My 2021 in Books

[I wrote this up on December 28, 2021 and never posted it to this blog. Better late than never? I'm not going to bother fixing up the formatting issues due to pasting from OneNote.]

According to the Goodreads 2021 Reading Challenge, I read 50 books (so far) this year. That's 26 more than my goal of 24 (208%). That sounds like an amazing over-achievement, until I reveal that 1) this year's goal was half of what I set in 2020, with an eye toward reading longer works with about the same amount of reading time, and 2) I retired at the end of April, which allowed me to spend more time reading than before (though not as much as I anticipated). 

Here are some highlights: 

 

1. Non-fiction. 12 titles of the 50 were non-fiction and several of those were focused on writing. A few stand out: 

   1. Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America by Adam Cohen - I learned a lot about how the court has impacted policy and politics and vice versa. 

   2. But He Doesn't Know the Territory! by Meredith Wilson - A fun journey with the creator of the Broadway musical The Music Man from concept to opening night. 

   3. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway - A classic. Spend time in Paris and elsewhere during the earlier part of the famous author's career. 

   4. Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Gupta, Sanjay - learn about how you learn and how to keep exercising your mental muscle throughout your life.  

 

2. Inspirational. I wanted to expand my reading of Christian literature. But I only managed one (it's pretty dense). 

   1. Knowing God by J.I. Packer - A classic with some deep thoughts about the nature of God and the Bible. 

 

3. Netgalley. My original plan was to limit myself to preview 5 or fewer titles on Netgalley this year and focus on authors I don't usually read. But with retirement, and a bunch of new books from favorite authors coming out, I was happy to post early reviews for about 10. The most notable: 

   1. A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker ★★★★★ - Having spent my high school years not too far from Laguna Beach and not too many years after the setting of the book, I was transfixed by the 16-year-old protagonist's coming of age amidst more than one family crisis and turbulent times. 

   2. The World Played Chess by Robert Dugoni - This historical look at the Viet Nam war and its impact on various lives hits the sweet spot of character and story and setting Dugoni brings to all his writing. I'm more fond of Dugoni's mystery and spy titles (I also previewed In Her Tracks [Tracy Crosswhite #8] and The Silent Sisters [Charles Jenkins #3] and recommend both). 

   3. Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner - (yes, that Brent Spiner; Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you still don't know). This isn't a memoir, though he includes some personal vignettes. It's also not really noir, though there is some mystery and some dark characters. It's a good, goofy novel for fans of STTNG. 

   4. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - The first half of this novel felt like too much work for me and I only stuck with it because I made the commitment to review it. But around the halfway point, the story really got rolling and I enjoyed the rest of it quite a bit. 

 

Some other treats this year: 

1. This Tender Land by William Kent Kreuger ★★★★★ - A delightful coming-of-age story mashing up Tom Sawyer and The Great Depression and good Midwestern values. 

2. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles ★★★★★ - A book I didn't want to end. The gentleman in question is a lesser nobleman compelled by the Soviet government to remain in the luxury hotel where he is already somewhat of a fixture. A perpetual house-arrest. We spend many years with him and his friends, adapting to changing bureaucrats and circumstances.  

3. Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson - One of those longer works I wanted to read this year, about 2,000 pages of fantasy. This is not Tolkien. But it is well-written and entertaining with wit and magic and thoughtful characters. 

4. Dune by Frank Herbert - I reread this before the new film premiered - another long work. 

 

That's not 50. You can see more of my reactions (not reviews) to books on my blog at https://perpetualreboot.blogspot.com/ And you can see my Goodreads.com 2021 wrap-up is at https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/25255662.  

 

I'm going to aim a little higher in 2022: 50 books again. I still want to reduce my TBR pile and keep up with some current titles, choosing authors I don't usually read. And I'll be sure to read some challenging non-fiction. I'll also continue to tackle those longer works and series that I've been putting off until I had more time. I've got my eye on The Expanse series. I really enjoyed the first book. 

 

Keep reading! And share a book with a friend. 

My 2024 in Books

Glossing over the fact that I'm a bad blogger and haven't done a book-year-in-review since 2021 (and I didn't even post that one), here is my summary of 2024 and a few thoughts about 2025:

According to the Goodreads 2024 Reading Challenge, I read 39 books last year. That's 9 short of my goal of 48 (I thought I was a bit closer, but discovered that Goodreads had somehow double-counted several books). I'm a bit disappointed I didn't finish stronger. But I'm not surprised, given that I read some longer works, did not mix in enough shorter works and got a little too focused on phone scrolling. As a retired person I would think I could consume a book a week without breaking a sweat (which is the other problem, I should have walked and exercised more and knocked off several audio books). 

Here are some highlights:

1. Non-fiction. Only 7 titles of the 39 were non-fiction. A few stand out:
1. The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee ★★★★★ - One of those longer books I mentioned. But well worth it to learn more about life on our planet and in our bodies.
2. Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien Lewis ★★★★ - Inspiration for the film "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" and a well-told-tale of true-life secret heroes of WWII.
3. The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly: Life Wisdom from Someone Who Will (Probably) Die Before You by Margareta Magnusson ★★★★ - Essays about living from the author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.
4. The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman ★★★★ - I didn't realize that this was not a recently released title until I was well into it (published in 1962). Even so, I was fascinated by the intricacies of pre-World War politics and early World War I warfare and all the things I (and probably most people) I did not know about it.
   
   
2. Inspirational. I had intended to expand my reading of Christian literature. But I only managed one and it's not worth mentioning. Aging Exuberantly was much more inspiring.
   
   
3. Netgalley. I stuck to my plan to limit myself to preview 5 or fewer titles on Netgalley this year and focus on backlist books and authors I don't usually read. But I was happy to post early reviews for 4 (5 if you count The Women, which I finished last December). The most notable:
1. The Women by Hannah Kristin ★★★★★ - Did I want to relive the years of Viet Nam War? No. But the author paints a vivid portrait of a combat nurse experiencing the horrors of jungle combat and an unwelcome homecoming.
2. A Cold, Cold World by Elena Taylor ★★★★★ - A classic locked-room mystery set in a small snowbound mountain town.
3. The Martian Contingency by Mary-Robinette Kowal - ★★★★ - Twenty-or-so years after a meteor hit Earth and forced mankind to reach for the stars, the first colony, sorry, habitat on Mars is trying to settle in for the long term and discovering how difficult it is to leave the worst parts of humanity behind. Fourth book in Kowal's Lady Astronaut retro space-program series.
   
   
4. Some other treats this year:
1. James by Percival Everett ★★★★★ - An amazing book that was an easy read with difficult content, worthy of your time and the attention and awards it's been receiving. I also read Everett's dramady Erasure ★★★★ and enjoyed it.
2. Matterhorn by Christopher Reich ★★★★★ - A ripping spy story. 
3. Starter Villain by John Scalzi ★★★★★ - A preposterous scifi romp about super villains. 
4. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie ★★★★ - A classic whodunnit. Charming beyond its outdated, clunky language. 
5. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John ★★★★ - Trippy novel unloosed in time. 
6. The Expanse (series) by James S. A. Corey - I read the last three books of the series this year. It's obvious why they were excluded from the television series: a severe time jump and huge set pieces with the main characters scattered around the galaxy. Still some very good reading.

You can read more about these and other books I read in 2024 elsewhere in Perpetual Reboot. My Goodreads.com 2024 wrap-up is at https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024/3195690 or https://www.goodreads.com/readingchallenges/gr/annual/2024. 

I'm going to keep the same goal in 2024: 48 books. Lowering the bar would serve no purpose. I have no hope of actually reducing my TBR pile, since I keep adding titles. But I do hope to balance things out by (re-)visiting some classics, mixing in some current titles, including authors I don't usually read and pushing hard to read some challenging non-fiction. Maybe I'll even write a blog post with a more detailed plan. Don't hold your breath!

Keep reading! And share a book with a friend.

My 2020 in Books

According to the Goodreads 2020 Reading Challenge, I read 45 books this year. That's a bunch of reading. But is 3 short of my goal of 48 (94%). I think the main excuse I have for missing the number is that I was stymied from listening to audio books during commute and gym time because I've been working from home for the past 300 days. I did well on my sub-goal of reading more current titles: 14 (almost 1/3) were published in 2020. Another sub-goal was more non-fiction (that also wasn't a biography or about writing): 7 titles fit that description. On the flip-side, this meant that I only read 2 titles out of my backlog of physical books. But I did manage to read a majority of physical books that I purchased via my local bookstore. Here are some highlights:

1. Non-fiction. These four really stood out:
1. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Laren - I read this early on during the pandemic lockdown. Oddly enough, reading about what the people of London had to endure during The Blitz in WWII helped put my own situation into perspective.
2. What Unites Us by Dan Rather - I read this around the time of the election and post-election furor and I, along with many others, found it a quite comforting portrait of what the United States is really about.
3. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski - A deeply personal and moving rags-to-riches, hard-work-pays-off Hollywood story without being cloying, sensational or scandalous (by the creator of the TV series Babylon 5 and Sense8).
4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates - made me think differently about the idea of "race" in historical and modern America.
   
   
2. Netgalley. I limited myself to previewing 5 titles on Netgalley this year, including some authors that are new to me.  I was happy to post early reviews for all of them. My favorites:
1. The Last Agent (sequel to The Eighth Sister) by Robert Dugoni - the second installment is even more thrilling than the first.
2. All We Buried by Elena Taylor - excellent first book in a new crime series by a local author that uncovers the (fictional) secrets in a small town.
3. The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal - third book in the Lady Astronaut series, which I highly recommend for fans of early space flight, NASA and good writing.

Some other treats this year:

1. Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré - His most recently published novel and le Carré at his best. Boiled down. Insightful. At turns appropriately humorous and cruel. His spies find action in inaction and waiting. In talking their way through confrontations, rather than shooting.
2. Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) - is a fun collection of short stories that all manage to incorporate the use of a typewriter (he's a big fan and collector of them).
3. Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin (audio book) - tells the story of one particular 19th Century ship and her crew as they explore the South and North Poles. I loved hearing the excitement in the author's voice as he read this.
4. Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb - a quite fascinating read about the early days of auto racing and what is now Formula 1.

My Goodreads.com 2020 wrap-up is at https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/19861064

I'm planning a similar strategy in 2021. Clear out my backlog, yet keep up with some current titles, choosing authors I don't usually read. And I'll be sure to read some challenging non-fiction. But this year I will set a lower overall number and tackle some longer works that I've been avoiding in order to keep my numbers up. Who knows? I may even be able to find more time to read this year.

Keep reading! And share a book with a friend.

My 2019 In Books

According to the Goodreads 2019 Reading Challenge, I read 54 books this year. Six more than my goal of 48. One goal was to clear out my backlog of physical books. I made some progress. Several of these are actually short stories, novellas or graphic novels. Audio books helped, too. Here are some highlights:

1. Non-fiction. I gravitate toward fiction. But I also managed to keep it real:
1. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow - Lin Manuel Miranda's inspiration for the musical. I started this in late 2018 and took almost six months to finish, but it was worth it.
2. Why We Sleep - informative and highly recommended!
3. Factfulness - also informative and highly recommended! And surprising! This will challenge how you think about the world, and your neighbors.


2. Novellas. These have been a way of keeping up the overall book count without investing large amounts of time. A couple of series were very enjoyable:
1. Binti, Binti: Home, Binti: The Night Masquerade - highly readable science fiction about cultures that are both foreign and alien to me
2. Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy - further adventures (that starts in All Systems Red) of a self-aware SecUnit 'droid calling itself "Murderbot" that's really good at its job and doesn't actually murder


3. Netgalley. I limited myself to previewing 5 titles on Netgalley this year. All authors I already read. I still owe a few reviews. The best:
1. The Eighth Sister - darn good spy/legal novel from Robert Dugoni
2. A Cold Trail - another spot-on crime thriller from Robert Dugoni
3. The Last Good Guy - third book in a series by T. Jefferson Parker. Now I have to go read the first couple.

Some other treats this year:

1. Motherless Brooklyn is a mystery story told from a quirky point of view character. Now a movie.
2. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett was languishing on my reading list. I finally read it before I watched the off-beat television series.
3. Stumptown - the graphic novel inspiration for the new television series about a low-rent PI in Portland. The same, but different.
4. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (audio book). I wish I'd read/heard this while he was still alive. It sheds a different light on who he was and how restaurants work.

My Goodreads.com 2019 wrap-up is at https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2019/3195690

I'll have a slightly different strategy in 2020. I still want to clear off my TBR shelf. I'll set my Goodreads.com 2020 Reading Challenge at 48 books (4/month). But I also want to…

1. Read more current titles. I don't want to be stuck in the past, in constant catch-up mode. I want to read at least six books published in 2020 that aren't just the latest by authors I already enjoy.
2. Read more actual non-fiction. I should move beyond biographies and how-to books about writing.

Keep reading! And share a book with a friend.

My 2016 In Books

By the skin of my teeth and a few last minute graphic novels, I read 52 books in 2016, which was the goal I set. At times, this felt like a bit more of a chore this year (compared to last year, when I had the same goal), like I was under pressure to perform. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1. Long books. I decided to attack several longer works this year and that made it more challenging to keep up. I've been avoiding longer books in previous years in order to enhance my bottom line. Forsaking any of these would have added 1 or 2 additional works to my 'done' pile. But then I would have missed:
1. Game of Thrones (wondrous)
2. Leviathan Wakes (stupendous - 5 stars)
3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and …the Order of the Phoenix (there's a better, shorter book inside each of these)


2. Fewer graphic novels. These have been a way of keeping up the overall book count without investing large amounts of time. I read 14 in 2015, but only 7 in 2016. My favorites were:
1. Leaves on the Wind (Serenity #4) - good follow-up to the Serenity film for Firefly fans
2. Lost in Space - The Curious Galactics - just like a TV episode (because it's based on unproduced scripts)
3. How to Talk to Girls at Parties - Neil Gaiman (need I say more? I also loved the short story)


3. Netgalley. I trapped myself into 9 titles on Netgalley in 2016 (vs. only 4 in 2015). On the whole, this was a good thing. I read a couple of titles I would have otherwise missed. But it did mean I felt the pressure to perform (and I'm still behind on posting feedback). I'm not a reviewer. I know what I like. Putting that into words does not come easily. Some surprises:
1. IQ (a quirky mystery novel that doesn't read like one)
2. Mug Shot/Whole Latte Murder (#2 & #3 in a chick-lit series that I enjoy more than I should)
3. Curious Minds (an unexpectedly dull and unfunny book from Janet Evanovich)

Some other treats this year:

1. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is quirky and fun and marvelously performed on audio book. 5 stars
2. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ranson Riggs is also quirky and fun and worked remarkably well on audio, considering it is based on odd photographs. (What's the deal with possessive titles with P's in them?)
3. In the Clearing and The Trapped Girl by Robert Dugoni, the 2016 and 2017 releases in the Tracey Crosswhite series. The biggest benefit of Netgalley is getting to read stuff before it's generally available. I bought both of these (and his 2016 stand-alone The 7th Canon), anyway.
4. The Emperor's Revenge by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison took me on a completely different trip than I expected.

My Goodreads.com 2016 wrap-up is at https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2016/3195690

I'm going to keep reading in 2017, but will slow the pace a little.

1. Fewer Netgalley books. That was too much pressure and I have plenty on my TBR list already, including…
2. Finish off more series. I probably won't get through much more of Game of Thrones (actually A Song of Ice and Fire) or The Expanse. I do plan to finish Harry Potter, Old Man's War, Wool, and Cinder and get back to Mystborn (at least the 'alloy' era) and Reckoners (Steelheart). Just this list could fill up my entire year. Except I also want to…
3. Read more Young Adult titles. One reason I want to reduce the pressure on my reading is to do more writing and my current project is shaping up as YA. I need to understand the genre.

Keep reading! And share a book with a friend.

Authors and Web Sites and Platform, Oh My!

As I mentioned earlier (Dehosted and Rehosted), I had to find a new virtual home for my small amount of personal web site content. The move has given me the opportunity to rethink the content of that site. Up until now, it's been a haphazard collection of widgets and links to my haphazard collection of (so-called) social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Goodreads and BlogSpot (but not yet Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr and Google+), along with a sort of personal profile in bullet-list form.

It turns out, I had already been thinking about what I should be doing with my web site to prepare for promoting my authorly activities, assuming I would buckle down and turn one of my projects into something publishable in the not too distant future. I wanted to at least polish up my bio and weed out the less pertinent tidbits and links.

That still leaves some questions to answer. How does someone who has not published a book create an 'author' web site? What should a writer who has written at least eight unfinished novels (for National Novel Writing Month and in-between) say about their creations? Should I list them? Describe them? Should I be teasing about projects that are in-progress or the worlds I have created for them? Or just wait until I have something finished and at least submitted before doing that? I know I should (and want to) spend more time writing and finishing the stories than producing 'extra' content about them.

Of course, there are plenty of folks out there with opinions on what such a web site should include. I found this one on Creating a Website as an Unpublished Author by Amanda Luedeke pretty insightful. I guess I'll keep it focused on who I am and what might make my work interesting. I'll leave a few clues about the sort of stories I've been writing (maybe super short blurbs about my NaNoWriMo work). Keep the social media links intact. And work harder to keep the blogs active.

Meanwhile, until I get my site settled and a book published, have a look at the web sites (and books!) of some my favorite authors. They give me something to aim at and I'm amazed to actually call several of them friends.

• Robert Dugoni
• Boyd Morrison
• Guy Pace
• Mary Robinette Kowal
• Cherie Priest
• Jessica Lourey
• John Scalzi
• Neil Gaiman

Dehosted and Rehosted

I haven't put much effort into my personal web site in quite a while. There was not much point. I'm not selling anything. I'm horrible at blogging (I have a couple of infrequently updated channels). It was fun to play around with HTML and some layouts and graphics, back in the day. But it was easy to just ignore it. There were plenty of other ways to spend my time and effort (or not).

Then Comcast forced my hand.

Since I use them as my Internet provider, I have been hosting what little content I did have on their free service. It had a somewhat ugly URL (http://home.comcast.net/~billwnet/), but that was easily dealt with by simply forwarding my much easier to type domain (billw.net) there. They recently decided to discontinue the free hosting. I had to find a new place to host my stuff.

My options:

1. As a consolation for discontinuing the web hosting service, Comcast gave their subscribers two years of a Pro subscription to Weebly.com. Weebly offers drag-and-drop web site construction and a spectrum of features and services.
2. Add hosting to one of my GoDaddy domain registrations. This would allow me to either upload my existing, but lame, web content or use their web site constructor to create something more interesting. Either way would cost me a little more each month.
3. Research and find another way to get free, or almost free, hosting. Been there, done that. I'd probably wind up and someplace like Squarespace.com (a Weebly competitor) or back at GoDaddy.

For now, I'm going with option #1. Why not? It's paid for (for two years). The functionality seems fairly reasonable. It even takes care of making the site compatible with the smartphone form factor and I can use one of my existing domains for it. The only thing is, I can't just upload my existing site content (just a bunch of HTML). I need to recreate it. I might as well take the opportunity to update what I have and make it more attractive.

More on that in a subsequent post. For now, you can find my new web site (in progress, under construction and all that) at billweinberger.net.

Films of the Season

Just this morning I got to thinking about the quickly approaching Christmas season and the associated films and television specials I look forward to each year. I've decided to turn my mental list into an actual list (in no particular order):

• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• Ruldolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (tv)
• A Christmas Carol (either the 1951 b&w classic with Alastair Sim, or the 1984 tv version with George C. Scott; though I'm also a sucker for the 1970 musical Scrooge with Albert Finney)
• Miracle on 34th Street (1959, b&w)
• It's a Wonderful Life (b&w)
  
• Elf (new classic)
  
• A Christmas Story
• White Christmas (or Holiday Inn, or both)
• The Santa Clause (almost a guilty pleasure)

That just happens to work out to ten. Some also-rans and guilty pleasures are worth mentioning: The Bishop's Wife, Jingle All The Way (with the governator), Die Hard, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol, any Andy Williams Christmas Special, and if it ever makes it to video John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together.

Hawaii Five-O Again

Anybody excited about the new 'Hawaii Five-O' starting this fall? I'm skeptical, but might watch it to see what they do with Daniel Dae Kim ('Lost') and Grace Park ('Battlestar Galactica'). In the meantime, the new opening sequence, with a brand new, yet retro, version of the theme is out. Thanks to Ken Levine (Hawaii 5 0 -- then, now, and the one that didn't sell) for pointing out good renditions of the original and new versions, plus a remake from 1998 (starring Gary Busey?), of which I was not previously aware.








Bonus #1: The Ventures performing their version at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (jump to about 7:10 or follow this link)



Bonus #2: One more for those that can't get enough

2010 (Down to Earth) Locus Awards

First of all, congratulations to all of the winners and nominees for the 2010 Locus awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy.

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/06/2010-locus-awards-winners/

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/04/locus-awards-finalists.html

I suppose I could have actually attended some of the festivities, given that they took place just across the lake in Seattle. I wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe next year.

Somehow, this year I have been paying enough attention that I've actually read many of the winning and nominated stories a priori, rather than catching up to them post facto, which is my usual modus operandi. Looking back, I probably read one or two winners from 2008 and 2009 before they got awards. For quite a while before that, I was totally not paying attention and barely kept up with any.

I think my greater hip-ness this year is due to following the blog and/or Twitter feeds for several prominent authors. My desire to become an author, though perhaps not an award-winning one, has pushed me to pay better attention to what's happening in the industry. As such, and as I look at this year's Locus winners, I actually do see what might be termed a trend: the novels are all Earth-bound.

Starting with the winner for Science Fiction Novel, Boneshaker (Cherie Priest), we have a science fiction story not only not set somewhere out in space, but set on an Earth of the past that never was. There's a lot of this going around. I like it. But it's not Ringworld. One of the nominees that's already on my to-be-read list, Galileo's Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson) sounds like it involves a bit more outer space and future. But then the winner for Young-Adult Novel, Leviathan (Scott Westerfeld), is back on Earth in the steampunk mold. This time in the era of WWI, rather than the Civil War.

My perception of fantasy novels is that they are generally set in some indefinite past time and place (e.g., Middle Earth). This year's Fantasy Novel winner, The City & The City (China Miéville) ignores that and takes place in some indefinite present time and an indefinite Earth-bound pair of cities. A very trippy read, but also close to home.

The three nominees for First Novel of which I have first hand experience or knowledge, including the winner, The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi), are also very down-to-Earth. The Windup Girl is a hard science-fiction novel where the science of the future has been pushed back to rely on technology of the past, due to oil shortages and greenhouse gasses. Lamentation (Ken Scholes) seems like it might be on Earth and hints that it's in some post-Apocalyptic future (or could it be on another planet, ala Le Guin's Dragonriders?). And Norse Code (Greg van Eekhout) is pretty obviously (based on the sample chapters I saw) set in the gritty urban streets of Earth.

So does any science fiction get the reader into outer space or into the future? I have to admit I'm not current on short stories or the other short forms, like novella and novelette. And I haven't read or gotten familiar with the other novel nominees. But judging by the titles, I'm guessing at least some of them do. And I know for sure that the winner for Anthology does. I'm several stories into The New Space Opera 2 (Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds.) and it's chockablock with characters and settings that are not of the the Earth or of its past.

Will the Earth-bound story continue to dominate science fiction and fantasy awards? It seems like there is an awful lot of action in the steampunk, alternate history, and urban fantasy realms of fiction. I'm sure that these up and coming authors will continue to charm us with visions of Earth past, present, and future. I'm just as sure that there are other authors who will beguile us with stories set on other planets and in other galaxies.

In the meantime, though, I hope that there will always be room for down-to-Earth adventures. So I'd better get back to work and finish my science fiction mystery story set in an alternate 1950s where we're about to get the space age for which we wished.

About Bill

Over at WordPress, I've launched a new blog specifically About Bill (http://aboutbill.wordpress.com). The first Bill in the list: Bill Nye (The Science Guy).

Enjoy.

Writers Needed (1909)

In Scientific American for June 2009: 100 Years Ago

JUNE 1909
WRITERS NEEDED— “Moving pictures are exhibited in about ten thousand theaters and halls in the United States. With the rapid spread of this new amusement has also come a marked change in the public taste. Spectators were once quite content with a view of factory employees going to and from their work, the arrival and departure of railway trains, and similar scenes. Nowadays, a more or less coherent story must be unfolded, for which reason the makers of moving pictures have been compelled to write plays (or at least to conceive them) and to have them acted before the camera.”