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

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).

I don't think saying "this trilogy is deserving of winning once, but all three winning seems a bit excessive" is quite the same thing as deligitimizing the author entirely! He's still saying she deserves a Hugo.

Pretty certain the pinefox is blissfully unaware of the culture wars the Hugos have been embroiled in, and good for him, wish I didn't know about the fucking puppies either.

Will say I read the first book of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series and found it a slog, but perhaps it is not Jemisin's best work (I don't often hear ppl mention it specifically) and I should try again with a different series.

Perhaps there’s also the idea that the pinefox’s tastes and requirements for what makes good SFF are old-fashioned, and that the Hugo committee trying to bring in new readers from the most underrepresented group in the most popular genre of fiction is something to be celebrated

I mean, what else would win from the years she won? Looking at the other nominees, mostly looks not great. One can certainly say that the novels aren’t as typical to the Hugo awards as most nominees, but that’s good, not bad.

the Hugo committee trying to bring in new readers from the most underrepresented group
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Saturday, March 4, 2023 6:41 PM

It's publicly voted (you have to pay though) and it was a very popular series.

The novel category generally seems quite strong in recent times, it's the short fiction, non-fiction and best related awards that cause more controversy (I think an award speech and blog rant getting nominated was silly)

I read The City We Became a year or so ago. I wanted to like it, I really did, but I found its prose and what I perceived to be faux hipness offputting. Not a terrible book, but not great either.

agree

I tried one of them and gave up pretty quickly because it seemed like I was reading YA. That’s my view of all the recent Hugo novels I’ve tried so they were not unusually bad or good in that respect.

Whole "read like YA" thing is an issue for me in general, although haven't actually tried any or hers yet that I bought on sale.

My partner didn’t like The City We Became— but we both absorbed the trilogy

my main takeaway from 'the city we became' was wow she fucking *hates* staten island

there's a sequel now (i guess it's a trilogy?) but i'm not feeling it

apologies for saying 'takeaway'

what does "read like ya" mean?

reads like Young Adult fiction

Yes, but what does that mean? What are the qualities that one might associate with young adult fiction that one might also find in other types of fiction?

Ease of reading, in a nutshell? Less of an emphasis on style, clear, concise sentences. Possibly also a focus on age appropriate protagonists and a dose of melodrama. I'm oversimplifying but in a nutshell I'd say that's it.

in a double nutshell

agree w that. i was going to say snappy, sarcastic dialogue, protagonists uncertain of themselves, v horny

It’s also traditionally a way for older readers to dismiss the merits of books they don’t like, for whatever reason.

Knew that was coming.

YA fiction (or fiction that is redolent of YA in style and theme) is not enjoyable for most As to read.

i liked the living cities books. they’re propulsive bits of popcorn fiction, but i don’t really agree that they read like y.a. she is very naturalistic and not very showy, and folks who are more interested in the writerly aspects of writing might not get much out of her books.

nb, i haven’t gotten to the hugo-winning trilogy yet