ArmadilloCon 2008: What You Should Have Read

"The Year is Half Over: What I Should Have Read" is a traditional panel at ArmadilloCon, where a bunch of avid and discriminating readers recommend recent must-read books in the science fiction / fantasy genre. The panelists are an assortment of writers, editors and booksellers. Without further ado --

Rick Klaw recommends "Somnambulist" by Jonathan Barnes. It's a late Victorian era / Edwardian novel about a magician. It's the oddest novel you'll read this year, or perhaps any other year, says Rick. The ending is a little weak, but by that time you don't care. He also recommends Ann and Jeff Vandermeers' anthologies "Best American Fantasy" and "The New Weird" -- a collection of really odd stories. They also have a collection named "Steampunk". When you finish reading it, you'll have an idea exactly what steampunk is.

Rusty Hevelin recommends reprints of Robert Heinlein, and Jack Williamson, who's still as good as when he started selling in the 20s.

Sheila Williams didn't recommend any specific novel or story collection, but mentioned a few new authors she likes very much, such as Ted Kosmatka (especially his story "Divining Light" which came out in a recent issue of Asimov's, and got many fan letters from engineers and scientists, who all wanted to perform the double slit experiment described in the story), also Felicity Shoulders, who has a story "Burgerdroid" in Asimov's. She also mentioned recent stories by Elizabeth Bear (March), Stephen Baxter (September) and Nancy Kress, but I didn't catch the titles of those stories.

Willie Siros' list of this year's must-read books

Science fiction:

Charles Stross: Saturn's Children -- his take on the later Heinlein. If Heinlein hadn't gone crazy and was still writing well.

Iain Banks: Matter -- a new Culture novel. Incredibly fascinating far future.

Greg Egan: Incandescence -- Greg Egan is probably the most out there hard SF writer there is; keeps up with the cutting edge of matehmatics.

Greg Bear: City At The End Of Time

Melissa Snodgrass: Edge of Reason

Joe Scalzi -- Zoe's Tale

Joe Haldeman: Marsbound

Chris Roberson: The Dragon's Nine Sons

Cory Doctorow: Little Brother

Peter Hamilton: Temporal Void -- finishes current duology

Richard Morgan: Steel Remains -- a very bizarre far future world

Alistair Reynolds: House of Suns -- new space opera

Neal Stephenson: Anathem

Fantasy:

Thomas Disch: Word of God -- in this novel Thomas Disch reveals that he's God, and that his opponent is Phillip K. Dick, which he's been fighting for all eternity.

Ursula Le Guin: Lavinia

Terry Pratchett: Nation

Diana Wynne Jones: House of Many Ways -- a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. Willie thinks D.W. Jones is the one who God should have tapped on the shoulder, saying, hey, I'm gonna give you millions -- instead of JK Rowling.

Naomi Novik: Victory of Eagles

Adam. Roberts: Swiftly -- Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels turn out to be real.

Jeffrey Ford: Shadow Year

James Morrow: Philosopher's Apprentice

Gene Wolfe: Evil Guest

Joe Abercrombie: Last Argument of Kings

J. M. McDermott: Last Dragon

Matt Hughes: Hespira

Tim Scott: Love In The Time Of Fridges -- surreal. Too absurd to try to explain in 2 sentences.

Sean McMullen: Time Engine

Steve Erickson: Toll The Hounds


In addition to all this, Willie mentioned "Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse" by Victor Gischler. I'm not sure which category it falls into.

UPDATE:

Another person emailed me other recommendations that were mentioned on the panel, that I didn't catch.

Eric Marin recommends: ShadowUnit.org -- crime fiction with a supernatural twist, from TV concepts

Sheila Williams:

-- a Gulliver' Travels redux thingie by Gord Seller

-- "Lester Young and the Jupiter's Moons Blues" in the July Asimov's

-- David ????, "Flowers of Nikosia" in December Asimov's, about a Nirvana cover band

Madeleine Dimond: Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Some other people recommended:

-- Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

-- Michael Swanwick, The Dog Said Bow-Wow

Here are lists of books recommended on other "What You Should Have Read" panels: at ArmadilloCon 2005, ArmadilloCon 2006, ArmadilloCon 2007, ArmadilloCon 2009, ArmadilloCon 2010.

What I Should Have Read This Year: an ArmadilloCon 2007 panel

I've noticed over the years that some of the "What I Should Have Read" panelists have tastes so unlike mine, it's as if we are from different planets. (It's different people each year, by the way.) For example, some people's idea of good science fiction is a Sherlock Holmes-type detective story with time travel, as you'll see further in the text. I'm sure a time-travelling Sherlock Holmes can be done very well, but... I've already read the original Sherlock Holmes, so why would I want to read the same story again? I read science fiction for something new, although it becomes increasingly harder to find. But the moment I truly realized I landed on a wrong planet came when I listed to Rick Klaw praising a comic book "I shall destroy all the civilized planets" by Flether Hanks. (More about it behind the cut). I sat there thinking, well, I'm not against weird, but I would never read SF just for that. Even the weird needs to have logic.

I found it a bit comical that while the panelists praised obscure, bizarre books like the one mentioned above, they had hardly anything to say on this year's Hugo nominees. A person in the audience asked which of this year's Hugo nominees they would recommend most highly, and Willie admitted he drew a blank on who the nominees were. Jessica Reisman corrected the situation somewhat by recommending "Blindsight" by Peter Watts.

Without further ado, here is the list of the recommended books.

Some of this year's must-read books garnered nominations from more than one panelist, and we shall start with them.

Books recommended by 2 people:

Two-handed Engine, a Henry Kuttner story collection. Joe Lansdale says: "Kuttner is one of the best SF writers, although he's a better short story writer than a novelist. The reason Kuttner still survives is because he's a damn good writer. Ideas, charcters, writing -- he's got all that."

"Thirteen" by Richard Morgan

Books recommended by 1 person:

Rick Klaw and Jessica Reisman.

Here is the list of Willie's recommended science fiction books (each title is followed by Willie's short comment):

Brasyl by Ian McDonald -- In McDonald's "River Of Gods" it was India taking over the Universe, now he's doing Brazil taking over the universe.

The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds -- a quintessential space opera.

Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod -- an almost mainstream thriller that has pretty amazing stuff in it.

Mainspring by Jay Lake -- trying to imagine a world where Newtonian clockwork idea is in fact true, and where the world is composed of springs.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon -- alternate history.

Hurricane Moon by Alexis Glynn Latner

Here is the list of Willie's recommended fantasy books (each title is followed by Willie's short comment):

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville -- the villain is amazing.

Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb -- a conclusion to her current series.

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill -- Stephen King's son who writes under a pseudonym.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson

Ysabel -- Guy Gavriel Kay

Legacy -- Lois Bujold

Here are books recommended by CJ Mills. (All of these books were more than a year old.)

The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay

The Terrorists of Irustan and The Maquisarde by Louise Marley

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Books recommended by Joe Lansdale

Pearls from Peoria and The Best of Philip Jose Farmer: story collections by Phil Jose Farmer.

Books recommended by Jessica Reisman:

Territoryby Emma Bull -- alternative history.

Precious Dragon by Liz Williams

Jessica Reisman, Bill Crider and Joe Lansdale.

Books recommended by Rick Klaw:

Fast Forward 1, edited by Lou Anders -- a pretty incredible anthology. It's got an incredible Robert Charles Wilson story. There's also a story by Tony Balantyne about a world operating system, infected by a virus.

Acacia by David Durham. It's a violent fantasy with no magic. It's closer to George R. R. Martin, not to Lord of the Rings.

Michael Moorcock's detective stories -- they essentially Sherlock Holmes stories. They go to plaes you would never expect.

I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: the Comics of Fletcher Hanks. Rick Klaw says: "You have these cosmic power shadow charaters who would punish people for doing the wrong things. They would freeze people's heads, they would dissect them. There is a guy there with flaming hands who goes around killing people."

Or -- and I'm not sure I got this right -- there are people who want to kill everyone on Earth except themselves, so they tie themselves to Earth and spin up the Earth so that everyone would fly off of it. The last idea sounded so absurd that I really don't know if I got it right. At that point I just sat there thinking, well... this panel is going to be less helpful to me than I hoped.

Books recommended by Bill Crider:

The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig -- a riff on Hamlet. A dark, but hilarious book. And if you've read Hamlet several times, you'll get a lot of in-jokes about Hamlet.

There was also a book that, in my calculation, collected 0 nominations, despite being mentioned by two people. One of the mentions was positive, the other negative, so I guess they canceled out. That was Un Lun Dun by China Mieville.

Here are more of my pictures and blog posts from ArmadilloCon 2007.

World Fantasy Convention: The Lone Star State of Fantasy

The only discussion panel I made it to on Thursday night was "The Lone Star State of Fantasy". The panelists were Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Rick Klaw, Caroline Spector and Eric Marin.

I found it disappointing. The whole panel was devoted to the discussion of what makes Texas fantasy weird. Some of the obvious reasons were ponted out, such as that Texas is so damn big. In between all these open spaces there are many isolated towns where anything can happen.

A guy in the audience. In Texas you can find little towns that would scare the crap out of you. Where people drag people behind cars.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke. A farmer in San Antonio shot this dog-thing that was almost blue. It was almost necrotic. It was kind of cool, so I put it up on my blog. Then I got an email from East Texas: hey, I shot one of these things too! I started getting all these emails of people who thought they shot a chupacabra.

Another factor is that that the Texas state itself is playing up the mythology. Everything is bigger in Texas, as they say.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke. At A&M they have a hornets' nest that's 14 feet across. It's the 3rd largest in Texas. It's about 2.5 million wasps. If you are going to write it in a story, everyone is gonna say, oh, get out of here!

Yet another reason why Texas inspires weird fiction is that Texas still has a frontier mentality; it is perceived by writers as a state where unknown lurks and anything can be expected. This said, the panelists magnanimously acknowledged that Australians has a lot of affinity with Texans because of the frontier mentality; hence, weird fiction set in Australia would also have a true ring.

Other parts of the world, it was implied, can hardly live up to the task of serving as a setting for weird fiction. The only panelist who wasn't from Texas -- he was from Maine -- conceded that weird fiction would be less believeable if it was set in Maine, as opposed to Texas. He didn't explain why. But isn't a lot of Stephen King's fiction set in New England, in its quaint, little, time-forgotten towns? Isn't the supernatural element quite believable in King's stories? I wondered. I am hardly a judge of this subject, since I'm not being very familiar with Texas fantasy, and I don't know what's weird about it. But it all sounded a bit parochial to me.

Left to right: Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Rick Klaw, Caroline Spector. Read more about the World Fantasy Convention 2006 in my blog.

.