#sf literature

[nabs-bookish-thoughts]

I'm reading Little Mushroom, which is a sci-fi danmei novel by Shisi and it didn't really register to me that this is the first book in this specific genre I'm reading. Now I'm spiralling down an intellectualising rabbit hole where I have to read up more on speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, Chinese sci-fi, worldbuilding etc. Right now I do have thoughts, but they're just raw Thoughts without any context or intellectual analysis. Some might argue you don't need those to have opinions on a book but that's just how I am.

[rapha-reads]

Am I supposed to take advantage of the night to keep working on my thesis, of which I've barely completed 1/9th (discounting research, abstract, introduction, structure and bibliography)? Yes. Am I instead reading my second novel of the day? Yes. Should I go to bed instead because it's 4am? Yes.

Earlier today I read This is How You Lose the Time War, that I had been meaning to check ever since it was published, and it was gorgeous. Really beautiful, the letters, the descriptions of the multiple universes, times and planets visited, the ways Red and Blue work, the emotions... Pure joy.

Right now I'm reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and it is fascinating. I love a good scifi book, especially a scifi book that really takes into consideration the vastness of space and how varied other species and planets could be. Also punching holes through subspace sounds like a pure adrenaline trip and I'm deeply interested and captivated.

Anyway. Thesis is not progressing, deadline is getting closer. I should stop reading and start writing at some point. Meh. Stress levels are still not optimal. Stars aren't aligned. Need more adrenaline.

[literary-illuminati]

How High We Go In The Dark seems, 90 pages in, to be best understood as a broadly pandemic-themed set of Twilight Zone episodes.

I just finished the chapter about forming a giant human pyramid in purgatory to throw a baby high enough that it floats back into the world, and started the one where growing human organs for transplant in pigs has resulted in one capable of speech.

Also one of the most emotionally heavy books I've read all year.

[zippocreed501]

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

'My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.'

Author Extraordinaire Clark Ashton Smith

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Preliminary Round

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane

Endorsement from submitter: "This is a collection of several dozen short stories, some of which are queer. Includes a F/F story by Ursula Le Guin!"

33 outstanding science fiction stories by women

Travel by train to the Moon, discover living spaceships born in gas giants and explore the constellations, alternate universes and post-apocalyptic worlds of this compelling collection of SF written by women.

Whether crossing the stars or constructing the future of our planet, women have always written powerful, important science fiction. This anthology showcases the most exceptional SF stories written by women in recent decades, from classic stars Ursula K. Le Guin and Angélica Gorodischer; science fiction greats Karen Joy Fowler and Nancy Kress; new award-winning talents Elizabeth Bear, Nnedi Okorafor and Aliette de Bodard; and many more.

Short story collection, anthology, science fiction, speculative fiction, experimental, adult

Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology, edited by Ryan Vale and Ocean Riley

Nothing about us without us!

A young adult anthology of stories about trans autistic characters by trans autistic authors. These last few years have been difficult for the transgender community. This has included frequent attacks on autistic trans people, claiming we can’t possibly understand who we are or what we want. This book focuses on autistic trans masc and non-binary people telling our own stories. It aims to explore autistic trans joy and challenges and to show all the autistic trans people out there that they are not alone.

A young shepherd gets a glimpse of what could have been, but all is not as it seems.

A babysitter is tasked to take care of an unusual child, and discovers who they are in the process.

In a dystopian future, a teenager discovers a supposedly extinct animal on a beach.

Featuring stories from 13 authors including a story from New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White.

Short story collection, anthology, science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, young adult

[flamepinion]

Y he kinda bad tho

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

7.2: Ariel & Christina Discuss: Why Must Utopia Be Cruel?

In this episode, Ariel and Christina try to get to the bottom of why our fictional visions of utopia are so negative. They often involve mindless acquiescence to an authoritarian nanny state, the oppression and labor of an underclass, or both. It’s as if we can’t imagine a situation in which we all voluntarily treat each other (reasonably) decently and life can be good for everyone. We discuss the literary origins of utopia, how it has evolved (or not) as a concept, and Ariel gives a few examples of sci-fi futures that are about as close to her style of solarpunk utopia as can be. Ultimately, the topic of utopia raises more questions than answers!

Links:

Original blog on the concept of a protopia: https://kk.org/thetechnium/protopia/

Audio dramatization of "Kitaskinaw 2350": https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1020-this-place/episode/15862270-kitaskinaw-2350

"This Place" publisher's page: https://www.portageandmainpress.com/Books/T/This-Place

Episode 6.10: the Dilemma of Utopian Joy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saBnIh3jZq4

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

First serialized in Pearson’s (UK) and Cosmopolitan (US) in 1897, H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds wasn’t the very first alien story ever told, but it is probably the most enduring and culturally significant of those early tales. Wells wasn’t just drawing on the nascent genre of science fiction but also the (earthly) invasion literature that was first popularized by George Tomkyns Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking ( Blackwood's Magazine, 1871). Wells later wrote that War of the Worlds was inspired by the genocidal treatment of Aboriginal Tasmanians by British colonizers.

The Limited Edition’s Club edition of H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds was published in 1964. It is illustrated with ten color lithographs, drawn directly on the plates by Joeseph Mugnaini, as well as a number of smaller line drawings by the artist. We posted a few years ago about the Limited Editions Club edition of The Time Machine, also illustrated by Mugnaini. These two books were originally issued together in an ochre-yellow slipcase that matches the end papers; the linen-weave book-cloth bindings are dyed in an opposite color scheme (black with a red spine label for The Time Machine and red with a black spine label for War of the Worlds). The boxed set was designed by Peter Oldenburg and printed on white wove paper from Curtis Paper Company by Abraham Colish at his press in Mt. Vernon, NY. The lithographs were pulled by master printer George C. Miller. 

I love how Mugnaini’s colorful illustrations manifest a sense of unease: the yellow and red skies backing the alien invaders, the extreme heat of blue streaked flames, the kaleidoscopic ruins of a building. Mugnaini was best known for his many collaborations with another Science Fiction heavyweight: Ray Bradbury, including cover art for the first paperback and hardback editions of Fahrenheit 451. A previous Staff Pick featured Mugnaini’s illustrations for the Limited Editions Club of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

You can find more posts on the work of H. G. Wells here.

Check out more from illustrator Joe Mugnaini here.

And here you can find more from Limited Editions Club.

For more Staff Picks here. 

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[spaceintruderdetector]

Blade Runner : Philip K. Dick : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[waywordsstudio]

𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄: "𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗼𝘁" 𝗯𝘆 𝗥𝗮𝘆 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗯𝘂𝗿𝘆 -

Bradbury's novella is philosophy and pulp, silly and lyrical, therefore slipping the thoughtful into the story's fun.

[rapha-reads]

PARLONS SPACE-OPERA : The Wayfarers Saga, Becky Chambers - HUGO AWARDS 2019 (sans spoilers)

Salut à toi qui a sans doute aussi la tête dans les ��toiles.

Petit retour sur la saga Wayfarers de Becky Chambers garanti sans spoilers !

- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. - A Closed and Common Orbit. - Record of a Spaceborn Few. - The Galaxy, and the Ground Within.

Bon voyage !

[zippocreed501]

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

'Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.'

'When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you’ve got a good writer.'

'Writing is a communication.'

'I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.'

'You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.'

Author Extraordinaire Theodore Sturgeon

[mokeymokey]

Mass Effect really has like a unique winning combination imo the hard and soft sci fi together it's like a sci fi creme brulee or somethng. When the sci fi has sexable aliens AND lagrange points. The dialectics of it all

[piedaterreincensorshipville]

Leigh Brackett's pulp SF stories are full of stuff like "hero & heroine flirt by giving each other facial scars" and planets whose dress code is "tits out always"

She also wrote the first draft of Empire Strikes Back.

imagine if Star Wars was allowed to be that horny. the hotness would make people's heads explode.

[theprinceandthewitch]

Nobody understands Professor Venomous like I do...

[mystacoceti]

if anything is my "5:10 am..... back to denouncing anglicans" it's people talking about high-low cultural divides as though it's remained stable across time and space