lol ok, I had a look at the start of the plot summary but it rang no bells - ah it's in The Time Traveler's Almanac.
― ledge, Wednesday, 13 April 2022 10:49 (two years ago) link
Believe you said it was a keeper though, so hopefully you will enjoy the reread.
― Anita Quatloos (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 13 April 2022 12:05 (two years ago) link
More time-tourizm on the Rolling Speculative threads!
More relevant to this thread than expected: most of the best of Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories For Late At Night. Mind you, the best is not the most of these stories, though most of the failures are gratifyingly ambitious, pushing through or against early-to-middle-ish respectable magazine slickness, to something thumping you and darting away--but ultimately suffering from unity of effect, for lack of a better phrase ( dun yeah, I didn't get some of 'em). Margaret Ronan's "Finger, Finger!" did very discreetly point me toward an off-page resolution/justification of the ending, via an unobtrusive and early clue, riskily recalled (hard to do this right; even Gene WolfeNevertheless, I did get Jerome Bixby's "It's A Good Life", a little different than the Twilight Zone version, but just as great. Funky country fun can also be had in William Hope Hodgson's "The Whistling Room" and M.R. James's "The Ash Tree."George Langelaan's "The Fly" is sweet, sober, tragic and low-key audacious, minus the camp of the first screen version or the awesome thump and dart and thump some more of Cronenberg's re-make.The one that really grabbed me: "Vintage Season," a novelette by C.L. Moore, better known by me for collaborations with Henry Kuttner. This is a tale of an innocent 20th Century lad encountering kinky time travelers, eventually including or followed by a composer of metamorphic works...first published in a 1946 issue of Astounding, the last place I would have guessed (can be taken as a female writer's critique of Astounding's axiomatic white male earthlings uber alles, though can also imagine Campbell and crew getting turned on by i)(I kinda was).Also, though not really thread-revelant, the volume ends with more unsettling gender scrutiny via "The Iron Gates", a WWII-era novel by Margaret Millar, wife of Ken Millar/Ross Macdonald, where women (oh yeah, some men too) are keeping the homefires burning and the merry-go-round turning, with madness and murder finding their seats, of course. A little too b-movie talky at times, or creatively overwritten at others, but the zingers can go deep (enough to distract me from obvious clues).
― dow, Thursday, July 18, 2013 12:58 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink
One more from the Hitchthology: "Evening Primrose", by John Collier: a poet forsakes this cruel world and stumbles into a subculture of people living among posh Manhattan department store mannikins. Light touch flicks momentum, through eerie elegance, tawdriness and plain dust: the poet's a fule, but his streaky point of view is increasingly hard to dismiss, as he veers into a romance a bit more tragic than comic. This is prob the most Hitchcockian story in the whole thing.
― dow, Sunday, July 21, 2013 7:59 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink
There's a great John Collier collection put out by NYRB
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Sunday, July 21, 2013
― dow, Wednesday, 13 April 2022 22:41 (two years ago) link
read GALAXIES by barry n. malzberg, which, as he points out again and again, is *not* a sci-fi novel but merely notes for a *possible* sci-fi novel
it's interesting enough because he's a legitimately good writer, but overwhelmed by his incredible bitterness. at various points he challenges the Big Writers of the century -- hemingway, dos passos, lewis, oates -- but notably does *not* call out philip roth lol
apparently he entirely quit writing sci-fi soon after writing this (in 1975), which was just as well
― mookieproof, Friday, 15 April 2022 02:09 (two years ago) link
Right. Think we have discussed before the Malzberg/Silverberg - Malz/Silver? - dichotomy where after his own crack-up Silverberg eventually came back into the fold and started doing fan service like Lord Valentine’s Castle.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 15 April 2022 02:28 (two years ago) link
The Malz Age of Science Fiction is 75.
in GALAXIES he literally points out the spots where an author could pad this novel out or even create a series
but that was too much for him, even if writing crime novels or porn was the alternative. is that better than fan service?
― mookieproof, Friday, 15 April 2022 03:16 (two years ago) link
Even or especially PKD, sometimes living on speed and visions of the Dark Haired Girl, pizza deliverer with the Christian fish symbol earring, told Malz to suck it up or go home, so maybe that's why he went.
― dow, Friday, 15 April 2022 05:02 (two years ago) link
(also bravely living on cat food when couldn't afford Earthly pizza deliverance)
― dow, Friday, 15 April 2022 05:03 (two years ago) link
Never heard that before about PKD’s advice to BNM. Where did you come across it?
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 15 April 2022 12:03 (two years ago) link
Did just learn some stuff from his Wikipedia page.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 15 April 2022 12:06 (two years ago) link
Like this.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 15 April 2022 12:52 (two years ago) link
Or this, two weeks and a day late.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 15 April 2022 13:13 (two years ago) link
Looks like there's quite a lot of SF on Malzberg's CV after the 70s, a good chunk of it is collaborations and he's still doing it.
I'm quite pleased about the variety of new things Somtow is doing, serials including weird high school romance, regency romance with SF, a religious series and a historical novel about Sporus; maybe restarting Vampire Junction. Really hope he finishes his new Inquestor series because I adore that (haven't got to the new parts though). Don't know what's happening to Dragonstones, I should ask him.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 15 April 2022 18:58 (two years ago) link
Wow, Screen even got a fancy audiobook treatment.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 April 2022 01:01 (two years ago) link
Maybe I will finally read Herovit’s World if not The Falling Astronauts.
― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 April 2022 01:03 (two years ago) link
Have you read any other Malzberg, mookie, or do you plan to?
― Wile E. Kinbote (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 April 2022 22:58 (two years ago) link
Malzberg has a habit of trudging grimly through almost the entire length of the work, and then powering up on the last page. He does that in Galaxies, Herovit's World, and a number of other things I've read.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 19 April 2022 04:44 (two years ago) link
Herovit’s World starts out pretty strong, I think, but I have only read the first few chapters.
― Wile E. Kinbote (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 19 April 2022 05:04 (two years ago) link
Didn't know Ben Burgis is the brother of Stephanie Burgis. Admittedly not something a lot of people talk about
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 24 April 2022 11:57 (two years ago) link
Mark Valentine on Wormwoodiana:
Ghosts in the Machine is an exhibition of black & white images hosted by Bower Ashton Library, Bristol, for World Book Night 2022. Contributors were invited to create an image responding to the theme and also to name a favourite ghost story.These included stories by M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Pierre de Ronsard, Fritz Lieber, Toni Morrison, Jan Pienkowski, Pu Songling, Astrid Lindgren, Aoko Matsuda, Stanisław Herman Lem and Daphne du Maurier.There were 93 spectral contributions from participants in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, and the USA.My own contribution, ‘Phantoms’, is one of a series of manipulated pages from The English Catalogue of Books for 1937, edited by James D. Stewart (London: The Publishers’ Circular, Limited, 1938). I nominated Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser.The exhibition runs from Weds 13th April – Weds 29th June 2022 and the complete set of images is available as a free PDF (scroll down the Ghosts in the Machine page for the link.
These included stories by M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Pierre de Ronsard, Fritz Lieber, Toni Morrison, Jan Pienkowski, Pu Songling, Astrid Lindgren, Aoko Matsuda, Stanisław Herman Lem and Daphne du Maurier.
There were 93 spectral contributions from participants in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, and the USA.
My own contribution, ‘Phantoms’, is one of a series of manipulated pages from The English Catalogue of Books for 1937, edited by James D. Stewart (London: The Publishers’ Circular, Limited, 1938). I nominated Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser.
The exhibition runs from Weds 13th April – Weds 29th June 2022 and the complete set of images is available as a free PDF (scroll down the Ghosts in the Machine page for the link.
― dow, Sunday, 24 April 2022 16:56 (two years ago) link
I just finished Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth. I knew going in that it was lesbian astronaut necromancers, but I didn't know it was also a closed circle murder mystery. Great stuff. It got mentioned on Jeopardy last week so I guess it's a popular book.
― adam t. (abanana), Monday, 25 April 2022 19:20 (two years ago) link
i also liked that a lot
― mookieproof, Monday, 25 April 2022 19:29 (two years ago) link
Daily Mail and Kiwifarms and some other news sites have been going after Gretchen Felker-Martin (apparently Manhunt kills JK Rowling in an amusing fashion) and I hope this all turns out well for her. As far as I can tell most of this notoriety has come from her being opinionated about pop culture on twitter and her tv reviews because there's lots of outrageous horror writers who never get any attention regardless of how skilled they are.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 26 April 2022 21:49 (two years ago) link
Well, mostly it comes from her being a trans woman and the right wing press taking any chance they can get to attack a trans woman and cast JKR as the victim.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 09:35 (two years ago) link
read KSM's 2312. i don't think these comments are actually spoilers, but just in case
humanity has colonized nearly every vaguely habitable rock/ball of ice between mercury and saturn, mars is fully terraformed, venus is in the process, plans are bandied about for the larger moons of jupiter and saturn. humans in space are doing very well; theirs is even referred to as a 'post-scarcity society'.
earth, however, is a hot mess, with 11 billion people, nearly 500 sovereign states, and a fried environment. it is reliant on spacers for a significant quantity of its food (???) as well as minerals and such.
the titular year is presented as a crisis point that may decide the future of humanity. big questions are raised: if earth collapses into full-on chaos, can the colonies survive? can its biome be healed? are our artificial intelligences becoming sentient?
these are mostly hand-waved away. most of the book seems like an excuse for the main characters to flit about the solar system (mercury to saturn is a 16-day trip, and apparently does not require money?) doing neato things like surfing the rings of saturn or dancing just ahead of the approaching sunrise -- which will boil you in moments -- on mercury.
of course it's well-written. there are classic KSM set pieces and some interesting and detailed sciencey bits, but other sciencey bits either bear little scrutiny or are simply stated as facts no matter how unpersuasive. and the ~portentiousness~ of it all is ultimately unearned. so i liked it but also found it disappointing.
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 27 April 2022 20:58 (two years ago) link
Sounds like what I had reservations about in Green Earth, which I posted about on one of the previous Rolling Speculatives: main idea was, climate disruption is really going to suck for a lot of people, but with some surprising perks, at least early on: flooding of DC results in Fed Parks squatters trading Thoreau passages on DIY localnet (so green neo-cyberpunk to that extent). But he's an outdoorsman enough to provide some wonderful New England coastal and California mountain visits, along with thriller-y elements and a maybe-mystical situation involving eco-refugee monks: seems too gimmicky sometimes,and maybe he should not have lost detail by mixing trilogy down into this one novel---but if you like him at all, and are ready for some disappointments, it's worth checking out; I learned some stuff without feeling lectured.
― dow, Thursday, 28 April 2022 18:14 (two years ago) link
audio interviewhttp://www.scottedelman.com/2022/01/21/usman-t-malik/
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 28 April 2022 20:22 (two years ago) link
Yet another sequel anthology of women authors but oddly this one goes even further back in timehttp://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?888549
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 30 April 2022 22:16 (two years ago) link
Stan at his best is the best. Stan phoning it in is, as you say, portentous.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 30 April 2022 22:26 (two years ago) link
Which of his do people think are the best ones? He’s written so many.
― Eric B. Mash Up the Resident (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 30 April 2022 22:49 (two years ago) link
I was introduced to him through his Three Californias Trilogy, and that's still my favorite.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 30 April 2022 23:00 (two years ago) link
Thanks. What about The Green Earth Trilogy?
― Eric B. Mash Up the Resident (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 30 April 2022 23:38 (two years ago) link
I haven't read that one, although it appears to be on his preachy side. The Mars Trilogy was solid.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Sunday, 1 May 2022 00:09 (two years ago) link
The Green Earth I mentioned---maybe first volume of a trilogy now? Can't keep up with this guy---is itself a mixdown of the Science in the Capital Trilogy: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting: supposedly tighter (he said he was inspired by the way Peter Matthiessen turned his Watson Legend Everglades Trilogy into Shadow Country, but seemed too all over the place for me, too spacey and glib and impulsive---not that I didn't enjoy it in those terms, and sympathize with him and his characters pushing against the patience of eco-decline by working hard, also playing hard, which some of them def made time for---which is why I wondered if the original books may have had more grounding, though he seems well aware of his rep for going on and on in very great detail, like the hard science fiction overlords of yore----anyway my favorite was The Wild Shore, as far as I got in the Three Californias, alas
― dow, Sunday, 1 May 2022 04:08 (two years ago) link
Also, I first knew of him as a writer of short stories, believe it or not, in Asimov's. Well, and novellas---if interested, try the 1992 collection Down and Out in The Year 2000 (gotta dig up my copy).
― dow, Sunday, 1 May 2022 04:12 (two years ago) link
The central character of Green Earth started out as a dour, tightassed researcher, but soon seemed like he, man of the present century and not that old, had grown up smoking pages of his parents' or grandparents' Whole Earth Catalogs, which was odd, but pulled oldie me along, and reminds me there's a Stewart Brand bio just out.
― dow, Sunday, 1 May 2022 04:18 (two years ago) link
I really liked Aurora, a sceptical take on the generation ship tale.
― buffalo tomozzarella (ledge), Sunday, 1 May 2022 06:10 (two years ago) link
Back to SF with Isaac Asimov: FOUNDATION & EMPIRE (1952).
― the pinefox, Sunday, 1 May 2022 11:20 (two years ago) link
Pinefox, you mentioned on WAYR? that his Foundation Trilogy has no robots, but they do show up in some much later Foundation books; I won't tell you which ones.
― dow, Sunday, 1 May 2022 18:36 (two years ago) link
read LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY by kim fu
short stories; riyl kelly link
― mookieproof, Sunday, 1 May 2022 19:46 (two years ago) link
I didn't mean to say that this trilogy had no robots - my main point was that so far, it didn't contain aliens (but no spoilers if they appear later).
So far it rather oddly doesn't seem to contain robots; oddly because he had written key works about robots over the previous decade!
One thing that everyone says about Asimov is "he later wrote loads of books to connect his various sagas up", so yes, I think I knew that somehow he connected robot stories with the Foundation ones, which I believe resumed c.1982. I think I will finish the trilogy but then not read the later ones; it seems more worthwhile to go on with other SF.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 1 May 2022 20:21 (two years ago) link
iirc the later ones are better-written but perhaps unnecessarily muddy the waters
― mookieproof, Sunday, 1 May 2022 20:37 (two years ago) link
Some interesting stuff in here, the Malinda Lo book in particular (didn't catch the title) and the scarcity of old gay bookshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgmJmdXldKU
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 19:09 (two years ago) link
FY50 challenge: fully incorporate women into the species
― youn, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 19:18 (two years ago) link
One thing that everyone says about Asimov is "he later wrote loads of books to connect his various sagas up”
― Wile E. Is President (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 19:56 (two years ago) link
rip patricia mckillip
https://www.tor.com/2022/05/11/patricia-a-mckillip-1948-2022
― mookieproof, Thursday, 12 May 2022 13:35 (two years ago) link
That's sad. Once her friend Pat Cadigan said she stays away from the internet noise and I hope that wont leave her increasingly unknown but I guess she was successful enough she didn't have to self-promote much?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 12 May 2022 18:55 (two years ago) link
It's interesting, she seems like an important figure, but hardly any news sites are picking this up.
― jmm, Thursday, 12 May 2022 19:03 (two years ago) link
I looked around twitter and there are plenty of mourners, in spanish and japanese too
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 12 May 2022 20:40 (two years ago) link