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

Noticed that but haven’t watched yet.

Book collectors go a-roving:

n a damp late-November morning we went on pilgrimage to the Dark Tower, the three of us, Valentine, Howard and Gale, keen book-collectors all. We went from our digs in Abbey Dore, hard by the Abbey itself, through the Golden Valley until we came to Peterchurch, whose church has a slim, needle-point spire in pale stone, an aerial of elegance.

From here, a narrow, steeply climbing road is the way to Urishay. As we neared the summit, making way for an approaching vehicle, our wheels slithered in the roadside slime, as if to impose upon us a slow, respectful approach. Through the autumnal trees, the last vestiges of gold glowing on their gaunt branches, we could see the high ruinous towers. Here, a Norman baronial stronghold had become over the centuries a ramshackle farmhouse, until finally its owners had been obliged to give up the struggle to keep it intact: its once roaring fireplaces now stood exposed in their walls, dank hollows.

Before its desolation, a traveller, seeking gratefully its lights through a storm, arrived one night, and asked for shelter, and was welcomed by its eccentric castellan: they talked long together by one of those fireplaces, in the marvellously evocative opening scene of Francis Brett Young’s The Dark Tower (1915). In a preface to a later edition, the author says: ‘this early, imperfect book has a deeper claim on my own affections than any other I have written.’

It was bound up with his discovery of ‘that mass of Old Red Sandstone called the Black Mountain, whose sombrely suggestive name and bold outline, filmed by distance’ had haunted him for years. When Brett Young had visited ‘the lonely outpost’ it was ‘still inhabited, through the declining storms of centuries, by the family whose forebears had first held it: a race named Delahay. Now, at last, the Delahays are gone and Urishay a stark ruin . . .’

It had been ‘his romantic privilege in those days to know the last of them: a young man, half-squire, half small farmer, who clung to its stones like the last leaf of a dying oak’, and the story of his lineage and the story of the place, had enthralled him. Moreover, he had written the book as a relief from his work as a local doctor, himself convalescent, during the fiercely busy days of an influenza epidemic in 1914: ‘The composition of The Dark Tower, an urgent spiritual necessity, was the only escape a harassed mind and ailing body found at that time’.

There's a rarebookscore too.

https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2023/12/rip-mark-samuels.html?m=1

Quite shocked to see this, I hadn't seen him online in a while but his friends seem surprised by the news too

I managed to forget The Glamour at my friend's over the weekend when I had 50 pages left and could feel how Priest was preparing to resolve the story with another twist. It was actually a very old recommendation and my first since reading Inverted World. I will probably go on to read another (I saw recs upthread).

Right now I switched to Ramuz, probably our most famous Swiss-French author, with a novella about the Earth crashing into the sun, told from the perspective of calm quiet agricultural Switzerland. I didn't know he had written stuff like that. Shamefully my first.

Loved The Glamour. Maybe one day I will read it again.

Maybe I should get around to reading The Gradual one of these days.

If not The Islanders.

find someone who loves you as much as christopher priest loves titling his books 'the [vague noun (or occasionally adjective)]'

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/4838504/altany-craik-author-fife-labour-candidate/

yes this is the correct thread, he wrote books about a badass priest investigating a scary sex cult. I'm curious but I don't think I'll bother

I perused a page or two on Amazon Kindle previews, er let's say I've read better. Is all self-published writing this bad?

Of course not.

find someone who loves you as much as christopher priest loves titling his books 'the [vague noun (or occasionally adjective)]'

It’s like all the “Adverb Adjective Noun” Dylan song titles.

Not to be confused with Mr. Bob Dorough, that was his birthday yesterday.

Ramsey Campbell uses titles like that a lot, but then occasionally something really striking like The Face That Must Die or The Doll Who Ate His Mother

can anyone speak to lois mcmaster bujold? she's won awards, i've seen her praised, but

a) apparently no one agrees on where to start
b) really just the worst cover art imaginable

The only one of hers I've read is Memory, a turning point for apparently heretofore somewhat crazy-brilliant Miles Vorkosigan, Imperial son and rep in space, but also mercenary leader: the central protagonist in what could be called the Vorkosigan Saga, after Miles and his family. It's space opera with unusual range, incl. some depth of characterization at times. Here he's mostly back on his home world, mostly immersed in family and gov politics, intrigue, also some romance and obligatory socializing---all of which can be read on the sly side, but omg outburst of violence-crisis too, and clear enough depictions of previous activities, and I'd like to go back (and fwd) to space adventures, but this one's pretty satisfying, even though I guess mid-series.

Also maybe SFE could help you, though it's got a spoiler re Memory:
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bujold_lois_mcmaster

Paul Di Filippo recommends Cordelia's Honor (an omnibus) as the best starting place. Thankfully there is a series of omnibuses but they don't cover the entire saga

She gives her own take on the order here:

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/22803928-bujold-reading-order-guide-2022-update

I quite enjoyed the Vorkosigan Saga. A fun mix of politics and space opera romp

Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.

Both of these are in Cordelia's Honor. I normally go for publication order, but when a series is this long and not a strict sequence, I'll make an exception.

huh

https://www.tor.com/2023/12/14/apple-tv-to-adapt-martha-wells-murderbot-alexander-skarsgard-set-to-star

feels like there are an incredible number of novels (particularly recently) about generation ships nearing their destinations and being sabotaged?

thank god we have becky chambers to make everyone rational and humane

Lol

i just read “Liane The Wayfarer” by Jack Vance and am completely blown away. next level

read 'exadelic' by jon evans

more of a techno-thriller, i suppose, than sci-fi exactly -- although robert heinlein makes a cameo appearance

hella fast-paced, covers a fantastic amount of ground, pretty decent imo

honestly the worst thing about it is that the author photo is deeply in the uncanny valley

modern SF 'about the author' entries are . . . well, cringe

female SF author is six feet tall and lives in los angeles

male SF author lives in the midwest with his family and a tarantula named rosie

c'mon ppl

Two new Broodcomb Press titles at the end of Jan.

https://broodcomb.co.uk/?page_id=84

Having read all the ones still in print, I am not sure there’s anything comparable in the folk horror / English unease canon. They’re an extraordinary achievement.

From What Did You Read in 2023?

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ((ed.): Starlight 2
(science fiction x fantasy:prestige express, but often gives out of steam
—exceptions: Susanna Clarke, *“Mrs. Mabb,” Jonathan Letham, *”Access Fantasy,” Martha Soukoup,*”The House of Expectations”)

'Piranesi' is excellent (haven't read/heard/seen Jonathan Strange).

I really liked Piranesi, it was a model of concise weirdness.

I'm reading a book of short stories ('Under My Skin') by KJ Parker, who wrote my other favorite story in that Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2012 collection besides Adam Roberts.

They're very fun & engaging so far, although they tend to feature male protagonists that are overly snarky and ultra-capable. But I do like his tendency to write about warring academics.

Thanks for those tips!
Also, this venerable, classy collection concludes with Ted Chiang's " Story of Your Life," which has always made me wonder: if you knew or thought you knew everything that was going to happen and how, including your daughter's death and your own, would you be this calm about it, as the narrator seems to be? Maybe part of the aliens' gift, but mainly well-mannered, along with the always tastefully attentive detail (not quite my thing. when it seems the main thing).

I'm reading a book of short stories ('Under My Skin') by KJ Parker, who wrote my other favorite story in that Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2012 collection besides Adam Roberts.

They're very fun & engaging so far, although they tend to feature male protagonists that are overly snarky and ultra-capable. But I do like his tendency to write about warring academics.

Also, the last story in that book has the same title as a Momus tune.

lol no, that story was real fucked up if it's the one I'm thinking of

Actually haven’t read the one in that book but I did read the one you are most likely thinking of.

Or maybe you are thinking of the one in the book. Will read and report back/pvmic

Mantis Wives

I could swear I've read/listened to at least one of Kij Johnson's stories in Clarkesworld. "The Privilege of a Happy Ending," maybe?

Think that must have been the one I was thinking of, “Spar.” A Nebula Award winner.

Kij Johnson kind of updates Tiptree via Ballard, or something.

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_10_09/

Actually there are more audio stories over there where that came from.

No, I know what it was: "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe." IIRC, the Coode Street guys had that on one of their year-end lists.

Okay, thanks for clarifying.

Jordan, it took me awhile to see that you had reviewed that book in two posts. At first I thought you just overlooked some stuff you didn’t like.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2023-in-review-part-one/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2023-in-review-part-two/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/2023-in-review-part-three/

They're very fun & engaging so far, although they tend to feature male protagonists that are overly snarky and ultra-capable seems to definitely be k.j. parker's thing

he's really into how things work -- it's like, this is how we tried to build a trebuchet, and why it didn't work at first, and how we found the materials and how we raised the money to buy them rather than just 'we catapulted some shit at the enemy' or 'we used magic'

no doubt many readers won't care for that sort of thing -- in my mind i call it 'playing with encumbrance' -- but it's not at all as dry as it sounds (partially due to the snarkiness)