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

I found it in a second hand shop recently

That's a good find.

Nearly 1/3 into THE SPACE MERCHANTS, appreciating it. One idea that Asimov develops is that the people of NYC live under a dome in very controlled conditions (like Mega City One in 2000AD?) but the people from the Outer Worlds ('Spacers') have a settlement beyond it that is actually open to nature. They see ordinary air as healthy and eat apples - which is bizarre to the regular Earth-dwellers. The Spacers also think of the Earth people as unhygenic and demand that they go through extensive showering before entering their sector. Asimov seems to be developing ideas about nature vs artificial life here in a way that is not particularly predictable and only emerges as you read.

He's also, again, good on people's fear of robots and what their superiority will do for the usefulness of humans.

The book is made more appealing by its police procedural element, though that hasn't entirely got into gear yet.

Are you sure you typed the correct title of what you are reading, the pinefox?

I apologise: I meant THE CAVES OF STEEL, of course. Was thinking again of THE SPACE MERCHANTS earlier and conflated them. Both are my kind of thing.

Mark Valentine:

And Other Stories have recently announced pre-orders for Fifty Forgotten Books by R B Russell, due out in September. The author recounts autobiographical episodes alongside discussing books that have been important to him, many of them not very well-known.

All enthusiasts of fantastic, supernatural and unusual literature will enjoy encountering the titles the author chooses, but the book also introduces us to a cast of decadents, bohemians, cult musicians, the odd (very odd) spy, shady publishers and backstreet booksellers, as well as the writers of the weird and wayward.

David Tibet calls it ‘A groovy and delicious and intimate jigsaw of memories and passions and books . . . Falling in love with books voraciously, whilst growing up ferociously, has never been so beautifully described.’

We asked R B Russell to join us for The Wormwood Interview. Here he has chosen some different titles to those in the book. Ray notes: ‘I have tried not to repeat myself in this interview for Wormwoodiana, and this time I discuss only well-known books!’

Really good interview with Jessica Amanda Salmonson from 2004
http://www.jitterbugfantasia.com/violet/index.html

of those books the first two are very english '70s and the last is newish

the ladybird books are what every schoolkid started reading with, 1a being the very first. i doubt that has more than one word per page. iirc there'd be 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, b, c, up to 12. those covers will be very evocative to people my age.

Picked this up on the basis of the many many Vance namedrops here: is this a good representative collection, what’s a good one to start with?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40895.Green_Magic

Seems pretty good. “The Moon Moth”!

I read Green Magic first, if only because it was the shortest — really enjoyed it and looking forward to reading more. Felt like one of those archetypal stories that’s always existed but somehow got summoned up and written down. It sort of reminded me of Mark Twain - but Twain had no discipline and could never have written something so concise.

Nearing the end of ASTOUNDING, I can entirely confirm poster Ward Fowler's previous observation that in other circumstances, Asimov's 'groping' behaviour would make him persona non grata but in this company, he seems the most sane and decent protagonist around.

Heinlein maintains integrity at times but is strangely credulous, especially about Hubbard, for a long time. Campbell is worse. This is meant to be what they now call 'the greatest generation', a time when men were men, they could land on an invasion beach, build a rocket, take no nonsense -- and yet these people tend to believe the most ridiculous baloney, as if they're children. They chuckle wryly about Hubbard's seaborne adventures, not knowing that he lied about all of them and everything else in his life. They say 'This is the greatest discovery in the history of mankind' when Hubbard invents a form of therapy.

The people who actually stay away from the nonsense or politely jibe at it, like Pohl, emerge better.

The book does confirm how close SF and science were. Nuclear energy and weapons, rocketry, and also ESP -- people seem to have taken ideas from fiction into actual science, or pseudoscience, and back again, constantly. And many SF writers seem to have been employed as scientists during WWII.

I think there's a couple of books about science fiction and fact interacting

Finished THE CAVES OF STEEL (1954). The sociological ideas here - about how mankind must leave Earth and, specifically, how the Spacers seek to encourage this - can be briskly dealt with and thus hard to grasp, despite Asimov's great clarity as a writer. But Asimov robot-world + police procedural was a pretty winning combination for me. It's all more to my taste than FOUNDATION.

The question arises: what is the full history of SF-detective genre crossovers? BLADE RUNNER (/ ANDROIDS) is just the most obvious. Asimov was doing this in the 1950s. Are there actually stories along these lines in 1930s magazines?

My local Oxfam has a nice old paperback of CoS, I’ll pick it up. Never read Asimov

In that case, I strongly recommend buying this novel.

I'm sure there are earlier examples, but Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (1953) is a good SF mystery novel.

Who? also (algis budrys) maybe even Rogue Moon

but i think he wanted robots as well

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4d9IrslaOzQ/Tt_FNDTTDFI/AAAAAAAABSI/zD5dn1VXlgk/s1600/stainless+steel+rat.jpg

(although i think the robotic-sounding name may be misleading)

(oh, no, he says SF / detective, not specifically robots)

I'm not quite sure I ever read the RAT, though I have a Harrison novel on my shelf called TECHNICOLOR TIME MACHINE that I ought to read after all this time.

i enjoyed some of them (there are many) when i was in the sixth form, and the carlos esquerra illustrated run in 2000ad. long time ago now though.

I thought Harrison hit his peak with Make Room, Make Room.

^ soylent green, i have just learned

was looking for ebook versions and there's a stainless steel rat anthology (first 3 books) but it says "Available 31-12-2035" and i can't wait that long

I am convinced he was traumatized by a visit to New York City.

2035 !!!

NYC could have robot detectives by then!

Many xposts

Yes chuck that is a nice intro collection for Vance.

i read Anthem so you don't have to. it's only 50 pages long and it only goes batshit in the last two chapters but when it does it does.

he discovers his individuality only in those last two chapters and ignores the fact that EVERYTHING he does and has is because other people did something before him, all he did was take them

The earliest science fiction crime-solving (not really detective) story I know of was this one by Mark Twain, published in 1896. Not one of his best, for sure---even if he'd stopped with Part I---but here tis:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3251/3251-h/3251-h.htm#link2H_4_0009 I did come across one with a detective by Fredric Brown, from the 1940s, maybe, but it was sub-standard too. These can't be the only early examples.

Re: Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Don't know why I don't use the wayback machine more often because reading her old sites has been a lot of fun and I think I'll be reading them for months or years to come, would be great if much of it came out in a book.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110202120339/http://violetbooks.com/
Her views on the depiction of warrior women in her time as a writer and editor are interesting. She makes fun of male writers she knew for putting rock lyrics quotations in their stories in the 80s, that's something I've seen a bunch of times but never really noticed as a trend.

xpost finally thought to check SF Encyclopedia, and found this typically deep-dive thematic survey, down through the ages:
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/crime_and_punishment Sp much here that I'm not actually sure they mention xpost The Demolished Man, which is awesome The Naked Sun is mentioned, picked as Asimov's best robot detective story (reminding me that my local library has his Robots and Murder omnibus, which I may read this summer).
They don't get quite as far as John Scalzi's Lock In, which reviewers often mentioned as an updated Asimov steel gumshoe outing: good lively entertainment, if a bit too TV-quippy sometimes toward the end, but with some contemporary political friction too, largely set in the streets of DC. There's a sequel and a backstory (not a prequel), but I haven't read those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_In

Also I usually mention The Yiddish Policeman's Union and (mostly good, if somewhat wobbly) The City and The City when this subject comes up, but somebody always objects. Fizzles got seriously pissed about TCATC, but he also hate-reads Asimov.

Back when I still bought books, I probably picked this library discard because it incl. Robert Reed (also it probably cost 25 cents)---haven't read it yet:

Resnick, Mike (editor). DOWN THESE DARK SPACEWAYS. [Garden City, NY]: Science Fiction Book Club. [2005]. Octavo, boards. First edition. Original anthology collecting six novella-length noir SF hard-boiled mystery stories: "Guardian Angel" by Mike Resnick, "In the Quake Zone" by David Gerrold, "The City of Cries" by Catherine Asaro, "Camouflage" by Robert Reed, "The Big Downtown" by Jack McDevitt, and "Identity Theft" by Robert J. Sawyer.

Stabelford's Granger series is supposed to be detective noir in spaceships and Aliette de Bodard's Xuya series has lots of detective stuff in spaceships

misspelled Stableford

Poster dow, those look like good tips on this interesting sub-genre subject.

I'm very much enjoying Semiosis by Sue Burke, emo sf (as I like to think of the loose genre that prefers stories based more around social relations than advanced tech) with intelligent plants.

Not solely intelligent plants though, most of the characters are human.

those are good books (first >> second iirc)

That seems to be the consensus, the second one isn't too long so might give it a go at some point.

I was wondering how many other stories dealt with plant intelligence, there's Day of the Triffids but their intelligence is very basic - I can't bring any others to mind, the sf encyclopedia doesn't have an entry for it and the only other thing I found is this: https://ezinearticles.com/?Intelligent-Plants-in-Science-Fiction&id=813730

Would Le Guin's "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" count?

Oh yes, I thought there was a Le Guin one but I could only think of The Word for World is Forest, which is a regular forest.

Isn’t there some Disch book, The Genocides?

But maybe those plants aren’t intelligent.

Last night I read "The Gardener," in The Best of Margaret St. Clair: metamorphic tree-related intelligence, very precise.

Desirina Boskovich - Lost Transmissions: Science Fiction and Fantasy's Untold, Underground, and Forgotten History

I listened to an interview with Boskovich around the time this book came out and she was worried people would complain the choices were too well known, but rightly pointed out that the audience for speculative fiction is so wide and fragmented now that there are fewer and fewer common touchstones, so very few people are going to know about everything in this book. Yet I was still disappointed by the literature section but I thought the architecture, music and fashion sections were a good idea.

Many of the writers are extremely important but apparently losing popularity: Mervyn Peake, M John Harrison, Angela Carter, John Shirley and George MacDonald. I know that a lot of younger american fans don't know about M John Harrison but I thought most would know Peake. Couldn't there have been more said about the other Inklings while on the subject? The interviews are decent and they have their own recommendations for often overlooked writers.

A good deal of the essays are about lesser known aspects of popular things: concept artists, strange back stories, promising projects that were never completed and trivia. Somebody really should film Clair Noto's The Tourist screenplay but it's easy enough to find online and there is a novelization.

I think this book is probably best suited to teenagers who are wanting to branch out. Boskovich said there would be another book with more genuine obscurities if this one succeeded but I guess it's not going to happen but I would have liked to see the sequel. Maybe the hardcover and thick glossy paper made it too expensive and I think very few of the pictures really benefitted from it, the exceptions were Paul Lehr and Syd Mead's lovely paintings (they could've just had a glossy section for the nicer pictures).

https://clairnoto.wixsite.com/thetourist

Time for some Tanith Lee today I think... pic.twitter.com/JaZcb104jy

— Pulp Librarian (@PulpLibrarian) July 19, 2022

Damn. Click on pic to see whole cover.

Several more in that thread.

Probably told y'all before about the time I want to the SF convention at a hotel near LGA and there was some talk about Tanith Lee and some older lady said: "My query? Tanith Lee perplexeth me/Might she be/A Romany?"

Brian Stableford - The Empire Of Fear

An Alternate history set in the 17th century, scientists and revolutionaries are rebelling against the vampire rulers that include a handful of real life historical figures who would have died centuries earlier.
Stableford has said he thought it was a more logical approach to vampires and that this was an attempt to broaden his audience (he's never really stopped writing about vampires for long, so it doesn't seem like much of a compromise) and I guess it worked because while it isn't his best selling book, it seems to be his most acclaimed one (keep in mind most of his books have been read by a very small audience, so there has been no opportunity to decide his best book by broad consensus, I hope this will change).

It becomes clear later on why this is considered a science fiction book, but it might appeal to readers of historical fantasy more than anything else. It is extremely violent at points but it's never supposed to be scary in the way other stories of vampires in castles often are. I sometimes found it padded out with over-explanation and the travels in the middle section went on a bit long, but all in all it's an absolute belter. I found it very unpredictable and the ending is fantastic. It has something of the spirit of Matheson's I Am Legend but with a completely different aesthetic and ten times more ambitious (it is a much thicker book too).

I love the edition with the Sanjulian painting, it captures the book better than the others.

Woke up this morning: To find out my novelisation of @GreatDismal ‘s unproduced screenplay for Alien 3 won the Scribe Award for best adapted novel, announced Friday at the San Diego Comic Con.

& that’s my day! In yr face, Mortality!

— Pat Cadigan (@Cadigan) July 23, 2022

@GreatDismal being William Gibson---not one of my faves, but Cadigan is.

Will there be a novelization of Vincent Ward's version?