Miévillians discussion
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The Weird Mess Hall & Chit-chat Centre
I have a FB account, but when I click the link, I get "This content is currently unavailable".
Cecily wrote: "I have a FB account, but when I click the link, I get "This content is currently unavailable"."Sadly, I get the same.
Okay, finally getting around to sharing some photos from the booksigning with Neil Gaiman - it was a great daddy daughter night for sure! This link should take you to a Flickr photo set:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrallenb...
Be sure to look for the drawing he did in my daughter's copy of Coraline. He's so cool.
Allen wrote: "Okay, finally getting around to sharing some photos from the booksigning with Neil Gaiman - it was a great daddy daughter night for sure! This link should take you to a Flickr photo set:http://ww..."
Wow, Katie got a special mouse treat! And she is so cute herself!
I bet you're both very glad that you went. :)
Shall we add Neil to our "other authors" here, Allen?
Oh definitely. I'm reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane now and it qualifies so far. I think some others here have given it good reviews. And I really thought Neverwhere was very Mieville-esque. Another good candidate might be American Gods but haven't read that yet.
I was quite disappointed by American Gods, but have been looking for something to give him another chance (after all, he's written for Doctor Who — he must be good!) so maybe I'll try Neverwhere.
Allen wrote: "Okay, finally getting around to sharing some photos from the booksigning with Neil Gaiman - it was a great daddy daughter night for sure! This link should take you to a Flickr photo set:..."That's wonderful. What a great memento.
Thanks. I was just excited that Catie was excited about meeting an author! Granted it was made into a movie and Gaiman had made an appearance (as himself) on an Arthur episode (kids animation), but we read the book together and I say anything to get her turning pages without mom and dad pushing too hard!
Allen wrote: "...I say anything to get her turning pages without mom and dad pushing too hard!"Absolutely.
The funny thing is, I always assumed Mom & Dad did push a little, as I was such a precocious reader, but fifty years later I asked my mother about it, and she said they hardly ever read to me, though my older sisters did occasionally. She actually thought my sisters taught me to read. They deny it. My mother was actually the sort of 50s mom who would get annoyed that I was reading on a sunny day, and throw me out of the house (without the book, dammit!). I never got smart enough to check the weather, and then tuck a book in my pocket and leave...
Have you now learned to have a book tucked away, wherever you go, Derek? ;)
That's what's cool about a Kindle! ;)
Traveller wrote: "That's what's cool about a Kindle! ;)"Precisely. I never leave home without my Kobo.
Hi everyone,I just wanted to mention this really quickly: The voting for Bartleby Snopes's "Story of the Month" is still open ['til tomorrow] and my story, "Now You See Me," is up for consideration (and it's currently neck and neck for first place!).
If you haven't already, would you all mind checking out the story [of course, only if you've got the time] and consider tossing a little voting love my way? Maybe tell your friends, too?
Thanks in advance, even if you don't vote/haven’t voted; you’re all still the best either way!
http://bartlebysnopesstoryofthemonth....
~JM Owens
Joseph wrote: "Hi everyone,I just wanted to mention this really quickly: The voting for Bartleby Snopes's "Story of the Month" is still open ['til tomorrow] and my story, "Now You See Me," is up for considerati..."
If we vote, do we get a prize? ;)
If I can think of a suitable one, sure!!
Oh, I've got it (though it's not much): How about a free copy of my book [in PDF form] for the voters?! It can be on the honor system. It was an Indie Book Award Finalist if that counts for anything?!
Joseph wrote: "Oh, I've got it (though it's not much): How about a free copy of my book [in PDF form] for the voters?! It can be on the honor system. It was an Indie Book Award Finalist if that counts for anything?!"It's a deal! I'll send you my e-mail addy. XD
(Gosh, I hope we don't get into trouble for bribery & corruption.)
At least you're an honest to goodness Mievillian. Tell you what - you need to post a comment on our dead Iron Council discussion if I vote. Heheheheh.
Bah. I see you haven't read the book yet. Nevermind then. *Skulks sulkily back into teh corner...*
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, everyone!
Image of an illustration by China Mièville, nabbed from China Mièville's book Railsea
Let's hope he doesn't mind.
"'So, come on, then,' said Mills, a phlegmatic young Yorkshireman who was to fall in France in 1940. 'Who has a theory?'"We took turns speculating on what had happened to the cadaver. We mooted theft, ghostliness, complicated games. William had joined us in the pub by then, and his own flight of fancy was that the man had woken up, realized he wasn't dead, shrugged, and gone home."
"Mine—my classmates encouraged the new boy to play—was that they were all victims of a hex operating on their memories, that there had never been any such corpse as the one they remembered."
China Miéville, "The Design" in McSweeney's No. 45: Hitchcock and Bradbury Fistfight in Heaven
Cool! Thanks for sharing. I've actually never read Mc Sweeneys before.
This is a more sci-fi themed "issue" (though really it's more of a regular book collection than a literary journal). Good stuff!!
Um, actually, yes! Do you have an iPad by chance? http://app.mcsweeneys.netYou can buy most of their stuff digitally through the app. It's formatted so that it looks identical to their printed pages.
Thanks for the link, Joseph. I have limited access to an iPad, but it's probably not enough to read this.I'm not too fond of iTunes either, actually... :P
Thanks. Really, really considering McSweeney's ... had never heard of it before. Could use some convincing. And, speaking of literary journals, I'm in search of some for my Kindle. So far considering Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, etc. But was really hoping some of you knew of them or others that maybe have a weird fiction/speculative fiction bent. Thoughts? Recommendations?
I read a lot of stuff from Clarkesworld. This one, this week, was very good: Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable. I thought the ending was going to be predictable.tor.com also has regular short stories online.
Yeah, I've read a few fantasy stories on Tor.
Well, subscribed to Clarkesworld and am loving it. Looks good on a Kindle paperwhite too. Found an interesting weird fiction site http://www.strangehorizons.com/ I thought everyone might enjoy, if you don't already know about it.Also, started reading We ... intriguing so far, and quite philosophical. Not too fond of the "diary" format for stories but I'll give it a whirl anyway. I keep picturing the 70s sci-fi scenes of Logan's Run. :)
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I read a lot of stuff from Clarkesworld. This one, this week, was very good: Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable. I thought the ending was going to be predictable.tor.com also has regular short..."
Thank you, Derek, a lovely story!
And Clarkesworld has podcasts! Even better. Been looking for more podcasts.
..and thanks for the site you linked to as well, Allen, looks very interesting. I wonder how long each offering stays up.
Guys, I've been thinking about what to do for the latter half of this year. We've had a good cyberpunk run now at the start of the year, how about we do a Dystopian/Utopian run by reading another book or two that we can compare with "We"?Candidate books would be: 1984 by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and if you felt like more Le Guin, there's her The Dispossessed.
What do you guys think, any of those that appeal? Shall we put up a poll?
I would be into any of those; I've even read a few!!
I am all for more dystopian, but as I've read most of the first half of the year already, I would push for something new (to me),and the only one from this list I don't recognise is the Murakami. On the other hand, I am happy to go with whatever the group decides.
I'm a Bradbury fanatic and so have read, and reread, most everything there. The Murakami is exciting though. I started one of the author's more recent ones - can't remember or look it up right now - but it was compelling. And the plot of this one sounds intriguing. Been long enough ago that I would call 1984 more of a read than a reread. But any of them sound great. I'm easy to please!
I've read 1984 and Brave New World so long ago that they'd pretty much come close enough to qualify as a new read for me, I'd say.As far as Vonnegut and Murakami are concerned, I haven't read those specific ones but I have read some of them and they're both weird. People seem to either love them or hate them or like me, feel rather undecided. But what i've read of them was very little, so I'm eager to try more.
I haven't read Bradbury's F.451 at all yet, so that's a big stain on my reading record and I need to rectify that one ASAP.
So, you guys are interested in at least some kind of utopian/dystopian fic, good. I think I'll make a poll of that and throw in something like Cormac Mc Carthy's The Road and Ben Marcus's Flame Alphabet. Personally, actually, I really don't want to read the former of those 2 but I'm very interested in at least trying the latter.
Then besides the Utopia/dystopia theme (you guys realize that Bas-lag falls into the latter genre, eh?) perhaps we should try some other new-weird (like Jeff VanderMeer and some Steampunk and do polls for those as well.
I'm thinking we should perhaps try to emulate the genre's that Mieville has been attempting to write in. So, we should throw a detective novel and a Noir novel in there at some point as well. I'm not too sure what one would class Embassytown as? Pretty much SF, right? Hmm, and we need to check out Urban Fantasy as well then too. Ha, he's left us a pretty wide range. Hey wait, let's not forget Westerns, after Iron Council, and adventure novels after Railsea... XD
You know, I wanted to read a western after/during Iron Council ... I think we talked about the similarities somewhere. Did China say he read some westerns or listed his favorite somewhere? Zane Grey? I have a vague recollection of such a discussion. Anyway, I have very fond memories of watching Sunday afternoon westerns on TV with my dad, but I never read a western novel in my life. Should be more well-rounded than that so I think this is a good idea! As fas as mysteries, I'm a Raymond Chandler fanatic, too. But there are probably some better, more Miavillesque ones to choose from out there. Wonder if there are any other weird+detective novels outside of TC&TC??And you definitely need to rectify your F-451 situation. :) Great read, great characters and ahead of its time in terms of technology and the social dangers of it. Plus, nobody turns a phrase like Bradbury, except his Chinaness of course.
In fact, now that you bring it up, I'm thinking the main characters in both F-451 and our "We" read are somewhat similar in their mindset/conflict. I may have to read them both side by side!
We could try to pick a few from these genres that everybody or most everybody have read and then do a re-read or comparative analysis through a drop in discussion thread of the lot. Maybe? I don't know, just an idea, seeing as how we're always pressed for time for new reads.
Embassytown -- Linguistic SciFi, of course. There are a few out there, see Suzette Haden Elgin. I would love to find more. Anybody out there know of any others?
I've enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson, whose works a lot of critics call literary science fiction. While not strictly about linguistics, 2312 uses a style that has linguistic overtones ... Chapters of prose interspersed with poetry-like stream of consciousness. Probably best in hard copy form so you can enjoy the visual of how the words are displayed on pages. Also has a more socio-political plot like much of CM's works.
Traveller wrote: "Guys, I've been thinking about what to do for the latter half of this year. We've had a good cyberpunk run now at the start of the year, how about we do a Dystopian/Utopian run by reading another ..."A good novel to compare to We would be The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov. It's another Soviet dystopia and it's excellent. Another novel worth considering in the future would be The Aerodrome by Rex Warner, an overlooked masterpiece of English writing from 1941 on the appeal of Fascism.
I'd love to do Fahrenheit 451 as a group read. It's been 40 or so years since I read it, and I've been arguing about it with somebody else recently, so I'd love a group take on it.I tried to read The Flame Alphabet a while back and found it dreadful.
And we absolutely have to do VanderMeer sometime.
But bring on the poll!
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I'd love to do Fahrenheit 451 as a group read. It's been 40 or so years since I read it, and I've been arguing about it with somebody else recently, so I'd love a group take on it.[...]
But bring on the poll!
Now you guys are starting to make me feel excited.
I thought of making two polls and then sending a message linking to them, but still working on it, so please give me another 6 or 7 + odd hours for that, ok?
You wanted a poll? You got a poll! https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/9...If that list has more than one candidate that you'd be interested in, we could always break up the utopian/dystopian theme into smaller components and choose out of that, like for instance Soviet type/Nazi type dystopia; tech dystopia (and maybe branch off into cyberpunk dystopia, such as Altered Carbon, post-apocalyptic dystopia, and so on.
And Derek, if Fahrenheit 451 doesn't come in, since we both want to do it, why don't we in any case? ;)
Ruth wrote: "So many I want to click on, Help!"* heh heh heh * <-- evil laughter.
Well, how about my suggestion that we break it up into smaller sections?
I think vote for your no.1 by clicking on it, and then maybe copy and paste a selection of the ones you want most in the comment section below. I'm going to reserve my own vote until later, in case we land up in a situation with ties and so on...
We can look at what members would like in the comment section, and put in second and third popular choices for a second poll and so on. But at least this big-ish poll will weed out the stuff that we're definitely not interested in...
I'm with Ruth ... and I like your plan Traveler. I'll think on it today, vote, then put my "second place" candidates in the comments.On Fahrenheit-451, I would be willing to do that right now, or alongside the "We" read.
Also, to add to the list of great dystopia: "A Canticle for Leibowitz." Reread it last year and had forgotten just how exceptional, and timeless, this 1960 novel really is. Worth reading again.
And, one final thing. How the heck do I link to books from this iPad??!! Arghhhhh!
Allen wrote: "Also, to add to the list of great dystopia: "A Canticle for Leibowitz." "Will you believe me that that was among the ones I had wanted to include, but got distracted and decided to stop at 30? I think we're definitely going to have to make splinter sections like post-apocalyptic dystopia, religious dystopia, gender dystopia, cyberpunk utopia/dystopia, etc. I'd also wanted to include I Am Legend, but thought by that time, that we can just as well do a second poll for post-apocalyptic and stick it in there.
Where would you stick Canticle into--which sub-section? You guys realize that we've been reading quite a bit of political dystopia with old CM's books, eh? Only, they're not entirely 'pure' because of the fantasy and other themes alongside, I suppose.
Nothing pure about CM, ha ha.
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
This Census-Taker (other topics)This Census-Taker (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jeff VanderMeer (other topics)Jeff VanderMeer (other topics)
Michael Moorcock (other topics)
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If not, will post some stills.