(1) James H. Burns recalls the effects of 9/11 on Broadway in “Delphinus, in the Northern Sky” (posted in 2012).
It’s eleven years later, and we’re still here. Still able to perform, or write, or otherwise create, or, also wonderful, to be able to embrace those passions.
I was just thinking of the guts it took for the actors who resumed their places on the stage so soon after that day in September.
Remember the courage it took, for some of us, just to walk down the street. And these folks were resuming one of the toughest challenges, in the arts.
(2) Melbourne has a website that maps every one of its city trees. Citizens can report a particular tree’s condition and get the city to attend to it. The website has a button “Email this tree,” short for “Email the city about this tree.”
Except, as fans will do, many take the label literally, and email the tree about life, the universe, and everything.
People around the world have been e-mailing trees in Melbourne to confess their love.
As part of the Urban Forest Strategy — implemented to combat the steady decline of trees following a 13 year drought — the city assigned all of the Melbourne’s 77000 trees individual emails.
The idea was residents could use these emails to report trees that had been vandalised or were in a severe state of decline.
Only, people decided to make another use for the email and began writing love letters to their favourite trees….
Weeping Myrtle, Tree ID 1494392
Hello Weeping Myrtle,
I’m sitting inside near you and I noticed on the urban tree map you don’t have many friends nearby. I think that’s sad so I want you to know I’m thinking of you.
I also want to thank you for providing oxygen for us to breath in the hustle and bustle of the city.
Best Regards,
N …
Variegated Elm, Tree ID 1033102
Dear Elm, I was delighted to find you alive and flourishing, because a lot of your family used to live in the UK, but they all caught a terrible infection and died.
Do be very careful, and if you notice any unfamiliar insects e-mail an arboriculturist at once.
I miss your characteristic silhouettes and beautifully shaped branches — used to be one of the glories of the English landscape — more than I can say.
Melbourne must be a beautiful city.
Sincere good wishes
D
The Urban Forest Strategy will see 3000 new trees planted in Melbourne each year and since its implementation in 2012, 12000 new trees have been added to the city’s urban landscape.
(3) Step inside Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft designed to carry humans to the International Space Station and other destinations.
(4) Major league baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates welcomed back devoted Batman fan A.J. Burnett by sending up the Bat-Signal.
(5) Need a little adventure in your life? Tor.com is seeking an in-house publicity coordinator.
This person will work with publicity and editorial departments and contacts throughout all of genre publishing, developing plans for comprehensive book coverage on Tor.com and assisting with publisher and author outreach. They will also be responsible for encouraging and moderating conversation between readers on the site and on social media.
This is a full-time position working in our New York office. Ideally, we are looking for a candidate with at least 2 years of publishing experience, who is outgoing, extremely organized, and detail-oriented. Applicants should be both highly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about science fiction and fantasy across a range of media….
(6) Did I forget to mention – issue 24 of Hugo-winning fanzine Journey Planet, the Richard III theme issue, is available online. This issue contains a series of articles by Steven H Silver, Joan Szechtman, Chuck Serface, K.A. Laity, Ruth Pe Palileo and Pixie P.as welll as pieces by editors James Bacon and Chris Garcia. The cover, some interior and technical art work was provided by Autun Purser, a full-time deep sea ecologist, who has created a series of travel posters, advertising travel to destinations from unusual fiction – the “Fantastic Travel Destinations.”
(7) Kevin Standlee shares several examples that show why Hugo Administrators aren’t activists.
- 1989 and A Brief History of Time (Scroll down and click “further detail” for a bit more information.) In 1989, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had sufficient nominations to make the final ballot. The Administrator ruled it ineligible, as the definition of Best Non-Fiction Book (the title of the category now known as Best Related Work) at that time said that the book had to be about “science fiction, fantasy, or fandom,” and thus the Administrator ruled that science books weren’t eligible. This decision was controversial. There were attempted changes to the WSFS Constitution that year that were eventually rejected, IMO mainly because nobody could agree on a consistent proposal. It took several years of argument, but eventually the 1996 WSFS Business Meeting passed (and the 1997 meeting ratified) the change of the category from “Best Non-Fiction Book” to “Best Related Book,” thus:
Any work whose subject is related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time in book form during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.
Note that ABHOT would have been eligible under this wording.
(8) Naturellement !
For the record, I've always pronounced "Voldemort" correctly.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 11, 2015
(9) These Black Mouse Printing Titanium Steel His and Hers Band Couple Rings are cute as the dickens and go for only $59.
(10) Cat Valente in a comment on Jay Maynard’s award proposal at Black Gate
…Because it’s simply not right to say a good story has no message. Story and message are not separable, hostile camps demanding loyalty only to one or the other. A good story has themes. A good story is about something. A good story is not only about things that happen one after the other, but about why they happen, and how, and to whom, and how all those things interconnect. And all that can happen WITH ray guns and explosions and buxom princesses. It happens literally all the time. One does not kick the other out of bed for eating crackers.
The author always, ALWAYS, communicates their own culture and experience through their fiction. There is no writing without that cultural electricity animating it. It’s not good or bad. It just is. We cannot help it, we are human. To say that Ancillary Justice is message fiction and undeserving but Time Enough for Love is not is to say that some of those communicated experiences are good and should be promulgated and some are worthless and should be cast aside. And I don’t think there’s anything in the world that should be cast aside and never written about.
However, no one, not even the terrible, no good, very bad SJWs, has ever said that the best stories are ones where the “message” overrides the good story. Everyone wants a good story. Everyone wants to sink into a novel and get totally wrapped up in the tale. There is no need to split into camps on this topic because there is literally no argument. Everyone wants the same thing.
The difference lies in the fact that for some people, a story that communicates an experience that they are unfamiliar with, whether a gendered one, or racial, or sexual, or even literary, jars them out of the story and makes it harder to get wrapped up in it. I can even use my powers of empathy to understand that, because it jars me out of a story when I come across a message about how shitty and/or unnecessary women are, because I am a woman and I like to not feel like I am shitty and unnecessary. But unfortunately, for some people, me just writing a story that draws on my life experience IS political, because my experience isn’t theirs, and the central presence of women in a story is, for them, a political act….
(11) Ruth A. Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance, was interviewed by L. Jagi Lamplighter at Superversive SF about her interpretation of the Hugo kerfuffle. It’s part of a series – later installments will apply her theory to characters in John C. Wright’s Night Land stories, and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” as well as the larger Hugo/culture war picture.
Part One: What Forces Drive the SciFi Culture Wars?
Q: In the Afterword to your new book, you suggest that ideas about personality might help us understand “culture wars” by showing how the sides just see the world differently. What do you mean by “personality-based worldviews”?
A: The thesis of Re-Modeling the Mind is that our brains can’t process all of the information that comes at us constantly, so each brain organizes itself around more limited options, depending on the neural strengths it already has. When we talk about “personality” we mean these limitations and abilities, which are usually clearly visible when we watch each other. We know ourselves this way, too. We know there are things we simply can’t take in, or if we can take in the facts, we can’t manage them to make decisions. There are things we pay close attention to, and other things we just can’t be bothered with. Personality is this very real neural patterning that filters the world so that it’s manageable.
But this means that our personalities also limit and even blind us to things other people can perceive and manage. We’re all in the same physical world, in the sense that we agree on where the objects are, so that we can avoid running into them. But at a more complex level, we really don’t all live in the same world. Our personalities can have such root-level different views of the world that we can barely have conversations. This is what I’d call a personality-based worldview.
I’m not a science-fiction reader, and I’d never heard of the Hugos until this year. But watching the ferocity of the battles made me feel convinced that at least some of this culture war is provoked by a clash of personality-based worldviews. In other words, probably the leaders and many supporters of each faction share some personality traits so that they all “live” in a similar world. In each faction’s “world,” its values are not only sensible but the only possible ones. Or if not the only possible ones, the only morally right or safe ones. This is why it’s so hard to have a conversation. It’s self-evident to each faction that its values are right, and the arguments offered by the other faction hold no water in their worldview. A lot of people on both sides feel that if So and So wins a prize, moral right or wrong will be rewarded.
(12) David Gerrold on Facebook is working out his own communication theory to explain “the recent squabble in SF fandom.”
…We now live in a world of self-organizing subcultures. Some of them are positive — organizing around the desire to address various challenges. Some of the clusters are negative, organizing around cult-like behaviors. Some are in the business of disseminating valuable information — some are in the business of misinformation and propaganda.
There’s a psychological phenomenon about new media — we give it gravitas. The first decade of any medium is the decade of education and assimilation. ie. We have to learn how to filter the information, we have to learn how to recognize that it is not an access to truth, merely one more way to be massaged. Example: The 1938 Orson Wells “War of the World” broadcast and panic. That happened while radio was still in its infancy for most listeners.
The internet is experiencing a prolonged childhood — most of us are still somewhere on the learning curve. We still trust too much of what we’re seeing on our computer screens, because we haven’t learned how to distrust it yet.
That’s the context in which we’re all operating. We’re being assaulted by an avalanche of data — we have to figure out how to mine it for actual information.
We have built the kind of technology that gives every person on the planet access to vast libraries of information and the ability to communicate with people all over the globe. But even if we’ve built a global village, we haven’t yet learned how to live in it. We’ve brought our prejudices and our beliefs and our parochial world-views.
Here, on this continent, we’ve built a cultural monomyth that carries within it the seeds of our own destruction — the mythic hero. We believe in John Wayne, the strong man who comes to rescue us. It’s a variation on the Christ myth. Or Superman. Or Batman. We’re incapable of being responsible, we need a daddy figure to sort things out for us. (The savage deconstruction of this monomyth is a movie called “High Noon.” It’s worth a look.)
Belief in superheros is an adolescent fantasy — it’s a way of abnegating personal responsibility. Whatever is wrong with the world, the Justice League, the Avengers, SHIELD will fix it.
The counterpoint is that whatever is wrong with the world — it’s not us. It’s THRUSH or SPECTRE or HYDRA or some other unnamed conspiracy. It’s always a conspiracy. …
(13) Steve Davidson has an advanced scouting report on next year’s Retro Hugos, which will be voted by members of MidAmeriCon II for eligible work from 1940.
But when it comes to the editor’s categories, we’re going to be restricted to one, that for Short Form.
Of course Campbell is the natural choice here, but take a minute to consider everyone who is eligible:
Mary Gnaedinger – Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels (reprints)
Raymond A. Palmer – Amazing Stories, Amazing Stories Quarterly (reprint), Fantastic Adventures
Mort Weisinger – Captain Future, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories
Frederik Pohl – Astonishing, Super Science Stories
F. Orlin Tremaine – Comet
Charles D. Hornig – Future Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly
Martin Goodman – Marvel Tales/Marvel Stories
Malcolm Reiss -Planet Stories
John W. Campbell Jr. – Astounding Science Fiction, Unknown
Farnsworth Wright – Weird Tales
None of the other editors had anything approaching the budget that Campbell had, yet Pohl, Hornig and Weisinger managed to put together some very fine issues from time to time (often relying on friends for copy at cut-rates), while Malcolm Reiss practically gave birth to the sword and planet sub-genre (not to mention introducing us all to Leigh Brackett!) with Planet Stories and several of the other magazines had a material impact on the field – if only by keeping certain authors and artists barely fed.
[Thanks to Mark (wait, not that one, the other one), L. Jagi Lamplighter, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian. Title credit to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Oneiros: Oh yeah I’d actually kinda forgotten that Disney disregarded the EU. Oh well, the hate certainly seems to have spurred sales. Sometimes I wonder if the people so vehemently spouting venom realise that they’re actually helping fuel sales
The haters have been dumping 1-star reviews (it’s up to 227 of them now) on it, fueled by some SW forum which is urging participants to do so. Most of those reviewers have posted either no other Amazon reviews, or less than 5 reviews, so it’s clearly driven by fanrage, rather than by people who read lots of books and post lots of reviews.
When this first started happening, Wendig got concerned and talked to Amazon, who told him not to worry because the more reviews a book gets, the higher it gets pushed up in Amazon website visibility, regardless of how many stars on the reviews.
It’s #60 on Amazon’s Top 100 Best Seller List right now. So he is definitely getting the last laugh.
“And this year’s Sin Nombre Award for Fewest Sentence Fragments goes to…”
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
I enjoyed A Storm of Swords enough that I immediately read the two sequels that had been published at the time, but The Malazan Book of the Fallen is just on another level. Every time a new 900 page novel was published in the series, I reread the entire series from the beginning.
Things in Deadhouse Gates that are awesome: Friendship between Icarium, an ancient, friendly half-Jhag amnesiac who can destroy entire cities when he rages, and Mappo Trell, his guardian. Heboric Ghost-Hands, ex-priest of a boar god whose removed hands have been replaced by… something, and Felisin, teenage noble girl sent to die in the otataral mines, who sinks low and then rises to confront her past in a most personal way. The origin of Quick Ben’s ability to use seven warrens. Iskaraal Pust, apparently insane High Priest of Shadow. Kruppe… Kruppe… a comical, gourmand thief whose mind is so vast, that an ancient god who is essential to the universe and its workings, turns to Kruppe for help.
So many characters are ascendants or gods or god’s pawns and then there is Coltaine, just a man, who dominates the book by leading his troops and thousands of refugees 1500 miles across a desert to “safety”, while constantly under attack.
And then there is the hundreds of thousands of years of history being revealed as you read through the series.
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
4. Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
10. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
14. Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
@KYRA
Here we go again! 🙂
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
4. EPIC STORIES
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
12-13
Abstain
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Bracket 5 is the only one I have read both books, so Storm of Swords.
I’m amazed by how many of these I’ve read.
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
abstain
4. EPIC STORIES
abstain
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Galveston, Sean Stewart
tie
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
abstain
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
abstain
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Indeed. And beloved of workplace psychology a few years ago, I believe.
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. Pass
3. Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle (My copy of Ash is one volume; I assume this is part of it?)
4. Pass
5. Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
6. Declare, Tim Powers
7. Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
11. Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
12. Pass
13. Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. Pass
15. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
I’ll admit that in most cases if I’d only read one of a pair, I gave it the vote. The one exception was Lovely Bones, which I couldn’t bring myself to vote for.
I spotted a suitably amusing tweet from Steven Brust (all picture, so you’ll need to click through) and in the replies was this rather interesting sequence from Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
Interesting. Warned by PNH? Or by someone else?
128 entries in the new bracket. [satisfied nod] I knew it would happen. Because…
[heavy reverb, portentious audio filtering]
THE POWER OF TWO COMPELS YOU, KYRA!
What makes you assume Kyra is an Indigo Girls fan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj0yVN8pFNw
ETA: holy embed batman, fixed.
TNH: Lamplighter’s the one who got warned that she was pushing the limits on the convention’s code of conduct.
I’m not surprised. If someone who had repeatedly e-mailed me, to whom I had deliberately chosen not to reply or engage, insisted on approaching me in person at a con, I’d have been asking the Harassment Committee to give them a warning to cease and desist.
Amazingly I’ve only read one of the bracketed works so like JJ I’m out. Roll on the 21st century sci-fi…
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Arrgh – like others (and like Mary Gentle) I consider Ash to be one novel. I also absolutely love Bold As Love. Both skirt the SF/Fantasy interzone too so I can’t use that as a discriminator. Can I vote for both?
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Bugger, again two of my favourites – but my vote has to go to Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Galveston, Sean Stewart
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
For those who haven’t read a lot of the current books, that generally stops being so much the case after the heats and maybe the first round of the general.
> “Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle (My copy of Ash is one volume; I assume this is part of it?)”
Yes; it’s the final book of the series. I decided that allowing omnibus volumes was a little unfair to series that didn’t have them.
> “What makes you assume Kyra is an Indigo Girls fan?”
Well …
It’s a fair cop.
Alas, in most cases voting for those that I have read so as to be able to express an informed view in later rounds (apart from The Lovely Bones which I hated):
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Bold As Love, Gwyneth Jones
4. The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
5. A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. Declare, Tim Powers
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
(I think the latter is the better book, but I don’t think it is fantasy)
10. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
15. Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
> “Can I vote for both?”
Voting for a tie is the best way to vote for both if you truly can’t decide.
This bracket hits the time period where I had backed away from reading fantasy for many years so I’m not qualified to vote — though this is going to be a fabulous reading list!
That said, in one of the pairings where I had read both books, Kyra puts Queen of Attolia against Paladin of Souls?!? The torment begins anew!
I’m pretty sure Paladin of Souls is going to walk away with that pairing and I’d most likely give it to Paladin myself, but with much anguish — so I’m just putting it out there for the record, I really loved Queen of Attolia. I think it asked a big question about love and forgiveness, about the ability to believe oneself even capable of being loved, and tackled it head on. And, for me, did it in a way that kept me emotionally involved the whole way. I really love this book.
So, that’s just my bit of reader love for one of the books I’m pretty sure is going to get wiped out in the runoff because it’s up against a powerhouse of a book.
*fistbump*
Cat Valente hits the nail on the head, as far as I’m concerned.
And I don’t know anything more about Lamplighter being warned for harassment, but really–that *is* harassing behavior. You don’t have a right to demand interaction from someone who has made it plain they aren’t comfortable with you.
I like the idea of people e-mailing trees. Both in the sense of “many eyes to spot a problem early” and in the sense of being able to leave love letters to particular trees that are important to them.
The brackets always remind me how much SFF I haven’t read. I am trying to see this as a “world is full of great SFF” opportunity rather than a judgement on my fannish dedication.
Ash was not an omnibus volume; it was the original, one-volume, novel. The US publisher, reprinting, was too lily-livered to publish it properly and split it up into smaller volumes.
In previous heats, I’d read almost everything. In this one, alas, I have not. I foresee that my TBR tower is going to reach to the stratosphere…
In many cases, although I’ve not read one of the works in question, I’ve read others by the same author; in such cases (unlike the previous brackets) I’m going to vote based on authorial voice, if not actual text.
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Something from the Nightside, Simon R. GreenNever really got into Simon Green. Is this a good starting book? I bounced off the one Green I tried to read; don’t even remember the title…
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
Abstain; never read anything by Flewelling.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Bold As Love, Gwyneth JonesI’ve read Gentle and Jones, but neither of these works. Still, I’ll go with Gentle.
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo HopkinsonShip of Destiny, Robin Hobb
This is hard. This is really, really hard. Hobb by a nose.
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
Abstain; never read Erikson.
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey FordDeclare, Tim Powers
A Tim Powers I haven’t read yet? <off to bookstore>
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. BarnettGalveston, Sean Stewart
Another tough one, but I had dreams about Galveston…
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei LukyanenkoNight Watch, Terry Pratchett
Heh. Your dice are funny.
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz ZafonOk, I’m breaking my rule even though I’ve not read any Zafon, because I loved-loved-loved the Fforde.
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Abstain; never heard of Danielewski. Is he good? Somewhere strange implies psychodelia, which I often (but not always) bounce off of. Or is this portal fiction?
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
Tithe, Holly BlackI should vote for Black. I really should. It was well-crafted and compelling. But I grab the newest Butcher whenever it comes out, even though it’s mostly popcorn-reading….
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
Abstain; not read any Marks.
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth NixThe Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Hm… This one was tough, because neither really stuck with me.
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Bitten, Kelley Armstrong
I want to vote for McKinley, but I’ve never read the Armstrong. Abstain.
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline CareyHeh. Your dice are *really* funny.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Abstain. Loved the Bujold, but never read Turner.
At least we know what Maynard’s award would look like–an Oscar, except with blue electroluminescent strips and a camelbro.
It’s difficult because so many of the nominees are books from series; inevitably there’s an element of having to ask myself whether I’m reacting to the work or to the series.
I shall have to think about this…
> “Ash was not an omnibus volume; it was the original, one-volume, novel.”
So noted; since there are plenty of other Massive Tomes on the list, Ash can henceforward be considered one book if that would/will change anyone’s vote.
(I didn’t know the story behind its publication, and since the first two U.S. “books” actually came out before the full UK volume for some reason, I made assumptions. But having looked it up, the single volume text is indeed considered the canonical version and not an omnibus edition.)
Lost Burgundy is part of Ash? I didn’t know that; I read Ash as one volume. Now I’m really glad I voted for it. (I was actually thinking of Ash when I gave Gentle the nod.)
Yep; my ‘Ash’ is large but not unmanageable. Also, a great book!
@Cassy B.: “Never really got into Simon Green. Is [Something from the Nightside] a good starting book? I bounced off the one Green I tried to read; don’t even remember the title…”
I think it is. It’s a reasonable size at around 200-ish pages, and if you like the style, it’s the first of many books. If you don’t care for it, you haven’t invested much time. There’s an arc to the first six books, too – and the sixth tied up so many plot threads that I was surprised to see a seventh. (Come to think of it, the sixth Ghost Finders book did the same thing, but I’m really not expecting a seventh there. I just don’t see how, although I could totally see some appearances in the Secret Histories books happening.)
That said, I snapped up the Nightside books as soon as I saw that a new one had come out, and typically read each new book in a day. I love the narration style, the bantering dialogue, the pop culture references, and the multitudes of casual hints about just how big the shared N/SH/GF setting really is.
Oh, and House of Leaves is… weird. I cannot imagine trying to read it as an ebook; the physicality of the book is crucial.
Point of order: I think Kyra should sync up with Mike and get a separate 770 entry for each bracket. I believe they are valid and valuable fandom contributions. Also, it would be nice to see each round’s comments together, rather than interspersed with other conversations (and, to be fair, possibly drowning those out).
Anyways, these are me votes:
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
2. The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
4. Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin: ouch.
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
13. Abhorsen, Garth Nix
14. Bitten, Kelley Armstrong
15. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold (substitution)
POS is great, but COC is greater, IMNSHO.
My bracket:
1) Something From the Nightside, Green (what can I say I like parodies)
2) Bonedoll’s Twin, Ffleweling
3) Lost Burgundy, Gentle
4) The Salt Roads, Nalo
5) Toss-up
6) Declare, Powers
7) Didn’t like the one, didn’t read the other, no vote.
8) NightWatch, Pratchett.
9) Eeiry Affair, Fforde
10) Coraline, Gaiman
11) No vote
12) No vote
13) Abhorsen, Nix
14) Bitten, Armstrong, one of the better books in a series I was meh on.
15) Kushiel’s Dart, Carey
16) Paladin of Souls, Bujold
The whole “split a doorstop into smaller volumes” thing can be very confusing. A few years ago one of my friends arrived clutching a brand new paperback declaring he had the latest Game of Thrones book “and I didn’t even know it was due out.” The look on his face when I pointed out he now owned a second version of the first half of the (single volume) hardback he’d bought a few months ago…
Yay Brackets! I haven’t been commenting lately, because old temp job ended and then new temp job began, and I really didn’t have much to say. But BRACKETS!
HEAT ONE – DAWN OF A NEW MILLENIUM
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Something from the Nightside, Simon R. Green
Pass, as I haven’t read the Green, and PDS, though impressive, wasn’t a book I really enjoyed.
2. THE TRUE QUEEN IN DISGUISE
The Bone Doll’s Twin, Lynn Flewelling
The Tower at Stony Wood, Patricia McKillip
I love this series. Flewelling is comfort reading for me. Even though this series breaks my heart sometimes.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
Bold As Love, Gwyneth Jones
Abstain
4. EPIC STORIES
The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson
Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford
Declare, Tim Powers
7. THE DROWNED ISLAND
Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Galveston, Sean Stewart
Abstain
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
11. THE TERRIFYING COURTS OF THE FAE
Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
Tithe, Holly Black
12. RECOVERING FROM THE WORST
Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
Abstain
13. BEYOND THE GATES OF DEATH
Abhorsen, Garth Nix
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Abstain.
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Bitten, Kelley Armstrong
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
TIE! Because T&C is an amazing book, but I re-read the Kushiel series regularly.
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
> “A Tim Powers I haven’t read yet? ”
I feel safe in saying you are in for a treat.
> “… never heard of Danielewski. Is he good? Somewhere strange implies psychodelia, which I often (but not always) bounce off of. Or is this portal fiction?”
House of Leaves is, at least among people I have talked to about it, a Love It or Hate It book. It tends to generate a strong reaction one way or the other. (I am one of the people who loves it.) It is closer to being psychedelia than portal fiction, although (1) it kind of has elements of both and (2) I wouldn’t really classify it as either. It has multiple narrators that interact in strange ways. It’s quite difficult to describe, and sometimes literally difficult to read — the text is sometimes arranged in ways that mirror the events of the story. You might like it if you like, say, Jeff VanderMeer or David Foster Wallace; you might not like it if you don’t.
Incidentally, Danielewski’s sister is the singer Poe, and her album Haunted is a companion piece to the book (or, alternately, the book is a companion piece to her album); they reference each other.
It’s disturbing how few of these I’ve read both of, but these I’ve read and loved:
1. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
4. Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
8. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
9. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
11. Summer Knight, Jim Butcher
14. Sunshine, Robin McKinley
15. Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
16. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
Rev Bob and Kyra, thanks for the reviews of House of Leaves. I just checked my local public library catalog… and it’s listed as “Not Available: Lost and Paid For.”
Arghh.
Maybe I can inter-library loan it.
3. KINGDOM THAT NEVER WAS, KINGDOM THAT NEVER WILL BE
Lost Burgundy, Mary Gentle
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
10. THIS DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE STRANGE
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
15. PROPER PROPRIETY OR SENSUAL SADOMASOCHISM
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
16. ATTRACTION KNOWS NO RULES
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
(Ash, I would say, is a classic example of what was originally intended by ‘a work appearing in parts’.)
Yay brackets !! I have read most of these and a few I will have to add to the TBR pile.
I don’t know if it’s amusing or sad that Cat Valente had to explain in basic terms how plot works in a post for an award for storytelling. Next up, how character development isn’t the author pushing an agenda just because you personally don’t relate to it, and a brief seminar on communism and the Oxford comma.
I think both Lamplighter and Gerrold are digging too deep on the psychology of ‘I didn’t win award, your award sucks, you suck, you should give me that award, here are some excuses so I feel better about my actions’. Both of them in their reasoning appear to treat those excuses used as honest, instead of folks lying and creating flimsy justifications to troll for attention. No reason to dig deep on it when those involved are pretty shallow.
Here’s a link for our local Marsupial of Color:
http://io9.com/huge-communities-of-crayfish-are-living-right-underneat-1729730435
I’ll tell you who’s opposed to both — my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
I just want to add my two cents on what a wonderful book Mary Gentle’s Ash is. It’s is one of my favorite speculative books of all time. DAW really did the book wrong by splitting it into four parts and making it look like a generic fantasy series. And Gentle actually got a degree in Military History to get the combat and weaponry right. I don’t often use caps but EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK! It is a masterpiece. And you can get it on the Kindle for $9.99 and used paperbacks of the complete book starting at $0.78 from Amazon.
And I can’t speak highly enough on Declare. Think of John LeCarre writing a Cthulhu Mythos espionage thriller. (The supernatural entities are his own, not Lovecraft’s.) This is another one of my favorite speculative books of all time. And again, EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK!
Ash is great. Ummm, but what’s happened to Mary Gentle. I don’t think I’ve seen more than one book from her in a decade.
1. HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE BIG CITY
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
5. CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
6. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Declare, Tim Powers
8. INEVITABLE MATCHUP
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Now if you’d put Night Watch vs Night Watch, that would’ve been a harder decision since I love the first book of the World of Watches series.
9. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
14. VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
I hadn’t read both books in a number of categories, so I skipped them and increased my TBD pile some more.
@Darren – CRAWBOB SHALL RISE FROM BENEATH OUR FEET AND OVERTHROW OUR PUNY MAMMAL CIVILIZATION
“I’ll tell you who’s opposed to both — my parents, God and Ayn Rand.”
Sort of the way Tuomas eats, shoots and leaves?
She basically disappeared from view due to serious health problems (what I heard was that the chronic pain from a car accident that used to be controlled wasn’t any more). She’s still writung though – at least two books appeared after Ash, Ilario and one I own but don’t remember the title of. Also pinned under revenge cat at the moment so I can’t go look.
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
That’s really sad news if true.
I was also pinned to the sofa by revenge cat for much of this afternoon. My one thinks the correct way to thank me for strokes is Moar Claws.