One of the perils of book reviewing, or any other form of literary analysis is putting more thought into some aspect of a book than the author did. It’s one of the aspects of the humanities aide of academia that, from time to time, strains my ability to be respectful of the scholarly activities of […]
Category: SF
Hugo Nominations: Meh
The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it’s just our flaky DSL that’s kept me from saying anything about it. that’s only part of the story, though. I haven’t said anything about them in large part […]
(Sub)Genre Is a Marketing Convention
(Alternate Title: “Epic Fantasy Is What We Point to When We Look Down on Epic Fantasy.”) I’ve been on a bit of an epic fantasy kick lately, evidently due to the thousand-ish pages of The Crippled God not being enough. This means that I was in a weirdly appropriate mental space to catch the recent […]
Hugo Humiliation
Over in LiveJournal land, nwhyte just finished reading all the Hugo-winning novels, and provides a list of them with links to reviews or at least short comments. He also gives a summary list of his take on the best and worst books of the lot. The obvious thing to do with such a list, particularly […]
Steven Erikson, The Crippled God (Spoilers) [Library of Babel]
OK, having spoken vaguely about The Crippled God, here’s a post for spoiler-y comments about the book and the series as a whole. If you haven’t read it, but think you might, save this post for reading after you’re done. SPOILERS:
Steven Erikson, The Crippled God (Spoiler-Free Comments) [Library of Babel]
(This is a post about the concluding volume of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, so if you clicked through here because the title made you expect a rant about religion, you’re at the wrong blog.) It’s hard to say anything coherent about this other than “Wow.” I mean, this is the tenth thousand-page book […]
Con or Bust
Every year, Kate runs a fundraiser to help support SF fans who want to attend Wiscon, which takes the form of an auction of various cool items, such as a signed book about quantum physics. You can find a big listing of everything at the Con or Bust community on LiveJournal, but some items of […]
Hugo Nomination Recommendations?
I’m leaving today for the AAAS meeting in DC, where I’ll be through the weekend. The AAAS works much differently than the physics conferences I’m used to, most notably requiring speakers to upload their presentation several days ahead of time. This means that my usual night-before-a-talk process of fiddling with my slides is right out. […]
Jo Walton, Among Others [Library of Babel]
This is a difficult book to review, which is probably fitting, because it’s a very personal book. My reaction to it is largely personal as well, and may or may not be of any use to anyone else. Given the surprising number of people who had Opinions regarding my recollections of telecommunications, I almost think […]
Con or Bust Auction Signal Boost
Last year, Kate was one of the people who helped organize a fundraising auction to send a few people to Wiscon. It’s that time again, and she’s seeking donations for the auction: Last year, Con or Bust raised $6,183.89 and helped thirteen people of color attend WisCon. We weren’t able to meet all the requests […]