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

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?

speaking of Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic was on Great Movies Classic (classic!) during the week. keanu, Rollins, ice-t, autechre on the soundtrack, 80s VR...

Dolph Lundgren has just turned up. beat takeshi also.

autechre?? (pvmic)

um. not listed on the soundtrack. did i confuse it in my paying-half-attention with the orbital track?

yeah, it's orbital, the autechre-sounding one, "SAD BUT TRUE"

Prob right, but songs in the movies don't always make it to the soundtrack albums, for whatever reasons (prob financial?): I know this too well from having worked in a CD-DVD store

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCzOahgur3M

From two years ago but still good

started the Elizabeth Bear books that are currently cheap on amazon.

but it increasingly reads like this

"Yes, space doesn’t have directions, exactly, but let’s be honest here: prepositions and directions are so much easier to use than made-up words, and it’s not like the first object somebody called a phone involved a cochlear nanoplant and a nanoskin graft with a touch screen on it, either. So those of us who work here just pretend we’re nice and know better, and commend the nitpickers to the same hell as people who hold strong and condescending opinions about the plural of the word octopus."

so many asides and opinions, just get on with the exploring already. and there's 470 pages of this in book 1.

I just read Philip K. Dick's first novel SOLAR LOTTERY (1955).

Pretty bonkers, in that the elements of the plot are divergent (it ends with a spaceship discovering a distant planet, but this has been a subplot!). A load of action-adventure shoot-em-up stuff in the middle. A theme of chance as the driver of politics and society - which should be interesting, but isn't really worked through: the social and governance issues *don't* actually seem to have much to do with chance. And even insofar as there is a lottery, it's not solar!

Strikes me that PKD has a noir element - that he wants to write hardbitten heroes and femmes fatales.

Don't know that one---Disch wrote an essay on PKD as intro to this edition, making some good points about what it takes to get into his books, and about SL in particular, Disch says that the title and space opera elements were mandated, not really Dick's interest. His main pulp reference or role model, says Disch, seems to be A.E. Van Vogt, whose
books make the productions of such other founding fathers of proletarian pulp as Hammett and Chandler look like mandarin poetry. His prose rises above the rules of rhetoric and approaches the condition of phatic noise, the direct communication of emotional states by means of grunts and groans.
Also cites detectable influence of "more sophisticated" writing, especially The Demolished Man, also The Space Merchants, which will be more nurturing later, but right now, in this journeyman work, it's much more Van Vogt, especially "his most characteristic work, The World of Null-A." The .pdf won't let me paste, but anyway it's 10 pages, worth a look (may (mentions a "mutilated" 1956 UK edition, as The World of Chance, with the "most inspired" parts unerringly removed, so beware of that w original title restored, as sometimes happens with bootlegged book posts) Here's the UMichPress post of Disch's opener:
https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472068968-25.pdf">chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472068968-25.pdf

Amazon synopsis, apparently from Mariner Books edition (2012):

From the Back Cover
In 2203 anyone can become the ruler of the solar system. There are no elections, no interviews, no prerequisites whatsoever—it all comes down to the random turns of a giant wheel. But when a new Quizmaster takes over, the old one still keeps some rights, namely the right to hire an unending stream of assassins to attempt to kill the new leader.In the wake of the most recent change in leadership, employees of the former ruler scurry to find an assassin who can get past telepathic guards. But when one employee switches sides, troubling facts about the lottery system come to light, and it just might not be possible for anyone to win.

Announcing the Shortlist for the Inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

P.S. In the middle of all of this b.s. about local politics, I might've gotten kicked off a fb nature group for this comment. Can I get some love? I need some love. pic.twitter.com/4ddftrHhDz

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) July 30, 2022

I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Galaxias about the sun being kidnapped by the titular entity and it's as boring a book about such a thing as one could imagine.

.

https://ansible.uk/writing/sfxbc01.html

^David Langford on The Stars My Destination.

Thanks---the only thing that can top that description is reading the book, the jet-propelled immersion of that, in several directions at once, but always straight ahead. Which makes it necessary, or at least it did in my case, to come back and take it all in, which is fine. Pinefox once commented on a What Are You Reading thread that Bester has more ideas on a single page than a lot of other writers have in whole novels (whole careers, I'd say). And he knows how to lay them out, with, yes, The Count of Monte Cristo and his own comic book training as resources.
Reading him in thee mid-to-late Sixties, I, spoiled starchilde, kind of took him for granted, among wonders of era: another intrepid vanguard captain---while also greatly enjoying his novels and short stories, these last being very, very, jazzed-up variations on a few themes. I don't think I took in how old the novels already were, and how mind-blowing they must have seemed when first published; they still seem uncannily prescient, in some techno-societal times individual experience senses (reeling) Setting the standard for extrapolation, to use that good old SF standard term, and also interpolation, on the fly, or so it seems, however long he worked to make it play that way.
He may be one of those artists whose influence and early tapping of zeitgeist could make him seem less striking now, except I've never come across anyone who pulled off the same stylistic approach as well: the closer you come, the more of a parroty fule you may sound (in the same sense that Joyce, Pynchon, several others, may be glorious dead end streets).

"he may be": time to read it all again.

Probably sticking to the first two novels and collected stories, since SF Encyclopedia indicates that The Computer Connection and other later works were not so good. But SFE can be rong (awestruck by Frank Herbert, for instance), so maybe I'll go against their advice.

I'm reading Stephen Baxter's Galaxias about the sun being kidnapped by the titular entity and it's as boring a book about such a thing as one could imagine.

Don't think I've ever read any of Baxter's books but seems like you're not alone as had a quick scan of the Amazon reviews for Galaxias and probably at least half of them use words like boring, tedious, slog etc

Before I bought it I saw a goodreads review that said it consisted entirely of people talking in meetings, which is true, so I was warned - but also the writing is incredibly pedestrian, it has the worst disguised info dumps e.g. one of the world's most eminent scientists will say to another "let's get back to basics, what exactly is the sun's corona", and once you get past the main plot device, absolutely nothing exciting happens whatsoever.

So I guess it’s safe to say it wouldn’t come anywhere near passing Alec Nevala-Lee’s Borges Test.

The only Baxter I've read was a short story or novelette, I think in one of those Hartwell co-edited Year's Best SF(s) from late 90s: hard science, graceful enough, even a glimpse of modestly poetic imagery at the end. Later saw a novel credited to Arthur C. Clarke & Baxter: seemed like they might be compatible, but I haven't checked.

read 'simiosis'

thought it was grebt -- or at the very least, interesting -- but am restraining myself from reading the disappointing sequel

also considering ways to domesticate ilx

whiney = the orange trees

'semiosis', apologies

Just read remnant population by Elizabeth moon which I found redolent of semiosis without being nearly as interesting.

fippocaek tho

Sem·i·o·sis
/ˌsēmēˈōsis/
noun LINGUISTICS
the process of signification in language or literature.

So

Sim-i-o-sis

the process of monkeyfication in language or literature or anything else

(See also VanderMeer tweet above)(Good luck with domesticating Whiney tho)

yeah the orange trees got cut down

because they were shitheads, no less

Just read remnant population by Elizabeth moon which I found redolent of semiosis without being nearly as interesting.

Maybe not as interesting from an SF point of view - it probably could have been set on earth without much modification - but I enjoyed it, particularly the main character, there should be more grumpy old women in SF.

Alec Nevala-Lee’s Borges Test.

Ok I googled it. "The other approach is to emphasize qualities that can’t be summarized, like character, style, atmosphere, and suspense." - in other words, the other approach is to write a good book. Great advice cheers! Srsly though reading Galaxias did put me in mind of KSR, it seemed like Baxter was trying to do a similar thing of weaving a story not driven by a straightforward plot, but by politics, characters, climate, geology - he just couldn't pull it off.

true xp

Still a little dizzy from recently reading The Best of Margaret St. Clair: 1985 Academy Chicago paperback that might be considered "trade" in that it's a bit taller than the drugstore mass product, but still, so much tumult in what usually reads like so few pages---actually an average of 10, now that I look at table of contents, for 20 stories in all, with an introduction by the author, looking back and around "in my early 70s," characteristically dry, droll, not kidding (b. 1911--d. 1995). One of the bleakest, angriest, funniest---all of that with a few poignant notes struck off the deadpan, if you catch and take them that way; she don't jerk tears, jerks, or joeks, although you might get an afterimage of a Mardi Gras float, with beads having been tosses is from 1980, but pretty recognizably the same voice as in stories from the 1940s, when this one couldn't have been published because of climatic (in more ways than one) imagery at least, if not overall attitude about science and technology and problem-solving. But she succeeded in becoming an artful & entertaining naysaying mainstay of the pulps, which she regarded as "folk art," bringing the heady strange brew.
(And in that, she's right at home with other discontented early Cold War veterans in The Future Is Female, which we talked about way up this thread or the previous Rolling Spec.)
At first, she's like a junior high school bio teacher: "Now class, this is what happens when you put this sort of species with this one"---kinda scary, but not too, and she won't let anybody on the slideshow tour get lost for too long: lights on again, see? One species is always an Earthling, venturing confidently or bemusedly or desperately or just compulsively, as we go along through the ages: males first for sure, but sometimes with a female, like once a hot Martian, once a hot Mithran, both ginger-haired and hot as plot point, both more knowledgeable and sensible than Earthman, both with troubled connections to Rros and Agape (britannica:

Mithraism, the worship of Mithra, the Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract, and war in pre-Zoroastrian Iran. Known as Mithras in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries ce, this deity was honoured as the patron of loyalty to the emperor.

Aft

beads having been tossed), that should read---and very eventually referring to what I should have given the title for, relative-clarity-wise: "Wryneck, Draw Me"(1980)(a title that I still have to think about, hoping to draw more overall understanding from its relation to the story)

And there are a number of stories where characters never leave Earth---she might say, "You can't leave it, even when you drive it away, or somebody does."

*Eros* and Agape, duh, sorry (eros under the rose, anyway)

Oh cool, thought Yaszek was gonna do a follow-up, and sure enough:

]The Future Is Female! Volume Two, The 1970s: More Classic Science Fiction Stories By Women: A Library of America Special Publication Hardcover – October 11, 2022
by Lisa Yaszek (Editor)

Here are twenty-three wild, witty, and wonderful classics that dramatize the liberating energies of the 1970s:

Sonya Dorman, “Bitching It” (1971)
Kate Wilhelm, “The Funeral” (1972)
Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) NEBULA AWARD
Miriam Allen deFord, “A Way Out”(1973)
Vonda N. McIntyre, “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” (1973) NEBULA
James Tiptree, Jr., “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973) HUGO AWARD
Kathleen Sky, “Lament of the Keeku Bird” (1973)
Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Day Before the Revolution” (1974) NEBULA & LOCUS AWARD
Eleanor Arnason, “The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons” (1974)
Kathleen M. Sidney, “The Anthropologist” (1975)
Marta Randall, “A Scarab in the City of Time” (1975)
Elinor Busby, “A Time to Kill” (1977)
Raccoona Sheldon, “The Screwfly Solution” (1977) NEBULA AWARD
Pamela Sargent, “If Ever I Should Leave You” (1974)
Joan D. Vinge, “View from a Height” (1978)
M. Lucie Chin, “The Best Is Yet to Be” (1978)
Lisa Tuttle, “Wives” (1979)
Connie Willis, “Daisy, In the Sun” (1979)

Mark Valentine posts:

The Atlantis Bookshop at 49a Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LY, have announced:

'We are delighted to be able to host the author Nina Antonia this coming weekend, at 7pm on Saturday 13 August. Her book Dancing with Salome features a series of interlinking essays which take the reader on a journey to meet the Decadent demi-monde of the 1890’s with whom Wilde and Douglas mingled.

Whilst eroticism and mysticism were key themes of the Decadents, there was also a surge of interest in ritual magic, enabled by the flowering of the “Golden Dawn” – the most significant esoteric order in England’s history. Wilde’s wife, Constance, was a member, as was W.B. Yeats, alongside Aleister Crowley and Arthur Machen. All would play a part, directly or indirectly, in the drama of Oscar Wilde’s enchanted & accursed life'.

The bookshop is also offering inscribed copies for those unable to attend in person, if ordered through their website.