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

I continue with Kornbluth's stories.

'The Silly Season' (1950) is quite remarkable, basically describing the period before an alien invasion, in which the Martians (! introduced in the last sentence! as if WAR OF THE WORLDS has happened again) deceive humanity into a sense of security by fabricating 'silly season' mysterious events. The twist at the end is striking but what really makes the story is the density before that: the life of the journalist and his blind contact who, being blind, can detect the false character of the illusions.

'The Remorseful' (1953) is quite stark and grim, describing a post-apocalyptic Earth with one man left alive, who is then observed by an alien race of tiny bugs, whose nature is very different from ours. An exercise in imagining alterity of being and perception.

'Gomez' (1955) is about nuclear physics research and its dangers. A humble Puerto Rican dishwasher turns out to be a scientific genius and is spirited away by the US state to work on its nuclear programme. We hear about his brilliance and his periods of relentless scientific thought. At last he pretends to have forgotten his physics knowledge, so that he can return to a simple life and start a family.

'The Advent on Channel 12' (1958) is a brief work about the entertainment industry. A children's character called, quite unpleasantly, 'Poopy Panda' is being marketed to millions of children via TV, toys and so on. The original creator of the character seems to sabotage it by rewriting the script so the character is a god. The distinction of the story is that it is written in cod-Biblical language. The essence of this story or its intention didn't quite come across to me.

Now I'm on 'The Marching Morons', first published in GALAXY in 1951.

I just came across a pricey but substantial single volume study of The Stars My Destination. Hmm.

This book: https://dharlanwilson.com/books/stars/

Click on the link if only to see an incredible pull quote from none other than Barry N. Malzberg.

I have thus far resisted cutting and pasting that quote here but may give in later.

Unusual, James Redd.

"In Wilson’s view, SF is a moribund artform, and Stars foresaw the inevitable science fictionalization of our benighted world. With scholarly lucidity and precision, Wilson shows us that Stars pointed the way to what we have (un)become."

This is not good, coherent writing.

I never got far in that particular novel. It was powerful, but I was too disturbed by the violence and I stopped.

Was still a bit tempted to buy that book but seems especially pricey for its length.

Back to Vonnegut: on to Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, not back to back, but too close; think I may lay off novels for a while. First read the former many years ago, and only remembered the "God made mud" set piece, which still works, and the reading of the author-made index, which supposedly reveals that he is "a homosexual," and so what? Which is my now habitual response to "So it goes" and almost all of this novel, too much of S-Five. Philip may or may not be working, building around such awareness in part, but that and he don't really pertain to the rest of the novel; if it's why his love for the pre-Rihanna sex goddess figure is frustrated, couldn't they press the soles of their feet together in the great melding of Bokononism? Is this man-woman only? Not specified. Other frustrations pile up, but that's all. Ever-static, blurry masses of sufferin'/sometimes ornery cattle-sheeple in both books.
CC comes off mostly clinical, but the later book at least goes for the gusto, with yarnspinning KV now the complete raconteur at your circus party, "And now, boys and girls, ladies and germs---". going for deadpan thrills and chills. his Sgt. Pepper's--although xpost Sirens already did it better, but still the time-travel shell game, kind of Rubik's Cube too, works in the moments, though the Postwar segs---sanitized Suburbia, nasty NYC were already 2-D predictable at best by '69, really the human zoo exhibit bit too, prob (punchline of an early 60s Twilight Zone ep, at least), and in any case, both go almost nowhere, except to sport still more of his worst female "characters" ever; they were at least relatively sympathetic in previous novels.
However, the WWII segments are by far the best, with ever-spaced Billy working as a kind of tracking device or reference point through harrowing events (the author's long-established technique for laying out details, incl. their texture and accrual, as if on a grid, once again given enough room, though not as central as in the better novels, xpost Player Piano and Sirens of Titan
So why couldn't it have been all WWII? With or without the author-narrator-fellow-POW figure of the early chapters. who occasionally pops up later, though just long enough to say,"Yep, it sure did happen that way, sure did."? Why, indeed, a novel at all, considering the apparently straightforward account of his own Dresden account, which he added to the 1966 edition of Mother Night?
Maybe he thought it was more significant in a fictional context, but he just keeps throwing stuff in there, and however significant it might be to him, sometimes I felt like I was reading a hipster Stephen King's inflated potboiler (even though this is much shorter than most King tomes).

Also good in WWII segments: group/subgroup dynamics of Americans, Germans, Russians, also as on both sides of the river in Player Piano, the prisoners and escapees of Sirens, Germans and some others in Mother Night)(and, among the WWII American POWs here, the hobo stands out: even dying, still saying, "You think this is bad? This ain't so bad. I've seen worse." He's the one who will stay with me.)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book-of-cyberpunk-by-jared-shurin/

very large, should be interesting

read three straight space operatic trilogies

noumenon by marina lostetter
machineries of empire by yoon ha lee
the outside by ada hoffmann

none of them were good, but i wouldn't rule out reading something new by lostetter

all of them featured weird hand-waving about 'souls' being transferred/extended/otherwise manipulated to serve the plot

the yoon ha lee series made a great deal of both serving tea and wearing gloves, although not necessarily at the same time. which may or may not be a nod to ann leckie, who probably blurbed it

yeh I read the first Noumenon book but wasn't super into it, so didn't go any further. I liked the front cover tho!
read the first 2 books of Adliss's Hellonica and absolutely loved them, hope the 3rd is as good

oops didn't mean to dis your name Aldiss

When I was a kid I thought his name was "Brain Aldiss"

So I just noticed that John Varley does movie reviews on his site, lots of them.

Based on a quick random sample, his taste is not bad but as always I find his writing is a little too glib, although I think several of his stories have really held up over the years.

John Varley corn must die.

Guess I already suspected that he liked old movies when I saw that Steel Beach starts with a discussion between characters named Hildy and Walter. And there’s another character named Cricket!

“Air Raid” still packs a punch. Own the novel version Millennium, but never got round to reading, don’t really see the point.

Just noticed again, as remarked on earlier iterations of this thread, that the chapter titles of the novel are all borrowed from the titles as famous time travel stories.

I guess I still kind of like the way sf, like funk, is always referring to itself.

Have to say I'm not keen on it, as much as I like keeping the past alive. You've probably read about the idea of a genre or artform decaying when it mostly just talks about itself.

We've talked about Varley on here and prev. Rolling Specs, still want to try Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), having read a story in the same Eight World series, and SF Encyclopedia claims it's prob his best novel, also first. Has one three Hugos for short fiction, and would like to see more of that---meanwhile, just discovered that my local library has a whole lot of Vernor Vinge, and am tempted to binge.

From Wormwoodiana:

Tartarus Press have announced a new, revised, paperback edition of Robert Aickman: A Biography by R. B. Russell. This was previously only available as a limited edition hardback and offers the first full exploration of its subject's role as author, aesthete, administrator and bon vivant.
We previously featured an interview with the author about the book.

"Clear-eyed and dispassionate." Margaret Drabble, Times Literary Supplement
"Nobody knows more about this author of beautifully composed, hallucinatory short fiction than R.B. Russell. Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography — the subtitle echoes Aickman’s memoir, The Attempted Rescue — reveals a man, both charming and rabidly opinionated, who seems to have polarized everyone he met. . . ." Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"Masterful. . . Russell is quite aware that a biography of Aickman can only be attempted because, from moment to moment, what Aickman experienced and what he imagined are hard to separate. It is a virtue of this biography that it shows how, for Aickman, experience was what he imagined." The New York Sun

"...insightful, revealing information about a true master of horror." Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue

(Mark Valentine)

We've talked about Varley on here

the third gaea book, as mentioned above, involved a semi-divine being demanding that everyone under her control reenact mid-20th-century films

so yeah, he likes movies. also that book was fucking terrible

Sounds about right.

Feels like there's been an explosion of SFF booktubers in the past year and it's nice to see it happening, but I wonder why it only happened so recently?

the yoon ha lee series made a great deal of both serving tea and wearing gloves, although not necessarily at the same time. which may or may not be a nod to ann leckie, who probably blurbed it

this has been playing on my mind. so weird. the gloves & tea thing is one of the most distinctive aspects of the ancillary series - not entirely successful, it does paint a culture and society but feels like a slightly forced effort. copying it feels like more than a nod, i'd only expect to see that in ancillary justice fan fiction.

http://corabuhlert.com/2023/03/27/non-fiction-spotlight-brian-w-aldiss-and-robert-holdstocks-mythago-wood-a-critical-companion-by-paul-kincaid/

I think Aldiss saw himself as the new H.G. Wells, and not just in the innumerable times that he echoed or referenced Wells in his work. He saw parallels: they were both from the same sort of lower middle class background, their fathers were shopkeepers, they were about the same age when they first got published, they married twice but had numerous other sexual relationships (I suspect Aldiss thought that Margaret should be as tolerant of these liaisons as Jane, though reading between the lines of his autobiography there seem to have been a number of estrangements between them), and they each had a major if unexpected success with a work of history. To what extent Aldiss tried to intentionally shape these parallels I don’t know, but the echoes were certainly there.

their fathers were shopkeepers

i was told the entire nation were shopkeepers

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/08/rachel-pollack-trans-activist-and-comic-book-writer-dies-aged-77

reading julian may's pliocene exile series for the first time in ~30 years

it is fantastic imo

I don't know that - how fantasy adjacent is it?

not very, i would say

I finished THE BEST OF C.M. KORNBLUTH. Here are comments on more of the stories.

'The Marching Morons' (1951) depicts a future in which stupidity has spread and a minority of intelligent people are keeping society running, deceiving the 'morons' as they go. If you think that sounds elitist and even possibly eugenicist - you could have a point. It is at least an ingenious inversion how Kornbluth shows the 'smart' people to be having to work hard to service the illusions of the 'morons' - rather than the reverse, the intelligent being a leisured elite. The actual story involves a character from the 20th century being reawoken in this moronic future, who gains the position of 'world dictator' by developing a means of killing off the 'morons' by deception. A kind of genocide, I suppose. This story becomes dark! But at the end this power-crazed new dictator is himself killed for his immoral scheme.

I'm not sure how serious Kornbluth was about the eugenic ideas. Rather, I think the story belongs to a mid-C20 fear of 'media-induced stupidity', also detectable, as I recall, in Vonnegut's story 'Harrison Bergeron' - or, indeed, in FAHRENHEIT-451.

'The Last Man at the Bar' (1957) is a chilling tale in which a drunk in a bar is pursued by sinister beings from another epoch. 'The Mindworm' (1950) is almost equally chilling, depicting a modern kind of vampire who can read people's minds and drain the life from them. It ends surprisingly and cheeringly as a town of immigrants from Eastern Europe to the US (I think) use their old vampire-killing lore on this monster. These stories show that Kornbluth could be a 'horror' writer, in a way, as much as his more usual metier of SF. Looking back through the pages of the stories, I'm also impressed by the density of the writing. He'll include mathematical equations, fragments of thought, distortions of language. He seems to have been unusually adventurous with words, especially for a 1950s magazine writer.

'With These Hands' (1951) is about a sculptor in a future era where art is devalued. The reason is uncannily close to our own time of emergent AI: human beings can generate art by just entering some co-ordinates in a computer; they don't need the time-intensive artistry and craft of human artists.

'Shark Ship' (1953) is a long, ambitious story about a future in which people have left the land for the ocean. They exist on crowded ships, in fishing fleets with demanding regimes. We get to know some of the captains and officers. When one ship loses the sail it needs to continue, the crew decide to undertake an expedition back to dry land. They find a New York which is recognisable to us though puzzling to them - PLANET OF THE APES Statue of Liberty stuff! It turns out that the US has been taken over by a cult of death which has replaced the desire for sex - in response, I think, to overpopulation. Once again, as with 'The Marching Morons', Kornbluth is dabbling in speculation about speculative demographics, though he is not at all sympathetic to the anti-population death cult. The story ends with the 'sea people' (from the ship)_planning to build a bridge from their ship to the land, to start to begin civilisation on land again.

'Friend to Man' (1951) is another distinctive, again very dark story in which a lone straggler on another planet is remembering his awful acts and mistreatment of a woman, and is killed by a parasitical alien. 'The Altar at Midnight' (1952) follows a scientist on a drunken, despairing binge as he encounters people who have suffered physically through space travel; it at last turns out that he invented the means of space travel, thus is responsible for their ailments. The story is short but yet again contains packs power.

'Dominoes' (1953) is a time travel story in which a businessman travels to the future to find out when the stock market will crash, goes back to the present to sell his stock, and finds that this is what causes the crash. So it's about the consequences of altering events, the involvement of the time-travelling individual in the process he observes, that kind of idea (if not paradox).

The final work 'Two Dooms' (1958) is a long story about what would happen if the Japanese and Nazis won WWII. That sounds familiar. But this is from 1958, before Dick's famous version. It's much more compact, yet has things in common with Dick - who I feel must have read it (others may know the facts here). The story is extraordinary. An atomic scientist during WWII takes a Native American mystical drug that sends him far into the future so that he can see the consequences of the USA *not* developing the atom bomb. The Allies lose the war (the facts of the alternative war are explained in ingenious detail), the Japanese take the West coast, Nazis the rest, but none of them have nuclear power; in fact their science remains backward. But the protagonist realises that the Nazis remain genocidal and murderous. So he engineers a way back to the present so that he can ... carry on and develop the atom bomb so that the US can win the war.

That's dark, again. 'Two Dooms': Nazi victory or a world of nuclear weapons. And the hero chooses the second.

Looking over these stories again, I must admit that in the couple of weeks since I finished them, I've already lost touch with much of the detail - which is a sign of how complex and original they are. Kornbluth seems to be a pretty remarkable writer: dense, driven, going into dangerous territory, while also more linguistically detailed and ambitious than many SF writers of his time. Like most people he's less crazy than Dick, more controlled; he has some of the black humour of Sheckley but is less relaxed and droll, more scary. I'm not sure how much Kornbluth is read today but this compact book is an example of the extraordinary amount of thought, speculation, creativity that went into SF short stories in the period.

Otm

some of those are in the public domain and available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/34039

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).

― toby, Thursday, 23 February 2023 11:18 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was fantastic. mature, intelligent, wonderfully written.

Glad you liked it!

Michaiah Johnson - The Space Between Worlds

recommended by a couple of folks here and I liked it a lot. the multiverse aspect was actually interesting here, and despite the risk that one might find the multiverse premise a bit played-out these days i thought it delivered some fresh takes. the premise of someone (Cara, the lead character) who works moving between these realities as a way to gather relevant information pertaining to patterns, population growth, ecology, etc which will help her own world function better is an interesting one, though the narrative is primarily focused on the personal with the lead character. one of its subtexts is a certain vicious toxic masculinity, which comes into play across all parallel worlds, though to the shock of Cara she discovers an abuser in one world is a strong, kind person in another. And vice-versa, in certain ways. It's a really interesting one, and she's a good writer.

Yeah, and Cara is a bold one/kind of a basket case at times, got her own consistent parallels, across the multiverses.
With wi-fi down, I finally resorted to my first reading of an ebook, downloaded long ago onto the Kindle app: sometimes thought of adjusting the brightness of this old PC, but the stark high contrast (and whatever wrought iron font it flaunts) so suited/wouldn't let me touch that dial around the florescent moonlight of Karen Russell's novella about a pandemic of insomnia, Sleep Donor(please give now).

dang---Sleep Donation, that is---gotta get it right for Karen Russell, one of the best. Likewise w fluorescent moonlight. The novella's now available as a Vintage trade pb, which might glow in the dark also.

My local library can borrow books from a Big City Library that has thee following Patricia A. McKillip trove---what should I ask for, where should I start? (Have only read Winter Rose and some equally awes anthologized stories). Behold:

Kingfisher
Od Magic
Harrowing The Dragon
Ombria in Shadow
Solstice in Shadow
Alphabet of Thorn
The Bards of Bone Plain
The Sorceress and the Cygnet
Harpist in the Wind
The Bell at Sealey Head
Riddle of Stars
Moon-Flash
The Tower at Stony Wood
The Cygnet and the Firebird
Fool's Run
The Book of Atrix Wolfe
The Riddle-Master of Hed
The Changeling Sea
In the Forests of Serre

riddle-master of hed and harpist in the wind are books one and three of a (great) series

(book two is called heir of sea and fire)

Riddle of Stars is an omnibus edition of that trilogy

I've just read that, and some of the stories in Harrowing the Dragon. She is fantastic.

Thanks yall! I belatedly thought to search on ilx, found a lot of comments. The trilogy was often mentioned favorably, although some readers thought it was over-extended (in the middle, I think, before strong finish), being from the Time of Trilogies, when writers could seem pressured into them. Great to know it's all in the omnibus, which the Big City Library has. I read Harrowing's title story in anthology, really great, so may start with that collection. Or---

Yeah I think Riddlemaster is possibly a victim of the late 70s trend of publishers getting writers to emulate Tolkien but hers was more distinctive and original than most but its far too long. I wish I had started with another book. I think Ombria In Shadow might be a better bet, some people who've read lots by her seem to rate her 90s-00s stuff highest?

bite your tongue/i will fite you

it is not far too long or even long at all. the entire trilogy is listed at 578 pages, which is less than half of lotr and less than 200 pages per book

The scenes on the dusty road go on forever and some of the journeying seems to go nowhere. I've read 10 page stories that are waaaaaaay too long, so 578 can certainly be too long. On that podcast I posted somewhere above I think E. Lily Yu also said she thought Riddlemaster was a bad starting place. But I'll say again that the magic battles in the third book knocked my socks off and there's other good stuff in there. Ombria In Shadow, Changeling Sea and Forgotten Beasts Of Eld will be my next McKillips.

i respect your knowledge of it but every single one of the landrulers are interesting in different ways. if you were so inclined, you could write a trilogy about mathom of an. and the dusty road is necessary for the harper

Terra SF: The Year's Best European SF - edited by Richard D. Nolane

There was only two of these, the editor clarifies that it's really just western europe. Joe F. Randolph translates all but one of the stories (Sam J. Lundwall translating his own) and it results in most being readable but a few are very very awkwardly done. They must have realized this because the next book has a few more translators. Nolane is a bit ashamed about only having one woman in the anthology but he says that America is far ahead of western europe in this regard, which really surprised me but I've just been realizing that the UK, despite it's very strong SFF scene, seems to have only started getting any real quantity of women writers in the 90s, didn't expect America to be ahead of the curve in this way. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Have to admit this was a disappointment and I warn you that tracking this down will not be worth it for most readers. Most of the stories are slightly absurdist near future dystopias, I thought the two about revolutionaries were quite engaging but won't really stand out in their subgenre. Lundwall's "Take Me Down The River" about people flying on kites and strange contraptions suicidally off the edge of a planet was pretty good and I wonder if this inspired David Gullen's Third Instar at all? Lino Aldani's "Red Rhombuses" is very eccentric in style and content but I feel like this is one of the translators greatest failures because I just couldn't grasp it much.
My favorite was Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff's "Aruna" because it has sort of dreamy science-fantasy imagery and was quite enigmatic. Neutzky-Wulff writes all kinds of things (including philosophy and computer programming) and I wouldn't mind reading more of his fiction. Sounds like an interesting guy.

I'll get around to the next book eventually.