It’s Ditmar time again, so get nominating
Firstly, I would direct your attention to this post, which I wrote last year and which is just as relevant now as it was then. Bear in mind that the links in that post are old, so make sure you use the links in this post. Anyway, this post is to point out that the Ditmar Awards are now officially open for nominations and will remain open until one minute before midnight Canberra time on Wednesday, 20th of March, 2013 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10). I will list at the end of the post all my eligible work, in case you were thinking of slinging a nomination my way. And, if you weren’t, you can read a lot of my eligible work online, so maybe you’d like to have a read and then sling a nomination my way. I’d be very grateful.
I’ll certainly be thinking hard about what’s moved me this year and making my nominations. You read that post I linked above, right? Well, then you must nominate, just as you must vote. You can nominate work if you’re a “natural persons active in fandom, or from full or supporting members of Conflux 9, the 2013 Australian National SF Convention. Where a nominator may not be known to the Ditmar subcommittee, the nominator should provide the name of someone known to the subcommittee who can vouch for the nominator’s eligibility. Convention attendance or membership of an SF club are among the criteria which qualify a person as “active in fandom”, but are not the only qualifying criteria. If in doubt, nominate and mention your qualifying criteria.”
What does that mean? Well, if you’re even vaguely active in the Australian scene, you can nominate. So get your nominations in!
The current rules, including Award categories can be found at:
http://wiki.sf.org.au/Ditmar_rules
A partial and unofficial eligibility list, to which everyone is encouraged to add, can be found here:
http://wiki.sf.org.au/2013_Ditmar_eligibility_list
While online nominations are preferred, nominations can be made in a number of ways:
1. online, via this form:
http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2013/nominations.html
2. via email to [email protected]; or
3. by post to:
Ditmars
6 Florence Road
NEDLANDS WA 6009
AUSTRALIA
So that’s the official stuff. Now for the personal stuff. As promised, here are my eligible works this year.
Best Novella or Novelette
(Novella or Novelette: A Novella or Novelette is any work of sf/f/h of 7,500 to 40,000 words.)
“The Darkest Shade of Grey“, by Alan Baxter, published by The Red Penny Papers.
You can read this entire novelette online for free at Red Penny Papers, or buy it as an ebook for just $1.99. I’m really proud of this piece and it has particular personal resonance for me for other reasons that I won’t go into here. But I would really love to see it get a bit of attention on the ballot. If you nominate nothing else, I’d love you to nominate this one (assuming you’ve read and enjoyed it, of course!)
Then there are my eligible short fiction works. Some of these are available to read online too, so if the title is a link, click it to read it.
Best Short Story
(Short Story: A Short Story is any work of sf/f/h less than 7,500 words.)
“Burning, Always Burning”, Alan Baxter and Felicity Dowker, in Damnation and Dames, Ticonderoga Publications.
“Cephalopoda Obsessia”, Alan Baxter, in Bloodstones, Ticonderoga Publications.
“Crossroads and Carousels“, Alan Baxter, in The Red Penny Papers, Fall 2012.
“Fear is the Sin”, Alan Baxter, in From Stage Door Shadows, eMergent Publishing.
“In the Name of the Father”, Alan Baxter, in The One That Got Away, Dark Prints Press.
“Salvage in the Void“, Alan Baxter, in Kasma SF Magazine.
“The Everywhere And The Always”, Alan Baxter, in Mythic Resonance, The Specusphere and Esstee Media.
“The Goodbye Message“, Alan Baxter, in ticon4, April 2, 2012.
“Tiny Lives“, Alan Baxter, in Daily Science Fiction, December 25th, 2012.
I’ve also just noticed that my name crops up in a couple of other places on the eligibility list. So those are here:
Best Fan Writer
Fan Writer and Fan Artist: These awards are made to writers or artists for a work or body of work first published, released, or made available for public viewing in the eligible calendar year. The writer or artist must have received no payment other than contributor copies and other incidentals (coffee mug, t-shirt, poster, etc.)
Alan Baxter, for body of work including reviews in Thirteen O’Clock.
William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
The William Atheling Jr Award: The William Atheling Jr Award is for the writing or editing of a work or a group of related works of criticism or review pertaining to the genres of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.
Alan Baxter, for review of A Haunting of Ghosts by Maynard Sims, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Dredd (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of El Orfanto (movie), in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Ishtar edited by Amada Pillar and K.V. Taylor, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Killeroo Gangwar by Darren Close and Paul Abstruse, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Rope by Martin Livings, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The List, Volume 1 by Paul Bedford, Henry Pop and Tom Bonin, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of The Sixsmiths by J. Marc Schmidt and Jason Franks, in Thirteen O’Clock.
Alan Baxter, for review of Vaudeville by Greg Chapman, in Thirteen O’Clock.
I’m not entirely sure why all my Thirteen O’Clock reviews are listed separately, but that’s just how that particular award works, I guess. As they’re on the eligibility list, I’ve included them here.
So there it is. The reason to vote, all the links you need and my work that’s eligible. Here ends the Ditmar Award rant and promotion for now. Like last year’s post says, in order to make this award as fair and relevant as possible, we need as big a nominating and voting pool as possible. So, if you’re eligible, please get involved.
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Urban Occult anthology available for pre-order, with special offer
My story, A Time For Redemption, is included in this anthology of urban occult stories. It’s due for official release around the start of April, but the publisher, Anachron Press, is offering a special deal for the first 50 pre-orders that will see you getting more for your buck. Here are the deets:
Urban Occult Limited Pre-Order
Limited to 50.
Behind urban life, weird and horrific things fester.
The whispers and chills of things long gone… the promise of power from the darkness… the seduction of those that lie in the shadows… the occult is all around us: in town houses, in mansions, and in your very own street.
Editor Colin F. Barnes collected together fifteen stories by a cast of critically acclaimed authors from around the globe who look into the stygian gloom, explore the dark corners of our houses, and peer into the abyss of human temptation.
Featuring stories by: Gary McMahon, Ren Warom, Gary Fry, Mark West, K.T. Davies, Nerine Dorman, Alan Baxter, Adam Millard, Julie Travis, Jason Andrew, James Brogden, A.A Garrison, Jennifer Williams, Sarah Anne Langton, and Chris Barnham.
Special Pre-Order Edition Limited to 50.
This pre-order edition means you will get the book at least a week to two weeks ahead of general release and:
A FREE ebook version (for any eReader)
and A FREE ebook of Day of Demons. (eBooks will be emailed to you on the 4th of March).
Just £9.99 (+£2.99 shipping anywhere in the world).
Pre-Order here: http://www.anachronpress.com/product/anthologies/urban-occult-limited-pre-order/
That’s a pretty sweet deal for just thirteen of your moneypounds. Hop to it.
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Guest post: Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies
I’m very happy today to be presenting a guest post by up and coming writer, Leife Shallcross. An online discussion a little while ago raised some very interesting points about gender roles in SF, and Leife’s observations were quite telling. So I asked her to write it up for a post here and she very graciously obliged.
Lazy writing and the survival of the human race… in animated movies
I was having a discussion with some writerly friends a while ago about female leads in spec fic films. The conversation was started by an article that was arguing for a female protagonist in the next Star Wars movie, to be made by Disney some time soon. It was pretty interesting, and had some good points.
Naturally, though, this broadened out to a discussion of the nature of female characters in spec fic films generally. Are there enough of them? Are there enough leads? And are they genuinely well-rounded, complex human beings?
I’ll put myself out there and say I’m in the camp that thinks the answer to those questions is no.
But I will qualify it, by saying that I’m the mother of an 8 year-old boy and a 10 year-old girl, and the vast majority of the movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years have been kid’s movies, so that’s what I’m going to talk about here. (And, let’s face it, with Disney at the helm, this is what we are going to have to expect for Star Wars.)
And before you groan, and lose interest in what sounds like it’s going to be another feminist mummy rant, I’m also going to talk about why I think this comes down to one thing: lazy writing.
If you take the Pixar films, for example. A quick look on Wikipedia gives you a fairly comprehensive list of films they’ve produced, starting with Toy Story in 1995.
1995.
…And the first movie they produced with a female protagonist came out in…?
2012.
Now, I’m gonna pick on Pixar here, but boy they make it easy. It’s not that they can’t write good female characters. Dory (Finding Nemo), Jessie (Toy Story 2), Mrs Incredible and Violet Incredible (The Incredibles), to name just a handful. So why don’t they do more of it?
Why did Mike & Sully (Monsters Inc) both have to be male? Why would making one of them female not have worked? What about Up? It really would have made little difference to the story whether the kid, Russell, had been a boy or a girl. You could make arguments around Mike & Sully representing the classic blokes’ working relationship, or Carl (the old guy in Up) seeing himself in Russell, but I don’t think either of those examples could not have been managed by finding equally satisfying alternatives through good, clever scriptwriting, had they chosen to swap the gender of one of the characters.
This points to one of the things that the article on Star Wars argued, which is that film makers tend to view male characters as having generic appeal, and female characters as only appealing to women and girls.
In my opinion, this a view that needs to be challenged and proved false.
And in case you thought Monsters Inc and Up were the exceptions, here’s a random sample:
Toy Story (the original): not a single girl in the gang. Every single female character could only be described as tertiary, at best. There’s a bunch of the supporting character toys that could have been presented as female – the money pig, the dinosaur, the slinky dog, the penguin. But no.
Finding Nemo: Dory, an awesome character. Now count the total ratio of male characters in the movie to female ones (19:6). Not even one fishaholic shark, and would that have been so hard?
Cars: Do I even need to start?
Ratatouille: This one’s great. One female role with a name (there’s also one female ‘dining patron’), out of a total of 19 roles.
Even Brave. Their flagship female protagonist film. Count the ratio of female to male characters (4 including a castle maid, to 14). You might also want to look at the female to male ‘extras’. It’s a wonder the human race has managed to survive.
And just to be fair, let’s look at Dreamworks:
How to Train Your Dragon: Astrid, awesome character. Now count the total ratio of male characters to female ones (10:3).
Rise of the Guardians: The tooth fairy. Cute and funny, but, oh look, all the rest of the guardians are… male. Token. There’s a couple of female kids (including the interesting, different and kinda awesome Cupcake), but the one the protagonist connects with in order to save the world is, you guessed it, a boy.
I could point to the Disney princesses and *wince* Barbie for a bunch of female protagonists, but these are movies marketed at girls, not generically, like the ones I’ve named above.
The fact is, with a little, a VERY little, extra effort in character development, the ratio of male to female protagonists, supporting characters and extras could more closely reflect the fact the human race is approximately half-half. And when a movie studio is as influential as Pixar or Dreamworks, this is actually something they could reasonably achieve.
But, you might say, what about the thing you mentioned earlier? Mike and Sully representing the blokey working relationship trope, or about Carl in Up seeing himself in Russell? Well, these are movies for kids. They don’t know about blokey workmates, or that adults are often inspired by children they see themselves in.
The messages you give your kids repeatedly in childhood will shape their expectations of the world as adults.
I’ll go back to my core argument, though, which is that, in my opinion, stories which involve a disproportionate number of male characters and token females (or film studios that churn out an aggregate disproportionate number of male to female characters, including protagonists), are going to be the result of lazy character development.
Generally, having a diverse range of characters (including—hey!—even the genderqueer!) makes for increased interest in the dynamics between the characters. Which usually makes for more interesting stories.
And just might have the spin-off of making the world a more tolerant, egalitarian place.
Leife Shallcross lives in Canberra with her husband and children. She fits in her writing around looking after the kids, an almost full-time job in the public service and playing the fiddle (badly). She is fascinated by fairy tales and folk tales and frequently weaves elements of these into her writing. She’s also the current secretary of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. Her second published story will appear in Next, edited by Robert Porteous and Simon Petrie, to be launched at Conflux 9 in April 2013.
She blogs occasionally at leifeshallcross.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter @leioss.
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How to help an author
You all want to help out the authors whose work you love, right? Course you do. It’s really easy and anyone who’s listened to me crapping on for more than about thirty seconds will have heard this before, but here it is again anyway. Cos it’s important motherflipping stuff and really very simple. Try to make it a habit. In this modern realm of social media, it’s an easy habit to form. Plus, this time it’s presented in a nice graphic.
Pass it on.
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Dreaming of Djinn cover revealed
Check out that beautiful cover art, revealed yesterday by Ticonderoga Publications for the new Arabian Nights inspired anthology Dreaming of Djinn, edxited by Liz Grzyb. I am never disappointed with the cover art from Ticonderoga, and they’ve excelled themselves once again. I’m especially pleased as I have a story in this book, due out around April. People are always talking about not judging a book by its cover and, ironically, that applies to pretty much everything except books. It’s right to not judge people by their appearance, for example, or the quality of a home by the building it’s in. But people do, quite rightly, judge books by their covers. That’s what covers are for. They’re the first port of call for a prospective buyer. If the cover looks good, they’ll pick up the book and read the back cover blurb. If that grabs them, they’ll maybe thumb through a page or two. Then they’ll buy the book. If they’re buying on recommendation anyway, the cover is less important, but bad covers still do put people off.
In this day and age of mass production and awful, homogenous graphic art that makes all books look the same, it’s great to see something with some real artistic value and quality design going on. In this case, the artwork is from Ukraine artist, Nadiia Starovoitova, and the design is by Ticonderoga’s own Russell B Farr.
My story in this one is about a young woman with challenges in her life, not least of which being a father who won’t let her grow up. Then she meets someone connected with the Djinn. My story is called On A Crooked Leg Lightly and I’m very proud it was accepted for this book. Look who else is in there:
- Marilag Angway “Shadow Dancer”
- Cherith Baldry “The Green Rose”
- Alan Baxter “On A Crooked Leg Lightly”
- Jenny Blackford “The Quiet Realm of the Dark Queen”
- Jetse de Vries “Djinni Djinni Dream Dream”
- Thoraiya Dyer “The Saint George Hotel”
- Joshua Gage “The Dancer of Smoke”
- Richard Harland “The Tale of the Arrow Girl”
- Faith Mudge “The Oblivion Box”
- Havva Murat “Harmony Thicket and the Persian Shoes”
- Charlotte Nash “Parvaz”
- Anthony Panegyres “Oleander: An Ottoman Tale”
- Dan Rabarts “Silver, Sharp as Silk”
- Angela Rega “The Belly Dancing Crimes of Ms Sahara Desserts”
- Jenny Schwartz “The Pearl Flower Harvest”
- Barb Siples “The Sultan’s Debt”
- Pia Van Ravestein “Street Dancer”
- DC White “A Dash of Djinn and Tonic”
Dreaming of Djinn features 18 incredible tales of romantic Orientalism. The book will be available in April and you can pre-order it here.
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There’s no such thing as a real pantser, or a real planner
I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as a pantser when it comes to writing. And I say this as a self-confessed pantser. I’ve stood up and defended the position of writing from the hip against those pesky planners. I’ve defended the greater creative purity of the unplanned writing session. But it’s all bollocks. And you know what? There are no real planners either. This is a bell-curve, so there will be those outliers, but I’ll get to them later.
Firstly, in case you’re the one person who doesn’t know what a pantser or a planner is, let me explain. When it comes to writing fiction, there are two primary camps – people who plan everything and decide on each detail of the plot before they start writing, who are called planners, and people who plan nothing and just let the story all pour out au naturel, called pantsers. These people have also been referred to as architects and gardeners, and in that post I talk about being a bit of one and a bit of the other. But here I intend to make the bolder statement that we’re all a bit of both.
I’ve always identified mostly as a pantser. I don’t like to know everything that’s going to happen in a story before I start to write. What’s the point in writing it then? It’d be like writing it twice – once in note form, then again in detail. But I do make some notes. I have a good idea where things are going and what major events are going to occur in a story. I sometimes don’t know exactly how a book or story is going to end, but I have a good idea where I’m going with it and the ideas I’m playing with. The process of discovery that accompanies the writing then, as my subconscious tells the story through my characters, is the thing I love most about writing. So I do write a lot by the seat of my pants. But I plan too.
It’s the same for planners. Any great writer, no matter how strictly they might plan a book, will gladly let a new idea or an unexpected turn take the story somewhere else. That may mean that they stop and re-plan, based on the unexpected revelation. Or they may just roll with it. The bits and details in between their carefully planned markers will still need filling in, and they will have to cover those transitions and interstices with writing from the hip.
So no pantser never plans, and no planner never pants. Like I said above, it’s a bell-curve. I think it’s more a case of where on the curve you sit. Not whether you’re a pantser or a planner, but to what degree you plan. We’re all plantsers – we all sit down with a story idea and we work on it. We have to. There needs to be some ideas in mind of what we’re writing about, who our characters are (at least in their most superficial incarnation to begin with) and where we’re going with it. That’s planning. But the degree to which we plan that, or how much we leave open, is the only thing that separates our writing styles.
Kim Wilkins is a writer with something like 24 published novels and she is quite vocal about being a very detailed planner. Whenever you raise the subject with her, she will simply cry, “Two million words in print! I rest my case!” and she does kinda have a point. But really, all she’s saying is that she plans a lot, not only a little bit. There’s a case in her argument that everyone should plan a lot. I disagree. I don’t plan in anything like the detail Kim does, but I do plan to a certain extent. We all do. And no matter how much Kim plans, no matter how much of an outlier she is on one side of the bell curve, I bet there’s some pantsing in there too. Just like the person who pretty much pants the whole way will still have a small amount of planning, somewhere in the back of their mind. And even when someone pretty much pants the thing entirely, there comes a point when they need to pull it all together at the end and that requires a bit of planning.
There’s no such thing as a pantser or a planner. There’s just the degree to which we plan.
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Remember this. ALWAYS remember this.
Bloodstones contributor copies arrived
Look at this beautiful tome. It’s the Bloodstones anthology from Ticonderoga Publications, edited by the awesomely talented Amanda Pillar. You can tell she’s awesomely talented because she picked one of my stories to be in this book. And all the others, of course. Bloodstones is an anthology of short fiction using unusual creatures, myths and legends in dark, urban fantasy settings. And let’s be honest, that kind of brief is right up my flagpole. My story is called Cephalopoda Obsessia and it’s my little cephalopod overlord homage. I won’t say any more than that.
The book has a great line-up of authors (I’ll post the full list below) and boasts a broad range of subject matter. From the back cover blurb, we’re told we’ll encounter ancient Greek monsters, lamia, gorgons and kraken, as well as the Malay toyol and dukun, Chinese xiannu, Haitian voodoo, ghosts, Cthulhu, selkies and (get this!) the Philippino Alan. That one really has me interested. I mean, I’ll be honest, I have no fucking idea what half the stuff on that list is. But there’s a monster called an Alan? Sign me up!
The forward is by the very talented author, Seanan Maguire, and she says really lovely things about the anthology. Things like, “There was not a story in this book that did not surprise and delight me…” and “…a map to a whole new realm of horror.” Shit, yeah, I like the sound of that. So I can’t wait to get my teeth into this one. You can get your copy from indiebooksonline.com, or all the usual Amazon type places.
Here’s the full list of 17 stories:
- Joanne Anderton, “Sanaa’s Army”
- Alan Baxter, “Cephalopoda Obsessia”
- Jenny Blackford, “A Moveable Feast”
- Vivian Caethe, “Skin”
- MD Curelas, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”
- Thoraiya Dyer, “Surviving Film”
- Dirk Flinthart, “The Bull in Winter”
- Stephanie Gunn, “The Skin of the World”
- Richard Harland, “A Mother’s Love”
- Pete Kempshall, “Dead Inside”
- Penny Love, “A Small Bad Thing”
- Karen Maric, “Embracing the Invisible”
- Christine Morgan, “Ferreau’s Curse”
- Nicole Murphy, “Euryale”
- Kat Otis, “And the Dead Shall be Raised Incorruptible”
- Dan Rabarts, “The Bone Plate”
- Erin Underwood, “The Foam Born”
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Time for another Top 100
I haven’t done one of these posts for a while, so I thought it was about time. I came across this post of the Top 100 Sci-Fi Books
. Apparently it’s “A statistical survey of the all-time Top 100 sci-fi books”. Whatever that means. There’s a link on the post where you can click to take part in the poll and it takes you to a massive list of SF titles and you’re asked to select ten of them. So by “statistical” I think they mean “voted”. Anyway, it struck me as an interesting list, so I thought I’d see how many of this alleged top 100 books I’ve read. The list is below. Sometimes you’ll see [S1], which means the first book in a series, or [C], which means it’s a single author collection. I’ve bolded all the titles I’ve read. The ones all in italics are books I have, but have yet to get around to reading.
1 Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game [S1] 1985
2 Frank Herbert Dune [S1] 1965
3 Isaac Asimov Foundation [S1-3] 1951
4 Douglas Adams Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [S1] 1979
5 Robert A Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land 1961
6 George Orwell 1984 1949
7 Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 1954
8 Arthur C Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
9 Isaac Asimov [C] I, Robot 1950
10 Philip K Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968
11 Robert A Heinlein Starship Troopers 1959
12 William Gibson Neuromancer 1984
13 Larry Niven Ringworld 1970
14 Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama 1973
15 Dan Simmons Hyperion [S1] 1989
16 H G Wells The Time Machine 1895
17 Aldous Huxley Brave New World 1932
18 Arthur C Clarke Childhood’s End 1954
19 H G Wells The War of the Worlds 1898
20 Joe Haldeman The Forever War 1974
21 Robert A Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 1966
22 Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles 1950
23 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five 1969
24 Neal Stephenson Snow Crash 1992
25 Niven & Pournelle The Mote in God’s Eye 1975
26 Ursula K Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness 1969
27 Orson Scott Card Speaker for the Dead [S2] 1986
28 Michael Crichton Jurassic Park 1990
29 Philip K Dick The Man in the High Castle 1962
30 Isaac Asimov The Caves of Steel 1954
31 Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1870
32 Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination 1956
33 Roger Zelazny Lord of Light 1967
34 Frederik Pohl Gateway 1977
35 Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain 1969
36 Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle In Time 1962
37 Stanislaw Lem Solaris 1961
38 Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle 1963
39 Carl Sagan Contact 1985
40 Isaac Asimov The Gods Themselves 1972
41 Philip K Dick Ubik 1969
42 Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep 1991
43 Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange 1962
44 John Wyndham The Day of the Triffids 1951
45 Robert A Heinlein Time Enough For Love 1973
46 Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon 1999
47 Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars [S1] 1992
48 Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818
49 Walter M Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz 1959
50 Daniel Keyes Flowers for Algernon 1966
51 Isaac Asimov The End Of Eternity 1955
52 Jules Verne Journey to the Center of the Earth 1864
53 Iain M Banks Player Of Games [S2] 1988
54 L Ron Hubbard Battlefield Earth 1982 < Seriously!?
55 Peter F Hamilton The Reality Dysfunction [S1] 1996
56 Orson Scott Card Ender’s Shadow [S1] 1999
57 Ursula K Le Guin The Dispossessed 1974
58 Neal Stephenson The Diamond Age 1995
59 Greg Bear Eon 1985
60 Philip Jose Farmer To Your Scattered Bodies Go 1971
61 Kurt Vonnegut The Sirens of Titan 1959
62 David Brin Startide Rising [S2] 1983
63 Philip K Dick A Scanner Darkly 1977
64 Niven & Pournelle Lucifer’s Hammer 1977
65 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale 1985
66 Arthur C Clarke The City and the Stars 1956
67 Michael Crichton Sphere 1987
68 Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat [S1] 1961
69 Robert A Heinlein The Door Into Summer 1956
70 Alfred Bester The Demolished Man 1953
71 Gene Wolfe The Fifth Head of Cerberus 1972
72 Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space [S1] 2000
73 H G Wells The Invisible Man 1897
74 Robert A Heinlein Citizen Of the Galaxy 1957
75 Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars [S1] 1912
76 Robert A Heinlein The Puppet Masters 1951
77 Dan Simmons Ilium 2003
78 Connie Willis Doomsday Book 1992
79 C S Lewis Out of the Silent Planet [S1] 1938
80 Robert A Heinlein Have Space-Suit – Will Travel 1958
81 Edwin A Abbott Flatland 1884
82 Cormac McCarthy The Road 2006
83 Richard Morgan Altered Carbon [S1] 2002
84 John Scalzi Old Man’s War 2005 < I can honestly say this is one of the worst SF books I've ever read.85 Philip K Dick The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch 1964
86 Iain M Banks Use of Weapons [S3] 1990
87 John Wyndham The Chrysalids 1955
88 Ursula K Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven 1971
89 Clifford Simak Way Station 1963
90 Stanislaw Lem [C] The Cyberiad 1974
91 John Brunner Stand on Zanzibar 1969
92 Philip K Dick VALIS 1981
93 David Brin The Postman 1985
94 Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1886
95 Julian May The Many-Colored Land [S1] 1981
96 Arkady & Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic 1972
97 Greg Bear The Forge of God 1987
98 Richard Matheson I Am Legend 1954
99 James Blish [C] Cities in Flight 1955
100 Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World 1912
There are a few on there that I can’t remember for sure if I’ve read or not. I think I might have, many years ago, but it’s equally possible I just thought I should read them but never got around it it. So I’ve left them. The bolded ones I know I’ve read – it’s not a bad showing, though how some of them have made it onto the best 100 list mystifies me. It has also, however, served to remind me of a hell of a lot of books that I haven’t read yet but really want to!
So I’ve read 41 out of that 100. How about you?
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Wild Chrome by Greg Mellor – review
Greg Mellor is a relatively new voice in Australian science fiction, but his debut collection from Ticonderoga Publications places him firmly in the upper echelons of SF writers at work today. Wild Chrome is a collection of 21 short stories, ten of them new and original to the collection and the other eleven reprints from such august publications as Clarkesworld, Cosmos, Aurealis and more.
Mellor has a background in astrophysics and is one of those writers who can dream big ideas and back them up with believable and potentially realisable science. His stories play mostly around the ideas of the post-human singularity, the arguably inevitable conjoining of humanity and technology, which opens up all kinds of questions about mortality and our place in the universe.
Mellor manages to keep an entirely human aspect in all his work, however big or deep the subject matter. That is, unless it’s one of his stories from the point of view of an alien species, and then he manages to write a very convincing non-human.
Not every story in this book hits the mark dead on, but all the stories are imaginative and entertaining, really nailing the excitement and wonder that we should expect from science fiction. And some of the stories are nothing less than brilliant. I’m looking forward to anything else Greg Mellor writes, but he’s set himself a high bar with this collection.
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