Beyond Reality discussion

Hi everyone,

It’s time to open nominations for our July 2011 Books of the Month. Each group member can make 1 science fiction and/or 1 fantasy nomination in this thread. If you would like to make a nomination, please reply to this post with the title and author of the book(s) you would like to put forward for the group’s consideration.

Telling us a little about the book and why you think it would be a good group read can help get other members interested in reading (and voting for) your nomination. You can also check the group bookshelves for previous Books of the Month to see if your nomination has already been read by the group. (Being chosen as a past BotM does not necessarily disqualify a book from current consideration, but be aware that it may hinder your nomination’s chances at the polls.)

• Feel free to re-nominate a book that didn’t win in the polls in previous months!
• Seconding isn't necessary in this group, but feel free to assert your enthusiasm for any nomination all the same.
• Friendly discussion/debate is strongly encouraged, but let's please keep things civil.

Nominations will remain open through Tuesday, April 19th, and the first round of polls will go up on Wednesday, April 20th.

Thanks!


NOMINATIONS SO FAR:


FANTASY:
The Etched City - K.J. Bishop (Pezter)
Vellum: The Book of All Hours - Hal Duncan (Phoenixfalls)
Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde (Jane)
Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb (Kevin)
Horse Goddess - Morgan Llywelyn (Kernos)

SCIENCE FICTION:
Natural History - Justina Robson (Pezter)
The Languages of Pao - Jack Vance (Nick)
Pavane - Keith Roberts (Richard)
Galileo's Dream - Kim Stanley Robinson (Ron)
Reap the Wild Wind - Julie E. Czerneda (Kernos)
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder (Deedee)

hi guys

i'd like to open the nominations with The Etched City by KJ Bishop for the fantasy pick.

Fleeing the ghosts of their violent past, two former revolutionaries - the roguish, rakish Gwynn and the taciturn Raule - escape from the ruined and deserted Copper Country to the tropical city of Ashamoil. As they salvage new lives from the rubble of the old, they discover that the ghosts of the past are also the ghosts of the future.


For SF I'll nominate Justina Robson's Natural History

It is in the far future. The human species has diversified. Alongside the seed-forms of the Unevolved (ordinary humans) live and work the Augmented, people who have been forged, not born. Nonetheless the Augmented are human beneath their vast and complex biotechnological bodies which allow them to live deep in the oceans and out in space. As far as they're concerned, however, the old ties of blood and genes may just be ancient history.

When a new solar system is found, containing an Earth-like world, full of abandoned alien cities and devoid of intelligent life, the Augmented see it as their Forge-right to claim this place as a homeworld. After all, the aliens who once lived there have followed the same path beyond the limits of genetics and organics, adapting themselves to new environments, and heading for the frontiers of deep space.

Allegedly...

For Science Fiction I'll nominate The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance. It's a distant world in a distant future, and the dominant science in question is linguistics. And it's a classic by Jack Vance.

I shall nominate Vellum: The Book of All Hours again for Fantasy -- The Magicians won, so it's this book's turn, right? Right? ;)

Blanking on what I'd want to nominate for SF, so I'll see how things shape up first. . .

i hereby assert my enthusiasm for both Languages of Pao and Vellum!

I'd love to read The Languages of Pao but have never managed to get my hands on a copy after several years trying.
So as Candiss says • Feel free to re-nominate a book that didn’t win in the polls in previous months! I will, again.

For SF I'll re-nominate Pavane by Keith Roberts.

It's my all time favorite alternate history/world novel and appears in David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels as well as 100 Must-Read Science Fiction
Novels from Bloomsbury Good Reading Guides.
It's also number 35 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series. So you don't have to look it up, I'll quote the blurp from the back of my SF Masterworks copy :
'1558: Queen Elizabeth is felled by an assassin's bullet. Within the week the Spanish Armada had set sail, and its victory changed the course of history.
1968: England is still dominated by the Church of Rome. There are no telephones, no television, no nuclear power. As Catholicism and the Inquisition tighten their grip, rebellion is growing.'

Stealing from the two 100 best/must-read books mentioned above :
Pavane takes its title from the name of a stately court dance of the 16th century and its 'measures', the individual stories, conclude with a 'coda' in which the contrasts between our own reality and the alternative that Roberts has imagined are made more explicit. With its tales of monks lovingly maintaining centuries-old traditions, of would-be inventors dreaming of change and of semaphore operators (the long-distance communicators of the age) exiled in remote signalling stations, Pavane is a peculiarly English vision of an alternative past. Roberts's own love of for the rural landscapes of the West Country, for the folklore of fairies and hobgoblins, and for the ruined remains of castles and churches emerge in a linked narrative that blends together potential versions of past and present into a mesmerizing whole.'
And :
"The 'Measures' of the book are precisely detailed and intensely felt, each a masterpiece in miniature. They progress like a vividly-costumed stately dance, or pavane. The 'Coda' is very revealing."

I really think this is a good one for a group read, not only being an excellent story, but some contentious ideas and not all together straight forward conclusion.

After all that I daren't nominate a Fantasy book.

I'm unofficially seconding 'The Etched City' 'cause I think it looks like it could be cool.

I'm gonna add the blurb from goodreads, though, 'cause the one posted below seems pretty generic (No offense, Petzer - just trying to help out the book):

Gwynn and Raule are rebels on the run, with little in common except being on the losing side of a hard-fought war. Gwynn is a gunslinger from the north, a loner, a survivor . . . a killer. Raule is a wandering surgeon, a healer who still believes in just—and lost—causes. Bound by a desire to escape the ghosts of the past, together they flee to the teeming city of Ashamoil, where Raule plies her trade among the desperate and destitute, and Gwynn becomes bodyguard and assassin for the household of a corrupt magnate. There, in the saving and taking of lives, they find themselves immersed in a world where art infects life, dream and waking fuse, and splendid and frightening miracles begin to bloom . . .

I will have finished my exams and might have a good chance of reading a new book, so would like to recommend "shades of Grey" by Jasper Fforde for Science fiction. It has been on my TBR pile for months and my hubby keeps asking whether I have read it yet

Jane - I've had Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde on my to-read list for a while, too. (Actually, I've been wanting to read several of this month's nominations, so there's a lot of win going on as far as I'm concerned.)

However, I'd like to file it as a Fantasy nomination, instead of Science Fiction. It's one of those books that walks the line between SF and F, so I think we need an arbiter of sorts. When you look at the top shelves for the book here on Goodreads, three times as many people have shelved it as Fantasy than as Science Fiction. In the past, I believe Stefan has used the Goodreads community's shelving as a metric in cases such as this, and I think it's a good practice to continue.

Are you ok with this?

I'd love to see The Languages Of Pao as the July SF selection. I haven't read much of Jack Vance's output in a long time. He used to be a favorite. But, like so many others, I moved on to more "contemporary" authors. This would be a great opportunity to get reacquainted with a classic SF writer.

I would like to recommended Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing, the first book of her Soldier and Son trilogy. I know a lot of people did not care or like this trilogy, but I thought his book was fun.

Kevin wrote: "I would like to recommended Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing, the first book of her Soldier and Son trilogy. I know a lot of people did not care or like this trilogy, but I thought his book was fun."

Kevin, shall I assume you're nominating Shaman's Crossing for Fantasy? You didn't specify, and I don't know anything about the series.

Candiss wrote: "Jane - I've had Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde on my to-read list for a while, too. (Actually, I've been wanting to read several of this month's nominations, so there..."

Fine by me, I asked my hubby whether he considered it fantasy or sci fi as he has already read it and he said sci fi. WHich is why I put that. I don't have another book that I was planning on nomiating for fantasy

Candiss wrote: "Kevin, shall I assume you're nominating Shaman's Crossing for Fantasy? You didn't specify, and I don't know anything about the series."

Yes, that is true, sorry that I did not state that in my post.

I nominate Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson for science fiction. This is a stand-alone novel and it moves pretty quickly for a KSR book. Galileo is a wonderful character and Robinson's portrait of him is often very funny ("If I have seen less far than others," he declares at one point, "it is because I have stood on the shoulders of dwarfs.") Robinson combines the story of Galileo's troubles at the hands of the Church with a series of visits to thirty-first century humanity living on the moons of Jupiter (the Galilean moons). Fans of Neal Stephenson's Anathem will, I think, enjoy this very much, as will anyone who feels surprised to hear "Kim Stanley Robinson" and "funny" in the same sentence.

For SF, I'd like to nominate Reap the Wild Wind by Julie E. Czerneda book 1 of the Stratification series a prequel to her Trade Pact Universe series

Julie is always a pleasure to read, has strong female, male and alien characters. I've been sitting on this series for some time and would like to read it.

For Fantasy, I'd nominate The Horse Goddess by Morgan Llywelyn a fictional legend about the deeds of a girl who would become the Celtic Goddess Epona. Llywelyn can spin a tale in a way that makes me think it really happened.

those are some very interesting recs, kernos! i am not remotely familiar with either novel.

Wow, what a good group of books nominated so far!

I would like to nominate:

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne #1) by Mark Hodder

I'm reading it now and it is excellent! The sub-genre is "steampunk". I think it would be science fiction, even though there are elements that would qualify as fantasy. I'll leave it to our moderators as to which group to place it in.

Deedee wrote: "...The sub-genre is "steampunk". I think it would be science fiction, even though there are elements that would qualify as fantasy. I'll leave it to our moderators as to which group to place it in. "

Hmm... Well, the book itself feels more like fantasy to me, but it's got technology, yet it also has magic and, apparently, werewolves, so it's anybody's guess what genre it should be called. I'm going to defer to the Goodreads sorting system, which files Steampunk as "Science Fiction > Steampunk", as well as the convention that usually files Steampunk that way.

The book was also a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, which is a SF award, so that's another tick on the SF side of the tally.

Steampunk always reminds me of what we used to call "science fantasy" (although that term seems to be gone now). Anyway, that doesn't help this discussion, I suppose. In my mind, I always consider anything with magic in it as fantasy, even if it's set in the future or has futuristic tech, but it's true that most people seem to think of steampunk as SF. So, SF I guess? (I've had the book on the TBR pile, by the way, but haven't been able to get to it. It looks interesting. I have the sequel here too.)

I've read the Hodder book and would definitely categorize it as SF. (Though arguably the science is soft or runs on handwavium, in some cases.) I know the blurb says there is magic, but I don't recall there being much if any functional magic. (This may well be an error in either my reading or my recollection.)

Handwavium. I love it. Is that situated next to unobtainium on the table of elements?

Certainly it's in the same row. Also it's the alternate name for phlebotinum! :)

Nominations are now closed. I'll get the polls up in a few hours. We can continue any discussion of the nominees in the poll threads.

Thanks, everyone!