Dreams in Print

Posted by Cyn


Well, that’s a change. The orig­i­nal ver­biage here said, “One of my very favorite pas­times is get­ting totally lost in an actual printed-​​on-​​dead-​​trees book. EBooks are unlikely to ever catch on well with me, because they can’t replace the porta­bil­ity and con­ve­nience of the real thing — and they have no chance of over­com­ing a life­time of pos­i­tive mem­o­ries of all the incred­i­ble books I’ve read.”

At some point in the last ten years, that obvi­ously changed a lot. E-​​readers and ebooks got a lot bet­ter, and now tra­di­tional books can’t beat them for porta­bil­ity and con­ve­nience. I reg­u­larly carry around hun­dreds of books on my Nook, and could carry thou­sands if I cared to do so. I don’t even know what I meant by the last part of the above, because I’m still mak­ing pos­i­tive mem­o­ries of incred­i­ble books. I still read the occa­sional old-​​fashioned book, if the con­tent isn’t avail­able dig­i­tally, but that’s more and more rare.

While I’ve spo­ken else­where on the site about other kinds of books, I decided to move the SF&F books to their own page here (since they were tak­ing over the page any­way).

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s work is some of the most orig­i­nal I have ever had the plea­sure to read. I sim­ply can’t get enough of ir, despite the fact that his Shad­ows of the Apt is very dark, and that would nor­mally be a huge vote against it for me. If you have not yet read Empire in Black and Gold, I urge you to do so right away. Just be aware that you’ll want to have Drag­on­fly Falling, Blood of the Man­tis, Salute the Dark and The Scarab Path on hand to read right away, too.

The Golden Globe by John Var­ley is set in the same uni­verse as Steel Beach. I’m strug­gling with it some, because there’s a lot of mate­r­ial about the main character’s rela­tion­ship with his abu­sive father, and it’s get­ting to me. It’s been a few years since I read Steel Beach, and while I remem­bered that it as well-​​written and thought-​​provoking, I’d for­got­ten that it was also fairly depressing.

Cover of Such a Pretty Face
Doug Beekman’s cover art for Such a Pretty Face caught my atten­tion imme­di­ately while I was brows­ing the shelves of the Sci­ence Fic­tion & Mys­tery Book­shop in Atlanta — it’s beau­ti­ful! Then I saw that the book was edited by Lee Mar­tin­dale, some­one I remem­bered encoun­ter­ing (and respect­ing) in the size accep­tance news­groups. At that point I prob­a­bly would have bought it no mat­ter what, but the theme of the anthol­ogy cinched it — every story fea­tures a per­son of size. I fin­ished it within 48 hours of get­ting it, and it was won­der­ful. As usual with any anthol­ogy, I enjoyed some pieces more than oth­ers. I think Demon Bone by Teresa Noelle Roberts had to be my favorite story. The poem Fat Is Not A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen and Eliz­a­beth Ann Scarborough’s tale Worse Than The Curse were awfully good, though. Paula L. Fleming’s Poly­for­mus Per­fec­tus left me wish­ing it were the begin­ning of a novel rather than a short story.

Cover of The Unlikely Ones
I have to admit that I picked up The Unlikely Ones by Mary Brown because of the cover art. While it was bet­ter than read­ing cereal boxes, I couldn’t help won­der­ing if the author had sim­ply writ­ten up a long-​​running (very, very long-​​running) D&D cam­paign.

I ran across Luna Marine while brows­ing the paper­back racks at the library one day. The Marine Corps emblem caught my eye, and I hon­estly fig­ured the book had been mis­shelved at first and belonged wher­ever Tom Clancy’s books are kept. It was sci­ence fic­tion, though, and since it was book two of Ian Dou­glas’1 Her­itage Tril­ogy I found myself seek­ing book one, Sem­per Mars. Both were good enough that I read on through to Europa Strike and am look­ing for­ward to read­ing more in the series.

Cover of The Veiled Web
Some­times, though, pick­ing a book because of its cover or title with­out know­ing any­thing about the author works well — I cer­tainly haven’t regret­ted pick­ing up The Veiled Web by Cather­ine Asaro. Since read­ing it I’ve gone on to her Sko­lian Empire series and enjoyed those, although I think Veiled Web is actu­ally bet­ter writ­ing than any of the books in the series. I read The Phoenix Code, which is in the same uni­verse as The Veiled Web, and while I enjoyed it too, I didn’t relate to it quite as much.

Cover of Partners in Necessity
Back in the late 80s, I read Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden nov­els—Con­flict of Hon­ors, Agent of Change, and Carpe Diem. I loved them. Unfor­tu­nately, they went out of print and I couldn’t find them for a long time, and the tril­ogy ended with some major plot lines totally unre­solved, which was some­what unsat­is­fy­ing — espe­cialy con­sid­er­ing how very engag­ing I found the char­ac­ters. Hap­pily, they were repub­lished recently in an omnibus edi­tion, Part­ners in Neces­sity, by Meisha Mer­lin Pub­lish­ing. Even bet­ter, Plan B, the next install­ment in the series, was released shortly after­wards. The next vol­ume, Pilot’s Choice, is out now! My sweetie gave it to me as a Valen­tine present, and so far it’s every bit as good as the oth­ers. The mar­velous chap­books have since been made more acces­si­ble to all, as they’ve been released as ebooks (avail­able through Ama­zon) and there are new nov­els avail­able in the series, too.

If you have any inter­est at all in our future in space or in lib­er­tar­ian phi­los­o­phy and have not yet read Vic­tor Koman’s Kings of the High Fron­tier, just stop read­ing now and go get a copy from Ama­zon or some­where. I was impressed by Solomon’s Knife and enjoyed The Jeho­vah Con­tract, Kings is in a class by itself.

To Say Noth­ing of the Dog and Bell­wether by Con­nie Willis were both very dif­fi­cult to put down, and both were funny and very well-​​written. I hon­estly found Lincoln’s Dreams very slow going and almost didn’t fin­ish the book, prob­a­bly because it’s much darker. Black­out and All Clear, how­ever, are incred­i­ble nov­els set in the same uni­verse as To Say Noth­ing of the Dog (the Oxford Time Travel series).

Inter­est­ing Times by Terry Pratch­ett kept me in stitches. How does the man con­tinue to stay funny and fairly fresh with the Dis­c­world series?

Heavy Weather by Bruce Ster­ling is one of the best sci­ence fic­tion books I have ever read – ever. Read it.

Cover of Sing the Four Quarters
Cover of Summon the Keeper
When I first ran across Tanya Huff’s Vic­tory Nel­son books, I’d just fin­ished read­ing Mer­cedes Lackey’s Diana Tre­garde nov­els — and to be hon­est, they were too sim­i­lar for me to really enjoy the Huff books. After being pleas­antly sur­prised by Sing the Four Quar­ters sev­eral years later, I tried the vam­pire books again and did enjoy them. I think, but am not entirely sure, that Sum­mon the Keeper is set in the same uni­verse. In any case, I enjoyed it even more. When Huff moved on to sci­ence fic­tion in Valor’s Choice this past year, she did pretty well with that as well. I don’t know if she’s get­ting bet­ter or my tastes have improved (prob­a­bly both), but I’m cer­tainly look­ing for­ward to read­ing more of her work.

Ammonite by Nicola Grif­fith is the best first novel I’ve ever read, bar none. I can’t really say that I was as impressed with Slow River, but it wasn’t a bad book. She’s writ­ten a mys­tery series as well that’s very good.

Cover of The Chick is in the Mail
Who could resist a title like Chicks in Chain­mail? Not me. Edited by Esther Fries­ner, it’s an anthol­ogy of short sto­ries inspired (as far as I can tell) by all those paint­ings Vallejo and sim­i­lar artists do of busty women wear­ing armored biki­nis. Some­thing must have struck a nerve, because there are four books in the series now and they’re all hilar­i­ous. Num­ber two is Did You Say Chicks?! : Smile When You Say That. The third had my favorite of the titles—Chicks ‘N Chained Males. Mar­garet Ball expanded her Riva Kon­neva sto­ries from the antholo­gies into a novel, Math­emag­ics, and while it was a pleas­ant enough read the idea works best in the short sto­ries. I was happy to see Riva back in
The Chick Is in the Mail.

Trou­ble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott is a great cyber­punk read with more char­ac­ter devel­op­ment that I’ve seen in most of the genre.

Robert A. Hein­lein is my all-​​time favorite author/​philosopher, bar none. I just reread Stranger in a Strange Land for the umpteenth time, and I find that I see new things in it every time I read it. My copy of The Note­books of Lazarus Long is much thumbed — I need to replace it with a hard­back. Quotable Hein­lein is one way to get a quick taste of Heinlein’s thoughts.

David Brin is, in most cases, a reli­ably fan­tas­tic author. I think I’m one of the few peo­ple who read Glory Sea­son, and even I have to admit it wasn’t really up to snuff for him. I loved all the books set in the Uplift uni­verse, though, and wish he’d write more in it!

Cover of Someplace to Be Flying
Charles de Lint has to be the best urban fan­tasy writer I’ve ever encoun­tered. I espe­cially enjoyed Some­place to Be Fly­ing.

I’ve really liked C.J. Cherryh’s sci­ence fic­tion — espe­cially the For­eigner, Invader and Inher­i­tor tril­ogy2 and the Cha­nur series. Every time I’ve picked up one of her fan­tasy books, though, I just haven’t been able to get into them for some reason.

I’d love to see Larry Niven return to the world of Fallen Angels or the Dream Park series.

Allen Steele is shock­ingly unrep­re­sented on the web. What on earth has hap­pened? He’s one of the best hard SF writ­ers out there today – if Hein­lein has a suc­ces­sor, Steele is it.

Happy happy news! In a post to rec.music.filk, I men­tioned how much I want to see more Mid­dle King­dom stuff from Diane Duane, and she actu­ally replied! I had no idea that she hung out there! They’re due to be reprinted by Meisha Mer­lin Pub­lish­ing, with The Door Into Fire and The Door Into Shadow released as one vol­ume in May 2001, and The Door Into Sun­set and Door Into Starlight com­ing as a sec­ond vol­ume some­time after that. Our entire fam­ily has also enjoyed her Wiz­ardry series, and Sam and I have also read the two adult books set in the same uni­verse, The Book of Night With Moon and To Visit the Queen sev­eral times. She men­tioned that The Wiz­ards Dilemma will also be out in June 2001!

I first stum­bled on Eliz­a­beth Moon’s Deed of Pak­se­nar­rion series, so when she coau­thored Sassi­nak with Anne McCaf­frey I scooped it right up. The Planet Pirates series was uneven (the bits by Jody Lynn Nye were not up to par) but worth read­ing. I the Ser­rano Legacy series, too. There are seven books in that series now. I’ve read and enjoyed the first six, and plan to read the sev­enth shortly:

The first few vol­umes of the series really reminded me of David Weber’s Honor Har­ring­ton books, prob­a­bly because both fea­ture hero­ines who must over­come politically-​​engineered dis­honor in their pasts. As the Ser­rano series has con­tin­ued, though, it has devel­oped into far more than mil­i­tary SF.

Speak­ing of David Weber — I don’t have the mil­i­tary back­ground to say that he is one of the best authors writ­ing mil­li­tary SF right now, but I can cer­tainly say that he cre­ates some excel­lent space opera, and I’ve enjoyed all of his books so far. John Ringo is right up there, too.

Any time I’m in a used book­store, I look for paper­back copies of Snow Crash by Neal Stephen­son. If they’re in read­able con­di­tion, I buy them. I started doing that because I tend to rec­om­mend this book to every geek I meet, and every time I loaned out copies of the book, they didn’t come home, because the peo­ple to whom I loaned them loaned them to their friends. It’s sim­ply to just give out copies. I re-​​read this one every year or so, and every time I find some­thing I’d missed before. I’m started to get to the same place with Zodiac : The Eco-​​Thriller, a much ear­lier work. Crypto­nom­i­con, is good but just doesn’t sing to me the way Snow Crash does. I finally got to read his first novel, The Big U, which was fun although not SF. His most recent book, Reamde: A Novel, feels very much like Crypto­nom­i­con (a near future-​​thriller) with­out the his­tor­i­cal flash­backs. It’s a lit­tle slow in parts, but I fin­ished the last few hun­dred pages in one sit­ting because I couldn’t put the book down.

At first Gibbon’s Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tep­per had much the same chill­ing effect on me as Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale did a few years ago (I con­sider that one to be the 1984 for my gen­er­a­tion). It got more pos­i­tive as I con­tin­ued read­ing, though, and it’s one of the most pow­er­ful books I’ve read in years. Her Beauty is a very inter­est­ing retelling of sev­eral clas­sic fairy tales. As dark as Tep­per can be, she’s so good that I keep return­ing to her books almost in spite of myself. I didn’t enjoy Grass nearly as much, but it is extremely well writ­ten. I’ve intended to read The Gate Into Women’s Coun­try for sev­eral years – but there’s no way I can read more than one Tep­per novel in a row!

Eliz­a­beth Ann Scar­bor­ough is great for light fan­tasy, like The God­mother, The Godmother’s Appren­tice and The Godmother’s Web. They make nice, mostly pos­i­tive coun­ter­weights to Tepper’s ver­sion of some of the same fairy tales. I also read Noth­ing Sacred recently — def­i­nitely not light in any sense, but a good read. I haven’t read The Healer’s War (her treat­ment of Viet­nam) yet — it seems to be out of print.

Spi­der Robin­son is another very enjoy­able author with def­i­nite lib­er­tar­ian lean­ings. I’m happy to see that the Calla­han series is being re-​​released, as it was either out of print or hard to find for a few years.

1 aka W. H. Keith

2 While the refer­ring to the tril­ogy is cor­rect, the series itself has gone on to 14 books, and the ones I’ve read are all wonderful!

Permalink | June 27th, 2012

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