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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."
"SCO's Claim to ownership of Linux"
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
This is a great reading list. In fact, I've read my fair share of these books and can vouch for the quality.
I wasn't particularly impressed with the Douglas Adams biography, personally, but Adam's book itself (not released this year) is extraordinary.
I have been pwned because my
"Windows -- Securing the world for the next Millooneyum"
MoFscker
Teaser:
One February morning, Dick Cheney emerges from his bunker, to see his own shadow - which means six more months of war...
The scenario repeats itself, with the morning started anew each day, until Dick learns to keep his eyes off the ground, and fixed on "the light at the end of the tunnel."
Capsule review:
The best traditions of Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad meet those of Michael Moore and Norman Schwartzkopf.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That's quite a deal you ended up getting at 50 rupees. Would you like to sell your guide to me for 2,678,600.00 Turkish liras? That should definitely be enough for you to be able to purchase yourself some nice Star Trek phaser replicas there guy.
MoFscker
He died, IIRC, after a basketball game. Ruptured aorta, I think. Something that happens to tall people on occasion and Douglas was 6'4" (also, IIRC)
I did have the great fortune to meet him (and Terry Jones) at a reading (Startship Titanic) in Larkspur, CA several years ago. A truly entertaining fellow to listen to. I wonder how much recorded, documentary style footage there is of him.
One thing I'll pass along, and pardon me for not wording it exactly as he had: WWW has to be the longest to pronounce, as an acronym of what it stands for. Double-U-Double-U-Double-U, that's 9 syllables, while World Wide Web has only 3. Why don't they call it something shorter, like Triple-U?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wasn't aware 'completist' was a word...
That is to say- I couldn't find a meaningition in my language-iser.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
Is the Locus 2003 Recommended Reading List on the list? Because it's pretty long and I don't want to read it all if it's not on the recommended list.
-Brad
The "Hitchiker's Guide" series is very very funny though I have yet to finish all of the cd.
I can understand you're a slow reader, those ascii characters must be awfully hard to read, printed circularly in binary format on a 12cm CD...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Glad to see the Tad Williams book up there; it was excellent.
Another series by the same author that I'd highly recommend (especially to this crowd) is the "Otherland" series; four books long (and I do mean long.)
It set in the future, and raises some interesting points about the possible future of the internet, VR, and gaming technologies.
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.
There used to be a number of good books out there but in light of Excel's dominance of the market, it's hard to find any good book on Locus 1-2-3.
(Personally, I tended to favored Lotus Improv anyway.)
On to business: When I submitted the article, I wanted to use the word, but found (as you did) that it does not appear to be defined anywhere (I was actually trying to check the spelling). In checking around, though, I saw that nevertheless it was being used.
So, like a good little sheep, I caved into peer pressure and used it. No doubt, my English teachers would be ashamed of me ("Hey, all the cool kids are saying 'completist'. You should, too. The first one is free, you know...")
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Probably for the same reason you're still alive. The galaxy is a cruel cruel place.
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."
Quite a few authors I have not read...and me being a fantasy addict....
"The Crystal City, Orson Scott Card (Tor)"
I am actually just now reading though this series. I sometimes can't believe just how deep he seems to build this alternative look at america. I admit I am just finishing the third book but I am hooked already.
"The War of the Flowers, Tad Williams (DAW)"
I don't know how Tad ever got the chance to write. His first book was about cats, it was not very good and he even mentions that it took forever to find someone to publish it. He then went on to write his great Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series...and then on to his amazing Sci-Fi Otherworld series. The War of flowers was good but not as amazing as his last series.
"Fool's Fate, Robin Hobb (Voyager; Bantam Spectra 2004)"
I did not even know the third one was out (or is it?..a quick check of chapters seems to think not, in my local stores...if it is I better get to the book store fast!). If you have any interest in the fantasy genre then you have to go give these a read NOW! Each book she publishes seem to get better and better with no end in sight. I often find that many authors seem to hit their "peak" and then taper off (Hey I am looking at you Robert Jordan) but that is just not the case here.
And just to ruin my many image (please oh please don't let anyone I know find this post), she was the first author to actually make me cry while reading one of her books...(shhhh don't tell).
Thats all I have read (well kinda) off that list.
David Brin's "Glory Season" is about as thought provoking as they come. It has it's flaws, since Brin was more focused on the ideas than keeping the story consistent, but provokation of thought is what you're after and this one will do the job.
Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossesed" and "The Left Hand of Darkness." Humanist philosophy at it's best. LeGuin is the master of exploring humanist themes in story without getting preachy, letting the characters and the story bring out the points she wishes to illustrate. I wish more writers would follow her example. "The Lathe of Heaven" is the work that really brought her fame, less mature in style than the previous two but definately worth the read.
Harlen Ellison's classic anthologies "Dangerous Visions" and "Again Dangerous Visions." Collections of short stories written specifically for the anthology (not collected from other sources) with the express intent of publishing short works that could not find publication in the usual places.
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.
If nothing else none of the above are particularly trite.
KFG
I love Linda Nagata but do not know any of the other.
Help fight continental drift.
I agree it's unwieldy, but the Locus List has to be big to accomodate all Locus'es editorial staff. I mean, the magazine is basically nothing but reviews. If you want to thin the herd a little, try looking at some of the stuff nominated for the various awards or better yet at various reviewers personal best lists (sorry - couldn't find any links offhand).
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I just finished the last book of this trilogy. I've read way too much fantasy in the past couple years and it's sometimes hard to find a new author that I really like. This series is BY FAR one of the best I have read. I was hooked from the first few pages of the first book.
:-)
It's not on the list, but I thought I'd pitch it!
Here's their list from last year. Me, I'd rather buy 4 good paperbacks than 1 hardcover, and I only found one book from the new list available in paperback (admittedly, I only looked for 20-25).
And someone rememeber to remind me to revisit this list next year.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I have 5 one foot high piles of unread novels on my bedside table from my last few trips to the bookstore. Reading's like crack.
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.
It's no surprise to me that F&SF was well-represented in this list. If you love *good* fantasy and science fiction, F&SF is for you. I've had a subscription on and off since freshman year of high school, and I'm currently in the process of completing my collection by ordering the back issues from my "off" times. You can subscribe here.
They publish an incredible spread of stories. Some to make you think; some to make you feel; some to make you laugh; some to immerse you completely in the world the author has created. I can't say enough good things about the magazine. Check it out.
-monique
The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List:3 /top100 .html
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/611
I'm currently working my way through this list. One or two of the authors are a bit hard to find, but trawling the 2nd-hand book shops nets quite a few of the more 'specialist' books.
Red.
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.
The best new (to me) series I've read recently wasn't represented on Locus' recommended list. It's in the fantasy genre.
Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn.
Book 1: Across the Nightingale Floor
Book 2: Grass for his Pillow
Book 3: Cloud of Sparrows
Highly recommended.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
I mean, Playboy, Fantasy, what else.
I dont mean fantasy like shes my fantasy, I mean FANTASY like ANY geek would EVER get a Playboy babe in the sack, now THATS Fantasy
Araminta Station (and its sequels) by Jack Vance
Emphyrio by Jack Vance
To Live Forever by Jack Vance
Planet of Adventure by Jack Vance
Tales of the Dying Earth By Jack Vance. Just keep this in mind when reading this oddly beautiful, highly amusing, and often wistfully melancholic collection: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
Gateway (and sequels) by Frederik Pohl
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
The Fall of The Towers by Samuel R. Delany
Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand by Samuel R.Delany
Protector by Larry Niven
The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
The Many-Colored Land (and sequels) by Julian May
Earthclan by David Brin
Demu Trilogy by F.M. Busby
THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman
Anything from Gene Wolfe, Clifford D. Simak, Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny (by himself), Samuel R. Delany (you'll learn as you read his works) or Philip K. Dick will make you think. But, Jack Vance can outwit them all!
Good eating!
= 9J =
Lois McMaster Bujold's "Paladin of Souls" made the fantasy novel list. It and the book before it, "Curse of Chalion" are awesome, and unique fantasy.
Any geek that hasn't read her Mile's books certainly should consider them also. "Warrior's Apprentice" or "Borders of Infinity" are good starting points. Military SF at its best.
Cadmann
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. Already mentioned by a previous poster.
The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man, both by Alfred Bester.
Marooned in Real Time by Vernor Vinge.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon.
A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn.
A Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein.
A Fire in the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
Startide Rising by David Brin.
Dune by Frank Herbert.
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks.
You're probably right - although I tend to tar the public relations wankers, marketing scum and other shiny-suit-wearing servants of satan with the same brush.