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Locus 2003 Recommended Reading List
Embedded Geek writes "Locus magazine has published its 2003 Recommended Reading List of science fiction, fantasy, and related titles. With nearly 300 entries, it's a safe bet that even the most voracious reader will find something new. Personally, I was delighted to see Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams under non-fiction and the great listing of short fiction (so I can mine my old magazines for the gems). If you're more of a completist, check out Locus'es exhaustive listings (continued here
and here). Definitely worth downloading to your PDA for your next trip to the bookstore."
Monstrous Regiment: OK, but not his best
Wee Free Men: Better than MR
(pTerry's next book, A Hat Full of Sky will be out in a couple months.)
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, M.J. Simpson (Hodder & Stoughton; Justin Charles & Co.)
Not sure I'd read this, I took a swing at Salmon of doubt but didn't find much interesting I hadn't already seen before in there. A good read from a while back, and recently re-issued in hardcover: Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I picked a paperback copy up in Cambridge, ten years ago and found it a great read.
(Currently reading The Soong Dynasty (non-fiction) by Sterling Seagrave, alternately with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (fiction) by Robt. Heinlein, interesting combination as both address revolutions.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm currently reading the second part of that story (It really is one long story. It ends in a cliffhanger of sorts). I'm glad to see it make that list, it is really good.
It may be one of the first "modern" sci-fi stories. Namely that it plays forward some familiar themes from today, and not just 60 years ago. (It seemed to me that science ficition for the most part was stuck in WWII/Cold War logic). One main part of the books is how immortality begets laziness...and how intellectual property plays into that. (One of the main characters, a Senator, is in the middle of a centuries long fillibuster of even more strict IP rules.)
As well, the idea of micro-combat instead of macro-combat is extremly interesting and well done.
It really is a must read.
Ya know, I used to think the same way, until I started working where I do now. Here, we download alarm panels. Which is to say that we dial in, and send in the programming which makes the alarm panel actually know what zones to monitor, etc. It took me a while before I finally wrapped my brain around the fundamental issue: From whose perspective is the download being done? From mine, it's an upload. From the technician on the scene, it's a download. And what is the technician asking for? A download. Hence, why we use this (seemingly backwards) definition that we do.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Yet, of those three magazines, Analog is the only one I find consistently good enough to subscribe to.
I wish they would publish a list of things they they recommend against reading...I suspect that would fit better with my tastes. :-)
Looking over the list quickly, there aren't a whole lot of surprises here. The usual crop of perennial big authors are here, (Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, William Gibson) and even many of the lesser authors are familiar to anyone who even occasionally reads Asimov's or Analog.
The problem here is that the list is so massive, there's actually almost no point to it. There's no plot descriptions whatsoever attached to the list, just a link to elsewhere.
If you're going to recommend a book, I think whoever a book is being recommended to deserves at least a brief explanation of "WHY?" I know that's difficult for a long list like this, but just a sentence or two would be nice, not just a links leading eventually to Amazon.
BTW: I'm finding Greg Bear's latest series a tad scientifically iffy, and his characters unbearably (no pun intended) flat and boring. The new William Gibson book, on the other hand, has enough of his signiture sarcastic view of mass-media to be entertaining, but that's just my humble opinion. Go read your own books.
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
I love Linda Nagata but do not know any of the other.
Help fight continental drift.
If you only count the official "submission to pro fiction magazines", I've been uncannily lucky. Not being too prolific, I've only sent out a half dozen formal submissions over the years and got this one sale last year.
For several years, though, I submitted three or more times a year to an amateur short-short contest in the Orange County Register and placed in the top ten half the time (meriting being put on their website) and scored first twice (to wind up in their newspaper). One of those grew into the Black Gate piece.
On the (nominally) nonfiction front, I wrote several articles for Dragon. In would pitch, say, twenty different articles at a sentence a piece before the editor would tell me he liked one and asked me to write the article. Perhaps one in five of those I liked enough to actually carry out and complete a full article. Of those articles that were "preapproved" that were submitted, he only turned down two - one of which was by an assistant editor in a very unprofessional manner that convinced me to end my relationship with Dragon.
So, my ratio is either very high (about 80% for "preapproved" Dragon articles), good (16% for "submission to pro fiction magazines"), or rather low (about 1% for total Dragon pitches).
If you're not bored yet with my ramblings and want to see the total tally of pieces that saw print, check out my site.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I have a little book that EVERYONE should read. Why? Because this little book is has interesting symmetries from the syntax all the way up to higher-level concepts in the books storyline. It is an old book originally written in French (free online version), but translated into English. The book is classified as surrealist, and that might be the best one word description of it... but it definitely doesn't do it justice.
It is free if you can read French, and it is inexpensive if you do not. JUST TRY IT! Note that the original French has the best syntax level symmetry in that the author would make use of words that were spelled similarly but had different meanings... he would then construct sentences around that which were nearly the same at the level of text, but wildly different at the level of semantics. He even takes this interesting anti-symmetry all the way up to the storyline. It is one interesting and entertaining read. The English translation is still enjoyable, but 2nd best to the French original.
Don't even try to Babelfish the free online version. It might make you cry.
I noticed there were no Baen books on the list - Baen (www.baen.com) has produced several bestsellers recently, including Eric Flint's "1633" (the followup to the wildly successful "1632", which is now free for the download). Baen is one of the few publishing houses to make money recently - and they are the one giving away full-length, top quality novels at their Baen Free Library. ( www.baen.com/library )
They also sell their books through "Webscriptions", which produce non-DRM e-books (They use HTML, RTF, or a variety of 'Reader' formats).
It's more than a little interesting that giving away older product, and selling current product without annoying DRM or other restrictions would produce a *positive* result - but of course the RIAA will probably continue to pay no attention.
I wonder why Locus avoided the whole publishing house? SF publishing has traditionally been a jealous, backbiting world but I don't know if that's a factor in this list, or just the taste of the reviewers.
With the recent news about Sprit and Opportuntity, I'm really tempted to go back and re-read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars).
These books get into a lot of detail about the colonization and terraforming of Mars and how different factions splinter off into different directions (think of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for you gamers).
I really enjoyed Tad Williams' "Dragonbone Chair" series (which isn't on the list, as it isn't new) but I was not at all impressed with "The War of the Flowers," (which is on the list.) The other two I've read are "The Brian King" and "In the Forest of Seere," both of which are quite good.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Somewhat more subtle than the previous, but Roger Zelazney's "Lord of Light" is worth a read. Besides being an excellent story it explores themes of individual freedom set against an immortal oligarchy, cast ( as it were) in the framework of Hinduism vs. Buddhism.
One of my favorite passages from _Lord of Light_ is where Sam talks about the difference between submitting to the "unknowable" (religion) or choosing the path of reason. There are these creatures that look and act like demons. In fact, they fit the definition of "demon" in all ways except for one crucial thing: they are not supernatural. One character thinks that this distinction is academic (looks like a duck, acts like a duck) but Sam explains that to admit that the creatures are supernatural would be to submit to fantasy.