(1) Here are three science fiction and fantasy birthdays to celebrate on September 25.
Born 1951: Mark Hamill
Born 1930: Shel Silverstein
Born 1952: Christopher Reeve
(2) Plans are afoot to launch a San Juan in 2017 NASFiC bid at DeepSouthCon, which will be held next weekend. Source: committee member Warren Buff, who is working on the facilities. The website is mostly private at the moment.
(3) “NASA to Announce Mars Mystery Solved” on September 28, promises the press release.
NASA will detail a major science finding from the agency’s ongoing exploration of Mars during a news briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 28 at the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
Taking part in the news conference will be Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters; Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters; graduate student Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
I don’t see Mark Watney’s name in there anywhere…
(4) On April 7, 2016, LASFS will welcome Hugo, Nebula, and Aurora winning author Robert J. Sawyer who will read from his new novel, Quantum Night. The book will be published by Ace Books on March 1. Kudos to President Matthew B. Tepper for lining up the engagement.
(5) Today in History
September 25, 1959 Hammer Films’ take on The Mummy premieres in England.
(6) The Nerdist alerts fans to updates in German artist Dirk Löchel’s online poster featuring hundreds of science fictional star ships ranging from Star Trek to Mass Effect.
A high-res version can be downloaded from the artist’s Deviant Art site, where he also discusses the updates in detail including such frequently asked questions as…
Q: Why isn’t the Death Star/CSO Carrier/V’Ger/other large ship on the chart?
A: For reasons of image quality and chart organisation, only ships between a minimum of 100 meters and 24000 meters are applicable for this chart, sorry. Arbitrary? Yes! But I had to draw the line somewhere.
Q: And where’s TARDIS?
A: It’s both too large and too small for the chart.
(7) J. C. Carlton in “How To Create Your Own Monsters” appeals for people to sympathize with Vox Day, linking to a long list of insulting things people have said about Vox over the years. Because, Carlton thinks, what Vox has orchestrated with the Hugo Awards is all their fault.
The puppy kickers had every opportunity to put a hand out and create some sort of consensus with Larry and the rest of the Sad Puppies. They could have listened to what the puppies were saying and taken a more even handed stance. Above all they could have avoided the fiasco of no awarding the Hugo Awards. Instead they treated the puppies with abuse and disparagement, conducting yet another campaign of destruction. But they aren’t hitting Vox the Count working against them. All they have managed to do is create yet more Counts and hasten their own destruction.
(8) Al Harron explains why he is now a former contributor to The Cimmerian blog in “Matters of Importance” on A Wilderness of Peace.
[Leo Grin on The Cimmerian] “The Cimmerian Blog has been defunct for half a decade, but now that one of our former bloggers has been exposed as an SJW, we feel impelled to rise from our slumber to declare that we stand 100% against SJWs and their travelling freakshow of interlocking fetishes and predatory abuses.
As a now-confirmed SJW, Barbara Barrett is hereby EXPELLED from this blog. We have struck her prose from every post, and her face from every picture. Let her name be unheard and unspoken among us, erased from the memory of our august fellowship, for all time. So let it be written. So let it be done.“
Barbara Barrett is a friend, a colleague, and an erudite scholar. I wrote to Leo stating, in no uncertain terms, that if anyone on The Cimmerian was to be expelled, their prose struck, their faces scored out, their very names unheard and unspoken, for the “crime” of criticism, then they must do exactly the same to me.
I campaign for Scottish independence. I took great pride in our movement’s peaceful, positive message in the face of immense opposition. That opposition had the might of the entire UK Establishment at its back, seeking to crush anything that could threaten their dominion over these isles and their resources. Everyone in the movement has a story about being intimidated, being abused, being threatened. My mother has been physically assaulted three times in the past few years. The car was trashed, the windshield cracked, property vandalised and stolen. Grown men and women have screamed obscenities in my face, my mother’s, the children in my family. I have been called every name under the sun: “Nazi,” “Fascist,” “Taliban,” “Racist,” “Scum,” “Evil.” I do not need to have my name associated with the likes of Vox Day.
Yet I put up with the intimidation and abuse and threats, because some things are worth the struggle. Some things are that important. And frankly, I had spent too long being silent on the matters of Gamergate and Rabid Puppies, because I didn’t feel it was my place. I didn’t want to stick my neck out. But after three years campaigning for independence and facing down all the power of Westminster, I find myself completely unafraid and resolutely unphased by the schisms of fandoms – and it makes choosing sides a lot easier. What fear, what power, could they hold over me, given what I have just experienced?
So, to remove any doubt: I advocate the cause of social justice. I denounce the activities of Vox Day and his supporters. And I publicly express my support, unequivocally and without reservation, for my friend and fellow Robert E. Howard scholar, Barbara Barrett.
(9) Steve Davidson has posted “The 1941 Retro Hugo Awards (Part 7 Novels)” at Amazing Stories.
Final Blackout is generally considered both a golden age classic and perhaps the best story Hubbard turned out. Typewriter In the Sky is an early example of alternate realities and the “author as god” concept.
Absent the reading I still need to do, I think the stand-outs in this list are Slan, Gray Lensman and If This Goes On… (though I’ve only read that in the fix-up Revolt in 2100).
(10) Bravo to Lauowolf for the impromptu filk “Filers of London”
I saw a Filer with a Kindle in his hand
Walking through the West End in the rain.
He was looking for a place called the Odeon Leicester Square.
Gonna go see The Martian on screen.
Aaoooooo!
Filers of London!
Aaoooooo! (Repeat)If you see him reading on a train,
Better not ask its name.
Little old lady downloaded a jillion ebooks in shame.
Filers of London again.
Asoooooo!
Filers of London!
Aaoooooo! (Repeat)He’s bleary-eyed alright, cause he’s blogging all the night.
And lately he’s been reading in the shower.
Better stay away from him
Or he’ll list some more books, Jim
But look at that tbr tower!
Asoooooo!
Filers of London!
Aaoooooo! (Repeat)
(11) First a Hugo rocket, now a LEGO astronaut – see what’s floating in the window now at the International Space Station.
(12) The cast of Agent Carter promote the show with some Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper pranks.
https://twitter.com/HayleyAtwell/status/647176917196496896
https://twitter.com/HayleyAtwell/status/647204721241944064
(13) At Fast Company — “Take A Long Look At The Amazing Nic Cages/Tim Burton Superman That Almost Was”. (They say that like missing it was a bad thing…)
It’s a plot worthy of a comic book. In some alternative universe, Nicolas Cage might have have been Superman.
Back in the ’90s, Warner Bros had greenlit Superman Lives, a moodier take on the Man of Steel mythos to be produced by Jon Peters, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Cage, then hot off an Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas. The team caught the fascination of the comic zeitgeist, until an unfortunately-timed shot of a droopy-eyed Cage in superhero garb leaked and fan support soured. Two years, three scriptwriters, and a slew of concept art and costume tests later, the project was dead.
(14) J. W. Ocker, curator of OddThingsIveSeen.com, knows the harvest season is at hand, and that File 770 believes in “All Bradbury all the time.” Check out “Strange Stuff From My Study, Episode 4: Ray Bradbury’s Halloween Decorations”.
For this fourth episode of Strange Stuff From My Study, I dig into my collection to show you a pair of extremely special and extremely relevant-to-the-season items: Halloween decorations that once belonged to the Great Scribe of Halloween himself, Ray Bradbury.
Appropriate for any season is the author’s Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe:
My latest book is Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe, in which I visited every Poe site on the East Coast and across the Atlantic, meeting and talking to those men and women who are upholding the dark poet’s physical legacy. It’s a weird book, but it won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biography.
(15) And while we’re in this eldritch neighborhood, The Last Witch Hunter trailer looks fairly horrifying.
(16) Did Ridley Scott just pull the rug out from under Neill Blomkamp’s Alien sequel? A September 24 news report says Scott just revealed the title of Prometheus 2 to reporters – and it’s not Prometheus 2.
During an interview with HeyUGuys, the 77-year-old filmmaker – and director of the original ground-breaking ‘Alien’ movie – revealed the rather surprising title.
“Actually, really it’s going to be called Alien: Paradise Lost,” he said. “So Prometheus 2 is not really what it’s going to be… it’s going to be Alien: Paradise Lost.”
Alien: Paradise Lost heads to cinemas on May 30 2017.
(17) A 7-minute video, To Scale: The Solar System, shows how “On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the universe.”
[Thanks to J.W. Ocker, JJ, Mark-with-no-last-name, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
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I’m not home, so I can’t come up with a 21st century SF list, sorry. ;-( I don’t want to just +1 things, though it’s tempting, as I see some recent faves listed! Ooh, never good timing for me.
I’ll regret ticking the box. . . . 😉
Which reminds me of the BEST HALLOWEEN EVER, when I was Evil Vampire Willow and paulcarp was Angel’s Chest. I painted a large, muscular, bare male torso on cardboard and rigged elastic so paulcarp could wear it in front of his own less cinematic torso, an effect that was a little bit like sticking your head through one of those painted backdrops for a carnival photo. Every time he sat down, the torso would seem to swallow his head, and everyone around him would crack up.
It’s interesting to hear what the vaguely informed pop culture narrative on the controversy has become. Particularly, that the Game Grumps have the impression that the sad puppies are old. I would probably have that same impression, if I hadn’t looked it up, and didn’t know that Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia are younger than I am.
They also seem to have the impression that the driving force behind the puppy initiative is making sure that everybody continues to tell white guys how great they are. The reality might be more nuanced than that, but as an elevator pitch, it’s not too far off.
Also… why is watching videos of other people playing video games and chatting about them a thing? I was introduced to the concept when I ran into something referencing PewDiePie a while ago, and I still find it baffling.
That’s hilarious! I read Count in high school, and hadn’t gotten into vampire fiction yet, so that sailed right by me.
Regarding Passage — there were aspects I loved — and I read The Circus Fire immediately after finishing it — but it was also the first Willis book that struck me as spending an inordinate amount of time engaged in pointless wheel-spinning and complications that were largely manufactured by having characters never stop for even five seconds and listen to what other people were saying. Overuse of that device is my primary complaint regarding Blackout/All Clear.
Well… Apparently I don’t read much recent sci-fi, but here goes nothing.
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee (lovely little future-dystopia)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (it’s one of my least favourite Ishiguros which makes it still better than most other things to me)
Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
Embassytown by China Miéville (depending on if you’d class this novel as sci-fi or not)
Light by M. John Harrison
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
I also feel like Adam Roberts should get a mention somewhere in this list… maybe either Jack Glass, By Light Alone or Yellow Blue Tibia?
Maybe also Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer on account of it being brilliant
And no list of 21st century sci-fi from me would be complete without throwing in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
And did anybody mention Station Eleven yet? 🙂
Nominations, part 1. I reserve the right to come back and make more!
+1 to Praxis by Walter Jon Williams, Anathem by Stephenson, Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach.
+1 to John Scalzi, but why not Old Man’s War instead? It’s still new enough to be eligible.
+1 to Bujold but I don’t know whether for Cryoburn or Diplomatic Immunity.
+1 to Wen Spencer, but I may choose a different book. Eight Million Gods might be too much fantasy and not enough SF, but there’s also Endless Blue.
+1 to Elizabeth Moon, but Remnant Population is from 1996, so I guess I’ll have to pick one of the Vatta’s War books instead. I might have to reread them before I could decide which is best, but for now I vote Trading in Danger.
Half Share by Nathan Lowell. Or possibly one of the other books in the series…
Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos.
I haven’t seen anyone nominate Peter Hamilton yet. Let’s see what’s eligible… I think Pandora’s Star is the best from a standalone perspective.
In the Stormy Red Sky by David Drake.
You all are going to force me to go out and buy a bunch of Linda Nagata’s stuff, aren’t you?
I’m reading Watts’ Echopraxia at the moment, and the viewpoint character is just as bad as in Blindsight. The intro is all about how miserable he is, how everything is doomed and explicitly states that he wishes the world would hurry up and end.
This is before anyone knows about the events in Blindsight.
Brackets:
Transition – Iain M Banks
Dark Eden – Chris Beckett
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance – Lois M Bujold
A Calculated Life – Charnock, Anne
The Three-Body Problem – Cixin, Liu
Neutronium Alchemist – Peter Hamilton
God’s War – Hurley, Kameron
Ancillary Justice – Leckie, Ann
Embassytown – China Mieville
Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan
1Q84 – Haruki Murakami
Nexus – Naam, Ramez
The Quantum Thief – Rajaniemi, Hannu
Revelation Space – Reynolds, Alastair
Air – Ryman, Geoff
Lock In – John Scalzi
Station Eleven – St. John Mandel, Emily
Halting State – Charles Stross
The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance) – VanderMeer, Jeff
The Martian – Weir, Andy
Falling Sky – Pippa Goldschmidt
Personal favourite at this point is close between God’s War and Embassytown.
I’ll second the nom for Worm. It’s a bit rough in parts, but it is six million words or something ludicrous like that. I hope the edited version appears at some point, as well. I wound up binge-reading the whole thing over the course of about a month while I was supposed to be finishing my PhD thesis…
____
@EPHing the nominations: There’s no particular reason to limit EPH to five nominees, even for the Hugo. ‘list all works you think are Hugo/Bracket-eligible’ is fine, you just get divided into smaller and smaller fractions.
Black Man by Richard Morgan (although I too could get behind Altered Carbon)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
The City and The City, China Miéville
Air, Geoff Ryman
Europe in Autumn – Hutchinson, Dave – 2014
Blindsight by Peter Watts
City of Stairs Robert Bennett
My real children, Jo Walton
The first fifteen lives of Harry August, Claire North
Look to Windward, Iain Banks
I’m sure I have forgotten lots.
Marking this spot. I’ll post a count of how many titles have been nominated in a moment. Nominations are still open.
I need to finally read this, it has been in my library too long. Also I need to read Little Brother which is bern in my Kindle too long. But I want to read stuff to nominate for this year, dammit!
Can I change my Banksie vote to Matter?
21st Century SF? Oh, so much to choose.
Up Against It, M J Locke
Permanence, Karl Schroeder
The Wreck Of The River Of Stars, Michael Flynn
Spook Country, William Gibson (and I’ll argue that it is SF with anyone!)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (possibly the definitive near-future SF novel)
Dread Empire’s Fall, Walter Jon Williams
Ruby’s Song, Brenda Cooper
Nexus, Ramez Naam
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Shipbreaker, Paolo Bacigalupi
Newton’s Wake, Ken McLeod
The Algebraist, Iain M Banks
Existence, David Brin
As of the 3:00 am timestamp, 231 individual titles have been nominated, written by 175 different authors; 143 of them have received multiple (two or more) votes.
The most nominations for a single title is 17.
20 authors have had two of their books nominated, 10 authors have had three of their books nominated, 3 authors have had four of their books nominated, and 1 author has had five books nominated. (As a reminder, this will not end up “splitting the vote” for any of these authors.)
Simon Bisson: The Wreck Of The River Of Stars, Michael Flynn
Auuuugggghhh! How can you pick this over Eifelheim? I mean, Wreck was really good — but Eifelheim was just absolutely heartwrenching.
These picks are mostly from JJ’s list with some title changes and a few different authors.
HARM – Aldiss, Brian
Oryx & Crake – Atwood, Margaret
The Hydrogen Sonata – Banks, Iain M.
Jennifer Government – Barry, Max
Carnival – Bear, Elizabeth
City at the End of Time – Bear, Greg
Transhuman – Bova, Ben
Kiln People – Brin, David
World War Z – Brooks, Max
Cryoburn – Bujold, Lois McMaster
Fledgling – Butler, Octavia E.
The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu
Ready Player One – Cline, Ernest
The Hunger Games – Collins, Suzanne
Dark Space – De Pierres, Marianne
For the Win – Doctorow, Cory
The Martian Child – Gerrold, David
Spook County – Gibson, William
The Gone-Away World – Harkaway, Nick
Nothing Himan – Kress, Nancy
Ancillary Justice – Leckie, Ann
The Quiet War – McAuley, Paul
River of Gods – McDonald, Ian
The City and The City – Miéville, China
Cloud Atlas – Mitchell, David
The Speed of Dark – Moon, Elizabeth
The Red: First Light – Nagata, Linda
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Niffenegger, Audrey
Boneshaker – Priest, Cherie
2312 – Robinson, Kim Stanley
Anathem – Stephenson, Neal
Accelerando – Stross, Charles
Bones of the Earth – Swanwick, Michael
The Fresco – Tepper, Sheri S.
Blindsight – Watts, Peter
The Martian – Weir, Andy Wier
Return to the Whorl – Wolfe, Gene
I can’t make my mind up what to nominate and keep thinking I’m missing something.
Maybe BrianZ can run the EPHing as the whole concept seemed to bother him so much. Of course someone else would have to do all the collation and calculations as he’s more the ideas guy…
M John Harrison, Light
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
Walter Jon Williams, Implied Spaces
Anne Leckie, Ancillary Justice
Richard Morgan, Black Man/Thirteen (but third the Altered Carbon fall back)
Al Reynolds, House of Suns
Iain M Banks, Matter (now does the fact that Transition was published as Iain Banks make a difference…?)
Neal Asher, Dark Intelligence
William Gibson, Spook Country
Charles Stross, Accelerando
Extinction Game, Gary Gibson
Brasyl, Ian McDonald
ETA: Bunch of stuff here I’m clearly going to have to read. Starting with Linda Nagata and the James S A Corey series.
Gah, on second thought make the Banks Surface Detail and pass the damp forehead cloths.
> “(now does the fact that Transition was published as Iain Banks make a difference…?)”
I’m not counting Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks as two separate authors, if that’s what you’re asking.
@Kyra
Not that I’m a huge Banks fanboy or anything…
@RedWombat Oddly enough, I think the reason the book worked for me was because I dismissed the narrator immediately as a whiny self-absorbed little shit.
I’m not good at that. I’m even less good at getting around a narrator who is so intensely and extravagantly wrong. (“there are no right angles in nature” was particularly hard to take.) So for me it became a throwing book before there were any neat aliens.
While I loved Wildbow’s Worm, I’m not sure whether it counts as SF or Fantasy. It’s about being a superhero/supervillain, and the ethics and ramifications thereof. Although, thinking about it, there is a SFnal framing story that partly explains the whole superheroism thing, so maybe it is SF.
I’ll shut up now.
Missed the editing window. I should mention that when I captured Worm off the web and made it an epub for my ereader (personal use only!), it saves as 4.1 meg. My average epub novels are between .2 and .3 meg. So Worm is between 12 and 20 novels long…
Drat! Matter or Surface Detail? Decisions, decisions…
McJulie-
This so totally encapsulates my feelings about those two stories that I must ask who manufacturd the mind reading device you’ve placed in my house. It must be a very good brand.
@Niall:
You need to reread Blindsight – you never find out who the narrator is in that novel…
Eek, okay:
+100 to Blindsight by Watts. Probably one of my favorite mind****s of the last decade or so.
+1s to:
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Learning the World, Ken MacLeod
Regenesis, CJ Cherryh
Accelerando, Charles Stross (and feck, it’s hard to just pick one of his, I’m going with this over Iron Sunrise just ‘cos Accelerando was the first one I read and I’m a software engineer, so it was like reading Dilbert in science fiction form…)
The Peripheral, William Gibson
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
The Martian, Andy Weir
I’ll add The Engineer, Reconditioned by Neal Asher (yes, it’s a reprint, but it had additional material – does that get it past the bar?)
I kindof want to +1 Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, but I’m only mid-read (hey, quit judging, I had to work through the whole SP3 reading list, you’re lucky I didn’t give up on English altogether…)
Meredith – Woo hoo! And with Kindle you don’t have to worry about concussion.
So, I reiterate my STRONG nomination for Anathem by Stevenson.
The Lost Steersman by Kirstein. Oh goodness, I love those books.
I will dump Blackout/All Clear so fast it would break the c barrier. But anything else by Willis would be good.
Diplomatic Immunity by Bujold.
Old Man’s War by Scalzi
World War Z, by Max Brooks
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
When We Wake, by Karen Healey
Pegasus in Space, by Anne McCaffrey
The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve
How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff (although this is pretty borderline as sf)
Lock In, by John Scalzi (I know Old Man’s War is better known, but Lock In is a later work and it shows. Much more effortlessly written. Redshirts is still on the TBR list.)
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
I feel like one of Wesley Chu’s Tao books ought to be on there but I’m not sure which one. I sort of want to pick The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal but it isn’t a novel.
I probably read other things in the 21st century that I liked but who knows what they were.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Or dislocated fingers! I always enjoy books more when they’re not trying to damage me.
Cam I add Sea of Silver Light by Tad Williams?
It is the last installment of his Otherland series and the only one that is in the right century(otherwise I would have picked City of Golden Shadow or River of Blue Fire).
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to fully compile a list of 21st Century SF that I consider notable, but for now….:
Look to Windward – Banks
Anathem – Stephenson
Ready Player One – Cline
Leviathan Wakes – Corey
Ancillary Justice – Leckie
Diplomatic Immunity – Bujold
Lock In, Scalzi
Am pretty sure they’ve all been mentioned before.
I will say I am learning a new appreciation for the people who tally the Hugo nominations. 🙂
Add votes for:
Knife of Never Letting Go-Ness
Mortal Engines -Reeves
Feed -Anderson
Farthing- Walton
Fledgling-Butler
Nominating
The White Darkness (2008)- Geraldine McCaughrean (for my money, the best MG/YA written in the last ten years).
@ Jeff Smith: DANCING AZTECS! I love it so much, I bought it twice.
Given that your other tastes in YA include Ness, Reeve, and Anderson, you’ve pretty much just convinced me to go out and buy The White Darkness.
@ Kyra
YAY! I When first came out, I read it and then immediately bought 7 or 8 copies to give away and the first destination was my mother’s school library.
When I met my (soon to be) beloved cat, he was a starving, injured NYC alley beast and I named him after Captain Titus Oates because of this book. (It is much, much less harrowing than the Ness, Anderson and at least Mortal-Engines mode Reeve).
Oh, and can I add another vote to Meredith’s suggestion of:
How I Live Now-Rossoff
and a nomination for
Life as We Knew It (2008) Pfeffer, Susan Beth
(a quite different post-apocalyptic survival story– do not bother with the sequels though)
Some of the best SF I’ve read from this century, or at least had lots of fun reading:
Best of all Possible Worlds, Karen Lord
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Explorer, CJ Cherryh (gur bar jurer gurl zrrg gur xlb) or Destroyer (jura gurl pbzr ubzr).
Bones of the Earth, Michael Swanwick
Blindsight, Peter Watts
The Dervish House, Ian McDonald
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold
Fledgling, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller or Balance of Trade
Alien Taste, Wen Spencer
Annihilation, Jeff Vandermeer
Halting State, Charles Stross
and if I had to choose just one, it’d be Best of all Possible Worlds, Karen Lord. Have I mentioned that I really love this book?
Damn, that’s eligible? +1!
I didn’t dive into the next one–heard it was vampire heavy, and I found the vampires wildly implausible (in part, yes, because of all the right angles in nature!) I’d come back for those aliens, but not for the vampires.
It occurs to me suddenly that I have no idea if these narrators are meant to be sympathetic or not. I had assumed we were obviously supposed to hold them in contempt–maybe a sort of a social-skills equivalent of the narrator who is less intelligent than the reader, so the reader figures out what’s going on before they do–but now I remember a lot of people saying they went through the novella with the world going upside down thinking that this was supposed to be a dreadfully unlikable protagonist cruising to his inevitable comeuppance, and then go to the end and realized no, apparently the author expected you to be rooting for him. (Had a similar problem with Gibson’s “Dogfight” myself.)
Does anyone think we’re supposed to identify with the narrator in Blindsight? Because seriously, f’ that guy.
Does anyone think we’re supposed to identify with the narrator in Blindsight?
Structurally? Totally. We get way too much of the narrator’s early life and far more detail about their cognitive processes than we would if they weren’t intended to be sympathetic. (This is different from the text successfully presenting the narrator as sympathetic.)
Siri is not the narrator in Blindsight. Which you could lose if you didn’t read the opening clearly, but it’s made explicit in Echopraxia that Fvev arire rfpncrq va Oyvaqfvtug naq gur aneengvba vf gur nggrzcg bs gur nyvraf gb erpbafgehpg uvf zrzbevrf gb yrnea zber nobhg gur fpbhgvat grnz.
Oh, and +1 to Learning the World also. Sorry Kyra, that’s the last I swear. I’d like to add a McDevitt but suspect I haven’t read his best yet.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Shhhh. It’s experimental NASA technology. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.
Possibly all duplicates, but fwiw:
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Chabon
The Dervish House – Mcdonald
Surface Detail – Banks
The Prefect – Reynolds
11/22/63 – King
Spin – Wilson
Embassytown – Mieville
The Quiet War – McAuley
Seveneves – Stephenson
Aurora – Robonson
Blindsight – Watts
Ancillary Justice – Leckie
The Last Policeman – Winters
The Martian – Weir
Ark – Baxter
Jack Glass – Roberts
Southern Reach trilogy – Vandermeer
Shipbreaker – Bacigalupi
@Mark Dennehy, re Blindsight spoiler
You sure about that? Because in reading Watts’ blog as he’s talked about the third book, he seems to indicate that Fvev naq uvf sngure jvyy zrrg hc ntnva va gur raq.
> “Possibly all duplicates, but fwiw”
In fact, not every single one of those was a duplicate, but … these are nominations. The more people who list a work, the better its chances. Duplicates are good!
Mostly + 1s
Blindsight – Watts – though I preferred Echopraxia
Look to Windward- Iain Banks
Light (Kefahuchi Tract series)- M John Harrison
Ancilliary Justice
Spin State – Chris Moriarty
Polity Series – Neil Asher (pick one)
Iron Sunrise – Charles Stross
Leviathan Wakes – James SA Corey
River of Gods – Ian MacDonald
> “Blindsight – Watts – though I preferred Echopraxia”
If you’re worried about splitting the Watts vote if you vote for Echopraxia, it won’t. Feel free to vote for the one you prefer if that’s the reason you didn’t
@redheadedfemme : pretty sure. It’s a point made obliquely in Blindsight and full-on stated in Echopraxia that Fvev vf na haeryvnoyr aneengbe naq abobql ryfr va Rpubcenkvn one uvf sngure oryvrirf Fvev vf va gur rfpncr pncfhyr. That being said, we’re talking about a guy who made a paedophile into a sympathetic narrator, so he could just be setting us all up 😀
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on September 27, 2015 at 2:54 am said:
Also, The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein. Excellent book about how the scientific mindset works
I need to finally read this, it has been in my library too long.
I cannot even express how much I love these books.
You’re going to want to read all of them.
You may want to wait til over Christmas, or some time where you have a little space and can just keep reading for a while.
2000-2014 SF Bracket Nominations
Where are the non-white SF authors? Aren’t we supposed to be SJWs? Shouldn’t our list contain more LGBT, PoC, and Women? LOL
My PoC SF reading is in my TBR I’m a bit behind on it. Yes my list is almost exclusively women, 2 men to 10 women, as I changed my reading habits years ago so I’d get “punched in the face” less frequently.
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein
Perdition, Anne Aguirre
Valor’s Choice, Tanya Huff
Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler
Trading in Danger, Elizabeth Moon
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance or Diplomatic Immunity or Cryoburn Lois McMaster Bujold I can’t choose just one – maybe we need to do an IRV to determine which one goes forward through brackets…
Hollow World, Michael J. Sullivan – time travel into the future, interesting things done with gender (which is rarely mentioned in reviews), human beings have moved underground, murder mystery – this was a Kickstarter
The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker steampunk – one of the more popular self-published authors – she’s addictive once you start reading. 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee
Steel by Carrie Vaughn – YA time travel with Pirates. How to get back to my own time
Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer – YA retelling of Cinderella as a cyborg
David Weber is right up there with Bujold for me as top must read with his Honorverse I was able to bring it down to two books: The Shadow of Saganami (Honorverse: Saganami Island #1) and A Beautiful Friendship (Honorverse: Stephanie Harrington #1) the 1st in his YA spinoff.
That was an interesting experience. I browsed through the the 939 books I’ve marked as read on Goodreads since I joined January 2012 to find SF books as my memory is spotty (after agreeing with others recommendations).
My GR reading records are skewed as I forget to record library and books we own as well as review copies I’ve received. It mostly records kindle books as my Kindle easily records “currently reading”, “read”, and ask me to rate them when I’m done. Other books I have to remember to manually add and more often than not I forget. I’ve also reviewed fewer than I thought as my Kindle Paperwhite only asks for a rating while my iPad request a full review. Looking over my GR reading one might think I mostly read UF/PNR/Regency romance written by straight white women. This misses about 1/3 or more of my yearly reading. Each year I swear I’m going to get better at tracking my reading and reviewing… Maybe I should aim for the opposite instead. See if reverse psychology works on myself.