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Voting is on for the Nebula Awards, with the winner to be announced May 21st. Who do we think should win Best Novel?
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There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:07PM (14 children)
Yeah there's entries in there obviously only because they're non-white non-males and if noms were blind they would never have made it. But even if white males are excluded the top of the second rate authors still has some interesting looking stuff.
As near as I can tell:
Birds is fantasy environmental catastropism left wing disaster pr0n. Its a couple hundred pages of you suck and you should feel bad. Strongly recommend SJWs add it to their reading list. Its not looking good, skip.
Borderline is heroine damaged goods urban fantasy about being a multicultural ambassador, kinda. I graduated with my womyns studies degree and instead of working for Starbucks I got one of the few positions at the state dept but the world has like DnD monsters (maybe they represent whyte people, who cares). Not looking good, skip.
Obelisk is the world is ending because Trump won, wait only partially kidding its fantasy environmental catastrophism, yet again. Reportably tolkein-esque fantasy superior to Birds. The author describes her own work as "decolonized fiction, for our postcolonial world". Yeah I'm thinking pass on this one LOL. Hey hey me too me tooooo I hate whitey as much as anyone else me too me toooooooo. Whats the difference between this and Birds?
Ninefox is set in space with undead zombies, so its not really fantasy and not really sci fi. "military space opera" with a little fantasy mixed in. This is very Yoon Ha Lee (the author's name), all Lee stories have like like spaceships plus a drop of chinese mythology or whatever. In my infinite spare time I'm trying to read "Conservation of Shadows" a short story collection also by Lee. In my infinite spare time I have not read Ninefox but I have the $3.50 ebook and only paid $3.50 for the audiobook and thats more fun and cheaper than a hollywood movie so I'll listen on my commute, like real soon now. I have high hopes for this one. I hope to be ready for the 2017 Nebula with everything read by 2019 or so. WTF. Anyway ninefox looks good enough to read/listen to.
Everfair is African "we was steampunk kings" alt history. I know that sounds like a joke but that's actually fairly accurate paraphrasing of the author and reviewers. The idea of "King Leopold gets punked in the congo" sounds like a hell of a good plan at first glance. Its the execution of the plot where things sound like they run off the rails. From what I can figure out, the book is kinda like a Plutarch's lives of an imaginary industrial African continent. Like what if the Liberia project hadn't totally sucked. Actually I wonder if it covered why Liberia and Haiti are hell holes rather than successes. Perhaps in this fictionalization they are successes, I donno. I have mixed feelings on this. Not being African I don't find it personally compelling to read about imaginary Africans LARPing as euros, its kinda like watching white guys doing indian dances, you're not fooling anyone, its somewhat disrespectful of both cultures, and its all vaguely cringey. I feel the same way about white rappers, I mean, blackface hasn't been cool in entertainment since the 40s or so, cultural appropriation usually is pretty cringe worthy. I would imagine it doesn't handle the HBD question very intelligently, but who knows maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised. On the plus side the reviews whine and moan about the lack of interpersonal drama and preaching and focus on hard sci fi world building, so if you crack it loose from the Earth and call them all martians in a galaxy far far away maybe its not such a ridiculous story? Or if you read it as a shout out to "we wuz kangs" and laugh extremely inappropriately at the wrong spots, maybe its hilarious. I'm thinking narrowly skip this one. It sounds like the kind of thing I'd read just so I can make fun of it, farm it for harvestable memes.
I find it amusing, or typical, that the "science fiction and fantasy authors" managed to produce no sci fi this year, other than in space we gots guns 'n' zombies (at least that would be a good rock band name?), and the what if HDB don't exist because we was steampunk kings. On the other hand I think zombies in space has some promise and I intend to read it, so I guess ninefox is what you're looking for?
I haven't read it yet, so if ninefox turns out to have 50 pages in the middle of anti "fucking white male" ranting, well, it's not my fault. Superficially it looks good, thats all I can authoritatively say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:39PM (6 children)
Yeah there's entries in there obviously only because they're non-white non-males and if noms were blind they would never have made it.
You know this because you've read some of these books?
Didn't think so.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:05PM (5 children)
Dude its the Nebulas. None of those books are more than a year old and I don't think most of the voters read them either, there's just too much reading to do. I read a lot, and I read very fast, and there's no way even I can keep up with the Nebulas. A retired dude probably could. Someday that'll be me, just not today.
I read many reviews and blogs about those books because it was fun and I like Sci Fi (and fantasy to a lesser extent), and synthesized the data together which is why its absolutely gonzo journalism brutal as opposed to merely being technically wrong or outright confused. Takes a lot of study to really hit a nerve like I can do.
If you've actually read any of those books, I'd genuinely be interested in reading your effort post review, especially if you disagree.
I am very familiar with the concept of how a book appears not matching how a book actually is, and if for example Borderline might look like dreck but when read its actually pretty awesome, I'd love to know so I can read it. It would be hard to gaslight me because I read a lot of reviews, both the "gamergate style we're paid to love everything" sources and real sources. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I don't need to dissect it just to make sure its not a liquid metal Terminator 2000 in disguise..
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:18PM (4 children)
If you've actually read any of those books, I'd genuinely be interested in reading your effort post review, especially if you disagree.
And if I haven't read them, how interested are you in my opinion?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:32PM (3 children)
And if I haven't read them, how interested are you in my opinion?
I pounded amazon and several SF and F type blogs, its likely you have different data sources which would be awesome. I would imagine you'd have the same author quotes I had access to, or, maybe more. You could probably read more author blogs than I did.
Can you present your findings as entertainingly as I can ... you may as well give it a try. I'm going to dump effort into selecting a good book to read, might as well make a funny post about it too, some laughs.
I do like this kind of literature but I'm just one dude on a big universe so I must extensively judge, sort, and select, so if you can actually out select me (good luck), I'd be a happy reader. Yeah ... good luck with that. It took me until 2016 to get around to reading Ringo's "maple syrup" series ("hot gate" or something like that) from 2010 or so. There's just so much out there. I still haven't read all the Culture books although I've read most. I haven't even read all the PKD, I got Ubik sitting there waiting for me. I've heard Ubik is weird. I'm looking forward to Ubik.
Then there is always the issue of taste. For better or worse I read CSF and F+SF magazines every issue and greatly enjoy both although I prefer CSF. I think the noms for the nebulas were chosen by people who prefer reading Proudhon-Bakunin-Kroptkin, or the huffpo, or jezebel, it doesn't seem to be selected by SF fans.
I don't like preselected nominees like this. The world is big, the list of nominees is short... Much like someone else's list of "favorite foods" or "favorite games" its probably pretty bad just by the nature of the situation which opens it to comic ridicule. you can't run a voting thing like this without it turning into a comic farce so I may as well get some laughs in.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 23 2017, @08:01PM
I still haven't read all the Culture books although I've read most.
What did you think of those? I've read Phlebas, Player of Games, Excession, and like the first third/half of Use of Weapons (had to return it to the library and was rather meh about the book anyway). Liked the other 3.
I was surprised Excession didn't have the obligatory squick scene where the main character eats his own hand or something. Guess with a bunch of ships as the main characters that's a bit harder to do...
Apart from his sci fi stuff Iain Banks's stuff sounds pretty horrible in an oh-god-i-wish-i-could-forget-i-read-that-wikipedia-article sort of way.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by novak on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:00AM
Ubik is weird. And really good. I've read about 31 of PKD's books and Ubik is in the top... five or so. Definitely recommend.
No opinion on these Nebula books as I've not read them yet, and may never. I read a few dozen books a year but I have quite a backlog, so I don't really focus on new SF, unless it's William Gibson. I've read everything he has written so I try to keep up.
novak
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:46PM
The process for awarding the Nebula award doesn't start with five preselected nominees. There's an earlier stage with a long -- and I suspect very long -- list. I don't know what the process is of boiling the long list down to five, but I suspect it's more sophisticated than one person picking his favorites.
An obscure self-publishing author I know, Rebecca Blain, was surprised to find that one of her books (Dawn of Dae I think it was) was placed on the long list last year. I suspect the long list is long indeed.
By the way, Rebecca's books are quite readable. I've certainly enjoyed them. I prefer her early works for their depth and intricate world-building. She has since switched her writing process to be productive in a modern fantasy genre with a dose of humour, which seems to be much more popular than her earlier high fantasy. She pleases many, but my taste differs from that of her current market.
And no, the books aren't excuses for presenting pornographic interactions with vampires, as so much so-called modern fantasy is.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:50PM (2 children)
Oh me, oh my - the wife is looking at me like I've gone crazy. "What are you laughing at?" Love your reviews! I'll get some of Lee's work for sure. And, I'll be sure to skip the rest of that shit. Thank you very much!
If you have a book review blog or anything, I'd truly love a link to it!
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:30PM (1 child)
Better yet: A book review blog based only on other reviews! Reading books is for suckers!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 26 2017, @02:45PM
I like to read the magazines and keep up with the reviews to figure out what to read next, and unfortunately I think book review journalism is only a step or two above video game review "journalism", and we all know about that.
Its not "gamergate" level of bad, but its not that good of a situation either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:49PM (3 children)
Rap was invented by a middle aged white woman.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:03PM
"Rap was invented by a middle aged white woman."
Michael Jackson?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:07PM (1 child)
Rap was invented by a middle aged tone deaf fat welfare woman.
FTFY
I have no idea what color that fat woman was, don't give a damn, because it's irrelevant.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:02PM
Vanilla Ice?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---