which was getting publicity for surveillance cameras (one major thing lacking here!) resulting in penalties for not flushing urinals, jaywalking---SilverBob, taking over as Asimov's Mag resident gas giant opinionator after Isaac left our system, approved the widely publicized caning of an American teen, visiting along with his family, for graffiti.
The whole thing seems almost a little flat, under glass, but that's how they live, and I would still like to read some more of Varley's stories about this society, whenever I happen to come across them.
The narrator's mom, however, lives a very different kind of life, apparently: she's a working single parent, who got her kid into a good program, and supports a series of aspiring artists, live-in lovers, who leave, either becoming successful enough to go on to the next rung lady, or resenting her stability as a comment/insidious influence on their rebellious artistry's lack of success (what can rebellious artistry consist of, in such a society?) Would like to know more about this kind of thing.

My state legislator might find Sharon Webb's "Variation on a Theme From Beethoven" just as disturbing, in a YA way: Earth is a big ol' arts summer camp, where you go, if chosen, to choose whether to be a true artist, thus staying with your lifespan, or to find insight through self-disillusionment, and give up, go back, to be just another immortal, an artsy one, of course, if you care to---and what is life anyway, if it never ends? And what is life, anyway? This was a little awkward at first, but developed pretty well. Sharon Webb, like Varley, was popular then, still new to me.

Howard Waldrop's "Ugly Chickens" is one of the two I read previously: this was in Universe 10, Terry Carr's good old series. The scene that stayed with me since the 80s is the dodo doing its own kind of dance in the court of the king, several centuries ago: from the reverie of the narrator, a grad student who's gotten word of dodos surviving into the 80s, and in America! He's hot on the trail, and happily dispensing dodo knowledge, like Ishmael reveling in his Moby Dick discoveries, of whales in books, down through the ages. Otherwise, this is nobody-but-Howard. His stories, the ones I happened to come across, were always good, except one in Omni that ended up being too sentimental about flying saucers.

George RR Martin's "Nightflyers' is a novella, the longest yard by far, and earns it. An intriguing, quest-worthy scientific expedition sets off on a strange ship, with a strange captain, and it's mystery-horror in space, gore and zombies floating through more than Special EFX, as the story develops via the dynamics of a group whose members I can actually keep straight, they have that much personality, even when dead/"dead."

Michael G. Coney's "The Summer Sweet, The Winter Wild" is the other re-read, first encountered recently in Le Guin and Virginia Kidd's 1980 Interfaces (which is good-to-great, except for one Avram Davidson stinker). It's narrated by the group consciousness of an antelope herd, which finds itself in a post-apocalyptic season of no bearable pain, when the wolves, who already seemed neurotic, are starving because they can't bear to thin the herd, which now includes a lot of losers, who aren't heard from in this well-paced and otherwise well-shaded tale of anxiety: so is this truly a parable of needed herd purity, or meta, a comment on that kind of purist mentality? I take it as the latter, but nice read either way, lyrical and sneaky.

I don't recall any particular objection to the other selections (by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Spinrad, Lee Killough, Lisa Tuttlea few others), but don't recall anything else about them either.

the longest *yarn* by far

Use to love Varley, but ultimately felt his was too glib, like his hero Heinlein, then read some stuff again in recent years and sort of liked it. Think Disch detested him or at least one of his big stories. Believe "Beatnik Bayou" is based on Austin's Hippie Hollow, the title at least.

Martin Skidmore used to stan for Michael G. Coney. I read the first few chapters of one of the novels he recommended, liked it, but never got around to going further/pvmic.

I read Robert Sheckley's story 'Paradise II'. Quite chilling, really. Sheckley had a remarkable and clear imagination.

Also Sheckley's story 'The Accountant': a joke, but seems to anticipate Harry Potter by decades.

Sheckley knew what he was doing. Think he lost a lot of years due to substance abuse but I really liked that last Alternative Detective novel which takes place on Ibiza, Soma Blues, maybe one of the last things he wrote.

It actually takes place in a druggy milieu which with he has apparently pretty familiar. Really good use of his talents, no joke.

James Redd: in truth I haven't yet read any of his novels, though I own a few. I greatly admire his stories. Do other SF readers here?

I've read one Sheckley novel, Journey Beyond Tomorrow. It's a pretty entertaining 'comic odyssey' novel, not unlike very early Vonnegut. The only thing I really remember about it now is that at one point the main character successfully campaigns to abolish metal so that no more weapons can be manufactured. Society promptly collapses.

A lot of his stories seem to have the theme 'what if people were unutterably stupid'. Which was perhaps accidentally prescient.