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. I mean, I could fiddle with my slides, but any changes won’t be reflected in the pre-uploaded ones I’ll get to do the actual talk, so what would be the point?
This puts me in the unusual (recently) position of having some time available to read fiction. I’m 50-ish pages into Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World, but since my only reding time these days is half an hour or so before bed, if that, progress has been slow. This weekend, though, I’ve got two plane flights and Friday night in the hotel (I can’t work on my talk, but playing pool ’til 4am is still Right Out), which means I might actually make a dent in some of my reading.
This, in turn, reminds me that the Hugo Award nomination period ends in a bit more than a month (that’s part of why I’m reading the Gilman– lots of people have said things that make it sound potentially award worthy, and I liked his previous books). Which means this is probably a good time to renew my request for recommendations of things to nominate. The Locus recommended reading list is a little thin on books I might reasonably expect to like, and most of the ones I have read were pretty meh. And for short fiction, I’ve read the stuff from Short Story Club and that’s about it.
So, if you have Opinions and Ideas about what should be on the SF awards ballots, here’s your chance to (potentially) influence my vote. If there’s anything– novels, short fiction, etc.– that I simply must read and consider for nomination, leave a pointer to it in the comments, and I’ll make a reasonable effort to give it a shot. I can’t promise I’ll have time to read it– my book deadline isn’t long after the Hugo nomination deadline– and I certainly can’t promise to vote for it, but I’ll do what I can.
It’s not out yet, but I have a feeling that Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss is going to be a heck of a book. It comes out March 1st. The early reviews have already been very positive, and the first book in the series was fantastic. I’d recommend giving it a read (though you’d have to read The Name of the Wind, the first book in the series, also).
I’ve only read a few things on the Locus list, but my thoughts for what they’re worth:
Zendegi (Greg Egan) is interesting and thoughtful; something of a change of pace for Egan in being very much personal and near-future, but none the worse for that.
The Fuller Memorandum (Charles Stross) is an excellent continuation of the “Laundry” series and definitely worth reading if you liked the first two. (If you haven’t read the first two, why not?)
Enchanted Glass (Diana Wynne Jones) is entertaining, but not her best by any means. (Which is to say, a good book but not a stunningly brilliant one.)
I Shall Wear Midnight (pTerry Pratchett) likewise.
I’ve not read “The Bird of the River” (Kage Baker), but if it’s anything like as good as its predecessors (“The Anvil of the World” and “The House of the Stag”), it’ll be an excellent book.
From that list I’ve only read Under Heaven, which would get my vote if I had one.
Have you read Robert Redick’s The Red Wolf Conspiracy (2009) and The Ruling Sea (2010)? To me, those are some of the most interesting new fantasy to come out in a while. Seafaring with political intrigue on a honking big ancient ship (lost magical technology…). Some unique worldbuilding with the “woken” animals.
The best stories in Analog last year were the novella The Rift by John G. Hemry and the novelette Outbound by Brad R. Torgerson. The Rift follows a set of soldiers trying to rescue colonists on a planet where the interaction with aliens has gone bad. Outbound is a very human story about humanity being forced into the outer solar system and trying to cling to whatever connections they can find in that vast cold empty space.
To clarify a bit, I’m looking for stuff that’s eligible for this year’s Hugos, so 2010 books. People say good things about the Rothfuss, but I haven’t gotten around to the first yet, and anyway, Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God is at the head of the “Giant Epic Fantasy” line (and will be what I read next unless something Hugo-eligible jumps out.
The Stross and Pratchett were good-but-not-great, and Egan has rubbed me the wrong way in the past. I read the Redick books, which were fun as far as they went, but suffered from a bit of idiot plotting– namely, the good characters kept going along with the schemes of the evil ones for reasons that didn’t make much sense to me. They had some cool bits, though.
John Ringo’s Live Free or Die kicked off a new series for him. Its exploration of human (or maybe American) shortsightedness through glimpses of a human-acting alien race, the Glatun, is particularly effective.
How strong is their requirement for uploading slides? Every conference I’ve been to, no matter what their stated policy, has had connectors for the projectors up front. At my last session, even the people who did pre-load their slides fiddled with presentations until the last minute and then used their laptop at the point instead. No personal experience with AAAS, but I’d be surprised if they really enforced it.
Say hi to Mark Liberman while you’re there.
The Evolutionary Void by Peter Hamilton. It’s the 3rd of a trilogy, really the 5th of an quintilogy that began with Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. Best wrap-up of a series of novels I’ve ever read. Plus, Ozzie comes back, if you know who he was.
I’ve read Blackout/All Clear (Willis) and The Passage (Cronin), and while I enjoyed both, neither seems all that award-worthy to me, despite all the hype for The Passage. I tried to read The Half-Made World, and got quite a ways into it before deciding that I really didn’t care what happened next, that I just didn’t like it. I tried really hard to like it, but I didn’t.
For short form, the novelette “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang. Well worth the weekend morning I spent reading it. It’s readable for free online here: http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall-2010/fiction-the-lifecycle-of-software-objects-by-ted-chiang/
Of the 20 or so sci-fi books I read last year, it seems not a single one was published in 2010, so that’s the only recommendation I’ve got.
Ah, right. Hugos are for books from 2010. Hmm . . .
Changes – Jim Butcher. This one came out almost a year ago now, but it was a very strong addition to the Dresden Files, and tremendous fun to read.
The Magicians – Lev Grossman. This got mixed reviews. A lot of people describe it as ‘adult harry potter.’ I really enjoyed it. Grossman tells a good story, and the characters are real, and flawed, in a way we don’t encounter in fantasy that much.
The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson. The first in what promises to be another long epic fantasy series, this was a good book. Not as much for the characters, only a few of which I was attached to, but for Sanderson’s fantastic world building.
I think those are the ones that came out last year that stand out in my mind.