The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

What are the best books you have read so far in 2017? Old or new doesn't matter....

I've really enjoyed Jeff VanderMeer's Borne. More 'weird fiction' than sci-fi, although set within a dystopian environment. Don't let the idea of a giant flying bear put you off - it fits within the narrative really well.

Not a very good year for me ... but Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day Seanan McGuire was a nice surprise

So far, Old Man's War and Saturn's Children have been the best. Not stellar, but very enjoyable. They both created universes that got me engaged and left me wanting to know more. That is a sign of creativity right there.

I'm hoping this year I'll have a book that gets me excited like Neptune's Brood, Ringworld and The Quantum Thief did last year.

I'll be receiving Infomocracy and Too Like the Lightning in august. I really want them to deliver.

Gregoire wrote: "Not a very good year for me ... but Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day Seanan McGuire was a nice surprise"

I've only read one book by her so far, and l really liked it.

So far, my best reread has been Flowers for Algernon. The best new SF has been Linesman.

Jim wrote: "So far, my best reread has been Flowers for Algernon. The best new SF has been Linesman."

i agree with Linesman a great first shot in an interesting universe with an intriguing concept but book 2 and 3 are more about politics conflicts than about the strange alien "lines" ... there frustrate me a lot Want to know more please Mister S.K. Dunstall !!!

Ed wrote: "Gregoire wrote: "Not a very good year for me ... but Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day Seanan McGuire was a nice surprise"

I've only read one book by her so far, and l r..."

me too ! that one was my first try in Seanan McGuire work Please could you tell me about the one you have read ?

Gregoire wrote: "Please could you tell me about the one you have read ? .."

I read Every Heart a Doorway, which has a really great premise. It is about a bunch of people who have all come back from fairyland, or wonderland, or Narnia, or Oz, or another place like that and are forever altered by the experience. Many of them are hoping to go back.

Ed wrote: "Gregoire wrote: "Please could you tell me about the one you have read ? .."

I read Every Heart a Doorway, which has a really great premise. It is about a bunch of people who have a..."

thanks Ed I will give a try

Read (but not published) in 2017:

My favorite so far was probably A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Honorable mentions to The Circle by Dave Eggers and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Also The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report. I gave these each 4 stars.

After being disappointed with China Miéville andKraken, I finally read Perdido Street Station and it was well worth reading.

I also enjoyed Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.

Not been a particulary exciting year of books for me so far though.

Jo wrote: "After being disappointed with China Miéville andKraken, I finally read Perdido Street Station and it was well worth reading.

I also enjoyed [book:Binti|2..."

I liked Binti but wished it was longer and more fleshed out. I plan to read the sequel. Best book I've read recently was The Three Body Problem. Blindsight was also very impressive though I did not find it a particularly fun read.

2017 is near an end, so I've looked back over what I've read this year and these were the SF ones I seem to have liked the most:

The Girl with All the Gifts. This one surprised me. I thought I wouldn't like a book on this topic, but I read it because it was chosen by a group. It is a very original take on the genre. (I'm intentionally not saying which subject/genre because I wouldn't have read it if I had known that.)

Illuminae. Again read for a group. A little young-adulty but fun enough. Visually interesting, because it plays around with typography a bit like House of Leaves.

His Majesty's Dragon. I count this as fantasy, but Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985 – 2010 claims that this is definitely SF and not Fantasy! Either way, it was very enjoyable because of very likable characters (and one very unlikable one), one of whom just happens to be a dragon.

All of those are young-adult oriented. I'm still reading more challenging works, but those are the ones that I enjoyed most.

I read the first & last you listed, Ed. I agree with your feelings on them. I too was very pleasantly surprised by the first. I guess the last is SF due to the alternate history angle, but I shelved it as fantasy, too. Unfortunately, the series went downhill rapidly for me. Each succeeding one interested me less until I didn't finish the 3d or 4th book.

Jim wrote: "I shelved it as fantasy, too ..."

There isn't really a hard dividing line. But I think they were saying it is SF rather than Fantasy because it doesn't have the other fantasy elements. There is no magic, for example. It is the real world, with simply one thing changed: dragons exist. And, they almost could. They would need enormous wings, but they almost could exist.

JuniperGreen ~❄Winter is coming❄~ wrote: "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany...."

I sometimes love Delaney, but that one is in the category "too much gross stuff" for me and I'll be skipping it.

These are my best SF reads in 2017

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula K Le Guin (2002). Le Guin is a favorite author of mine. I'll read anything of hers that I come across.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (2014). Excellent. Because I liked Harry August so much I also read North's Touch (2015) which was pretty good, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope (2016) which was just alright

The Man in the Maze by Robert Silverberg (1968). I have yet to find a book by Silverberg that wasn't somewhere between pretty good and outstanding. The Man in the Maze isn't particularly well known, I think, but it ought to be.

I didn't read any great, new-to-me, SF this year, but I did revisit some old classics that I hadn't read in so long (likely 40+ years) that they were almost new. The best were Flowers for Algernon, Little Fuzzy, & A Wrinkle in Time.

The Paratwa trilogy by Christopher Hinz was another reread, this second time in order. (I couldn't find the 2d book the first time until long after I'd read the 3d.) It was great, definitely overlooked, probably because the author isn't well known.

Linesman & Alliance are the first two of a trilogy (series?) with really interesting tech. The average ratings of the books goes up with each one, so I'm really looking forward to reading the 3d book, Confluence.

On the border line of SF, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow looks into our future based on our past performance & trends based on new tech. I gave it a 5 star review. In a similar vein read Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How by Theodore J. Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber. I didn't go looking for it, but had it offered to me free for a review. I wound up giving it a 1 star review due to poor logic & preaching.

Librivox.org got a lot of business from me this year. I've been listening to their many classics since their narration has gotten a lot better. While the old short stories & novels don't knock my socks off, it's a great way to explore the genre. Forrest J Ackerman's World of Science Fiction gave me a long list of authors to explore more. Most of those he mentions have stories & books on Gutenberg.org & Librivox.org. I gave his book a 4 star review.

My best sci-fi books this year have been Too Like the Lightning and the The Forever War. Both are high quality literature, even if they have very different styles and subjects.

The best graphic novel/comic/manga was PLUTO: Naoki Urasawa x Ozamu Tezuka, Band 001. It is a gritty and adult take on Astro Boy. I'm looking forward to reading the other mangas.

The best non-sci-fi book was Debt: The First 5,000 Years. It is an essay on debt from an historical and anthropological perspective, not just an economic one. It shines a whole new light on debt and many misconceptions we might have on the economy.

My worst was Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. I was looking forward to it as my first Cherryh read and boy was I disappointed. I'm not sure why it won the Hugo.

I started reading PKD this year. I read five novels from the 50s plus Ubik. Ubik was my favorite, but The World Jones Made is a close second. I also really enjoyed Ballard's Concrete Island .

Marc-André wrote: "My best sci-fi books this year have been Too Like the Lightning and the The Forever War...."

I just read The Forever War a few days ago. I like it, but it isn't one of my favorites. My favorite part was the middle section back on Earth, which was apparently left out of the book until a 1991 revision because it was considered too depressing. I can understand why this book was so highly regarded in its time, but I've encountered the main ideas already in other works that I've enjoyed more. I liked the fact that the main character was not a typical military guy, and was in fact a pacifist until drafted.

It was interesting to watch the changes in societal attitudes toward sexuality, though none of the societies was actually plausible to me. In the first, soldiers are required -- both by custom and law -- to have promiscuous sex with other soldiers. (Presumably homosexuals don't exist at this point.) Later everyone is encouraged to become homosexual as a form of birth control. Umm... there are much easier forms of birth control! and most people can't just switch by force of will or societal pressure. And the main character got really annoying by repeatedly reminding us that he is heterosexual.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, and I wasn't sure that I would because I don't usually like military stories. Redeeming qualities were that it is a quick read that switches gears many times in its short length to deal with multiple new ideas.

Ed wrote: "...It was interesting to watch the changes in societal attitudes toward sexuality, though none of the societies was actually plausible to me. ..."

Of course there weren't any homosexuals in the handpicked group of soldiers since they would have been weeded out by the standards of the day when Haldeman was writing this in the early 70s. IIRC, in 1974, the year this was published, was also the last year shrinks voted homosexuality a mental disorder.

I don't think they were supposed to be plausible. He was poking pins into the military, social mores, & gov't systems he really detested by making caricatures of them. Nixon was running around saying that homosexuality caused empires to fall & ZPG was a big deal. Conflating the two & showing how it felt to be a minority (A straight guy was a queer.) was funny, but you need to remember the context. The Pill was fairly new, & times were a changing. Times have changed a LOT since then.

Ed wrote: "I just read The Forever War a few days ago. I like it, but it isn't one of my favorites. My favorite part was the middle section back on Earth, which was apparently left out of the book until a 1991 revision because it was considered too depressing. I can understand why this book was so highly regarded in its time, but I've encountered the main ideas already in other works that I've enjoyed more. I liked the fact that the main character was not a typical military guy, and was in fact a pacifist until drafted. "

The cynical and lucide pacifist drafted in the military isn't a new take, but Haldeman does it well and does it in a sci-fi context. It isn't my favorite book of all time, but this year it is one of the best sci-fi novel I've read.

It was interesting to watch the changes in societal attitudes toward sexuality, though none of the societies was actually plausible to me. In the first, soldiers are required -- both by custom and law -- to have promiscuous sex with other soldiers. (Presumably homosexuals don't exist at this point.) Later everyone is encouraged to become homosexual as a form of birth control. Umm... there are much easier forms of birth control! and most people can't just switch by force of will or societal pressure. And the main character got really annoying by repeatedly reminding us that he is heterosexual.

I just see Haldeman as being a provocateur with his use of homosexuality. At the time it must of raised a few eyebrowse and seen as condoning an immoral behavior. I'm sure he had a good laugh. It still raises an eyebrowse today, but for sounding homophobic.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, and I wasn't sure that I would because I don't usually like military stories. Redeeming qualities were that it is a quick read that switches gears many times in its short length to deal with multiple new ideas.

I wish more comtemporary authors wrote shorter stories with shifting ideas. Nowadays this would be a trilogy* and each book 500 pages long.

*Yes, I am aware Haldeman ultemately turned it into a trilogy, but that was done 20 years later after the first book was published.

Since we seem to be doing it anyway, I created a spoiler topic to compare various war novels here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'm going to paste our last few comments in there for continuity.

Jim wrote: "Since we seem to be doing it anyway, I created a spoiler topic to compare various war novels ..."

Thanks. That is a good idea.

Marc-André wrote: "I wish more comtemporary authors wrote shorter stories with shifting ideas. Nowadays this would be a trilogy* and each book 500 pages long."

Yep. That seems to be a trend in the Evolution of Science Fiction. Or in SF publishing, at least. Seems even worse in fantasy. Stand-alone fantasy novels seem rare.

One thing I read this year was Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing. It uses mathematical analysis to examine changes in style over time (among other topics). Across all forms of popular fiction, words and sentences are getting shorter and less complex. It didn't explicitly study SF separately, but I'm sure it would have found a trend toward more multi-book series.

I'm in another SF book group here, and the members seem to prefer picking series rather than stand-alone. I'm finding myself skipping those.

(Marc-André, by the way I also started reading "Debt". Quite interesting. But also quite long, so I may not make it through.)

Ed wrote: "One thing I read this year was Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing. It uses mathematical analysis to examine changes in style over time (among other topics). Across all forms of popular fiction, words and sentences are getting shorter and less complex. It didn't explicitly study SF separately, but I'm sure it would have found a trend toward more multi-book series."

Are they getting longer? Shorter and simpler sentences, but longer novels or shorter novels? If they are getting longer that is quite the paradoxe.

(Marc-André, by the way I also started reading "Debt". Quite interesting. But also quite long, so I may not make it through.)

Hang in there. I found some rather surprising info about the history of debt and currencies.

Marc-André wrote: "Ed wrote: "Are they getting longer? Shorter and simpler sentences, but longer novels or shorter novels? If they are getting longer that is quite the paradoxe...."

I don't recall whether Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve looked at book length. But there was definitely a trend toward shorter, simpler words and sentences. And it applied to "popular" fiction as well as "literary" fiction. That doesn't mean the ideas in the books are getting simpler, but our style of writing is changing. Becoming less stiff and formal. (French writers could learn a lesson from us!)

Ed wrote: "I don't recall whether Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve looked at book length. But there was definitely a trend toward shorter, simpler words and sentences. And it applied to "popular" fiction as well as "literary" fiction. That doesn't mean the ideas in the books are getting simpler, but our style of writing is changing. Becoming less stiff and formal. (French writers could learn a lesson from us!) "

Maybe it is just the result of the democratization of reading and writing.

Marc-André wrote: "Maybe it is just the result of the democratization of reading and writing."

Could it be shorter attention spans or other brain changes? I read something about us getting shorter ones as well as losing our ability to memorize as writing became more common. Our use of computers, phones, & such has accelerated the pace. I'm not sure how good the science was behind it & can't find the article, unfortunately.

Having finished the year at 50 books, my favorites were:
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (re-read)

Those were my only 5-star books of the year. Here's a few 4-star books that just missed the cut:
The Circle by Dave Eggers
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The City & the City by China Miéville
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Randy wrote: "Having finished the year at 50 books, my favorites were:
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins ..."

Looks cool! I'm going to add that to my list.

I also just finished Annihilation and would also recommend it, though at a 3.5-star level.

(I refuse to say "Having finished the year..." yet. I always get lots of reading done in the last few days.)

Ed wrote: "The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins ..."

Looks cool! I'm going to add that to my list.

I also just finished Annihilation and would also recommend it, though at a 3.5-star level."

Yeah it's a good one. I'm not easily able to classify it into a category. I called it "urban Lovecraft" in my review due to some things I won't bring up due to potential spoilers, but that doesn't begin to cover it. It made me laugh out loud a few times, and I couldn't wait to see where it was going. The plot is ridiculous in the best possible way - I almost need to re-read it just to see how the author set it all up. And to think that a first-time author pulled this all off... Wow.

I agree with you on Annihilation. I only categorize books as 4 star or 3 star since that's all Goodreads lets us use, but I think that book was right between those ratings. It was a little slow and tended to fall back on description and setting to build suspense, but I think that was largely intentional. I read Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness after Annihilation and now I see why the comparison is drawn so often. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie version - I'd like to see some of Vandermeer's ideas brought to life on the big screen.

I finished up my review of 2017 on Goodreads. 5 stars, of course. Details are here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...