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sebmojo posted:at least nona owns Yeah and Kowal has not failed me yet so I presume her book is good too. The rest, er.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:07
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StrixNebulosa posted:Where on earth is book tumblr? I use tumblr regularly and they almost never talk books. Oh geez, half my dash is book-related. Follow "booklr" first and go from there. (A lot of the booklr tag is ~aesthetics~, but it can at least point you to some interesting blogs)
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Jul 6, 2023 21:12
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sebmojo posted:at least nona owns Nona was just so, so, frustrating to me. All I wanted was Gideon back. And more Harrow.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:17
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Screaming_Gremlin posted:But looking at what I have read, besides Nona, I did like How High We Go in the Dark and Sea of Tranquility. How High We Go... Made me cry, showed me I have a new trigger, and was one of the most beautiful things I've read in a long, long time. Pretty disappointing that it didn't seem to make much of a splash with Hugo Nominators. Same with Spear Cuts Through Water. I know it's all a popularity contest, and what's popular is mostly what's easy to read and easier to market, but it's still a bit of a shame.
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Jul 6, 2023 21:56
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I'm realizing I read very little that came out in 2022 but a friend of mine that reads everything says he thinks the biggest crimes of omission in the nominees are Spear Cuts Through Water and All the Horses of Iceland. I have Spear Cuts etc and have heard I should try to go into it blind, but anybody read All the Horses of Iceland and have opinions on it?
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Jul 6, 2023 21:58
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Beachcomber posted:Nona was just so, so, frustrating to me. All I wanted was Gideon back. And more Harrow. The series is ascending in frustration. Gideon was a bit confusing, Harrow more confusing, Nona very confusing. I love the universe and the characters and I'm along for the ride, but man.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:01
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No Dignity posted:Where's all the middle aged ladies writing eight novel cycles about very sad and tragic men being sad these days? All of this sub-Ready Player One nerdswill makes my eyes bleed MockingQuantum posted:Robin Hobb is still writing but idk if she's put anything out in the last couple of years, or if she has I don't think they've gotten a ton of attention, she's the only writer I can think of off the top of my head that fits that description, lol No Dignity posted:Janny Wurts and Kate Elliot were the other two I had in mind, but also just big earnest fantasy cycles in general that aren't extremely internet brained or boring pseudo-shonen action novels like Sanderson's work seem to be very short supply these days : / Wurts is seeing a bit of resurgence on Book Twitter since she's active there AND she's handed in the manuscript for Song of the Mysteries AND enough of her die hard fans with a platform have taken to drumming up hype for the last book by running readalongs and posting lots of reviews and analyses. J.V. Jones is still writing too and the final book formerly known as Endlords (now A Sword Called Loss) is coming. MockingQuantum posted:I'm realizing I read very little that came out in 2022 but a friend of mine that reads everything says he thinks the biggest crimes of omission in the nominees are Spear Cuts Through Water and All the Horses of Iceland. The Spear Cuts Through Water is on my TBR and I am kinda shocked it wasn't included given all the critical raves.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:02
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm realizing I read very little that came out in 2022 but a friend of mine that reads everything says he thinks the biggest crimes of omission in the nominees are Spear Cuts Through Water and All the Horses of Iceland. I have Spear Cuts etc and have heard I should try to go into it blind, but anybody read All the Horses of Iceland and have opinions on it? All The Horses of Iceland was phenomenal, yeah. Reminded me a bit of Sofia Samatar, in a very good way.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:06
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Awkward Davies posted:The series is ascending in frustration. Gideon was a bit confusing, Harrow more confusing, Nona very confusing. I love the universe and the characters and I'm along for the ride, but man. Every new book + a reread makes previous books better though, so there is that.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:20
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RIGHT we also missed this big release: Melissa Scott's The Master of Samar, a standalone fantasy novel that's 300+ pages. Unfortunately Candlemark and Gleam is a tiny tiny publisher so it gets 0 press, which is a bummer as it's published one of my favorite novels (Erekos)
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Jul 6, 2023 22:31
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Awkward Davies posted:I know we just did a Scalzi thing, but how the gently caress oof even /r/fantasy is sour, and most of the nominees have posted there https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/14s8ywh/2023_hugo_finalists/
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Jul 6, 2023 22:31
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I stopped using Hugo award winners as a mark of quality when they gave it to Yiddish Policeman's Union. YPU is a phenomenal book but it is only barely sci-fi, it was a clear stunt award to gin up coverage, and now I just figure fingers are being put on scales for marketing reasons. Best novel anyway. I wonder what the criteria for this category is, lots of these series started years ago.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:34
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tima posted:Every new book + a reread makes previous books better though, so there is that. I hosed up when Nona came out and just read it and was confused. Next time I’ll do a reread first.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:37
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Leviathan Wakes (Expanse #1) by James SA Corey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y171G/ The Nonexistent Knight (Our Ancestors #3) by Italo Calvino - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ALJH6ZC/ The Stories of Ray Bradbury - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KH4TR4Q/ A Man of His Word: The Complete Series by Dave Duncan - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0732J6PN5/ Legends & Lattes (#1) by Travis Baldree - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3755RV9/ I wasn't even going to post this until I saw the Hugo list. Seemed like standard kindle unlimited fare. I guess you can see for yourself.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:49
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pradmer posted:Legends & Lattes (#1) by Travis Baldree - $2.99
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Jul 6, 2023 22:54
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zoux posted:
quote:The award is available for series of science fiction or fantasy stories consisting of at least 3 published works totaling at least 240,000 words, with at least one work released or translated into English during the previous calendar year. A losing finalist becomes eligible again with the publication of at least two new works totaling at least 240,000 words.
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Jul 6, 2023 22:57
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It's an interesting (by which I mean confusing) choice to specifically make it an award for book series that could potentially be ongoing, though I guess it could also be a book series that just ended in the last year... I feel like that's setting it up for the inevitable situation where some "Best Series" winner puts out a terrible or phoned-in entry after winning the award, which feels like it undercuts the value of the category. Hell we were just talking about all the book series where you can reliably expect each subsequent book to be worse than the previous ones.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:04
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Screaming_Gremlin posted:I was about to say there were several good books that I wished would have been represented, but then realized they were all 2021 releases. Oh god, I am getting too old and time has lot all meaning. Yeah, it's not like there wasn't anything good, I just felt like I went much longer between books that I really really enjoyed than usual.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:10
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Beachcomber posted:Nona was just so, so, frustrating to me. All I wanted was Gideon back. And more Harrow. Haha right? It strongly rewards a re read fwiw. Muir is rather gene wolfe in how she doesn't feel the need to explain herself but there's a lot of detail that comes out when you understand the context. Also read as yet unsent if you haven't, it's vital context.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:35
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No Dignity posted:Where's all the middle aged ladies writing eight novel cycles about very sad and tragic men being sad these days? All of this sub-Ready Player One nerdswill makes my eyes bleed JV Jones but she's glacial in her writing speed
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Jul 6, 2023 23:48
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MockingQuantum posted:and yeah lol that Hugo list is something... it feels like book twitter and book tiktok have pretty much won the war in establishing a certain kind of trendy SFF novel that's easy going down and kind of all flash and no substance as the preferred type of spec fic novel these days. That's maybe uncharitable of me to say given that I haven't read more than a quarter to a half of any of those books but Kaiju was trash, and I know people ITT like Kingfisher's "horror" novels but dear god are they twee and boring IMO. At least I know a non-zero number of people who genuinely love Legends & Lattes. i look at the i09 list every few months and i come up with 2-3 that interest me out of 50-70 books they highlight. on one hand i'm glad people are reading and there's something for everyone, on the otherhand the grumpy old man in me doesn't thing stories about influencers who are magic is really sci-fi https://gizmodo.com/63-new-sci-fi-fantasy-horror-books-releasing-in-july-1850502141 branedotorg fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 23:58
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These awards need more snobs voting for entries. I’m sure all those books are fun reads but gotta have some standards here.
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Jul 7, 2023 00:03
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StrixNebulosa posted:RIGHT we also missed this big release: Thank you so much for reminding me about this! I love Scott's Astreiant books and was excited to see she had a new release coming out. She's one of those writers who should be way more popular (this is where I learn everyone in this thread has read her books).
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Jul 7, 2023 00:39
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Ccs posted:These awards need more snobs voting for entries. I’m sure all those books are fun reads but gotta have some standards here. For the low low price of $50, one can buy a supporting membership and be that snob!
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Jul 7, 2023 00:47
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I personally don’t care about awards but I am disappointed that the Chinese fans didn’t do some ballot stuffing and get some books in the finals.
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Jul 7, 2023 00:56
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FPyat posted:I'm reading For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by Robert Sobel because someone told me that it used to be his favorite work of alternate history. The start is interesting - the first 28 pages covering the years 1763-77 describe events that are identical to our history, but from a perspective in hindsight where the rebellion was doomed. So Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry are described as dangerous fanatics overwhelming the more reasonable political elites and spreading mob terror; Washington is a man "of little talent and less imagination, though of great pride"; the description of the Boston Massacre firmly takes the pro-soldier position. Most telling is the sentence where it is the loyalists who are referred as "patriots." It's a great case of alternate history's main strength in my view, its ability to make you radically rethink the conventional view of factual history by making you think about the contingency and changeability of things. Makes me excited to see what he does when he starts making things up. I actually read For Want of a Nail about a year ago, and I wish there were more books like it. Alternate history often has the issue a lot of speculative fiction has where authors come up with fantastic ideas for settings but are either unable or uninterested in manhandling their creation into the shape required by the conventional novel. There are ways around this, of course; if you're working in speculative evolution like Dougal Dixon you can team up with some illustrators and release an art book of your creations, or you can try the tested-and-true method of stapling some vestigial game mechanics to your worldbuilding bible and release it as a TTRPG. A fictional textbook from an undergrad-level survey course is a fantastic medium for depicting alternate histories, but I imagine that isn't a model that fits into the marketing categories of mainstream publishers. As for For Want of a Nail itself, while I won't spoil anything for now, I will make two suggestions. If your history isn't up to snuff, I'd recommend grabbing a general history for the US and for Mexico just so you can compare events and see what themes Sobel was riffing on. My other suggestion is to remember that Sobel-the-fictional-author-writing-the-book has biases, which may explain how certain events later on are described.
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Jul 7, 2023 01:20
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Thanks to Sea Lion Press, textbook-form alternate history does have a reader and eager publisher, albeit one with no advertising budget. Have you read many of the webfiction works on alternatehistory.com?
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Jul 7, 2023 01:45
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Megazver posted:Hugo 2023 Best Novel finalists: Daughter of Doc is pretty mid. Mexican Gothic was definitely better. Really enjoyed Legends & Lattes also Nettle & Bone. For Novellae, very excited to see Into the Riverlands and Even Though I Knew the End. A Mirror Mended I found to be pretty blah.
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Jul 7, 2023 02:15
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pradmer posted:A Man of His Word: The Complete Series by Dave Duncan - $3.99 The me of 30 years ago loved this but history has shown him to have been unreliable.
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Jul 7, 2023 02:20
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In the novella category, Ogres is great. hosed up the way Tchaikovsky usually is.
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Jul 7, 2023 02:22
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coathat posted:I personally don’t care about awards but I am disappointed that the Chinese fans didn’t do some ballot stuffing and get some books in the finals. Yeah, it's weird no Chinese stuff popped up. Maybe people weren't informed an entry ticket confers voting rights.
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Jul 7, 2023 02:50
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fez_machine posted:Yeah, it's weird no Chinese stuff popped up. Maybe people weren't informed an entry ticket confers voting rights. https://en.chengduworldcon.com/help/1 It seems kind of convoluted and I'm not sure if they usually do it like this, but they separated the voting rights from the in-person entry ticket. So you have to buy two different things and pay a total of $100+ if you want to be there physically AND vote. DurianGray fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 03:18
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What did they disenfranchise China because people were grumbling about them having a con in China?
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Jul 7, 2023 03:25
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Is there actually a culture of non-obligatory polling and voting in mainland China, where it's something people will go out of their way to do?
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Jul 7, 2023 03:36
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Tars Tarkas posted:What did they disenfranchise China because people were grumbling about them having a con in China? Each Worldcon is technically run by a volunteer group local to wherever it is that year (they're also the ones who submit the hosting bids) and they decide how to run it themselves from what I've read about it. (Conveniently this removes most responsibility from the main Worldcon body [if there even is one, it looks like it's just a loose association?] since they don't actually run the events.) DurianGray fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 03:37
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Best Short Story “D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tor.com, August 2022) “On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo (Science Fiction World, January 2022) “Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022) “Resurrection”, by Ren Qing (Future Fiction/Science Fiction World, December 2022) “The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban (Science Fiction World, May 2022) “Zhurong on Mars”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Frontiers, September 2022) Looks like the local Chinese nominees are mostly in Short Stories (Science Fiction World is headquartered in Chengdu). Also: Best Novella Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk (Tordotcom) Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom) A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom) Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris) What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire) Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom) I've only read Into the Riverlands, Where the Drowned Girls Go, and What Moves the Dead (I've been mulling an original story over because the way this ended bothered me lol), and they were all just OK I thought. Riverlands was definitely not my favorite Singing Hills Cycle entry so far.
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Jul 7, 2023 03:51
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So the leaked list is ... weird. Close enough that it seems to be semi-legit but also with some wild left-field entries, like what appears to be a random fanfic, and some Dutch writer with basically zero internet history, but like ... enough is right (and unexpectedly right) that I honestly have no idea what happened. It's in Mandarin, but link. What it had right: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau Upstart Resurrection Yao Haijun and Yan Huan Wang Xu Zhao Enzhe Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes and Art of Ghost of Tsushima Cyberpunk 2077 and Dune GN Chinese SF Academic Express Liu Maijia and Xin Weimu but the rest of the list is kind of loving baffling? My Mandarin is awful, someone else can probably break down what's being said there, but it looks to me like half real shortlist and half Some Random Dudes inserting themselves into it so they can lie on their CV or something EDIT: not a fanfic, a web novel. Still, not in the final list. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 04:41
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Looks weak, again. I wonder what happened to Babel. Scalzi's an impressively long-lived Hugo contender - his first nom was in 2006.DurianGray posted:Looks like the local Chinese nominees are mostly in Short Stories (Science Fiction World is headquartered in Chengdu). Yeah, compared to other non-Anglophone Worldcons, there's an impressive number of local nominees. Nippon (the 2007 Worldcon held in Japan) had 0 Japanese nominees, Worldcon 75 in Finland had one (in Fan Artist), and I don't think I see any from 1990 or 1970. This year there's 19, I think - they're mostly in less prestigious categories, though. coathat posted:I personally don’t care about awards but I am disappointed that the Chinese fans didn’t do some ballot stuffing and get some books in the finals. Personally, I've had enough of China fixing elections  ... although it looks like the slate they did run benefitted Daughter of Dr Moreau.DurianGray posted:https://en.chengduworldcon.com/help/1 It is unusual - usually you're either a full member (attending and can vote) or supporting member (can vote but not attend, about US$40). It looks like they're making it easier for passers-by to drop in casually, which is a good idea, although at the price of making things a bit more complex. The disorganisation behind the scenes hasn't helped. zoux posted:I stopped using Hugo award winners as a mark of quality when they gave it to Yiddish Policeman's Union. YPU is a phenomenal book but it is only barely sci-fi Surely you mean you stopped using Hugo award winners as a mark of sci-finess?
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Jul 7, 2023 04:55
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DurianGray posted:https://en.chengduworldcon.com/help/1 It's been standard to separate day admission from memberships for a while. But still the assumption was with membership you'll be attending every day. They've made membership a purely voting thing this year, no attendance rights it looks like and attendance package with no voting rights. Bad bad bad bad fez_machine fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 04:57
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branedotorg posted:i look at the i09 list every few months and i come up with 2-3 that interest me out of 50-70 books they highlight. I get irrationally angry at their list every month and I don't know why I keep going into it every time expecting different.
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