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.

hmm, one of the best, most deep thinking and considerate authors of all time vs. "pollyanna in space".

just learned that neal asher dedicated a book, in 2025, to elon musk.

Five years ago, I watched the two Falcon Heavy side boosters come into land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. Honestly, it was like something in a game animation and seemingly too perfect to be believable. Others, I’ve seen landing on drone ships with names taken from Iain M. Banks’ Culture books. Just recently, I saw a huge booster for the Starship come down to be caught between two metal arms—y’know, they caught something the size of a skyscraper like a dropping stick—and that was an astounding feat of engineering. But these are not in isolation, since SpaceX, as of last month, has launched over a hundred rockets in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who brought this about, the guy who is aiming to make humanity multi-planetary by putting us on Mars, has a few other projects on the go, like building electric cars, burrowing tunnels under cities, putting up a satellite internet system and, perhaps the most important of them all, preventing the totalitarians of our world from killing free speech.

So thank you, Elon Musk, for bringing to reality, right before my eyes, those things I read and dreamed about as a teenager.

ffs

Of course by UKG I meant UKLG, not to be confused with her contemporary PKD. Was wondering how far along Julie Phillips was with the Le Guin bio and still have no idea, but there at least seems to be an interesting chapter about her in The Baby on the Fire Escape.

xp Just the other day I was wondering hmm should I read some neal asher? Happy to have had that decision made for me.

ledge I very much look forward to your Riddlemaster updates; please do keep us informed.

her contemporary PKD.

Ima Gardener (in orbit) at 2:23 8 Feb 26

ledge I very much look forward to your Riddlemaster updates; please do keep us informed.

Oh dear... well. I enjoyed the first two books! There was a lot of travelling up and down the realm. I mean a lot. And a lot of silly quarreling - "I'm going to do this thing!" "No you're not!" "Yes I am!" "Not!" "Am!" "Not!"; but it's a distinctive mythology with some interesting characters. However by the third book I started to find the endless travelling up and down the realm and the same old quarrels unbearable, and Morgon's story becomes so far beyond anything human or comprehensible. The final revelation/explanation of you know who was very well done, but the very end... I love you but I'm going to live in the sea. OK well I love you but I'm going to live in the wasteland. wtf!

Also I feel Raederle is a bit hard done by in the third book? At the start it sets her up as though she's going to have a pivotal role at the end, but she just doesn't. And she spends most of the book as a crow just following Morgon around.

I did like the bit in the second book where she asks the dead kings to protect Morgon and they pick the wrong guy. That was pretty funny!

i respect this take!

btw, this is Boris Vallejo's artwork for Playboy’s Pro Football Preview, August 1984.

https://i.postimg.cc/bvNHsPND/borisnfl.jpg

xp Yeah, that's why I've come to avoid series, although I'll prob read that one---McKillip's standalone, prev. mentioned Winter Rose is indeed dope---ditto Naomi Novik's---wiki sez:

Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards.

Novik is great. Uprooted/Spinning Silver are both top-tier. My SO loved Novik's Scholomance series, which is based on a Transylvanian folkloric vampire school saga that inspired Bram Stoker.

Morgon's story becomes so far beyond anything human or comprehensible.

I'm just reading an sf story (fine structure by qntm, available here: https://qntm.org/structure) which features things way beyond anything human or comprehensible but because they're wrapped in technobabble I find them more enjoyable so, though I stand by my quote above as an accurate description, I will retract it as a criticism!

there are apparently thousands of books/series involving 'secret british police/government/societies designated to deal with supernatural phenomena'

e.g. 'rivers of london'/'the checquy files'/'fractured europe'/'*-handed booksellers of [british city]/certain nick harkaway works/etc. and no doubt more i've forgotten or were never aware of

but i have to admit that i've quite enjoyed all of those i've encountered

see also 'the atlas *' by olivie blake

so many libraries, so few original plots to build around them

https://reactormag.com/jo-waltons-reading-list-january-2026/
Hearthfire Saga Book 1 — Ada Palmer (2027)

Re-read. I read the first draft and now I read this revision. This is a book about Norse gods and the Norse cosmos, and so it’s about survival and the marginal way in which it’s possible to make space to survive. It’s the story of a man and a god travelling through memory to learn why they’re doing it, to learn about themselves and each other. As you’d expect, it’s brilliant, very intensely absorbing, very long, and very thought-provoking. It’s also meticulously researched and deeply grounded in all of the latest research about Norse culture and cosmology. And it’s great, and as I was heading towards the end I was just reading faster and faster in that can’t put it down way, even though I’d read it before and I knew what was going to happen. I will remind you when this comes out, and when it has an official title.

https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/hearthfire/

Fire in the Dark is Ada Palmer’s new Viking Mythology–focused novel series, with two books planned and an estimated publication date for early 2027, from Tor.

One of the goals of the series is to use a lot of the latest new scholarship on Viking myths and culture. A lot of fiction based on mythology draws, very naturally, on the versions the author grew up with, which usually means versions that are at least 30 years out of date, and since children’s books tend to lag behind adult books in terms of using updated material, they often repeat versions that are as much as 70 years out of date in terms of modern scholarship. As a scholar at a major research library, Palmer puts her access to the latest interpretations and discoveries at the service of readers and the fantasy fiction community by including the latest awesome research in her version of the Viking cosmos.

The series also works to focus on the anti-nationalist, anti-Nazi, anti-white-supremacist sides of the latest research, since Viking culture has been heavily coopted in our present moment by the alt right. It is a great moment to zoom in on the aspects of real Viking culture that blow white supremacist readings out of the water, aspects like its focus on disability; on gender fluidity; on weakness, compromise, and cooperation; and on racial mixing and interdependence. All of these are themes which are huge in the original sources and help prove how ahistorical and distorted the coopted readings are.

In Fire in the Dark, Palmer will tell a great story while also providing some refreshing healing to a corpus of stories which has taken a battering.

been reading bethany jacobs' kindom trilogy

solid and fast-paced space opera, but there's one enormous allegory that is completely undisguised and seems particularly awkward given recent events

hella political intrigue, with characters going *way* over the top to achieve their (often murderous) aims. but i guess that's why it's called space opera and not space theorems

might take a look but it sounds pretty heavy and dark. why will no-one take up iain m banks' mantle of fun space opera writer? okaaaay banks' themes and plots don't scream 'fun' to the casual observer, idk something about his approach even while dealing with genocidal regimes and war criminals. and the 'character bent on extreme revenge' parts were always the worst.

this was cheap today on kobo

claire north - slow gods

"A space opera of breathtaking imagination from the most original voice in speculative fiction"

i know her name from those feminist retellings of greek myths which are currently legion, so it was a surprise to see this.

she lost me at "My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze" though. this will stick in my craw every time i have to read it.

"And I vowed to become the scourge of the world that wronged me."

i guess that's probably out for ledge as well then

oh well, bought it anyway!

maybe she'll be a fun scourge

For now I'm reading The Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Unremarkable so far.

Claire North is also Catherine Webb, and, I think, also Kate Griffin?? Very confusing. I think the Webb stuff is more middlegrade, and the Kate Griffin works are more urban fantasy, namely the Midnight Mayor series which I've liked a lot and re-read the whole thing from time to time when I want to go back to a nice world with people I like.

I'm doing a speedrun through the Ann Leckie ancillary trilogy again right now and I find that the storylines hadn't really stuck with me. I don't know what it was that made them not as memorable. Maybe I never read the third one but I'm in it now. They're pretty good, I guess.

No one really has the power of Ian Banks imo. Some of those revenge stories were gut punches. Not "The Sparrow"-level of life altering realization but definitely in the ballpark.

I started reading the very long and torturous bug war series by Adrian Tchaikovsky and iirc they were individually compelling in the characters and storylines but I can't do these 10+ book series anymore. Wrap it up. (twirls finger) I would be willing to try both more sf and fantasy by him though.

> For now I'm reading The Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

that was another recently cheap thing which i failed to buy. the name 'the shroud' and the general synopsis made me think it was just a Reynold's copy (the shroud being the place that induces madness in Revelation Space - https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Shroud. that said, there was something a lot like this in Hinterlands (1981) in Burning Chrome)

No one really has the power of Ian Banks imo. Some of those revenge stories were gut punches. Not "The Sparrow"-level of life altering realization but definitely in the ballpark.

Omg The Sparrow! Sorry but that reveal for me was kinda wtf but mostly lol, up there with Hyperion for weird kink catholic priest torture.

The Sparrow, written by---?

(seeing several novels with that title)

I very much presume in orbit was referring to the one by Mary Doria Russell.

Was hoping it was hers (now I see it won Tiptree and Clark Awards), having greatly enjoyed her historical westerns, Doc and Epitaph. Is Children of God a strong sequel?

Clarke

lol ledge! Tbf I read it in my early 20s and haven't revisited it since then but I've had many conversations with people in sf/f forums etc where the running joke is dividing your life into pre-Sparrow and post-Sparrow eras.

Have been thinking of reading that and may even own a copy

Is Children of God a strong sequel?

no idea sorry, I had no more appetite for jesuits in space.

this blood moon stuff is awfully drool rockworm

Feeling like I need to get the newly available audiobook of Silverberg's The World Inside.

McKillip's late The Bards of Bone Plain (2010) appeared in the library shop today---and I've got it now, don't I.

Tchaikovsky's The Shroud was pretty good, a 'survive and escape this inhospitable planet' tale with inscrutable (not to Lem standards though) aliens.

I'm really enjoying Slow Gods, it's a lot like Banks if he was a bit more concerned with gender and pronouns. The Shine are basically the anti culture (and obviously a stand-in for our current political situation).

i seriously understand the desire to make pronouns beyond he/his/her/hers commonplace -- it has to start somewhere.

but it's sooo awkward. there's still a difference between referring to a character as te/ter vs. qe/qim. for now anyway

― mookieproof, Tuesday, January 27, 2026 5:50 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, it trips me up too.

Minor quibble which everyone can ignore, apparently I'm fine with monsters in hyperspace but not with using tangled particles for communication. I guess it's the differnence between something obviously made up, and using an actual phenomenon or technology which absolutely does not work in that way.

loved the spooky alien skulls being used for communication across space in the Revenger series

Slow Gods is on my hold list so if you're borrowing it from the BPL kindly hurry up. ;) Also waiting for LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTER by Charlie Jane Anders and THE EVERLASTING by Alix Harrow. Tick tick tick

I listened to CS Friedman on a podcast recently and she was saying you need to be a pretty good writer to use they/them properly because there's so many pitfalls of potential confusion

i've been dipping into some modern classic sci-fi lately, it's never been my genre but i'm burned out on mystery/thrillers and westerns for my genre reading these days
read the book of the new sun by gene wolfe and mostly enjoyed it but could not finish urth of the new sun, read a couple of other wolfes as well
really liked the mountain in the sea by ray nayler which is more of a grounded/near future scifi about octopi and communication
currently reading hyperion by dan simmons, pretty rad so far
i've got another ray nayler and tchaikovsky's the doors of eden (library didn't have children of time in) on my bedside table
i'm curious about the sparrow too, the combo of sci fi and religion made me think of the book of strange new things by michael faber, a favorite of mine

I finished The Riddlemaster Trilogy a few days ago. I figured out the ending rather early on in the first book and still loved it. Had I read it at age ~12 I would have read it multiple times and it would be in my childhood fantasy pantheon like Middle-Earth, Prydain, Earthsea, Narnia, etc.

I found it most similar to Earthsea, at least the first book, including that the primary conflict of the series was the protagonist's internal struggle. I loved the worldbuilding and all the coziness rubbing up against dread. There were almost no battles until the very end (maybe three total fights in the entire series). The various kingdoms of the land were very distinctive with weird unexplained twists. The book would have been much poorer had things been more spelled out. The best part of the entire series may have been Raederle summoning the dead of An even if it bears some superficial similarities to Aragorn and the Paths of the Dead.

xp you might wait a bit to read the sparrow after reading hyperion. unless you really hate catholics

the everlasting is v. good

read outlaw planet by m.r. carey, which i liked rather less than his pandemonium duology

and westerns

Sorry this is offtopic for the thread, but...recommendations?

ha sure, i was mostly reading relatively modern/revisionist westerns though, nothing that obscure:

warlock - oakley hall
the big sky - a.b. guthrie
the shootist - glendon swarthout
the heart in winter - kevin barry
elmore leonard's westerns (i read these in an everyman's library volume)
deadwood - pete dexter (shares real-world characters with the tv show but is otherwise completely different)
in the rogue blood - james carlos blake (very violent, recommended if you're into cormac mccarthy but maybe not otherwise)
and of course lonesome dove and its sequels/prequels

thx!