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.

the only olde gold effect here

Although the cloying bits are the nostalgia, come to think of it, since the narrator finally says that this whole tale is old family lore recounted for and by him, the visitor.

read 'the sixth nik' by (pulitzer prize winner) daniel kraus. quite enjoyed the SF parts -- some fantastic ideas, even if they didn't all entirely make sense. enjoyed the horror parts much less; seemed kinda tacked on, but i am not a horror guy and he totally is (co-wrote something with george romero iirc!)

halfway through 'the works of vermin' by hiron ennes and it is grebt. set in a rotting city beset by, well, vermin -- not wholly unlike 'perdido street station'. but all the powers that be are obsessed with art/theatre/opera, and master perfumers can alter perception with scents, and it is baroquely funny. recommended

Sounds good! Can't keep up with you and Jimbo, I mean Jimmo.

Came to say I don't think I've ever recommended But n Ben A-Go-Go, by Matthew Fitt, a climate disaster cyberpunk story written entirely in Scots. One of my favorite things ever tbh.

http://www.mfitt.co.uk/

Janny Wurts has quite a bunch of interviews where she's just recommending underrated books. Really admirable that she reads a lot of new selfpublished authors and promotes them. Few established writers of any age do that.

Picked up PAGANS for a holiday read, thanks Mookieproof (and James)

Couldn't find the original James reference tbh

https://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=5017
https://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=5062
https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Péter-Zsoldos-ebook/dp/B07CRXST5Y/

This is about his trilogy, not translated yet
https://locusmag.com/feature/geographic-accidents-the-gregor-man-trilogy-by-peter-zsoldos/

Couldn't find the original James reference tbh

might have been on bluesky?

he is also big-upping THE PRETENDER by jo harkin, which is (15th-century english historical fiction) not precisely in the purview of this thread but everyone seems to love it

https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-r-morlan/
https://circlet.com/?p=2001

Someone was recently talking about A. R. Morlan and I didn't recall ever hearing about her before despite my frequently checking the horror news when she died. It's troubling to think about why she had so many dead cats but I guess she was constantly taking in stray cats, trying to feed them all despite her poverty (she was going through lots of garbage looking for food) and couldn't bear to let them go once they died? Or didn't know what to do with them?
I get a lot of emails about people hoarding animals and treating them very poorly, never really considered that they might actually love them as pets.

my summer of sci-fi continues:

finished reading the first dungeon crawler carl at my son's request - still not really my thing, the humor in particular is pretty embarrassing wacky LOLrandom millennial humor, but i see the appeal. it moves fast and is action-oriented. i probably won't read any more of them but my son is on the 7th book in the series.

astounding - the nonfiction book about asimov, heinlein, hubbard, and john campbell mentioned upthread. well-written but as someone who hasn't read any of the books by these authors (maybe i read some asimov as a young teen?) i was mostly left with all the creepy details about each of them. fair play to the author for not shying away from the negative aspects of his subjects i guess.

children of ruin - hard to live up to children of time but this came close. i'm going to read the rest of the series soon.

sea of rust - postapocalyptic, post-human neo-western starring robots. pretty decent, but not vital.

the mote in god's eye - currently reading. found this as an old used paperback edition from the '60s, i was laughing at how goofy the alien looks on the cover, then when i got to the part of the book where the aliens are described i was like oh this is actually what they look like. there are some silly aspects to this book but i'm enjoying it more in the back half when the shit is going down.

Currently reading Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, getting near the end of the second volume. Really enjoying it, didn't expect this to be so funny, Cugel is such a fun asshole of a character.

Before that I read Kai Ashante Wilson's The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and A Taste of Honey, which are both amazing, some of the most well written Sci-Fi/Fantasy I have read.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFz9eyoxSk8DdLNHllsrLXYf
Very long in-depth interview with Brian Aldiss from 2014, annoyingly someone cut it up into tiny chunks, so I can't tell how long it actually is but I listened to it over a few nights.

Kai Ashante Wilson has a new novel out soonish

yes, I am very much looking forward to it

Someone counted that Aldiss interview for me and it's 4hours 23mins

read VENTUS by karl schroeder: solid; very long but fast-paced. had a spaceship who was involuntarily turned into a humanoid and kinda wonder if it was among ann leckie's influences

started THE MARS HOUSE by natasha pulley but quit after 50 pages. not for me

re-read the first BATTLESTAR GALACTICA novelization (by glen a larson & robert thurston) after 45 years and my god it is so incredibly bad lol

xposted to the general "wat u reading" thread:

Just finished John Wyndam's The Chrysalids. Wild post-nuclear holocaust spec-fi involving telepaths... its themes of fundamentalism/dogma make a nice contrast to the pure religious experiential ecstasies described in mysticism. I really hate how Wyndham writes female characters, though, he gets really weird and paternal or something. Day of the Triffids had this problem as well.

Been struck upside the head by recently reading A.Merritt, whose lavishly over-the-top imagery, in hyper currents, challenges the minds of pulp readers and self-disciplined yet too-impetuous protagonists. A Great War veteran, who has dealt with all of that as best he can, several years ago, and is taking a nice pastoral vacation in France, encounters
enchanting, seemingly innocent entities in "The Woman of the Wood," and finds himself pulled in the opposite direction by asshole humans, who nevertheless have a point, despite being crazy, and veteran grapples with his own mind as well.
He should have checked out of that country inn much sooner, and the scientific explorers in "The Moon Pool" and "People of the Pit" should have turned back much sooner from their horrifyingly beautiful, hella designed and engineered discoveries, but these brave white men are in competition with the unknown gods and/or geniuses "before our fathers," as natives put it, trying to warn off Dave, the moon pool enthusiast (to be fair, he does flee it, but)
I prefer "The Woman of the Wood" because character development, but there's no direct comparison. The special effects of the other two are characters already fully developed, though interested in exploring the explorers. They don't get many such opportunities, just hanging out in their remote places through the aeons.

Oh nice view, hadn't read much about him before: https://sfencyclopedia.com/entry/merritt_a Turns out, for one thing, that his novel The Moon Pool takes the story of the same title much further.

Merritt was influential upon the sf and fantasy world not primarily through his storylines, which tended to be unoriginal (he acknowledged the influence of Francis Stevens on his work), or through the excesses of his style, but because of the genuine imaginative power he displayed in the creation of estranged but hypnotically attractive alternative worlds and realities.

read VENTUS by karl schroeder

― mookieproof, Friday, August 28, 2026 11:45 PM (three days ago)

Some people like Lady Of Mazes better, I think it's maybe a prequel

Though bump would be about whatever won the Hugos at Worldcon.

indeed: https://locusmag.com/2026/08/2026-hugo-lodestar-astounding-awards-winners

I've been following from afar but didn't look at the actual winners until you just posted, although in the run-up I read a lot of rave reviews of the best novel but people who like to read Hugo-winning fiction.

is it good or bad when the same works sweep the hugo/nebula/locus/etc awards?

(also god bless ada palmer but it is very weird to see her scholarly history win a hugo for 'related work')

Good I guess, for me, at least in one case I can't go into right now

always such a tease

If you'd like I can link a cryptic YouTube video to further muddy the waters

only if you are secretly married to michael whelan

xp
Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do that joek here, since the people who it is directed at don't read this thread

I'm happy you don't have social media rants or whatever winning Best Related Work nowadays. I have to say though that Sinners is one of the worst films I've ever seen, not that 2025 was a great year for SF/fantasy cinema unless there's something great I missed.

Just get rid of film/television categories, sff readers watch far too much mediocre/bad stuff.

Lol, mean but maybe true

https://britishfantasysociety.org/events-2/fantasycon/fantasycon-2026/
https://britishfantasysociety.org/fantasycon-2026-attendees/

I probably won't go to this but I'd like to do one of them eventually, I've read only the smallest pinch of these writers

i know orson scott card is a shithead but is ender's game worth reading? i snagged a copy from a little free library

Oh hell. I mean. I still think it’s worth it? Maybe not the whole series if you’re like okay I get it already jeez.

Only read the first one

it and at least the first sequel are pretty good iirc

(tbf it's been 40 years, so)

someone start a MORMONS IN SF thread

https://www.google.com/search?q=bene+gesserit+mormon&sca_esv=6fdc10c10e4e750b&sxsrf=APpeQnsPxQlBbFr_-DPM4YYsAtBNSifeJg%3A1788404450291&ei=4uKYaoSpEaq7p84P_t3m-AU&biw=1094&bih=510&ved=2ahUKEwiEouXftdGWAxWq3ckDHf6uGV8Q4dUDegQIBhAM&uact=5&oq=bene+gesserit+mormon&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiFGJlbmUgZ2Vzc2VyaXQgbW9ybW9uMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAFIrV5Q6gpYjlZwA3gBkAEAmAGkAaABtyCqAQQwLjMyuAEDyAEA-AEBmAISoAKaE8ICChAAGEcY1gQYsAPCAgoQABiABBiKBRhDwgIFEAAY7wXCAgYQABgWGB7CAgsQABiABBiKBRiGA8ICBRAAGIAEwgIFEC4YgATCAgsQABiABBiKBRiRAsICCxAuGPsGGPIGGI8HwgIIEAAYiQUYogTCAggQABiABBiiBJgDAIgGAZAGBpIHBDMuMTWgB4mYAbIHBDAuMTW4B8MSwgcHMi0xLjguOcgH3AKACAE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

sic to thread

Did Matthew Barney do any sf, I wonder

should I read Clive Barker's Weave-World?

I read it when I was 16 or so, which was a long time ago, but iirc it's long, detailed (complimentary!), dark fantasy. I don't normally go in for that kind of thing but it's probably pretty good.

I also read it as a teenager (around the time it originally came out in paperback). I remember it as being more tightly structured and less self-indulgent than the likes of Imajica. Probably the best of the Barker books I’ve read but again last read a long time ago

I'm reading Weaveworld right now.

I recommend it. It's pretty long, but a fast read. Dark, richly imagistic, with some cool characters. I love the Incantatrix Immacolata with her two ghost sisters.

i haven't read it but i'm about the embark on The Great and Secret Show.