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

Internet echo chamber sez that the episode in question, which is of course "A Stop at Willoughby," was Serling's favorite first season episode, which I am inclined to believe, even if I can't find a real source.

Dow, SF about white-collar strivers also includes Pohl & Kornbluth's classic THE SPACE MERCHANTS.

Thanks for the reminder---I may make that my next library request, after Mother Night comes in.

just read "wrong place wrong time" by gillian mcallister, which is v middlebrow speculative fiction. kind of a groundhog day/memento premise. potentially interesting setting/twist related to recent UK news, but this is not pursued enough imo (no spoilers). it wasn't terrible, good holiday reading, but it was a cut below something like emily st john mandel or david mitchell.

Inter-library loan came through w xpost Mother Night pretty quickly, and I read it all in one evening, which never happens. It's pretty tight alright, so hard to describe w/o spoilers, but not really science fiction or fantasy, despite some unmistakably KV instances of yarnspinning, the more effective for colorful contrast with overcast WWII Germany-to-Cold War cold water NYC, as narrated from an Israeli prison cell, where Howard Campbell Jr. looks back on his twisted life, a la Humbert Humbert near the end.
Most of the characters, including several Nazis, also more common citizens of Germany and America, inhabit and maintain dual (if not more) identities, shifting gears in a practiced way, sometimes automatically, or not, but with filtered self-awareness, for the most part. Maybe a little too nudge-nudge with the ironies and plot-twists at times.
The intro succinctly and vividly recounts his experience of being bombed in the Allies' nonmilitary target of Dresden, then, still held prisoner, forced to pull bodies of civilians from shelters.
Tough act to follow, and the novel does pretty well, considering, but can see why he'd want to use the Science Fiction part of his brain for the WWII aspects ov Slaughter-House-Five, which I've yet to read.

Should say that the emotional core or layer of this, as w his other books I've mentioned, is always evident enough, in observational intensity, whether it seems insightful, or prematurely old man yells at cloud, or occasionally too mannered (nervous-compulsively hammering the keys energy in that choice).

Hazards and alibis of first-person narration, esp. writer in cell.

Good summary of that novel. I like 'Cold Water cold water'.

*Cold War !!

Updike, talking about Vonnegut's earlier bread-and-butter sales to the slick magazines, and what came after---he starts out talking about the stories in Welcome To The Monkey House, and says that re-reading them in the mid-70s

is a lesson in what slickness, Fifties vintage, was: a verbal mechanism that raised the specter of pain and then too easily delivered us from it. Yet the pain in Vonnegut was always real. Through the transpositions of science fiction he found a way, instead of turning pain aside, to vaporize it, to scatter it on the plains of the cosmic and comic. His terse flat sentences, jumpy chapters, interleaved placards, collages of stray texts and messages, and nervous grim refrains like "So it goes" and "Hi ho" are a new way of stacking pain, as his fictional ice-nine is a new way of stacking molecules of water. Such an invention looks easy only in retrospect.
If any slickness remains, it is in a certain intellectual haste. Introducing his collected non-fiction, Vonnegut says he is impressed by the "insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth."

But I did enjoy all three novels, each in their own way, always his way.

Have we had a discussion of when exactly Vonnegut, um, jumped the shark?

Learned from Outlaw Bookseller's youtube that Nicholas Royle (british writer of the uncanny) is often confused with Nicholas Royle (british writer of the uncanny), but what he didn't say is that they have toyed with collaborating
http://wordsandfixtures.blogspot.com/2011/02/nicholas-royle-vs-nicholas-royle-like.html

On the aforementioned youtube channel, the Christopher Priest interview is worth a watch, I knew he could be a harsh critic but I was still surprised by his low assessment of some writers.

Not surprised myself.

That he is longterm friends with Moorcock but completely dismisses his writing taken me aback

Also not that surprising to me.

I like Updike's generous statement.

Yes. Feel like most of early Vonnegut is really good, it was only later when the stylistic tics started to overwhelm.

SLAPSTICK (1976) isn't his best.

Right. Feel like almost everything after Slaughterhouse Five is bad, tbh.

So when a Staryk, whose forebears or present selves once raped and pillaged (leaving human descendants), later focused on taking gold from monasteries, churches, but somehow supposedly leaving an all-Jewish settlement intact (you know what that means: they're in league), comes to the door of a wimpy Jewish moneylender whose daughter is a stone-cold debt collector (and increasingly canny negotiator) in a Dark Ages-maybe Polish Christian village, and orders her to turn his coins of fairy silver into gold, what has the old world come to? To commerce of course, beyond transmutation, and she knows a guy. But what will the Staryk lord give her? He won't turn her to ice. But that's what he won't do, what will he do for her? He'll make her his queen, he replies in a derisively savage roar, sounding like he's maybe astonished himself with this reaction to the outrageous gall (of a girl who describes herself as "short, boney, sallow...with a hump in my nose," to boot).
Well. It's ridiculous, but he insists, now that he's said it. And women have to be married; there aren't even any sex workers, much less nannies, anywhere in sight so far, in Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, the only free-standing NN, next to the excellent Uprooted. Her Temeraire Series is 9 volumes to date, Scholomance is a trilogy so far, and I got burnt out on series in the 80s, hoping not to get hooked again.
So far, so good with this, as I take a break from Vonnegut.

Day to day, night to night, material and emotional transactions make their own kind of train through the winter, not waiting for machines to be invented or implemented (though there are other implements).

"forebearers," I meant, but "forebears" is close enough for the giant white Staryk (whose steeds are stags with cloven hooves and teeth ov wolves).

Tree alternating narrators so far, gradually appearing: Miryem the younger moneylender,
Wanda, her bondswoman/assistant/acolyte, originally just working off some of her brutal peasant father's debt, rather than getting her ugly hardy intelligent self sold in marriage, likely to one of his kindl
and Irina, wallflower daughter of the Duke, who hangs her with jewelry made from the Staryk's fairy silver (not knowing or caring about the source), that she might catch the marrying eye of the young tsar, himself said to be the daughter of a witch, and Irina is among those who consider him supernatural: beautiful, but too Other for her (why?), so she actually tells him that she doesn't want to marry him---and that's what he finds uniquely, thrillingly magical, not all her fairy silver (which she loooves the touch of); he's getting unpleasantly excited, and that's as far as I've gotten.

A. A. Attanasio - Radix

Thanks to Gnosticangel for introducing Attanasio to me, I've been wanting to get around to this for a long time. It didn't quite live up to the hype, (this first novel and the 4th novel in the series have attained a cult classic status but never enough to be included in a classics line and it never gets in top100 lists, but I've seen a fair number of people say that the 1st or 4th book is their favorite book ever) but it is fascinating and I'm very eager to go further despite being quite disappointed.

It's about violent cosmic disruption that results in environmental chaos, a society of migrating alien consciousness, animal and plant mutation and a small group of people who transcend their previous lives.

Attanasio's style is very eccentric, his vocabulary is immense (he makes Clark Ashton Smith look like Homer Simpson forgetting the name for a spoon), grittiness and extreme violence alternates with ethereal/psychedelic/new age hippie passages about the forces that move the universe. I've seen Jodorowsky comparisons and they make a lot of sense.
He invents a lot of his own terminology, slang and there's lots of worldbuilding, I found this and the heaps of vague poetic paragraphs to be overcomplicated, wearying and needlessly obscure at times. The main story is easy to follow but there's so much beyond that, anyone who wants to understand this book exhaustively has a lot of work to do and I doubt even Attanasio understands every flight of scientific and philosophical poetry in here. The Appendixes are very helpful.

There's a lot of obvious brilliance and ambition in here but I missed the strangeness and tension of the first half of the book, the ending chapters feel almost like a drawn out action movie compared the more unpredictable weirdness early on. The descriptions of Sumner's youthful fatness might offend some readers. Despite feeling far too long and overcomplicated, I liked Radix more than disliked it, it's still a compelling story of transcendence with fascinating ideas and images and I'm looking forward to the slimmer sequels (different characters) and the more conceptually fascinating 4th book and his other writing. I hope readers who think he peaked with this first novel are wrong!

This book was revised and illustrated for the Phoenix Pick edition, I didn't buy that version because I didn't want to be interrupted by an artist's interpretation of the text but I'm very curious to know how much Attanasio revised and I might read that edition in the future.

Yeah, that was pretty much my take---several later books that I didn't know about are briefly, intriguingly described here:
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/attanasio_a_a

More on Spinning Silver:Some magical thinking in the contemporary sense conjures/adds up to the bubble around and in and beyond life-changing decisions by increasingly radical risk-taker Miryam, balanced by comparatively cool-minded Irina, one of the other principal narrators: earned and unexpectedly bonus "happy endings" for them both are precarious enough, as previous tell now shows by accrual of implication: transactions go on and on, could see this as a video game. I don't care about those, but found it a mostly satisfying read, although the author is not above her own, intentionally ""magical" thinking, in terms of waving the wand for some speedy, convenient plot advancement, once in a while.
Which is why, so far, without much re-reading, or any comparative reading, I can't quite shake the notion that, fourth-quarter-wise, this character-driven, tightly plotted tale isn't quite as convincing/disbelief-suspending as her previous stand-alone, Nebula winner Uprooted.

Midway through an early 50s Richard Matheson collection, The Shores of Space: "Trespass" goes on alarmingly long, a tilting hallway, mostly domestic, to which a young geologist has returned after six months in South America, eagerly reuniting with his loving and lovely young wife, who discloses her pregnancy of six weeks, but she hasn't been with another man. And the pregnancy displays some anomalous symptoms, as their doctor agrees. The husband's best friend, her friend too, wants to help, solve the mystery, resolve the conflict, carefully-compulsively walks a thin line, as do all concerned, via everyday details continually challenged (seeming in that way a run-up to The Shrinking Man). Wife is only female character, so there's that,. and it's all early 50s as hell, even more than preceding stories.

Even more Mathesonian, for being more filed down: "The Test," which is something a mentally failing, defensive male citizen is struggling to cram for, lest he be euthanized. He's passed it twice before, at required five-year intervals, but now he's 80, and convincingly displays one of the more slowly torturing forms of dementia, though may have never been very/at all easy to live with (of course, at this point it's hard to imagine such a difference). His son, who has put in the required request for the test one more time, has very mixed emotions, though he and his wife are most afraid that Dad will pass again. Even if he doesn't, they'll all have to wait several weeks, maybe a month, for notice of the final appointment.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman. Ticking another 'classic' off my list, but it didn't do much for me, I guess I'm just not into war fiction. The much vaunted time dilation theme just came across as a gimmick, at no point did I feel any great empathy for his situation. It was never clear why this guy with almost no real combat experience and behind the times by a few centuries would be not just kept on but promoted into command positions. Its roots as a serialised novel showed in places - springing on us after a few chapters into one section that oh btw everyone speaks english differently now and the protagonist can't understand them unless they speak his dialect which they've specifically learned. The mild homophobia could be written off as in character; the idea that to combat overpopulation the government makes everyone gay is a lol for sure. I'm not even sure it's any good as war fiction, there's no sense of the wider scale of the conflict in terms of goals or strategy, they just turn up to random planets and fight.

i got back into gideon the ninth and hmm well i was not expecting such a videogame-ish hogwarts-y direction tbh. the first couple of chapters are absolutely masterful imo and her descriptions of combat and of environment are terrific but gideon herself isn't, well, that interesting, and all the cutesy high school just kinda rubs me the wrong way

that said i am still reading it if only for the completely unsubtle gideon/harrow slash suggestions

Martin Macinnes, In Ascension. I've loved all of his books, but I think this one might be the best; it's a little less oblique (although I see some reviews complain that it's still too oblique) but I don't think it suffers from this. Nothing revolutionary in the subject matter but has a mood of its own that I guess reminds me a bit of Vandermeer's Annihilation (more for its effect on me than the actual content).

i read Forever War the same month as Tau Zero and they were very similar iirc, like 4 major plot points in common.

what i wrote at the time

the two sci-fi books were bought from fopp at the same time, 2 for £5. first features 50 scientists, 25 male, 25 female, trapped on a spaceship heading for another planet, lots of bed-hopping, lots of relativistic space travel. the second features 50 soldiers, 25 male, 25 female, trapped on a spaceship heading for another planet, lots of bed-hopping, lots of relativistic space travel. oddly similar. neither fantastic tbh. i would bet alan moore has read the second though (halo jones 3 very similar and it also mentions the planarian worms thing from one of his early swamp things)

Interesting!

That also reminds me of a story by Judith Merril (unless I'm misremembering that point), about a spaceship whose astronauts are only of one sex, and the big late twist is that they're all women.

lol!

I will forever fondly remember Tau Zero for its completely batshit ending.

For a less batshit treatment of time dilation, and much more moving than The Forever War, you can't beat Le Guin's short story Semley's Necklace, and her division of people in the hainish cycle into stabiles and mobiles (those who don't do near light travel vs those who do) is a neat idea.

In Ascension looks good, added to my to-read list.

New translations of major bulgarian SF author Lyuben Dilov, pay what you want ebooks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELt6HRcN17Y
https://www.dilovinenglish.com/

Speaking of Radix and obesity, the first I ever heard of the novel was in this intriguing description by Jim Trombetta in the old Too Cool book from 1991, where it was one of his SF picks, alongside Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand and Soldiers of Paradise:

“a fever dream of Earth bathed in the radiations of a rotating black hole. Here sometime fatso Sumner Kagan improves his muscle tone considerably as he confronts the killer android Befandi (created to look like Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars), the eerie voors (aliens in human bodies who have taken vodoun to new heights), and, in a bizarre continent that used to be South America, the artificial intelligence Rubeus, the nastiest sorcerer’s apprentice in history, past or future…”

I think one of the most interesting things that I maybe should have mentioned is how Sumner and Rubeus are destructive and protective manifestations from another character.

Is STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND good?

Memory of it from long long ago.

Lots of mentions here (many more if search "stars" rather than "pockets"---would have thought the latter more relevant, but no) Samuel Delany

I finished N.K. Jemisin's THE FIFTH SEASON (2015), part 1 of her BROKEN EARTH trilogy.

To confirm what I have said on this before: this is a fantasy novel in a world that is a bit later than 'pseudo-medieval' - maybe pseudo-Renaissance or even later. Transport is by horse or walking; there is no electricity or motor power. Cannon appear at the end of the novel and are a dangerous new invention. The novel takes place on an imagined continent called The Stillness, ironically because it is not still but is always quaking and erupting. The sense of a geological landscape that is very unstable is fundamental to the book. The word 'season' is used to refer to an ecological catastrophe that comes around quite frequently and destroys communities. This may be an allegory of the fragility of human society now in the face of ecological breakdown.

The people in this world think in very long terms - centuries and millennia - and I get the impression that they live a very long time. This time frame also connects in a way to the ecological outlook. A minority of the people are 'orogenes', who have a special power of being in touch with the Earth and able to affect the movements of rock formations. Rather than being revered, these people are despised as dangerous - effectively treated as a 'racial other'; in fact they are given the derogatory name 'rogga', which some of them 'reclaim'. Some of these orogenes work for an official place called The Fulcrum in the capital city. They are also in thrall to The Guardians, who have power to prevent the orogenes' power. A further 'racial group' is the Stone Eaters, who are somehow able to move through stone as if it's air.

The concept of race features in another way, in that many of the characters seem to be in one way or another 'Black'. You could say that Blackness in one way or another is the norm in this world, and Whiteness is more unusual. Meanwhile, the author also tends to invert gender norms, so that most strong characters, including eg: leaders, governors, officials, scientists, are women. Further, there is an element of sexual fluidity. Two main characters (a woman and a mainly gay male) get into a kind or '3-some' with another, bisexual male. Another character presents as a woman but seems to have aspects of maleness. It would be fair to say that the author is avoiding some of the 'normativity' of the real world, through this fantasy.

The book has one quite unusual feature, in that it features alternating chapters about three female characters, all of whom are ultimately revealed to be the same character with three different names. So each set of chapters was actually taking place at a quite different time, not simultaneous, but this isn't announced explicitly; the reader has to detect it in the last third of the book. I don't think I've ever seen this effect before in a novel.

The writing is functional, moves along fast, but not high quality. It is marred by very frequent use of 'fake swear-words', ie: characters 'What the rust were you thinking?' and 'Earthfires, what was that?'. This doesn't carry much conviction (cf an earlier discussion of Asimov's entertaining versions of this). Confusingly, characters *also* sometimes use real-world obscenities. More generally the characters' thoughts and speech, plus narrative voice, are typically a version of contemporary US idioms; very casual, informal, sarcastic. I don't enjoy this much. Overall, the style is a weakness.

I believe that the trilogy won the Hugo Award 3 years running. I can see that it could have been deserving of one award, for the lot as it were, but if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field.

Perhaps the awards went to her because some people don’t have the same problems with her books? Your implication that they’re not deserved is pretty ghastly tbh

Why ghastly?

but if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field.

― the pinefox, Friday, March 3, 2023 10:21 AM (eleven hours ago)

I'm looking forward to the series but the field is so enormous now that nobody can hope to keep up or get the kind of overview that one had even a decade before but some people have been pretty scathing about what gets nominated for short fiction now

Clarke awards has a better reputation but that's novels only I think and not publicly voted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke_Award

i liked the broken earth series quite a lot iirc

if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field

no one would say this sort of thing about 'film' based on whoever won an oscar. it's just an award

Why ghastly?

SFF and its awards have been highly politicized for years now. nk jemisen is a black woman. i imagine table read user the pinefox's complaints as meaning 'she only won those awards because of political correctness'

The implication that the first Black person to win the Hugo for best novel did not deserve the award is pretty questionable, imho! That Jemisin was the first Black woman to win that award makes it more questionable.

I’m not being accusatory, as I don’t think pinefox meant what was said to come off the way it did, but it came off as delegitimization of a set of novels that are infinitely better (to my mind) than most SFF, to my mind. (I read them when they came out).