(1) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel will have Karen Lord & A.C. Wise on the line August 18.
The YouTube livestream starts August 18 at 7 pm. EDT. Link to come – will be posted here.
- KAREN LORD
Barbadian writer Karen Lord is the award-winning author of Redemption in Indigo, The Best of All Possible Worlds, The Galaxy Game, and Unraveling, and the editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.
A.C. WISE
A.C. Wise is a multiple-award finalist for her science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Her debut novel, Wendy, Darling, was published by Titan Books in June 2021. Born and raised in Montreal, she currently lives in the Philadelphia area with her spouse, two adorable corgis, and a small cat who is clearly in charge of everyone.
(2) IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU TIPTOE. James Davis Nicoll identifies “Five Strategies for Sneaking Stealthy Space Hijinks Into SF” at Tor.com.
No doubt you are all so familiar with the reasons why stealth in space is very difficult to carry off that I need not explain… Here are five methods authors have used.
1: Ignore the science
This is perhaps the most popular solution, occasionally venturing into vigorous denial. After all, in a genre where such fundamentals such as relativity can be handwaved away for narrative convenience, why not simply handwave stealth in space and go full speed ahead?
An example that comes to mind is Chris Roberson’s 2008 novel The Dragon’s Nine Sons which sets a China that never suffered the Century of Humiliation against a malevolent Mexic Empire. The rivalry extends into the Solar System, which provides the pretext for a reprise of The Dirty Dozen…IN SPACE! Also, IN AN ALTERNATE HISTORY! Stealth being a key part of sneaking up on an enemy base, Roberson deals with the issue by ignoring it. Indeed, detecting other space craft, even ones at very short range, appears so difficult that it may be best to assume space is entirely filled with a very dense fog….
(3) DRINKING WITH AUTHORS. Joshua Palmatier’s interview series continues: “Drinking With Authors: Marshall Ryan Maresca” – an unlocked Patreon post and YouTube video.
It’s another “Drinking With Authors” interview! This time with Marshall Ryan Maresca. He’s best known for his twelve book set of interconnected trilogies called the “Maradaine Saga,” but he’s here today to talk about a standalone novel called THE VELOCITY OF REVOLUTION. Join us as we discuss what we’re drinking, his latest novel (go buy it right now!), and worldbuilding! And don’t miss his worldbuilding podcast. Enjoy!
(4) VOICE OF EXPERIENCE. The Odyssey Writing Workshop blog interviews “Graduate Arley Sorg”.
Arley Sorg is co-editor-in-chief at Fantasy Magazine, senior editor at Locus Magazine, associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare Magazines, and a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction….
As Co-Editor-in-Chief of Fantasy Magazine and Senior Editor of Locus Magazine, you have the opportunity to read a lot of fiction. Where do you see short fiction going in the next ten years?
I see short fiction as the place where real experimentation happens. Not just in terms of form (which can sometimes be “gimmick” or “trend”) but also in terms of meaning, subject, content. Right now we are seeing more inclusivity. I hope that in ten years a lot of the narratives that are essentially arguments for the basic human rights of different kinds of people, or the beginnings of inclusivity of perspectives, shift baseline assumptions. This will allow a progression of stories from there.
The concerns of some stories are outside the lived experiences of some editors. They may not understand how good a story is because they don’t understand what the story is actually saying. Hopefully in ten years the things that many editors don’t get and need explained will be more broadly absorbed—and, the demographics of editors and publishers will be more diverse—again, allowing the conversations to progress.
I think there will be more experimentation in form, as well—including things I can’t predict. We see stories based on video games, messaging, Twitter. There’s interactive fiction, platforms that attempt different ways to make this work, including phone apps. Accessibility will be part of the key to proliferation, and technological shifts can open the way for new ideas. In the past, there were stories experimenting with hyperlinks. Maybe in the future there will be hybrids of text and audio, or other kinds of sensory input.
At the same time, the core elements that hit people in the feels seem to be somewhat timeless… so I think more “traditional” story structures will probably still be around….
(5) BRAM STOKER WINNER RETURNS. Lipstick Asylum is the next novel by Nzondi (pronounced En-Zon-Dee), an American urban fantasy and horror writer whose Oware Mosaic won a 2020 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Young Adult fiction.
The Scream Teens are hired to raise the dead as the necro-tainment for a zombie cruise, and the eighteen-year-old animator, Cozy Coleman, is bitten by a shapeshifting she-wolf. To Cozy’s surprise, she survives and with the aid of her friends, helps the government stop a human-extinction virus from spreading. Unfortunately, Cozy uncovers a secret so haunting, that her death is only the beginning of her problems.
Omnium Gatherum will release the book September 10.
Nzondi 
(6) STICKING WITH IT. First Fandom Experience pieces together “Early Chicago Fandom, In Pictures” with a bit of detective work.
…The fanzine survived for nine issues, the last appearing in late Spring 1937. While some individual club members remained active, others pursued diverse interests. The Binder brothers relocated to New York to promote their writing careers. Fortunately for history, the final Fourteen Leaflet gives us a rare pictorial glimpse of early fandom.
Prior to the wider availability of lithography, photographs in fanzines required the inclusion of actual photo prints. This was beyond the capability and budget of most amateur publishers. In the rare instances where this was undertaken, it was common for the prints to be glued to a page. If the page has managed to survive, very often the glue has not. This decreases the likelihood that the photo continues to travel with the page.
In their fanzine’s 1937 swansong, Dellenback and his cohort undertook to publish nineteen separate photographs, all tiny prints attached to a single page….
(7) SPOTS DANCING BEFORE YOUR EYES. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Karen Heller looks at Boston Dynamics’s doglike robot Spot and asks several experts (including Ed Finn of Arizona State’s Center for Science and the Imagination) if being doglike would influence the public’s acceptance of robots. “Spot is the $74,500 robot dog of our dystopian dreams”.
…Why is a robotic dog frightening to so many? Possibly because the Venn diagram intersection of robots and dogs remains whippet slim. Humans are irrational about both. Also, entirely reductive. Robots = Terrifying. Dogs = Goodness incarnate.
Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, a monster of man’s own making, is more than 200 years old, a response to the threat of the industrial revolution that machines might well replace us, making human existence seem utterly disposable and meaningless. The term “robot” is a century old, dating to Czech writer Karel Capek’s science-fiction play “R.U.R.,” in English short for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.”
How does the drama end? Not well.
Robots in our collective imagination have tended towardmenace, rapacious will and allegiance to none. With few exceptions (C-3PO, R2-D2, the Jetsons’ aproned Rosey), robots in popular culturetend to be Terminators possessed with the soul of HAL 9000.
Whereas our affection for dogs is overly sentimental, resulting in a fathomless ocean of slobbery drool. We never fear dogs will replace us. We believe they’re here to comfort and adore us unconditionally, despite what some have done to mail carriers. Spot challenges us to hold two opposing thoughts in one $74,500 place….
Heller also steered me to this video from June, in which Boston Dynamics celebrated being taken over by Hyundai Motor.
(8) BRIANT OBIT. The International Costumers Guild reports Bruce Briant has died. He was involved in the UCSD science fiction club in the Eighties. An active convention masquerader, he was part of the group that took Best in (Novice) Class at the 1993 Worldcon for “Chess: The Elegant Game of War,” and Best Journeyman at the 1995 Westercon with “Superhero Wedding,” and part of the vast group that won a Retro Master Award at the 1996 Worldcon for “The Wedding on Klovia,” just to name three appearances. He was Dean of the Costume Colleges of 1996 and 1997.
(9) TODAY’S DAY.
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
- 1996 – On this date in 1996, John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. as it was stylised on screen premiered fifteen years after Escape from New York came out. It was co-written, co-scored, and directed by John Carpenter, also co-written by Debra Hill who produced it with Kurt Russell, with Russell again starring as Snake Plissken. It also co-stars Steve Buscemi, Stacy Keach, Bruce Campbell, and Pam Grier. Reception was definitely a lot more mixed than Escape from New York with most critics thinking the script was uneven, the film bombed at the box office, and audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a thirty nine percent rating as opposed to seventy seven percent for the first film. Carpenter has said that, “Escape from L.A. is better than the first movie. Ten times better.” He might be the only one that holds that view.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born August 9, 1914 — Tove Jansson. Swedish-speaking Finnish artist wrote the Moomin books for children, starting in 1945 with Småtrollen och den stora översvämninge (The Moomins and the Great Flood). Over the next decades, there would a total of nineteen books. Currently Moominvalley, the new animated series is playing, on Netflix. And Terry Pratchett in “My family and other Moomins: Rhianna Pratchett on her father’s love for Tove Jansson” credits her for him becoming a fiction writer. (Died 2001.)
- Born August 9, 1920 — Jack Speer. He is without doubt was one of the founders of fandom and perhaps the first true fan historian having Up to Now: A History of Science Fiction Fandom covering up to 1939 as well as the first Fancyclopedia in 1944. Filking and costume parties are also widely credited to him as well. Mike has a proper remembrance here. (Died 2008.)
- Born August 9, 1927 — Daniel Keyes. Flowers for Algernon was a novel that I read in my teens. Two of the teachers decided that SF was to be the assigned texts for that school year and that was one of them. I don’t now remember if I liked it or not (A Clockwork Orange was another text they assigned along with something by Heinlein that I don’t remember) nor have I ever seen Charly. I see he has three other genre novels, none that I’ve heard of. (Died 2014.)
- Born August 9, 1944 — Sam Elliott, 77. Weirdly, the source for this Birthday thought he’d only been in one genre role, General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross in the 2003 Hulk film, but he’s got many other roles as well. His first was Duke in Westworld followed by being Luke Peck in Time Bandits, Flik Whistler in The Thing and Lock in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He’s the Phantom Rider in Ghost Rider and Lee Scoresby in The Golden Compass. His latest genre is as the lead in The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot as Calvin Barr. Not even vaguely genre adjacent, but he’s in the exemplary Tombstone as Virgil Earp.
- Born August 9, 1947 — John Varley, 74. One of those authors that I’ve been meaning to read more of. I read both The Ophiuchi Hotline and Titan, the first novels respectively in his Eight Worlds and the Gaea Trilogy series, but didn’t go further. (See books, too many to read.) If you’ve read beyond the first novels, how are they as series? Worth pursuing now?
- Born August 9, 1954 — Victor Koman, 67. Three time winner of the Prometheus Award, his short stories have appeared in such publications as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy and Fred Olen Ray’s Weird Menace. Kings of The High Frontier which won of those Prometheus Awards also was on the long list for a Nebula.
- Born August 9, 1956 — Adam Nimoy, 65. Son of Leonard Nimoy and the actress Sandra Zober. His wife is Terry Farrell. He’s directed episodes of Babylon 5, Next Generation, The Outer Limits (he directed his father in the “I, Robot” episode), and Sliders. He’s responsible for For the Love of Spock, the documentary about his father.
- Born August 9, 1968 — Gillian Anderson, 53. The ever-skeptical (well, most of the time) Special Agent Dana Scully on X-Files. she played Media on the now cancelled American Gods. And she played Kate Flynn in Robot Overlords. Did you know she’s co-authored a X-File-ish trilogy, The EarthEnd Saga, with Jeff Rovin?
(12) KEEP SOMEONE’S MT. TSUNDOKU FROM ERUPTING. Newcon Press publisher Ian Whates is running a “Make Room! Make Room! Sale” through August 15. Here’s why —
I’m hoping Helen and I can beg a small favour.
You see, once upon a time I had a library. It was my pride and joy, with a lifetime’s collection of books proudly displayed…
Then I became a publisher.
My collection is now largely inaccessible, hidden behind walls of cartons containing NewCon Press books. With over 150 titles and counting to our credit, the library has burst its seams, and stock has started to amass ominously in my office. I fear that soon we may not be able to reach the computer to work, or indeed the door…
In a desperate attempt to avert this disaster and reclaim our home, we have launched our biggest ever sale; for the next week, prices have been slashed on over 80 titles, including signed limited edition hardbacks and paperbacks, with prices starting as low as £1.00. In some instances we have plenty of stock remaining, in others just a few copies; when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Any assistance you could provide in boosting word of the sale on social media, blogs, etc, would be greatly appreciated…
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement on behalf of a beleaguered independent publisher.
(13) MARK BOOK. If not for his career as a steamboat pilot, that might have become his name instead. The Mark Twain House will host “Clemens Conversations: Mark Twain in the Margins” on Wednesday August 11 at 3 PM EDT. Register here.
Mark Twain had a lifelong habit of writing in the margins of the books he read – and it did not always matter whether the book actually belonged to him. He commented acerbically on the authors and their work – “by an ass” was a favorite phrase – and made other, longer comments that tell us about the man and his thoughts. His marginalia are his “conversations” with the books he was reading, and there are many examples of this in the library collection of The Mark Twain House & Museum.
(14) WAILING. Verlyn Klinkenborg recites a “Requiem for a Heavyweight” at The New York Review of Books. Most of the article is behind a paywall – sorry.
…Were those two whales, mother and calf, aware of us? Yes, I’d say, though surely without the elation we humans felt. Just how they might have been aware of us—what awareness might look like in a whale—is an undecided question having to do with cetacean physiology and the complexities of the aquatic environment, including its acoustic properties. (The most discernible thing about us may have been the thrum of our motor.) How human awareness works is also an undecided question, and not only because the price we often pay for consciousness is inattention. Since that encounter in Mozambique, I’ve found myself wondering: What happens when creatures from separate species become aware of each other? Is there something there, something shared or shaped between them? Or do their sensoriums simply overlap—like car alarms setting each other off—in isolation, without reciprocity?…
(15) IF YOU COOK IT THEY WILL COME. “Guy Fieri, Chevy sell Apple Pie Hot Dog at MLB Field of Dreams” reports The Takeout. Will those hot dogs be made from pork?I’ve been to Dyersville, and driving to the ballpark I remember passing a pen filled with hogs that looked the size of Volkswagens, so it would only be appropriate if the meat was local.
This Thursday, a very special and long-awaited baseball game will take place: the MLB at Field of Dreams. The White Sox will play the Yankees at the filming location for the 1989 film Field Of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, a site that still draws a strong contingent of tourists each year. While it will count as a home game for Chicago, this will be the first Major League Baseball game ever to be played in the state of Iowa, and a momentous milestone like that calls for a momentous ballpark snack for spectators to gnaw on from their shiny new stadium seats built just for the occasion. Enter Guy Fieri, Chevrolet, and the (Fieri-tastic) Apple Pie Hot Dog.
According to a press release sent to The Takeout, the Apple Pie Hot Dog is a play on an old Chevrolet ad from 1975, which heralds a bunch of comically patriotic imagery: baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet “go together in the good old U.S.A.,” asserts the jingle.
They better have Doc Graham standing by, too, in case any of those hot dogs go down the wrong way.
(16) REAL FUNKO POP. How long has there been Funko Soda?
(17) TRAILER TIME. Netflix will air JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure STONE OCEAN in December.
2011, United States, Florida — When Jolyne Cujoh and her boyfriend get in an accident while out on a drive, she is framed for the crime and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Will she ever be free from this prison — this stone ocean? The final battle in the century-spanning, intertwining fate of the Joestar family and DIO begins!
[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Paul Di Filippo, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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First!
(6) STICKING WITH IT. This sounds absolutely fascinating. It’s the sort of history that I wish was done more often.
(11) Varley’s third Gaea Trilogy book, DEMON, is one of my all-time favorites. I’ve read it at least half a dozen times and I still enjoy it.
(11) Yeah, I liked Demon, too (but I think Wizard was the best of the three); the pre-Hotline short stories are great (most of Varley’s short work is great) – weirdly, there’s a major continuity shift in the later 8 World novels, but I still liked the first two of those.
“Do you want me Godstalk?
No Mr. Scroll, I expect you to File!”
So, a quasi-general question, per an off-scroll exchange with OGH: where it isn’t self-containedly obvious, do (enough) Filers want (the option of) explications of Scroll (and perhaps Item) titles? I confess I often don’t know the reference, riff, et cet; heck, sometimes I’m barely sure what went into my own suggestions (OK, that’s not quite true, I think.)
For example, this scroll title references a late 50’s/early 60’s (American) TV show and a 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (plus a magic/fantasy device (which, had it occurred to me earlier, could also have finessed a Gilbert & Sullivanism). Speaking of which, is it weird that the actor who played Bruce Wayne’s ward in the 60’s TV show had that as his last name — and did that influence his getting the part?
I confess I don’t get all the Pixel Scroll title references, so an explanatory note would be nice; Pixel Scroll titles can be inspired by/ripped-off from so many diverse sources.
Regarding Varley’s Eight Worlds books, I thought Steel Beach was just fantastic and The Golden Globe almost as good.
There a lot of title references I don’t get, but I consider that part of the fun. Optionality lets people decide for themselves while making more work for OGH.
You can make the scene on the mezzanine, but don’t scroll in the pixels.
Follow link for so-called “cultural” reference…
10) I happen to own an Escape From L.A. promotional baseball cap which I found on sale in a thrift store decades ago. I like to wear it when I go out and see an sf film in a theater every now and then…
(11) Flowers For Algernon has the distinction of being the Hugo-winning work most often adapted to dramatic presentation. There are at least five movie versions (including TV movies), at least three radio dramas, and a musical.
(11) Varley’s short stories are better than his novels. Much, much better. You don’t have to just take my word for it–he’s won three Hugos, two Nebulas, and five Locus awards for short fiction, and four (!) more Locuses for his collections; compared to one Locus for a novel (Titan). Start with any of his collections, they’re all good.
Clickity
I’ll take a Foray into the obscure June references…
Hi June, how’s Wall-E and the Pixel Scroll?
Some scroll titles make me laugh out loud some make me wish I thought them up others I never figure out. It*s all part of the fun
7) After watching the current War of the Worlds series (recommended), I cannot see those robots as anything other than murderdogs.
11) Sam Elliott was also in The Legacy, an underrated horror film.
“You can’t scroll here, this is the file room!”
I have so many things to say about Moomins, that it all gets log-jammed and nothing coherent appears,
I was going to cite it as a fan theory, but it seems to be accepted now that Thingumy and Bob are based on Tove Jansson’s early relationship with a married woman, with the ruby representing the secret love they shared:
https://moomin.fandom.com/wiki/Vivica_Bandler
I’m glad to find there’s evidence to support the reading – it’s one I’ve always liked.
(6) It’s a shame that the efforts of First Fandom Experience have not been recognized by the Hugo voters.
Meredith moment: Clifford Simak’s Way Station is available from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine. If you prefer to listen to it, it’s narrated by Eric Michael Summerer and it’s available from Audible and I assume other audiobook vendors.
click
So the CEO of the company I work for asked me for a list of “highbrow” SF to read…
https://www.patreon.com/posts/54741629 (open post)
Paul Weimer says So the CEO of the company I work for asked me for a list of “highbrow” SF to read…
I’d add Gaiman’s Neverwhere as I think it’s held up remarkably well. The illustrated by Chris Riddell version has the bonus story of “How The Marquis Got His Cost Back”.
11) @Cat – I’d say Flowers For Algernon is one of my very top SF novels, and one I sometimes recommend as an introduction to the genre.
@Paul – you’re very brave to recommend Dhalgren to your boss 😉 How about Solaris?
Two mentions of Rosey the Robot in one post, and two ways of spelling Rosie!
Aaron G. says Two mentions of Rosey the Robot in one post, and two ways of spelling Rosie!
Ahhh, but beginning with season two of The Jetsons, the spelling of Rosey’s name is rather inexplicably changed to Rosie. So there’s no single proper way to spell it. Funko Pop! is selling a version of her right now and she’s quite cute.
And yes, the Warner Bro. Store did a version of her as well that’s been dumped into eBay. She’s not that valuable, only dong seventy dollars these days.
11) Varley and the 8 Worlds. I love the short fiction – I’d love to have a collection of just those. John Arkensawyer – I’ve got the reverse of you on Steel Beach and The Golden Globe – I adore The Golden Globe. Irontown Blues was a disappointment to me.
His other stuff Red Thunder and Red Ligthning I enjoyed, Rolling Thunder I didn’t and skipped out on Dark Lightning.
Slow Apocalypse was OK, but nothing to write home abut.
I always enjoy the Gaea trilogy, especially Wizard and Demon.
#12: Someone I know in the UK wanted to order some of the books, but the shipping charges per book were outrageous, so they deleted the order.
Also, shipping charged outside the UK make overseas sales extraordinarily expensive.
BravoLimaPoppa: Varley and the 8 Worlds… Irontown Blues was a disappointment to me.
I read Titan, Wizard, Demon, Millennium, and The Ophiuchi Hotline decades ago and thought they were great back then, but I haven’t revisited them. I read Persistence of Vision, The Pusher, and Irontown Blues in the last couple of years; the former two have aged very, very badly, and the latter was just seriously WTF – as if it was written by an author who is still stuck writing the same thing they were writing in the 80s and hasn’t read any of the SF that’s been published in the last 3 decades.
Varley made his bones with the short, mostly Eight Worlds short pieces in the 1970 and 80s. The first two collections, The Peristence of Vision and The Barbie Murders, are full of strong stories with deliberately challenging notions of sexuality, identity, and general what-it-means-to-be-human stuff. He’s also a first-rate word wrangler. The John Varley Reader (2004) is a good one-volume sampler with lots of authorial/autobiographical comment.
It can be argued that his 21st-century work is not at arresting or innovative as his earlier stuff, but I’ve never read a less-than-competent book by him (still a very good word-wrangler), and back in the 1970s, I used some of his short stories as part of an English course intended to get students to read what was actually on the page, as distinct from what their conventional assumptions told them ought to be there. (Damon Knight’s “Masks” and Heinlein’s “‘All You Zombies–‘””were in that mix as well.)
Russell Letson — Heinlein’s “All You Zombies–“ may well be my favorite SF story of all, though Bloch’s “Hell Bound Train” is close to it. I think one of the SF radio shows of the Fifties produced but I can’t remember which one.
@Sophie Jane: Yes, I believe that’s documented as well as a couple of other personal references: Too-Ticky is Jansson’s later life partner Tuulikki Pietilä, and Snufkin is Atos Wirtanen, her former fiancé who remained a close friend.
The August 10th NY Times crossword has a very familiar answer for 34 Across!
(requires extra subscription, but I had to giggle at the inclusion!)
“So the CEO of the company I work for asked me for a list of “highbrow” SF to read…
https://www.patreon.com/posts/54741629 (open post)”
Good list.
The scrolls are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have pixels to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
The Lord of the Files
@Eli
Thanks! I knew about Too-Ticky but not Sunfkin – I guess it’s not surprising that someone with such a good eye for character would be drawing so much on life.
The Pixels that you find in the Scrolltitles of your File!
Agree with the people who found Irontown Blues to be disappointing – though I’m sure part of my disappointment was the long wait for a sequel to the terrific earlier two books.
Has anyone read Varley’s short piece “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)” or ” The M&M Seen as a Low-Yield Thermonuclear Device”?
@Paul,
If they aren’t averse to reading short fiction, what about Ted Chiang’s “Stories of your life and others”?
@soon Lee Not sure how the CEO feels about short fiction. That IS a strong idea.
I suspect I need to send the CEO “List Two: Listicle Harder”. I’ve gotten a sheaf of suggestions on twitter, on my patreon, and here. It’s all good stuff!
10) Having re-watched both Escape From New York and Escape From L.A. less than a month ago, I actually agree with Carpenter that the sequel was the superior film, largely because of the pacing.
NY’s pacing is frenetic except where it plods. Even the action is often filmed in a dull and/or uninteresting manner. The core story is entertaining, but it’s just not presented well – especially when compared to the sequel.
In its defense, the special effects have held up remarkably well, and its dystopian vision of a future America is presented much more effectively than one would expect given its budget.
LA’s pacing works better. There’s not any point where you pause for infodump, and the action feels more energetic.
That said, its effects are … not great. And its vision of a theocratic dystopian America isn’t as well-realized as the first one’s was.
@Paul Weimer. Surely something by Gene Wolfe should qualify, The Book of the New Sun would be the obvious choice.
My other suggestions (off the top of my head):
Neverness by David Zindell
Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds
Blindsight by Peter Watts
@ Paul.
I’m not sure what highbrow means here but my mind went to older books like Day of the Triffids and 80000 Leagues Under the Sea.
And something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – he won a Nobel after all.
@bookworm1398: My copy of the Verne had only 20,000 Leagues and now I feel ripped off.
@ Paul
The books I immediately associated with the term “highbrow” were either classic bodies of work by authors such as Wells or individual texts like 1984. I also thought pretty well anything by Olaf Stapledon would fit the bill.
Then, thinking more about it, I would add Dick, Ballard, LeGuin and Vonnegut as obvious choices. Less obviously, M. John Harrison, Christopher Priest, Naomi Mitchison and Doris Lessing.
11)
I prefer his Eight World’s work over the Gaia. But then I read those way back when and haven’t re-read them.
Steel Beach and The Golden Globe but I also was kind of Meh about his latest.
But his short stories!!
“Air Raid” and “The Barbie Murders” stuck with me. I’m not sure expanding “Air Raid’ into a novel really worked.
But the movie definately disappointed.
I’m currently working my way through Heinlein’s juvies–just finished “Between Planets” and alternating with Nora Ephron’s essays. Thank you ThriftBooks.
Stuart Hall: Playing along with “highbrow”, I think your “less obvious” names are really getting closer to the bullseye because I associate “highbrow” with those who would like to appeal to the mainstream literary readers.
And it’s not easy to create that kind of genre work without risking disappearing off genre radar altogether, so for that balancing act score another point for the writers you named.
‘Highbrow’ might include works like Snowcrash, Gun with Occasional Music, The City and The City, or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, all of which had significant crossover appeal, as I recall.
@JJ: Haven’t reread “The Pusher” lately, but wouldn’t be surprised at all if it had aged particularly poorly.
Andrew (not Werdna) says ‘Highbrow’ might include works like Snowcrash, Gun with Occasional Music, The City and The City, or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, all of which had significant crossover appeal, as I recall.
Yeah I’d consider Miéville’s The City & The City high brow. It’s certainly one of the most intellectually challenging mysteries that I’ve read (and frequently re-read). Huh, I think I’m do to re-listen to it.
It is indeed a hard sell.
Mary Doria Russell’s “The Sparrow”?
For ‘highbrow; I’d recommend including some Adam Roberts. They tend to the grim side of highbrow to be fair (‘Land of the Headless I’m looking at you), but there in plenty of fine work to choose from. I’s say ‘Jack Glass’, ‘The Thing Itself’ and ‘Gradisil’ are the most memorable. i do have a soft spot for ‘On’