Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

Actually we decided against the Guardian list for next year's challenge.  Much too limiting over all.  We'll be announcing the new challenge in a few weeks.  Right now, we're working out the rules and laying the groundwork behind the scenes for it.

As for December reading, I'm wrapping up my GMRC list with 2 books: Farmer in the Sky by Heinlein, which I'm almost done with already (it's a short book) and then Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement will be my 12th!

After those I'm dying to finish off the Apotheosis trilogy with Messiah by S. Andrew Swann.  It took me a bit to get into the first book but by about the half way point I was sold.  I read the second book in just a few days.  It's an action packed page turner.

I've got some good vacation time coming up so I expect I'll be able to get a few more books in so I'm going to treat myself to some Patrick O'Brian and read The Yellow Admiral (vol 18), The Hundred Days (19) and Blue at the Mizzen (20) to finish out my thrid reading of the Aubrey/Maturin Series.  Yes, they're that good!  In fact, I'm already planning to read them again in a few year's time and I'm lusting after this lovely boxed set.

Very cool!  I'll warn you up front, the first book is a bit slow to get going, or at least I know a couple people that felt that way and bailed on it.  It was never a problem for me but I will say that later volumes are more streamlined and move faster.  That could be because the characters and O'Brian's style are familiar by then.  I hope you like 'em.

Finished out the month (and the year) with Big Planet by Jack Vance, Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin, and an excursion into the pulp time machine with the second issue of Unknown magazine (April 1939). This issue has "The Ultimate Adventure" by L. Ron Hubbard, which anticipates de Camp and Pratt's Incomplete Enchanter with the story of the discovery of a pseudoscientific method for transporting a person into the world of a book (Arabian Nights, in this case). Also included is de Camp's “Divide and Rule” (which concludes in the May issue), a couple of forgettable supernatural stories, and an overlong and excruciatingly boring novelette by early pulp mainstay Arthur Burks, in which the Roman gods argue among themselves about the growing destructiveness of human warfare. Unknown has yet to hit its stride, and John W. Campbell points out in his editorial that things will get better as authors come to better understand what he's looking for in the magazine...