These guys is out of Wikipegia, which is like Canadia, but they eschew their Bachman Turner Overdrive heritage (*smirk*) to deliver a tune-fest of psychy power-type pop. Like Sloan on acid, but better. This is their first album - apparently there are two later releases, of which I am desirous. Leave us have a Telepathic Butterflies record party, right here on th' IoF©!
(Harp glissando, wavy picture effect)
Your pals: Whut is dis shit?
You: Which it's a book, ya dumbasses.
Your pals: Sez you.
You: (pushing out chest): Yeah?
Your pals: (bellying up): Yeah.
You: Well, fuck you.
Your pals: No, fuck you.
(Feeble, misplaced blows are exchanged. Your pals fall into the coffee table, destroying it and your wife's three thousand-piece jigsaw of A Gracelands Christmas which you were tasked to frame.)
Today's Mass Debate is anent the subject of Science-type Fiction, to whit; what was the first SF book you read that you thought was the best thing you ever read? Me, Ray Bradbury, and soon after, Vonnegut.
ReplyDelete(And if you want the record, ax!)
I think the first I read was Dune, and it didn’t turn me into a science-type fiction fan. Nor did Vonnegut, he just turned me into a Vonnegut fan. I just last week re-read Sirens of Titan, and it remains the dream of my imaginary self to one day read every story Kilgore Trout never wrote.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm no fan of psychy power-type pop tune fests, but any friend of Kurt's ...
I went through a major SF phase starting at about eleven, I guess, buying cheap paperbacks from the market. If I liked the cover, I bought it. And I liked all the covers. Dune was my first epic length book, but Vol. Deux left me baffled and bored (and still does).
DeleteYes those very psychedelic other-world covers tempted me in my teens. And yes also Dune interested me enough to attempt and rapidly abandon the part deux. New movie out soon gettin good reviews.
DeleteIf it's anything like the director's other movies it's going to be a stretch to sit through. Especially as it "ends" half way through the story.
Deleteif you can find it there was a satire of Vonnegut published in 1975 by Phillip Jose Farmer called ''Venus on the half shell'' credited to Kilgore Trout
DeleteJules Verne's "Robur the Conqueror"
ReplyDeleteNobody's stepping up for this one, Babs ...
DeleteWell, I did answer the question.
DeleteIn '61 I saw the Vincent Price movie: "Master of the World" with my parents (at a drive-in), which at the time I thought was good. My mother gave me her book that was a compilation of Jules Verne novels, and "Robur the Conqueror" was the first story, which was written in French. The movie holds up well, in a campy sort of way.
Nobody's stepping up for the Ambrosia post, either, but Prog-Rock nerds really should. I can post a link for the entire album, or use it for future screed. The choice is yours??
Phew! At least we don't have to worry any more if you got it when it was first published. By all means post the Ambrosia album. Links are always appreciated by the grifting freeloaders who constitute the majority of th' 4/5g©.
DeleteI think my first SF reading was anthologies from the library. These gave me names of authors to follow up. I was never a "space opera" fan - I preferred humour (like Sheckley) or something a bit strange (like Bradbury). Nowadays I don't read much of it at all.
ReplyDeleteFavourite ever SF? Dan Simmons' Olympos and Illium.
How could I forget the Kemlo books? I think these were probably my first SF books.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemlo
Wow, I never encountered Kemlo before. And now I need to check out Ilium and Olympos! I like humor in sci-fi too: Sheckley, John Sladek, and (especially) R.A. Lafferty.
DeleteLafferty put the laff into S.F.
DeleteBefore they became a schmaltz act, The band Ambrosia put music to Fifty-third Calypso from "Cat's Cradle" on their first self-titled (semi-prog) album.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAxPLoFedQo&ab_channel=AntonymoustB
A shout out for Michael Moorcock's A Cure For Cancer four-novel set. It's as much about London in the 'sixties as anything else, a timeless time capsule. My favorite ever SF novels are The Drowned World and The Crystal World, superlative, visionary works from J.G. Ballard, one of the greatest ever novelists. If you haven't read them, really do!
ReplyDeleteMoorcock's a very interesting guy who also links to a lot of great music - BOC, in particular. Also collaborated briefly with Martin Stone.
DeleteOh, and a quick shout out for Mick Farren!
Spot on with Ballard. A genius. And the UK literary establishment knew that too in the sixties, but they were, like, “why won’t you write proper fiction, James, rather that sci-fi nonsense?” And he was all like, no, you stuck up onanists, “I’m gonna write dystopian fiction ‘til my hands bleed”. Until “Empire of the Sun”, ahem. And my favourite science fiction short story is “The Star” by Arthur Clarke,. Recommended reading for anyone of the religious persuasion.
DeleteI'd like to hear this album please.
ReplyDeleteI think my first sf novel was The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, when I was a young teen, I don't remember anything about it.
Album up later. It's really good.
DeleteAs others have said it was the covers that made me read them, and my parents really wanted me to read more because I was a 'very slow learner' at school. In 1981 the BBC series Day of the Triffids was shown on TV, that kept my interest in SF going.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pulpartists.com/Wesso.html
ReplyDelete= my uncle/aunt minnie's husband
premier illustrator of sci fi mags in that golden era nearly a century ago!
blind in one eye no less, shades of b wilson?
"The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster. Written in 1909. Remarkable.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
Cheers, Peanuts Molloy.
A fabulous tale, and prescient (like the best sci fi).
Deletemy father introduced me to hard sci-fi (Asimov, et al) when I was a youngel and I've been hooked ever since...not sure Vonnegut is sci-fi, though I have loved most all of his (another thanks to my father). My father gave me _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ when I was about 10 (1968 or so?) and it fucked me up for months, mostly in a good way. Or a good-bad ("I hear he's bad." "Well, he's good-bad, but he's not evil"). First year of high school was asked to write about a serious piece of literature and went with Clarke's _Rendezvous with Rama_...oops Does Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_ count? Seems in keeping with Vonnegut. Apologies for the geeky academic moment.
ReplyDeleteVonnegut was definitely a SF writer. So was Ballard. They were just extremely good writers, and as soon as that happens academic snobs like to elevate them from a genre because, well, genres don't allow literature. They do, of course. Genre enables genius, not holds it back.
Deleteproperly put in my place and I think Vonnegut was a sci-fi writer...but I think that has been used to marginalize him or at least try to. I am all for eliding genres and just reading good writing, regardless.
DeleteNo putting in place intended, Eric!
DeleteAnd there I was, thinking Kurt was a humorist, but what do I know?
Delete"God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine" is my favorite.
My uncle gave me "Breakfast Of Champions" when I was about 12, and probably should have waited until I was a little older. That one messed with my head for awhile. After my uncle died, my dad and I cleaned out his apartment, and I found out that there was one sci-fi novel that my uncle loved to read over and over. It was "Desolation Road" by Ian McDonald. That's a really good book. It's not "hard" sci-fi; there's an element of magical realism in it.
DeleteBabs, are you axing does humor belong in S.F.?
DeleteOr antithetically.......
DeleteWhat have you got against theticals?
DeleteMy gastrocnemius and soleus calf muscles.
Deletelove ''Breakfast'' think it is Vonnegut's best but for me the very best sci-fi was ''Roadside Picnic'' by Arkady And Boris Strugatsy oddly the translation (from Russian) I like best is the first which most folk consider not as good the later version, the ''bad'' trans makes it a little mysterioso
ReplyDelete"Roadside Picnic" is a great tale. Now you've got me wondering which translation I read...
Deletethe main difference I notice is the ''bad'' trans has things show up and not get explained till pages later <I dug that approach and thought it was intentional, like the main guys daughter slowly turning into a monkey or his dead father showing up and sitting at the table.
Delete"like the main guys daughter slowly turning into a monkey or his dead father showing up and sitting at the table" - isn't that a page from everyone's diary?
DeleteMulti-media loaddown!
ReplyDeleteYOU GET: the swell album (better than you think it's going to be), Breakfast Of Champions, and the most hallucinogenic, vivid, leap-off-the-page-direct-into-your-brain novel ever written. Files are epub and mobi - download Calibre if you want to change them.
A Stealth Link© has been embedded into this comment for your security, comfort, and peace of mind.
Thanks for album!
DeleteYou're welcome! Give the Ballard a spin, also too!
DeleteSweeet!! What a combo. I've read and love most of Vonnegut's work and I love the few Ballard's I've read -- but I haven't read this Ballard yet. Problem is, I only read audio books these day -- can you please narrate this for my "reading" enjoyment?!? Pretty please?!?!
DeleteNot the first SF story I read by a long shot, but the best (of any genre) is "A Boy and His Dog." I'll fight anyone who says it isn't!!
First SF was in the Wizard comic, "Mr Egz from Mars". Mr Egz comes to the Melbourne Olympics and wins everything. Martian National Anthem blares out, hilarity ensues.
ReplyDeleteThen the Faber anthology, starring "The Cold Equations" where the stowaway gets the airlock treatment for physics reasons. I very recently read a similarly-premised story where the weight in the ship was reduced by everyone chopping a leg off.
Then Bob's Bookstall in Romford Market, everything I could find. And the public library, anything in the yellow Gollancz livery. (Which is how I, and maybe Van Morrison, got to read Christmas Humphreys on Zen)
Yessss! I used to scan the library shelves for those yellow jackets, too. Guarantee of quality. My introduction to H.P. Lovecraft and many others. I was stupidly proud when I got published by Gollancz, decades later, although the yellow jackets had long gone.
DeleteI once won an English prize at school and we could choose a book. I chose Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" which I received in the classic yellow jacket.
DeleteEven though I already had it, when Gollancz issued a yellow jacket edition of Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora" (my favourite fantasy novel) I went ahead and bought it just for the jacket.
Best novel, probably still "Stand on Zanzibar". Or Lord of Light.
ReplyDelete"The Golden Age of SF is 12" But I was 22 in 1968.
Not only did "Kilgore Trout" write "Venus on the Half-Shell", in that novelette he introduced "Ralph von Wau Wau" a talking dog detective who featured in a further story "A Scarletin Study". All accessible via the Internet Archive F & SF mags - all there from 1949 to 2000. PJ Farmer also contributed "The Jungle-Rot Kid on the Nod" to Dangerous Visions, supposing that the Tarzan stories were written not by E.R Burroughs, but William.
ReplyDeleteIf you like writers posing as other writers (Nabokov's Pale Fire is another), you might enjoy a book called Lint by Steve Aylett. I need to check out "The Jungle-Rot Kid on the Nod" -- that's a great premise!
DeleteOr "The Iron Dream" by Adolf Hitler (Norman Spinrad I think)
DeleteOh, good one! Spinrad it is. Banned in Germany.
DeleteWhen my son was in college, his class was assigned to watch the film "Crash". All the other students rented (or pirated) the earnest and well-intended 2004 drama. My son somehow found the Cronenberg film of the J.G. Ballard novel instead.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could have seen his face during the next class session, when everyone else was discussing themes of "race, loss and redemption" instead of amputee fetishists and sex scenes in staged accidents.
Haw! *snork*!
DeleteI went to a middle England middle income Grammar School in Wallingford because as a working class bright 'un I passed the access to middle class 11-plus which got you out of endless woodworking classes at the local comp.
ReplyDeleteSomehow Brian W. Aldiss was invited to talk to the 'boys' (pre co-ed) about being an author. I remember a very conservative obviously ex army man in tweed and tie ( he had served in Burma)who was delightful, erudite and quite the opposite of how I'd imagined a sci-fi author should be. He continued to live in Oxford all his life and I keep meaning to read his Greybeard which set in a post-apocalyptic Thanes Valley connecting to Jeffries 'After London' which set the bar high on dystopia way before Ballard and crew. I read some Aldiss, Asimov and Philip K. Dick after this and started writing a awful Atlantis inspired novel the draft of which disappeared rightly as it seemed inspired by Planet of The Apes. Thanks for any power pop Numero III I partial to said genre. I remember a story maybe by Aldiss where returning voyagers return to Earth and are surprised there humans as the world had been ruled by Budgies but I could just be lacking sleep on that one and hallucinating.
I once worked in Wallingford, across the square from Astley's Records, a well-known chart returns store (they're supposed to be a trade secret) where we grabbed armfuls of 12" singles gifted to the store by shifty sales reps.
DeleteMy Skool Prize for Best Riting was Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast tri-ology.
Don’t know if it’s there today but there was still a record shop in Wallingford a year or 3 ago, selling vinyl and portable record players. I moored in Wallingford several times on my travels along the mighty Thames and last time I was browsing them racks the other customers were 2 very young teens, wildly excited about buying a new portable. Vinyl is cool, it's official.
DeleteThanes Valley is the next valley along from Thames Valley of course..
ReplyDeleteMine was Lord of The Rings I never read it....in fact I never finished the Hobbit..mine was for artin
DeleteI knew that phonographic emporium well....was Virginia Astley la chanteuse of 80s renown not related..or did I just make that shit up?
Ah The Cross Keys, The Lamb..The Rowing Club it was middle England indeed.
I checked I made that shit up not true! Shame ...I could imagine her coming from said place..never heard her moosic
ReplyDeleteI think it is true. Old man Astley was some kind of musician of note. His son worked in the shop, and Virginia made the records.
DeletePete Townshend married her sister
DeleteThere a page on everything...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/astleys.html
Hurrah I know everything was spot on ...Ravishing Beauties her band supported Teardrop Explodes whd have thunk it
ReplyDeleteSlight twist on the original question: how about the SF you read most recently that you thought was the best thing you ever read?
ReplyDeleteThe Fifth Head Of Cerberus is a masterpiece that I only recently got around to. Jack Womack's Dryco Series is another great achievement in world-building SF, and I wish he would write more.
If you can enter the Pirate Bay without getting hauled before a judge, a search for Gene Wolfe delivers rich treasure.
DeleteI enjoyed Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon trilogy (the tv show, like most adaptations, was 'meh'). Great concept that is well explored with a fun and exciting plot, yada, yada.
DeleteBut, as previously proffered, the best story that I or anyone ever in the history of the universe read is "A Boy And His Dog" and I'll still fight anyone who says it isn't. Largely because it's about a boy and his dog.
Gee! That sure sounds swell, Mr. Dave! What's it about?
DeleteThanks, MrDave! My wife is also a fan of the Altered Carbon books. She liked the first season of the TV shows (partly due to the beefcake on display).
DeleteBy the way, MrDave, do you have a favorite short story?
Here's a bunch of Gene Wolfe novels what I ain't perused yet:
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/QhJrjpCdh7V
Thanks for the pack of Wolfes! Have you read Jack Womack? I started with Random Acts of Senseless Violence (which works just fine as a standalone novel), and was so impressed that I had to get the rest of the series.
DeleteHis novel Let's Put the Future Behind Us (which isn't part of the Dryco series) is very funny. It pairs well with Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart: if you like one, you'll enjoy the other.