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

I thought he would live to be at least six hundred and fifty miles.

Sad to hear about Priest, didn't expect this one.

James - what do you mean about that table of contents?

I mean has anyone gotten that book and dipped into it yet?

I just saw it at my local library but didn’t borrow it…yet.

Still there on the NEW shelf, a few books down from Curepedia.

Christopher Priest RIP
https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=6855🕸

Heh, they haven’t, but Paul Kincaid has, and they both liked Kincaid’s book about him so maybe I should take a look at that

Also saw tributes from Pat Cadigan, a Ballard fan club and, wait for it, a Harlan Ellison fan club! Clute and Langford, like Richard Hell, said it’s too early.

Never read anything apart from Inverted World but it blew my mind of course. Would love some testimonials on his other stuff

Lost track at some point but The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Extremes and The Separation are all really good.

Also The Adjacent, The Space Machine and The Quiet Woman.

And the stories in The Dream Archipelago.

That was a Golden Age of SF for me, when I read all of those books one after the other.

Still wanna read The Prestige, The Islanders, A Dream of Wessex and maybe The Gradual.

Hadn’t known he was first married to Lisa Tuttle for six years.

The relatively recent collection Episodes looks good, featuring the classic Palely Loitering which is also in this fine collection
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a7/NNFNTSMMR271979.jpg

This one he edited is good too:
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/74/NTCPTNSFVJ1978.jpg

i recommended 'inverted word' to someone literally one hour before his death was announced, so maybe it's my fault

.

At least he outlived his bête noire Martin Amis by a wee bit.

Hadn’t known he was first married to Lisa Tuttle for six years.

don't actually know paul kincaid, but this is lovely re: christopher priest

https://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2024/02/03/chris

Yeah, meant to link. Does that have the Cavern club story?

Have Adam Roberts and M. John Harrison weighed in yet?

Christopher Priest has died.https://t.co/OaH6Iwse4m

— Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) February 3, 2024

forgot the quote marks there, but anyway, a nice thread from Roberts

Ah I don’t use Twitter. I was hoping for a Medium post.

Okay, just created an account to see that, which somehow seems fitting.

Yeah, meant to link. Does that have the Cavern club story?

Priest lived on the island of Bute in recent years, and not long ago donated lots of books to this local charity bookshop:

https://friendsofwemyssbaystation.co.uk/bookshop-test/

On my last visit, I picked up a hardcover edition of Movie Magic: The Story of Special Effects in the Cinema (1974) by John Brosnan and found this inscription inside:

https://i.imgur.com/vJbxa08.jpg

Nice!

Somebody on social media (on that Cavern Club thread I think) posted a picture of a book he had bought of Priest’s with an inscription from Richard Cowper to him.

Thread is here

not much to it outside what I already told you though, but the inscription is cool.

Hadn’t realized that he was the first one to associate the term New Wave with New Worlds etc.

Found this in the sample of Paul Kincaid’s book about him:

In a long 1981 review of Lester del Rey’s The World of Science Fiction, Priest declared: ‘I am Lester del Rey’s professional adversary, the antagonist of his literary dreams’ (IT, 110), before going on to skewer del Rey’s vision of science fiction as something opposed to everything Priest himself believed in and worked towards. As Priest said: ‘I am challenging his perspective, his impartiality, his accuracy, his writing ability, his ideas and attitudes, and even his spelling and vocabulary. There is nothing here for him’ (IT, 110).

damn dawg

Reminds me of Hollywood Henderson vs. Terry Bradshaw although you probably didn’t hear about that in the UK.

Maybe Tracer heard it when he was coming up though.

Hmm. Adam Roberts liked The Evidence, maybe I should add that to my Infinite SummerQueue.

TS The Dream Archipelago vs Viriconium

Mike Harrison has made a blog post in more than a month, mostly been retweeting stuff including Nina’s tweet.

Hasn’t

Dig this origin story of Non-Stop being the book that set him on the right path or firmed his resolve, made him stick to his guns, blew his mind or whatever.

Now on a completely different tip, wonder if I need any of the $1.99 Poul Anderson ebooks?

*Chris turns over in his grave*

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-134-cody-goodfellow-on-his-new-novel-vertical/id1524359471?i=1000640902593

_But n Ben A-Go-Go_ is what I’m talking about.

So about M. John Harrison’s memoir, Wish I Was Here.

Is there an omnibus version of the Elric saga? The currently available versions are individual hardbacks with about three words per page.

What I really want are the 80s paperbacks in the sliver covers I used to gaze at in Waldenbooks, but they are $$$.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Thursday, September 7, 2023 8:04 AM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I recently reconnected with one of my oldest friends after about 5 years. I casually mentioned to him the Elric editions I referenced above. Several weeks later I received a package from him in the mail with his copies of those editions from his teens and a handwritten note where he drew a picture of Stormbringer :)

What a nice friend. A pal of mine, no longer with us, used to have a parody character called Eric of Marylebone (an area of Central London with a big old train station). And of course Dave Sim had a character called Elrod, based on Barry Smith's version of Elric from the Conan comics, with the speech patterns of Foghorn Leghorn.