2003: Stuff: Reading
Jan. 4th, 2004 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentI read about thirty books this year, which seems a little pathetic. Of those, roughly twenty were published in 2003, and ten or so were older works. Authors new or mostly new to me this year included Paul di Filippo, Ian R Macleod and Lucius Shepard. 2003 was therefore a year in which I feel I gained a much greater appreciation of good quality prose.
And accordingly, the best novel I read this year was The Light Ages by Ian R Macleod, in which getting lost in the beauty of the language is the least of the joys on offer. The central conceit - an England in which the industrial revolution was based on magic - is carefully detailed and, in Macleod's hands, immensely resonant. The story concerns a coming of age and the turning of an Age, so it runs the gamut of personal and social change. In 2004, this book needs to win awards.
On the other hand, the most out-and-out fun novel I read was Paul di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice, a madcap spacetime jaunt that has more ideas per page than anyone except possibly Charlie Stross. The hapless hero rushes between worlds based on cellular automata, exaggerated chaos theory, a world of highly infective memes and much, much more.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
twic described it as 'pop science on acid,' and that's still the best description I've heard. The only downsides are that it costs thirty-five pounds, and it's only available as a limited edition from PS Publishing.
PS Publishing as a whole had another strong year. The ones I read were Fuzzy Dice; Lucius Shepard's Floater, a hypnotic voodoo police procedural; Terry Bisson's Dear Abbey, a melancholy far-future exploration in the manner of The Time Machine, but with a more ecological bent; Jupiter, Magnified by Adam Roberts, which tells exactly the story you might expect based on the title: Jupiter is magnified so that it appears to fill half of Earth's night sky; and Riding The Rock by Stephen Baxter, a novella that successfully recasts the author's Xeelee war as a version of World War I. Early in the year I also picked up Cities, the fourth Gollancz collection of PS novellas. It's worth the asking price for Paul di Filippo's A Year In The Linear City alone...But you've all heard me say that before. It should have won the Hugo, dammit!
Baxter and Roberts both had good full novels out this year, as well as the novellas above. Coalescent is the first volume of a new series in the Xeelee timeline, although you have to be paying pretty close attention to realise it's anything other than a standalone story. It's not a perfect novel by any means, but when it's good, it's very good. Polystom, meanwhile, displays the now-familiar Roberts obsession with unpleasant protagonists and sprawling wars, but does so in a beautifully conceived and described alternate universe (the atmosphere extends between the planets), and at its close delivers a philosophical kick to the head that would not disgrace Greg Egan or Philip K Dick.
I read three good books set in spaaaace this year. The best was Justina Robson's grand and witty Natural History, although it works significantly better as a thought-experiment than as a plausible future. Allen M Steele's Coyote stories made it to novel form; it's probably more lightweight than it needs to be, but enjoyable nonetheless. And Charles Stross' Singularity Sky was a lot of fun, although in plot terms somewhat rough around the edges.
As usual, I didn't read much outside the SF ghetto, and when I did I wasn't blown away by what I found. Toby Litt's collection Adventures In Capitalism, whilst not without its moments, reaffirmed my confusion about exactly what mainstream short stories are for; they don't have the basis in ideas that SF stories have, so it seems that all that is left is slices-of-life. If anyone can recommend good non-SF short story writers to me, now would be the time.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake was good but not that good, and a fun demonstration of what you write if you think you know what science fiction is but actually don't. On the other hand, The Master And Margarita is an excellent demonstration of what someone writes when they reinvent fantastic fiction all on their own; massively impressive, although not by any means an easy novel to read. I also enjoyed Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, cleverly written from the point of view of an autistic boy, and a reminder of just how alien other people can be.
I read a number of classic SF novels this year. They carry that status for a reason. Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human is a group-mind story like nothing you've ever read before, and The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth presages the capitalist excess of the 1980s by several decades. John Christopher's The Death Of Grass proves that someone other than John Wyndham can write great British disaster novels, whilst Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 prove that nobody can bend your mind like a pro.
I also managed to track down a copy of The Separation. Having read it, I can say without hesitation that it's an excellent novel. I can also say without hesitation that I wish something else had won the Clarke and the BSFA award, because this is a book that's SF by only the barest of margins. It's a good book to demonstrate the range of the genre, but if you pressed me I'd have to say I'd prefer something more full-blooded to get the awards.
When it comes to short fiction, I don't think I read a single new collection. On the other hand, I did read (or I'm currently working on) excellent older collections by Lucius Shepard (Barnacle Bill The Spacer And Other Stories), Ian R Macleod (Voyages By Starlight), Paul di Filippo (Ribofunk), Zoran Zivkovic (Impossible Encounters, Time-Gifts, Seven Touches Of Music and The Library), and John Barnes (Apostrophes and Apocalypses, although there the nonfiction pieces were routinely more interesting than the fiction). Meanwhile, I had subscriptions to Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction and The Third Alternative. The best stories I read this year were:
Novellas
In general, I discovered a love for the novella this year. Long enough to supply reasonable breadth and depth, and short enough to read in an hour or two, they just sit well with my current reading habits.
Novellettes and Shorts (combined because Interzone and TTA don't specify length, and I can't always tell which category they should go in).
In general I felt that Asimov's and Interzone had good years, but I was a little disappointed in The Third Alternative. When my subscription comes up for renewal, I'm considering letting it lapse and picking up Fantasy & Science Fiction instead.
Overall, 2003 was a good year, if not quite as spectacular as 2002. In the course of it, I read recommendations by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ajr, greengolux, korovyov_x and snowking, and I'm working on ones from twic, flyingsauce and brassyn. For future reference, nobody should ever hesitate to recommend things to me; I like it! Although it does sometimes take me a while to get around to them...
And accordingly, the best novel I read this year was The Light Ages by Ian R Macleod, in which getting lost in the beauty of the language is the least of the joys on offer. The central conceit - an England in which the industrial revolution was based on magic - is carefully detailed and, in Macleod's hands, immensely resonant. The story concerns a coming of age and the turning of an Age, so it runs the gamut of personal and social change. In 2004, this book needs to win awards.
On the other hand, the most out-and-out fun novel I read was Paul di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice, a madcap spacetime jaunt that has more ideas per page than anyone except possibly Charlie Stross. The hapless hero rushes between worlds based on cellular automata, exaggerated chaos theory, a world of highly infective memes and much, much more.
twic described it as 'pop science on acid,' and that's still the best description I've heard. The only downsides are that it costs thirty-five pounds, and it's only available as a limited edition from PS Publishing.PS Publishing as a whole had another strong year. The ones I read were Fuzzy Dice; Lucius Shepard's Floater, a hypnotic voodoo police procedural; Terry Bisson's Dear Abbey, a melancholy far-future exploration in the manner of The Time Machine, but with a more ecological bent; Jupiter, Magnified by Adam Roberts, which tells exactly the story you might expect based on the title: Jupiter is magnified so that it appears to fill half of Earth's night sky; and Riding The Rock by Stephen Baxter, a novella that successfully recasts the author's Xeelee war as a version of World War I. Early in the year I also picked up Cities, the fourth Gollancz collection of PS novellas. It's worth the asking price for Paul di Filippo's A Year In The Linear City alone...But you've all heard me say that before. It should have won the Hugo, dammit!
Baxter and Roberts both had good full novels out this year, as well as the novellas above. Coalescent is the first volume of a new series in the Xeelee timeline, although you have to be paying pretty close attention to realise it's anything other than a standalone story. It's not a perfect novel by any means, but when it's good, it's very good. Polystom, meanwhile, displays the now-familiar Roberts obsession with unpleasant protagonists and sprawling wars, but does so in a beautifully conceived and described alternate universe (the atmosphere extends between the planets), and at its close delivers a philosophical kick to the head that would not disgrace Greg Egan or Philip K Dick.
I read three good books set in spaaaace this year. The best was Justina Robson's grand and witty Natural History, although it works significantly better as a thought-experiment than as a plausible future. Allen M Steele's Coyote stories made it to novel form; it's probably more lightweight than it needs to be, but enjoyable nonetheless. And Charles Stross' Singularity Sky was a lot of fun, although in plot terms somewhat rough around the edges.
As usual, I didn't read much outside the SF ghetto, and when I did I wasn't blown away by what I found. Toby Litt's collection Adventures In Capitalism, whilst not without its moments, reaffirmed my confusion about exactly what mainstream short stories are for; they don't have the basis in ideas that SF stories have, so it seems that all that is left is slices-of-life. If anyone can recommend good non-SF short story writers to me, now would be the time.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake was good but not that good, and a fun demonstration of what you write if you think you know what science fiction is but actually don't. On the other hand, The Master And Margarita is an excellent demonstration of what someone writes when they reinvent fantastic fiction all on their own; massively impressive, although not by any means an easy novel to read. I also enjoyed Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, cleverly written from the point of view of an autistic boy, and a reminder of just how alien other people can be.
I read a number of classic SF novels this year. They carry that status for a reason. Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human is a group-mind story like nothing you've ever read before, and The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth presages the capitalist excess of the 1980s by several decades. John Christopher's The Death Of Grass proves that someone other than John Wyndham can write great British disaster novels, whilst Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 prove that nobody can bend your mind like a pro.
I also managed to track down a copy of The Separation. Having read it, I can say without hesitation that it's an excellent novel. I can also say without hesitation that I wish something else had won the Clarke and the BSFA award, because this is a book that's SF by only the barest of margins. It's a good book to demonstrate the range of the genre, but if you pressed me I'd have to say I'd prefer something more full-blooded to get the awards.
When it comes to short fiction, I don't think I read a single new collection. On the other hand, I did read (or I'm currently working on) excellent older collections by Lucius Shepard (Barnacle Bill The Spacer And Other Stories), Ian R Macleod (Voyages By Starlight), Paul di Filippo (Ribofunk), Zoran Zivkovic (Impossible Encounters, Time-Gifts, Seven Touches Of Music and The Library), and John Barnes (Apostrophes and Apocalypses, although there the nonfiction pieces were routinely more interesting than the fiction). Meanwhile, I had subscriptions to Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction and The Third Alternative. The best stories I read this year were:
Novellas
- Barton, William, 'Off On A Starship' (Asimov's, September 2003). What happens when SF gets a mid-life crisis. Barton's story mixes up aliens, exotic planets and what it means to be a fan. It could have been self-indulgent, but in fact it's often sad and sometimes harsh.
- Bisson, Terry, 'Dear Abbey' (PS Publishing). Noted above.
- Shepard, Lucius, 'Ariel' (Asimov's, October 2003). A lush, hyper-romantic story of destiny and parallel universes.
- Stross, Charles, 'Curator' (Asimov's, December 2003). I haven't been that impressed with the previous couple of Accelerando stories, but this one won me right back over. The ultimate dysfunctional family reunion.
- Vinge, Vernor, 'The Cookie Monster' (Analog, October 2003). The singularity as seen from inside an emerging AI. Nobody does this sort of thing better.
- Honorable mention: Doctorow, Cory, 'Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom', which is technically a novel but in form seems to fit more comfortably in this category.
In general, I discovered a love for the novella this year. Long enough to supply reasonable breadth and depth, and short enough to read in an hour or two, they just sit well with my current reading habits.
Novellettes and Shorts (combined because Interzone and TTA don't specify length, and I can't always tell which category they should go in).
- Ballantyne, Tony, 'The Waters Of Meribah' (Interzone 189). Deals with the nature of punishment, what it means to become an alien, and a radically different cosmology, and does it in less then ten pages. Ballantyne has written other very good stories over the past few years, and has a debut novel, Recursion out sometime this year that I'm looking forward to.
- Baxter, Stephen, 'Touching Centauri' (Asimov's August 2003). A bit of a cheat, since I actually read this first as part of Phase Space last year. But it's one of Baxter's best short stories for several years, something like a post-Matrix take on 'The Nine Billion Names Of God'.
- Butler, Chris, 'The Smart Minefield' (Interzone 185). A traditional SF logic-puzzle story: How do you deal with a minefield that rewires itself every time you disable one of the mines? Clever and funny.
- Cleary, David Ira, 'The Automatic Circus' (TTA 36). A story that's something like steampunk, but not really, dealing with a mysterious robotic circus.
- Glass, Alexander, 'From The Corner Of My Eye' (Asimov's, August 2003). A densely written tale of what happens when the lines between virtual and real worlds become blurred.
- Purdom, Tom, 'Sheltering' (Asimov's, August 2003). A brief story describing people sheltering from catastrophe.
- Purdom, Tom, 'The Path Of the Transgressor' (Asimov's, June 2003). I was trying to limit myself to one story per author, but this was too good to leave out. A traditional alien-world story with acute observation of social dynamics.
- Reed, Robert, 'Hexagons' (Asimov's, July 2003). I'm a complete sucker for game stories, and I have a soft spot for alternate worlds. This story combines the two, and the only flaw is a slightly perfunctory ending.
- Rusch, Kristine Kathryn, 'June Sixteenth At Anna's' (Asimov's, April 2003). What you get when you crosswire remote-viewing time portals and DVD special editions. But far, far more effective than that sounds. Possibly my favourite story of the year.
- Shepard, Lucius, 'Only Partly Here' (Asimov's, March 2003). An inevitable post-september 11th story. In anyone else's hands, it would be unbearable; Shepard makes it work.
In general I felt that Asimov's and Interzone had good years, but I was a little disappointed in The Third Alternative. When my subscription comes up for renewal, I'm considering letting it lapse and picking up Fantasy & Science Fiction instead.
Overall, 2003 was a good year, if not quite as spectacular as 2002. In the course of it, I read recommendations by
ajr, greengolux, korovyov_x and snowking, and I'm working on ones from twic, flyingsauce and brassyn. For future reference, nobody should ever hesitate to recommend things to me; I like it! Although it does sometimes take me a while to get around to them...
