Books: January 2006 Archives
Stack up the books and turn off the tv. Here's Locus's recommended reading list for stuff that came out in 2005.
Plenty for me to read.
I think I might work my way down the short stories and read everything that is online.
Better late than never, here's the shortlist for the 20th Arthur C. Clarke Award (2006):
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)
Learning The World – Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
Pushing Ice – Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
Air – Geoff Ryman (Gollancz)
Accelerando – Charles Stross (Orbit)
Banner Of Souls – Liz Williams (Tor)
If you count Geoff Ryman as British (he was born in Canada but been living in the UK for most of his life) then this is the first all-British shortlist in the history of the Award.
This award tends to throw up some different books from the BSFA award, including more mainstream novels (or marketed as mainstream anyway), and this year it's Never Let Me Go.
As usual I've only read one of the books! (Accelerando). I must read Air though, that's going to the top of my list.
Via comments on Charlie Stross's Live Journal, here's a picture of the Baroque Cycle manuscript. It' big!
Via SFSignal the Locus Online 2005 Cover Art Gallery is pretty awesome, all of the covers of books and magazines that they have received.
Perhaps it's my cultural bias but I generally think that the UK versions of covers tend to be better that the US ones.
From the BSFA site
Novel
* 9Tail Fox -- Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Gollancz)
* Accelerando -- Charles Stross (Orbit) (Free ebook edition)
* Air -- Geoff Ryman (Gollancz)
* Learning the World -- Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
* Living Next Door to the God of Love -- Justina Robson (Macmillan)
Short fiction
* 'Bears Discover Smut' -- Michael Bishop (SciFiction, 26 October)
* 'Bird Songs at Eventide' -- Nina Allan (Interzone #199)
* 'Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch' -- Rudy Rucker (Interzone #200)
* 'I, Robot' -- Cory Doctorow (Infinite Matrix, 15 February)
* 'Imagine' -- Edward Morries (Interzone #200)
* 'Magic for Beginners' -- Kelly Link (Magic For Beginners; also F&SF, September)
* 'Soft Apocalypse' -- Will McIntosh (Interzone #200)
* 'Two Dreams on Trains' -- Elizabeth Bear (Strange Horizons, 3 January)
Now I'm a BSFA member I get to vote, cool! The downside, I've only read one of the novels and two of the shorts. The shorts I can try and fix by trying to read the ones available online. But there's no way I'm going to be able to read four novels, especially the ones in hardback. That's always the problem with these awards.
The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link is a Nebula nominee and I read it last night.
I loved it. Although I'm finding it very hard to articulate why (I'm so rubbish at reviews!). It's a fantasy story, first person, that tells the tale of a handbag. Hmmm, not doing it justice here.
Just start reading it. The language is wonderful, with a great sense of character (which can sometimes be tricky in first person). The narrator tells the story as a stream of consciousness, going off into interlocking tales. It builds to a wonderful image of her life. It made me smile lots, at times it's funny, in a soft way, but there's also sad bits.
Once I finished it left a lingering glow in my head and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Lovely.
Via Emerald City, loads of the Nebula nominee stories are online thanks to their original publication magazines. So far Asimov's, Analog and F&SF have links for their stories. Plenty to read!
Via raelity bytes, Bed Books! For those too lazy to hold your book sideways...
The patent pending sideways text layout of Bed Books affords total comfort and eliminates the back and neck strain associated with the contorted body positions normally required for reading conventional books while lying down, and usually propped up, in bed.
You'll be happy to know that there are a couple of SF books that are Bed Books: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , Frankenstein and War Of The Worlds. Which all sound supiciously to me like books which are out of copyright and so you could probably just download them from somewhere and print them sideways to get the same effect.
Cory Doctorow's short short PrintCrime is online and a great little piece.
Justina Robson's discovery/reaction to news of her PKD Award nominations made me laugh.
Via SF Signal, the Nominees for the 2005 Philip K. Dick Award, have been announced.
I'm going to go all tribal for a minute and cheer on the British nominees, Neal Asher (for Cowl) and Justina Robson (for Silver Screen and Natural History). Go Neal and Justina (cue cheerleaders).
The 2005 SFWA(R) Preliminary Nebula Awards(R) Ballot list is online.
As usual I've read disappointingly few of them.
I think the Fantasy/SF debate may rage again on this one, surely Susanna Clarke and Kelly Link have a good chance?
Locus Online has an excerpt from Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Felaheen online. If you haven't read his Arabesk series I highly recommend it, streetwise "detective plot" SF in the Middle East. Very cool.
Congratulations to Cory Doctorow who has decided to become a full-time writer. He says "effective today, I'm a full-time, freelance word-maker", and it sounds like he has a lot of stuff in the works.
