Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is the place to nominate a Contemporary Fantasy or Science Fiction work for our April group read and discussion (beginning April 21.) A contemporary work would typically have been first published in the 21st century.

You need not have read the title you are nominating; after all, you'll be reading along. Feel free to say why you are making the nomination, if you care to. Note that if your nomination is selected by the group, we'll be expecting you to take the lead in the discussion.

We read & discuss up to three different SF/F works each month: One is a "Contemporary" SF/F novel, anthology, novella, or other work, which was written after 2000; that discussion starts on the 21st of each month. One is a "Classic" SF/F work which was written before 2000; that discussion starts on the 1st of each month. We may also read one book from a series each month, a step in reading the entire series; that discussion starts the 11th of the months. You can always check on our upcoming SF/F works discussion topics by scrolling down on the Group Homepage to the "Upcoming Reads” section.

You can review past group selections in the "read" section of our Group's BookShelf. If you wish to continue a discussion of one of those past selections, all those discussion topics are still open in our Book Discussions area.

Note that these are nominations for our April discussion topic. A Shadow in Summer has already been selected as our March Contemporary Novel discussion topic.

Nominations will be open through Wednesday, March 6, when I'll collect the nominees and post a poll so members can choose among them.

When someone mentioned Dinotopia for the Lost Civilization bingo challenge I remembered I had another dinosaur book I was planning on reading. I got a free copy the second book through Goodreads and it suffered from the second book syndrome of wondering if I didn't understand some things that were going on because I hadn't read the first book or we weren't supposed to know that yet.

Note that it won't work for the Lost Civilization slot, but it did have evil angels in it (or aliens? or something else? that's what I'm hoping I'll find out LOL)

The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán

The group seems very structured and impressive. I love SF/F. Read the Game of Thrones trilogy in the 90's. May I join? I'm Jay.

Hmmm - can I nominate some TBD thing tied in to the Hugo awards?
Such as: all the freely available shorts or novelettes?

Why not? I feel I'm a comprehensive reader, but I'm having a hard time with your last comment. What's wrong with a Hugo/Nebula award? shorts or novelettes?

Jay wrote: "The group seems very structured and impressive. I love SF/F. Read the Game of Thrones trilogy in the 90's. May I join? I'm Jay."

Welcome to the group, Jay. You're welcome to join any conversation you find interesting!

Rachel wrote: "Hmmm - can I nominate some TBD thing tied in to the Hugo awards?
Such as: all the freely available shorts or novelettes?"

Well, I like that idea. Back in the day, I used to commandeer the short story discussion for April or May & merge together the Hugo & Nebula finalists in those short categories, as if they were an "anthology". (I stopped during the puppy thing.)

So, yeah, you can definitely do that!

This year's Hugo nominations close March 15. I haven't seen a firm date for announcing the finalists other than "Early April" (probably the Saturday, the 6th or 13th). (They used to do it the Saturday before Easter – which would be April 20th this year.) So, that's doable for this nomination cycle, which starts discussion April 21.

(Which reminds me I have to fill out my Hugo nominations still.)

Rachel wrote: "Hmmm - can I nominate some TBD thing tied in to the Hugo awards?
Such as: all the freely available shorts or novelettes?"

It's like a build your own anthology :)

Andrea wrote: "Rachel wrote: "Hmmm - can I nominate some TBD thing tied in to the Hugo awards?
Such as: all the freely available shorts or novelettes?"

It's like a build your own anthology :)"

It's also like a surprise box, because during the voting you have no idea what's going to be in it. :)

Ooh I’m excited now- hope others like the idea!

I too need to fill out my Hugo moms. I want to read one more novel before then too......

Sounds like a fun idea to me! Had a goal of reading the nominations this year anyway so that'd be perfect.

Thank you for the nominations. A poll to select our Contemporary Science Fiction / Fantasy Work discussion topic for April is now open. If you're interested in participating in the discussion of one of our nominees, you can vote here for your choice.

Please only vote if you plan on participating in the discussion of that work.

(Note that the "Hugo short story/novelette finalists" haven't been announced yet, but should be before the discussion starts on April 21st. We'll discuss those finalists that can be found free to read on-line, which is usually most of the short stories & novelettes.)

Note that these are nominations for our April discussion topic. A Shadow in Summer has already been selected as our March Contemporary Novel discussion topic.

This poll will be open through Wednesday, March 13.

Reminder: For those who are interested in discussing one of the above nominees with the group, today, Thursday, is the final day to vote for one of our Contemporary Fantasy or Science Fiction work for our April group read and discussion.

Our selected contemporary SF/F group discussion topic for April is...

  2018 Hugo Award short story/novelette/novella Finalists

Those will be announced presently and I'll announce them here, and with Rachel's help identify the ones that are available to read free on-line.

(BTW, Hugo nominations close today at midnight US Pacific Time, for those with Dublin or San Jose Worldcon memberships, by the way.)

Just got my Hugo novella and novel nominations in. I don’t feel I read enough short fiction to do those accurately so I’m excited!

A lot of places will make a nominee free for the publicity

Rachel wrote: "Just got my Hugo novella and novel nominations in. I don’t feel I read enough short fiction to do those accurately so I’m excited!"

The thing that drives me nuts every year doing short fiction noms is figuring out whether a story goes in the short story or novelette category. The old guard mags break the table of content by those criteria, so I can go back and look it up, but the newer eMags & anthologies require I do a word count. Every year I promise to do a better job tracking my favs next year,....

Yeah the word count thing is too much for me - I was even worried that the novellas I picked might end up being novelettes. But I’m pretty sure they were marketed as Novellas sooo

Rachel wrote: "Hmmm - can I nominate some TBD thing tied in to the Hugo awards? Such as: all the freely available shorts or novelettes?"

So, the freely available shorts & novelettes finalists available on-line, the TBDs, that we'll be discussing starting April 21st are (links to each included):


Best Novelette Finalists:

“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho ( B&N Blog)

“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly (Tor.com)

“Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" by Daryl Gregory (Tor.com)

“The Thing About Ghost Stories,” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine)

“When We Were Starless,” by Simone Heller (Clarkesworld Magazine)

(Note: "The Only Harmless Great Thing" by Brooke Bolander is the only novelette finalist not available on-line; However, as luck would have it, we already had that as a group discussion topic last year. So I'll link to that discussion if anyone else wants to join in. As Andrea mentioned, it was one of Tor.com's ebookclub giveaways, so it may already be in your collection.)



Best Short Story Finalists:

“The Court Magician,” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed magazine)

“The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society,” by T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine)

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine)

“STET,” by Sarah Gailey ( Fireside Magazine)

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat,” by Brooke Bolander ( Uncanny Magazine)

“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine)


These will be the subjects of our April Contemporary discussion, starting April 21st.

Thanks for all the links! How should we go about discussing them? Shorts or novelettes first? And do we do one per day or...?

Rachel wrote: "Thanks for all the links! How should we go about discussing them? Shorts or novelettes first? And do we do one per day or...?"

I usually set up a separate topic for each story at the start of the discussion (April 21), but then I usually read one or two a day. Order is a good question; with an anthology there'd be an obvious order from the collection, but for this ad hoc collection, we get to make our own table of content. Do you have a preference? Otherwise I'll probably just list them in the order the Hugo committee did, which is alphabetical by author (above).

They all have GR pages so added them all to my to read shelf. Will see if I can convert them to epub this weekend, more convenient to read on my eReader than on my computer screen and I'll be done with my current ebook very soon.

Looking forward to this, missed out on the other years the group did kind of read.

Andrea wrote: "They all have GR pages so added them all to my to read shelf. ..."

Interesting things happen to those GR listings sometimes. E.g., "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window", a novella by Rachel Swirsky, once had a Goodreads page. (The group even discussed it once upon a time.) Some time latter, some GR Librarian decided that was wrong somehow. The GR entry was changed to a Swirksy anthology, How the World Became Quiet, in which the story was reprinted. I figured that out when I noticed I had How the World Became Quiet on my GR bookshelf as read when I was pretty sure I hadn't (yet.) I figured out the switcheroo because I keep exports of my GR bookshelf from every month, and I stubbornly went back through them to figure it out when it went weird. (In fact if you look at the old discussion topic, it now shows it's about the anthology, while it's clear it's just about the novella.)

Same thing happened to Swirsky's "Gande Jette" novella, which turned into "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 9"

So, don't be surprised if your GR bookshelf shows you've read anthologies you've never heard of in a few years ;)

Thanks for the warning! I guess there'd be so many entries if every short story had it's own page, especially once its included in an anthology.