“I believe in the importance of science fiction and fantasy to inform, explore and challenge society: where it is now,where it has been, and where it might go.” Alexandra Pierce
Alexandra Pierce has been reading science fiction and fantasy since childhood. She did time as a book reviewer for ASiF! (Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus) and Strange Horizons, and currently reviews for Locus Magazine as well as on her own blog. For a decade she was one third of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Galactic Suburbia. Alex co-edited two award-winning books, both with Australian indie publisher Twelfth Planet Press: Letters to Tiptree and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E Butler.
In January 2024 Alexandra launched Speculative Insight, publishing two essays a month about issues and themes in science fiction and fantasy. Born in Adelaide, Alex grew up in Darwin, moved to Melbourne for uni, and now lives in Ballarat.
In person: we are meeting once more at Kappy’s, 1/22 Compton St, Adelaide. Turn up at 6:15 for a 6:30pm start on Wednesday, October 16th.
Zoom details for Critical Mass Oct 16, 2024 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne/Sydney
Simon & Schuster have started selling epubs of short stories in their Start Classics series, as we can see in their selection of Walter M. Miller shorts.
Stableford produced so much that it is worth looking at the bibliographies at the above sites. The Wikipedia entry has links to interviews with BMS. Because they are done at different times you get sketches of the development of his career at different stages. It also has an excellent bibliography.
Because there is so much, yes, I am suggesting you can do your own research.
E. PUBLISHERS:
Places where Stableford’s books can be found. Mainly e-books, some are only available in print formats.
Not the most easy access to find Stableford’s books. It’s a long way down to the letter ‘S’ and there are lots of other authors with names beginning with an ‘S’. This is where you can find Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of Eternity (2009). Only available in paperback. But it’s worth it.
It also lists his anthologies and translations (which they call ‘adaptations’).
Snuggly Books:
Again you have to work down to S for Stableford. The only place for some of his last books. Plus anthologies and translations. A curiosity publisher. A title like Snuggly Tales of Femme Fatales feels simultaneously wrong and yet so perversely right.
F. A note about BMS:
Brian Stableford has been writing for fifty years. His fiction includes include eleven novels and seven short story collections in a series of “tales of the biotech revolution”; a series of metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin, most recently The Cthulhu Palimpsest; A Romance of Termination (2024); and a series of supernatural mysteries set in an artist’s colony, recently The Pool of Mnemosyne (2018). Recent novels independent of any series include Vampires of Atlantis (2016) and The Tangled Web of Time (2016). He also translates antique works from the French, with particular interests in the Symbolist and Decadent Movements, roman scientifique and the fantastique.
(Included to give a sense that Stableford was more than simply a science-fiction writer.)
G. Notes:
It is a quirk of my nature that give titles to talks like this; a way of putting things into one place conceptually. There are two jokes therein, well, sort of jokes. More like bits of irony. Another of my quirks.
“The impish demon known as Beetlejuice has been dead for centuries, but he’s enjoyed a pretty long life in popular culture….. Even so, I wasn’t hankering for a sequel to the Burton movie, which might have turned out to be just another fan-servicing, nostalgia-milking cash grab.
Fortunately, there isn’t a whiff of cynicism to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Burton shows real affection for the first film’s characters and genuine curiosity about how they’re doing three decades or so later. Winona Ryder is back as Lydia Deetz, who escaped Beetlejuice’s clutches as a teenager; now she’s a paranormal expert with her own talk show.
Lydia has long since buried the hatchet with her artist stepmother, Delia — the sublime Catherine O’Hara. But she’s having a tougher time with her own teenage daughter, Astrid — that’s Jenna Ortega from the show Wednesday, whose creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, wrote this movie.
When Lydia’s father dies suddenly, the family reunites at their old Connecticut home for the funeral. It’s here that Lydia accidentally winds up summoning Beetlejuice, thanks in part to her sleaze of a fiancé, played by Justin Theroux. With a sudden whoosh, Beetlejuice is back — played by Michael Keaton with the same messy green hair, rotting teeth and mischievous streak as before.” — Justin Chang, from NPRs Fresh Air, writing about the movie in Beetlejuice is back, in a supernatural screwball sequel
At the August Critical Mass, we chose an old favourite worthy of a re-read.
Gerald chose Cordwainer Smith’s Scanners Live in Vain, which can be found in the collected works, The Rediscovery of Man
The SF Masterworks edition has 30+ short stories, including The lady Who sailed the Soul, The Game of Rat and Dragon, Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and The Dead Lady of Clown Town.
Kate suggested two children’s books, both by Robert C. O’Brien: The Secret of NIMH (originally Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) and Z for Zachariah (published post-humously)
Beata selected Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) by Andrzej Sapkowski (author of the Witcher series, originally written in Polish). This is a collection of short stories about The Witcher. The title story is the one where Geralt meets Yennifer, seeking her help to capture a genie.
Adam chose Simon R Green’s Blue Moon Rising , the opening novel in the Forest Kingdom series.
Prince Rupert, a second son, was sent out to slay a dragon. The task became more complicated when he spared the dragon, which collected butterflies…
Roman selected Lisa Goldstein’s second novel, The Dream Years, about a surrealist Robert St Onge, in Paris, 1924, who argues with André Breton and eventually finds himself in 1968 at the Paris riots, helping surrealist anarchists fighting for the power of the imagination.
Jeff selected Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. A fantasy set in Imperial China (subtitled “A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was”), it follows Master Li and Number Ten Ox as they search for a cure for a plague caused by a poison. He also mentioned William Gibson’s Burning Chrome (short story collection) and George Turner’s Beloved Son.
He also mentioned
Captain WE Johns’ series of space books. (A total of ten.)
EV Olde’s The Clockwork Man
Donald Suddaby, Village Fanfare or The Man from the Future
Brian Stableford, the David Lyddyard trilogy because the third volume took years to appear.
Brian Stableford, the six volume Emortality series in internal chronological order. [Originally published out of order which was how Jeff read them…]
The first six monthly collection of essays from Speculative Insights is now available as an ebook or a physical book. That’s 13 interesting essays, 179pp. Details at the Speculative Insight website: https://www.speculativeinsight.com/buy-collections
Although Sheri S. Tepper became best known for her eco-feminist SF writing, her first published trilogy, The True Game, can be read as a more traditional fantasy with SF elements. Two subsequent trilogies continue exploring this world. Over the nine novels set on this world, many of her future themes can be found which lift it out of the traditional fantasy genre into something more interesting. Consisting of the Peter Trilogy (collected as The True Game in 1985), the Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped, and the Jinian Trilogy, the nine novels explore themes of ecology, feminism and colonialism.
Zoom Details: Critical Mass July Time: Jun 26, 2024 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne/Sydney, 5pm Perth
In person: in June and July, we are meeting at the Community Room at Christie Walk, 101 Sturt Street, as Kappy’s will not be open in the evenings. Turn up at Christie Walk at 6:15 for a 6:30pm start on Wednesday, June 26th.
The 2024 GUFF race is now on, with candidates Kat Clay and Ian Nichols (both from Australia) contending for the GUFF trip to the Glasgow Worldcon on 8-12 August 2024. Here are links to the PDF ballot with candidates’ platforms, and to the online voting form. Australia.
Voting closes on 22 April, 23:59 British Summer Time/8:59 23 April Australian Eastern Standard Time; see ballot for other time zones.
Roman will talk about two series by Elizabeth bear: one historical fantasy, the other space opera.
Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable–and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty. She has nothing, but obligations.
Sebastien de Ulloa is the oldest creature she has ever known. He was no longer young at the Christian millennium, and that was nine hundred years ago. He has forgotten his birth-name, his birth-place, and even the year in which he was born, if he ever knew it. But he still remembers the woman who made him immortal. He has everything, but a reason to live.
In a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where Holland finally ceded New Amsterdam to the English only during the Napoleonic wars, and where the expansion of the American colonies was halted by the war magic of the Iroquois, they are exiles in the new world–and its only hope for justice.
This is a more recent work, the first of two novels. A routine salvage mission in space uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of powerful ancient technology. Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way, and find themselves on the run and in possession of universe-changing information.
When authorities prove corrupt, Haimey realizes that she is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilization from the implications of this ancient technology—and the revolutionaries who want to use it for terror and war.
Meeting details:
April Critical Mass Time: Apr 24, 2024 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane, 5pm Perth, 10am London, noon Petersberg
Live at Kappys, 1/22 Compton St, Adelaide Please arrive at 6:15 to order drinks for a 6:30 start
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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