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

it'll be easy enough to convert to an epub and from there to anything i think. ilxmail me.

"Note that I do not grant you the right to convert, to republish or to sell the free ebooks or the contents of the free webpages."

so, er, don't ilxmail me.

although "html to pdf" turns up a heap of sites that'll do this for you

there also java, javascript, python and c# libraries that claim to do it if you have the coding chops.

I have the bottom left copy, can recall a few of the stories - gernsback, petra, m in m, all 4/5, though if they count as cyberpunk it's in form not content.

There should be a science fiction genre for environmental, economic, and social planning that focuses specifically on the planning aspects.

Seems like KRS's Mars trilogy involves a lot of planning? Judging by comments on previous Rolling Speculative threads.

That’s what jumped right to my mind as well

no idea if this would fit but I came across it the other day and thought it looked interesting: https://www.commonnotions.org/everything-for-everyone

Just watched one of those docs about Brian Catling. Had no idea he'd been a fine artist (especially performance arts) for most of his life. Shirley Collins was in it too. And Ray Winstone. Didn't realize BBC were still doing things like Arena.

read THE PARADOX MEN (novella 1949, fix-up 1953) by charles l. harness

pretty decent imo; deserves a slot alongside (or above?) alfred bester

also frank herbert totally stole the personal-shield-that-only-the-slow-blade-penetrates from ^^^

The Irish literary magazine Poetry Bus edited by Collette O’Donoghue and Peadar O'Donoghue bears on its masthead a Mark E Smith quotation: “If you’re going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.”

The latest issue, Poetry Bus 10, includes my 16-line poem 'With The Great God Pan in Whitby'. This was inspired by one of the memorable occasions of the original Arthur Machen Society, a weekend in the North Yorkshire harbour town when Mark E Smith, singer and songwriter with The Fall, joined us, with his girlfriend. We met at The Angel, where Machen had stayed, and explored other places associated with his visit.

MES was a keen Machen fan and wanted to hear about the Welsh writer’s stay there during the First World War, as a reporter investigating rumours of suspicious activity on the cliffs. There was nothing in the reports, but instead Machen filed pieces for his paper, the Evening News, on ‘Wonderful Whitby in the Moonlight’, and on the town’s famous trade in jet jewellery. The stay also inspired his atmospheric story ‘The Happy Children’.

The poem recalls some of the, er, interesting incidents of this Whitby encounter with MES.

This well-designed paperback offers 55pp of contemporary poetry from a diverse international line-up.

(Mark Valentine)

excellent! v vaguely seem to remember this being partly covered or mentioned in The Fall fanzine The Biggest Library Yet, tho it’s a loooong time ago now.

maybe not

I think you would like The Thing Itself.

― toby, Friday, 30 September 2022 13:08 (four weeks ago) link


that actually rings a bell, though not sure what kind of bell - maybe i added it to one my many 'to read' lists then forgot about it - but yes I think you might be right.

― ledge, Saturday, 1 October 2022 17:04 (four weeks ago) link

Jesus christ I've only bloody read it.

Downloaded the ebook last night, only 3.99 luckily. The cover looked familiar. The first page wasn't but when it got to the bit about the answer to the fermi paradox being in kant, the penny dropped. oh well, I've started so I'll finish.

Turns out Lucile Hadzihalilovic's last film was an adaptation of Catling's Earwig. Been watching more interviews and it's sad seeing him talk about limited time because it seems like he had piles of books in him. There was supposed to be a 4th Vorrh book.

read john varley's 'gaea' trilogy, which was weird

not sure why i read it; i'd never heard of him before, and tom clancy blurbing him as the best writer in america wasn't a draw

first half of the first book was pretty hard sci-fi -- oh shit there is an enormous ringworld orbiting saturn, and . . . maybe it's sentient? the rest of the trilogy was more or less fantasy -- literal centaurs and shit -- which i don't personally have any problem with, but seemed like an odd transition

dude was literally at woodstock so of course all the characters are fucking each other because free love and no one ever gets jealous. props for a certain open-mindedness but even heinlein (to whom varley is apparently often compared?) had men fucking each other, which is conspicuously absent here

props for all the important characters being strong kickass women (this was written ~1980). points off for them being the only characters who question their straightness (or, even worse, strict lesbianism)

first one was decent and for some reason i kept reading and the third book was a textbook example of a series entirely disappearing up its own ass. all i can say in my defense is that he at least puts words together in a reasonable order

Varley has some good moments but yeah it’s as you say. Heinlein has always been a good comparison, both for the kind of prurience you mention as well as for a certain kind of fast-moving facility with words that is initially exciting but can ultimately be kind of glib and annoying. In recent years I read the short story “Air Raid” and thought it was grebt.

I've read one Varley, as mentioned way upthread---it's in Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha's The 1981 Annual World's Best SF:

...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.

Have only read a couple of Varley short stories - agree that 'Air Raid' is really good, some of the same energy as Tiptree and proto-Cyberpunk in terms of flash. Other one was 'The Persistence of Vision', about a blind/deaf community, complete with v 70s and v dubious older/younger sexual encounter (cos love is blind you grok?) So comparisons to creepy Bob H not wide of the mark in that regard either. It won both the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella, so he was a big deal for a while there. I thought he was a real Hard SF guy - perhaps because of that Clancy endorsement - but maybe not?

I know what you mean about the Clancy but no he's not quite the modern version of Hard SF, more like a throwback to the guy we keep mentioning. I remember when "The Persistence of Vision" won all that stuff and being a little creped out by it, your description is otm. Disch had something negative to say about it, don't know if I can locate it.

It was in one of his print books. I'll never find it, don't think I even own it anymore.

Also want to say that I believe he came up with name "Beatnik Bayou" based on Hippie Hollow in Austin.

Ah okay, this goes way into his significance and the books that seemed disappointing as well--grab a coffee and be braced for a spoiler or two: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/varley_john "Beatnik Bayou" is from his Eight Worlds series, about humans banished from Earth for bad behavior (wiki sez the Invaders hand it over to rightful caretakers, whales and dolphins). But for some reason they're allowed to spread through the Solar System, maybe because they're resolved to/compulsive about changing, becoming or maybe just trying to become something like posthuman, or betterhuman. The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), in this series or thematic sequence, is mentioned as his first and maybe best novel; Irontown Blues (2018, his latest), is a return to the Eight Worlds, but there's also the Titan series and other stuff, incl a YA sequence this century.
Also in the Eight Worlds universe, here's an example of his Hard SF side:

Steel Beach (1992)...demonstrates through its very considerable length a virtuoso control of the Hard SF toolkit, presented through many of the kind of compulsive narrative hooks employed by Robert A Heinlein in his ruthless prime; but the story itself...lacks dramatic urgency, despite many cleverly conceived (but sidebar) episodes full of action. The title itself, however, deserves to have become established as a tag for the evolutionary impasse humanity may soon face: like a lungfish struggling to breathe on a Pacific beach, Varley suggests, humanity could soon find itself struggling for breath on the steel beach that is all the home that remains, after the final death of Nature. The difficulty with his presentation of the steel beach that may be our destiny lies, perhaps, in his underlying hopefulness that engineering solutions may pry us out of hell.

I seem to remember that in a lot of his stuff both sex changes and revivification after corporeal death using cloning and scanned memories were about as easy as dyeing one’s hair. This was okay when these technologies sort of helped drive the mystery of the stories but sometimes just seemed sort like, um, some other writer I can’t quite recall the name of right now who wrote about going back in time and siring himself, maybe being his own mother as well, that’s his grandmother over there etc.

I always thought the premise of the Eight Worlds was kind of cool, although I still haven’t read my copy of The Ophiuchi Hotline. Nor I have I read the novel-length version of “Air Raid,” Millennium, although I did read the table of contents and notice that all the chapter titles are also the titles of various sf classics. It was made into a movie called Millennium as well which I haven’t seen and is terrible according to Varley, despite the William Goldman screenplay.

Yeah I'd like to read those.
xpost it seems to be more about the compulsiveness ov change taking over/pulling at and through from idealism, guilt, fear--is what I got from "B.B." and sfencyclopedia's takes---but yes, physically, techonologically, it seems all too easy, which makes it more compulsive, of course (deliberate effect on author's part, also it seems that he wants to believe: see sfencyc's ending comment on Steel Beach above)

https://web.archive.org/web/20160509113332/http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020218/both_and.shtml

thanks---also you're reminding me of our discussion upthread, with some references to https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/transgender_sf"> https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/transgender_sf and another one I can't paste now because wtf chrome but search for original post of the one I did manage to paste earlier in this sentence and you'll see what I mean: an article about a film re trans life, based on a Heinlein story.

Some good stuff in here, clearing up misconceptions but most of it wont be news to us oldsters, some interesting trivia I don't know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tntj13Qgkf4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISG3DpAcrW4

Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology, is a newly published anthology edited by Johnny Mains. It contains some twenty-one stories, divided into seven sections: Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Isle of Mann, Wales, Cornwall, and Gaelic. Some of the authors are well-known, like Robert Aickman, Count Stenbock, Edith Wharton, Nigel Kneale, Arthur Machen, and Frank Baker, etc. Of course I immediately gravitated towards the authors unknown to me, and I'd like to discuss one of them here. The story is called "The Butterfly's Marriage" and it is by Eochann MacPhaidein.
Mains introduces the story as follows:

"I cannot find anything about Eachann (Hector) MacPhaidein apart from the fact that he wrote Pòsadh An Dealan-dè ("The Butterfly's Wedding") for Uirsgenlan Gaidhealach / Highland Tales (1905). The following story is, in my opinion, astonishing, I don't think I've ever read anything so out there and he distills the very essence of Gaelic folklore and outré imagination into every single word. This is one weird tale."
I think the editor oversells the story a bit, but it is an odd one, and I certainly wish we had more stories from this author.

CELTIC WEIRD looks good, thanks, doesn't seem to be available in the US.

What SF-Fantasy should I read?

I read Book of the New Sun last year and really liked it.

Things I'm thinking of:

1. I've never read any Michael Moorcock. Should I read Elric?
2. Stuff like Vance and Poul Anderson that influenced D&D?
3. Something else?

I guess the Conan stories fall under #2.

I really, really enjoyed The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The final, tenth volume misses a little bit, but it's a hard landing to stick and the series is still very much worth it.

I'm not nearly familiar with fantasy as with science fiction, but xpost Anderson's Tales Before Tolkien is a good, fun grounding: stories that T. commented on, others that he was known to have read, probably read, coulda read, couldn't have read for various reasons, but they all pertain to what he did/have some related appeal. Also the DG Hartwell-edited Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, which goes from at least the 18th Century to the 1980s, to Le Guin, at least. Another good gateway for me was one of the anthologies that George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois commissioned from leading modern authors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_These_Strange_Streets---it's tagged as "urban fantasy," but yes, some very strange streets, not nearly all of which go where I thought they might (likewise Ellen Datlow's Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy).
Martin & D's Dangerous Women is maybe even better, but/because it crosses genre and subgenre lines. Their Rogues is also good, but I miss Jack Vance's characters---all stories in these have to be new, and RIP Vance can't dance no more, being dead So maybe try his The Complete Dying Earth, or whatever you can find in the DE saga starring Cugel the Cunning (I don't know that much Vance otherwise).
I also liked this Fritz Leiber [series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser"> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser
Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose and Naomi Novik's Uprooted are compatible, deep in forest worlds.

I read the first Elric trilogy too soon after five books of Dying Earth, should have taken a break from series; also, it seemed dry by comparison, but a lot of things would. Most of the Moorcock stories I've come across in antholgies were good (and non-series-related, far as I know).

Vance reminds of Philip K Dick (at least from what I’ve read of both) in the way his short stories take off into unexpected tangents. But Vance is a better sentence writer, more controlled, less chaotic (for better and worse)

PBKR - looking for D&D Appendix N style stories?
After New Sun you going for Urth, Long Sun and Short Sun?

I've been buying up Lavie Tidhar's World SF anthologies (including the Apex series) and Valancourt's World Horror anthologies and can't wait to start on them. Listened to another Lavie interview recently and he talked about some reviewers still baulking at names of foreign places as if everything should be set in new york and london. He met an editor like this too!

Thanks for the tip on Celtic Weird. Mains has been digging up things in recent anthologies.

Yes, Appendix N was what I was referencing without saying it. I've read Urth too, but don't know if I need to read further just yet.

Here's an anthology I've been wanting because David Madison stories are really difficult to find
http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/appendix-n/

As far as sword and sorcery these two seem good but a chunk of it is the expected characters
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1433129
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?603384

There's been quite a big (albeit small press) resurgence of sword and sorcery and sword and planet recently. I was hesitant to join a discord a while ago because the genre has a bit of a reputation for nostalgic reactionaries but I needn't have worried.

Love the Pyat covers
https://pmpress.org.uk/product-tag/michael-moorcock/

One of the elements in my story ‘Mad Lutanist’ (recently reprinted in The Ghost & Scholars Book of Follies and Grottoes edited by Rosemary Pardoe, from Sarob Press) is the aeolian harp, an ancient instrument which resonates with the wind to produce eerie music. It fascinated Coleridge, and his experiments and speculations are alluded to in the story.

I was therefore delighted to receive news of Aeolian Mixtape by Quinta, an album just released on the always-interesting Nonclassical label. Quinta is a London-based experimental composer who devised hand-made versions of the aeolian harp while she was living in Greece. Its strange soaring sounds are here combined with string instruments and electronics to convey a truly unearthly soundscape.

(Mark Valentine)

I'm reading Marge Piercy's He She and It and finding it tough going. Maybe I'm just not in the mood, it's clearly very rich and thoughtful, and very feminist, but I have no interest in the sexual hangups of the main character, or of reading the same story twice. (It's a retelling of the Golem of Prague set in a post collapse world, interleaved with a retelling of the same story in its original setting but modified to develop parallels with the other version.)

all my christmases sf library reservations have come at once, I need to finish marge piercy so I can get on with alistair reynolds' eversion (thankfully under 300 pages) and emily st john mandell's sea of tranquility.

i have lost touch of reynolds books, haven't even heard of that one.

description makes me think of Century Rain, which was a nice standalone thing he did way back when.

i was keeping up with Reynolds for awhile and also lost touch. he never really disappointed, though the first one i read ('house of suns') remains my favorite.

separately, my kid is very much into Tolkien and seems inclined to find more along those lines. so far, he's been digging into the redwall books pretty steadily. i also showed him the back-of-the-book description of 'the sword of shannara' (as a goof!) and he had a good laugh over its transparent thievery from lotr.

Maybe he'd like Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry? I just finished it last night (pretty sure I read the first volume as a Tolkien-obsessed kid), and it clearly has a large debt to Tolkien. Kay worked on The Silmarillion with Christopher Tolkien, and you can see a lot of the same mythical elements at play. I found it beautiful in some ways, but also ultimately unsatisfying - by the end there's probably 50+ characters, gods, demons, etc. vying for attention, and I don't think GGK really keeps control of all the different forces in the last volume. But it does give you a rich fantasy world, which is half the reason I read this kind of book.

He might like the old Dragonlance novels!

The Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander are good, especially if your kid is on the younger side.