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Nah, the terrible secret behind the utopia of "In the Barn" (by the famed Piers Anthony, "Again, Dangerous Visions") wasn't about incest or free love, it involved breeding facilities for humans grown to be mindless. A different sort of creepy.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:05
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Foglet posted:Nah, the terrible secret behind the utopia of "In the Barn" (by the famed Piers Anthony, "Again, Dangerous Visions") wasn't about incest or free love, it involved breeding facilities for humans grown to be mindless. They're talking about "If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister" by Theodore Sturgeon. Where, to be fair, the ending is that everyone who didn't grow up there nopes RIGHT THE gently caress OUT of the concept of incest wonderland, often violently.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:20
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Capilarean posted:Some time back a gave a try to Dangerous Visions, and I'm honestly not sure if that's really what passed for transgressive or if it's just one big troll by Harlan Ellison. You might consider this a half-assed defence of Dangerous Visions. It's from a particular time when there was a fashion in boundary pushing, transgressive SF. And the collection was specifically aimed at that, so it applies doubly so. And Ellison is great at talking up his own creations, so triply so. From our distance, the results are decidedly mixed. Some of DV seems almost quaint, like some relic hippy commune, some of it has little to offer but shock value, and some of it still lands. I can't speak to that story, because I don't remember it. Is it worth reading? I'd say no, the hit/miss ratio is too poor. Note that The Next Dangerous Visions (unsure about title) is definitely downhill, feeling like all the stuff that didn't get into the first book. And The Final Dangerous Visions? If you want to go into a rabbit hole, read Christopher Priest's takedown of it. Ellison was a talented writer. But he stayed stuck in his angry young man / I'm an artist damnit schtick and it did him no good.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:56
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nonathlon posted:And The Final Dangerous Visions? If you want to go into a rabbit hole, read Christopher Priest's takedown of it. Could be difficult as it was apparently withdrawn from distribution all over the internet, back when that was still possible.
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Oct 29, 2021 18:04
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Dabir posted:Could be difficult as it was apparently withdrawn from distribution all over the internet, back when that was still possible. There are hard copies available for ridiculous prices, but here is an archived copy of the original essay Priest wrote. (I guess the title was changed later?)
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Oct 29, 2021 18:28
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nonathlon posted:You might consider this a half-assed defence of Dangerous Visions. Ellison was just a lovely awful person in basically every way. But it's okay. In SF, you could be a legit monster who only makes everyone miserable and people will still flock to you.
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Oct 29, 2021 18:36
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Runcible Cat posted:They're talking about "If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister" by Theodore Sturgeon. Where, to be fair, the ending is that everyone who didn't grow up there nopes RIGHT THE gently caress OUT of the concept of incest wonderland, often violently. Ahh, yeah, true. Well, in the "Barn" the protagonist also nopes the gently caress out off the planet in the ending and rescues an infant girl not yet influenced by the development-stopping procedure. Not before managing to try to gently caress one of the cattle-women on the premise that no one would know. That's as much credit as I can give to Piers Anthony, I guess. ... Although knowing the author as I do now, maybe the protagonist's plans for rescuing an infant weren't so noble as I assumed back then.
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Oct 29, 2021 18:40
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Runcible Cat posted:They're talking about "If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister" by Theodore Sturgeon. Where, to be fair, the ending is that everyone who didn't grow up there nopes RIGHT THE gently caress OUT of the concept of incest wonderland, often violently. That's the initial setup, IIRC. The ending is that the protagonist steels himself for the difficult task of promoting this wonderful lifestyle. At no point is it portrayed as anything but positive,yet misunderstood.
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Oct 29, 2021 18:42
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Well, we've seen the results! We gotta do it! No I have no idea how the transition works, it's probably horrifying for nearly everyone involved but we know it leads to utopia--somehow! We just have to work on dropping thousands of years of extremely reasonable taboo agreed upon by all but the most monstrous, then step two, then utopia!
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Oct 29, 2021 19:00
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shelley posted:There are hard copies available for ridiculous prices, but here is an archived copy of the original essay Priest wrote. (I guess the title was changed later?) George R.R. Martin posted:The 1978 volume of my own 'New Voices/Campbell Awards' anthology series hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa Dabir has a new favorite as of 21:13 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 20:12
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Good poo poo.
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Oct 29, 2021 20:26
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Man the last two spoilers I've clicked on have been incest I think I'm gonna stop clicking on spoilers
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Oct 29, 2021 21:10
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That's the thing, it's incest all the way down.
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Oct 29, 2021 21:54
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Ok, so, "beach reading" type thrillers are obviously a free square for this thread. But permit me to bitch about Survive the Night, a new thriller by author Riley Sagar. Mr. Sagar has several novels under his belt already - and until now I thought they were surprisingly decent for pabulum genre. I know, I know, I don't have to defend my reading choices or whatever, but I listen to books like this one while I run; I cozy up with physical books that demand a lot more attention. I read a lot. I read anything I can get my hands on. But running? Yeah, then it's time for dumb thrillers. Ruth Ware is my friend when I'm pounding the pavement. So I've listened to every one of Sagar's books, and they're... fine. Actually a cut above the usual crap. Sure, you know who the killer is early on, and, sure, you have to suspend your disbelief that the heroine didn't even look in the attic for weeks until the killer happened to be right there on a dark and stormy night. Eh, it's a cheap thrill. But Sagar usually writes... dependably, I guess. He doesn't try to throw twist after twist at you. The killer kills, the single mom lives, the hot groundskeeper dates the mom, the kidnapped daughter returns unharmed. They're not good, but they're better than a lot of the genre. Enter Survive the Night. The premise is a good one. It's 1990ish, so we're pre-cell-phone, which is a good start for a thriller. Our heroine is a college student whose roommate has been murdered by The Campus Killer, and she's wracked with guilt about leaving Roomie at the bar that night. So she's bailing on college and on her boyfriend - going home to Nana. She's described as neurotic and paranoid and scared with good reason (see: murdered roommate, serial killer at large). She checks her university's rideshare board and sees some guy is going in her direction and wants riders. Best of all, he's willing to leave the next night. As midterms are currently underway for the rest of the non-ditching student body, her options for leaving right now are limited, and so she decides to trust the random dude Josh and ride with him. Throughout the night, though, she starts to get nervous. See, little clues keep landing in her lap that make her think Josh might not be who he says he is. Like the fact that his wallet... lands in her lap, and his driver's license says Jason on it. She starts to suspect he might be the Campus Killer, but she isn't sure, because she's neurotic and paranoid and scared. She can't call her boyfriend because no cell phones. OK. This isn't bad so far. You're stuck in a car and you don't know if you're being paranoid or if there really is something to worry about. But most women - particularly those whose roommates just up and got theyselfs killt - would leave the situation. Claim diarrhea and disappear at the rest stop; claim you need a tampon and tell the night clerk at the 7-11 that you need help; claim you forgot you told Nana you'd call her before you left and she'll kill you (heh) if you don't get to a pay phone. So we have to add another reason Charlie stays put as the flashing warning signs pile up. Enter "unreliable narrator." Unreliable narrator is very, very hard to do well. Charlie's particular unreliability comes from the fact that she "sees movies in her mind". Instead of just making her paranoia war with her desire to obey social conventions, Sagar decides that she literally lives in daydreamed movies sometimes and can't separate fiction from fact. Adding to the fact that this is just... really stupid, Sagar can't write it well. Obviously, her vision of her dead roommate handing her a cupcake is a "movie". And just as obviously, Josh's coy allusions to intimate knowledge of the killing is real. But Charlie is utterly paralyzed by stupidity and indecision. She is four hundred pages of meek passivity. She has So. Many. Chances. To. Escape. and takes none of them. Sagar makes the choice to tell us, the reader, early on, that Josh is indeed a bad guy. We learn that he has handcuffs, duct tape, and hunting knives in his trunk "and plans to use them all on Charlie, soon." We readers get his inner monologue that Charlie will never make it to Nana's house. So seeing Charlie continually decide not to leave (after starting the process each time) is frustrating as hell. For hundreds of boring pages, Charlie constantly starts action to leave - asking for help at a rest stop, calling the cops at a diner, gearing up to jump out of the car - and then in each case she decides at the last minute not to leave. Nothing external ever prevents any of these escapes; in each case, Sagar makes her internal monologue talk herself out of it. The author struggles mightily with this, because it's so stupid. Repeatedly, Charlie has to tie herself in logical knots to come up with a reason not to go. The funniest one is with the cop, who is standing beside her at the diner: "I'm a strong woman, I am going to handle this myself! I'll get back in that car and give him what-for! Nobody gonna Campus Kill me!" It's maddening. She does nothing. Four hundred pages of nothing happening. With only four characters in the novel (Charlie, Josh, the waitress, and the big strong boyfriend), it's pretty obvious that dear boyfriend is the REAL killer. Josh kidnaps Charlie and turns her in to the waitress, who is the roommate's mother. Waitress starts to torture Charlie to get the truth about who killed her daughter. Josh knows this and planned to handcuff her, hurt her, and hand her over. Boyfriend shows up and identifies as the killer. In a pathetic action scene involving fire and a loving Hollywood scramble for a gun, Charlie and kidnapper-Josh fight off Boyfriend. Charlie forgives Josh and marries him. I think Sagar is an idiot.
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Oct 30, 2021 00:51
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Thank you for that break-down. I had previously read Sagar's Final Girl and thought it was... fine. Fine! I might've given this a shot at some point but now I won't because that sounds loving intolerable. Also (spoiler for Final Girl) isn't he literally just reusing the loving twist from Final Girl? Not exactly, but the beat of 'the guy you think is the killer wasn't and the handsome love interest was!!'
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Oct 30, 2021 01:21
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Thursday Next posted:She checks her university's rideshare board and sees some guy is going in her direction and wants riders. Best of all, he's willing to leave the next night. As midterms are currently underway for the rest of the non-ditching student body, her options for leaving right now are limited, and so she decides to trust the random dude Josh and ride with him. Is he intentionally recreating the death of Jane Mixer?  Btw if you look up the graveyard there's a picture of her corpse in the google reviews. (Its not even five minutes from my house) UwUnabomber has a new favorite as of 16:50 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 16:47
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Dabir posted:Could be difficult as it was apparently withdrawn from distribution all over the internet, back when that was still possible. Like Shelley noted, you can find the original essay. And when I looked (some years ago admittedly) it was fairly easy to find various versions of the story scared about the web. And the abbreviated versions are possible as long as the story needs to be.
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Oct 30, 2021 22:49
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https://twitter.com/KirstySedgman/status/1454503687460638726
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Oct 31, 2021 18:21
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That excerpt reads like you need to say it in one breath
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Oct 31, 2021 18:32
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Legitimately disappointed that's not on audible so I can delight in the narrator's pain
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Oct 31, 2021 19:07
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"My book was panned by virgins! Here's an excerpt that implies I have never interacted with my genitals and am terrified by them"
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Oct 31, 2021 23:19
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Liie Zorro. 
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Oct 31, 2021 23:56
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In reality, the only Z's are from his attempted sexual partners
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Nov 1, 2021 03:16
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That's not even the worst thing Giles Coren's ever written. The worst thing would probably be the article he wrote for the Times about going on holiday with just his three year old daughter and how it was the "sexiest" holiday he'd ever been on. E: In trying to find this quote I've learned that he also wrote one where he speculated about her giving blowjobs when she's older. Dabir has a new favorite as of 04:34 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Nov 1, 2021 04:28
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W H Y
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Nov 1, 2021 04:45
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Dabir posted:E: In trying to find this quote I've learned that he also wrote one where he speculated about her giving blowjobs when she's older. There was no reason in hell we needed to know this.
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Nov 1, 2021 04:46
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You can either be an author or a sane person, you can only choose one
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Nov 1, 2021 04:49
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Yeah, I love my daughter too Yeah, she's beautiful Well, uh, no I don't think I'd say that-- ... Dude if you weren't an article I'd be about to kick your rear end
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Nov 1, 2021 04:51
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I thought it was that you could choose whether to be an author, and no normal person would choose "yes".
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Nov 1, 2021 04:53
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Captain DIEgiene posted:You can either be an author or a sane person, you can only choose one Am a (non-fiction) author, can confirm.
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Nov 1, 2021 04:53
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Am a (non-fiction) author, can confirm. What paraphilia do you pepper your prose with?
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Nov 1, 2021 04:54
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There was no reason in hell we needed to know this. Take it up with him
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Nov 1, 2021 06:14
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Dabir posted:That's not even the worst thing Giles Coren's ever written. The worst thing would probably be the article he wrote for the Times about going on holiday with just his three year old daughter and how it was the "sexiest" holiday he'd ever been on. in addition to the obvious problem with this passage, i really think you should not give coca-cola to three-year-olds
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Nov 1, 2021 07:57
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NOPE NOPE NOPE OH MY GOD
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Nov 1, 2021 08:15
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Brawnfire posted:What paraphilia do you pepper your prose with? John le Carre allusions.
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Nov 1, 2021 08:35
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lmao I forgot that was giles coren as well extremely normal man
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Nov 1, 2021 08:40
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OwlFancier posted:lmao I forgot that was giles coren as well I wonder if David Mitchell has ever punched him during a family dinner.
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Nov 1, 2021 08:45
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https://twitter.com/Mr_Considerate/status/1455121559362932736?t=5s1OPrZEJhZOQIlp3QyDWg&s=19
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Nov 1, 2021 12:17
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 Well, this takes some of the joy I got out of Supersizers Go/Eat.
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Nov 1, 2021 16:56
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Rascar Capac posted:https://twitter.com/Mr_Considerate/status/1455121559362932736?t=5s1OPrZEJhZOQIlp3QyDWg&s=19 Not gonna lie kind of curious how A gets to B here
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Nov 1, 2021 17:56
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