Brooke's comments (member since Apr 02, 2008)

Brooke's comments from the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club group.

Nominations are now closed. I'll compile our list on Sunday and get a poll up by the end of the weekend.

The BBCA website is now showing that the USA will get part 1 of The End of Time on Dec 26, which is pretty damn soon after the UK gets it! The website says this is the 3rd of the 4 specials, is the 2nd part of The End of Time the 4th?

Well, I was completely underestimating how many books would fit this category and didn't think we'd need to 'second' nominations - but since this has already gotten so much activity in the first 55 minutes, let's institute that rule. I'll edit my first post.

I'm liking a lot of the suggestions so far - wine and math and colors? Cool. My only question so far is about the Charles Stross nomination - I only know him as a sci fi author, does he write fantasy, too?

Y'all selected "Unique Systems of Magic" on the December fantasy theme poll, so now we'll be nominating books that fit this theme. I'm going to copy and paste what our sci fi czar, Brad, said when he suggested this theme:

"I figure there is the classic magic system of spell casting, and its closely related variants, which include projecting the casting through wands or the D&D mode of studying to regain a spell once cast.

But then there are those systems which occur in some fantasy that are distinctly magical but have no connection to "casting" or take offer serious alterations to classic casting. The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through come to mind as fine examples of the former. In those books magic is all conjuration, and the gateway of the conjuration is the mirror. All the magic is channeled through mirrors, or it could be said that it is mirrors. Tigana pops into my mind as an example of the latter (but I know I am forgetting a much better example), wherein true casting power requires a serious sacrifice and the casting itself is not so much a series of spells but a malleable expression of force. Tigana also adds a parallel system of magic that is engaged with through a dreamstate.

I'm not sure that it is easy to define, but those are the things I was thinking of when I threw it out there."

When you make a nomination, I would like you to briefly explain what unique system of magic your suggestion has - just a sentence or two, like Brad's explanation about the mirror above. And please feel free to rebut someone's suggestion if you feel that it is too close to traditional fantasy magic to qualify for this theme.

In order to make it to the final poll for voting, a nomination must be seconded by someone else.

Let's take until the end of Saturday, November 21, EST, to make nominations. I'll put up the poll to select the book on Sunday.

Jon, we won't be getting it in the USA until December 19, I believe. It'll be on BBCA.

Fringe's ratings aren't doing so well this year since it's up against Grey's and CSI, but tvbythenumbers.com, which analyzes ratings, seems to think that Fox is getting what it expected out of it in that timeblock. Since they're not worried, I'm not.

What disappointed you about Tin Man, blackrose? I thought it was really good, but felt let down by the motivations of the villain (I don't like villains that are evil just for evil's sake).

I'm going to go ahead and call Those Who Hunt The Night the winner, and see if I can figure out how the shelf thing works so I can swap it.

I've noticed while following TV news that people in on-the-bubble shows will take a new job and the contract will prioritize the existing show over the new one. Tyler Labine, for example, took the role on Sons of Tuscon while he was still on Reaper, and if Reaper was renewed, he would have stayed. That doesn't seem to be matching up with what's happening on Eureka, since everyone does seem to be leaving, but maybe they'll be written back in?

Since they delayed the airing of this half of the season for so long, I can't imagine that Jamie Ray Newman was cast in Eastwick at the time they filmed it. But maybe I'm wrong. It happens from time to time. :)

Hank is the new Kelsey Grammar sitcom. Which I read a horrible review of, I can't see that one sticking around for much longer.

I wonder if the delay of this half of the season led a lot of people to take other jobs since it really seemed like SciFi was trying to kill the show off.

I'm not sure who put the book on the shelf, perhaps they picked the wrong one? I hadn't checked the poll progress since Friday, but Those Who Hunt The Night was leading the last time I looked.

I'm the opposite of everyone else - I haven't bought books in years. For a while, I was buying a lot at used bookstores, but "a lot" for me pales in comparison to most of you!

What I do tend to get ridiculous with, until they call them back, is library books. I'm at the library at least once a week picking things up that came in on reserve and dropping things off, and I can't walk away without browsing the new release shelf and the graphic novel shelves and picking up something, even if I have 15 others at home, some that are so new and in demand I can only keep them for 2 weeks (hi, new Dan Brown and new Kathy Reichs). Thank god they're free, 'cause I couldn't afford to read otherwise.

Neal Stephenson seems to have his own approach to science fiction. I've noticed it a few times in interviews with him:

"I always write with a science fiction feel to my stories, though for some of the books, the marketing may be more toward a mainstream audience. The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different."

http://www.sfsite.com/10b/ns67.htm

"Reason: Is The Baroque Cycle science fiction?

Stephenson: Labels such as science fiction are most useful when employed for marketing purposes, i.e., to help readers find books that they are likely to enjoy reading. With that in mind, I'd say that people who know and love science fiction will recognize these books as coming out of that tradition. So the science fiction label is useful for them as a marketing term. However, non-S.F. readers are also reading and enjoying these books, and I seem to have a new crop of readers who aren't even aware that I am known as an S.F. writer. So it would be an error to be too strict or literal-minded about application of the science fiction label."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36481.ht...

There's also a broadcast of him giving a lecture about SF as a genre:

http://fora.tv/2008/05/08/Neal_Stephenso...

I'm on a several-year-long hiatus from The Baroque Cycle (my brain gets tired just thinking about the scope of that thing), but I do love the guy as an author.

Other people appear to be having this issue, too. There is a thread in the Feedback forum about it, so hopefully Otis & Co. can get it fixed.

Okay, poll is up! I evaluated each book that had been seconded and removed one or two that were shelved primarily as SF instead of fantasy, and a few whose reviews leaned more towards anti-heroes than villains. We've got 10 books up for nomination, I think I'm rooting for Soon I Will Be Invincible after reading a positive review at Den Of Geek today.

I used the poll invite feature instead of the group broadcast, forgetting that the invite limits itself to 1000 people - the group has more than double that, if you can believe it! I'll send out another email tomorrow so I don't overload everyone's inboxes.

Making some rulings before I compile our current list -

Yes, Lestat can count as a villain
The Wasp Factory is not fantasy
I Am Legend is not fantasy
No on The Summer Tree because there are no villain POVs in it, although if anyone wants to explain why so many people have mentioned it, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

Haven't gotten a chance to read too indepth since my last post, but I had to comment on the Summer Tree nod/second - who is the villain? The only one who comes to mind for me is the one trapped under the mountain, and the book is never from his POV.

I probably won't have time until this evening to make a list of everything that's been nominated and seconded so far, but keep giving your ideas and commenting on whether or not you think the nominations fit the theme!

I think that books like Grendel, Wicked, and from the sounds of it, To Reign In Hell will fit. So one category of accepted books is any book showing the POV of a villian in another book (Wicked Witch, Satan, and Grendel were all villains, and their books are retellings of the original books). I think that, what John said is true - we'll probably view them as the hero of the story once we see it from their POV, but what makes them fit is the author's intention of showing their motivations as the villain.

I'd like to stay away from anti-heroes, since I think that starts to fall into another category. Obviously there isn't a perfect line between them, but I think the anti-hero tends to truimph in the end even if s/he's of disagreeable personality. Agree? Disagree?

I'm going to agree with John about The Golden Compass (I am less familiar with other suggestions) where even though the villain is a strong character, we don't spend much of the book understanding things through their eyes.

Greyweather, let's have nominations run until the end of Wednesday. I'll send out a group broadcast to alert anyone who doesn't check their group tab for new posts.

Liz, the group already did A Game of Thrones, so we won't put that on the poll again.

Shannon, I found it and deleted the polls relating to months we've already finished discussing. It WAS where Jon said it was, but it took a discerning eye to find it. It wasn't intuitive at all! I think in the past, if I remember correctly, you deleted them, but I could be wrong.

Goobers, y'all must have had much less busy weekends than I did to go ahead and get this nomination process started!

As I said in the poll comments, I'll accept any nomination that contains a significant portion of the villain's POV, since I thought we had a very nice discussion about the two villains' chapters in our Tigana discussion, even though the book wasn't solely from their POV.

I'm not familiar with all of these books so far, so I'm relying on anyone who knows them to object if they don't feel like it fits. I'm going to go ahead and ask everyone if they agree Lestat from Anne Rice's world counts as a villain - I've read her vampire books multiple times and I don't know if I would consider Lestat a villain, even in Interview. I can be convinced otherwise if someone has an argument for including him.