Group Reads - Sci-Fi Book 3

The place to select the third book in the SF Group Reads project.

Who wants to start the selection process?

Necropath, Eric Brown
Farthing, Jo Walton (again)
The Night Sessions, Ken Macleod
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness (got lots of good reviews)

... or are we going to stick to classic books (as we have done so far)?

... how about a female author this time? Have already mentioned Jo Walton. But there's Timmi Duchamp, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Suzette Haden Elgin, Gwyneth Jones, Kay Kenyon, Liz Williams...

Any SF, classic or not, is fair game. Part of the exercise is to introduce ourselves to things we might not otherwise read. I would prefer to stay away from Fantasy, but that's me.

I've got no problem with women, although some of them may not agree.

NOT radio freefall ...and i just bought it - nothing "heinlienesque" please. Nice to see someone else mention Vonarburg - calm, understated paranoia. Lisa Mason's the Golden nineties is v. good historical sf..but i've read it and would rather read something new

No suggestions from me this time. Just a general preference statement--nothing too thick, or fantastick. That said, I'll read whatever gets the most votes in the end.

I think it's time to consider the hugely underrated (here in the US, that is) Gwyneth Jones so I'll toss Life (no touchstone) into the nominations hat. It's not a whacking great tome, but neither a slim little bagatelle it be at +/-368pp. It's available to US readers, who should one and all be head-hangingly embarrassed to have ignored it so far, from Aqueduct Books. Whoever they are.

On the antique-books side, what about another post-apocalyptic goodie? Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber is one I have on my shelves to read...it's more akin to A Canticle for Liebowitz in its setting than Triffids, but it could simply be too much too soon...?

I'll always second Jo Walton's Farthing because I love the series, and Inspector Carmichael, so much.

I would put in a vote for Farthing, because I would never read the book otherwise.

Necropath - Eric Brown
Farthing - Jo Walton
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber

If I have missed any, (or there are other suggestions) I will update the list.

I have one Gwyneth Jones from years ago, Divine Endurance, which I remember liking, but I just have not seen her work in bookstores here in the States!

I'm still nominating A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge--it is still sitting there in my TBR pile.

I'm not nominating but commenting--found a copy of Anathem on my local library new books shelf today and grabbed it. It IS a big book.

I don't think Jones has ever been published in the US - except for an edition of Bold As Love by Night Shade Books. Oh, and Life: A Novel by Aqueduct Press, which is US-based - and that's the only edition of the book.

I'm just sitting here, wide-eyed, waiting for you to decide.

Is anyone keeping up with these suggestions? Whoever decides to manage this this time needs to capture what has been suggested so far or else it will be a real headache later.

Having coordinated the read for Book of the New Sun I'm going to let some one else coordinate this time.

Anyone want to step up?

Well, Ian, my copy of Divine Endurance by Gwyneth Jones was published by TOR Books in 1989--I bought it new at that time. And after reading it, was on the lookout for more by her but never found aught.

In message 8 rojse agreed to update the list.

I'm again nominating Hominids.

I, like #s 3 & 5, would not be into fantasy.

i'd like to add Charles Stross Saturn's Children to the semi-formal list of possibilities. (having just read a review in new scientist)
thanks
bob

Necropath - Eric Brown
Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
Farthing - Jo Walton

Keep the suggestions rolling in - the more there are, the better chance there is we'll find something we all want to read.

Are we supposed to vote for the nominations first? How many suggestions before the book choice? That's already nine books in #16, I think if there are too many the votes could get splintered. It's nicer when a winning book gets a bigger chunk of votes than two, say.

jmo!

in re how voting works..could we have 1 vote against a particular novel? in addition to an affirmative vote for one?

Well, rojse seems to have volunteered to do the honors this time, so I propose the following: The thread opened on 3 December, so shall we close nominations on 13 December? It's a busy month, so giving more time seems likely to reduce participation rather than encourage it...too many things competing for attention, too long a time between nomination and voting, less likely to remember what's going on?

In the past during this phase we have multiple suggestions for the same work. At the end of the suggestion cycle the four or five books with the most suggestions have been put into a poll and people vote on the books in the poll. So if you see a book you would like to read that has already been suggested, second it.

I second A Fire Upon the Deep.

Okay then, top five suggestions enter the actual voting?

I second the nomination for Farthing.

umm.i'll third Farthing; A Fire Upon the Deep is a very fine book..but i've read it which puts it off my voting list.

Necropath - Eric Brown
Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
(2) A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
(3) Farthing - Jo Walton

The third vote for Farthing is mine, by the way - I would never look at it otherwise.

We have thirty-one members and twelve votes for the next book. Surely there are more people than this that have an opinion on what we should read next.

Well, since there's no option of group comments/e-mails... maybe we should just go ahead with who's there? Maybe not everyone is available or ready for every read.

Besides, people like clicking on polls--set up the vote and I bet more will appear.

Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan - only female cyperpunk novel I've heard much of anything about

Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata

There you go - a couple of novels by female authors kicking around on my tbr pile. :)

I'm currently reading The Day of the Triffids. so I should be ready for the next book by the time it gets firmed up.

#26 -Really,, i know i'm a crank on the subject, but read some of Melissa Scott's novels...cyberpunk/art/class stratification/gender relations/well wrought characters and cultures. Pass on trouble and her friends and dive into Dreaming Metal, Burning Bright, Night Sky Mine, Dreamships..Dreaming Metal is my favorite but all of the above are underrated, underknown(sic) and damn fine books. Avoid her fantasy (well, my wife liked 'em, but i wasn't so hot on 'em).

Night Sky Mine is emotionally astute for SF; Dreaming Metal the most complex, but tied together very well and not all that long at all.

Problem. Melissa Scott's novels will not be easy to find in the UK.

Also, I've read Linda Nagata's Vast and it was... meh.

vast...was vast..i'd be willing to pick up some second hand Scott and sent them over to one person to redistribute..not necessarily for a group read

Well there aren't too difficult to find - Forbidden Planet will probably have some in (in the big London shop) and there are second hand sellers for a number of the books (Amazon) but people would have to go out of their way to find them. They won't be in libraries (well maybe the Star Trek ones) or available from regular shops.

Personally I managed to pick up a copy of Night Sky Mine from a charity shop for a couple of quid. I must say it didn't set me afire with enthusiasm to track down her other stuff, it was OK but I was expecting something fantastic after the build-up that you had given her.

sorry..Scott has just clicked with me as few other authors have. I know she gets criticized for pushing a gender agenda but i've just found most of her books both emotionally and imaginatively engaging. I'm sure she'd have won more awards if more people reacted to her stuff the way both my wife and i have - but i'd suggest either used or library copies first, i guess.

Necropath - Eric Brown
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
Limit of Vision - Linda Nagata
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
(2) A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
(3) Farthing - Jo Walton

As for the poll, we would want to wait until we could narrow the field down to five books (since only two books have multiple votes at this point in time).

I'll add a second nomination for Saturn's Children, then. I'm not a big fan of Stross -- er, of his novels. I thought Glasshouse could have been so much better than it was. And I've yet to read the free copy of Halting State I was given at alt.fiction last April... But I'll give him a try anyway - more so than the Vinge (which would be a reread), Sawyer or Nagata.

In addition to my own nominations, I'll second Gather, Darkness.

i've only read 2 of Stoss' books..The first was the atrocity archives which i found great fun; but then i disliked accelerando so who knows.

Necropath - Eric Brown
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
Limit of Vision - Linda Nagata
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer

(2) Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
(2) Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
(2) A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
(3) Farthing - Jo Walton

Keep the nominations and the secondments rolling in.

I wonder...can one send invitations to join a group to a member of a group? Is the text of the invitation user generated? If so, perhaps our current moderator could send invitiations to the non-participants?

Lotta work, though.

#37

If someone hasn't managed to check the Group Reads thread in the last two weeks (or even looked at their latest group LT threads) I doubt they are too eager to suggest books or join in the discussions.

I'll second Life: a novel by Gwyneth Jones

Since my copy just came in at the library, I'll suggest The Silent City by Élisabeth Vonarburg; however, it might be hard for some people to locate a copy.

Necropath - Eric Brown
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
Limit of Vision - Linda Nagata
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
The Silent City - Élisabeth Vonarburg

(2) Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
(2) Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
(2) Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
(2) A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
(3) Farthing - Jo Walton

I have been reading this thread. I have just recently started reading SFF (along with this group), so I don't really know what to suggest. I just got lucky last time in getting to second a book because I had been wanting to read that book for a while due to seeing the movie long years ago. I asked my daughter if she was familiar with these books, but she wasn't. So, I am willing to read whatever is chosen.

My daughter suggested either I, Robot by Isaac Asimov which I am guessing you have all read or The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke. So those are my suggestions.
--BJ

I, Robot - Isaac Assimov
The Last Theorem - Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
Necropath - Eric Brown
Mindplayers - Pat Cadigan
The Night Sessions - Ken MacLeod
Limit of Vision - Linda Nagata
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
The Silent City - Élisabeth Vonarburg

(2) Life: A Novel - Gwyneth Jones
(2) Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber
(2) Saturn's Children - Charles Stross
(2) A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
(3) Farthing - Jo Walton

I'm going to read A Fire Upon the Deep sometime next year, so I'd be happy if it was selected. I'll be interested in the final vote to see what comes up.

Now that we have five titles with more than one nomination, shouldn't we move straight onto the vote?

sure...
i'm going for Farthing (although i nominated the Stross). Ready for a new author.

Does this work?

http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/519456-126695

EDIT: I couldn't use Vizu - my internet connection doesn't like lots of Javascript. So, I've put the poll on Micropoll instead.

It doesn't work for me. :(

Worked for me.

I'll try again later when I get home.

I voted!

I voted, too!

It's great to see so many votes on there so soon - nine so far.

I voted.
--BJ

My vote's in.

Voted.

Voted as well.

worked fine

voted.

When do we get the results? Btw, I can't get to the poll link anymore.

Here's the results so far...

... or maybe not. It's not letting me embed the results in here.

For the record, Farthing is currently the front-runner.

Thanks. So... when's the finale? Looks like we'll be starting after Xmas?

Anyway, I'll put through a request for Farthing.

May I suggest starting the group read on 1/5, the first Monday of 2009? And with 16 votes, are we ready to close the poll?

I'll leave the poll open for two more days (until the 25th), which means everyone has a week to be able to vote.

And starting the group read on the fifth sounds like a good idea - that gives more than two weeks from the closing date for everyone to get their copy of the book we all decided upon.

Just to make it official, the book that received the most votes is Farthing with 38% of the vote, followed by A Fire Upon the Deep, with 31% of the vote.

I ordered my copy today.
--BJ

I just finished it and am looking forward to discussing all the SF aspects. This seems like a brilliant move on the part of SF afficionados everywhere. Appropriate an entirely different genre and call it SF, or is it fantasy. I can't tell. I'm looking forward to being enlightened.

I'll be starting my copy in a week or so. I've got to read Bruce Sterling's new novel, The Caryatids, first. And I've got interview him about the book as well. For Interzone.