The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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What SF are you reading now, 2000-2014?
message 251:
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Dan
(last edited Dec 26, 2018 04:04PM)
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Dec 26, 2018 01:42PM
Has anyone read a good 2018 science fiction novel published this year (meaning published for the first time, not a reissue)? Short story collections don't qualify--they contain stories published previous years. (The book mentioned in message #249 of this thread also doesn't count since that was published in 2019 instead of this year.)
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Dan wrote: "Has anyone read a good science fiction novel (not a short story collection--they have stories published previous years) published this year of 2018 (meaning published for the first time, not a reis..."It is a dry year for sci-fi lit (2017 wasn't that better). I haven't added a 2018 sci-fi novel to my "to-read" shelf.
Earlier this month, I searched top 10 list for the best 2018 sci-fi novels, but they all felt uninteresting (maybe Rosewater is the exception) and fantasy novels often were in those lists (ok, so often they are sci-fi and fantasy top 10 novels of 2018 lists. Sue me).
Maybe some 2018 sci-fi classic novel will immerge over time.
Mod
Same for me. I don't often read novels in the same year they are published. No reason, just that my to-read pile is already long. Though I do plan to read The Consuming Fire soon. And I did read Mem, as mentioned above, but it was merely good (and wouldn't likely meet your definition of SF).
Most of the stories in Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against were first published in this 2018 book. But I've only read 3 of the stories so far, so don't have an opinion yet.
Dan wrote: "Has anyone read a good 2018 science fiction novel published this year (meaning published for the first time, not a reissue)?"The only 5-star for me this year was The Expert System's Brother, though it is a novella, not novel.
I'm yet to read the following promising 2018 SF novels:
Salvation
Dogs of War
Red Moon
Tool of War
Ed wrote: "Same for me. I don't often read novels in the same year they are published. No reas..."Ditto. I don't even pay much attention to the publishing date generally. I'm also going to start reading "Resist" today at lunch.
Yeah,
Vox by Christina DalcherSet in an America where half the population has been silenced, VOX is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.
On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words daily, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial—this can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.
This is just the beginning.
Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.
But this is not the end.
For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.
----
And
Foe by Iain ReidA taut, philosophical mind-bender from the bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.
In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company.
Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.
Danielle wrote: "Yeah, Vox by Christina DalcherSet in an America where half the population has been silenced, VOX is the harrowing, unforgettable story of..."
Vox sounds like an incredible setting for a sci fi! The reviews are a little mixed, but half of the negative ones look like they're a bit salty about the topics being criticised. I'll have to read it some time this year and make up my own mind.
I was excited to get 2 new books. Head On by John Scalzi was pretty good. It seemed to be as well written as Lock In, but is a sequel so some of the shiny newness has rubbed off. Still, I gave it a 4 star review.I was also really looking forward to Artemis by Andy Weir. It was going pretty well at first. Interesting location, main character, & plot right up until Jazz takes a job about 1/4 of the way through. It's a great job, but then it became idiotic! (view spoiler) This better be very entertaining from this point forward or I'm going to quit.
For another group read, I bought Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against. I grudgingly gave it 2 stars for the half dozen good stories out of 27. I reviewed it here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm highly disappointed in the editor not to mention some of the authors. Half the proceeds from the book goes to the ACLU & apparently it's OK to racist & sexist depending on the target. Scalzi, Bear, & Howey didn't disappoint, although Hearne's entry wasn't very good. At least it wasn't rude.
Mod
The story by C. Robert Cargill is excellent, though I haven't enjoyed much of his other work.
The Arc Bends by Kieron Gillen was also quite interesting.
I have a totally different take on "Monster Queens" by "Sarah Kuhn". You said "Dumb. I guess the author has something against beauty pageants." I sort-of agree that it is dumb, but the story didn't seem to be against beauty pageants. It was against aliens from outer space forcing contestants to perform the same pageant over and over again and killing them if they made a mistake. As for why the aliens do that, I guess it is just to indicate that aliens might have very alien motivations.
I liked 'Resist' early on, too. "Aware" by C. Robert Cargill might have been the best story in the collection. It's short, has a great plot, & a wonderful ending. It really hit me in the funny bone while making a great point through a twist at the end. Perfect!"The Arc Bends" was interesting & I'm not sure why it never grabbed me. It made several good points & was, on the whole, an excellent story. I just had trouble keeping my interest while reading it.
When reviewing short stories, I try to keep the comments on each one short. I do think "Monster Queens" was dumb. Beauty pageants are repetitive & very tough on the contestants. Losers get no recognition. They're discarded & disappear. Winners are often coerced into repeat performances by everyone to make a buck. I thought the point was fairly good, although it ignores the fact that women have are free join or not as they see fit. Unfortunately, the setting was just too silly & distracting.
Obviously, I got a different point from than the story than you, though. I'd recently read that the Miss America contest is no longer a beauty pageant since they're dropping the bikini contest for a hot air contest.
"We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That's huge," Carlson said, adding that the competition would now welcome women of "all shapes and sizes."...
In lieu of the bikini portion, contestants will "highlight her achievements and goals in life and how she will use her talents, passion, and ambition to perform the job of Miss America" in an "interactive portion" with the judges...
https://www.maxim.com/news/miss-ameri...
Supposedly this is empowering. I like looking at pretty girls dressing up in various costumes & some extra skin is always a bonus. That's a beauty pageant & is entertaining. Now it's just another political cartoon & we have more than enough of that going on. So the premier beauty pageant of my life now just seems like another casualty of political correctness.
On the plus side, I know which short story we're going to read next month.
:)
I currently read Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton, published in 2018, as a part of selecting a novel for Hugo Award 2019. So far, it is a "typical" Hamilton, with ubiquitous portals that allows instant transportation, but with a twist of alien (?) invasion.
I finally got around to reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers & enjoyed it very much. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just finished Rogue Protocol, the third installment of Martha Wells' Murderbot series. As usual, great fun. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A Closed and Common Orbit was good. Not as good as The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first of the series, but that's a tough mark to make. I was disappointed not to spend time on the Wayfarer, but I loved reading Pepper's back story. I gave it a 3 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm reading We Are Legion (We Are Bob). I forget who mentioned it or in what topic, but thank you! It's fantastic. I'm about halfway through & it was a real effort to put it down to get any chores done this evening.I'm also reading The Uplift War as an audiobook. It's good, too. Not as good as 'Bob', though. I try to keep audio & print books in different genres since I always have one of each going. When they're the same genre, I can get confused. Since I'm also rereading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I guess that's 3 of the same. They're not confusing, though.
I finished We Are Legion (We Are Bob) & loved it. I'm starting the next book & plan to finish the trilogy before reading anything else. I gave it a 5 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It is my first novel by him. 60 pages in and I'm underwhelmed. I want to read his new novella collection Radicalized, but I wasn't sure if he was worth reading. Makers had been lying around on my shelves for a while and it sounded like a good way to gadge Doctorow's lit-fu. Now I wonder if Radicalized is worth it.
Anyone read Doctorow's fiction and survived mild boredom?
Mod
I survived Little Brother, but I was in fact bored by it. I agree mostly with his politics, but wasn't impressed by that one encounter with his fiction.
Ed wrote: "Marc-André wrote: "Anyone read Doctorow's fiction and survived mild boredom?..."I survived Little Brother, but I was in fact bored by it. I agree mostly with his politics, but wasn'..."
Yeah, the guy gives great interviews and talks, and his politics is fine by me, but his prose lacks soul.
I really liked Little Brother, but I didn't shelve it as SF. A lot of the computer stuff is actually happening now, so I felt like it was more of a YA war book. Far better done in that genre than most. My review is here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I've also read his nonfiction Microsoft Research Digital Rights Management (DRM) Talk. I really liked that, too. Most of the points should be obvious now, but some are still clinging to them. My review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Mod
Fine. It felt almost like a lecture rather than a story. It was all about teaching how to resist digital surveillance. Your mileage obviously varied...
I've also read In Real Life, which is both a short story and a graphic novel. I enjoyed it more, in part because shorter. It also has a message, this time about exploitation of workers in a digital sweat shop.
Marc-André wrote: "Anyone read Doctorow's fiction and survived mild boredom? "I did bu I agree, he is not the most grasping of writers. His non-fic is solid and interesting, e.g. Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age
Marc-André wrote: "Anyone read Doctorow's fiction and survived mild boredom? "I saw him paired with John Scalzi at the LA book festival a couple years ago, and they were both sharp & fun.
Fiction: He was promoting WALKAWAY. I liked it pretty well: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I gave "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" 4 stars back in 2003. But the book I would recommend is his first collxn, " A Place So Foreign": https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-- and IB he has it all online, https://craphound.com/place/download/ Check it out. Boy peaked early..... 😎
Ed wrote: "Fine. It felt almost like a lecture rather than a story. It was all about teaching how to resist digital surveillance. Your mileage obviously varied......"You're right, it was & that's the way I looked at it, not as SF. I wouldn't have given it high marks for that & I cut YA books some slack. I try to pass on the same mindset to my users because they are often out to get us. If you read my review, you'll see I made this point 3 years before the Cambridge Analytica story broke & proved just how right he got it.
Mod
Here is an interesting article from him about why he releases his e-books without digital rights management:
https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/bur...
Spoiler alert: big businesses don't care about us.
Spoiler alert 2: this site is owned by a big business.
Jim wrote: "Spoiler alert 2: this site is owned by a big business"Indeed. Jeff's Everything Store! Itself an entertaining read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
4 stars by me, & has an sfnal element (rockets! drones! & more)
The Chemist was a pretty good audiobook. A little long/ repetitive but I found the characters engaging and the adventure not ridiculous. Not quite my usual fare, but husband and I needed to find something to agree on for a road trip. The female narrator did pretty well with third person and mostly male characters.
Mod
And actually being put to use, particularly in China. Here is him describing it:
https://boingboing.net/2019/04/05/bel...
Oleksandr wrote: "Also Cory Doctorow had a nice short story/novelette When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth"Second to that one. 4 stars. Also an early one....
Good articles, Ed. Scary stuff. I totally agree with him about DRM. Microsoft came out with .lit books years before anyone else had a decent ebook format & then killed it just when ebooks were really taking off. I have a bunch, but Calibre came to the rescue. It's free (donations gratefully accepted) & does a good job converting between formats. Add-ons are available through third parties that will strip DRM off files & save them in any format you want.China is plain scary. Definitely a hammer like Doctorow describes.
Oleksandr, thanks for the link to 'Sysadmins'. Neat that it is free.
I finished For We Are Many, the second of the Bobiverse books & started right in on the third. I can't recall the last time I stayed up past 11pm reading a book, but I did that last night & am halfway through the final Bobiverse book, All These Worlds. Anyway, it's really good & the second book didn't even suffer from the slump so typical in trilogies. I gave it a 5 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jim wrote: "I finished For We Are Many, the second of the Bobiverse books & started right in on the third. I can't recall the last time I stayed up past 11pm reading a book, but I did that last..."I fully agree, great series!
Pines by Blake Crouch was really good. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It was an amazing read. About halfway through, I thought I'd finally figured out what was going on, but I'd only guessed part of the answer & the story just kept getting better all the time until a really satisfying ending.
Jim wrote: "Pines by Blake Crouch was really good."Great, and my library has it so I will pick this one up. I remember I finished our group read Dark Matter very fast.
I haven't read Dark Matter yet, but thanks for bringing it up. I found Crouch's writing to be quickly & easily read, yet fulfilling.
Started The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer. I do not usually do series, but this one is still awesome even if it is book three.
Marc-André wrote: "Started The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer. I do not usually do series, but this one is still awesome even if it is book three."The first one was great (with the only drawback that it ended in mid-story) and I plan to read the series.
I finished
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It's a shame it didn't hit your funny bone, RJ. I thought it was a hoot.
Jim wrote: "Pines by Blake Crouch was really good...."I liked Dark Matter a bit better. In a way the story in Pines was less believable, although that is an absurd thing to say when you know what happens in Dark Matter.
Being unable to leave open ends I think have to read the following two parts. No problem with Crouch, it's like eating pop-corn: you can't stop untill there's nothing left.
Leo wrote: "Jim wrote: "...it's like eating pop-corn: you can't stop untill there's nothing left. "Perfectly put!
Dark Matter keeps popping up in my mind even after 4 books since reading itRecently I finished the Passage and it was light reading but dreadfully long. Blake deserves to be with the classic sci fi writers like Clarke, Niven, Farmer, Asimov, Silverberg and Simak.
John wrote: "Dark Matter keeps popping up in my mind even after 4 books since reading itRecently I finished the Passage and it was light reading but dreadfully long. Blake deserves to be with the classic sci f..."
I have been wanting to start The Passage including following parts for a long time now but it is an awful lot of pages alltogether, which holds me off it until now.
I doubt whether I can put Blake Crouch in such a list of writers. Maybe it is all a bit too light and actionpacked for me to do that. But I must admit he does a great job in capturing the reader - just can't put his books down.
So far, Crouch has really impressed me. He paces his books really well. He sets up during the first half & hits a good reveal that starts putting the pieces together. In the last half, he ups the weirdness as the last half races toward a conclusion. Very tough to put down. I wish Sweterlitsch had done that with The Gone World. The poor pacing, especially in the last half which dragged, just tore apart a great idea.
Dark Matterby Blake Crouch
This story would be great if there wasn't a big inconsistency. How the MC could travel to and fro universes in which the machine hasn't even been invented? Normally, he should have done it only in universes where the machine had been created too.
I hate when authors can't stay consistent all along their stories.
Danielle wrote: "This story would be great if there wasn't a big inconsistency. How the MC could travel to and fro univ..."I thought that was addressed by it creating itself in each reality due to its nature. Once it was used, it was suddenly there. No?
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
Judas Unchained (other topics)Pandora's Star (other topics)
Troublemakers: Stories by Harlan Ellison (other topics)
Dark Matter (other topics)
Dark Matter (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Peter F. Hamilton (other topics)Blake Crouch (other topics)
Stephen King (other topics)
Blake Crouch (other topics)
Blake Crouch (other topics)
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