http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ F&SF Forum » Topic: ...And Nothing Is But What Is Not en Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:12:42 +0000 http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-23937 Sat, 01 Sep 2012 18:41:22 +0000 ChrisDeVito 23937@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>"Warm" is an odd little piece -- I wonder if Sheckley was about to get married when he wrote it. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-23883 Sat, 01 Sep 2012 14:48:39 +0000 Dr. Caligari 23883@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I think Sheckley's "Warm" is on Gutenberg as well. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-23667 Sat, 01 Sep 2012 03:36:50 +0000 Marian 23667@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I agree. Quite a story! Powerful, creepy. I'm surprised it fell out of copyright. Anyway, thanks, Dr. Caligari, for saying it was on Project Gutenberg. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-23587 Fri, 31 Aug 2012 23:40:25 +0000 Dr. Caligari 23587@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>John Boston,<br /> Thanks for the tip about Laumer's "It Could Be Anything." It evidently fell out of copyright, because it is on Project Gutenberg and is a free download for the Kindle. Quite a story! </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-21429 Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:35:20 +0000 Dr. Caligari 21429@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I'm bumping this old thread to mention another story I found in this subgenre, also a Kindle freebie, Sheckley's "Warm" (originally in Galaxy in 1953). </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-13151 Mon, 28 May 2012 01:14:03 +0000 Marian 13151@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>The New York Times is doing a three part series on Philip K. Dick. There's some fascinating information (i.e. fascinating to me because I hadn't known it) in it, namely The Golden Fish revelation and how it affected the rest of his life and work. <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-1/" rel="nofollow">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-1/</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12170 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:04:31 +0000 arowhena 12170@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Don’t forget Arthur C. Clark’s “The Wall of Darkness” published in 1949. It’s a little long winded but the ending is a good one. One thing about this story that jumped out at me (I’ve been reading his entire collection over the last year), and considering he wrote it in 1949, is its opening sentence:</p> <p><em>“…Many and strange are the universes that drift like bubbles in the foam upon the river of time – a very few –move against or athwart its current; []…”</em></p> <p>It seems to me that Multiverse theory is not a new idea. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12116 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:39:54 +0000 Mark Pontin 12116@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Yeah, a worthwhile piece by Silverberg. </p> <p>It's useful and instructive to know that Silverberg's perceptions and judgements about the early 1950s scene -- Dick, Sheckley, Budrys (sorry) all started within a few months of each other -- as the intelligent, aspiring tyro SF writer he then was often dovetails with our own judgement now, looking back. </p> <p>That may be he's probably done quite a bit to form our judgement (well, those of us who remember that era.)His 1987 anthology WORLDS OF WONDER/SF 101 --</p> <p><a href="http://www.sfsite.com/06a/ww201.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfsite.com/06a/ww201.htm</a><br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Robert-Silverbergs-Worlds/dp/1596870648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334907497&amp;sr=1-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Robert-Silverbergs-Worlds/dp/1596870648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334907497&amp;sr=1-1</a></p> <p>-- pretty much definitively represents the intelligent SF of that time, with Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit," Blish's "Common Time," Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live In Vain," Dick's "Colony," Vance's "The New Prime," Knight's "Four In One," and so on. As Silverberg's intro to the anthology says: "I will not attempt to hide the self-indulgent nature of this book. The whole thing is, in a real sense, an affectionate gift to that 12-year-old kid with my name who set out, in Brooklyn long ago, to be a science-fiction writer."</p> <p>Yes. Sigh. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12114 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:25:52 +0000 Marian 12114@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Silverberg talks about Dick's early work and how much he inspired him as a writer. <a href="http://www.asimovs.com/2012_06/ref.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.asimovs.com/2012_06/ref.shtml</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12032 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:15:51 +0000 Mark Pontin 12032@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>And then there's Kuttner and Moore. "Year Day" is a late story from this duo in the synthetic reality sub-genre and was originally published in 1953 --</p> <p><a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57518" rel="nofollow">http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57518</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12031 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:10:08 +0000 Mark Pontin 12031@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>More earlier stories in this vein ---</p> <p>Algis Budrys's "The Real People" from 1953 is worth a look. It's a novella that was in Horace Gold's short-lived BEYOND, a fantasy mag that was a companion to Gold's GALAXY. It's reprinted in an old Pyramid anthology from 1963 called BEYOND, which has other rare stuff by the likes of Pohl, Bradbury,Sturgeon, etc.--</p> <p><a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4295" rel="nofollow">http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4295</a></p> <p>To the extent it works, "The Real People" is carried by Budry's capability to turn a sentence -- as Fred Pohl has commented, Budrys was sometimes one of the most graceful writers to ever do SF, and was the more remarkable for it being his second language (after Lithuanian). Unfortunately, "The Real People" becomes in its latter half fairly incoherent structurally.</p> <p>Also by Budrys, however, is "Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" from 1961, a short story about two competing future media barons with two different technologies to bring VR entertainment to the masses -- with one of the competitors having bought his technology from the ancient engineers of Mars. </p> <p>"Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" is absolutely successful. The focus here is as much on the characters and societal implications, and this story has always struck me as a probable initial influence on PKD's novel THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and, maybe, James Tiptree's "The Girl Who Was Plugged In." In decades past, it was much anthologized --</p> <p><a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40809" rel="nofollow">http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40809</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-12029 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:25:13 +0000 Mark Pontin 12029@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I read Richard Wilson's "Double Take" at your prompt, Dr. C, and personally found it crude stuff, such as filled the mags during the 1950s SF boom. Phil Dick wasn't just working this vein more sophisticatedly ten years later, IMO, but already in 1954-55. </p> <p>So, too, was Damon Knight from as early as 1952, with "The Analogues." See also Knight's "You're Another" from 1955, which is quite a nasty story for its time and all the better for it. (Kudos to J. Boston for remembering this one upthread.)</p> <p>Besides being better-written than SF by almost everybody else around then, Knight's takes on the theme of people living in technologically-induced fantasy worlds have the virtue of taking his own line and feeling distinctly non-phildickian, as Knight tended to stress the disturbing ethical issues. Nobody here has mentioned it yet, but "Semper Fi" by Knight from 1964 is a classic in this vein. </p> <p>Frankly, Knight's stuff line by line still stands up as better craftsmanship than the vast majority of what I see in the SF mags today. Surveying the current landscape, in fact, one wonders: for all his promotion of Clarion and better writing and the New Wave, did Damon Knight -- to paraphrase Chris Priest -- live and fight in vain? </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11999 Wed, 11 Apr 2012 01:46:06 +0000 Gordon Van Gelder 11999@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Funny that Richard Wilson should come up here, as a story collection of his (including one previously unpublished novella) has just come out: <a href="http://www.ramblehouse.com/storywriter.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.ramblehouse.com/storywriter.htm</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11998 Wed, 11 Apr 2012 01:15:07 +0000 VideoChrist 11998@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>"Double Take" is an interesting one.</p> <p>Richard Wilson was one of those early "Futurians" -- Kornbluth, Asimov, Pohl, that crowd. He won a Nebula back in the 1960s, when the award actually meant something. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11838 Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:19:58 +0000 Dr. Caligari 11838@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I am bumpimg this thread because I just discovered another really good example of the theme, in a free Kindle short story by Richard Wilson (an author I don't think I've read before) called "Double Take." It was published in 1954, but reads like something Philip K. Dick wrote 10 years later. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11722 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:50:40 +0000 oblomov 11722@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Ron: I feel that I'd be remiss to go without saying that K-Pax -- though it does illustrate the kind of story you mentioned -- was such an unbelievable turd of a film. Though I did like the part where K-Pax Spacey eats a whole banana to prove that he is an alien rather than just a loveable psychopath, even though he ends up in fact being a loveable psychopath. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11721 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:47:49 +0000 oblomov 11721@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Whether we're all just brains in vats a'la a Cartesian thought-experiment or our sense reveal to us pretty much everything that's out there until they go sour, I think we can all agree with Sun Ra's pronouncement that Nuclear War is a motherfucker. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413&page=2#post-11719 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:19:31 +0000 ChrisDeVito 11719@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Looks like we're back to Sun Ra . . . </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11718 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:45:25 +0000 Ron 11718@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Closely related are stories of the "is what this person says is true?" type. In these kinds of stories, a person claims to be from another planet, or a time traveler, and says things which others find too incredible to be true. This person is considered nuts yet there is an internal consistency to what this person says.<br /> Examples would be:<br /> The movie K-Pax.<br /> "The Incarceration of Captain Nebula" by Mike Resnick which appeared in Asimov's a few years ago.<br /> Another story in this vein is, if I recall correctly, "O Ishmael!" by Brian Aldiss. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11717 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:06:43 +0000 Dr. Caligari 11717@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Marian,<br /> I suspect that it wasn't very long after genus homo first became self-aware before our ancestors began noticing that there were differences between waking reality, dreams and drunkeness. So yes, this is an old theme. But it's one that is particularly well suited to SF. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11710 Sat, 10 Mar 2012 02:11:13 +0000 Mark Pontin 11710@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>One more fine story in this vein is "Suicide Coast" by M. John Harrison, which appeared in F&amp;SF in 2000.</p> <p>Here's Rich Horton's review of it --</p> <p><a href="http://www.sfsite.com/08a/ta86.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfsite.com/08a/ta86.htm</a> </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11707 Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:30:09 +0000 Marian 11707@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>It's a great title, but I agree with Byron. It's an old, old theme predating Shakespeare by quite a lot. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11688 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:04:20 +0000 Dr. Caligari 11688@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>As for the idea that this theme goes back to Shakespeare, check the title of the thread... </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11686 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:28:19 +0000 ByronBailey 11686@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>"It seems to me that in terms of standard literature the outlook of reality being challenged or wondered about originated there, with William Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND. William Hope Hodgson's work, THE GHOST PIRATES, THE NIGHT LAND, THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, also have the nature of being reveries. Earlier than Shakespeare, the only thing I can think of is Apuleus' THE GOLDEN ASS. Chinese poetry has a lot about reveries and the nature of reality, and in Persia there's Omar Khayyam's THE RUBIYAT."</p> <p>From what I remember, reality versus unreality is a common theme in the stories in the Mabinogion. I think it's a common theme in Celtic mythology and legend in general, where our world and the world of the fey get entangled. In many religions, it's a very common theme, possibly near universal although I'm just guessing. It's even in Christianity some as exemplified by the phrase, "For now we see through a glass darkly...." It's also very common in rituals throughout the world where altered states of consciousness -- much indulded in by Philip K. Dick iirc -- caused by anything from drug use to dancing are thought of as glimpses of the real world. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11685 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:30:24 +0000 geoffhart1962 11685@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>In the category of manufactured reality*, is anyone else wondering what percentage of humanity will be watching live blogging from Apple's iPod 3 conference in about half an hour? I'd give even odds that it will be an order of magnitude higher than the TV audience for the first moon landing**. &lt;g&gt;</p> <p>* Back in 1984, who would have dreamed that Apple would become Big Brother or SkyNet? Not me, that's for sure. Of course, they're not there yet, but with enough cash in the bank to buy most small countries and a market cap so high that its gravitational attraction is warping space-time in New York, it's only a matter of time...</p> <p>** Of course, there were a lot fewer TVs and no Internet back then, so it's not a fair comparison. Still... we have met the future, and it are us. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11684 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:33:47 +0000 JohnWThiel 11684@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>I've never seen Dick's "The Electric Ant" but it sounds to me like he was still with the idea he had in "Imposter" and it seemed a pity to him to blow up a guy like that, idea and all, without studying him further, so he repeated the idea with more insight and attention to the being as such.</p> <p>In stories like these "Crazy Buck Rogers stuff" becomes "insane Buck Rogers stuff" in the regard of the many, and Dick, as we know, had his sanity in question as we learned when we asked him to tell us more about his stories and the writing of them. Heinlein may have escaped this kind of attention when interviewed about "They" but he does outline a childhood viewpoint which some would take to be paranoia, especially after reading the resultant story. (Robert Moore Williams wrote essentially the same story, which I think appeared in FANTASTIC.) The question of solipsism also becomes involved in discussions or even the writing of stories of this viewpoint. Right in the text of one of his stories Fred Brown defined "solipsism". In "Come and Go Mad" he has a person identifying himself with Napoleon who turns out, at least according to the author, really to be him, and then the character goes through a personality disintegration indicating either that he wasn't Napoleon or that was a bad thing to be. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11683 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:21:46 +0000 JohnWThiel 11683@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Well, why shouldn't the UK have some edge into the general theme? It seems to me that in terms of standard literature the outlook of reality being challenged or wondered about originated there, with William Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND. William Hope Hodgson's work, THE GHOST PIRATES, THE NIGHT LAND, THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, also have the nature of being reveries. Earlier than Shakespeare, the only thing I can think of is Apuleus' THE GOLDEN ASS. Chinese poetry has a lot about reveries and the nature of reality, and in Persia there's Omar Khayyam's THE RUBIYAT. Apparently this outlook was much discussed in London, where there is even a nursery-rhyme type of song, "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11681 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:10:51 +0000 AKAkarlb 11681@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>Back again. Alex, you were right.<br /> Since I'd just re-read "Hoag" I thought I'd chip in.<br /> The subject of this thread is a deep-seated preoccupation of Heinlein's. Referring to "They" he once wrote:<br /> "Idea is based on the feeling I had as a kid that everything as I saw it was a deliberate plot to deceive me, that people didn't do the things I saw them do when I wasn't watching them. . . . The world consists of two parts, the ego--unique and utterly alone--(how is it that I am inside--that is the most startling fact we deal with)--and the outside, strange, incomprehensible, and possibly hostile." (Quote found in Panshin’s “The Abyss of Wonder,” btw.)<br /> It crops up in a number of places in his early writing, not only in “Hoag” and “They” but also in BEYOND THIS HORIZON and certainly in “Waldo,” where it (the nature of reality is both hidden and malleable) runs head-on into that “engineer’s mentality” that he is perhaps better known for. And later, unfortunately, in THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.<br /> Back to “Hoag.” “Heinlein could have told the whole story from the couple's POV when Hoag comes to them.” Mark, he could have indeed and thematically and stylistically it might have worked better. It certainly would have been much more of a straight line emotionally: a whimsical/cynical tone in the beginning that turns steadily darker. As it is, it’s dark, light, dark. As to whether that would be preferable I can’t say, I’m too familiar with the story as it is.<br /> But if he’d done it that way I’d have been deprived of the following passage: “The little hotel was like a thousand others, definitely third rate without pretension, a single bit of neon reading ‘Hotel Manchester, Transient &amp; Permanent,’ a lobby only half a block wide, long and narrow and a little dark. You do not see such if you are not looking for them. They are stopped at by drummers careful of their expense accounts and are lived in by bachelors who can’t afford better. The single elevator is an iron-grille cage, somewhat disguised with bronze paint. The lobby floor is tile, the cuspidors are brass. In addition to the clerk’s desk there are two discouraged potted palms and eight leather armchairs. Unattached old men, who seem never to have had a past, sit in these chairs, live in the rooms above, and every now and then one is found hanging in his room, necktie to light fixture.”<br /> That paragraph has always startled me, both in tone and in the level of description, which is just about unique in his writing. I like it a lot.<br /> John Boston, you beat me to it on “Yesterday was Monday.” IIRC that was filmed for the revived “Twilight Zone,” an OK job, not great. Nice to encounter you here. I’m “oldguy” over at ABE’s Booksleuth. </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11679 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:11:24 +0000 John Boston 11679@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>More for the list:</p> <p>Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"--mostly takes place in a character's reverie<br /> L. Ron Hubbard's "Typewriter in the Sky" (ca. 1940)--protagonist becomes a character in a hack writer's novel<br /> Sturgeon's "Yesterday Was Monday" (1939)<br /> Damon Knight's "You're Another" (ca. 1954)<br /> Dick's "Adjustment Team," from which "Adjustment Bureau" was made (1954)--these last three are variations on "reality is maintained by a metaphysical bureaucracy"<br /> Keith Laumer's powerful and seemingly forgotten "It Could Be Anything" a/k/a "A Trip to the City"--track it down. It's in his collection NINE BY LAUMER and probably elsewhere<br /> Kris Neville's never-reprinted "Casting Office," as by Henderson Starke (ASTOUNDING 3/51), which proposes that all the world's a stage, and the script is so bad the actors are revolting</p> <p>The UK magazine SCIENCE FANTASY was a hotbed of solipsism, and almost none of the relevant stories have ever been reprinted. I will dig these up when and if I have time.</p> <p> John Boston </p> http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1413#post-11678 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:39:58 +0000 Mark Pontin 11678@http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/ <p>They're all clearly in the category of philosophical fiction. So why not? </p>