Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 179

It's aliens!

A burst of gravitational waves hit our planet. Astronomers have no clue where it’s from.

I do enjoy weird astronomical phenomena. We certainly see plenty of unexpected things whenever we get a new look at a planet, and odd phenomena sure don’t seem rare. I don’t know much about gravity waves, but this article says:

 On Jan. 14, astronomers detected a split-second burst of gravitational waves, distortions in space-time … but researchers don’t know where this burst came from. … Gravitational waves can be caused by the collision of massive objects, such as two black holes or two neutron stars. Astronomers detected such gravitational waves from a neutron star collision in 2017 and from one in April of 2019 … But gravitational waves from collisions of such massive objects typically last longer and manifest in the data as a series of waves that change in frequency over time as the two orbiting objects move closer to each other.

I think this was obviously some alien species using wormhole technology relatively near Earth. Wormhole opens and shuts nearly instantaneously, and there you go, a split-second burst of distortions in space-time.

Keep an eye out for flying saucers this week!

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Recent Reading: One Night in Boukos by AJ Demas

Okay, this one is a novella – a long novella, a short novel. About 230 pages, it says on Amazon. I got the Kindle version. It’s long enough that the $3.99 price seems quite reasonable.

Also: it’s really good. It’s a historical – okay, wait, not exactly. Let me rephrase that. It reads like a historical. There’s no magic. The world is secondary, but very familiar. We have here a classical setting with an Athenian-like city-state, a Sparta-like city-state, a Persia-like country, and various others named but not described in detail, which are arranged around, as far as we can tell, a Mediterranean-like sea. Thus, a historical, basically, but withoutthe need to stick to historical customs or attitudes too closely.

The two pov protagonists are from Persia. I mean Zash. They are members of the ambassador’s party, in Athens – that is, Boukos – to arrange a trade alliance. We have Marzana, who’s the captain of the ambassador’s guard, and Bedar, who’s the ambassador’s eunuch secretary. Here’s the setup: The ambassador went out to a dinner party last night and doesn’t arrive back at the embassy. Only Marzana and Bedar actually know this. In order to prevent certain disaster, they’ve told the ambassador’s household he spent the night in the city, while they’re telling everyone else he’s fine, just not seeing anyone because, uh, reasons. They have to find him before everything falls apart . . . and, go!

“One Night in Boukos” is such an interesting contrast to Point of Hopes, because almost all the action takes place between one dawn and the next. There’s the same kind of emphasis on delightful worldbuilding details, but in this case combined with a fast pace. Marzana and Bedar split up, each of them investigating one possible trail left by the ambassador. They have very different skills and personalities, but both speak the language. The author does a good job having the Persians speak much more formally, the Athenians much more colloquially – possibly just a little too colloquially at times. Though I interpreted the occasional use of contemporary American slang as the author indicating the use of contemporary Boukosian slang.

Anyway, neither Marzana nor Bedar is all that familiar with the city or the customs. Adding to the confusion and the culture shock, this particular day happens to be an important festival to the patron god of the city, who is a god of fertility. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say, of sex. A certain amount of hilarity ensues. I will say, Bedar manages with more aplomb, but Marzana does all right too.

During the course of the day and night, two relationships unfold. I knew this was supposed to happen given the back cover copy, but it took a while to get there, relative to the length of the story. Both Marzana and Bedar gradually lose interest in locating the ambassador as the hints pile up that he is a totally worthless jackass. That reduces tension for the reader, who doesn’t care much whether something bad has already happened to him or whether the two of them are too late to save him from whatever fate he might have suffered. The tension instead is focused on the protagonists, in finding out how they solve their problems and whether they come out all right. The reader doesn’t have to be very astute to suspect they’ll both be fine; the tone of the story makes that pretty clear. This is all about the process of getting to the happy ending, without a lot of worry about whether the ending will be happy when you get there. In that way, “One Night in Boukos” is again similar to Point of Hopes. Both are good choices if you want a less-tense reading experience.

Anyway, Marzana meets a charming widow and Bedar meets a young man with an interesting past and an unenviable present. Spoiler: things work out. Even though all the action takes place in less than two full days and neither protagonist meets his specific important secondary lead until halfway through the story, the pacing of those relationships doesn’t feel frenetic. That’s quite a trick, but the author does take the time to make sure both protagonists and both important secondary characters are fully realized. Then as we get toward the end, the plot comes together neatly, click click click as elements fall into place. It’s an elegant story as well as charming. Humorous, but not quite tongue-in-cheek. Nicely satisfying ending. The first thing I did after finishing this story was pick up another of the author’s novellas.

Who would like this novella:

If you like Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas, and who doesn’t, there’s a good chance you’d like “One Night in Boukos.” If in addition to Penric you also like Gillian Bradshaw’s historicals, then it’s highly likely you’ll appreciate this novella, which has such a strong classical feel plus romance, a lot like most of her novels. Definitely recommended, and thanks to Mary Beth, who pointed me toward it on Twitter at the exact time I was in the mood for a story like this.

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Science fiction set in the 2020s

A post at Book Bub: Sci-Fi Set in the 2020’s Predicted a Dim Decade for Humanity

Now that we’re firmly entrenched in the 21st century (which for a long time was shorthand for ‛the future’ in sci-fi), it’s fascinating to look at all the stories set in this particular decade to see how past SF masters thought things were going to go. One thing is abundantly clear: No matter how bad you think the decade is going to be, sci-fi writers think the 2020s are going to be worse.

The author of the post, Jeff Somers, then goes into detail about some of the horrifying, dystopian, or extinction-level events that take place in novels set in the 2020s.

The sheer variety of doom sci-fi has imagined for this decade is impressively exhausting: Body-switching apocalypse (Dollhouse), time-warping alien invasion (Edge of Tomorrow and its source material, the novel All You Need is Kill), artificial intelligence genocide (The Terminator)—you’re hard-pressed to find a fictional 2020s that isn’t absolutely terrifying.

As Somers points out, apocalypse is fun! Easier to write a novel set during or after an apocalypse than a novel set post-scarcity.

Here’s a fun post on the same topic:

Freeways become parks in 2020 and cities are domed in these 1974 predictions

There have been other looks ahead to 2020. I have a 1974 science fiction anthology cleverly titled “2020 Vision.” Editor Jerry Pournelle commissioned eight stories that would be set in 2020. He wanted realism of a sort. … “The ground rules on this book were simple,” Pournelle wrote in his preface. “Each author had to write a story which he truly believed could take place in the real world during the year 2020.”

2020 Vision is a clever title for this kind of anthology. I immediately feel like I should have thought of that.

Evidently the predictions were mainly misses — no surprise there. From the sound of it, the contributing authors took the “truly believed could take place” requirement, well, not all that seriously, let’s say. There’s one story that almost sounds halfway plausible — diets enforced by computerized guardians. Kind of a “Sorry, you can’t order a burger, have a nice sprig of parsley and a glass of water!” dystopia.

Click through to the post for a description of the stories. And if you happen to see a copy in a used bookstore, grab it quick, because it’s way out of print, not available as an ebook, and $55 as a used book at this moment.

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Recent Reading: Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A Barnett

It was, they all agreed later, a fair measure of Rathe’s luck that he was on duty when the butcher came to report his missing apprentice.

Remember that one? It’s the first line of Point of Hopes, which I included in a first-line post a week or so ago.

The situation is simple: a lot of children – ages about eight to thirteen – are being kidnapped. Nicholas Raithe is a member of the city guard, which for some reason are called “points,” and I never really did figure out what “claiming a point” on someone entails or why the guardsmen want to do it. Are they paid per point? Is it a marker of status with their peers? Both? Pointsmen take an awful lot of bribes, too; this is a city where the concept of police is pretty new and still being worked out.

Okay, so: this novel stands out for me in two major ways:

a) Wow, the worldbuilding, and

b) Gosh, there’s whole lot of story wrapped around what is essentially a very scant plot.

Okay, the worldbuilding.

You know how one mark of not-great worldbuilding is names that are all over the place? Like, someone’s named Terasannion and then another character is named T’t’ling and a third character is named, I don’t know, Hope Trueblood, and then another one is named Robert Bateman. That’s generally a terrible thing to do. Well, Point of Hopes is kind of an exception to this rule, because the city of Astreiant is presented as a melting pot sort of city, inhabited by people of diverse nationalities. The only thing that bothered me – and it did bother me – was the inclusion of names like “Nicolas” and “Phillip.” The world is so unlike ours that it seemed just plain weird to have contemporary names like that thrown in with names like . . . let me pick out a handful . . . okay. First names for women: Gaucelm, Mijan, Ashiri, Housseye, Aadje,  and my personal favorite by a mile, Trijntje. I never want to hear anyone complain about the names I give characters again. Trijntje, give me strength! I love the way that looks on the page, but can you imagine an audiobook’s narrator hitting that one? Last names include things like b’Estorr. Obviously that’s from a completely different naming tradition.

So, obviously the names alone announce to the reader that this is a secondary world fantasy. Then at first glance, it’s a medieval-ish European-ish type of setting. Except with little gargoyles that play kind of a pigeon role in the city. But wow, then you learn how important astrologers are and figure out that the metaphysics are very different. It’s as though Scott and Barnett decided to take a medieval understanding of astrology, give it a couple of twists, throw in a little alchemy, and run with it as far as they possibly could. I enjoyed this so much. Want to be a butcher? Well, do your stars suggest that would be a good job for you? Want to be a merchant-venturer? Oops, sorry, your stars say you’re likely to die by water, so you may want to avoid ocean travel. These things aren’t just beliefs. All this metaphysical stuff is true. Very nice worldbuilding element. Plus there are ghosts (not important) and necromancers (one is a fairly important character). And duelists go mad if they kill too many people? That’s not very important either and never discussed, so who knows why they go mad or what form that madness takes. The metaphysics is cluttered, is what I’m saying.

There’s a complicated political situation too. I won’t go into it except to say that astrology is important there as well and in some ways this is the least believable element. I mean, characters tell each earnestly, “No one would do something so terrible just for political reasons,” and although I don’t think I laughed out loud, I might have. Uh huh. No one ever does anything really awful and dangerous merely to seize political power. Who ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, this is all background stuff that rarely becomes foreground, except right at the end.

Let me see. Well, there’s an organized crime lord, I guess, although he doesn’t seem that criminal, really. Most of his business seem pretty legitimate. We meet quite a few pickpockets and so on; when one of the protagonists is a guardsman, it’s perhaps not surprising we get a good look at the seamy side of town. Very few important characters are financially really well off; this is a book that presents the working poor very well, which is rather rare in fantasy as a whole. Technology . . . not quite medieval-standard. Guns have just been invented, flintlocks and matchlocks, I think, and they don’t sound like they’re topnotch examples of their type, either.

All right, hopefully that gives you a reasonable feel for the type of world. Now, the characters. Nicholas Rathe is one protagonist. The other is Philip Eslingen, a military guy who came up through the ranks and was just laid off from a disbanding unit. They bump into each other now and then, but Rathe is investigating the kidnappings and Eslingen is basically just trying to earn a living in a city where everybody’s on edge because of all the kidnappings, looking for someone to blame. Foreigners, maybe, like Eslingen. From there the story sloooooowly unfolds. The book offers 420 pages of small type, the kind I definitely cannot read any longer without reading glasses. About halfway through, Eslingen finds himself at loose ends, Rathe suggests he take a job with the crime lord, even though neither of them actually believes is involved with the kidnapping. But just in case, Eslington can keep an eye out. This happens about halfway through the book, and only then do people start putting pieces of the puzzle together. Slooooowly.

Good thing this isn’t a murder mystery, because the bad guy’s plan has to do with magical stuff the reader isn’t told about until right at the end, so there’s no way for the reader to work out what is really going on. The prologue is misleading, if you read it. Which I didn’t, until the end. I did look at it right at first, but it was boring and I wanted to get to the kidnapped children. After the fact, the prologue still strikes me as basically boring and unnecessary. But the point I actually want to make here is: the bad guy is really scary, I guess, but he is summarily dealt with in a few pages, the children are rescued – luckily none of them were killed – and there you go, the end.

That’s what I mean by a lot of story wrapped around a scant plot. I’m not entirely certain I’ve ever read a novel that gave so much attention to the daily life of the characters and so little to the Big Bad. This was basically fine with me; I’m just saying it was somewhat strange to get to the end and think: that’s it? Problem solved?

As a writer . . . as a writer, I totally understand this. I’m pretty sure the authors like the characters and the world and wanted to show off both, with the villain an afterthought to justify writing the whole thing. Certainly that’s how it reads: as an extreme example of a venue novel. I mean, a let-me-show-you-my-cool-world novel. With characters. And then, a very distant third element: the bad guy’s nefarious plot.

Final note: Romance. There isn’t any. Just very tiny hints that there could be something if the story continues. Which it does: there are several books in this series.

Who would like this book:

Well, if you’re into great worldbuilding and you’re not in a rush, sure, give it a try. Especially if you would like kind of a cozy fantasy, a low stress, meandering journey to a happy ending. It’s pretty clear the children are all going to turn out to be fine, at the end, or at least I thought the authors sprinkled in plenty of hints to that effect. Also, obviously, if you would like a romance-free story, here you go.

Who might not like this book:

YA has trained a generation or two of readers to expect snappy plots. If that’s what you’re used to, this will certainly be a different reading experience. Even I found it uncomfortably slow at times, and I like slow-paced novels. The dialogue is perfectly good, but not sparkling with wit – another factor that contributes to the slow feel of the story, because witty dialogue produces a faster feel to almost any story. Although Point of Hopes is good and I enjoyed it quite a bit, it does not imo have a lot of emotional heft. The characters are sympathetic and appealing, but perhaps not that deep emotionally. That could be because they are seldom put in really awful positions and when they are, those situations are promptly resolved. Definitely think cozy, rather than haunting or tortured or angsty or however you’d put the reverse of cozy.

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This is promising

Tuberculosis Vaccine Found To Inadvertently Counter Alzheimer’s Disease

You know, we have a word for this exact occurrence. The word is “serendipitous.”

ser·en·dip·i·tous/ˌserənˈdipədəs/

adjective

occurring or discovered by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

However, even though I’m not impressed with this use of the word “inadvertent,” I’m happy to hear about this serendipitous discovery.

“There’s data reaching back to the 1960s that shows that countries treating bladder cancer patients with the BCG vaccine had a lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease but it hadn’t been properly analyzed,” Bercovier, lead author of the paper, said.…

The exact way the BCG vaccine affects cancer hasn’t been fully understood but it’s known to have an impact on the immune system, as per the study. The BCG vaccine, which “modulates the immune system, may serve as an effective preventative treatment to this crippling condition,” Bercovier pointed out in a phone interview. “Looks like BCG is able to reduce this inflammation.”

Not a magic bullet, but perhaps a significant step towards a magic bullet.

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Swordswomen in SFF

Here’s a post by James Davis Nicholl at tor.com: Five sword-wielding women in SFF.

To which my immediate response, without reading the post, is: Five? Good heavens, man, couldn’t you instantly come up with ten? Is there a shortage of swordswomen in SFF? I hardly think so.

Well, let’s see which five Nicholl picks and then add five more.

His five:

Revolutionary Girl Utena by Be-Papas and Chiho Saito

I’ve never heard of that. Here’s his description:

Most modern schools ignore the role of swordplay in teenaged life. Not so at one school, Ohtori Academy, which is featured in Be-Papas and Chiho Saito’s Revolutionary Girl Utena manga. Dueling is a longstanding custom at the academy. Students fight to win the hand of lovely and passive Anthy. …

Oh, it’s like a manga version of a reality show? The Bachelor, with swords? Ugh, terrible setup, no appeal for me at all. Who wants to win a “lovely and passive” lover? Passivity is hardly an appealing quality! Again, ugh.

Cold-Forged Flame by Marie Brennan

Never read it — in fact, I don’t recall hearing about it. I really liked the Lady Trent series, really did not care for the Onxy Court series, who knows about this one? If any of you have read it, please comment.

Tomoe’s Story by Stan Sakai

This is another comic. I don’t know anything about it, but it does bring to mind Tomoe Gozen, the series about the historical figure of the same name. The novels are by Jessica Salmonson. I’m not sure why Nicholl thought of the comic before the novels, because the series was pretty impressive. Too tragic for me, in the end, but still impressive.

Steel by Carrie Vaughn

This one sounds pretty fun:

In Carrie Vaughn’s Steel, fourth-rate fencer Jill Archer tumbles off her boat during a family vacation near Nassau. She hits the water in the 21st century; she is pulled out during the Golden Age of Piracy. Luckily for the teen, Captain Marjory Cooper offers Jill the choice between signing on as a pirate or remaining a prisoner. 

Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones

Margerit Sovitre is astounded when she finds herself heir to the vast fortune of her wealthy godfather Baron Saveze. He has also bequeathed Margerit her very own armin. “Armins” are whos, not whats; they are personal bodyguards. Saverze’s armin is young Barbara, who is unpleasantly surprised, since she’d expected to be freed when the baron died. Serving a jumped-up bourgeoise turned aristocrat wasn’t in her plans.

I read the sample, but I haven’t read the full novel. I did like the sample, though, and will most likely get the full book one of these days.

Well, these are remarkably little-known swordswomen given the plethora of well-known choices and Nicholl’s broad knowledge of the field. Also, these are all fantasy, which is of course expected, but then don’t say “SFF,” say “Fantasy.” I can think of at least one swordswoman in a science fiction world, though. Two. Let’s start with those and then pick some of the lower-hanging fruit.

Swordswomen in SFF, an extended list:

6. Bel in Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series

7. Mary in Point of Honor by Dorothy Heydt

8. The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

9. The Paksennarion series by Elizabeth Moon

10. Alanna in the Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

That’s ten. It was too easy. Let’s add another fve:

11. Winter in series by Django Wexler

12. Both Harry and Aerin, in McKinley’s Damar duology.

13. Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings

14. Del, in Tiger and Del by Jennifer Roberson

15. Taizu, in The Paladin by CJC

I could go on forever! Stopping at five was ridiculous! Granted, writing a little tidbit about each one would take some time, but still.

Okay! My very favorite swordswoman in SFF may be . . . um . . . good heaven’s, I don’t know . . . so many of the women above might be my favorite, and probably were at one point in my reading history. I really love Harry and Aerin and Paks and Winter and Taizu! I think I would have to throw a dart at a dartboard to pick a favorite.

If I missed YOUR favorite swordswoman in SFF, add her to the list in a comment, please!

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Should we resurrect old slang?

Here’s a post: 59 Quick Slang Phrases From The 1920s We Should Start Using Again

Although my immediate reaction is Sure! Sounds like fun!, my response after looking through the list is: a lot of these slang phrases sound pretty stupid.

32. Jorum of skee: a swig of alcohol, particularly hard liquor

33. Know your onions: to know what’s up or what’s going on

34. “Let’s blouse!”: “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

Let’s blouse? This is one slang term that died a natural death and should be left in its grave.

I imagine that’s the general response to outdated slang, though! In another hundred years, I’m sure readers would say the same about words like mood:

Mood

Use mood in lieu of saying “same.” Generally, it describes something you’re into, as in, “All I want to do tonight is lay on my couch and watch The Bachelorette.” “Big mood.”

I got that here. I’ve never heard “mood” used that way, to the best of my knowledge. I just googled “modern slang” and got that website and took a look. “Big mood” looks about as stupid to me as “Let’s blouse!”

I do like this particular 100-year-old slang euphamism, though:

30. Iron one’s shoelaces: to excuse oneself for the restroom

Excuse me, I have to go iron my shoelaces! That’s funny. Sure, we can bring that particular euphemism back.

If you’ve got a minute, you can glance through the list and see if there’s anything you’d enjoy trying to lift out of the grave, bring back to life, and popularize as current slang.

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Traditional mysteries

From CrimeReads: REVIVING THE TRADITIONAL MYSTERY FOR A 21ST CENTURY AUDIENCE

[T]he term “traditional mystery” is from the outset somewhat difficult to define absolutely. It has an almost organic structure, with successive authors and generations adding their own extensions and renovations to the house built by the likes of Poe, Christie, James, Sayers and Conan Doyle.

That original house had a foundation built on the reassurance of the middle classes, and four recognizable walls: the amateur detective or private investigator with superior powers of deduction, violence and sex occurring largely off-stage and referenced rather than shown, an incompetent or indifferent police force and, above all, the restoration of social order.

Hmm. What can the author of this post, Sulari Gentill, mean by “built on the reassurance of the middle classes”? It seems to me Gentill is trying too hard to sound erudite, because I do think that is a strained way of saying that traditional mysteries tend to involve a middle-class cast of characters, or that they tend to have a middle-class setting, or whatever she has in mind here. Also, that sort of statement makes me immediately think of counterexamples. There are so many historical mysteries that involve the upper classes. Do those not count as traditional? They seem pretty traditional to me.

How about the rest of this? The investigator with superior deductive skill, maybe. Nero Wolfe, say, absolutely. Roderick Alleyn, not quite so much, but he is a smart guy. Anne Perry’s Inspector Pitt is honestly not that smart, which is why his wife can be more involved in solving mysteries sometimes.

Off-stage violence, check.

An incompetent police force, no way! Inspector Cramer isn’t incompetent! He’s not as brilliant as Nero Wolfe, but he’s a solid detective, as we see in The Red Threads, where he is the protagonist. Ditto for Charles Parker in the Lord Peter novels. The police are certainly not indifferent, either! That’s really unfair.

But not only that, LOOK at Inspector Alleyn, for heaven’s sake! That’s a classic and I would say definitely traditional mystery series, and the detective is the protagonist. This is hardly unusual! Using as your definition of traditional mysteries the necessary separation of the sleuth and the police, I don’t know, that seems really odd.

The restoration of social order, I have no issue with that part. That’s a crucial element of mystery fiction, or it has been.

Where is Gentill going with this?

…Perhaps however the most radical renovation is to the notion of the restoration of social order, the load-bearing wall which is an extension of the traditional mystery’s function as a literature of reassurance. Arguably this restoration is the most important facet of not only traditional mystery, but crime novels in general. …

The modern protagonist, on the other hand, can fail to save the day even if he or she solves the crime. The perpetrator can go unpunished, and lives can remain shattered by loss. The reader knows who did it, but may be denied the simple satisfaction of a “just desserts” ending, without the story failing to meet the standards of a genre which had evolved beyond being a discreet intellectual puzzle.

Oh, no. No no no! This is an argument in favor of the kind of thing we see in In the Woods by Tana French., where we have a beautifully written novel where the protagonist slowly destroys his own life and no one manages to stop the murderer from getting away with the crime. That’s terrible! Gentill argues this:

And so, the mystery novel has become, above all, a literature of resistance. At its core is a champion who will not let matters lie, who will defy propriety, circumstance and fate itself to achieve a greater end, whether that be justice, truth or a personal sense of right and duty. They may not succeed but they will try, and if they fail, the reader will know—even in the absence of a sequel—that they will return to the fight. The fine art of the mystery writer relies on an ability to lead the reader through the darkest of moments to a realization of some sort. Occasionally that realization involves hope, but not always.

The realization doesn’t always involve hope! Well, good Lord above, don’t tell me that is a traditional mystery! That is a grimdark mystery, a sub-subgenre I have never thought about before and have no wish to encounter by accident, as happened with In the Woods.

Well, in my opinion, there’s absolutely no need to re-interpret traditional mysteries, because lots of them are still being written. The more serious, less cute cozies are traditional mysteries, and there are certainly plenty of those. The above argument seems to me to be more usefully framed as an attempt to delineate a different subgenre of mysteries.

But click through and read the whole thing, if you have time, and see what you think.

Incidentally, one of my favorite current traditional mystery series is Patrice Greenwood’s Wysteria Tearoom mysteries, which are cozies, but very much set on the serious end of the cozy spectrum. If any of you read mysteries, do you have a current series you especially favor?

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Good heavens, really?

Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots

Be warned. If the rise of the robots comes to pass, the apocalypse may be a more squelchy affair than science fiction writers have prepared us for.

Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own steam.

One of the most successful creations has two stumpy legs that propel it along on its “chest”. Another has a hole in the middle that researchers turned into a pouch so it could shimmy around with miniature payloads.

We really do live in a science fiction universe.

Also: ugh. I think I prefer my robots to be robots and my animals to be animals.

All those SF novels where the aliens have biology-based technology suddenly look more plausible, though.

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Okay, so what ARE some really good SF novels for non-SF readers?

Drawing on yesterday’s post, obviously! And, like the Book Bub post, I’m going to try to stick to SF, not fantasy. So I will try to list ten choices I think would have a good chance of working. I’ll start off:

1. Murderbot: All Systems Red. That’s honestly a great choice.

How about something with a literary tone, but not Station Eleven. For example, how about:

2. Kindred or maybe Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

A bit dark, but not too dark, do you think? And Butler was such an outstanding writer. Any book club member who feels dismissive about SF as a genre needs exposure to something that is powerfully written at the sentence level all the way up to the level of themes. Personally, I admire the Lilith’s Brood series the most, but those might have a harder time appealing to readers who aren’t already fans of SF, it seems to me.

I’m not a huge fan of LeGuin, whose books just do not tend to appeal to me, for reasons that are hard to pin down. Well, I don’t tend to really like her protagonists or other characters; I imagine that’s a big part of it. She’s such a fantastic writer, though. How about:

3. The Left Hand of Darkness.

Perhaps the book club members like literary-esque detective novels? China Mieville is a bit hit-and-miss for me, but I loved:

4. The City and the City

Does that count as science fiction? Maybe that counts as fantasy. Well, leave it in for now and see if by the time I get to ten, something else has occurred to me.

Oh, here’s one:

5. The Martian by Andy Weir

It’s exciting, and near-future SF is accessible in a way that a lot of SF isn’t — I mean, accessible to people who may feel some resistance to liking a science fiction novel. This one is hard to resist. Plus there would be a lot to discuss! there’s no character development to speak of — does that matter? Why or why not? Having just one character on stage for a whole lot of the book, how does Weir make that work? Surely people would have fun with that.

Speaking of having fun with a book:

6. Seveneves by Neil Stevenson

I have seldom had more fun arguing about what did and didn’t work and why than with Seveneves. It’s a long book, granted. Still, I think it’s a reasonable contender.

How about a space opera? I hate to suggest to book club members, Oh, you can like SF, but not if it’s got too many yucky SF elements in it! Time travel sure, but not aliens and space ships! To avoid that message, how about picking something that’s a bit reminiscent of the Star Trek universe, but different and perhaps more appealing to modern readers? In other words:

7. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

Wouldn’t there be plenty to discus after reading that one? All the AI/Person stuff, and handling secrets, and aliens, an accommodating (or not) the expressed needs of people who are not like you. Lots of good stuff.

If you didn’t pick Kindred by Octavia Butler, then you have room for a different time travel novel. How about:

8. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

It’s funny, it would to readers who like literature set in the late 1800s it would especially appeal to any reader familiar with Three Men in a Boat, and of course it’s very well written.

What are some older titles that are clearly classic SF, but would have a good chance of appealing to modern readers? I’m thinking first of Varley’s Gaia trilogy, but you couldn’t suggest a whole trilogy for a book club, could you?

I’m not crazy about the typical books that appear on lists of SF classics, like Rendezvous with Rama and the Foundation series and Stranger in a Strange Land and all those. I didn’t care for them when I started reading SF and I don’t think most of them aged especially well. Maybe . . . maybe something by a classic older author, but a work that, while not as famous, is perhaps more approachable (and more appealing to me personally). Maybe:

9. Cuckoo’s Egg by C J Cherryh

It’s short, it’s beautifully put together, it is sociological SF rather than space opera, it tells an intimate story rather than trying to go all over the place and do everything. Plus it’s one of my all-time favorites by one of my all-time favorite authors. And available on Kindle these days!

What’s a good choice for the tenth place? Suggest something in the comments that might appeal to non-SF fans who are in your new SF book club:

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