Our reads Jan 2018

Happy New Year folks! Another year,another intriguing tower of books!

Dusty's TBR for January
SF/F
Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth ✔
Lester Del Rey - Battle on Mercury ✔
Simon R Green - The Man With the Golden Torc ✔
Amanda Stevens - The Visitor ✔
Robert Charles Wilson - Spin ✔
C J Cherryh - Convergence ✔
Arthur C Clarke - Dolphin Island ✔

from other genres
Hannah Alexander - A Killing Frost ✔
Enid Blyton - First Term at Malory Towers ✔
Anthony J D'Angelo - College Blue Book ✔
Meindert De Jong - The Wheel on the School ✔
Kate Greenaway - Under the Window ✔
Tove Jansson - The Moomins and the Great Flood✔
Ellery Queen - The Tragedy of Y✔
Leigh Russell - Dead End ✔

Lester Del Rey's Battle on Mercury was a rather cute little story ,one of the Winston juveniles about a young boy, a grizzled old prospector and an alien ball of electricity who head out through the wilderness to get to a communications relay station to get aid for their little community after the rocket carrying supplies to them crashed,dooming them to starvation. Typical tale of plucky boy coming of age,but nicely written and with an interesting background on Mercury. Good fun.
Coming up.Robert Charles Wilson's Spin,my first book by this author, and a UF novel,Amanda Stevens The Visitor

Happy New Year !!

Finished out 2017 with 120 books read plus three put aside as unreadable. Starting off the new year with a fantasy, Truthwitch by Susan Dennard, and a scifi, Provenance by Ann Leckie.

Last year was a terrible year for reading - had three writing projects on track at the same time, not something I plan to attempt again. This year it'll just be one book written, and possibly a lot more than 12 read!

Carrying over from December 2017: The War Against the Rull by Van Vogt and (nonfiction) The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. New for January is Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. On that last I must say, he certainly knows how to start a story!

I'm going to finish Four-Day Planet this month if it kills me. Also going to review Provenance if same.

I'm starting the new year with Persepolis Rising, and Artemis after that.

As the New Year gets underway I'm reading Ensign Flandry by Poul Anderson. So far it's a moderately entertaining allegory for the war in Vietnam.

First book finished in 2018 is Kraken by China Miéville. A bit reminiscent of Tim Powers. I enjoyed the writing and plotting. Four stars and a good start to the year.

Highlight read of 2017 was Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle. I have ordered copies of both Lexicon Urthus and Gate of Horn, Book of Silk in anticipation of re-reading/studying the worlds of the New, Long, and Short Sun in greater detail this year. Someone here on LT also mentioned the Alzabo Soup podcast, (thank you, mysterious stranger!), and that looks to be a fun and interesting resource for exploring the many worlds of Wolfe as well.

In 2018, I plan to focus on my TBR shelf instead of acquiring/borrowing newer books. I have a ton of reading languishing there that I need to get to sooner rather than later. Next up, I am mulling between Pavane by Keith Roberts and A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.

Artemis got a disappointed 2.5 stars because I just don't buy Jazz as a female. Sounds too much like Mark Watney for my taste.

I am starting the SF year with a light time traveling story - A Symphony of Echoes - or lighter than my usual fare at least. I really enjoyed the first book in the series but never got back to the series - so it was time.

>9 richardderus: Isn't she also supposed to be Muslim?

I've started with A fire upon the deep by Vernor Vinge. I'm enjoying it but not loving it. The ideas are amazing, the execution a bit less so.

It just came to my attention that yesterday was "Science Fiction Day". According to wiki:

National Science Fiction Day is unofficially celebrated by many science fiction fans in the United States on January 2, which corresponds with the official birthdate of famed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.1

While not an official holiday of any sort (in the sense that it is not recognized or declared by any government), National Science Fiction Day is given some degree of credence by its recognition by organizations such as the Hallmark Channel2 and by the Scholastic Corporation.3 It is also listed in the National Day Calendar.

All Hail Asimov! ;-)

>11 iansales: Is she? It wasn't a huge deal to me if it was mentioned.

>14 richardderus: Bit of a failure of writing then, if she didn't come across as a Muslim character. Still, from all I've seen, Artemis looks like a terrible book and I shall be avoiding it.

I finished Psion by Joan D. Vinge. It was quite a good read though not as interesting as The snow queen.

I'm reading Dune for the third or fourth time!

>17 jhicks62: One of a handful of books for which I've lost track of rereads. There's been more than a few for Dune, to be sure.

Having just read and reviewed The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, I'm now most of the way through False Gods.

>15 iansales: I was deeply disappointed in it, as the author's tech-bro-libertarian cred was way too much on display for my liking.

I'd wave you off had you not already decided to give it a miss.

I actually knocked off Artemis (C+) this evening and thought it was okay, but only okay. I'm not disturbed by Weir's supposed philosophy but I'm not sure that I buy even a small-scale smuggling operation working in the settlement depicted. Still, Weir has set himself a very high bar and I'm kind of impressed that it does appeared that he tried to stretch himself; the book doesn't compare that badly to some of the other "blue collar" SF novels I've read of late.

>21 Shrike58: High bar? Commercially, perhaps. But certainly not in terms of writing.

I'm about done with Ensign Flandry. Just couldn't get into it. Occasionally Poul Anderson comes up with a great story, but most of the time he is just too dry for me.

Next up I'm re-reading The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov.

Absolutely true...I'm a little impressed that he got any follow-up novel out at all, considering he's a hobbyist who touched a nerve and got lucky. Keep in mind I'm judging Weir as compared to a Dan Brown rather than, say, John Scalzi or "James Corey."

>24 Shrike58: Comparing him to Dan Brown? Cruel :-)

That's how I roll sometimes! Weir does seem like a non-jerk so one shouldn't be too mean I suppose, and I certainly don't begrudge him his success.

>26 Shrike58: There are so many ethically inferior ways of earning a nice buck than writing a couple of mediocre novels that have brough enjoyment to hundreds of thousands of readers, so certainly not!

I didn't think much of Consider Phlebas for most of it, besides some exciting action scenes, but the ending salvaged it for me and I think there's something to it. Hearing good things about other titles in this series, I'll probably circle back.

I finished Guardians of time by Poul Anderson which was a very pleasant read. There is nothing too much in this book ; the lightness was appreciated.

Finished reading The War Against the Rull by A.E. Van Vogt today. This is one of several novels I remember encountering in my hometown library, when I was between ten and twelve years old. The covers caught my eye and I was already hooked on science fiction, so that's all there was to the selection process. It's been decades since I read this one, but elements persisted in my memory. This one is another of his "fix ups," and like Voyage of the Space Beagle (which I reread last year after a similar decades-long delay) it suffers from a series of disconnects in the plot. The ending, in particular, was very weak - rushed and sort of off-hand in the way it wrapped things up. Knowing no better as a boy, I apparently enjoyed the book - what I understood of it. Now - bit of a disappointment.

Moving on - I'm well into Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. Very impressive work so far.

I read my first Doctor Who novel today! Touched by an Angel, the Eleventh Doctor with the Ponds as Companions. The only Doctor Who antagonist I was ever scared by are the Weeping Angels and they're in full creep-out mode in this book. A good first-ever read.

>28 Cecrow: I think it's fair to say that none of the Culkture novels are that much like the others, even if the later ones are a bit McGuffin-driven. But there's always something different in each of them. The same can't always be said of Banks' non-sf novels, though I've always found them entertaining. I've just read Complicity and found it remarkably similar in tone, setting and events to The Crow Road, for example.

Currently reading The Rift and nejoying it very much. It hangs together better than The Race did.

Just got Provenance by Ann Leckie and Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky from the library.

Have finished the first Jimn White Sector general omnibus, Beginning Operations and enjoyed it immensely despite some distinctly old-fashioned attitudes. Now about to start Connie Willis' Passage, to see if it can redeem her in my eyes from the turge-fest that was Blackout/All Clear.

Just started Beyond the empire, the third book in the Indranan war trilogy.

Reading as of Jan. 2 The Gods Themselves as part of the January SFF reading challenge. I've had it on my shelf for years, meant to read it prior to 2017, and decided it was time.

When Asimov gave his interview to Gene Roddenberry on the Star Trek LP, the one I was obsessed with and learned all sorts of bits of Star Trek lore, Asimov mentioned that he wanted to be remembered for Gods instead of Foundation Trilogy. (Or maybe it was I, Robot that he mentioned by name in the recording? The memory is decades old and alas, I don't have a stereo with a turntable.)

I'm enjoying it more than I had hoped, especially since The Sentinel was not an enjoyable read. Different author, different genre, although Fountains of Paradise was a TBR and became a favorite.

It's hard to resist a book with a good ending. It can feel like a rare thing. Too many books fall apart or have a disappointing ending.

>#37 I read Asimov as a kid. It hasn't dated well. I do though remember the caves of steel A PI SF I did enjoy.

I'm going through some old paperbacks, so the Caves of Steel might come up soon :-)

I can recommend Colossus as a nice read even though the years have gone by. Thankfully it doesn't say how large or fast the computer is, just large and fast, so imagine Alpha Go in charge of NORAD.

And I certainly enjoyed The Martian too; now all you have to do after achieving ridiculous out-of-the-blue success is to repeat it. Easy!

>39 guido47: Most of the Asimov I read I picked up in my mid-to-late teens and early adulthood. The Foundation Trilogy was one of those works the created a large portion of the frame of reference I still use when I read science fiction. Rereading it today as I do most books, with the somewhat more critical eye of a writer and a more mature perspective, it does seem a bit threadbare. And yet, reading those old books (his and others) can take me back a bit to those earlier days. At times, that's refreshing.

>37 threadnsong: I recently re-read The Gods Themselves and there are some deficits from a reader's viewpoint. It's basically three interconnected novelettes or novellas. The first one is fine, rooted in Asimov's own world of science and academia. The second, dealing with a totally alien universe, is understandably clunky. The third segment has problems with the interplay of the characters. All in all it's a novel with some great ideas but it's somehow less than the sum of its' parts.

Having said that, the Robot stories seem rather dated now. I think the Foundation Trilogy still holds its' own, at least the original three volumes.

I am going to read Plague War by Jeff Carlson. I see it is the second of a series... hopefully it does not flashback too much.

I just finished The Stone Sky, and as far as I am concerned, they may as well engrave N.K. Jemison's name on the 2018 Hugo. I read The Broken Earth trilogy almost one right after the other, and it just kept getting better. I actually caught myself holding my breath while I read at various points in The Stone Sky, which brought the books to an extremely emotionally satisfying conclusion. It has been a long time since I have read anything in the genre that has been this good: the world building was intricate, the plot was fresh and deftly revealed, the characters were deeply drawn with well defined arcs, and the shifting narrator point of view almost flawlessly kept the reader's attentive curiosity. What an achievement.

Its been a while since I have been on this forum and I am glad to be back. It great finding out what other folks are reading and what they think of the books. Provenance by Leckie was good, but I still feel her first book Ancillary Justice was the best of the lot. I sometimes get a hankering to re-read that book. It was soooo good.
I just keep adding to my list of what is to be read, besides what has been hanging around the house for years. My goal this year is to read Cherryh's Cyteen and Corey's Expanse (living on my bedstand for 2-3 years). Also, continue with Cherryh's Foreigner series. I stopped at #11 and will now pick up with #17 or 18. I find that the storyline doesn't move on too quickly, so I won't miss much if I skip 5 books or so. Besides this forum, I find Publisher's Weekly magazine very helpful in finding new books or series in scifi. Which,of course is where I found out about the current book I am reading Communication Failure by Joe Zieja. Of course, last year I read the first book Mechanical Failure which are a hoot. I finally got around to posting my review. For those who like very flawed heroes in wacky situations, this is for you. CF starts out well with a hard of hearing communications officer leading to very unintended consequences. Look forward to reading what other forum attendeess will read in the coming months. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm starting on The Power.

>35 RobertDay:: James White's Sector General stories are great. If you enjoyed Beginning Operations, I can't recommend Major Operation enough.

Just finished White's book The Watch Below myself and was not as impressed as I was with his Sector General material.

>28 Cecrow: Consider Phlebas was the first Banks book I read and it hooked me straight away. I would have read it shortly after it was published. At the time I thought it was a great yarn. It was what I needed on holidays. Having re-read since Iain's death I found I got a whole lot more from it in terms of its socio-political messages and in its context within the Culture universe. Personal maturity and having read all Iain's books in the interim obviously contributed to my greater appreciation of the work.

I'm currently reading vN, having enjoyed Company town in spite of its quite major flaws.

I am plodding through Asimov's Foundation and Earth,thankfully the last in the series(apart from Prelude to Foundation which I am not going to read)
I was never a Foundation fan anyway,and these additions in the 80s are pretty dull IMO.Still 330 pages of stodgy writing to go...(sigh).....
Much more fun is Simon R Green's The Man With the Golden Torc and Amanda Steven's The Visitor but at the moment real life issues are to the fore,and reading time is a bit sporadic,barely 50 pages a day,far below my required 150 pp to ensure keeping up with my challenges here and on WWEnd :0(

>51 dustydigger:, Prelude to Foundation was actually not bad, it was Forward the Foundation I didn't care for. I also agree the one you're reading isn't much of a keeper, I think only the original trilogy is on my shelves now.

I've only managed about 50 pages this week. It's all relative. ;)

>51 dustydigger: I've read all the Foundation etc. books written by Asimov himself, but have only reread the original trilogy. For some reason the original still works for me.

I'm actually reading them in the Tor omnibus editions, so my copy of 'Beginning Operations' has got 'Major operation' in it as well. (And you're right, that kept me turning the pages quite happily!)

>50 Sakerfalcon: I wasn't impressed by vN, although I've heard Company Town is better.

Finished The Rest of the Robots, which I'm sure needs little comment from me. Just started on Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany and I'm hooked from the first few pages.

Finished Provenance by Ann Leckie. Enjoyed it.

Read Way Station for a book group, and wow, what a great discussion we had! Never heard of this author before; this was written in 1963 and won a Hugo. The ending is a little off - sort of a universal kumbaya moment, but it was certainly one of the most enjoyable sci fi I have read, period. Anyone read anything else by him?

>18 ThomasWatson: last reread was a year or so ago for a book group and fell in love with it again (first read when I was 14!) But this time around was aware of some of the problems with it. Re read the sequel Dune Messaih and tought actually that was a much better book! still, wonderful series

I've started The IFO Report and despite (or maybe because of) the slow build-up I'm enjoying it.

>58 cindydavid4: I read lots by Simak when I grew up. Most of it I loved. He is one of the better known American SF authors of the 20th century, so I wonder whether you are very young? Or maybe you missed him all these years just by sheer chance. Such things happen to all of us. Anyway, congratulations to having found him! City is another great book by him.

I really like Simak,especially Way Station,there is a warmth and a sympathy for humanity that always shines through.I have his City,Ring Around the Sunand All Flesh is Grass on my TBR for 2018.
Another author I enjoy from the same era,also a massive name at the time though perhaps not so well known among younger SF readers of today,is Theodore Sturgeon,the great short story writer.
I am working through the Hugos and Nebulas this year but from next year I am intending to extend my acquaintance with Simak,Sturgeon,Poul Anderson,and check out people like Bob Shaw and Robert Sheckley,and maybe more Robert Silverberg,(though I find him a bit hit and miss). Cant wait.looking forward to some nice pulpy reads!
Meanwhile I have to contend with the monster tome writers of modern times........(sigh)....... Amazing how much brilliant speculation those old authors could pack into a couple of hundred pages or less!
I am putting aside all my current reads because C J Cherryh's Convergence in paperback has just arrived in the post,and I am off to totally immerse myself in the life of our dear old paidhi Bren Cameron.Only chores and sleeping will impact on that! :0)

>61 anglemark: hee no I am hardly young :) Ive been reading sci fi since the 70s and am familiar with names like Paul Anderson , Robert Heinlein, Arthur C Clark, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Ursular La Guin Harlan Elison, Michael Crichton - and for some strange reason, never came across Simaks name before! But I am glad I did! I read the synopsis of The City - sounds weird with dogs being the new masters of earth, but hey why not? I do intend to read it.

>62 dustydigger: "Meanwhile I have to contend with the monster tome writers of modern times........(sigh)....... Amazing how much brilliant speculation those old authors could pack into a couple of hundred pages or less!"

Thats funny, our discussion last night talked about that very thing! That Simak could put so much brillance in his books, as many others of his time, in under 200 pages, where so much else now is just unreadable. I think whats happening now is that authors need to build entire worlds in their tomes, losing sight of the story, and be able to make a series from them. Think maybe that started with Dune? Not sure but you are right, its hard to find authors like this nowadays

"there is a warmth and a sympathy for humanity that always shines through"

Totally agree - Actually I think Neil Gaiman does this as well. Perhaps he's as close to an early author as we can get in our modern times?

I'm just starting Rocket to the Morgue, a murder mystery which incorporates a roman a clef about the southern California SF scene in the 1940s, featuring various still-read authors such as Robert A. Heinlein.

>62 dustydigger: Bob Shaw and Robert Sheckley - ah, there's two names who are forever associated with Newcastle for me!

Back in my student days in the 1970s, Newcastle had a very active SF fan scene, with the Gannets meeting in pubs to swap fanzines, and separate sf groups at the University and the (then) polytechnic, which I ran. The Gannets had created a front organisation, NESFiG (the North East Science Fiction Group) which basically got grant money from Northern Arts to invite sf writers to come to Newcastle to speak. I first made contact with sf fandom and with Bob Shaw when I attended a NESFiG talk in late 1975 at the Bridge Hotel just at the end of High Level Bridge to hear Bob talk. Living in Ulverston, Newcastle wasn't too difficult a trip for Bob; and he rarely needed any encouragement to come out to meet fans, natter, have beer and go out for a curry afterwards.

Once the two student clubs discovered NESFiG, we fairly quickly realised that we could contribute to the slush fund and get even bigger names up to Newcastle for fannish purposes. So over the next two years, we hosted talks by Greg Benford, Harry Harrison, Christopher Priest, Thomas Disch and Robert Sheckley (these being just the ones I can remember off the cuff.) Oh, and one of my fellow librarianship students had worked at Harrow library with a chap called Malcolm Edwards, who had just left the public library service to join Gollancz as their SF list editor - so we got him to come up to give a talk as well. And he ended up as Managing Director of Harper Collins...

>66 RobertDay: Shaw and Sheckley are a couple of authors I have not yet read. Any specific titles of theirs you might recommend for a start point?

For Bob Shaw, I would recommend his early novel The Palace of Eternity and his fix-up novel Other Days, Other Eyes (based around his Hugo-winning short story 'Light of Other Days', not to be confused with the Clarke/Baxter novel) (Google it, it can be found online.). He also did a good take on Dyson spheres with Orbitsville, and i would also recommend The Ceres Solution. If you are not averse to a little risk, also Google his Eastercon speeches, often billed as "Serious Scientific Talks" (but they were anything but). But you will need to have a high tolerance rate for puns. (Oddly, he only ever did a couple of comic novels, only the first of which, Who goes here?, was all that good.)

Robert Sheckley was mainly known for short stories; his novels were generally short and satirical. Perhaps my favourite was Mindswap. Others worth looking for are Immortality Inc. and The Status Civilization. Any of the collections are pretty good, though the classic early one was Untouched by human hands; also look for The People Trap and The Masque of Manana.

Finished up The Burning Page (A) this afternoon which is the best novel yet in this series; the first I suspected was pandering to me as a fan and the second I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to enjoy. This time around it all came together.

>68 RobertDay: Good stuff! Thank you.

>65 paradoxosalpha: Hee that sounds like a fun read (anyone ever read bimbos of the death sun? Takes place at a Sci con, with the usual cast of characters and there is a murder of course. It is really really funny esp if you were at cons back before they were cool (McCrumb is actually a favorite author of mine in college Think I read all of her folk tale themed books . This one was a big surprise!)

>71 cindydavid4: bimbos of the death sun?

That one's news to me, but I do have fond (if vague) memories of Asimov's Murder at the ABA.

>59 cindydavid4: Many books I recall fondly from younger days have fallen short when reread at a more mature age. Dune fared better than most by a long shot.

>73 ThomasWatson:, oh yeah I know, which is why I have no desire to read all the fantasy books I still have from years passed - I don't want to know now! And yeah, Dune has fared better

>71 cindydavid4: There's a sequel, Zombies of the Gene Pool, which I've not read.

>67 ScoLgo: I second the recommendation for Bob Shaw. I only met him a couple of times, at Eastercons in the early 1990s. Somewhere I have a chapbook of his Load of Old Bosh, which was a collection of his "Serious Scientific Talks".

>75 iansales: yeah I read it, or tried to. Not near as good.

Getting started on Provenance.

Finished In the Mouth of the Whale, halfway through Mars is My Destination -- one of those "they don't write them like that any more -- thankfully."

I'm finding Ann Leckie's Provenance rather a chore so will put it aside for now in favour of Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. I've enjoyed all his previous works so am hoping for good things.

>55 iansales: I was disappointed by vN. I found that I didn't really care about the characters, and the issues raised were fairly clichéd. The plot was more coherent than that of Company Town (which went off the rails as the solution to the mystery was revealed) yet the later had me totally immersed in its world and engaged with the characters. Though both books have flaws, CT was a much better read.

Catching up on my magazine reading so I've added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction July/August 2017 into my reading rotation.

>80 SChant: Gnomon is his most challenging book to date and is well worth any effort invested.

>83 pgmcc: It's started well with some interesting ideas about ubiquitous surveillance, the Internet of Things, and ongoing participatory democracy prescribed by social obligation.

From what I recall of the books I sensed that McCrumb had developed a certain disdain for the fannish community (more apparent in the second book) and as someone still involved in the business of running conventions I'm happy to return the favor.

Cracked open Six Wakes last night. A locked-room murder mystery on a spaceship where the cargo is frozen humans and the entire crew is dead. The victims' clones have just awakened with no memories of what happened to their previous selves and with most ship's systems disabled. The initial setting is somewhat reminiscent of the Pandorum movie. I'm intrigued and ready to turn more pages tonight...

My first Spider Robinson book, Mindkiller, was quite good. The sequel, Time Pressure - not so much. Currently about halfway through it with little happening. It's all rather dated with lots of 'hippie-speak' and descriptions of living rural in a commune and not much driving the plot forward. On the other hand, the puns are often amusing, in a groan-inducing type of way. I plan to finish the entire trilogy this month with Lifehouse so I hope the plot picks up soon.

Also recently squeezed in a short story from the Wild Cards universe... The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown was a very short & fun little tale. I think I need to read more Carrie Vaughn - and more Wild Cards material.

I was foolish enough to read The Stainless Steel Rat, forgetting how much time has passed. Loved the capers, didn't love the sexism.

I gave up on Plague War after 100 pages. First of all not reading the first book did not help. Second the book was dull as dishwater to that point. Very depressing description of the surroundings but while I like details of the surroundings, the book seemed repetitious to me.

Yep...memo to self: never again read a book 2 of a series without reading book 1 first

>87 richardderus: I reread that a few years ago and thought it was so bad I took the entire series to the chairty shop.

Read and enjoyed C J Cherryh's Convergence. Cherryh's plots are like onions,you peel away one layer to find something else below. We are still learning more and more about the actions and motives of the crew of that ship that so memorably appeared way back when Bren,totally clueless back then,was having breakfast with Ilisildi and learned of the ship's return.Lot of water under the bridge since then!
My main problem with the book was the horrible cover art. Bren-ji looks about 55 at least!!! lol.And fat!Too many teacakes perhaps?
Bring back Michael Whelan.The cover for Invader sums up the whole series for me.
Too little of Banichi and Jago for my tastes.And no Ilisidi at all.But still it was an enjoyable read.

Halfway through Babel-17 it occurred to me that this might be the earliest SF novel I've read (first published in 1966) where the main character (in this case one Rydra Wong) is female. Unless anyone knows different?

I'm finding the actual narrative a bit patchy. But maybe it will all hang together when I get to the end.

Of course Podkayne of Mars! I overlooked it because I haven't read it, not being the biggest fan of Robert A. Heinlein.

Finished Beyond the empire which was an exciting conclusion to the Indranan War trilogy. This was a fun series, not the deepest but with a good balance of character development and action.

Now I've started Infomocracy.

Just finished Waking Gods. I love this trilogy and can't wait for part three this May. It isn't the most well written or thought out, but just fun and seems to hit the spot for me.

On the other side of good writing, before this book I finished The Fifth Season. While I am moving away from fantasy more and more, I am on a quest to collect and read all Hugo winners, plus everyone seemed to be gushing about this book and the rest of the trilogy. After reading it I cannot help but agree. It has been a long while that I have read something I loved this much, and while finishing I immediately ordered the next two (they are coming in tomorrow). Those will be my next two reads for sure.

>89 iansales: It's scary how often I'm experiencing that. I think the fact that I couldn't remember more than a very broad outline of what the book was about gave me the courage to read it after so many years.

Might be time to stop doing that, since the results haven't been that great so far.

>94 richardderus: Hit or miss for me, when I revisit book remembered from younger days. I fondly remember A.E. Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle and War Against the Rull for example. Discovered them in my old home town library in my early teens (I think - might have been a bit younger). The latter ended on a flat note for me, while the former was nearly unreadable. Andre Norton was in that old library as well, and her work fares a bit better. I have a short list of other titles that invoke nostalgia for those early days. I must confess to a certain trepidation as I reacquire them.

>95 ThomasWatson: My Andre Norton rereads to date have been on the positive side. I liked Forerunner Foray and The Zero Stone well enough but am pausing before I read Key Out of Time.

>90 dustydigger: I must admit I looked at the cover for Convergence and thought, "Really?" I mean, I know a fair amount of time has passed, but... Really?

I'm reading the Robert A. Heinlein correspondence/memoir Grumbles from the Grave, and I'm about a quarter of the way through.

>95 ThomasWatson: >96 richardderus: Good to hear that Andre Norton mostly holds up. She is an author that I missed in my early SF reading and I plan on tackling about 5 or 6 of her titles this year as part of a WWE challenge.

>68 RobertDay: {& others} Did Bob Shaw's short story Light of Other Days kick butt or what? I think we actually assigned to read that in jr. high school in the 1960s. Really transcended the genre as they say. I don't know that I have read anything else by him - will have to poke around.

>100 DugsBooks: Hear! Hear!

>95 ThomasWatson: There are some books I have reread several times over the years, like Dune or Door into Summer or Childhood End (which really was a different perspective the older i got!) But the book that was the most dramatic change for me, (not sci fi) was Kim. Read it in HS, loved it for the description of India and how much I identified with Kim. Reread it a few year back and wow! Knowing more about the politics and culture of the time and place made me realize how much I missed.

>100 DugsBooks: no kidding! I had never read it before and yeah that was a pretty powerful kick! Saw lots of his books at the local used, need to decide which to get

Finished Mars is my Destination, next up The Long Earth.

>91 SFF1928-1973: CL Moore's Judgment Night, serialised in 1943, published in book form in 1952, has a female protagonist - see https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/judgment-night-cl-moore-2/

>104 ChrisRiesbeck: I really enjoyed Long Earth, thought Baxter and Pratchetts skills worked well here. Couldn't get into the others tho.

>100 DugsBooks: Oh yes.

It's a story I know intimately and it still gives me chills when I read it, even after all this time. And a few years ago when we were on holiday in the west of Scotland, we drove over the Pass of Brander and I was able to point out a particular hillside to my other half and say "And THAT'S where the slow glass farm was in BoSh's 'Light of Other Days'." (Bob was very fond of incorporating the real world into his stories whenever he could.)

>107 RobertDay: And THERE I suddenly understood the pun in Load of Old Bosh! After all these years.

>102 cindydavid4: That change in perspective can enhance a book or end my interest in it. I read Heinlein's Starship Troopers as a teenage and mostly picked up on powered armor and battling bugs. Reread it many years later and could barely get through it. There are parts that are little more than political essays that stop the narrative in its tracks. Not a book I'm likely to read again in the future.

I actually never got around to reading "Starship Troopers" until after the notorious movie was released and found it a more reasonable book than I expected; more "Officer and a Gentleman" than anything else.

>107 RobertDay: What a neat experience! I think the older you get the greater the impact of the story.

>90 dustydigger: I love the onion analogy for the Foreigner series. I've used it myself. I've lost track of how many layers have been peeled back regarding atevi politics. It does seem that the plot will shift back toward the Mospheiran/Reunioner situation in the next volume, but we shall see...

Along with Emergence, my first reads this year have been Ada Palmer's The Will to Battle (my favorite so far in that series, with Palmer's complex future coming more into focus as battle lines are drawn), and Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. I agree with earlier comments regarding how modern SF can seem pretty flabby compared to the idea-packed early novels of Simak et. al., but Newitz does a nice job of packing lots of hard SF ideas into this relatively short (by today's standards) novel--speculation on pharmaceutical tech and patent piracy, artificial intelligence, and economics in 2144--while still managing the type of character development/interest mostly missing from the early days of SF.

Also just finished the latest Asimov's. I don't have a lot of time for all the Lovecraft spinoffs these days, but there's a fun novella by Rudy Rucker & Paul Di Filippo that takes off on "Mountains of Madness." My favorite story in the issue was "Sea of Dreams" by Cixin Liu, about an alien ice sculptor who arrives and transports the Earth's oceans into orbit as an art installation. (Well, that's what happens in the story, but it's about much more...)

>102 cindydavid4: oh I know - I really haven't reread many sci fi from my HS and college years. I like having good memories of them! But there are some that do lend to being reread.

>91 SFF1928-1973: James H. Schmitz with Trigger Argee in A Tale of Two Clocks (1962) and Telzey Amberdon in The Universe Against Her in 1964. Andre Norton wrote Ordeal in Otherwhere in 1964 with Charis as the main character. Of course, if you count the Jirel of Joiry stories, that's much earlier.

>110 Shrike58: The film is excellent, the book is terrible.

>97 ThomasWatson: lol! By my reckoning Bren is in the upper 30s. I seem to remember him being about 24 in the first books,then they spent 10 years getting the space shuttles etc up and running,then they were in space for 2 years,and ,despite a load of books,only a couple of years have passed at most since their return. Cajeiri is still only nine! So I sort of picture him about 37/38 years old. He looked 20 years older on that cover. I know he's gone through a lot,but no no no,I dont even want to look at the cover.lol.
>112 ScottLaz: I often wonder just how much Cherryh planned at the start of the series. Did she think out the layers of the onion,or does she just tinker with things as she goes along.
BTW Nice to see you posting here,Scott. :0) I like it when people shuttle between WWEnd and here.Different purposes in each group,but they fit well together

I've come to appreciate the film over time, particularly when you keep in mind that Verhoeven was making documentary films for the Dutch military early in his career; he'd probably been itching to do a send-up forever!

>117 Shrike58: Verhoeven was making documentary films for the Dutch military early in his career;

That I did not know! It's a shame that Verhoeven's satirical edge was inevitably lost when other people made sequels to his sci-fi action films (I'm thinking of both Robocop and Starship Troopers.)

>105 iansales: Cool. I haven't read Judgement Night and I suspect it might be rather hard to find.

>114 ronincats: Interesting. Those are authors I haven't read, with the exception of a little Andre Norton.

>119 SFF1928-1973: rather hard to find

Not really: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41248

I've got the 1979 mmpb, and I don't think it's that dear or scarce.

>114 ronincats: if you count the Jirel of Joiry stories

And you should!

>121 paradoxosalpha: I'm obliged to you. I may be able to pick up the Omnibus edition.

>119 SFF1928-1973: Definitely worth reading IMHO.

I got my e-copy from Singularity & Co when they were doing their 'Save the Sci-Fi' thing. Sadly, they seem to have gone out of business.

Kindle $2.99, (I can't tell if this is the entire collection or just the Judgment Night story).

Abe Books also has affordable DT copies available.

Finished Babel-17, which I found interesting in spots but generally rather uneven and confusing. Next up I'm reading The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick.

>123 ScoLgo: Hmm, should I take the plunge to ebooks?

>125 SFF1928-1973: The format has much to recommend it. For me it's especially useful when the book is long and large. I have arthritis in my hands and wrists, and books by the likes of Peter F. Hamilton can be a trial in paper format. Ebooks all weigh the same - much less!

I finished The wine of violence by James Morrow: an ambigous reflexion on the capacity of violence of human beings and wether violence is inherent or not to human beings.

Reading along with the Prime series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, I've enjoyed both Exhibit Piece and Autofac very much.

For the past few months I've continued focusing on 2017 novels, in anticipation of nominating & voting for the 2018 Hugos. I've enjoyed all of these:

Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Noumenon by Marina Lostetter
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Stephenson & Galland
Clade by James Bradley
Austral by Paul McAuley

Adding Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor to my reading rotation.

>121 paradoxosalpha: Oh, I definitely would, but SFF1928-1973 was talking about novels.
>129 edgewood: I have Tropic of Kansas in the tbr pile--glad you enjoyed it.

>118 paradoxosalpha: Starships Troopers 2 isa bit crap, but Starship Troopers 3 is even more satirical. It was directed by the writer of the original film. The CGI series is crap, as are the CGI the feature films. All of the Robocop sequels are crap.

>132 iansales:

Thanks for the tip. I might try ST3 sometime, then.

Currently reading Persepolis Rising...

>115 iansales: Here here! I saw the film first, went and grabbed a copy of the book, and thought that it was mostly about bouncing in the suits (there was a phrase in the book that was too oft repeated).

Impressed with how well the filmmakers had taken a thin bit of plot and managed to incorporate much of Heinlein into the film.

I just finished Tumble and Blue, a kids book about fate and a golden alligator and family.
I really enjoyed this, my brain needed a break..

Last month I handed in my final book borrowed from Sunderland Library.Annoyingly now that they closed down the huge city library and crammed the whole library into a shoe box barely 40 feet by 25,there are only 2 bays,(8 shelves),devoted to all SF,Fantasy,Urban Fantasy,and Horror.Got sick of getting no more than one book at a visit,sometimes none,after 2 buses separated by a 10 minute wait,I have stopped going after an unbroken run of 37 years
Instead I am now a member of a library 50 minutes away,but only one bus journey. It has a really excellent SF/F section,with both classics and modern stuff.I saw at least a dozen in the SF Masterworks jackets,for instance.
So as well as renewing Foundation and Earth,andThe Fifth Season ,I also snaffled the following;
Robert A Heinlein - Back to Methuselah
Robert Silverberg - Nightwings
Andre Norton - A Night of Masks
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Chessmen of Mars
Poul Anderson - The High Crusade
Orson Scott Card - Xenocide
Seannan McGuire - A Local Habitation

four of which were on my TBR for this year,so really pleased. Stocked up for a while.We can renew twice,making a total 9 week length of loan online ,and then you can return them physically and start again if necessary! lol

Finished Binti: the Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor. Enjoyed it

>137 dustydigger: Enjoy High Crusade I read it as a teenager and loved it and then re-read it and still enjoyed it though the surprises were blown.

It has been made into a movie in the 1990's but Poul Anderson was so disgusted in the abortion that resulted apparently he refused to see it.

I think if they just followed the book as written it would be a huge hit... let me know your thoughts after you read it.

Very sad about Ursula K. Le Guin. Truly, as John Scalzi says, "losing her is like losing one of the great sequoias."
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-leguin-scalzi-20180123-story.ht....

Just finished Nick Harkaway's Gnomon and I absolutely loved it. A tour-de-force, dense and demanding. It’s a long and slow-paced story set in a near-future Britain which interrogates the ideas of ubiquitous surveillance agreed to by the populace in return for security, participatory democracy by ongoing plebiscite as a social obligation, and much more. In some ways it’s a difficult book, interweaving multiple voices and timeframes, with occasional discursions into linguistics, mythology, and the art of hiding information, but I found it gripping and very rewarding.

>141 SChant: I think your description of Gnomon is spot on. It is a great book.

>140 rshart3: Hard news to hear, that's for sure.

>137 dustydigger: Really glad you found a new library! It sounds like a great collection.

Finished Connie Willis' Passage; a lot of the obligatory running around frantically looking for something or trying to find (or in this case, avoid) someone, but given that it's set in a hospital, and the last time I went to a hospital I couldn't find my way out of the place, this rang true. And unlike the even more extreme running around in Blackout/All Clear, there did actually turn out to be a point to all this. Very impressed with the way that clues to the resolution of the novel were sunk into the text, suggesting all the time that the solution was just there, only just out of reach...

Just about to start Peter Watts' Firefall (an omnibus edition of Blindsight and Echopraxia, as PW explains in a foreword that's bound into the book even before the title page, just so that those who have been reading Watts for ages don't think they're buying something new. I'd managed to miss Watts' work through a mixture of missing conventions (where I'd pick up non-UK editions) and not so many excursions to bookshops (so missing a lot of new books published in the UK), so it came as a bit of a shock to me to see that Blindsight was first published in 2006, nearly twelve years ago. Am I that far behind the curve?

Finished reading Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. A dark, violent, intense story, richly detailed and well-written. I can see why this made a splash when it first appeared. The main character is one of those rare anti-heroes that you have trouble not liking and rooting for. The plot was twisted and complicated, a description that could be applied to several of the characters. If Netflix does this book justice, it'll be a violent and likely controversial mini-series.

Going for something quieter and (I hope) less bloody next - All Flesh is Grass by Clifford D. Simak.

Reading Time and again by Clifford D. Simak. Time travel, strange aliens and androïds.

I've started The compass rose, stories by Le Guin which are new to me.

>146 ThomasWatson: I'm looking forward to the Netflix series. Joel Kinnaman did a good job in The Killing so I'm crossing my fingers that he's as good as Takeshi Kovacs.

>148 Sakerfalcon: A great collection of her short fiction.

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction July/August 2017. Kind of a meh issue.

Next up is Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories edited by Jonathan Strahan and Charles N. Brown.

Finished The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick. Typically for the author it's quite topical for the time it was written in. In the current volume Dick addresses abortion, civil rights, over-population and parallel universes. It doesn't have the usual reality-bending though, and the ending is more rushed than usual.

Just started in on High Couch of Silistra by Janet E. Morris, which is disappointingly not the story of an interstellar furniture saleswoman.

I loved Simon R Green's The Man with the Golden Torc,such a fun wildly inventive romp. Sadly there is only one more of the series in our library system,I would have really loved to read the whole series.
Also finished my first Robert Charles Wilson book,Spin Intriguing premise about aliens blocking off the earth while the rest of the galaxy continues on in time.Earth comes to realize that for every year on earth, time is rushing ahead at a 100 million years beyond the veil that blocks out the stars,so that within 40 years earth time our dying hugely expanded sun will swallow up our planet.Who are these aliens,what is their purpose and what can mankind do ? Interesting characters and complex relationship blend nicely with the plot. Very engaging.That makes 55/66Hugos read.
Now all I have left to do this month,apart from 60 pages of a Clarke juvenile,Dolphin Island, is finish the extremely stodgy Foundation and Earth How can such an exciting premise be so dull in execution? The dialogue is excruciating,the protagonist has suffered a personality transplant since the last book.presumably to fit the plot here,and it is all deadly dull,stilted and long-winded.Wish Clarke had left the fun Baley and Daneel Olivaw books alone instead of adding all this stodge.

>152 SFF1928-1973: Just started in on High Couch of Silistra by Janet E. Morris, which is disappointingly not the story of an interstellar furniture saleswoman.

I'd've bought it had it been.

>152 SFF1928-1973: I share your chagrin.

>154 richardderus: I think I tried reading that years ago. It was the start of a series, IIRC. I had fond memories of Morris's Kerrion Consortium trilogy, but a read of the first book a couple of years ago didn't go as well as expected: https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/dream-dancer-jane-morris/

Just knocked off Lines of Departure (B), the second book in the author's ongoing military procedural in space. What lifts it above the strictly routine is that Kloos' main character does sound like the actual modern military personnel who I have in my acquaintance.

>156 iansales: Great review, had me cracking up.

>156 iansales: “Above her head the sky rippled, a candent pewter pond. From glaucous downwarding curving hills around it shining villages like jasper berries seemed to hang suspended. Before her, a serpentine construction of shimmering glass and enchanted iron glimmering bright as silver crouched above the cinereous roadway” (p 19)

This isn’t “word salad” writing, it’s a complete abuse of vocabulary.

It is rather, isn't it. Just a big wodge of words too lumpen to attempt to swallow.

>159 richardderus: >156 iansales: ouch. that bit made my brain itch. It seems that this author's beta readers failed him. I can't imagine actually slogging through the whole thing.

>160 Darth-Heather: It's by a female author, and the book was published by a major sf imprint back in the 1980s.

I vaguely remember some passages that might have been similar but used to a better effect... to describe the realms of the Chaos Lords in Moorcock's Elric :D

From my thesaurus
synonyms for dull
''boring,tedious,flat,stodgy,Foundation and Earth,insipid,characterless...........

Sorry but I was never much of a Foundation fan,nor a Robots fan really and havent found the attempt by Asimov to firmly link the two different series together very convincing.But then I never found psycho-history in the least convincing either.Unappealing characters,interminable tedious conversations,and a rather weak ending did nothing for me either. Relieved to have finished.
Wont be reading the prequels.......

>163 dustydigger: A friend of mine once reviewed 'Foundation and Earth' as "...containing no action save for the clacking of the puppets' jaws."

There was an Asimov short story that blew me away decades ago The Ugly Little Boy, about a neandathal child who had time traveled to our present, and societies reaction. At that point I started reading his books and just could not get into them. Tried again when I was older - still couldn't. I am sure there is a reason why they are so acclaimed, but they just weren't for me. Suspect his is best for me in short stories.

Finished High Couch of Silistra, an SF adventure with large helpings of sexual politics. I found it interesting, unusual and rather unsatisfactory. My main issue was the annoying heroine, who I imagine would be considered vacuous and stupid by the average bimbo.

Next up I'm reading The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream by G.C. Edmondson.

>165 cindydavid4: I entirely agree that Asimov was best suited to the short fiction format. He was particularly poor at constructing the kind of "doorstop novels" that publishers started demanding in the 1980s.

Asimov was an ideas author, like Jorge Borges. His stories were usually about fiddling with those more than they were about presenting compelling characters and action. Understanding that, I've always enjoyed his work.

>168 Cecrow: That perfectly explains why I like him, both novels and short stories.

Finished The Stone Sky and loved the whole trilogy. Next up is some fun with We Are Legion (We Are Bob).

>169 divinenanny: Same here. I can still reread the original Foundation Trilogy and enjoy it.

Just started Down Station by Simon Morden on a recommendation from my book group. I'm only a few pages in, so yet to see how it goes.

Is the Feb thread up?

>172 cindydavid4: It is.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/285959