30 Aug, 2017
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August
22 books read. 12.5 by women (57%), 8.5 by men (37%), 1 by N/A (5%)
Works by POC: 5 (23%)
Year to Date
168 works reviewed. 91.5 by women (54%). 71.5 by men (43%). 4 by non-binary authors (2%). 1 by N/A (0.6%)
Works by POC: 51.5 (31%)
And now, the meaningless table.
28 Aug, 2017
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All acquired for commissions. It was a very heavy week for requests for authors named “Brennan”.
24 Aug, 2017
Here are twenty core Speculative Fiction Works it may surprise you to learn I’ve never read, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field1. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you or for that matter I should consider2.
I’ve owned copies of some of these for a significant fraction of my life to date.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Galactic Sibyl Sue Blue by Rosel George Brown
Bone Dance by Emma Bull
Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrellby Susanna Clarke
The Start of the End of It All by Carol Emshwiller
Hild by Nicola Griffith
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
England Swings SF edited by Judith Merril
The Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce
Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack
Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin
Among Others by Jo Walton
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny
Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand! SO AM I. ALWAYS NEW FRONTIERS TO EXPLORE.
1: There are two filtering rules:
Only one work per author per list
Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique.
2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.
14 Aug, 2017
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Welcome to Gluttony Bay High Security Supernatural Prison. We value your patronage. For your entertainment this evening, we are delighted to welcome the world’s most renowned paranormal culinary experts.
And on the menu: You.
10 Aug, 2017
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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Young Adult Speculative Fiction Works, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field i. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you should considerii.
Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!
i There are two filtering rules:
ii NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.
7 Aug, 2017
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In a galaxy where the super-powers are the megacorporations, and ambitious executives play fast and loose with ethics in order to secure resources, where can good people turn for help? The megacorps control the jump gates and trade routes. They use psi-techs, implant-enhanced operatives with psionic abilities, who are bound by unbreakable contracts.
Psi-tech Cara Carlinni once had her mind turned inside out by Alphacorp, but she escaped, found her place with the Free Company, and now it’s payback time.
Ben Benjamin leads the Free Company, based on the rogue space station, Crossways. The megacorps have struck at Crossways once — and failed — so what are they planning now?nCrossways can’t stand alone, and neither can the independent colonies, though maybe together they all have a chance.
But something alien is stirring in the depths of foldspace. Something bigger than thesquabbles between megacorporations and independents. Foldspace visions are supposed to be a figment of the imagination.
At least, that’s what they teach in flight school. Ben Benjamin knows it’s not true. Meeting a void dragon was bad enough, but now there’s the Nimbus to contend with. Are the two connected? Why do some ships transit the Folds safely and others disappear without a trace?
Until now, humans have had a free hand in the Galaxy, settling colony after colony, but that might change because the Nimbus is coming.
Fifteen-year old Fanny and her step-sister are drawn into mysterious occurences around their home in Scotland which seem to be connected to the unexplained disappearance of a young man in 1914.
A super-genius in a small underground colony of survivors of nuclear war, eighteen-year-old Casey risks journeying back to the twentieth century to discover why the survivors are dying and how he can save them all.
Angel Crawford has finally pulled herself together (literally!) after her disastrous dismemberment on Mardi Gras. She’s putting the pieces of her life back in order and is ready to tackle whatever the future holds.
Too bad the future is a nasty bitch. There’s a new kind of zombie in town: mindless shamblers, infectious and ravenous.
With the threat of a full-blown shambler pandemic looming, and a loved one stricken, Angel and the “real” zombies scramble to find a cure. Yet when Angel uncovers the true reason the plague is spreading so quickly, she adds “no-holds-barred revenge” to her to-do list.
Angel is busting her ass dealing with shambling hordes, zombie gators, government jerks, and way too many mosquitos, but this white trash chick ain’t giving up.
Good thing, since the fate of the world is resting on her undead shoulders.
31 Jul, 2017
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“History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.”—Operation Daniel
In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like.
Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control.
Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion?
Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be “The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.
31 Jul, 2017
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July
20 books read. 11 by women (55%), 8 by men (40%), 1 by NB (5%)
Works by POC: 7 (35%)
Year to Date
146 works reviewed. 79 by women (54%). 63 by men (43%). 4 by non-binary authors (3%).
Works by POC: 46.5 (32%)
And now, the meaningless table.
Key: WNB stands for “women and non-binary genders”, while POC stands for “person of colour”. R/R stands for “reviews/reviewers”. For R/R the percentage represents the site’s R/R over my 2015 R/R. SFX is actually called SFX; it is not short for anything. Same with io9. F&SF is the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. SFS is Science Fiction Studies. LARB is the Los Angeles Review of Books. CSZ is the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
| Review source | Total | WNB | WNB % | POC | POC % | Reviewers | R/R | R/R % |
| JNR 2015 | 329 | 195 | 59 | 45 | 14 | 1 | 329 | 100 |
| Locus | 324 | 163 | 50 | 22 | 7 | 17 | 19 | 5.7 |
| JNR 2016 | 255 | 163.5 | 64 | 62.5 | 25 | 1 | 255 | 78 |
| SFX | 165 | 48 | 29 | 10 | 6 | 30 | 5.5 | 1.5 |
| Romantic Times | 146 | 84 | 57 | 14 | 10 | (incorrect) | n/a | N/a |
| JNR 2017 | 146 | 83 | 57 | 46.5 | 32 | 1 | 146 | 44.4 |
| Tor | 141 | 66 | 47 | 18 | 13 | 27 | 5.2 | 1.6 |
| Strange Horizons | 139 | 66 | 48 | 30 | 22 | 80 | 1.7 | 0.5 |
| Rising Shadows | 83 | 25 | 30 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 41.5 | 12.6 |
| Interzone | 67 | 21 | 31 | 7 | 10 | 19 | 3.5 | 1 |
| F&SF | 59 | 32 | 54 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 11.8 | 3.6 |
| Analog | 58 | 10 | 17 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 58 | 17.6 |
| Io9 | 56 | 17 | 30 | 12 | 21 | 10 | 5.6 | 1.7 |
| Asimov’s | 53 | 21 | 23 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 17.7 | 5.4 |
| Vector | 52 | 18 | 35 | 4 | 8 | 26 | 2 | 0.6 |
| SFS | 45 | 48 | 21 | 2 | 4 | 38 | 1.2 | 0.3 |
| NYRSF | 42 | 11 | 26 | 6 | 13 | 24 | 1.8 | 0.5 |
| Foundation | 38 | 9 | 24 | 1 | 3 | 27 | 1.4 | 0.4 |
| LARB | 35 | 11 | 31 | 7 | 20 | 28 | 1.3 | 0.4 |
| Lightspeed | 28 | 16? | 57 | 14 | 50 | 3 | 9.3 | 2.8 |
| CSZ | 23 | 19 | 80 | 8 | 35 | 17 | 1.4 | 0.4 |
I am making progress on the non-binary front but only in terms of books. In terms of authors, I am still narrow focus. I've read more books by POC than this time last year (46.5 versus 34) but fiddling about with numbers says at 4 or 5 books by POC I will only have reviewed 66 to 71 books by POC by the end of December. The low end is not significantly better than 2016. It's a good thing I am neither competitive nor obsessed with my statistics.
At 20 books a month, by year's end I will probably edge out everyone but Locus' army of reviewers, in terms of total reviews. Ah, well. And Locus will have reviewed slightly more WNB authors than I will by years end. At least I can console myself that I am about 27 times as productive thus far as the median reviewer is in a year.
20 Jul, 2017
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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Dystopian works, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance1. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you should conside2.
Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!
1: There are two filtering rules:
2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER3.
3: See footnote 2.
16 Jul, 2017
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Lyrical, witty, and heartbreaking, here is Peter S. Beagle’s much-anticipated return to the short form. In these uniquely beautiful tales, Beagle once again proves himself a master of the imagination.
Sparks are champions of weird science. Boasting capes and costumes and amazing super-powers that only make sense if you don’t think about them too hard, they fight an eternal battle for truth and justice … mostly.
Darklings are creatures of myth and magic: ghosts, vampires, were-beasts, and the like. Their very presence warps reality. Doors creak at their approach. Cobwebs gather where they linger.
Kim Lam is an ordinary college student until a freak scientific accident (what else?) transforms Kim and three housemates into Sparks―and drafts them into the never-ending war between the Light and Dark. They struggle to master their new abilities―and (of course) to design cool costumes and come up with great hero-names.
Turns out that “accident” was just the first salvo in a Mad Genius’s latest diabolical scheme. Now it’s up to four newbie heroes to save the day, before they even have a chance to figure out what their team’s name should be!