Our reads March 2019

Another month,another pile of books. Tell us what you are reading .

Dusty's TBR for March
SF/F
Charles Stross - The Delirium Brief ✔
Karel Capek - R.U.R.(Rossum's Universal Robots) ✔
Susannah Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell✔
Stanley G Weinbaum - A Martian Odyssey ✔
Nalini Singh - Archangel's Prophecy✔
Daniel O'Malley - The Rook ✔
Stanley G Weinbaum - The Dark Other✔
Judith Merrill - Shadow on the Hearth✔
Suzanne Collins - Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane ✔
other genres
Diana Wynne Jones - Charmed Life ✔
Jean Ure - Supermouse✔
Robert Van Gulik - Chinese Nail Murders ✔
Delores Redondo - The Invisible Guardian ✔
J D Robb - Connections in Death✔
Gillian Morgan - Jungles and People✔
Wilfeid Owen - Dulce Et Decorum Est✔

Lies Sleeping and Imager (for a book group (not my normal flavor of fantasy)) are the guaranteed reads in genre fiction this month.

Still reading Alliance Rising, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May/June 2018.

I am halfway through Luna Wolf Moon. Good so far. I have Blackfish City and two Nebula nominated novellas, The Black God's Drums and Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach to read. I am hoping to get to Alliance Rising this month, too.

Blackfish City needs to get finished and reviewed the month since it was a DRC.

I'm reading The Exile Waiting by Vonda N. McIntyre.

>2 dustydigger: The book that caught my eye in your TBR list is Robert Van Gulik - Chinese Nail Murders. I love Chinese historical fiction but to have such a book as a mystery is bonus. Van Gulik is quite a prolific writer in this series. Have you read his books in Chronological order or is this a first time read of this author?

>7 Quaisior: I read that last year. Not at all like her other stuff.

>8 Lynxear: I came across a tattered old copy of The Haunted Monastery back in the 90s,and I loved it. Its the only physical copy of his works I have been to obtaindbut I have read several from the library,very fragile copies from the 1950s. I now see they stock only the Nail story,which I have just received,so they must have chucked out the rest :0(
So far I have read Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee,Chinese Gold Murders,Chinese Bell Murders,The Haunted Monastery ,The Lacquer Screen,and The Willow Pattern.I have also got Murder in Ancient China ready on Kindle.
Delighted to have found a lot of his books on Open Library,so I have many happy hours ahead in the weird and wonderful world of Judge Dee.
I also love the illustrations,which always seem rather inscrutable and otherworldly.as if there is more to them than meets the eye.I find myself peering at them looking for clues! lol
I am totally ignorant about Chinese literature,and am usually not a fan of historical novels (main exceptions,Georgette Heyer and Lindsey Davis Falco novels )
Oh dear,checked up,and apart from regency romances I have the amazingly low count of 74 books tagged as historical,out of 4135 ''books read'' on my shelf. And the majority of them are historical mystery novels! Historical fiction,along with fantasy novels which seem set in the middle ages,are perhaps my least favourite reads,apart from war novels.
No wonder Strange and Norrell is such a chore! :0)

I've only read Barbary by McIntyre before, which I think is also not like her other books since it's YA. I plan to read most of her books this year.

>7 Quaisior: How is The Exile In Waiting? Wasn't that her first published novel?

I have Barbary, and the Starfarers tetralogy on my TBR shelf but haven't gotten to them yet. To date, have only read Dreamsnake and Superluminal. Loved them both. In fact, Superluminal has one of my favorite opening sentences in all of fiction, "She gave up her heart quite willingly." Such a simple line freighted with much gravitas as the opening chapter progresses.

>10 dustydigger: well I note that most or if not all of the Judge Dee books are rated about 4 stars... so they are on my TBR list as I find them.

I will offer one Japanese historical fiction book I think you'd like , The Tokaido Road... I give a review of the book on LT

Finished Orbit 4, a very strong anthology albeit with a New Wave flavour, which I suppose was popular at the time. I shouldn't knock the New Wave so long as it produces stories like Windsong by Kate Wilhelm and Animal by Carol Emschwiller.

Next up I'm re-reading A Spectre is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber, of which I have fond (but very vague) memories.

>12 ScoLgo: It's pretty good. It's set on the same world as Dreamsnake, so I'll be reading that next. And yes, it was her first published novel. I have all of her original novels and the collection Fireflood, plus I have several of her Star Trek novelizations and her Star Wars novel. Sadly, I just heard that McIntyre has terminal cancer. :(

I just finished reading James Morrow's Shambling Towards Hiroshima. It's a sort of fantastical satire set in the 1940s science fiction and horror cinema industry--a quick read and worth the bother.

Alice Payne Arrives is fast-paced, so much so that I'll finish it today! (After starting it today, to be clear.)

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May/June 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay. Enjoyed it overall.

Just finished Nancy Farmer’s award-winning YA novel,
the house of the scorpion. :)

>15 Quaisior: Cool! I will have to locate a copy. Didn't realize it related to Dreamsnake. I'm excited to read it now.

Regarding Fireflood... looks like that collection contains Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand. I haven't read it yet but my understanding is that it's a short story (novella maybe?) that she wrote in the early 1970s and then later expanded into Dreamsnake. Having only read the full-length novel, I can't recommend which version to read first - if the reading order even matters to you...?

Finished Lies Sleeping (A) this afternoon and while it's a good addition to the series one is left with the sense that the long-running struggle with the "Faceless Man" went on just a little too long. It'll be interesting to see what Aaronovitch does with the series next; apart from the forthcoming side adventure involving the German opposite numbers of the Folly there are some suggestions that there was a higher power behind the machinations one has been following.

I am reading some Stanley G Weinbaum short fiction,starting with A Martian Odyssey.Back in 1964 it was voted as the second bestSF short story by the SFWA. It has now slipped down to #42 on the SF Lists site. I would guess the somewhat cheesy humour and dialogue do it a bit of a disservice today,but it was hugely influential at the time - 1934. I suppose its a common fate. A new brilliant thing appears,everyone copies it,improves on it,and generation say ''looks pretty ordinary to me'' It did however save the alien contact genre from its Bug Eyed Monster,(BEM),reputation.It was pretty cool then to show aliens,OK very alien and incomprehensible,but intelligent and likable.
Sadly Weinbaum's career was tragically cut short.He published this story in mid 1934,and was dead of cancer within 18 months,aged only 35.
I was delighted to locate a Wildside Megapack of some of his most famous stories for the princely cost of 55 cents,(74p)Brilliant! :0)

re: Vonda McIntyre -- I've read lots of her things, but not recently. So much good stuff there. I should reread something, or at least make sure to catch up on anything I've missed. (Yay LT, remembering stuff for us -- after we tell LT about it, anyway.)

>19 nrmay: Oh, that was a good one. Are you going to read the sequel, do you think? It's darker but still good.

>5 daxxh: Loved The Black God's Drums but haven't read the Kelly Robson one yet.

Me, I got partway through The Calculating Stars before it had to go back to the library. I'll finish it later. This month, I have The Poppy War to reread for a book group, plus the new G Willow Wilson, The Bird King. Plus no doubt more draft choices to be named later.

Well, my SF&F book group were generally underwhelmed by Blackfish City. I quite enjoyed it - some interesting ideas and the multiple-viewpoints gave a good overview of the city - though there were a few problems, and the ending was a big rush. I've got Lies Sleeping to pick up from the library tomorrow so interested to read the comments on this thread.

Finally got round to Karel Capek's R.U.R.,Rossum's Universal Robots,the source of course of the word robot ,Czech for ''forced labour'',though Capek's robots are more like androids than like Robbie the Robot. The whole idea must have been pretty alarming back in the 20s,and of course the play was very influential. The play itself is very brittle,full of twenties Bright Young Things and their sophisticated artificial dialogue,but the ideas are there,and are today more relevant than ever!Interesting.
Now reading the first Chrestomanci story,A Charmed Life by the late Diana Wynne Jones,plus the last 100 pages of Stross's Delirium Brief and ….wait for it....the last 100 pages of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell!!!!! I'm getting there! :0)

When I left work on Tuesday, my colleagues gave me a Kindle. So I loaded it up with a couple of books, and on the flight to Sweden I started reading Shadow Captain. Seems a bit talkier than I remember the first book.

Reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin....

I FINALLY finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell yesterday.I will give credit to Clarke's skill in embedding magic into a realistic setting and time frame,and her description of landscape,especially magical places. and the weather are excellent. But the characters are cardboard,I didn't care or like any of them except perhaps Mrs Strange.I liked the little vignettes highlighting their charming and rather touching relationship,then she was disposed of summarly by the plot!
The language,purportedly Austenesque,is all over the place IMO. Some of the scenes between the fops Lascelles and Drawlight were strongly reminiscent of Congreve's Way of the World,(1700) then turned rather Victorian.(which era didn't start till 1837,many many reviews place the book as Victorian - over 20 years too early),often there is no particular language at all,with just some deliberately archaic spellings to try to make things look historical.
But the pace was tediously slow,there were too many diversions,and I never did see an overarching theme or reason for the book as a whole. If you are ambitious enough to produce a work of pseudo scholarship (all those footnotes!),I think it needs to have some real strong theme there,and I never saw it!Perhaps that magic is not a good thing? Hardly worth 850 pages.
Sorry,not my cup of tea.
I wonder if many of those people who adored it just felt relieved that here was something of literary weight and scholarship,to counteract the rather plebian (to academics)Harry Potter books.and equating it will Austen and Dickens is way overestimating its worth IMO
But here has to be something that made the book win 4 major awards and be nominated for four others. I seem to be too dim to see why! lol.
Anyway,free at last. Of course I still have the 700 page Paladin of Souls,Vinge's Rainbow's End and Bacagalupi's Windup Girl to read to complete my task of reading all the Nebulas and Hugos. 64/67 Hugos,52/54 Nebulas completed.! :0)
Mind you ,they have already nominated the latest Hugos The challenge is endless lol.

>28 dustydigger: Congrats on finishing it (I both admire and fail to understand the task you set yourself!) I share your opinions (and somehow also struggled through it).

A Spectre is Haunting Texas wasn't as good as I remembered. On re-reading I found it overlong and not particularly funny.

Next up I'm reading A Gift from Earth by Larry Niven.

>24 SChant: I agree that the ending was too rushed, and I'd have preferred it to have carried on in the more thoughtful style of the earlier sections. But it was an interesting read.

>27 johnnyapollo:, absolutely I have to try N.K. Jamieson. I'm reading Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf and it already has my Hugo vote for next year.

>31 Sakerfalcon: I'm wondering if the author has a second volume planned - I'd like to see the world opened out a bit more.

>28 dustydigger: Entertaining review, fun to read.

i am currently reading Way Station by Clifford Simak after seeing it on Hoopla. I suddenly recognized it as one of my favorite stories when i read it in about the 6th grade. I always thought it had been written by Heinlien for some reason.

I finally finished my bedtime read: The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton. Only took me 2 1/2 months. Next up is the last book in that trilogy, The Naked God. I expect it to take my longer to read since it has more pages.

>34 DugsBooks: Way Station is one of my all time favourite books. I often tend to mix up Theodore Sturgeon and Simak,both have that feeling of concern for humanity. Though Heinlein is fun (early on),I don't get a sense of sensitivity for humanity anywhere in his work. Too often he is too authoritarian,getting the troops into shape.
But people do strive and fight in Heinlein. Quite often the sense of despair and futility of mankind's stupidity,bigotry,and avarice are too much for Simak,and the protagonists tend to trot off to alien worlds to get away from the mess! lol Sturgeon too is a little downbeat.
I think I need to read a bit Sturgeon soon. As a teen our public library had so many volumes of his short stories,but there isn't a single work by him there today.But good old Open Library have quite a few of their works available,so once I finish with the Hugos and Nebulas,I will get stuck in :0)

>36 dustydigger: When I was a teenager, while dodging dinosaurs, I decided I needed to have a favorite author. Sturgeon was it. He was often considered the SF writer's writer in the day. Definitely under-recognized today.

It doesn't help sustained recognition of Sturgeon that his best work was in the short story format. These days, genre fiction seems to be all novels, and long ones at that.

>38 paradoxosalpha: True that, though Bradbury sustained, and short stories dominated his work as well. Fame is complicated.

Started The Silkie by A E Van Vogt from 1969, about a shape-changing humanoid being seemingly attempting to protect Earth from an alien incursion. So far not bad, but as yet no female characters worth a mention.

I've just started reading Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded, a book about science fiction and music in the 70s. I think it will be a fast read.

It didn't hurt that Bradbury became popular canon in a way that Sturgeon did not.

And I don’t know about everyone else, but before I began seeking out Science Fiction specifically, I mostly knew Bradbury as the author of Fahrenheit 451 as opposed to as a short story writer.

He's also widely-known as the author of The Martian Chronicles, often misunderstood (at least by those who haven't read it) to be a novel.

In Charlie Stross's The Delirium Brief enemies have brought about the dismantling of the Laundry! Another fun episode of this enjoyable series. And a major and unexpected major plot development too for the next book.
Stross has a mighty poor opinion of the British government,as many of the Cabinet are infested with alien worms that will force them to carry out the wishes of an ancient evil creature.
Could do with such an infestination of Parliament at the moment,at least there would be a single focused course of action so something would happen with Brexit! lol

>46 justifiedsinner: My understanding is that Jacob Reese-Mogg is a real-life alien worm.

>44 paradoxosalpha: Yeah, I get that. And I realize that he wrote hundreds of short stories. But I guess what I am trying to say is as a person in my early 30's, when I was in high school and only had a casual relationship with reading fiction or Science Fiction, I first knew of Bradbury as the author of Farrenheit 451. I think, and I could be wrong...but I think that is the Bradbury work that probably reaches most people first today...or maybe Something Wicked This Way Comes. I guess that's different from the idea that Bradbury was known among dedicated Science Fiction fans for short Stories... The Martian Chronicles certainly seems to be well read among those crowds...but I was completely oblivious to his short stories until after I read a few of his novels and decided that I was a fan who wanted to seek out more of this work.

That being said, maybe what I am saying is beside the point. And I am still a relative newcomer to Science Fiction too. I'm ashamed to say that I am yet to read my first story or novel by Sturgeon...though I have More Than Human on my shelf as we speak. I need to check it out soon.

>47 Dr_Flanders:

I was basically agreeing with you, although I may have been unclear about it.

Finished Manifold: Origin and a non-SF mystery The Mark Twain Murders, halfway through The Ice People.

Thoroughly enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones Carnegie Medal nominated Charmed Life the first in the Chrestomanci series..Good stuff.Now reading Daniel O'Malley's The Rook and Robert Van Gulik's Judge Dee book,The Chinese Nail Murders

>50 dustydigger:. I just finished The Rook. Fun stuff!

>35 seitherin: Bedtime reads take me longer every year. I get anywhere near a prone position that time of night and, no matter my interest in the book, I'm dozing off in ten or fifteen minutes. I get more reading done at breakfast, these day.

>52 ThomasWatson: Fortunately, in an unfortunate sort of way, I have trouble sleeping on a fairly regular basis so I manage between 10 and 50 pages a night. I like to keep the longer reads for my bedtime because I tend to lose interest in them if I read them during the day unless they're one of those kinds of book you just can't put down. When that happens, I switch it with one of my daytime reads.

>48 paradoxosalpha: I appreciate that, but upon re-reading, I think the any misunderstanding was on my part. Apologies!

>52 ThomasWatson: I used to read in bed for 30 - 45 minutes, but the place I'm staying now, the floors are wooden and the bed has no bedhead. So if I lean back against the wall, the bed starts to slide away from it...

I usually wake around 4 am and cant go back to sleep,so I read for about 90 minutes then can sleep once more :0)

>55 iansales: So to escape Brexit you have moved beyond civilization?

>35 seitherin:: I loved Night's Dawn trilogy! I actually read it after the Pandoras Star/Judas Unchained series - you can tell that Peter Hamilton's writing style was a little more raw and immature in Night's Dawn. If I had to rank his major series, it would be 1. PS/JU; 2. Night's Dawn; 3. Mandel; 4. Void (a distant 4th). The very very last Void book Night Without Stars was a nice end to the Commonwealth mega-series though.

>57 justifiedsinner: I moved to somewhere *more* civilised: Sweden :-)

Reading M R Carey's Someone Like Me - creepy and atmospheric - and Lisa Yaszek's collection of women SF writers from the Pulp era to the early '60s The Future is Female - some writers I know and some that are new to me. Pretty good.

>59 iansales: Interesting choice and likely to become more temperate in the years to come.

>60 SChant: Every once in a while, I see something in this thread that I'd have never known about otherwise. The Future is Female is officially on the way to my house, and thank you for pointing it out. The list of authors brought back incredible memories of childhood, when I was first discovering SF (and thank you to the librarian that pointed it out to me, so very long ago).

Life is good.

Finished reading Hothouse and was blown away by the world building Brian Aldiss poured into it. Not so much by the plot and the characters. But that vision of future Earth ... wow.

Finished The Ice People, began Persepolis Rising.

I greatly enjoyed (devoured, really) Becky Chambers' Galactic Commons trilogy.

>58 drmamm: I've read the Void trilogy, but I only read it because I really, really enjoyed Great North Road. That's my favorite so far. I like his stuff well enough that I'll keep going with him.

Currently reading Imager and, so far, I'm not that enthralled. Then again I'm reading this for a book group and I really didn't expect to be; it's not my favorite flavor of fantasy.

In the spirit of my last post, I just downloaded Salvation, which is the first book of Peter F. Hamilton 's new trilogy. I've read some mixed reviews, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

I'm just finishing Mike Ashley's Gateways to Forever, the third volume of his history of the science fiction magazines, covering 1970 to 1980. Besides the professional magazines he also covers original anthologies such as Damon Knight's Orbit and Robert Silverberg's New Dimensions as well as fan and semi-professional publications of the period. It's an excellent book, volume two is winging its way to me.

Just finished HHhH. Non-fiction about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in the summer of 1942.

Picking up The Sorcerer's House next.

>62 Lyndatrue: Can't take credit for this - it was recommended to me on last month's thread by - I think - iansales?

>63 Cecrow: I know how you feel. I must confess i never finished Hothouse because nothing much seemed to be happening.

>71 SChant: Might have been me. I bought Yaszek's other anthology, Sisters of Tomorrow a few months ago.

Currently reading Crimes Against Humanity. Been a fan of Matthews's Jurisdiction novel since reading the first one back in the 1990s.

>68 drmamm: I have that one on my TBR pile. Not sure if I'll read it immediately I finish The Naked God. I have an urban fantasy I'd like to knock out and I may do that first.

I just started Adulthood Rites, in the Lilith's Brood collection. This is a second read of the trilogy for me; I reread Dawn a couple years ago in order to teach it, and decided I ought to reread the trilogy while Dawn was relatively fresh in mind.

I also received Sarah Pinsker's collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea today; I'll probably read a story over lunch every day at work, which has been my habit with collections and anthologies of late. I'm looking forward to it, since I really love And Then There Were (N-One).

>55 iansales: That could be awkward. I mean, trying to read while recovering from a concussion doesn't come highly recommended.

>73 iansales: I'm enjoying The Future is Female so much I've bought Sisters of Tomorrow and Galactic Suburbia too. And just when my TBR pile was down below 140!

Besides plugging along with Imager, which while still is not my favorite thing I think I see why people like it, By Fire Above is the book I'm actually lugging around with me.

Read Luna Wolf Moon, which I liked, and The Black God's Drums, which was ok (I am not into steampunk or young adult books). I am almost done with Blackfish City which is good so far.

I think I will try to find a copy of The Future is Female, since it is getting favorable comments.

>77 SChant: I can also recommend Daughters of Earth, which features stories followed by critical essays.

In fact... See https://iansales.com/2014/04/17/women-only-science-fiction-anthologies/

Finished with Imager this evening. I found it kind of a bloodless exercise, despite there being quite a lot of violence!, but between the level of lived-in detail and a magic-user who is depicted as a sober professional I can see the attraction though.

Considering that Modesitt was a strong supporter of SF conventions in the DC area that I've worked on over the years I would have liked to have been more complimentary but, again, this is not my preferred flavor of fantasy.

>80 iansales: Yes, I read this when it first came out and enjoyed it very much. I've been after Pamela Sargent's Women of Wonder: The Classic Years for a while but can't find it at a reasonable price anywhere.

Finished Before Mars tonight. Excellent. This 'series' just keeps getting better and better.

>51 vwinsloe: I have just finished The Rook today and I too thought it was a fun read.I got some very peculiar looks on the bus when I was sniggering over Myfanwy's examination (ouch) and had to try not to giggle when I read about the future seeing duck and its sad demise. Priceless! :0)

>84 dustydigger:. Glad you liked it, too. I have the sequel Stiletto on my wish list.

It's about time I started reading The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz.

>86 SFF1928-1973: I love that story! I plan to re-read it this year as part of The Hub: Dangerous Territory.

I just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. I thought it was good enough. It was a quick read, but there were some things that bugged me about it too. As I said, I liked it just fine, but I'm not sure why it got as much hype as it did. Whenever something is popular, and I feel a little underwhelmed by it, I always wonder if maybe it is just me.

Just started You Must Remember Us.... I found a near-mint condition Robert Hale hardback edition of the book on eBay a year or two ago. (And why is the touchstone in German? The book was first published in the UK and is by a British writer.)

Also reading To Play the Lady, a Kindle-only book I can across a while ago - a recommendation, I think - but since I only recently got myself a Kindle...

About half way through The Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin....

Back to science fiction with Cyan by Syd Logsdon. For some reason the style brings to mind fiction I read in the '70s and early '80s. Not a bad thing by any stretch, but a bit of a surprise.

Finished Alliance Rising by C. J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher. A bit of a rocky start, but good reading once it got going.

Finished You Must Remember Us.... Pretty forgettable. Was surprised to see Ingmar Bergman name-checked it, however.

To Play the Lady isn't very well-written. The tenses are all over the place. Not sure why I was recommended it, to be honest...

>92 seitherin:

Yep I thought pretty much the same.

Dipped my toe in Project Gutenberg's digitizing of a bunch of 1950s pulp magazines, and selected The old Martians by Rog Philips at random. It was pulpy, and bad, and a half-baked idea. Better luck next time.

(Here it is, in case you want to see for yourself.)

Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik (431 pp.)

This is science fiction of an increasingly common type; female kickass protagonist on the run meets up with sexy bad boy and they team up to outwit their enemies as they careen around the universe. That is not to say that this is not entertaining or interesting world-building, but come on now, THREE explicit sex scenes? One is more than enough. More action than character development, in all senses of the word. I got this from the library on the basis of Tor's summary of books coming out in February. I'm not sure that I'll continue with the series.

Getting ready to start A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe.

>86 SFF1928-1973: LOVE that book!

>95 Petroglyph: I love Project Gutenburg.... More more reading dummy downed books from the past, you have access to many original titles on a variety of topics.

I also like pulp cover art... so sexy but the books often were pretty tame.

here is a link to some scifi pulp covers

https://pulpcovers.com/tag/scifi/

Having enjoyed Gateways to Forever so much, I'm now reading the just arrived second volume of Mike Ashleys history of the science fiction magazines, Transformations (for some reason the touchstone for this won't come up). This volume covers 1950 to 1970. Recommended for anyone interested in the development of SF.

>98 lansingsexton: I assume that these are revised and expanded versions of Ashley's earlier, four-volume exploration of the sf magazines issued in the early 1970s: The History of the Science Fiction Magazine - Part One 1926 to 1935, The history of the science fiction magazine, part 2; 1936-1945, The history of the science fiction magazine, part 3; 1946-1955 and The history of the science fiction magazine, part 4; 1956-1965.

One assumes that there are sound commercial reasons for starting over again, instead of his continuing the original series with a new volume 5...

I'm just starting Alice Payne Rides.

I'm currently reading Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre.

I finished Blackfish City. As others have mentioned in previous threads, it's really good until the end, which seemed rather rushed. It's almost like the author wanted to be done and put in an action packed, fast ending. It doesn't fit with the rest of the book which was excellent.

I read Before Adam - very good. I like Jack London and have yet to read something of his that I don't like. I also read Alice Payne Arrives - ok. I doubt I will read any more of these. I am halfway through Kage Baker's Company series, and I really like those. The Alice Payne book is similar in scope, but lacks in execution.

I made the mistake of reading another free indie book, The Code and the Three Greatnesses. I always swear off indie books for a while after I have read one. The editing in this one was awful - not just the usual bad punctuation and grammar, but missing words. The writing was nothing like the book I read prior to it, which was Jack London's Before Adam. The characters are very flat and the writing dull. I am glad it was free. I don't recommend this one and I won't be reading the sequel.

I have started Alliance Rising, which I really like so far. I love this universe. Downbelow Station is one of my favorite books.

>55 iansales: "I lean back against the wall, the bed starts to slide away from it.." Demons!!

I just checked out The Reincarnated Giant "An Anthology of twenty-first-century Chinese Science Fiction" Have not opened it yet but it looks interesting - I did crack it open to see that it was written in english while at the library.

Pretty much finished By Fire Above (B+) this evening and found it to be a good continuation of the initial novel; it'll be interesting to see how far that Bennis can draw this story out.

Added Tiamat's Wrath by James S. A. Corey to my reading rotation.

Well another scifi novel has bubbled to the surface of my TBR pile. I shall be starting Martin The Warrior by Brian Jacques.

It looks like a fun read and reminds me of Watership Down when I saw it on the book shop shelf which I did like when I read it last year.... I hope the book is as good as the cover art :).

I just noticed that this book was purchased at what I expect was a book signing event. On the title page it says "To Paul - Brian Jacques.... so I have a signed paperback....sweet!

Continuing my exploration of early 20th century women SF writers by reading Sisters of Tomorrow, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp. Does anyone know of anything similar featuring British women writers for the early years of SF? I don't really know of any UK SF magazines from that era, but there must have been some?

>107 Lynxear:, I've not read "Martin", but I've heard it's the best of the Redwall novels (and earliest chronologically). I'd rate them as YA fantasy, personally.

>108 SChant: I don't think the popular sf magazine really was a thing in the UK at that time, actually. The Encyclopedia of SF provides an overview here: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sf_magazines

>110 Stevil2001: Thx for that link.

>109 Cecrow: Yep, Martin the Warrior is quite a juvenile book. I was hoping for a more adult Watership Down type of book. I gave this one up after 50 pages, though I will keep it because of it being signed.

My next book is Rift by Kay Kenyon.... I hope this one fares better.

I have now finished Cryptonomicon, which was a dense read but very rewarding. The contemporary sections read like Bill Gibson's 'day after tomorrow' stuff, such as the 'Blue Ant' novels; they interlock seamlessly with the historical sections, though this takes time to come clear.

It made me think a bit about the relationships between writers and genre literature. There are a lot of "mainstream" wrirters now who stray into genre territory, for purposes of satire or social commentary. I was reading the programme for the Hay Literary Festival last night, and there were references throughout to "acclaimed fantasy writer A" (usually attached to a YA author) or "noted writer B's new dystopian novel"; but I usually find these writers' offerings lacking. But I can read "mainstream" fiction, such as 'Cryptonomican', or the novels of Iain (no 'M') Banks with satisfaction. It seems to me that sf writers who wade into the mainstream retain their sf-nal sensibilities and outlook; in 'Cryptonomican', the contemporary protagonists, Avi and Randy, made their fortune on the West Coast with an online RPG and that is just accepted as completely normal and not a cause for snide comment, the way some mainstream novelists would if they were writing the same characters. Stephenson, Banks and sometimes Aldiss slipped sf-nal references into their stories as though they were completely normal. Some of them will have gone over the heads of non-sf readers.

Next up, after a short book on war journalism, will be Dan Simmons' Endymion.

Following on from our discussions of early sf by women, I just read a really interesting article about an early female sf writer: https://lithub.com/meet-the-reclusive-woman-who-became-a-pioneer-of-science-fict...

Now reading The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin....

I finished A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White. It's a first novel and while the writing is not bad, the book is a conglomeration of every trope you can imagine from space opera. There's the war-damaged survivors of a lost planetary war scavenging around the universe, picking up the alienated crew member who specializes in searching for lost objects (a la McDevitt), and the spoiled rich race-car driver who is framed for murder who ends up on the ship unwillingly but becomes a valued member of the crew, the indestructible captain, the crazy-aggressive quartermaster. And then we add on magic abilities and glyphs and god-like formerly human beings murdering anyone who learns about them or crosses them. It was very strange, the mix of magic with space opera, and nearly led me to Pearl-rule the book. I did eventually get enough into the story to finish the book--it is a quick read, at least.

>114 Stevil2001: Nice article. There are a couple of Clare Winger Harris stories in Lisa Yaszek's anthologies of the early women SF writers - not bad for their time!

>117 SChant: not bad for their time

Ouch. Praising with faint damns?

>118 paradoxosalpha: Haha - don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the stories as artifacts of their time, with their incorporation of science and attempts to write women as more than fainting damsels - but, pulp is pulp ;)

>114 Stevil2001: Someone recently posted that link to the Science Fiction Book Club on Facebook. (Excellent group, if you do Facebook). I'd never heard of this author until then, and if I'm remembering correctly, I wasn't the only one. On my list now.