February's Fantastic Folios and Fascinating Fables

[Diggler]

I finished Syzygy by Michael G. Coney. It was a relatively basic, though enjoyable novel. I started The Genocides by Thomas Disch the other day and have nearly finished it. It's been a great PA story about the earth's population being eradicated, by some unknown alien race, so the planet can be used as a plantation.

 

[J-WO]

In these books we are introduced to one of the most amazing fantasy creations I have read, Inquisitor San Dan Glokta, a cripple who struggles his way painfully through the story. Remarkable for his believability!

If I had to pick a fault with every other book ever, its that they don't have 'San the Man' in them.

 

[Diggler]

Finished The Genocides, and have to say it left me awed! The book unluckily ends on such a depressing note that i actually felt quite depressed. What I'm going to read next, I really don't know? I'll have to dig around in the shelves that are currently threatening to fall over and crush me.

 

[GOLLUM]

Well, I'm putting aside Elizabeth Smart's novel, not because it isn't good but because the myriad biblical and mythological references in the text require some time to digest......So I'm now picking up Susan Hill's rather slim 1980s novel The Woman In Black. Described as a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror, as chilling as Jackson's Hill House in addition to being a rattling good yarn, I for one am looking forward to reading this period piece set in the vein of the Victorian Gothic. Picture if you will, a windswept English moor upon which stands the proud but solitary Eel Marsh house and where roams the mysterious woman in black....

Hopefully my mischievous attempts to make this sound suitably eerie won't fall completely flat on its face when it comes to reading the actual book!....

 

[Hypnos164]

Finished I am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells a highly enjoyable take on teen alienation combined with elements of urban fantasy with some nice role reversal between "monster" and "monster hunter". Recommended.

 

[Fried Egg]

Making a start on "Altered Carbon" by Richard Morgan

 

[Talysia]

Next up is Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade.

 

[Thadlerian]

After having gotten through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, amazed at the lack of a moral twist by the end (some kind of pointing out that bellicose propaganda and rigging elections is not a nice thing to do), I am moving on to another installment in the "old men working in clandestine really know what's best for everybody" SF subgenre, namely Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel.

Would have been a reread, if not for the technical fact that it's an audiobook. Not quite sure if the narrator understands the book the way I did. Elijah Baley is made to sound like some kind of hard-boiled noir detective, while R. Daneel Oliwav sounds unmistakably smug.

 

[Diggler]

I've been ignoring my Philip K Dick collection, so decided to pick up The Minority Report and Other Stories that I got for Christmas. I've had to skip some of the stories seeing that I've read them elsewhere.

The one thing with this series is there seems to be two different versions of the same series, but using different short story titles?

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Now reading Triton by Samuel R. Delany.

 

[GOLLUM]

Continuing to read Woman In Black and finding it difficult to put down...

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

And the same here, with Triton by Samuel R. Delany.

 

[GOLLUM]

I've never read a single thing by Delaney. He's represented on my shelves with the Masterworks Babel 17 and Nova. I may have to read him for the first time this year.

Another SF writer I'm planning on this year is Cordwainer Smith both from the Masterwork series AND a rather nice HB edn. I own of Rediscovery Of Man: Complete Short Fiction of CS.

 

[chrispenycate]

Delaney shows a tendency to let style overwhelm concept. When the two align (as I remember them doing in 'Babel 17', where he is investigating the influence of language on thought, in language.) I consider the result riveting.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I liked Babel-17, but Dhalgren left me quite awestruck. Some of his early novels (The Jewels Of Aptor, The Einstein Intersection) are not quite as successful, but still weird and wonderful in their own way.

Cordwainer Smith is one of the greats. Happy reading!

 

[GOLLUM]

Cordwainer Smith is one of the greats. Happy reading!

Thanks.

Have you got that Rediscovery Of Man collection? It is published by NESFA and brings back into print all of his short SF including 2 previously unpublished works and an interesting Intro by Smith scholar John J. Pierce.

 

[Hypnos164]

Currently reading Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer so far pressing on despite it containing two extremely annoying "devices" that significantly hamper the suspension of disbelief (directly addressing the reader in one section and use of the 2nd person for a significant later section).

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Thanks.

Have you got that Rediscovery Of Man collection? It is published by NESFA and brings back into print all of his short SF including 2 previously unpublished works and an interesting Intro by Smith scholar John J. Pierce.

No, I have an earlier hardbound edition of the collection with the same title that was re-issued in the Gollancz Masterworks series.

 

[Rodders]

After two months, i've finally finished Stephen King's IT. Now on to Titanicus by Dan Abnett, which i don't think will take long to read at all.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Currently reading Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer so far pressing on despite it containing two extremely annoying "devices" that significantly hamper the suspension of disbelief (directly addressing the reader in one section and use of the 2nd person for a significant later section).

So what? Why should third or first person be any more intrinsically believable? Why does the question of suspending disbelief even arise when reading a novel that is avowedly a fantasy? And novelists have been writing narratives that suddenly turn around and address the reader for some centuries now.