{"id":3379,"date":"2009-02-03T10:12:45","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/02\/03\/recommended-sf-reading\/"},"modified":"2009-02-03T10:12:45","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:12:45","slug":"recommended-sf-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/02\/03\/recommended-sf-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommended SF Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Locus<\/cite> magazine has come out with its “Recommended Reading” list<\/a> of science fiction and fantasy published in 2008. There are, as always, some annoying quirks– several of the books making the list have been published only in the UK or by small presses, so I’ve never even seen them– but it’s a reasonably good consensus list of what people on the literary end of SF think was good.<\/p>\n

As usual, I’ve only read a smallish fraction of these. Somewhat unusually, I’ve read more of the science fiction list than the fantasy list– 4\/20 science fiction novels (Matter<\/cite>, Pirate Sun<\/cite>, Anathem<\/cite>, and Implied Spaces<\/cite>), compared to 1\/17 fantasy novels (The Knights of the Cornerstone<\/cite>). In recent years, that’s usually been the other way around. I don’t know if this reflects an increase in the quality of the science fiction being published, or a decrease in the quality of the fantasy being published. <\/p>\n

If you carry the count down into the “First Novels” list (1\/14) and the “Young Adult” list (4\/15), science fiction extends to a commanding lead– only one of those five was indisputably fantasy (Graveyard Book<\/cite>), and you could make a case for Nation<\/cite>. The other three are unquestionably science fiction: Singularity’s Ring<\/cite>, Little Brother<\/cite>, and Zoe’s Tale<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

What does this mean? Probably nothing. But if you’re looking for some books to help you pass some time, you could do much worse than checking out the stuff on that list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Locus magazine has come out with its “Recommended Reading” list of science fiction and fantasy published in 2008. There are, as always, some annoying quirks– several of the books making the list have been published only in the UK or by small presses, so I’ve never even seen them– but it’s a reasonably good consensus… Continue reading Recommended SF Reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}