Tag: fantasy

NPR and the Top 100 SF/F

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books

If I didn’t already love NPR, I would now. But I’ve sat in the car too many times laughing myself silly at the Car Talk brothers not to love NPR.

However, they just gave me a whole new reason to love them. NPR is putting together a list of the 100 best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) titles “ever written”. The list will be based on recommendations submitted here.

There are, naturally, a whole bunch of caveats built into this kind of thing. NPR wants this list to be strictly science fiction and fantasy for grown-ups (admittedly that term alone can be pretty loosely defined). YA SF/F will be covered some other summer. Besides, as NPR put it best, won’t it be nice to have someone besides Harry Potter win for a change?

Also, they are limiting to purely SF/F, so no paranormal or horror. Stephen King is out, and so is Sookie Stackhouse. So is Twilight. On the other, and much more interesting hand, it is perfectly okay to nominate an entire series as a single entity. So the Lord of the Rings counts as one nomination. Five noms to a posting, probably just to keep the lists manageable.

But my brain keeps hashing over what to nominate. There are two lists running in my head. One list is of the books/series that I have read and loved. Those are ones I would recommend in a heartbeat to someone who was remotely interested in science fiction or fantasy. Or someone I could get to sit still for ten seconds and listen.

1. The Lord of the Rings. This is still a comfort read. Or a comfort listen. I have multiple copies in print, and both the unabridged recording and the radio play. Tolkien could write beautiful words, and there are parts of this thing that still ring in my head, and still wring my heart. The tvtropes wiki says there are 7 basic plots; 1)Overcoming the Monster, 2)Rags to Riches, 3)The Quest, 4)Voyage and Return, 5)Comedy, 6)Tragedy and 7)Rebirth. The Lord of the Rings has everything but a comedy plot. There’s comedy in there, but it isn’t a major plot thread.

There are still things in LOTR I would like to have a serious talk with Prof. Tolkien about, if he were still around. The lack of female characters in the Fellowship. The shortage of strong female characters, period. And that’s just for starters. But the quibbles stand out because the whole is so very, very good.

2. American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The premise caught me, and didn’t let go. Every deity that had every been worshiped on American soil was alive, if not well, somewhere in the U.S. Some are still active, and some are trying to blend in, but they are all still here. Then Shadow meets Mr. Wednesday on a plane, and everything starts to fall apart, or come together. American Gods is part of the great American road novel tradition, except it’s written by a British ex-pat who seems to have swallowed a mythopedic dictionary whole. The point where the Egyptian gods were running a funeral parlor in Cairo, Illinois, I think I had tears in my eyes, laughing. But there’s more pathos than humor, and every god and monster has his, or her, day. The ending took me by complete surprise. And I loved every second of it.

3. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett’s Discworld can be seen as a parody of any number of fantasy worlds. Or all of them. When he’s funny, he’s screamingly funny. But it’s the kind of humor that makes you think, and more and more, makes you want to weep. Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of the city of Ankh-Morpork, makes Machiavelli look like an amateur. Death is personified as the bony gentleman with the scythe–on the other hand, his adopted granddaughter is considerably scarier than he is. After all, Death named his horse ‘Binky’. Start with either Mort or Guards, Guards. Just start.

4. Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay. I would include this because reading it once hurt so much I’ve never been able to read it again. Tigana is a country that is lost, gone. It was not just conquered, it was also cursed. The wizard who conquered it laid down a curse that no one who was not born there before the fall could say the name, or hear it spoken. Tigana, beautiful, artistic, advanced, lovely as it was, was doomed to be forgotten in a generation. There was only one chance to save it. A desperate group of survivors banded together to infiltrate the court of the wizard king and assassinate him before the last of those born in their beloved country before its fall became too old to recreate what they had lost. What they did not count on was how long it would take, or how much the part you are playing becomes you, if you play it for too long.

5. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. You know up front that this is not a coming-of-age story. More like wish-fulfillment, at least up to a point, as all the major characters start out as senior citizens who suddenly get brand new young bodies. Then they have to go fight aliens with those upgraded bods. This reads like one of Robert Heinlein’s space stories at its best, updated 50 years and without Heinlein’s attitudes about women. Or maybe that’s the updating. This is a great space opera. And because the point-of-view character is older, his perspective gets to use that life experience to wonder what the hell is going on. It’s a very important part of the story. He questions, and he wants answers. As he gets them, so does the reader.

These books are ones I have read, finished and would recommend unconditionally. In another post, I’ll list the ones I want to read this summer, and why.

Where ebooks? There ebooks!

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks

Last night, we had our first guest come to the house since we put up our books. It reminded me of an essay I read in Wired a couple of weeks ago that has generated a lot of comments on the Digital Book World group on LinkedIn.

The essay, “5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet,\” by John C. Abell, came to mind because of his 5th reason: you can’t use ebooks as an interior design element. He’s right. One of the first things that people used to say whenever they visited us was something about how many books we had. They were everywhere. Every room in every house had bookshelves, overstuffed bookshelves, including the master bedroom. Every flat surface overflowed. We had boxes of books we never unpacked. And since new books we wanted to read continued to be published, we bought more. But in this move, we shed 1,700 books, and we’re down to 2,300, thanks to our iPads. So the impression of tons of books simply isn’t there. There are four bookcases in the front room, and all the others are in our offices upstairs. The physical collection is shrinking.

What did we lose? We lose that impression of being excruciatingly well-read. Possibly, we lose the impression of being insane. YMMV. In the decision of where to start the alphabet, we were conscious that the end of the alphabet and the miscellany that followed would be on immediate display to anyone who entered the house. Visitors see the Tolkien collection, and all our media books, so Star Trek, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, etc will be right by the door. Anyone who doesn’t know we both like Science Fiction and Fantasy will soon figure it out.

On the other hand, everything from 2010 onwards is missing. It’s on one of our iPads. Did we stop reading? Will anyone care? Or is it the mass of books that impresses? Who knows?  All that can be inferred from the iPads is that we’re both geeks. That’s fairly obvious anyway. We also have every game console known to geek-kind currently hooked up to the TV. But books, books imply an air of erudition that the iPads, consoles and computers just don’t match, no matter what’s concealed within them.

His other reasons were also interesting to think about. His number one reason was something I’ve written about before, that eTBRs don’t command your attention. There’s no pile of books in your physical space getting in your way to jump out at you and say “READ ME!” the way there can be with print books. I borrowed one print book from the local library last week. I finished that one pronto. But that may have more to do with my not owning the thing  (I have over 200 print books I own and haven’t read yet in my house) than it being print.

But Abell’s second reason is the one that I can personally get behind. He comments that a big problem to be solved in the ebook business in general is that if you read ebooks a lot, you don’t have one set of shelves, you have a set of shelves for every app, and no easy way to blend them. He’s right. and it is a right royal pain in the patootie. The joy of using an iPad is that it is supplier-agnostic. I can get ebooks from pretty much anywhere, and I do. But that means I’ve got ebooks in every app imaginable; Nook, Kindle, Google, Overdrive, Bluefire, iBooks, Stanza, etc., with no easy way to combine the lists. In the bad, old print days, my first choice TBR pile was the far end of the kitchen counter. I piled everything there. I need an ebook everything TBR app. Except that it isn’t in the ebooksellers’ best interests to allow me to combine my lists, so that app doesn’t exist yet. I’ll confess that I’ve started using the Overdrive Media Console iPad app as my ereader for any EPUB that isn’t tied to a particular company. It’s a surprisingly good general purpose ereader, and it eliminates my need for a couple of those apps. If only it read PDFs…

Ebooks are here to stay. There are still some issues to be resolved, but there’s no longer a question of whether enough people will adopt ebooks to make them profitable for publishers.

On the other hand, books are here to stay, too. Very few technological revolutions completely wipe out the predecessor. We still have radio, it’s just changed. We still have LPs, they’re just a niche market. We may not ride horses for everyday transportation, but horses are still ridden. Books, both to be read and as treasured objects, will always have a place. I recently watched Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, again. Early in the movie, Spock gives Kirk a copy of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities as a birthday present. Ebooks make good reading, but there’s no way to attach ceremonial weight to them.  For that, you still need a book. 

 

The mythic side of London

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books

The London Underground may lead to more places than those found on the brightly colored map on display in every Tube station.  The evocative names of each stop may mean more than just a place for weary travelers to get on and off a mere train.  What if the Underground was the entrance to an entire world underneath the great city, a world existing beside the London currently polished and glittering for the Royal Wedding?

The City of London is too intriguing a character, and has too long an colorful a history, not to  have been used more than once in this marvelous fashion.  Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere is a magical view of London Below, a world that co-exists invisibly below and around London Above, our London.  The differences between our London and London Below can be stark, brutal and even horrific.   There is a terrible beauty in the world Below, but also terrible danger.  There be monsters, monsters that take your sanity, your soul, or just steal your heart.

One man, Richard Mayhew, is the reader’s entree into London Below.  It is significant that he finds the invisible world through an act of charity–he rescues an injured young woman that he believes is a street person.  By saving her, he disappears from his life as a corporate drone, into desperate danger, running for his life. Knightsbridge Station becomes a Knight’s Bridge guarded by an actual Knight that he must battle, and there is a deadly Beast under London that must be defeated.  In the end, he saves the girl, but at what cost?  He can have his old life back, but he may have discovered too much about himself to ever want it back.

The Nightside provides a different view of a London, and is also reached by Tube stops not generally known.  Simon R. Green’s series, beginning with Something from the Nightside.  The Nightside is a place where it is always 3 am, where dreams come true and nightmares come alive.  Every sin and every form of degradation is for sale.  Gods and monsters walk side by side, and incursions from other times and other dimensions are common.  The Nightside is “Not a Nice Place”, and Green’s protagonist, John Taylor, would never claim to be a “Nice Person”.  But Taylor does what is necessary to keep the Nightside from going completely to hell.  Because the Nightside is meant to be a place where neither Heaven nor Hell has dominion.  Although sometimes it’s a pretty near thing.

Neverwhere has a lyrical feel to it, in spite of the  horrors that Richard Mayhew goes through.  There is beauty there.  At the end, we understand why he makes the choice he does.  It’s the choice we want him to  make, even though  he could be content otherwise.

The Nightside is not beautiful.  It is intentionally dark and gritty.  John Taylor is one of the snarkiest anti-heroes you’ll ever read.  He’s funny, but it is gallows humor of the extreme variety.  John Taylor does what is needed, whether anyone agrees with him or not.  They just better get out of his way if they know what’s good for them.

Voting for the Hugos

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Hugo Awards

The Hugo nominations were officially posted on Sunday by Renovation, the 69th Annual World Science Fiction Convention.  Worldcon will be be held this coming August in Reno, Nevada, and the winners will be announced in a rather posh and occasionally hilarious ceremony on August 20.

I get to vote on the Hugos.  It’s easy.  All you have to do is buy an attending or supporting membership in that year’s Worldcon.  I usually just support, but this year, we’re planning to go.  And next year, since it will again be in one of our previous and much beloved homes, Chicago.

But back to the nominees.  They reflect the popularity and tastes of the folks who read, write, watch and publish science fiction and fantasy.  There are categories for everything.  Best novel, best short story, best film, best dramatic presentation (short form) which basically means a TV episode, best graphic novel, etc., etc., etc.  You get the idea.  But to be an informed voter, it’s important to read, or watch the thing nominated.  In other words, my TBR pile just got bigger, along with my to be viewed (TBV, I guess) list.

hundred thousand kingdoms coverI have only read one, yikes, one, of the nominated novels.  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin.  It was one of those absolutely fabulous first novels, where you can’t believe it’s someone’s first novel.  It is also a coming-of-age story, and about the power of belief.  It may share some common points with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods when it comes to whether or not a deity that anyone has once believed in can ever truly be extinguished.

I have Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear on my iPad, but haven’t gotten around to it/them yet.  It/them have now risen several dozen rungs on the TBR ladder.  Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold is one that I had been thinking about.  I read the earlier books in her Miles Vorkosigan space opera series.  I loved the first two books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar, but there, Cordelia was the main character rather than Miles.  Now that Miles has grown into himself, he may be more sympathetic for me.  I’ll have to see.

There are also a lot of categories for shorter works.  Novellas, novellettes and short stories in particular.  One of the great things about this process is that if you are eligible to vote, all the  shorter stuff is made available to you online.  Sort of like the Academy voters getting free DVDs of all the movies.

In addition to the books, there are five movies, and five TV episodes.  Three of the TV episodes are from Doctor Who.  I’ve seen all three, and I don’t mind the excuse to watch them again.  But the title I’m most interested in is nominated in the Related Works category.  It’s titled Chicks Dig Time Lords, A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It. I think only something like the Hugos would be so willing to nominate such a lighthearted look at the genre for a major award.  Besides, chicks really do dig Time Lords.  And I have the DVD collection to prove it.

Expecting a taller tale

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

What do you do when the story you’re reading isn’t anything like the one you expected?  As I kept going through Coronets and Steel, by Sherwood Smith, it was as if I was waiting for the author to drop the other shoe somewhere in a future chapter, but it never happened.  I’m not saying that the book wasn’t good, or that I didn’t enjoy it, just that I kept expecting it to be more magical, or more fantasy, and it was neither.

Coronets and Steel coverThe coronets in the story are due to the main character’s family history.  Kim discovers that she is, unbeknownst to her, a scion of one of the ruling families of a tiny European country named Dobrenica.  A country which she doesn’t even know about until she is kidnapped in the middle of a low-budget European trip to discover the murky truth about her grandmother’s past during World War II.  If this sounds like the plot for a formula romance, well, that setup has been used, and more than once, at that.

But, and this is a pretty big but, if you throw in either a little magic or a little high-tech mumbo-jumbo, it can also be the plot of either a fantasy or a science fiction novel.  I was expecting a variation of the Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series, which I liked a lot.  It also had some of the elements of S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador, which is more science fiction, if you consider alternate history to be science fiction.

Family Trade coverIn the first book of the Merchant Princes, which is titled The Family Trade, a reporter finds out that, unbeknownst to herself, she is a member of one of the ruling families of a kingdom on a parallel world to our own.  There is a love story involved here as well, adding to the common elements between the two books.  But the plot element where the heroine finds out that she is a member of someplace-she-doesn’t-know-about’s royal family while being in the midst of a personal crisis is one heck of a coincidental way to get both stories started.

Conquistador coverConquistador isn’t actually similar, but in memory it seemed similar, mostly for me through the link with Merchant Princes.  Once the story in Coronets went to the unknown tiny country, I was expecting a parallel universe or alternate history universe to slide in there too, the way it eventually does in Conquistador.  The other things that made me think these stories were all going to line up somehow, was that family ties and heritage were central to all three stories, and that the lead characters were all strong women.

So, when I saw the preview for Coronets, considering that Smith is known as a fantasy writer, I was expecting the fantasy version of this story.  I was expecting a familiar story, written by someone new to me.  I know I was expecting a variation on Merchant Princes.  Didn’t happen.  What I got was a variation on Brigadoon!  With a side-helping of the Keystone Kops.

Princess Bride Swordfight imageIf the prince marries a girl from one of the other ruling families on September 2 in the appropriate place, and if the ruling families are at peace with one another, and a whole host of other conditions, this lovely little country will slip back into the mists, just like Brigadoon, for as long as they can manage to not squabble with each other.  The not squabbling part alone may make it fantasy.  There are two rival princes, at least three kidnappings, a couple of mobsters (one American, one Russian), ghosts, possibly vampires (people believe in them, but no one claims to have actually seen one) and one swordfight straight out of the Princess Bride, complete with quotes from same.

And yes, there is a sequel!  Blood Spirits is due out in September.  Just because it wasn’t at all what I expected, doesn’t mean I’m not dying to know what happens next.

Read or listen?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

The name of the wind is not “Mariah”, just in case anyone still remembers that very old song.  A friend quipped that to me when I said I was listening to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind a couple of weeks ago.  Name of the Wind Cover

Yes, I know, I should have read it when it first came out.  But that was 4 years ago!  See, I was patient and now I don’t have to wait for the sequel, since it’s finally out.  But dammit, he committed trilogy!  Who knows how long it will be until book 3?

And I’m not patient.  I’ve been listening to Name of the Wind.  It’s marvelous.  This is a great fantasy.  It’s storytelling.  Kvothe is telling his story to the Chronicler, and he emphasizes that he didn’t do things the way that he would have if he’d known it was a story, because he was living it.  It’s beau-ti-ful.

There is a symmetry in my listening to the audio and the fact that in the story, Kvothe is actually telling the story.  It’s as though he is telling me the story.  But, but, but, it is taking him forever and ever to get on with it.

Wise Mans Fear CoverListening to a book, especially a 667 page book (yes, I have a print copy too, it’s an old Advance Reading Copy, I kept it) takes a long time.  28 hours to be precise.  I’m halfway done.  I could finish the book, if I read it, tomorrow sometime, or maybe Thursday at the latest.  And I could thumb to the end, if I wanted to see how stuff turned out.  Then I could start book 2 (Wise Man’s Fear) a LOT sooner.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.