(1) TAKING LIBERTIES. Gothamist reports New York City is plagued with another round of Nazi-themed ads — “Statue of Liberty Gives Nazi Salute in Huge Times Square Billboard for Amazon’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’”. (Photo here.)
(2) APPEALING ANACHRONISMS. Beware, Ryan Skardal’s review at Fantasy Literature may cause this book to land on your TBR pile: “Last Year: Time travel tourism”.
Jesse Cullum works security at the City of Futurity – in fact, he just saved President Ulysses S. Grant from an assassination attempt, though he lost his Oakleys in the process.
The science fiction premise of Robert Charles Wilson’s Last Year (2016), is outlined in its opening scene. Oakleys are sunglasses that come from our time, but Ulysses S. Grant was one of the most important generals in the American Civil War. How can both exist in the same place? Well, in this novel, a “mirror” allows people to travel back in time, but to a specific point in the past — and it will produce a different a future. The people who travel back are tourists, and the City of Futurity, run by August Kemp, makes money from the past’s wealthy, who are curious to see the many inventions of the future. Also, Kemp steadily ships the past’s gold into the future. When the novel begins, The City of Futurity is about to begin its “last year” in the 19th century….
(3) THE NARRATOR’S TOUCH. Bookworm Blues has a wonderful variation on a common theme – “Best Audiobooks of 2016”.
The Fireman – Joe Hill
Narrated by Kate Mulgrew
I really want Kate Mulgrew to narrate all the thoughts in my head. I do. Honestly. I just want her to dig her way into my brain and just read my mind to me constantly. She’d make my random musings of, “Huh, I wonder what Frodo would look like with cockroach feet?” actually sound interesting. The Fireman is a fantastic book, and Kate Mulgrew is one of the best narrators out there. I think she kind of struggled with the English accent, but that’s easy to forgive because… LISTEN TO HER. She made this book one of those rare experiences where I listened to the book as much for the story as to just hear her talk to me.
(4) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #10. The tenth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for an autographed book and a Tuckerization from Tricia Sullivan.
Today’s auction comes from award-winning author Tricia Sullivan, for an autographed copy of OCCUPY ME and a Tuckerization (meaning you’ll show up as a minor character) in Sullivan’s forthcoming novel SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS.
About the Book:
A woman with wings that exist in another dimension. A man trapped in his own body by a killer. A briefcase that is a door to hell. A conspiracy that reaches beyond our world. Breathtaking SF from a Clarke Award-winning author.
Tricia Sullivan has written an extraordinary, genre defining novel that begins with the mystery of a woman who barely knows herself and ends with a discovery that transcends space and time. On the way we follow our heroine as she attempts to track down a killer in the body of another man, and the man who has been taken over, his will trapped inside the mind of the being that has taken him over.
And at the centre of it all a briefcase that contains countless possible realities.
(5) VOYAGERS. Big Think tells you how to see it — “Massive Poster Details Humanity’s Missions Through the Universe So Far”.
By our count, there are 113 spacecraft in this image. It’s a catalogue of all of the vehicles launched into space so far, from the U.S.S.R’s Luna 2 in 1959 to the U.S.’s DSCOVR in 2015. Every orbiter, lander, rover, flyby, and impactor is here, along with its trajectory. It’s actually an image of a physical poster from PopChart Lab that any space maven could spend some quality time with.
Open another tab in your browser and click here for a zoomable version of the image. (If you’re on your phone, you may want to bookmark this and check it out when you’re near a big screen.)
(6) PROJECTS ON THE WAY. Natalie Zutter promises “(Almost) Every SFF Adaptation Coming to Television and Movie Theaters!)” at Tor.com.
Thanks to major properties like Game of Thrones and Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, we’ve entered a golden age of sci-fi and fantasy properties being developed for film and television. It seems that nearly every network and studio has snatched up the rights to old and new classics, with a bevy of projects in production or premiering in the coming months. To keep you on top of the latest news, we’ve updated our master list of every SFF adaptation currently in the works, from American Gods to Y: The Last Man. And surprising no one, prolific writers Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi each have a number of projects in varying stages of development.
Check out this list and get your DVRs and Netflix queues ready, because you’re going to be wonderfully busy for the foreseeable future.
(7) BAD NEWS. Andrew Porter reports that Ted White told members of a listserve that he has lost his son, Aaron, to suicide.
Aaron was Ted’s son with Lynda Spencer, who has since remarried, and is equally devastated.
According to Moshe Feder, Spencer told Facebook readers:
Dear Friends,
Our darling son, Aaron died early Monday morning. He had been fighting depression and took his own life. We are so deeply devastated that we are having difficulty finding our way right now.
We’ve tried to contact many of you outside of FB, but there are so many of you that we want to know about our dear child that I’m taking to FB to share this horrible news.
We will let everyone know when and where the memorial service will be once we know the details.
Here is a photo of Ted and Aaron that was published earlier this year in the Falls Church News-Press.
FALLS CHURCH RESIDENT TED WHITE (left) speaks with his son Aaron White in the living room of his house on Tuckahoe street. Ted grew up in the house and raised his children, including Aaron in the house. (Photo: Drew Costley/News-Press)
(8) VAUGHAN OBIT. Peter Vaughan, known to American audiences as butler William Stevens, the father of Anthony Hopkins’s character in Merchant Ivory’s film The Remains of the Day, and for five years as Jon Snow’s blind, scholarly mentor Maester Aemon Targaryen in HBO’s epic fantasy of Game of Thrones, has passed away at the age of 93.
(9) CLASSIC CHARLIE BROWN. At Dreaming About Other Worlds, Aaron Pound removes our rose-colored glasses — “Musical Monday – Christmas Time Is Here by the Vince Guaraldi Trio”.
This Christmas program, created more than fifty years ago now, shows that the “good old days” weren’t really that “good” to begin with. After all, Charlie Brown could plausibly lament the commercialization of Christmas as long ago as 1965, and Lucy could claim that the entire holiday was run by a “big Eastern syndicate”, and while Lucy’s claim was supposed to be mostly ridiculous, it was also supposed to be something that someone might actually believe. When Charlie Brown goes to buy a Christmas tree, the place that sells them is a gaudy showplace with spotlights, and almost all of the trees available are artificial. Even “back then” the world was commercialized, no matter what our hazy nostalgic gaze might tell us.
(10) DRAGON BREATH, Doris V. Sutherland, in “Dragon Awards Reviews: Horror, War and the Apocalypse” for Women Write About Comics, says the award-winning novels of Niemeier, Weber and Cole fall short of the mark.
A sequel to Brian Niemeier’s earlier novel Nethereal, Souldancer is one of the Dragon Award winners that benefited from Sad Puppy votes. It is primarily a space opera, making it an awkward fit for Best Horror Novel. Indeed, Niemeier acknowledges on his blog that the book was voted into this bracket for tactical reasons.
“I tip my hat to author and publisher Russell Newquist of Silver Empire,” he says, “who suggested Souldancer for the horror category, the only one where it wasn’t guaranteed to get annihilated.”…
Niemeier seems to view himself as working in the high-flying pulp adventure tradition of E. E. “Doc” Smith, but I do not recall Smith ever being this turgid. A closer comparison would be with Amazing Stories’ “Shaver Mystery” narratives, which, likewise, offered leaden mixtures of space opera and mythology. Now remembered only as curios, these were sold on the esoteric notion that they were true stories plucked from mankind’s racial memory.
Souldancer also has a distinct sales point. It is promoted on the grounds that, being written by a supporter of the Sad Puppies campaign, it somehow contains an essential sincerity and value that cannot be found in fiction from the SJW-dominated science fiction/fantasy/horror establishment. This marketing tactic will fail to attract anybody who is not already a convinced Puppy, of course. Should the Dragon Awards ever become a fandom institution, future generations will surely scratch their heads at how the first award for Best Horror Novel could have gone to this mediocre space opera.
(11) LITERARY BARTENDER. Nick Mamatas is co-editing Mixed Up: Cocktail Recipes (And Flash Fiction) For the Discerning Drinker (and Reader) with libations editrix Molly Tanzer, a volume forthcoming from Skyhorse in October 2017. He just posted the complete table of contents for the fiction element of the book.
- Maurice Broaddus “Two Americans Walk Into a Bar” (Pimm’s Cup)
- Selena Chambers “Arrangement in Juniper and Champagne” (French 75)
- Libby Cudmore “One More Night To Be Pirates” (Dark ‘N’ Stormy)
- Gina Marie Guadagnino “In The Sky She Floats” (Manhattan)
- Elizabeth Hand “Eat the Wyrm” (margarita)
- Cara Hoffman “I’ve Been Tired” (Negroni)
- Jarett Kobek “Wes Anderson Uses A Urinal” (champagne cocktail)
- Carrie Laben “Take Flight” (aviation)
- Carmen Machado “There and Back Again” (corpse reviver #2)
- Nick Mamatas “The End of the End of History” (vodka martini)
- Jim Nisbet “Mint Julep Through the Ages” (mint julep)
- Benjamin Percy “Bloody at Mazie’s Joint” (Bloody Mary)
- Dominica Phetteplace “Gin is Stronger Than Witchcraft” (orange blossom)
- Tim Pratt “But You Can’t Stay Here” (fin de siècle)
- Robert Swartwood “Dinner with the Fire Breathers” (Smoking Bishop)
- Jeff VanderMeer “Marmot Season” (Moscow Mule)
- Will Viharo “Hot Night at Hinky Dinks” (mai tai)
(12) ANCIENT FANNISH VIDEOS RECOVERED. Here are four new uploads at the Fanac Fan History YouTube Channel.
- Noreascon 2 (1980) Worldcon – Guest of Honor Speeches by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm [Audio recording only, with added photos and captions]
Noreascon 2, the 38th Worldcon, was held in Boston in September 1980. This audio recording with images preserves/presents the Guest of Honor Speeches by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. Toastmaster Robert Silverberg is entertaining as always, with long introductions and not a little hyperbole. Damon Knight’s talk is full of anecdotes including how “Fred Pohl saved my life” and other stories about the Futurians. Kate Wilhelm gives a more serious talk about the nature of our reality.
- My Favorite World Tomorrow panel
Featuring Jerry Pournelle, Arsen Darnay, Jim Baen, Karl T. Pflock, and Spider Robinson, this discussion is structured with the panelists describing their favorite future and then discussing and taking questions. The future visions range from the mystic to the moral to the technological. Jerry Pournelle moderates, with Jim Baen taking the editor’s role and commenting only.
- Joe Haldeman sings “Stan Long”
We hope you enjoy this delightful clip of author Joe Haldeman, singing one of his most entertaining songs.
- Transtemporal Institute for Fannish Studies
This video, “Know the Hotel Staff” made in “cooperation with the Institute for Transtemporal Fannish Studies”, was used as filler on the closed circuit video feed. Introduced by Dr. Dodd Clegler (a fannish reference old at the time), the film shows a time traveler interacting with various hotel staff as a training film for other travelers. It was created in the summer of ’76 by Minneapolis fans.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Moshe Feder, JJ, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Schnookums von Fancypants.]
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(1) TAKING LIBERTIES.
You’d think that they would have learned something from last year’s fiasco. Apparently not.
Somebody needs to whap the Amazon Studios PR Department upside the head with a clue-by-four. 🙄
(8) VAUGHAN OBIT.
HBO’s epic fantasy *Game of Thrones
JJ: Stand by to appertain!
[7] I’m stunned. I never met Aaron, but I used to see Ted from time to time. God, this is awful. I don’t know what else to say.
Clicky.
Got some reading to do. 🙂
#10: so Souldancer is the They’d Rather Be Right of the Dragons?
We saw Fantastic Beasts tonight. I liked it better than any of the Harry Potter movies.
Nothing useful to add (been a long day), so I’m just going to *ticky*
They did. They learned they get lots of free publicity when they do this.
This week at Short Story Squee & Snark, we’re reading “One Way Out,” by Ethan Robinson. The more I mull over it, the more I describe it as: This is like Lemony Snicket writing environmental catastrophe SF.
Always happy for more people discussing, so come on in 🙂
(2) APPEALING ANACHRONISMS. This was already on my list. I disliked Spin a lot, but I have high hopes for Last Year! 🙂 I liked the excerpt and the concept is an interesting twist on time travel. I’m not going to read this review, since I’ve read a bit about the book already and I’m sure I’m going to get it soon. If anyone reads this, though, please report back. 🙂
Slightly annoying, Last Year came out today (er, “yesterday” where I am), but Audible still has a placeholder clip saying they can’t play the sample until the book’s released. It’s already out, Audible!. (grumble, bookmarking to return there later)
SF Reading: City of Blades – early on – enjoying it. 🙂 Why did I wait so long; I had to skim/speed-read some stuff towards the end of City of Stairs to refresh my memory on the long-but-fascinating info dump at end of that novel.
ETA: (6) PROJECTS ON THE WAY. Too long a list for me right now, but I started skimming and I’m maaaaybe discovering a few comics to follow up on and see if I like.
(2) I got Last Year as an ARC from a contest! I keep meaning to write a review, but I suspect I’ve lost my early edge 😛
It was a good read. The premise is great and well executed, and all surrounding the theme of exploitation — the future is basically saying “Eff the Prime Directive” and interfering with an alternate variation of its own past. It’s especially effective because:
(A) The exploitation feels real and plausible. It’s not mustache-twirling villainy, it’s all things that have rationalizations, that take the past-people into consideration (always in second place, of course, to the future-people), and aren’t directly destructive, but you can see how it adds up to and where it’s heading to.
(B) The future-people’s visit to the alternate past has a time limit — this is their Last Year there. This does a great job of driving home how fickle the future’s “help” is, how what’s really making this thing work for them is the complete freedom from consequence.
There is a “But” to this, though. At some point, the book veers off into a side-track that just doesn’t do anything for me. For the last 1/2-1/3 of the book, the premise becomes so much backdrop, while the protagonist goes off to Face The Enemy From His Shadowy Past. The book shifts from social-SF into thriller, and… ooof. I kind of felt like the premise was the core of the book. but the author wasn’t able to weave an actual story out of it. It was a shame :-/
All that being said, I enjoyed the book a lot. Even if the latter half is exasperating, the first half is worthwhile.
1). Couldn’t be more of a perfect commentary on what we have to look forward to in the next four years. That said, I understand it can be disturbing. I just finished reading a book about World War One and that thing should come with a trigger-warning. Why didn’t they tell me bad things happened before I read it?
3) I remember when Sarah was brand new to audiobooks, and asking people like Rob Bedford of SFF World and I for ideas on what books to try in audio. And now she loves them so enough to have a separate best of list. Mission accomplished!
DRAGON BREATH
Ah, so it looks like the long journey to credibility has started slowly for the Dragon Awards, thanks to the Puppies.
I wish the the organisers of the awards well, but it doesn’t help their cause when there has been so little promotional effort and they haven’t released the voting numbers – making all that chat about them being ‘populist’ empty and ridiculous.
Right now, I’m wrapping up a nice slow reread of Lord Valentine’s Castle. Have Paul Jenkins’ Curioddity from the library but I bounced off it already. Will try again after I finish the current book.
[godstalk]
@Standback re. (2): Wow, quick response, heh. The book just came out, so to me, your edge is still early. 🙂 Thanks a lot for posting a review/thoughts about Last Year!
@Rob Thornton: I re-read-via-audiobook Lord Valentine’s Castle a while back and enjoyed it a lot.
(9) I think I disagree with the lede here regarding the removal of any rose-colored glasses. Aaron makes a cogent point that what was true about the commercialization of Christmas is even more true today. More of a “my how things haven’t changed” as opposed to “the way back when wasn’t as good as you think”.
It could be argued that the commercialization of Christmas was been documented on film as far back as The Miracle on 34th Street. Even a 60’s vintage animated TV show pining for the “good old days” when commercialization of the holiday was not rampant misses the mark.
A nice article either way, Aaron.
Vince Guaraldi possesses a unique space in American music as his work is probably the first in the jazz genre to which most Americans are exposed. There are probably some qualifiers that apply to exclude elevator music and other background music. But his work is the probably the first that Americans will encounter as central part of a media experience. His classic and classy treatment of the holiday is mesmerizing and memorable.
Regards,
Dann
Anyone happened to read T.S Pettibone’s writing? I just saw mention of them in this article on pizzagate, and I’m curious if it is awful.
@Rob Thornton and @Kendall
Lord Valentine’s Castle? Ah, now there’s a book I’ve not read in a long time. I quite fancy that now.
Not me, but having read that article and her Twitter feed… holy bonkering moly.
@Kendell: The books of Wilson Ive read so far all had cool premises, but lacked somehow in execution. I always felt his actual stories couldnt quite reach the potential hintd by theses premises. I hope the new book is better im this regard…
Worthy is the box that was ticked,
And hath subscribèd us to scrolls
By Our Gracious Host.
All apologies to G. F. Handel, Watkins Shaw, Charles Jennens, and of course the Bible.
@Dann: Guaraldi’s music might be the first jazz some Americans encountered, but those of us who are a bit older recall Brubeck’s Time Out album, which included a hit single, “Take Five.” A few years later there were other radio hits: the Getz-Gilberto “Girl From Ipanema” and Ramsey Lewis’s “The ‘In’ Crowd.'” Then there were jazz (or at least jazzy) soundtrack items from Henry Mancini and Elmer Bernstein (The Man with the Golden Arm is from 1956), among others.
Point is, jazz has been part of the American musical vocabulary for my entire lifetime–and I’m not exactly young. (I heard all of the examples above on the radio.) But, yes, Guaraldi’s music is lovely stuff and he offers one gateway into jazz for those who grew up after commercial radio stopped being a broad-church musical venue.
Just finished reading The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death, by Rich Larson in the latest Lightspeed. Not Larson’s best, but it was amusing to realize that “Gur Crggl Bssvpre” vf npghnyyl “Znfgre Puvrs” sebz gur Unyb tnzrf. I actually finished the whole story and was drafting my review when it suddenly hit me.
For those of you having a hard time finding Graphic Novels to nominate for the Hugos, take a look at Page 45 and its archive for the year. Gives you lots of information on different comics, generous displays of the artwork and a good idea of the storyline. Makes it much easier to find comics to suite ones own taste.
Ordered a bunch of new comics today after finding the page.
Thanks, that looks a good resource.
There are loads of decent comics around at the moment but I have Fear Of Missing Out on the best stuff.
Current reading:
Well, my reading isn’t very current at the moment as I am on a non-fiction and SFF-in-non-English-language kick.
But I did read the second of Emma Newman’s Split World books, Any Other Name, and it was excellent. I thought it was paced and structured very well, and the narrative is developing nicely. I’ll be picking up the next in the series soon.
Interesting read on telepresence robots:
Life as a Robot
For those with an interest in the Grimdark subgenre, there is a Grimdark readers and writers group on Facebook that is running a “best of 2016” contest/poll. One of my favorites is close to the top, but is well away from the current vote leader.
@Russell
I agree. I own* some of that music as well. I was not suggesting that he was the most important jazz musician or that he is the progenitor of that genre. Once that he is the first experience that most Americans have with jazz where they are the focus of the performance.
(given our litigious age, perhaps it is more correct to suggest that I have purchased licenses to listen to that music under most of the relevant conditions)
@rob_matic
I second the choice regarding the Split World series. Mrs. Newman does a fantastic job at creating a unique world, presenting a compelling narrative with engaging characters. She also does a great job of presenting the world in each successive book in a way that allows a reader to start in the middle. At least, she does so in a way that is better than some other books that I have read recently. Her book from this series that was published this summer is on my shortlist for the Hugo next year.
Regards,
Dann
Tristina Wright describes shenanigans with the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. She applied, then got an email saying she’d gotten $$ — but they said it was a *mistake*. She reached out to SFWA Director At Large Justina Ireland, but no dice & Ireland has now resigned.
Stay tuned.
rob_matic on December 7, 2016 at 7:17 am said:
Darren Garrison: Not me, but having read that article and her Twitter feed… holy bonkering moly.
Wow, she’s really drunk the whole pitcher of Kool-Aid, hasn’t she?
The fact that she has 37,000 followers swallowing the whacko conspiracy claptrap she’s spouting is pretty frightening. 😐
Ah, Lord Valentine’s Castle. Reread it last year and was glad to find I still love it.
Just read Becky Chambers’ new one, A Closed and Common Orbit. Liked it a good deal, and it has a firmer plot structure (the well known “past and present plots converging”) but is less expansive than Long Way …. . Will certainly want to read her next book, and would like to hear other filers’ views on the current one. I deeply admire her large mind and kind heart.
Today’s nice surprise was finding a stack of Genevieve Cogman’s new book, called (I think) in a local bookstore. Told myself I can have one tomorrow if I do my chores first.
I liked Becky Chambers’ Closed and Common Orbit. Better than the first one in many ways. I thought the first book was a lot of fun, and worthy of getting the author a Campbell nod but definitely not good enough to go on my hugo list. The second may be on my long list. Depends on what I decide when it comes time to nominate.
Since tor.com had the second book as part of the book club and the first book was $2.99 at amazon, I decided to try the Recluce books from Modesitt. Couldn’t get more than a few chapters into the first. Probably if I had encountered it in high school or college I would love them as much as a friend of mine does. Oh well. Might try the second anyway, since it’s not a direct sequel, especially if the protagonist is more to my liking. At 50ish, I have no patience anymore for teenage male protagonists. I barely have any patience for teenage female protagonists, either.
Since Annie Bellet’s Twenty-sided Sorceress books were free on amazon, I tried those. Finished the first one in one sitting (it’s fairly short) and am enjoying them. Protagonist is a competent adult female (yay). Light, but fun, urban-ish fantasy.
@Sylvia: At 50ish, I have no patience anymore for teenage male protagonists. A pity; the first book (in publication order) is a classic person-who-learns-better story. I’m 63 and thought it still held up.
When the scrollman brings the scroll
Well he just might like to know
He’s put a great big smile on somebody’s face
If you jump into your bed
Quickly cover up your head
Don’t you lock the doors
You know that mount tsudoku is on the way
Well I wish it could be Pixels everyday
When the filers start filking and the band begins to play
Oh I wish it could be Pixels everyday
So let the bells scroll out for Pixels
@Chip Hitchcock You know, I figured it was going there, but between the protagonist calling women “bitch” way too often and the so-80s-it-made-my-teeth-ache distinction of Order vs Chaos (which I also figured would get more nuanced eventually), I decided I didn’t have to read it. I might try a later volume with a different protagonist.
Sylvia Sotomayor on December 7, 2016 at 3:34 pm said:
I read one of the later ones. It was okay, but not something to make me want to read others in the series.
@Greg: Really? I twigged to that early on, at least when the narrator znxrf gur “yvxr n ivqrb tnzr” pbzzrag. Naq V qba’g rira cynl ivqrb tnzrf, rfc. abg Unyb.
@Dann: apparently These Kids Today don’t watch Peanuts specials (and why should they? the strip hasn’t had new content in 16 years and they don’t read newspapers), and Guaraldi died 40 years ago, so that music is probably less-known to them than “Take Five” or newer jazz. Most people didn’t think of it as jazz anyway, just “Peanuts music”. The characters aren’t even used in advertising any more.
I didn’t like “A Closed and Common Orbit” as much as the first, simply because I didn’t really care about those characters, and it took place in a much smaller and more predictable environment. Sensawunda was much less.
For Neil Gaiman fans: There’s a Humble Bundle running for 13 more hours with all sorts of rarities: scripts, comics, poems (including the Duran Duran biography, if you pay the highest amount).
12) My Favorite Tomorrow Panel – cigarettes, pipes, and beer for the panel members. Those were some days!
Bonnie: That’s 13 more days (plus about 16 hours as I write this).
@Lurkertype
Nope, it slid right past me. Zl uhfonaq naq V cynlrq nyy gur tnzrf pb-bc, fb lbh’q guvax V’q or snzvyvne jvgu gurz, ohg V qvqa’g svther vg bhg hagvy V ybbxrq hc “Crggl Bssvpre” ba Jvxvcrqvn.
At least I figured it out before someone had to explain it to me in a comment. 🙂
Re Pettibone: That’s certainly a very active imagination; maybe they can write good fiction.
@Bonnie McDaniel: That’s 13 more days 🙂 (but if it’s anything like the last time they did this/a similar Neil Gaiman bundle get in quick because it was the first [only?] time the middle tier on Humble Bundle has ended up more expensive than the last tier)
@Peer: From what I recall of Spin, I didn’t like the back-and-forth way the story was told and I hated the characters (maybe other problems, too; it’s been quite a while). It was a loaner from a friend, so I couldn’t throw it across the room. My friend was baffled, since he liked the book a lot. 😉 But I liked the excerpt of Last Year (and didn’t hate any characters!), so I feel more confident that I’ll like it. I haven’t read anything else of his, but I’m willing to try other past novels at some point.
@Hampus Eckerman: Thanks for pointing us to Page 45!
Bonnie
Thank you for the Humble Bumble link.
I feel like the cat that just ate the canary. That’s a boat load of Gaiman to chew on.
@Sylvia Sotomayor – If you like Modesitt’s writing but do not like his teenage male protagonist, I suggest the Spellsong Cycle books instead. The protagonist is a middle-aged, female vocalist who is summoned to another world where songs have power.
In the Magic of Recluse Larris can be grating. He is one of the least attractive protagonists of any of Modesitt’s books.
I love Spin. One of my favorites of Wilson’s. The sequel was a great disappointment.
I don’t think this establishes anything other than the uncontested fact that tastes vary, but there it is. 😉
(Just a random note) I’ve been having a serious brain-weasel attack over the last week or so, and as an antidote, I decided to supplement my pathetically thin end-of-year fiction eligibility post with a much more extensive end-of-year non-fiction roundup.
It doesn’t have the same purpose as a fiction roundup. Even given the high percentage of SFF-relevant blogging and reviewing I do, it isn’t as if I’m on anybody’s radar as a fan writer. But it is serving to remind me that I’m an extremely prolific writer on an astonishingly wide variety of topics. If I do say so myself. (And then, at night, the brain-weasels come and suggest that if my blogging were any good, people might actually read it.)
Ah well, it was worth a shot. I’ll probably get the post up Friday, if anyone’s interested. I was aiming for tomorrow, but in 5 hours of work, I’ve only made it up to the end of June, cataloging 94 essays and reviews.
@Heather: That sounds… really awesome. I look forward to it 🙂