These are the four books that won the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke Awards in 2004. (The Tiptree Award was shared.) I had already read three of them, and I found I didn't really want to reread one of those three. Which one? Well, you'll find out...

The one I had not read was one of the two Tiptree winners, Not Before Sundown, aka Troll, a Love Story, ( Read more... )

Having decided that I'll review the winners of the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke Awards of a give year together, the turn of the century provided me with a massive reading project. I think I started Wild Life on 17 October, and finished Perdido Street Station on 23 December. Together they are 2249 pages in length.

Ash: A Secret History and Perdido ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:He did not see or hear her arrive at the door to the cellar where he was working, until she called him by name, gently enough not to alert his comrades above. He reached for his gun at the sight of her but she tutted and shook her head with collegial imperiousness. “I’m Main à plume,” she said, and he believed her ( Read more... )

More for my own records than anything else, these were my votes in the short fiction categories. I did not keep good notes of the two shorter categories but can say a bit more about Best Novelette.

Best Short Story1. "That Game We Played During the War", by Carrie Vaughan - came third (narrowly missed second) in the actual vote, would have missed ( Read more... )

I've read most of Miéville's novels, but hadn't come across much of his short fiction except insofar as it has been nominated for various awards. This was a good set of stories, mostly leaning towards horror, mostly set in contemporary London (one set in New Crobuzon). There's a lot of very effective writing and scene-setting - I particularly liked ( Read more... )

London does fit well as a setting for intense occult novels - its long history of being a storehouse of knowledge and ritual, and the intimacy demanded of you if you want to engage with its geography: historical landmarks above ground, Underground stations below. Kraken reminded me very much both of Paul Cornell's London Falling and of Neil Gaiman' ( Read more... )

Fortunately none of this year's Hugo nominees is actually a bad book, an improvement on some previous years (no Willis, no Sawyer). Even so, I found it pretty easy to rank the nominees as follows:

( 6) Deadline, 5) No Award, 4) A Dance With Dragons, 3) Leviathan Wakes, 2) Embassytown, 1) Among Others )

Ranked by Goodreads popularity, with LibraryThing popularity and rankings from both sites provided for comparison.

GoodreadsLibrarythingnumberaveragenumberaverageA Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin332974.1327564.04Embassytown, China Mieville29443.868423.95Deadline, Mira Grant24794.262704.29Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey17104.032113.97Among ( Read more... )

I found this, the last in my reading of the BSFA novel nominations, a fascinating read. Embassytown is an interface between humans and several different types of aliens; the human ambassadors who deal with them are identical twins, bred and conditioned to function as effectively a single personality with two bodies; this alone is a fantastic sfnal ( Read more... )

Long plane flights and short stories often work quite well in combination for me, and I used the last week's travels, among other things, to read through the BSFA shortlist. I should say that I ranked my choices before then turning to Martin Lewis's discussion, which illustrates the point that chacun a son goût.

5) Afterbirth, by Kameron Hurley ( Read more... )