(1) HUNDRED BEST. Unbound Worlds knows there’s nothing like a “best” list to get everyone riled up. To that end they present “The 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time”. I’ve read a solid 15 of these, which tells you I’m not a big fantasy fan, but even I know they should have picked a different Pratchett book.
It was daunting, but we did it: a list of the one hundred best fantasy books of all time. What was our criteria? Well, we loved these these books and thought they deserved to be on the list. That’s pretty much it. This list is totally subjective, and with a cut-off of one hundred books, we couldn’t include all of the amazing fantasy tales out there. We hope you look through this list and agree with a lot of our picks, and that you also find some new stories to pick up. If there’s anything we left out, please add it to the comments below — we’d love to see what books would be on your list!
So without further ado, here’s what makes our list of best fantasy books of all time (arranged alphabetically)! Fair warning: your TBR pile is about to get a lot bigger…
(2) NEW GROENING SERIES. The Verge’s Andrew Liptak reports “Matt Groening’s new animated fantasy show will premiere on Netflix in August”.
Matt Groening’s animated epic fantasy series has a release date: Netflix has revealed that Disenchantment will premiere on August 17th. The company also shared a handful of pictures that show off an art style that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched Futurama or The Simpsons.
Netflix officially announced the series last year. It’ll follow a “hard-drinking young princess” named Bean, an elf companion named Elfo, and her personal demon named Luci as they encounter all manner of fantasy creatures in a magical kingdom known as Dreamland. Netflix ordered 20 episodes of the show; the first 10 will premiere this year.
Drink it in, peasants! @Disenchantment, the latest series from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, premieres August 17 on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/INr3mDOzuB
— Netflix (@netflix) May 23, 2018
(3) HELP FRANKENSTEIN AUTHOR GET BUSTED. Sculptor Bryan Moore hopes to crowdfund the rest of the expenses of the Mary Shelley Bronze Bust Project. So far people have contributed $3,546 of the $16,000 goal.
To celebrate the 200th publication anniversary of the legendary novel “Frankenstein”, we’re donating a life size, bronze bust of Mary Shelley to the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA on August 30, 2018!!!!
While I’ve donated the last six months of my time sculpting Mary, I can’t get her across the finish line without your help to pay for the considerable costs at the bronze foundry to mold, cast, finish and fire the patina on the bust itself.
Mary Shelley is the second of three busts that MoPOP has graciously agreed to accept in my horror author bronze bust series; “Dracula” author Bram Stoker was unveiled in October, 2017, Mary Shelley will be installed on her birthday on August 30, 2018 and Rod Serling will be unveiled in 2019 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of “The Twilight Zone”. As you’ll see in the video, I’ve also sculpted and donated bronze busts of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.
(4) SEEMS LIKE FOREVER. It was another busy day at the Romance Writers of America.
We are aware of and in communication with attorneys about the new trademark filing for the word "forever."
— RWA (@romancewriters) May 23, 2018
The author and agent have reported the trademark filing is being withdrawn. We’re glad to see the issue resolved so quickly and appreciate the romance community’s alertness. Members affected by issues like this can always contact RWA for author relations assistance. https://t.co/FMbZlQewxw
— RWA (@romancewriters) May 23, 2018
(5) TODAY IN HISTORY
- May 23, 1969 — Destroy All Monsters premiered.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
- Born May 23, 1933 — Joan Collins, who won genre fame as “City on the Edge of Forever’s” Edith Keeler.
- Born May 23, 1986 — Black Panther director Ryan Coogler
(7) COMICS SECTION.
- John King Tarpinian witnessed the first book tour at Non Sequitur.
- And Lio seems to have the wrong idea about The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
(8) PERSISTENT BELIEVERS. Did you think this was a settled question? Oh, such a silly person you are… “Loch Ness Monster’s Existence Could Be Proven With eDNA”.
Is the Loch Ness real? We may soon have an answer.
A team of scientists have proposed using actual science to figure out if the mythical creature allegedly lurking in Scotland’s River Ness is actually real.
Their proposal? Using environmental DNA, or eDNA, a sampling method already used to track movements in marine life. When an animal moves through an environment, it leaves behind residual crumbs of its genetics by shedding skin or scales, leaving behind feathers or tufts of fur, perhaps some feces and urine.
Scientists think those residual clues left behind by a monster like that of the Loch Ness could be collected by eDNA and subsequently used to prove its existence.
“This DNA can be captured, sequenced and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms,” team spokesman Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand told Reuters.
It’s certainly not the first time that people, scientifically minded or not, have attempted to track the legendary monster’s existence. A sixth century document chronicles the tale of an Irish monk named St. Columba, who banished a “water beast” to the bottom of the River Ness.
(9) JDA WILL PROVE LOVE. Since his lawsuit won’t even get its first hearing til October, Jon Del Arroz came up with a new plan to make people pay attention to him: “Announcement: Rally For Freedom And Anti-Discrimination Demonstration At Worldcon 76 San Jose” [Internet Archive].
Civil rights activist Erin Sith, trans for Trump, and I talked about this briefly on our livestream last Thursday. As we are both minorities on the right, we’ve both had a lot of shared similar experiences where those of privilege on the left have treated us inhumanly because we left the proverbial slave plantation they set up for us. 2018 is the year we will let our message be heard, in unity, in love, and for tolerance and diversity.
We are planning a gathering outside Worldcon 76 in San Jose, on Saturday, August 18th, 2018. I’ve talked with the city of San Jose and the convention center and we are cleared to go on their end. We cannot allow these institutions to willfully discriminate and spew hatred just because someone is an outspoken political personality. With Worldcon’s actions emboldening ConCarolinas and Origins to similarly attempt to harm and discredit other popular conservative authors because of politics, enough is enough….
(10) ANTIMATTER. Gizmodo swears it happened in 2015: “A Recent Hurricane Shot a Bolt of Antimatter Toward Earth”.
The detector onboard the plane measured a phenomenon that scientists have been interested in for decades: terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. It’s unclear exactly how it happens, but lightning in storms seems to accelerate electrons to nearly light speed. These electrons collide with the particles in the atmosphere, resulting in high-energy x-rays and gamma rays that scientists have measured in satellites and on the ground. The rays could also result from collisions between electrons and their antimatter partners, positrons.
The team behind the newest paper had a tool called the Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE) on board a hurricane-hunting WP-3D plane, according to the paper published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
(11) UNDERGROUND. “New whisky distillery in Moray ‘like nothing else'”. It blends in with the landscape, but visits expected to double. Chip Hitchcock asks, “A side trip for next year’s Worldcon?”
The new distillery, on the Easter Elchies estate near Craigellachie in Moray, has been camouflaged under a vast turf roof, to blend in with the rolling hillside.
It is believed to be the most expensive in the country, going 40% over budget, with a total cost for the production facility and visitor centre of £140m.
The roof, with 10cm (4in) depth of turf and meadow flowers, covers 14,000 sq m.
Underneath are ventilation, vapour control, flexible waterproofing and irrigation systems.
Under those is a complex ceiling structure comprising 2,500 panels, few of them the same.
(12) HEAVY DEW. “GRACE mission launches to weigh Earth’s water” – BBC has the story. This is a replacement/upgrade for applauded 15-year-old satellites which will track icecaps, and sea/land exchanges.
A joint US-German mission has gone into orbit to weigh the water on Earth.
The Grace satellites are replacing a pair of highly successful spacecraft that stopped working last year.
Like their predecessors, the new duo will circle the globe and sense tiny variations in the pull of gravity that result from movements in mass.
These could be a signal of the land swelling after prolonged rains, or of ice draining from the poles as they melt in a warming climate.
The satellites were launched on Tuesday aboard a SpaceX rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force base in California.
(13) SUMMA WHAT? Bakers are more activist in some parts of the country: “US student’s ‘Summa cum laude’ graduation cake censored”.
The South Carolina student’s mother had asked a local grocery store to print the term “Summa Cum Laude” (with the highest distinction) on her son’s cake.
The store censored the term “cum” deeming it offensive and put three hyphens in its place.
(14) TODAY’S CLICKBAIT. Frog in a Well asks “Was Hirata Atsutane Japan’s first Science Fiction writer?”
Maybe. Well, sort of. It kind of depends on how you define things.
Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843) was one of the key thinkers and popularizers of Japanese Nativism. He was a prolific writer, and most of what he wrote was aimed at proving that Japan was the center of the universe. In particular, he argued against Chinese learning, which was pointless, and to the extent it was any good, the Japanese had done it first. He argued against Indian (Buddhist) learning, which was pointless, and to the extent it was any good, the Japanese had done it first. He argued against European (Dutch) learning, which was pointless, and to the extent it was any good, the Japanese had done it first. As you may guess, he was a bit polemical. He was also pretty important in the creation and popularization of a specifically Japanese identity.
One of his important works is Senkyo Ibun (Strange tidings from the realm of the Immortals), 1822. This is an account of his interviews with the teenage tengu Kozo Torakichi. Tengu are the trickster/mountain goblin figures of Japanese folklore. Torakichi claimed to have been raised by them, and to have learned all the secrets of true Japanese-ness in the process.
(15) PERSONAL 451. Mr. Sci-Fi delivers “Ray Bradbury & Fahrenheit 451 – The Untold Story.”
Sci-fi whiz Marc Zicree shares stories his dear friend and mentor Ray Bradbury told him about the genesis of Fahrenheit 451 and gives a history of the work that includes first editions, plays, radio versions and movies.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Kendall, Andrew Porter, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rev. Bob.]
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I don’t remember anyone exposing him to the Terrigen Mists….
(1) Yeah, it might have been better to split the list into the “series” and the “stand-alone”, otherwise some of the entries (as ‘first in the series’) do seem very odd.
It’s still a pretty decent starting list for someone who knows nothing of the genre though. And it allows everyone else to argue, which is the real reason for a list, of course.
Judge Magney:
Honestly, I think you managed to argue for how good the list is by ranting about why mostly forgotten works and authors aren’t in it.
I got a surprisingly high 53 on that list, with two more in my immediate TBR, so it’s clearly hitting a genre sweet spot for me 🙂
I agree with everyone who has pointed out that some of the series based choices don’t make sense, but I wouldn’t dispute the quality of anything outside that, and it’s really nice to see a list recognising lots of high quality modern fantasy and the high hit rate among titles I have read makes me interested to find out more about some of the things I don’t recognise.
I’ve read a surprising 30 of the books on the fantasy list. It seemed to me that a lot of the books were very recent, which is fine, but obviously this isn’t a list for someone who wants to explore older roots of the modern genre. That said, and with the caveat that I haven’t read most of the books, it seemed well enough done as these things go. I’m currently reading Borne, which is excellent; good to see VanderMeer on the list.
1) Read 47, with varying opinions as to the “greatness” or otherwise thereof. Have a further 8 languishing on the to-read pile. Have privately filed a couple of others under “not going to bother”.
Of course, arguing about lists is at least half the point of them, and at least that’s a more varied sort of list than you usually see. As far as Terry Pratchett goes… I think the best “gateway drug” for Pratchett is one which dovetails with the reader’s interests. Someone likes police procedurals? Give them Guards! Guards! Shakespeare? Start them with Wyrd Sisters. Movies? Moving Pictures. And so on. I suppose, for people like me who grew up with Leiber and Lovecraft and McCaffrey, The Colour of Magic might actually be a good place to start – though there’s no denying Pratchett improved a lot as he went on.
1) A better list than many. It has its limitations, as pointed out above, but all lists do.
My personal list would have some more oldies (William Morris. George MacDonald, Leiber, Fletcher Pratt), Wolfe and Bujold. And no one seems to mention Sean Russell any more, but I very much like the four novels that begin with World Without End.
13) I saw that and mentioned on twitter that I need a Cicero facepalm gif. I have no gif game, though.
I haven’t gone through the Unbound worlds list yet to see how I “do”. At first glance I do like this list more than some others.
@ Hampus:
Judge Magney:
Honestly, I think you managed to argue for how good the list is by ranting about why mostly forgotten works and authors aren’t in it.
I see Judge’s point but in the end I agree with Hampus. For a list published in 2018, it has a lot of books that have not shown up in other lists I’ve seen (Night’s Master by Tanith Lee, for example). It is not my list but the Unbound Worlds crew is obviously much more aware of the genre’s history than other folks.
9) My suggestion is to pull a “Mariachi Band the nasty lawyer”: there will be a lot of filkers at the convention and, as we know, these are people who can take a tune and invent all manner of lyrics….
Why not set up outside the convention entrance and serenade the passersbys?
(Suggestion to Filkers. The “M.T.A.” song – Kingston Trio – seems ripe for the plucking….)
I’d be happy to join a sing along (though the rest of you won’t be. Can’t carry a tune in a paper bag.)
Thread by Jeet Heer (editor of The New Republic) on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/999510262897049600
“So I have an idea for great book that someone (not me) should write: Cordwainer Smith’s Science Fiction & the Bad Conscience of American Empire.” I hadn’t known about Linebarger’s extremely skeevy CIA work.
Heer concludes: “10. More broadly: science fiction was the genre that allowed the wounded soldiers weapon makers, torturers, psywar experts, etc to work out their traumas & fears: Heinlein, Smith, Tiptree, Wolfe, many more.”
You try going to Dublin and avoiding a tour of Guinness, see how easy it is…
(1) i’ve read 36. Yep, pretty 70s and 80s list. I missed seeing a lot of books, e.g. Little Big, and others I mentioned yesterday, but it was great to see Edward Eager and Half Magic, though it helps to have read Ivanhoe before tackling it.
I have this thing where where some books others would call Fantasy is firmly placed in the category of Sagas instead (a bit like fairy tales) for me. The Neverending Story is a Saga for me, but I do think it would fit into that list.
1) 32, with another dozen in the TBR pile or partial reads. But some of those are really head scratchers. I mean, if you’re going to include R.A Salvatore, why not his most popular ones as opposed to current grist? I can see the broad guidelines of urban fantasy open to include Rice’s ‘Interview’, but it stands out as an odd example. And, yes, taking the first (and arguably weakest) book of several major authors doesn’t really suggest a deep analysis behind many of the additions.
That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of works and authors that don’t often show up in these lists because they weren’t huge best sellers. I don’t think it is a bad list, but it is a wildly inconsistent one.
@4: Considering that Forever is (inter alia) a Judy Blume title, I hope the RWA didn’t have to pay their lawyers much to sit on the induhvidual who tried to trademark it.
@9: The obvious response to this is to have plenty of people videoing everything. An ~escort service loaning bodycams to anyone who has to go through that mess is probably unnecessary; with luck there won’t be enough of them (cf @Lanodantheon) to matter. I suspect that an airport-style notice (“Certain individuals have informed us they will be exercising their free-speech rights…”) in the convention newsletter is probably giving them too much attention/leverage.
@P J Evans: Mike, Moray is in Scotland, not Ireland! So? I hit both Orkney and London around 2005, and chunks of Scandinavia after 1990. Travel in Europe may cost more than in the US, but people dropping the huge price of a transatlantic ticket will want to make the most of the expense; there are plenty of water crossings between Ireland and northerly Britain.
@Tom Becker: distilleries are all very well, but their product is bottled uniformly; I have it on good authority that the best Guinness (no, that’s not an oxymoron) is poured in the immediate neighborhood, if not at the brewery itself.
@Judge Magney: a good point re dark, which they don’t say they’re excluding; some of your names lean very far toward horror, but I’m annoyed with myself for not noticing the absence of Powers. (Which one? All the post-Laser work is good, but I was especially blown away by Declare despite my attitude/grievance vs Xianity.) And De Camp (many choices even if they’re light — almost anything would be better than Colour — and Pratt’s The Blue Star….
@Lurkertype: my UUSWAG is that a slim majority of attendees will be staying in other hotels. (The W76 site no longer has room counts for the connected hotels.) There’s also going out for lunches that aren’t overpriced and overprocessed — California influence might make the SJCC less bad about this than other CCs, but there’s probably a limit to what the food contractor will do.
@Doctor Science: an interesting claim, but ISTM that most of Smith is a justification for intervention rather than an apology.
@1: ~55 read, and several unread I wouldn’t let into my house let alone onto my shelves.
1 – I’ve read 40 of them. It’s a decent list, sure it has some weird choices from some authors or books that appear to represent a whole series, but it has a good selection of older and newer titles and a wide range various fantasy sub genres. Not what I’d list but it ain’t my list.
2 – Futurama is one of my favorite things ever so I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out
Another “who goes outside the hotel/convention center” is anyone who finds that staying indoors for the entire day isn’t good for our (physical or mental) health. In my case it’s mostly a mood thing, so I might just spend a few minutes sitting or standing near the building entrance during daylight. Other people might be out there jogging (if the hotel in question doesn’t have exercise facilities they like).
An obvious target for that sort of picket would be people commuting to the con. If I were picketing an event (any event) at the SJCC, I’d look for a spot between the convention center and the light rail station. (That’s based on a quick look at the SJCC website; prominent local authors might know a better location.)
On the other hand, if I was on my way to a con and saw a random picketer or seven outside the convention center, I would probably walk past without engaging, unless the picket signs said something like “SJCC is unfair to janitors. Support SEIU.” I’d have too much else to do; it’s not like stopping for a minute on my way into the local farmers market to sign a nominating petition for Maura Healy, or talk to a campaigner for instant runoff voting. But those are both things I am already in favor of–I like our (Massachusetts) attorney general.
As it happens, there were people running an “informational” picket line at the SJCC at ConJosé, the 2002 Worldcon, as part of a long-running dispute between two locals of the same union. One of them stopped me and handed me papers asking me to see that “the people in charge of this event” get it. I reckon he did not see my “Chairman” ribbon.
Besides the party hotel (and the hotel with the largest single block of our hotel rooms) is the Fairmont, about 300 m/1000 ft/2 blocks north of the Marriott’s entrance (the Marriott and Hilton are connected to the convention center), there’s also the 3Below Theater, about the same distance east from the same entrance, with whom Worldcon 76 is partnering for an SF/F short film festival. (Do go and see it. And while you’re at it, check out 3Below’s other stuff; they are fantastic.)
58/100 but I have been reading Fantasy since the mid-80s. I had forgotten about My Father’s Dragon! I remember loving that as a child.
Hugo Reading: Currently reading LUMINESCENT THREADS on the train and have to put it down every so often because tears come to my eyes. Have realized that I haven’t read as much Octavia Butler as I thought, and will remedy that after Hugo voting closes.
JJ, Ctein:
I don’t feel like going back to analyze why, but JJ’s posts did come across to me as more confrontational than necessary, even though I agree that we here all already know what to do when JDA is around.
He has every right in the world to protest; we all do. If it’s how he wants to spend his afternoons, I say to him “you do you”.
People passing near him unwittingly have every right not to engage, and not to be harassed. Those going to the con might possibly spend time considering how to let other fen know who he is and why not to engage.
(11) They need a jingle:
When you wake in the tulips
after just one Mint Julep
that’s a Moray!
(handwaving away the difference between whiskey and bourbon)
1) I’ve read 32, but only actually heard of maybe 7 or 8 of the ones I haven’t read. And the Eddings one they chose is three books bound together in one volume, so I’m not sure that really qualifies as only “one” book. I agree w/ Kendall that the Pratchett (and other books that are part of long series) were likely simply a case of the first book in a series being chosen as a stand-in for the series itself, although Wizard and Glass kind of puts a lie to that. Very happy to see The Devourers there; it was phenomenal, perhaps one of the best books I’ve read, in any genre, in years. 100 Years of Solitude surprises me a bit, but I’ve been editing some courses on the history of magical realism (editing online educational materials for a university is my day job) and putting it under the fantasy genre, while in many ways appropriate, is actually really problematic in a bunch of other ways, and it makes me uneasy. A few of these are books that I thought were fun, but were not particularly well made beyond that most superficial level, so while I would still recommend them, I doubt I’d put them on my version of this list. (When I first read The Last Unicorn a couple years ago I would have expected to put it on my “meh” list, but it turns out it’s utterly amazing. Very much the Real Thing, and it makes me glad to see it here.)
Meredith moment(s):
Tansy Rayner Roberts’s Mocklore Omnibus (includes splashdance Silve, Liquid Gold, Ink Black Magic, and Bounty) is free today for kindle.
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher is currently 99 cents.
Anna Feruglio: For a long time I have been quite certain (based on no evidence whatsoever) that the Guinness brewery has a tap in the wall. I want to find that tap and lie down in the gutter beneath it and open my mouth. Now I realize that’s a silly idea. Guinness comes out foamy. It takes a long time to set up. There’s a good reason they serve it in glasses.
Sofia Samatar is doing an AMA on Reddit; open for questions now, and active noon through 3pm EST.
Anna Feruglio:
I’ve been to Dublin roughly “at least once per year” since, um, 2010 (with a few more visits between 2001 and 2010) and only managed to visit the Gunniess Brewery experiencething this February for the first time. I may have been to the Jameson distillery experience a few times, though (two? three?).
My guess is that Jon Del Arroz is more likely to bore people outside Worldcon than to provoke them.
I am skeptical that Del Arroz can say anything during a sidewalk protest that would attract the interest of passing fans. Every aspect of his online persona suggests an interaction with him on fandom and politics would be tedious.
On a college campus like the University of Florida, you can’t cross the main public areas during the day without leaflets being shoved at you. Most people who take one toss it in the next trash can. I think Del Arroz will attract about as much attention as that.
Anyone hear anything further on the Hugo Packet? I’d be waiting with baited breath but my cat would be in my face trying to get at the fish, and I’d be waiting with bated breath but hypoxia is bad for my reading comprehension….
So I’m just waiting. <grin>
microtherion:
When the scotch hits your glass
in a barn roofed with grass
that’s a Moray!
Just announced: They’re working on it.
http://www.worldcon76.org/entry/hugo-voter-packet-news
Maybe the Woldcon information packet can make a helpful note on the “surrounding area” map.
@Anna – Guinness is a brewery, not a distillery. They’re not the same thing.
(I’d be up for Jameson’s, if I were going. I do drink it, occasionally.)
If I were in the north of Scotland, I’d consider visiting this new distillery – but I’d also try one of the older ones.
Tom Becker: Just announced: They’re working on it.
That’s dated a week ago.
@PJ Evans
And there are some very good ones within walking distance of Macallan. I can highly recommend Aberlour. The Speyside Cooperage in Craigellachie is also worth a visit. A couple of miles away from Craigellachie is Dufftown where Balvenie, Glenfiddich, Mortlach (and others) are located.
JJ: Sorry. Posted before I had coffee.
The Guadalupe River is half a block west of the convention center. San Carlos St. runs over it. There is a bridge, and a nice trail along the river. Just sayin’.
@rcade
Protests always need a certain level of involvement before they get taken seriously. If it is JDA and a couple of random fellow trolls he’s scared up, he’s going to look like what he is; a crank with an issue of dubious legitimacy (or basis in reality) wondering around trying desperately to get anyone’s attention or provoke some kind of confrontation. In short, he’ll be the sidewalk shouter that everyone in any big city has to deal with on a daily basis.
My only concern is after an hour or two, standing around in the August heat and becoming increasingly more frustrated that he’s being largely ignored, he’ll try and force some incident. So I do hope that there’s at least a volunteer or security in the area just in-case he does decide to push harder. Fortunately, I think the attractions of Worldcon will be of significantly more interest to the attendees than arguing his wingnut logic out in the sun.
It was easy to overlook the fact my parents’ place on Guadalupe (in Kerrville) backed onto the Guadalupe. The back yard was so long it was darn near hidden by the curve of the planet.
I’m always curious about those essential lists — between reading very quickly, working in bookstores for years, and some other factors like having lived longer than some, I’m usually familiar with the bulk of the titles.
I’ve read 77 of them this time so in many ways it seems a dandy list to me, but definitely some stuff left off (how can any fantasy list be complete with Godstalk!?! I’d also add an impassioned plea for Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings, one of the best baseball novels of all time.)
1) 36. That was probably the first time I have ever seen Herland and Dragons of Autumn Twilight on the same list.
9) Now I want to see (national treasure) Chuck Tingle write a story about (regional gadfly) JDAs antics.
My wife and I walked the Speyside Way a few years ago and managed to fit in visits to Aberlour and Glenfiddich. The Aberlour one is indeed very good, and the morning tasting session sets you up quite nicely for a day’s walking in the Scottish countryside!
@Tom Becker
As opposed to all the non-foamy beers you’re supposed to drink directly from a tap outside the building? 😉
—————
On the Hugo packet, I’m trying really hard to be patient but I wish they hadn’t set my expectations for week of May 7th. To be fair, it’s more the uncertainty of what will be in (esp. for YA, Graphic Novels and Related Work) than any worry about reading time right now, so I really SHOULD just try harder with the patience thing…
Remember that case where an online video-game dispute led to a SWATting that resulted in the death of someone who wasn’t involved? The gamers involved, and the creep who actually made the call, have been indicted. According to the person who posted the link, there’s some reason to think that they may end up facing federal charges as well as state ones.
9) Something I read elseNet seems to be appropriate here:
“What the Right calls ‘censorship’ is usually actually censure – people meeting them with strong disapproval. What the Right calls for in return is usually actual censorship – asking ruling bodies and institutions to limit the freedom of expression.”
@ Avilyn: Your third scenario sounds just a bit like one that occurs in Zenna Henderson’s “The People” stories. (The People are evacuating their home planet because it’s going to explode; an old woman decides to stay behind and die where she has lived and loved; this opens up a place on her ship for a young woman who would otherwise have been separated from her fiance.) There are enough differences that I don’t think it’s the one you recall, but I’m tossing it out for the sake of completeness.
@ Kendall: ACC is effectively a Regency romance novel set in the Vorkosiverse. If you’ve never read any Regencies, you might not have noticed this. Also, I hope you didn’t get the version of “Winterfair Gifts” that came out in Miles In Love, which was absolutely riddled with typographical problems.
@ Judge Magney: Wow, who died and made you Emperor?
@Lee: (censure/censor)
Astoundingly apt summation.
I’m only at 10 on that top 100. Some others and were already in the “might read some day, eventually” category.
A couple of further thoughts re (9):
– A good soundbite description of JDA would be “the Fred Phelps of science fiction”.
– The evolution of slang has suggested a slight change to one of the lines in “The John Birch Society”, to wit: “To get a movement started, you need lots of tools and cranks.” (The original was “fools”, but the word “tool” has now developed an appropriate usage.)
I got ?21 plus some Tsundokus, which is more than usual. Quite happy to not see Terry Brooks on that list (I notice the abscence of Barbara Hambly, but its not that I really missed her.)
I loled at 13
Adding these to my TBL pile on the mp3 player: BBC Radio adaptations of the original Star Wars trilogy at archive.org.
ETA: BBC Lord of the Rings, too.
@Kip W
They are tremendous. I wore out two sets of bootlegs over the years.