March 2012 Reading

I'm currently reading Last argument of kings by Joe Abercrombie and Complete Pogo: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly. OK, maybe not hard sf. Perhaps Pogo counts as soft sf.

Anglemark, you might want to go back to February and fix your link, Right now it takes one to the Swedish-language LT site, which is interesting but not helpful.

I'm finally going to read two classics. A Princess of Mars and Desolation Road. They've been on my list for too long to be believed.

I'm reading David Brin's Kil'n People, it's going well so far.

Thanks, Richard.

Just finished McDevitt's Firebird. Darn thing was staring at me off the library's new books shelves, and since it was nominated for the Nebula, I picked it up. For the record, I loved A Talent for War, skimmed Polaris as it was rated as highly, and read Seeker, which I didn't care for as much as the first book. Haven't read books 4 and 5, even though Echo was also nominated last year. As for Firebird, it started off slowly, but ultimately built up to a rousing climax and a very satisfying ending. I don't know about the Nebula, but a good, hearty read for sure.

Reply to 2. I read A Princess of Mars a few years back thinking that it looked ok and could snag a free copy at the library and it actually turned out to be really good. I'm not a huge sf reader but I thoroughly enjoyed that book.

#2, 6 I read it 40 years ago and now I am trying to talk one of my granddaughters into going to see the movie with me.

Just read and reviewed Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow.

Next in the queue: Ardor on Aros (to prime me for the John Carter movie).

Still in Nantucket (and the UK circa 1200 BC) with S. M. Stirling...

I really enjoyed the Stirling Nantucket book. I haven't gotten to book 2 yet though. but it is climbing on the TBR pile.

#7. Wow! I've been wanting to go see John Carter since the beginning of last year but never realized what it was about until you just mentioned it! Thanks for helping me to make that connection there! Knew there was somethinf familiar about it :)

I started reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 today. I was loving even before I had read the first half of chapter 3. ;)

Yay! I loved 1Q84, Peter. Lots of good reading ahead of you.

I'm currently reading Master mind of Mars and am really enjoying it. I read Pirates of Venus and Carson of Venus a couple of weeks ago and I have decided that Burroughs writes the greatest parodies ever. There is no way you can take any of it seriously which makes them really enjoyable to read.

I haven't been considering going to see the John Carter movie because the trailer looks a bit over the top outrageously stupid but now that I consider it a parody I might just have to go see it for the giggle.

I'm looking forward to it. I was in two minds about starting it or waiting for my copy of Intrusion to arrive. As it happened I started 1Q84 on the way into work only to find Intrusion had arrived. I am quite happy to read on with 1Q84.

Just (Finally) finished Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury. The original novella was an awesome piece of work on the sheer joy and enthusiasm of a girl wanting to get herself to the Moon. Sadly the Novel bloated this out with a whole bunch of Cold War stuff that detracts from the joy in the original Novella. I could happily read about the female protagonist for hundreds of pages, but she was swamped out by think tanks and the American Russian Arms Race. A shame. An artifact of it's time (1987)

Just started on William Gibson's Spook country. So far, so Gibson.

"So far, so Gibson". Hah! I like it.

Just finished Ceres Storm by David Herter. Thanks to Ian for recommending it; it is indeed in exactly the subgenre I was postulating. I liked the writing, the ideas, and the general tone a lot. Found the plot a bit too confused & episodic (it *is* a first novel, after all), and the ending seemed a bit rushed, plus I still don't understand exactly what happens at the end. But overall a fun (and fast) read.

Now I've finally started Embassytown, and am loving it already.

Glad you enjoyed it. Herter has been working on a sequel for years, though whether it'll ever be published is doubtful. His last three books have been fantasy, published by PS Publishing: On the Overgrown Path, The Luminous Depths and One Who Disappeared. Oh, and there was a horror/dark fantasy novel from Earthling Books, October Dark.

According to Herter's blog, an unpublished prequel novella to Ceres Storm will soon be available for Kindle.

Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber certainly shows the range and depth of his writing, but that means that some stories will fall flat for some readers. I am currently struggling, along with the viewpoint character, to understand Bear's Hull Zero one.

Is that the prequel to Hull Zero Three?

Help, get me out of this non-existent novel! :--)

Power through it AlanPoulter! LOL

Finished the very dated A Case of Conscience. Started on Fools.

Finished Polar City blues this weekend; I really enjoyed it. Liked the setting and the many-stranded mystery. I felt the romance was a bit unconvincing, but that's really my only complaint.

Reading Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet books. Can't recommend them though.Only on book three , but the repetition is beginning to bore me. Still they are easy to fly through and if you like slow moving (realistic?) space battles give them a try.

They're mil sf. What do you expect? Righteous humans blow up nasty aliens again and again and again. Plus a bit of martial angst. And maybe some slightly grey morality. :-)

But there is always a homosexual on the squad, so it kind of gives them a pass on the genocide stuff

I'm currently reading Regicide. I'm not really sure exactly what genre it is. It is on the Clarke Award longlist, is probably more dark fantasy, and is marketed as horror in the USA.

That's not a long list, it's just a list of submitted works, irrespective of eligibility.

OK sorry for the slight infidelity of language - need sleep. It is however a list and it is long, but it is not a long list. It is a list of works from which they will pick out the works that form the short list, there has been no filtering, weeding or selection of works on the submitted works.

Started The Van Rijn Method by Poul Anderson

You could have wrote the blurb for the books Ian,lol. No gaytroopers on the ships yet, Swampirish, though to be honest I think the author would struggle with any character that couldn't be played by John Wayne. : )

Let us know if Regicide is any good, Andy. I was reading up on it when I was looking for books similar to The Raw Shark Texts. Been trying to track down a copy of it for a while (buy all my books second-hand.....so it may be a while before i find a copy!)

Finished the first book and am now reading Against the Tide of Years by S. M. Stirling. I thought the first book very well done - an interesting combination of time travel, culture clash, history and personal motivations. I'm really liking the author quite a bit...

I keep meaning to get to Against the Tide of Years. I also really enjoyed the first book. One day I'll get to it. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Hi Ian, and all,

I couldn't help but notice the mention of Ceres Storm. I'm glad you liked it rshart3. Yeah, there are things about it I want nowadays to rewrite, and in fact I have rewritten it, recasting it in present-tense, and adding small, subtle scenes from alternate viewpoints to make things slightly clearer (though the reader is always supposed to be a bit confused, like Daric). But I abandoned the project because it was taking me away from new stuff, and because my friends convinced me to leave the old stuff alone. At this very minute I'm preparing Classic Ceres Storm for Kindle. (I don't know what Librarything folk think of Kindles; I myself love books as objects, but it's nice to be one's own publisher). I'm also preparing an unpublished prequel novella, The Firebirds of Theriak, and hope to get both of them up in the next week or so. I'd thought that Yan Tan Tethera, the rather massive "sidequel" to Ceres Storm would be impossible to format for Kindle, but I've performed some tests that suggest otherwise. And so it's also in the pipeline. There are also four other prequel novellas in various stages of completion -- again, there's that issue about time away from new stuff. (My new stuff is epic planetary romance Cold Heavens, and I'm sensing my characters are very angry at me for ignoring them since January).

Oh, and On the Overgrown Path and The Luminous Depths (2/3 of my "Czech" trilogy, now officially titled the "First Republic" trilogy) are available at Kindle. OTOP is considerably expanded; both are revised.

Ian, thanks for your general support of my stuff, and for your enthusiastic recommendations of Ceres Storm here and elsewhere!

I hope you enjoy One Who Disappeared!

Hi David,

PS have posted that they have something from you due late this year, but I didn't know if it was related to Ceres Storm.

I can see I'll have to get myself a Kindle soon. Quite a few authors whose writing I like have started self-publishing previously unpublished and OOP works on it.

You can always get Kindle for your PC, which is free (I think). Though the text doesn't look as good. (for instance J––––– appears as a smooth line on a Kindle, but as dash marks on the Kindle for PC).

Am currently reading Embassytown and thinking it's a bit like the sort of stuff Vonda N McIntyre and Norman Spinrad were writing back in the 1970s...

#36

I haven't read The Raw Shark Texts so I don't know how similar it is. It certainly doesn't have the typographical games.

Anyway, Regicide is good although not excellent. I thought the first half is better written than the second on the whole - but less strange. Although it is a slim volume, 180 odd pages, it is a fairly slow moving affair, with atmosphere being built up by lots of descriptive passages. I think that the pace may also be due to the fact that time sometimes seems to flow a little strangely in the book, and at times the main character seems to be in a loop of repetitive behaviour.

It is based upon Royle's short story "Night Shift Sister" which appeared in In Dreams and the novel seems to be also based in the late 80s - maybe it was something Royle had written a while ago and recently tidied up for publication.

Gave up with Heinlein's The Number of the Beast, i began to find it incredible annoying!
Now reading Slan by van Vogt.

Read The Fear Index by Robert Harris, a near future or present day sci-fi-ish thriller. I'd seen two good reviews of it so I had high hopes but I thought it was only average.

Followed that up with another of his books, Conspirata, the second book of his historical Cicero trilogy and liked it much better.

Just finished Singularity (Star Carrier, Book 3) by Ian Douglas, something I was looking forward to since having read the first two books in that series.

In retrospect, I should not have reread the first two volumes, as this third book was - at least in my experience - not up to the standard of the first two. Not only did I get the sentiment of "rushed scenes" too often, there was also too much of a presence of cases where the concept of "taking a bit of liberty for the sake of the story" was taking with a LOT of liberty.

I don't know, maybe without the first two books not fresh in memory it would make more sense. It is understandable that a brisk pace is and should be present in the story, but there is a difference between setting such a pace and too easily giving an impression of matters being rushed.

So, I've picked up The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible again, in preparation for the upcoming next volume of that series (I believe that will be released in may). After that it will be time for a reread of Into the Black: Odyssey One by Evan Currie, which also soon is getting a second book it seems.

I have to say though, it's slowly starting to get a bit dry with science fiction / military science fiction books being published in mainstream publisher channels. May be time to dig through indie scenes again.

The Other by Matthew Hughes intricate superb world building as usual. Was happy to see that this is nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

I plan to buy Red Mars in the morning.

I started reading Battle at the moons of hell, got 1/4 way through it and gave up. The main character annoyed me too much because I found him to be a Mary-Sue. Or maybe I just don't have much sympathy for a 21yr old male git that is handed everything. And the plot was also really predictable. Anyway, I gave up and move on to The steel remains of which the 2 chapters I've read so far I've liked much better.

Just finished 1Q84 Books One & Two. Very enjoyable. Looking forward to reading Book Three at some stage.

Not a must read, but I found it good.

I'm currently reading (I actually started on International Women's Day) The Testament Of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. It is longlisted for the Booker and submitted for the Clarke (and many people are guessing that it will be on the Clarke shortlist). Don't be put off by the Booker thing, or the feminist dystopia label - it is very easy to read, and even suitable as YA reading (even though it is not published as YA).

I thought the first half of it was excellent, but the second half read too much like YA for my taste.

#52

Well I haven't got to the second half yet (I think I'm at about half way) - so you may well be right. From just the first half I can see why people are praising it.

Just finished Ready Player One--what a lot of fun!

Just finished A Fire Upon the Deep. Wowsers.

Just started 1Q84 Book Three. Different translator from Books One & Two but no reduction in quality.

I hope to start IQ84 before the end of the year. By the way, I've only heard it called a tone arm as far as I can recall. It is what I call the turntable arm. The pick up was the cartridge.

Finished Ardor on Aros and posted my review.

"Tone arm" must be an American term. Several of my US contacts have said the same. We only ever called it the pick-up arm as it had the pick-up on it.

I hope you enjoy the book. It's not one I would say, "OMG, you have to read this", but it is one I would say helped me pass the time pleasantly. I found it moved along at a good pace and I enjoyed the switching from one viewpoint to the other. I won't give anything away, but I've started Book Three and am enjoying it too.

Started Kiln People by David Brin. Kept being tempted by this one for a while. Off to a good start.

# 59 Never thought about "tone arm" before, but I think the term is also used in England. There's a history of early turntables at http://www.gilbert-gramophones.co.uk/history.htm that uses that term. Perhaps the term made more sense when the sound was generated more directly from the needle on the disk.

I reviewed an old favorite SF novel, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, in my thread...post #133. I love it when something enjoyed in youth retains its charm in old age.

Did not enjoy Bear's Hull Zero Three. It was just one strange event after another. Philip Mann's Master of Paxwax though is the real deal, a very dark space opera with humans as genocidal degenerates oppressing noble aliens. Am nearly on The fall of the Families, the second and final part.

I'm a big fan of Mann's novels. It's a shame he packed in writing.

I'm currently reading Transmission by John Meaney.

Reading Marrow by Robert Reed. I do like a big spaceship! It's the first of his I've read; won't be the last though.

>64 iansales: According to his Wikipedia page he is writing again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Mann

It's said that for a few years now...

Ah. OK.

I got another Kindle freebie, The Zona, which is a post-apocalyptic novel of surprising depth and satisfaction. I reviewed it in my thread...post #97.

Have posted my review of Embassytown on SFF Chronicles here.

Hmm I think Ian means here

No idea what happened there. Have fixed.

I liked Philip Mann's work, up until that alternate Roman universe series he did, which I took against. as for Robert Reed, well, he's - **different**. Down the bright way and Marrow struck me as very original, but there was something odd about them that I couldn't put my finger on, quite. Sister Alice and the well of stars worked better for me.

#74 by @RobertDay> I've noted a similar thing before about Marrow. It's a bit of a "coldness" to the characters. I partially chalked it up to how the future technology of immortality and near indestructibility made them lose a bit of their humanity. But then in the sequel, The Well of Stars, I didn't notice it so much so maybe not.

In any case, I immensely enjoyed both books. Then again, my particular tastes run more towards "big ideas" rather than "knowing exactly what a character's mindset, motivation and emotional investment is when making a piece of toast".

I liked Reed's early novels but went off him after Beyond the Veil of Stars. I later picked up Marrow and The Well of Stars and thought them good. But i reread of The hormone Jungle wasn't so successful. Having said all that, his first novel, The Leeshore, is pretty forgettable.

I read and loved a fair bit of Van Vogt when I was young but have not read him in decades. I've picked up some of the old paperbacks in recent months and started on Mission to the Stars AKA The Mixed Men. Although my fondness for golden age science fiction has dimmed over recent years, finding ones like this makes me happy. This is a short novel, a fix-up, that I am enjoying a lot. It will be too quick of a read.

Interesting note: the term "fix-up" (in this sense) is attributed to Van Vogt.

>>71 iansales:, 72 Excellent review of Embassytown.

Thanks.

My wife knows me well, she gave me The Other Side of the Sky An Annotated Bibliography of Space Stations in Science Fiction 1869-1993 by Gary Westfahl (Touchstone is shot sorry) Anyone would think she wants me to buy more books :-)

On my Birthday today I also picked up Sea Kings of Mars by Leigh Brackett, and The Helix and the Sword by John C. McLoughlin each for under a dollar. Clearly the gods of the book world are telling me these need to move close to the top of my to Be Read Pile.

1/3 through Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction.

It's been a while since I posted on here. Probably because my reading has been thrown off it's normal course. I'm knee deep in The Baroque Cycle, which I'm enjoying, I listened to Wyrms on audio and gave up by the last disc. I just started Dune, which, despite the huge amount of names a places, is a fun read so far.

Finished The Machine's Child, starting White Apples.

In #71 I read a bit of Iansales's review of embassytown and his description of " The Ariekans, known by the Embassytowners as Hosts, are mysterious and ineffable" immediately reminded me of the "Fair Witnesses" characters introduced in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

I still sometimes reflect on Heinlein's description of a Fair Witness when I am trying to be objective. I only remembered the description however and had to look up which story the character derived from to note this - been many years since I read Heinlein!

I have not read Embassytown yet.

::edit:: finished Ian's review and this quote also came to mind vis a vis Embassytown - Shaka: When The Walls Fell ;-) Good review again Ian!

Continuing with On the Oceans of Eternity by S. M. Stirling...

#85 The Trek thing is similar but not quite the same. In that episode, the alien race used metaphors to communicate, whereas in Embassytown the Hosts are incapable of using metaphors because that requires abstraction. I'm not sure the Stranger in the Strange Land reference is appropriate either. The Fair Witnesses make a choice to speak only truth, but Language prevents the hosts from speaking but the truth.

Thanks for the clarification Ian. I was muddling along thinking of objectivity mainly after your review and the star trek thing was a dual purpose {and unfair, since I have not read the book} jab at the novel Embassytown. "Shaka when the walls fell" = disaster, since you state it might not make many short lists for awards.

#82 AnnieMod
I enjoyed Reality Dysfunction. It took me a while to ge through. I have the next two volumes on my bookshelf, but can't pluck up the courage to devote so much time to another two long volumes. I do want to read them, though.

The Night's Dawn series is a great story. Unfortunately it's also half a dozen good, mediocre or boring stories.

I've just finished the third book of 1Q84 and found the whole thing a good read. It could have ended with Book Two, but Book Three did not do any damage to the earlier parts of the story.

Just finished Kiln People by David Brin. What a fantastic yarn! This was really a uniquely told story.

Finished last week The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown.
I’m still a beginner in SF literature and for more than 2 or 3 years I haven’t read anything of it.
It was a good and soft start, nothing hard or the kind, a romantic SF novel. I like it.

>92 brightcopy: I loved Kiln People when I read it a few years ago. I think it's one of David Brin's best books just because it doesn't take itself seriously.

I've just finished The Steel Remains and I liked it. It's one of the few fantasy books that I've actually enjoyed. One of the reviews said they thought it felt more like sf than fantasy which is probably why I liked it.

I'm moving on to Countdown: the Liberators but I don't have high hopes as the two people who rated it gave it 2.5 stars and 3 stars but there are no reviews so I don't know why they didn't like it. I'm looking forward to finding out because there is a guy with a sniper rifle and a building on fire on the cover so it can't be that bad, can it!?

I've been reading selections from The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-second Annual Collection and The New Space Opera. I particularly enjoyed Minla's Flowers from the later. TNSO was very good.

Finished listening to Judas Unchained. Forty-plus hours! (Took me nearly 6 weeks). I've read the book too. If you get hungry you can use it to bludgeon a cow. Its not bloated, however, IMOHO. Great reader, John Lee, did an excellent job. This is my favorite Hamilton novel by far (Fallen Dragon being second).

Now listening to Light. I've read it before and liked it.

I too loved Kiln People - great way of telling a story with the varying perspectives...

>89 pgmcc: pgmcc

A mild case of a cold combined with a nasty, windy and rainy weather (which is not normal for Arizona) got me reading through most of the weekend :) Which helped a lot on getting through the book. Now the biggest issue is if I want to spend the next few weeks reading Hamilton - I really enjoyed the first one, I want to know what happens next but at the same time, I like a little variety in my reading...

>90 brightcopy:
Maybe. But I kinda liked a lot of the secondary stories (when they were not becoming the main story out of the blue).

>95 randalhoctor:

Depends on which edition of Judas Unchained you have - my mmp is smaller than most books. Oh well. Now - the other Hamilton's can be used for that...

#97 AnnieMod

I was on holiday in the South of France at the time and my wife could not cope with the hot temperatures (which, at 32 degrees C were probably mild for you) so we had to spend a lot of time in the shade reading. :-)

My conclusion on the Reality Dysfunction and Hamilton's writing was that I enjoyed the story and the writing. In terms of the other books I decided not to read them as I have so many other books I want to read. Of course, the next time I spotted The Neutronium Alchemist in a bookshop I read the first couple fo pages and realised I really wanted to read on to find out what happens. That was when I came up with the cunning plan of getting my children to buy them for me for Christmas. :-) That is how they have come to be on my bookshelf. Now all I need is a long holiday in the sun to so that I can get to read them in the shade.

I hope your cold has cleared up. Nasty, windy and rainy weather in Arizona does sound a bit incongruous.

>98 pgmcc:

That's a small world - I read the Pandora's Star while on vacation in the south of France - Bordeaux to be precise. The reason for me reading it at this time was that I had the small compact mmp while having enough reading in it for the week :) And I had the Judas Unchained with me as well - never got to it, finished Pandora in the plane back home.

Nearing the end of The Year Before Yesterday by Brian Aldiss. It is an odd book.

Starting Black Sun Rising, first book in the science fantasy Coldfire Trilogy.

just finished and was very impressed by The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi; interesting world he's created... hope he sets more stories in it.

a mmp of Judas Unchained sits waiting on my shelf (actually it's sitting right next to the computer I'm typing this on ... I've been debating purchasing the kindle edition so as to not have to wrestle with the book ... small print etc)

Currently reading Intrusion by Ken MacLeod.

I have copies of the UK and US mmp versions of Pandora's Star. The UK version is thick enough to be a library stool, but the US version is printed down into the inside margins... the reason I bought the UK version when I saw it at a local bookstore.

I keep seeing "mmp". What does it mean please?

mass market paperback

(IMAGE REMOVED)

Thanks.
All good books IMOHO BTW.

Just started Osama by Lavie Tidhar. It is set in a slightly annoying typeface, rather I don't necessarily think it is the typeface itself, but more some of the letter-spacing. It exhibits it more with words starting with "St". I can see it will slow me down a bit.

Unlike in the cartoon, I find it too tight, rather than a bit too loose.

Either way is a bit of a pain. Actually, it's the inconsistency that's the real problem. I was reading a MMPB of A Fire Upon the Deep and it had sections that were printed as you can see here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=UGAKB3r0sZQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA54#v=onepage&...

The spacing between words wasn't that much more than between letters. I actually stopped and thought to myself that it was odd that I found it still readable even so. Yet another one of those tricks the brain can use, much like reading words with letters transposed without much trouble.

But if the spacing had been inconsistent, I think that would have fell apart.

Now reading Dies the Fire by S. M. Stirling. I think after this second "Event" trilogy I'm taking a break with something else...

#111

Actually it isn't as bad as I feared. The bits that look 'nasty' to my eye are the extracts from the "Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante" books. So it was definitely a deliberate artistic choice.

My first, and only, science fiction read this month is House of Suns which I started reading yesterday. It's set a lot further in the future than the Revelation Space series, but I am liking it so far as there are lots of mysteries to be uncovered!

Recently I've read Ready player one, which was excellent. Despite not being a gamer myself, I got totally absorbed by the plot and characters and could hardly make myself sto reading when it was time to get off the train.
I also finished Fledgling, a novel set in the Liaden Universe. It's the first of these books that I've read and I really enjoyed it; it's rather a YA type story but benefits from clearly being part of a larger set-up. I'll be looking for the sequel.

Finished Gibson's 'Spook country' and rated it quite highly. It turned into something of a page-turner towards the end, which was a bit of a surprise. Why do I visualise Hubertus Bigend as being played by John Malkovich?

Back to some Al Reynolds next - Pushing ice.

Been reading history most of the month, but just started my ARC of Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson. So far, it's been surprisingly funny and inventive. Have to say, if you're going to read a book with a lot of video games, it's better than Ready Player One.

Hey RobertDay - I liked Pushing Ice quite a bit...

Finished White Apples, and also Word Freak, which isn't science fiction, but is about fans of a sort who make hard-core SF convention goers look normal. Starting In the Ocean of Night.

brightcopy: Just so happens I'm into the first few pages of A Fire Upon the Deep (mmpb version). Now I'll be obsessing about the kerning, choice of font, and crappy paper quality. Thank you ;-)

I have noticed that hardcovers occasionally have wonderful fonts and paper (ex. : Embassytown). I can's say that I've ever paid attention to other peoples kerning. I've only ever been concerned with it for text in a graphic product. Lousy font and kerning could definitely tire the eyeball and try the patience.

RobertDay et. al: Ditto on the Pushing Ice accolades.

I've noticed an alarming phenomena: I find that my texting is influencing my normal writing. The "telegraphic" conservation of characters is bleeding over into my emails/business letters etc. For example: "You're supposed to be by to get me and take me to your house" becomes "Ur suppos 2b by 2 get me n take me to ur house". Perhaps I'm becoming senile. Quite possible.

I'll bet texting influences the English language in the long run. I bet the literary types guffaw but language is a living thing constantly evolving

Audio: I'm listening to Light and its great. Good rendition. Next up is another good book I read and will be listening to: The January Dancer

>117 RandyStafford:: That sounds good, I'll keep an eye out for it when it is published.

Just about to start reading The Waters Rising by Sherri, Tepper.

Starting The Protector's War by S.M. Stirling...

Finally plugging a gap in my reading life and cracking Desolation Road. So far I like it.

Am nearly finished Countdown: The Liberators and I have to confess that I'm enjoying it. No matter how bad the characterisations are, how offensive some of it is, I just can't hate it and put it down. I can't tell you why I like it either - I just am enjoying it and I have to know how it ends.

My book group put me up to looking at the Mars Trilogy as a precursor to going to see the flick "John Carter." Having never read any ERB up to this point in my life my impression is that I can see how these stories were canon but I'm just didn't get them at the right time; twelve years of age probably is the golden age of science fiction!

I just read a paperback off my bookshelf that I did not realize I had, The Maker of Universes by Philip Jose Farmer. At 240 pages a quick adventuresome read. The cover is missing off of my book and I don't have any other books in the "World of Tiers" series and am not sure if I have read them. After a quick check the local library also has none of the series, they must have perished as overused paperbacks. Similar structure to Riverworld series as the tale flows easily.

Finished reading the Foundation books trilogy by Asimov. Enjoyed the story enough to stick with it. Very interesting at times but also dull in places. Overall I would rate the books in the 3 to 3.5 star range. Good, but not great literature. I can see how it was influential on the genre in both print and film. Evaluating in the time it was written I can see how it was innovative, but to me has not aged well.

For a completely different change of writing style and pace I am about half way through Star King by Jack Vance and finding it very rewarding. I just discovered Jack Vance last year. I read and really enjoyed two of his Dying Earth books and decided to see if his more sci-fi oriented work was just as good as his fantasy.

Just started Cryptonomicon. I like Neal Stephenson's writing style. He makes doorstopper books go by quickly.

> DugsBooks - I actually liked the World of Tiers series better than the Riverworld books. I remember reading them as a kid about the same time I discovered Zelazny's Amber series...

>128 chokai:
Hi Chokai: If you liked Vance's Dying Earth books (which has become the name of a whole subgenre), be sure to try the Book of the New Sun quartet by Gene Wolfe if you haven't already. The first is The Shadow of the Torturer. Many consider them the masterpiece of the Dying Earth mode. Some find them too abstruse or mannered, but many readers who love Vance also love Wolfe.

#129 drmamm

You hit the nail on the head. I managed to read REAMDE in a week and I am a very slow reader.

> 128, 131

I like both Vance's Dying Earth and Wolfe's Book of the New Sun quite a lot, but Vance's work has a certain wry appeal that I don't find in Wolfe (and lacks a certain profundity that I do). Another direction to go from Vance's Dying Earth would be the Zothique stories of Clark Ashton Smith, and possibly even some James Branch Cabell, like The Silver Stallion.

>133 paradoxosalpha:
>I like both Vance's Dying Earth and Wolfe's Book of the New Sun quite a lot, but Vance's work has a certain wry appeal that I don't find in Wolfe (and lacks a certain profundity that I do).

I agree (and why can't I come up with great one-sentence summaries like that?!).
The odd thing about Wolfe for me is that I've found his work very spotty. The Book of the New Sun is a classic that deserves to be on any short list of greatest SF, and a number of his other things are great (The Fifth Head of Cerberus & The Devil in a Forest are favorites of mine), but others are awful -- like the The Book of the Long Sun set which is flat, lifeless & uninteresting.
Clarke Ashton Smith & J.B. Cabell are great suggestions. Maybe add a couple of more recent authors, like Matthew Hughes -- e.g. Black Brillion , or even those End of Time books by Michael Moorcock starting with An Alien Heat (they have a very different tone but the setting & concept are very Dying Earth).

I finished Countdown: the Liberators and enjoyed it. Still have no idea why I like Tom Kratman but I just do.

I've done a complete reversal and am now reading The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood which is set in a sort of dysotpia Melbourne, Australia and is all about gender and queer sexuality. The narrator of the story is an hermaphrodite which I can't remember ever having read in a book before.

133>

I read The Book of the New Sun last year. I had mixed reactions. Wolfe as always seemed something of a puzzle writer the few times I've read him. While I don't mind that in short stories, I'm generally not a big fan of the decode the clever writer type of book.

The Book of the New Sun ultimately came off, to me, as a very elaborate riff on a very standard plot: the young hero who turns out to be the savior of his people. Sure, I liked some of the set pieces and having an honest to goodness torturer as a "hero", but, as short as they were, the novels started to drag in the second half of the series, and I didn't appreciate most of the nested stories and dramas we get.

I suspect I saw what other people saw, just weighted my appreciation differently.

I do second the recommendation of Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series. Like no other Moorcock I've read. Genuinely funny and witty.

And, yes, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique is one of the great progenitors of the exotic, decadent, dying Earth that influenced Vance and, indirectly, Wolfe.

I actually managed to get two, two!, genre books read in a month for a change. City of Ruins (A) is classic space adventure in a continuing series as the adventurer "Boss" has made herself into an entrepreneur in her hunt for lost technology and finds more than she was looking for on an archaeological investigation.

>136 RandyStafford: Shorter, and perhaps more fun than his various New Sun series, is Wolfe's Soldier series as its 'tricksiness' is much more overt. Latro, a mercenary in the Ancient world can see and talk to the Gods but is cursed as sleep erases his memory. The 'text' is the diary he keeps to remember. Its only drawback is the lack of a concluding volume.

Completed Philip Mann's The fall of the Families which kept up the power of the first volume and also managed to finish somewhere both totally unexpected but poignant. Now on Lemistry which is a really strange collection of non/fiction about/by/inspired by Stanislaw Lem.

Finally finished Cryptonomicon yesterday afternoon, a very, very good novel that I honestly don't know that I would have attempted had I realized how long it was going to take me to read it. A good one to tackle when you're laid up with a broken leg, perhaps.

(ETA: You can read my Cryptonomicon review here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3OLRNLEVQCOC1/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_cm_cr_notf_APPROVED_f...

Taking a break from SF-type stuff to get into some music criticism, graphic novels, and other literature of interest (and to keep up with our weekly story discussions over at The Weird Tradition (http://www.librarything.com/groups/theweirdtradition), as always).

>133 paradoxosalpha: et al.

Always nice to see some Clark Ashton Smith love. He is certainly not to all tastes (which partially explains his lack of current popularity compared to his Weird Tales colleagues H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard), but I think his writing is worth looking into simply as one of the truly sui generis bodies of work in 20th century literature.

Finished The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and about to start The Tale of the Wicked by John Scalzi.

> 131 et al.
thanks for the feedback everyone. I will have to add Gene Wolfe to my library

Finished The Tale of the Wicked and about to start An Election, both by John Scalzi.

OK guys and gals, it's April now: http://www.librarything.com/topic/135204