(1) THE SICHUAN CHICKEN EMERGENCY. Last year’s Hugo-winning novelist has received a new honor — “Dinosaur relics named after science fiction writer Liu Cixin”.
A new kind of bird-footed dinosaur footprint was discovered in Gulin county, Southwest China’s Sichuan province and named for Chinese science-fiction writer Liu Cixin, to honor his contribution to raising public interest in science.
Liu, who was thrilled to hear the news, said that he has great interest in paleontology.
“It is like a science fiction we’re reading that the dinosaur in Gulin county was preserved so well for billions of years. It helps us travel back in time. I hope the relics could be studied and preserved well.”
(2) SUPERGIRL ADDS W, LEAVES BS BEHIND. Variety makes it official — “’Supergirl’ Lands at the CW for Season 2”.
After nearly two years of rumors, “Supergirl” is heading to the CW for its second season, Variety has learned….
At CBS, “Supergirl” averaged a 2.5 rating in adults 18-49 and 10.03 million viewers overall in Nielsen’s “live plus-7” estimates. It was CBS’ top-rated rookie drama this season in the demo, and was also its youngest-skewing drama with a median age of 55.6 — however, it was down from comedies in the Monday night timeslot last year.
The hotly anticipated crossover with “The Flash” on March 28 was a ratings hit for the CW, prompting the rumors to begin swirling once again that “Supergirl” would head over to the younger-skewing network, in order to nab a renewal. That episode, co-starring “Flash’s” Grant Gustin, averaged a 2.5 rating in 18-49 and 9.6 million total viewers in L+7 — the show’s best numbers in the second half of its run.
(3) KRYPTON. Vulture says Supergirl’s home planet is also going to be on the tube: “Syfy Orders Pilot for Krypton, a Show About Superman’s Grandpa Who Lives on a Planet That Definitely Isn’t Going to Explode Any Time Soon”.
And you thought Batman was the only DC Comics superhero who would get a TV show about what everyone around him was doing before he became interesting: THR reports that SyFy has ordered a pilot for Krypton, a Superman prequel from David S. Goyer set on the eponymous doomed planet. The series will follow Superman’s grandpa as he “fights to redeem his family’s honor and save his beloved world from chaos,” which is one task at which he is guaranteed to fail (because the world will blow up) and another that is a bit of a moot point (because, again, the world will blow up).
(4) GEMMELL VOTING STARTS TOMORROW. Voting on the longlists for 2016’s David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy (the Legend, Morningstar, and Ravenheart Awards) opens midday on Friday, May 13 and closes at midnight on Friday June 24.
The award’s Facebook page revealed there will be 48 nominations for the Legend Award, 6 for the Morningstar and 39 for the Ravenheart.
Voting on the shortlist opens at midday on Friday July 8 and closes at midnight on Friday August 19.
The presentation takes place at 8pm on Saturday September 24 at Fantasycon in Scarborough.
(5) MIND MELD. SFFWorld threw a lifeline to Rob B, whose Mind Meld installment needed a home after SF Signal went offline. The participants are N. E. White, Jonah Sutton-Morse, Yanni Kuznia, and Summer Brooks.
“MIND MELD: Recent SF/F/H You’ve Read & Enjoyed About Which You Knew Little”
Q: What recent SF/F/H books have you read and enjoyed which you knew little to nothing about beforehand? (For example, you go into a bookstore and picked a book off the shelf based on title and/or cover alone.)
(6) NEW YORK NEW YORK NEW YORK. Pornokitsch compares and contrasts in “Will Eisner and Three Visions of New York”.
Both Eisner and Fantasia 2000 also recognise this aspect of the city: it can grind people down, even to the point of death. Using the darkness of the city in this way all three of these representations show the city itself to be an active force working on their various protagonists. Dark Dark Dark focus more on the elemental aspects of the city while Eisner examines the interaction of the people and their home, but both are aware of the inherent magic of the place. Dark Dark Dark present in their enigmatic lyrics and the swirling otherworldliness of their instrumentals what Eisner recognised in his introduction to ‘The Building’, there is something “unexplained and […] magical” about the city which can affect those that live in it.
(7) NEW DESTINATION. Variety’s article “Winchester Mystery House Movie Attracts Spierig Brothers” discusses the next project by the Spierig Brothers, Winchester, about the famous San Jose, CA haunted house.
Keith Kato writes, “Michael and Peter Spierig, the Spierig Brothers, are favorites of (and members of) The Heinlein Society for their most recent film, Predestination (2014 U.S. release), based on the Robert A. Heinlein short story ‘All You Zombies.’ We have been told by the Brothers that they will be out of the country from July-September, presumably for filming commitments for this project and they regret they will not be able to attend the Kansas City Worldcon.”
(8) FURNITURE. I don’t think we’ll be able to order a park bench from them, though it’s nice to know Sancal’s Futura collection is based on 1960s sci-fi space stations.
Dezeen promotion: Spanish brand Sancal has launched a “retro-futuristic” collection of furniture, featuring tables, chairs and ornaments that reference 1960s science fiction films (+ movie).
The Futura collection, which was exhibited by Sancal during this year’s Milan design week, is modelled on the set designs of movies such as the 1968 epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
(9) NEW AWARDS? Bleeding Cool passed on this rumor about the San Diego Comic-Con.
The word on the street is that we are about to get a brand-new, very well-funded awards show for San Diego Comic Con.
I understand that high level talks are taking place between Jennifer O’Connell, Executive VP of Alternative Programming, Seth Lederman, Executive VP General Manager of the new streaming channel Comic-Con HQ and David Glanzer, Chief Communications and Strategy Officer of Comic-Con International, the people behind San Diego Comic Con.
While the existing Eisner Awards cover the comic book industry, and have been the premier awards at San Diego for some time, this new award show is planned to cover comics, TV, film, games and all manner of fan and genre culture. So expect very big names on hand to host and present awards…..
Lionsgate is said to be interested in producing the show.
(10) YESTERDAY IN HISTORY. Can it be May 11th was National Twilight Zone Day….? And I missed it?
Well…! Then I guess that makes it appropriate to feature a “lost episode”…
(11) STARFLEET TRAINING. “’Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience’ is coming to the USS Intrepid this summer”. MeTV has the story.
The museum exhibit will allow fans to study Starfleet culture as part of “Starfleet Academy’s Career Day.”
Beginning July 9, those lucky enough to get to New York City can visit Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience. The museum exhibit is opening aboard the USS Intrepid, which sits on Pier 86 along the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan. A naval museum might seem like a strange location for a Star Trek exhibit, but what is Star Trek if not a space navy? Besides, NASA’s Space Shuttle Enterprise is on display at the Intrepid Museum.
The Intrepid Museum will be the first venue in the United States to host this immersive “Trek Tech” experience, a sort of quick fantasy camp. The exhibit allows visitors to join Starfleet Academy’s Career Day, which includes orientation and nine zones of study in language, medicine, engineering, navigation, command and science. Tickets cost $18–$35. The exhibit runs through October 31, 2016. (That final day will be a cosplay dream.)
Visit the Intrepid website for more information.
(12) MEMORIES. Here’s a Lou Stathis artifact I never heard of before.
Photo: diskomo: Stalking Ralph by Matt Howarth and Lou Stathis. http://t.co/y8bP1w23fs
— Niels Heemskerk (@MaoSan) June 3, 2015
The cover image comes from here.
(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
- Born May 12, 1937 — George Carlin (comedian; first to host Saturday Night Live)
- Born May 12 – Heather Rose Jones
- Born May 12 – David Doering
(15) WILL FANAC FOR CHARITY. Jim C. Hines is back with another example of “SF/F Being Awesome: Lar DeSouza and Sailor Bacon”.
If my math is right, Lar [DeSouza] and his fans have raised around $40,000 in total to fight MS.
There’s even a new Sailor Bacon plush, with a portion of the proceeds going to MS research.
Fighting MS by con light,
Winning breakfast by daylight,
Rainbow beard that is so bright!
It is the one named Sailor Bacon!The MS Walk was May 1 this year, but it looks like you can still donate.
(16) END OF DISNEY DOLLARS. Paleofuture at Gizmodo mourns that gift cards have killed Disney Dollars.
When I was a kid I loved Disney Dollars. For those unfamiliar, they’re Disney’s paper notes that look like real money and feature cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Dumbo on the front. They’re only good at Disney Parks and stores, making them essentially like gift certificates. But Disney will stop printing Disney Dollars on May 14, 2016.
It’s truly the end of an era for Disney nerds. As reported by WDW News Today, the move is being blamed on the rise of gift cards and the general death of paper money. Disney staff were told just a couple of hours ago but the company has yet to make an official statement.
Disney Dollars will continue to be accepted at Disney locations, since they have no expiration date. But unless you have hundreds of notes to unload you should probably just hold on to them for a bit. The resale market for even once-common Disney products can be pretty lucrative after a few years.
John King Tarpinian recalls, “A long time ago when friends would have a kid or a grandkid I would buy one share of Disney stock. (Usually with a $25 premium over the stock price.) The certificates were beautifully framed, not to mention that with even one share it would get an invite to corporate events. Then Disney went electronic and that was gone. Now Disney Dollars. Gift cards are just not the same.”
(17) CAP’S PSA. Jim Burns says, “With all this Captain America chat (my all time favorite super hero, by the way!), a truly rare piece of film: a public service announcement, circa 1980 (or thereabouts)!”
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Keith Kato, Will R., Tom Galloway, Andrew Porter, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Doctor Science.]
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I put this on the 5-11 scroll because I didn’t see this one when I wrote the post, but… Agent Carter was officially canceled by ABC today. Also Castle, so Nathan Fillion is out of a job.
2nd 1st!
4) I’m not sure why the Puppies don’t put more energies into the Gemmell’s?
8) Ooooooh. I’d buy that.
9) That’s a wierd thing. Why have awards shows ballooned the past few years? How quickly will the Puppies claim the SDCC award?
Is there an award the Puppies won’t claim?
@BigelowT: Sorry to hear about Castle, but all good things…
Thirfth!
(2) SUPERGIRL ADDS W, LEAVES BS BEHIND. – Hee for the title. Hope this gives us more crossovers with Flash.
(3) KRYPTON. – Ok, jumping the gun and all that, but this sounds dumb.
(4) GEMMELL VOTING STARTS TOMORROW. – Hmmm.
@BigelowT
Enh. Castle (like Bones/ Supernatural) should’ve been naturally ended at least a couple of seasons ago.
Still sad to hear about Agent Carter though. In happier news, Lupita Nyong’o may be in Black Panther!
I’ll admit, if they named a fossil after me, I’d want a big predator…guess I’m greedy.
(4) Glad to see that they made the longlist process more open this year.
On another note, is it just me or is there no way to locate previous years’ winners on the Gemmell Award website? I remember seeing a list last year but it seems to have disappeared.
(ETA: added date to avoid confusion)
Just wanted to draw the attention of anyone who might be interested to “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”, a movie currently in production, directed by Luc Besson, and starring Chinese actor and former Kpop star (long story) Kris Wu. Details and a photo (of Kris) here:
http://wyfuniverse.livejournal.com/188675.html
Quoth IMDB: “Time-traveling agent Valerian is sent to investigate a galactic empire, along with his partner Laureline… Rooted in the classic graphic novel series, Valerian and Laureline.” (I assume by “rooted in” they mean “we’re using the characters and scenario”.)
I know nothing more. Did I mention Kris is in it?
Chagrined to hear about Agent Carter. I really liked that show. (Ticky? Yes, ticky.)
[ticky]
(2) Sigh. Will miss Castle — a good source of comfort TV and always love seeing Nathan and the frequent in-jokes. Hope the move to Canada and budget cut doesn’t take too much out of “Supergirl” (please don’t lose Cat, please, she’s the best). And Agent Carter season 1 made my BDP Long.
(3) Pointless, much?
(4) Why do they bother with longlist and shortlist when there’s only a month-long period? How many honking big fantasy novels are the public expected to be able to read (in 2 categories) in a month? Very cool awards, though.
(7) No matter how talented they are, I predict this movie will suck. But perhaps as a local, I’m jaded.
(15) That is awesome.
(16) When I went unto the Land, I looked at Disney Dollars and thought, “So, money I can’t use anywhere else in the world? When I don’t know when I’m coming back?” and firmly kept hold of my Washingtons. I thought the same on my next visit 15 years later. I may still have some A and B tickets around somewhere.
::just ticky::
Bartimaeus: is there no way to locate previous years’ winners on the Gemmell Award website?
It doesn’t appear that this information is available on their website, but Wikipedia has a complete list.
After looking at the Gemmell past winners list, I feel fairly confident Abercrombie will be the winner this year. For whatever he has out.
(2) SUPERGIRL ADDS W, LEAVES BS BEHIND. My God, Supergirl’s median viewer age was 55.6 – just about exactly my own age – and it was their youngest-skewing show?! Did someone misplace the remote at the nursing home again?
Re: Agent Carter,
I AM DISAPPOINT.
I loved just about everything about Agent Carter (including the costumes) and the new show with Hayley Atwell doesn’t sound nearly as promising, so I am sad for her AND me, because I won’t have Agent Carter to look forward to. I think I may have to break up with TV.
Oh, I always liked the Winchester House. Fond memories of visiting as a kid.
Aw, I got a birthday mention. Thanks! I’ve spent the day in Chicago, though–unlike the rest of my twitter feed who are talking about being in Chicago–I’m not here for the Nebulas. In my case, just a stop for some relaxing touristing before heading on the the medieval conference in Kalamazoo tomorrow. (That is, the conference started today, but we won’t be there until tomorrow.) It’s been a bit odd realizing that I’ve just missed bumping into various people accidentally. Kate Elliott was tweeting about taking the same architecture river cruise that I took, except an hour earlier.
I don’t pick up many books any more without at least having heard some buzz about them, but I did a couple of weeks ago. Killing time waiting for a prescription to be filled, I picked up a copy of Divergent by Veronica Roth mostly because the cover made me wonder, “Is this supposed to be a Hunger Games clone?” Opened it up to read a few pages, and came up for air 2 chapters later, so I bought it.
It is indeed post-apocalyptic YA fiction with a female protagonist, but I wouldn’t call it a Hunger Games clone. (Please note — I haven’t read Hunger Games, so nothing I say here is intended to be a slam at that book.) The story is interesting, the characters are engaging, there are some fairly hefty ethical issues dealt with in what feels like a realistic manner. The ending is an obvious setup for the next book, Insurgent, but it’s not a cliffhanger, just a pause between story arcs. There’s some interesting worldbuilding information in the back of the book, too. I’ll probably buy the rest of the series, which is currently 3 books plus a supplemental volume focusing on the secondary protagonist.
I have to say that while yes, Supernatural should’ve ended years ago, I’ve really been enjoying this season. (Although I haven’t seen this week’s episode yet.)
Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, is dead.
We share a surname but are not related. Although immediately after reading Geek Love I had a strong wish that we were related, and that I could just call Aunt Kathy any time I felt the need for some carny stories. I love that book.
@Jim Henley:
Re-mote? What sort of ancient technological artifact is that? Can I Netflix with it? Will it let me tab between my favorite Twitch streams? YouTube channels? Amazon movies?
(12) Yep, I published STALKING RALPH. I love Matt’s work, and he really got into using avant garde and krautrock luminaries (with permission, natch) in his stories.
I just noticed there’s no (13). Is that a thing?
Just my normal luck at proofreading.
Nothing as lucky as the night I put in two (5)’s by accident and was able to shine it on as a subtly humorous reference.
(…Which inspired me to come back another time and put in three (5)’s on purpose.)
@charon That is sad news. Geek Love is in my all-time top 10 books. She was a fascinating person.
Fifth fifth. Leaving on a jet plane…
@kate Besson has wanted to do a Valerian film for many years now: The Fifth Element was an attempt at making a BD-styled movie for a non-francophone audience. It may not have been a commercial success, but it was pretty clear that he loved the source materials and was a big fan of artists like Moebius.
So I’m pretty confident he will do a good job of adapting two books from the long running series of albums. Which are recommended, and can be found in translation or from amazon.fr. I recommend the original french versions.
Does anybody have some 2016 novel recommendations so far?
I don’t read too many new novels, but I’d really like to up the number, so recommendations would be awesome 🙂
What I like best:
Most of all, I’m hungering after High Concept. Whiiich has multiple contradictory definitions, but this one gets it close enough. I loooooooved Jo Walton’s “Just City” last year (High Concept: People from throughout time collect to implement Plato’s Republic), and the other book that really intrigued me was Carolyn Ives’ Gilman’s “Dark Orbit” (High Concept: A society of blind people who have no concept of “sight”). “Ancillary Justice” had me at “protagonist is an AI distributed among multiple bodies.”
These are not the only types of books I’ll enjoy… but they’re the ones I’ll snap up most readily.
Also excellent is any book recommendation where you can point to a driving question or conflict. “The Goblin Emperor” has “Can Maia adapt to his sudden, immense power, and the all-consuming politics of the Imperial Court?”, which may not be the Highest of High Concepts… but it’s certainly a very clear conflict!
In contrast, “The Fifth Season” IMHO doesn’t have much of a driving question — it introduces you to an incredible, awful, hyperapocalyptic world, but it’s hard to point at major questions that the story intrigues the reader by building up and resolving. That’ll be a harder pitch for me.
All that being said, if you have a pitch for something that isn’t quite this (e.g.: for “The Fifth Season” :P), I’m definitely glad to hear those too. Just tell me what it is about the book that makes it awesome. 🙂
Thanks!
Oh – and anything with a great audiobook, I wants.
JJ: Thanks for the link.
Purely based on popularity, I think Uprooted has a very good chance of making the Gemmell shortlist this year. It has an insane 38k ratings on Goodreads, which is nearly double Sanderson’s Shadows of Self (20k), and way higher than the other Gemmell nominees who had a book out last year (Abercrombie, Brett, Lawrence etc).
Standback: I haven’t read it yet, but based on Jo Walton’s gushing review, Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning looks exactly like what you’re looking for.
Lee on May 12, 2016 at 8:32 pm said:
This series has also been filmed: “Divergent”, “Insurgent”, and “Allegiant” were released in 2014, 2015, and this year. However, they’ve been pretty poorly reviewed, with 40%, 29%, and 12% aggregate ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw the first one and decided to skip the rest. Maybe the books are better?
This film series is following the Harry Potter and Hunger Games ones in splitting the last book into two films, so there’s going to be a fourth one, “Ascendant”.
@Bartimaeus: You are CORRECT.
Sold.
And, thank you 🙂
* shakes fist at Bartimaeus Tsundoku *
@Standback: Have you read Lovecraft County? It’s on my to-read list and looks very interesting.
@Mr Bisson, thank you for the information about Mr Besson. 🙂
@Bartimaeus
Yup, that sounds fascinating. UK availability looks a bit crap though, wish list for the time being.
I’ve had Fith Season in my hands a couple of times but the blurb just doesn’t call to me. The amount of love it’s getting here does make me pick it up again though.
Current reading: just finished Paul McAuly’s Something Coming Through. Good solid scifi with an interesting setting just maybe lacked a little final sparkle. Certainly worth reading though.
Next up: Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief, totally didn’t place that as a Finnish name…
@IanP: I picked it up after lots of people here gushed about it.
It’s honestly pretty great, and I’m looking forward to where the next book takes it.
Edited to clarify: I am of course talking about The Fifth Season
Re: (11)
I really can’t justify it, but I am hugely tempted to visit New York just for the Intrepid this summer.
If anyone is in the area can I recommend a couple of shows there by my current favourite geeky band, Public Service Broadcasting. Not SFF strictly, but their last album was a musical retelling of the early space race, from Sputnik to the Apollo 11 landing.
Their schtick is to take classic PSA films, cut them about and set them to music. All voices are samples, even the audience interaction is done by a computer. It shouldn’t work, but they manage to put on a cracking live show.
http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/PublicServiceBroadcasting.aspx
examples of previous performances doubtless all over YouTube.
Well, I just spent a significant amount of time down the RedWombat / AlexandraErin tumblr rabbit hole, and I encountered this quote, which I thought was really a propos to our spoiler discussion of The Force Awakens, and the debate as to whether Rey is a “Mary Sue”:
David J Prokopetz: I’m increasingly convinced that the real problem with the “Mary Sue” trope has nothing to do with fiction as such.
If you look at the types of characters who are popularly decried as “Mary Sues”, it’s not strictly that they’re good at something, but that they’re good at something without justification. Any sphere of competence exhibited by a female character must explicitly be justified within the narrative as something she “should” be good at, in a way that satisfies some arbitrary threshold of plausibility, or else she’s a “Mary Sue”.
In short, female characters are assumed to be incompetent by default.
But then, isn’t that exactly how we treat women in real life? Excepting a few narrow spheres of “women’s interests”, ignorance and incompetence are treated as the default attributes of femininity pretty much across the board. A woman practically has to pull out a goddamn PhD to be credited with the same level of knowledge and skill in a given sphere that would be expected of any random man off the street, and sometimes even that won’t suffice.
Basically, the problem isn’t that female characters in media have to pass some special test in order for us to accept that they’re allowed to be good at something. The problem is that female characters in media have to pass exactly the same test that women in real life do.
TBF female characters normally have lots of points sunk into APP and purely social Advantages as well. How are they supposed to pay for that lot AND a high Computer Ops skill?
(Points available from the ‘It’s a Man’s World’ disadvantage? Preposterous!)
@IanP:
I was pretty “meh” on the Fifth Season capsule summary, too. It sounded to me like it was all setting, no story.
I did wind up reading it, and… it was basically exactly that. I’m glad I read it; the setting was very, very good, and the writing was excellent. But I also felt like at some point before the 50% mark, I’d phased into, “OK, got it, cool setting, what’s the rest of the book for.” If that’s the kind of reaction you had to the blurb, then yeah, the book might not be your kind of thing.
(I feel I’d have enjoyed it a whole lot more as a novella or some such, which could have done the setting well and that would have been sufficient focus. Whereas the specific tensions and plot points were on the lines of “There is a slight chance that my existence can be marginally less horrible than Absolute Pure Horrificness, but I don’t actually have any agency to affect those chances or choose anything one way or the other.”)
Enjoy The Quantum Thief! It’s an awesome, remarkable book. Masterful Heinleining, with very cool stuff being Heinleined 🙂 I’ve got the sequel, The Fractal Prince, as the next book on my shelf. I’m really looking forward to it, but I’ve actually been stymied a bit in the first pages. That’s because I’m a little vague on what bits are cool new things being Heinleined in, and what are established bits I’m actually meant to know already from the previous book… 😛
I feel strongly that “Mary Sues” are often a real problem; the difficulty is that the “test” is applied very inconsistently.
Is Superman a Mary Sue? Discuss.
5 Mind Meld
Yeah, the pacing of the mind meld meant that when John and JP shut things down, my Meld was in the can, and Rob’s was in the process of compilation.
As far as if Mind Melds will appear anywhere else in future, the IP of the Mind Meld concept, as it were is with John and JP.
@standback
I am reading Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING at the moment. It’s got a dense High Concept in spades. 25th century, strange not-utopian not-dystopian Earth. Very unusual 18th century style of writing.
“Mary Sue” as in “too-perfect” character is very gender-biased, yes. I don’t think the “blatant author avatar” definition was ever as bad in that respect.
Paul Weimer: As far as if Mind Melds will appear anywhere else in future, the IP of the Mind Meld concept, as it were is with John and JP.
* cough File770 cough *
You know even if “Mind Meld” is considered as belonging to someone, File770 posts called something like “Scroll Picks” are perfectly fine.
Hell, we do that all the time here — it”s just called “Digressions on <sausages / pancakes / You Shall Not Pass >.
I couldn’t get into the Quantum Thief at all. I bounced off of the first chapter hard.
I used to be able to get into harder SF, or stuff that required a lot more brainpower to wrap around. Now when I’m reading I want something I can slip into and not have to spend major brain power to immerse myself in.
The question comes very early in the book: why has a man chosen to destroy the world i.e. bring on a civilization wrecking catastrophe and what is the connection between him and the three women who appear as the POV characters. Underneath that is the classic sci-fi theme of the mystery planet (i.e. why is this planet like how it is) not all of which is answered in this first book but which…well spoilers. On top of that we have the mystery of the character who is given a second-person narrative (i.e. as if she is the reader), and the question of what has happened to her daughter and where her apparently murderous husband has gone. We have the question of the dead-civ remains, the question of who or what the stone-eaters are, the mysterious boy companion who joins the second-person POV character and the thing in the thing that the girl POV character finds in the thing. If anything the novel has too many questions and layers of mystery rather than a lack of them.
I’ll concede though that I’m still too enthused to be impartial 🙂
@standback Just started “Central Station,” and it’s phenomenal so far. Feels truly global, it’s beautifully written, and it’s grounded in people. Feels like a more organic Neuromancer.
RE: High Concept books: I would recommend Spin State and its sequels by Chris Moriarty. MilSF with some very interesting looks at AI and extremely vividly drawn characters. (Some of the science doesn’t stand up to scrutiny very well, but I didn’t mind that much because the plots were so interesting.)