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

Time to launch another lifeboat to the stars. Previously: ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

All aboard the Strato-Cruiser!

DO U SEE, I’m a stranger here myself.

Singing thread title to the tune of the Theme from Underdog

Thread of Wonder
5000 posts

Wonder Thread
Wonder Thread!

Thread of royal beauty bright!

Cool, except PLEASE change "Sci-Fi" to "Science Fiction"; true headz will respect it more.

Seriously, change that shit.

If a mod wants to a mod can, now to read some skiffy some I can make a real contribution to the thread.

some

In thee beginning (not really, butt a big ol goodun, where I came in)
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

That rolled from 2011 to 2014, I believe.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/B08F9XYGVQ.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX500_.jpg

Kindle daily deal today. seems odd that it doesn't mention Gagarin by name.

also listed, a Tchaikovsky book, Doors of Eden. anyone? i liked the one about the spiders, i didn't like ironclads.

just finished The Ministry For the Future. almost comically unsubtle and didactic in its politcs. the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad. first half is excellent.

started that -- the first scene is harrowing, but i instantly lost all interest when things shifted to the ministry itself. i suppose no one dramatizes vast bureaucratic processes better than KSR but it's a low bar, and i'm not really up for doom right now

read 'hench', which has a jokey premise -- underemployed young woman seeks placement as a villain's henchman through a temp service -- but turned out to be fierce as well as funny

started jo walton's 'the just city'; it's a little precious but i'm liking it a lot so far

as everyone says about recent KSR, it's actually very optimistic. the first scene though good grief.

Yeah, if the future is remotely like that KSR projects I'd be a hell of a lot more hopeful than I am now.

the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad.

I am struggling with this sentence.

Yeah.

ha! do you mean you're struggling with it syntactically or morally?

Uh, aesthetically? The scouring of the shire is a highlight!

I'm more bothered by the lack of a comma in 5,000 than I am abt sci-fi tbh

Commas are only for numbers of five figures and up as far as I'm concerned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0
x10

Almost posted that embed 10x ina old-school JW Noizeborad style.

I'm sure I talked about some of this in the previous thread about hanging out with horror people mostly then SFF people and then when you go back to horrorland, most people in SFF land start seeming really uptight and conversations have so many restricted areas and I have to respect what people aren't willing to discuss but I find it occasionally frustrating. And then there's this area of horror which is like the children of Dennis Cooper and it's lovely how relaxed they are and talking about what drugs they're taking all the time.

https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/
https://www.clashbooks.com/
https://expatpress.com/shop/
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/books.html
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/books

I generally like SFF fans but I do feel like a lot of them (even a lot of the progressive ones) still want stories that are easy to swallow and are probably afraid to look at their dog's anus.

Only thing is, the blurbs for some of these authors can be completely ridiculous and leave you hanging, not knowing what it's like or about. "Britney Spears singing love songs to you while Baudelaire gives you an enema" or some nonsense like that.

Ha, exactly.

Think I started a thread about that once.

When Author X was Compared to Author Y by Author Z

nothing more riveting than people talking about their drug regimens, very transgressive

I'm a complete teetolaler and I'm not even into drug talk but my point is it's nice to hear writers talking in a more carefree way. It's probably significant that the horror genre largely escaped the culture war and there's less people out to get each other.

Like this crap is still going on in SFF land
https://dorisvsutherland.com/2021/04/06/baens-bar-the-utterly-incompetent-case-for-the-defence/

i haven't the patience to delve into what you consider 'culture war' 'crap' that's 'easy to swallow'

tbh i've seen way too much of my cat's anus, but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

honestly you are fucking creepy as hell; maybe you should stick to to 'open-minded' horror boards where you can discuss what you want to do to your waifus with no judgment

but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

Does anyone do this?

Old Lunch was asking maybe two years ago about problems with reactionary horror people but as far as the fiction/poetry side goes it's really minimal compared to SFF, it's been said they're more easy going and get on better together.
The drawback is maybe the low brow attitude, too much easy amusement with juxtaposing high and low culture and the shit eating grins (see lots of horror author photos) and it does annoy me when people feel they have to present dark or gross subject matter in a jokey way, I'm regularly guilty of it too and it's often my first instinct to joke about some of these things. I think people do this because if they keep a straight face about it, they're worried people will think they're crazy.
But I think sometimes humor and punky attitude doesn't let people process things as well, I'd rather the subject matters weren't considered so transgressive or frightening, it makes peoples lives more difficult. So it's nice when people are just more at ease with it all, but the transgression is undeniably part of the appeal of some of these writers.

There's been a lot of good buzz about this one
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/negativespace.html

Going to be weird hearing “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)” read out at a ceremony.
https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/announcing-the-2021-hugo-award-finalists/

https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/a-brief-guide-to-the-extraordinary-fiction-of-vonda-n-mcintyre/

http://file770.com/discon-iii-declines-to-comment-on-code-of-conduct-issue-about-hugo-finalist/

A little bit heartbreaking how many SFF authors despise each other and the awards nominations intensifying it all.

How many people nominated for a Hugo alongside Isabel Fall this year celebrated the removal of her story or contributed to the harassment campaign against her?

I think I count 3 so far. I really hope she wins.

— Experiencing A Significant Poggers Shortfall (@mechanicalkurt) April 13, 2021

The entire SF/F community came out and said "if you don't write about being trans in the way we think you should, we will attempt to harm you."

This is especially angering because it was an open secret that literally all of Chuck Wendig's writer friends were sex pests.

— Qualia Redux (@QualiaRedux) April 15, 2021

and some nice animals. What's weirder than the giant bunny in the first picture, is the way that guy is holding the pilot's head

One great sub-genre of retro sci-fi art: Confusingly Placed Animals pic.twitter.com/P0rmh9WG7I

— 70s Sci-Fi Art (@70sscifi) April 15, 2021

Jess Nevins - Horror Needs No Passport

This starts with Nevins explaining his frustration that there has been very little survey or study of international horror fiction and that he did this book because nobody else had. It sticks to the 20th century (with occasional background and influential writers from further back), skips USA, UK and a few other english speaking countries but there is still a bunch of english fiction included from other countries. Nevins doesn't say which writers he has actually read himself, he quotes other scholars evaluations quite a lot but I did get the impression he was voicing his own opinions about most of the japanese writers (who are surprisingly well represented in english translation) and these were some of the most enjoyable parts.

It might have been inevitable that many of the writers end up sounding very similar and my eyes often glazed over the descriptions of their approaches (what subgenres, where the horror effects are coming from). But every once in a while there's really tantalizing or unusual sounding stories about Africa, Indonesian martial arts horror, a story about a shepherd, Tarzan starring in Israeli horror adventures, italian extreme horror and amazing sounding gothics from all around the world.

It notes a handful of comic artists, Suehiro Maruo is oddly absent but I was pleased to discover Daijiro Morohoshi who I might have seen a little of but most of what I found on search was new to me.

The political/cultural background for every country is detailed, if horror was frowned upon or even outlawed (often in soviet countries, Germany and Japan censored under post-war occupation, some people writing horror only in exile), whether what each writer was doing was considered high art or trash from the gutter. It seemed like quite a lot of the South American writers were politicians.
A few times Nevins writes about authors not pursuing just "mere fear" and it seemed as if it was his own opinion (?), I don't understand why someone so devoted to horror would feel that being scary for it's own sake wasn't enough, given how that approach can be as intense and memorable as anything else when it's done well.

It is mentioned that Ewers was a Nazi but not Strobl, somehow.

No cover credit for Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

I do wish there was some sort of guide about the availability in english of these books. Perhaps Nevins was concerned it would date the book too much and that people might not bother searching for newer books if they weren't already in an english list? I spent a while checking isfdb and amazon for many of the writers but I didn't have the patience to research every writer that sounded promising. A few were indeed published after this book.
Sad that I probably won't hear about most of these authors again. If a particular writer has sufficiently high status, there's a good chance Penguin or some other classics publisher has them in english, a good deal of this stuff goes unnoticed by most horror fans and I can't blame them too much for not catching them all.

This could and should be an important building block for the future of horror. It's pretty great and I bought Nevins' Horror Fiction In The 20th Century, which can be considered a companion to this.

I can't remember who the writer was but one of the unique ideas I came across in the above book was from a writer in exile from a dictatorship who wrote a novel in which even gods are powerless against the goverment, which just seems like a horribly depressing idea. Quite a few south american stories were mentioned in which all the characters are completely fucked and have nothing but terrifyingly bad choices available.

I didn't know that books aimed at railway travelers was such a big thing in India. Which makes me wonder about "airport novels", do publishers and even writers really spend a lot of time thinking about what people want to read at an airport?

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-society-of-time-by-john-brunner/

I like the idea of Brunner but haven’t really been able to read.

Brunner’s supporting cast, including the Jesuit time-travel expert, Father Ramon

Another one for my 'Catholics in spaaaaaace!' list.

Never read any Brunner meself, sounds intriguing but this (re: Stand on Zanzibar) puts me off: Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armoured police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude), "bivving" (bisexuality, from "ambivalent") and "mucker" (a person running amok).

Elizabeth Moon's Remnant population: emo sf in the Le Guin mould. Good aliens and bad humans, though the humans aren't all that bad, and the dice are stacked rather heavily in favour of the aliens - not that Le Guin didn't indulge in a bit of dice stacking herself. Enjoyable but somewhat cosy and convenient.

Also for fans of (at least) 5000 posts, this Rollin Speculative looks like the first, b. 2011, and is where I came in: (hey thomp, get back here):
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Didn't mean to drop the g, sorry.

Has this been posted before? Can't recall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN_rJ27HfCw

Book fan inexplicably expects readers to enjoy watching hour long video.

I read some of the transcript, bought one (Europe in Autumn).

The error-ridden transcript, I should say.

I found the list on another site, looked pretty good.

i quite liked the ministry of time but the ending was a total cop-out

About to read it myself so I will avoid the spoiler, thanks for hiding

Came to say that when I skimmed to the end of Nevala-Lee's Astounding book it gave me a link to a free ebook so I got a copy of Hartwell's Age of Wonders

Outlaw Bookseller list is here:
https://csfquery.com/cworks?cid=482&sortby=2

Or here:
https://www.listchallenges.com/outlaw-booksellers-top-25-science-fiction

Book fan inexplicably expects readers to enjoy watching hour long video.

Things start making more sense when you realise a lot of youtube videos are best enjoyed as audio only.

If people are putting effort into monetizing their videos, they tend to go long and I tend to stop watching them so much. But a lot of booktubers including this one, have a lot of cover art to show you.

My favorite stuff by him is the author overview videos.

Reread of I, Robot was more enjoyable than expected.

Also went looking for this essay since some links to it were broken:
https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/columns/scores-37/

That one also appears to be broken

Not for me

Only some photoes missing

Truism: Heinlein was born and matured in a period when a more natural fit seemed to obtain between advocacy and a body politic that could be shaped, so that his work—certainly in the first decade of his published career—seemed congenial with its task.

not that I can put words together any better, "meant to mean" ffs.

Something something about post-Great Depression WWII-era optimism I assumed.

Thing I never knew until a few days ago: apparently Asimov died of AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion.

ledge otm

Good thing I have you two geniuses to tell me what a bad writer Clute is

u r welcome

During heart bypass surgery, iirc.

Yes, a triple bypass.

Heinlein's wife had worried about the same thing happening to him a few years earlier.

https://locusmag.com/2026/05/2026-locus-awards-winners

Yebo!

if anybody else in the uk has been waiting for the 4th part of the Children of... trilogy (Strife) to be cheap on amazon (kobo / google), today is the day. it's like twice the size of the 3rd though.

I haven't even read the third, did I enjoy the first two enough? I would consider it except for your last caveat.

the third is a bit of a change, and features a nod to norse myth, which i enjoyed.

elsewhere, the dysonsphere in Quarantine continues to be unimportant, instead it's focussing on many worlds theorum and web function collapse. which is slightly disappointing.

What is many worlds theorum?

aiui, every decision, even on an atomic scale, sparks a new world which differs from the existing worlds by that one change

some connection with the bloke from eels iirc

ha, here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsqlWaSviTk

MWI = Many Worlds Interpretation = Idea that all possible worlds exist, so the opposite of Leibnitz/Pangloss statement that this is the best of all possible worlds because it is the only one

(xp)

Everett-Wheeler! I feel like that was all over the comics I read in the early 90s

Dad to Eels frontman Mark Everett!

Finished Europe in Autumn. It started off well, reminded me of Tiber Fischer, intelligent working class Eastern European guys dealing with hardship and criminal violence with sardonic humour. Then it starts going Le Carre but it's very slow and repetitive and doesn't seem to have any kind of meaningful plot. Finally about 50 pages from the end it sets things up... for the next book. Fucker.

almost gave up on stand on zanzibar within a couple of chapters, i was not prepared for its postmodern approach to structure and language. it's still going slowly but i'm glad i stuck with it, it's pretty (darkly) funny

what is the deal with the dungeon master carl books? i'm turned off by their prevalence and cover art/title vibe but obviously that's not a fair assessment. they just seem to be everywhere all of a sudden

Amazom Unlimited would LOVE for me to read them.

Have always been curious about Brunner but couldn't get past the obvious gravity well at the beginning

A friend who I play rpgs with described Dungeon Crawler Carl as "shit is like White Castle sliders" after saying the first book was bad and then immediately reading the second book as well.

Fantastic hair/tie combo plus cig on the go and broadcast posh voice in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00TouBRitR0

Brunner interesting figure - massively prolific, successful in American markets (lots of Ace Doubles) with pretty mainstream fare then the switch to Zanzibar and subsequent 'new wave' books. Heavily involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; died at a Worldcon in Glasgow, a Brunner bummer for sure.

I seem recall reading Disch reporting Brunner telling him that some point he felt he couldn't make a living anymore because he didn't write trilogies.

Have always been curious about Brunner but couldn't get past the obvious gravity well at the beginning

same re: zanzibar

Finished Europe in Autumn

enjoyed these books a great deal; the second one (i think?) is hella weird

kaunas isn't a name. it's a place.

https://www.jodyscott.info/books-in-print.html
I don't know when it happened but the 3rd book (written in the early 80s but released in 2016) in Jody Scott's trilogy was deleted by amazon for crossing their content restrictions (I don't know what exactly crossed them but I've heard amazon is getting worse in this regard), wish I bought it when I had the chance. But Scott has made an ebook free for download.

https://www.jodyscott.info/about-jody.html

Looks good, thanks for the rec.