Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

There is a self-promotion folder in this group where you can talk about your book all you want.

Actual humans who purchase Worldcon memberships vote on the Hugo awards. The books do have to be widely known to win the popular vote, but there is no intrinsic motivation on the part of the voters to do anything but pick their favorites.

“Are Hugo and Nebula awards reliable?”

In my unprofessional opinion, no.

When fantasy books started to win science fiction awards, I found the Hugo Awards of no longer of interest to me. And no, I am not going to get into the differences between the two genres.

Mickey wrote: "“Are Hugo and Nebula awards reliable?”

In my unprofessional opinion, no. When fantasy books started to win science fiction awards, I found the Hugo Awards of no longer of interest >>>
Hear, hear! It's just laziness that makes libraries and bookstores not want to make up special labels and shelves for scifi and fantasy, so they wrongly combine the two just because they're smaller. Pox on Thee! allenmeece.comm

Here's the self-promotion area that Brandon references above:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Thanks in advance for following the rules of this group.

I think that while thing with the puppies or what ever they called themselves truly ruined the Hugo. They had a slight point, but the execution was horrific.....

Yep, I agree. I saw their point. Didn't agree with it, but I think it had at its heart a good-faith concern re. the potential for overt/biased political correctness in choosing nominees and giving awards. But man oh man the way it was handled. Sad Puppies indeed! Or was it Rabid Puppies? Or both? Or were those competing factions? LOL who knows

Although the way that Chuck Tingle somehow made it out of the controversy with a Hugo award (or nomination?) was kinda awesome. He really got to level up due to all of the drama.

I think any movement that has the very far-right edgelord Vox Day as its central figure is probably a movement that is going to run into some issues LOL.

I think Rabid was a far right offshoot of the already too far right Sads, IIRC

and yes! A Pox on Vox!

and just so any bias is understood, I actually signed up to be a voter that year, and actually read the submissions and voted from a genuine place. From what I recall, I didnt like or vote for any of the Puppy (SadorRabid) slate

In terms of this century's science fiction quality, I have found sales (which I judge mostly by number of GoodReads ratings) combined with ratings average to be a better guide than awards. And yes, that's largely because I think awards have biases that disfavor white, male, heterosexual writers. They destroyed their own credibility long ago.

The farther back in time one goes, in general, the more reliable the award in terms of writing quality and entertainment value. Not always though. I have found so many works of quality that seem to me better than the award winners, especially the 1970s through the 1990s award winners, when people were placing such a high premium on comedy. I mean really; who reads Philip José Farmer or Connie Willis any more? C. J. Cherryh and Harry Turtledove won fewer if any awards, I can't rightly remember that many for them in any event, but my goodness could they write!

I think PJF & especially Connie Willis remain very relevant. That damned Doomsday Book is regularly revived as a group read and other books by her are regularly (albeit not frequently) popping up in my feed, reviewed by GR friends. A bunch of PJF books (part of his "Wold Darwin" grouping of revisionist novels) were all reissued in the 2010s and I've seen him referenced, usually admiringly, in articles about how he pushed a lot of boundaries back in the day.

Also, where are you getting the impression that either of them are considered to be comic writers? Honestly curious here, not trying to be combative. That's just never been my impression, as far as how they are viewed. I don't think PJF's popular Riverworld & World of Tiers series were particularly noted as comic works (especially the monotonous latter series). Same goes for his various supposedly transgressive works - although I guess the Wold Newton books could be considered extreme versions of parody? Less funny and more over-the-top outrageous.

I know less about Connie Willis, but I also haven't ever had the impression that she is seen as a comic writer - just a very wry one. Which to me is very different than say, L. Sprague de Camp or Douglas Adams, both easily recognizable as (broadly) comic writers. Certainly my own experience with the excruciating Doomsday Book didn't include any overt humor whatsoever. Unless one finds the incessant search for toilet paper combined with incessant death by plague to be the perfect recipe for a comic confection LOL.

I'm ashamed to say that I've never read any Turtledove. (Any recommendations?) But Cherryh is usually a very impressive author to me. Faded Sun trilogy was excellent and Sunfall collection is one of my favorite things.

My impressions of Farmer and Willis as being comedy SF writers are direct impressions of having tried to read their work myself, read them trying to be funny in their writing, found them to be absolutely not funny, just frivolous, and then DNFing their work in disappointment.

I realize that they are not comedy SF writers in the sense of Douglas Adams or Robert Asprin who are comedy writers first that, oh yeah, just happen to be writing SF themed stuff too. Farmer and Willis are more SF writers who write in a light-hearted, not-serious vein. I base that impression on reading, or trying to read, the first of Farmer's Riverworld series (dnf'ed) and a few of his short stories in anthologies I no longer remember the titles of, but that also left negative impressions. I almost never read anything these days of anyone reading or thinking about Farmer's old work.

The Willis novel I tried to read was To Say Nothing of the Dog. For me it was a series of random events trying to be funny. The Barnes and Nobles reading group I was in at the time who had selected that work enjoyed it more, but also characterized Willis as a comic SF writer. Looking at the Wikipedia entry just now on the book itself, it says, "To Say Nothing of the Dog: or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last is a 1997 comic science fiction novel by Connie Willis. It uses the same setting, including time-traveling historians, which Willis explored in Fire Watch (1982), Doomsday Book (1992), and Blackout/All Clear (2010). To Say Nothing of the Dog won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998." There was this whole trend in the last thirty years of the twentieth century to my mind of distinctly overvaluing comic SF writing. I for one am thankful at its passing. Modern day readers never mention Connie Willis to me, nor do I hear her work spoken of any more. I suspect if modern readers were to read her they would find her about as funny as our generation finds Amos 'n' Andy, Phyllis Diller, or Abbott and Costello to be, as musically relevant as Lawrence Welk.

Moving on, Cherryh is one of those writers who to my mind is a quintessential writer's writer. Everything I have ever read by her is of uniformly high quality deeply thought out and exquisitely written. She never writes a sub-standard story or book, and given her volume of writing that says a lot.

Harry Turtledove is on almost as high a level in his writing to my way of thinking. He writes mostly in the subgenre of SF called Alternate History, though I have read some of his pure military SF, which was excellent, and am about to start the sword and sorcery series he broke into publishing writing. It's a matter of some controversy to assert that Alternate History is SF. Many SF fans would say it's not, and correspondingly relegate Turtledove to the fringes of SF, at best, a view I have some sympathy for. I don't care. Label it as you wish, I still like his stuff.

Turtledove usually writes in long series of books. When friends ask what their first Turtledove should be, I don't steer them in that direction, even though that is where he is at his best usually. It may be a good idea for their second Turtledove read, but not the first. I think there is no better book to start Turtledove with than The Guns of the South. It's January 1864, General Sherman is fixing to start his march on Georgia to burn up Atlanta, and the Civil War is about to go horribly wrong for General Robert E. Lee, when someone approaches him to offer a nearly unlimited supply of AK-47 rifles....

Your comments about Willis make sense to me. Just a matter of taste & outlook I guess. For me, the wry quality of her writing and the absurdity of some of her plotlines don't make her a comic writer - but rather a wry and absurdist one. But those things could equal "comedy" to other people.

Thanks for the Turtledove recommendation! I will look into that.

As a result of this thread, I encountered some surprises reexamining Philip José Farmer:

1) Although passed since 2009, he is still the subject of much discussion and recognitions in conventions.

2) He still has work coming out with co-writers; for example The Monster on Hold.

3) He has a very active website: https://www.pjfarmer.com/

4) He wrote a cool looking Doc Savage novel: Escape from Loki.

Dan wrote: "As a result of this thread, I encountered some surprises reexamining Philip José Farmer:

1) Although passed since 2009, he is still the subject of much discussion and recognitions i..."

Don’t forget Philip José Farmer’s greatest book.
Venus on the Half-Shell:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

My personal favorite of all the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. characters.

Lol. I'd get that for the cover alone. $9.99 on Kindle though!?

Dan wrote: "Lol. I'd get that for the cover alone. $9.99 on Kindle though!?"

That link was from an archive of Goodreads from “My Books” listing.

If one does a current book search from the main menu, one will not find any descriptions of that book. A current search for this book on Goodreads will show this link without any description of the book. It goes to show how much this website has deteriorated.

Venus On The Half-Shell: A Grandmaster Novel

Mickey wrote: "... It goes to show how much this website has deteriorated. ..."

Yup. Seems like GR has just become an Amazon marketing site. I'm thinking about moving elsewhere. Just where is the question. ?🤔?

I have a site I am using as a back-up for Goodreads. Actually since you can catalog more than just books I am cataloguing my comics and magazines as well as my books on it, as well as my music and video libraries. Not all that easy when much of your stuff is in a storage locker, and you don't drive. If interested I can either post the name here or send you a message.

C. John wrote: "I have a site I am using as a back-up for Goodreads. Actually since you can catalog more than just books I am cataloguing my comics and magazines as well as my books on it, as well as my music and ..."

John, I am considering LibraryThing and StoryGraph. What are you using?

Wow, backing up music and videos is something I also have ditched. My tv shows and movies recordings collected over the years are also gone. Before the internet, I had lots of music CD’s and Vinyl Records all backed up on large hard drives. Today all erased and I said bye bye. For a monthly subscription to Apple, I can listen to almost any song or album of my choosing. I have several playlists to soothe my soul, from oldies, easy listening, hard rock, Jazz, alternative and more (except religious and country music). I had friends that were in the DJ business and they had thousands of LP records like I had books. Today millions of songs at my fingertips and play through wireless speakers. Another thing as a teenager, I bought with my paper route money was a very nice Sound system with 15” Woofers. It’s odd that a small battery blue tooth speaker can sound good enough as that massive system I had in past. Yep, The world has changed. Same with my DVDs and VHS tapes, when I can watch any movies I want and often without cost and without commercials. I tossed all those cooking show decades ago, most of which are free or at a small monthly subscription. The only videos I kept and digitized was my home video and photos.

However, I am still wondering why I haven’t signed up for an unlimited book subscription yet, perhaps I haven’t yet reconciled with our benefactor here.

Clyde wrote: "C. John wrote: "I have a site I am using as a back-up for Goodreads. Actually since you can catalog more than just books I am cataloguing my comics and magazines as well as my books on it, as well ..."

I am currently using the app Book Crawler and is a bit outdated, considering Library Thing. For my vast number of digital cookbooks and a few Hardcover cookbooks, I use https://www.eatyourbooks.com/

Clyde wrote: "C. John wrote: "I have a site I am using as a back-up for Goodreads. Actually since you can catalog more than just books I am cataloguing my comics and magazines as well as my books on it, as well ..."
The first one.

Mickey wrote: "Wow, backing up music and videos is something I also have ditched. My tv shows and movies recordings collected over the years are also gone. Before the internet, I had lots of music CD’s and Vinyl ..."

I am backing up the listings, not the actual items. Started doing it as over the years I have had a few sites that I was cataloguing stuff on disappear on me.

C. John wrote: "I am backing up the listings, not the actual items."

Yes, that is what I am doing also. The actual items here are gone as well.

Does remind me of a story about Library goers and how they keep track of what they read. Some will put a dot in a corner of a certain page number of a book they borrowed. This way they know if they have read that book before. However, one can mess them up by putting similar dots on other books they have not read.

But that only works when there is only one copy of a book. When new books come out that libraries know are going to be popular they often order multiple copies. I recall for one of Rick Riordan's books they ordered something like 100 copies. If that seems excessive our library system covers all of Vancouver Island north of Victoria and also Port Hardy on the mainland, as it can only be reached by ferry.

Sounds like Canada has a better library system than the USA.

Probably depends on where you live. One thing we don't have is all this kerfuffle about having certain books removed from the system.

Mickey wrote: "However, I am still wondering why I haven’t signed up for an unlimited book subscription yet, perhaps I haven’t yet reconciled with our benefactor here."

I have an unlimited subscription to a service other than the amazing one. It's for Kobo. That lists at $9.99 per month but they have special offers and I picked it up for less than that. I honestly don't know how they can offer and then give me as much material as they do at that price. I'm not going crazy with it and downloading everything as I imagine some would. I really have read most of what I have downloaded.

Why Kobo? It's not that I have anything against our benefactor. I actually use them for a lot. Kobos are mostly used by non-United States English speakers. Not sure why. I'm in South Carolina, but have lived a quarter of my life in Europe. My tastes range wider. In any event, I use Kobo because I think they have a superior product frankly. I like my Kobo device and the software format and abilities that run on it better than my Kindle. And the content available for each overlaps by maybe 50%, but is 50% different too. And there's a lot more on Kobo that interests me than is on Kindle. Recent science fiction and other speculative fiction magazines? They're likelier to be free (as part of Kobo Plus) on Kobo than Amazon. At least that's been my experience.

Dan wrote: "I have an unlimited subscription to a service other than the amazing one. It's for Kobo.."

I have looked at the Kobo online as well as the nook. I do not believe anything is better for reading eBooks than my iPad Pro. It has a large screen similar to reading sheet of 8.5x11 paper, HD color, sound for audio books, movies and more. I prefer reading books on the Kindle app for the iPad than using my kindle, my kindle app also syncs with my kindle. I also enjoy reading my many Cookbooks on my iPad that is in full color that is actually better than the photos in my hard bound books. I admit also, I am comparing a $150 Kindle to a $1000 iPad in which there is no comparison. Again I do read some of my Kindle books directly on my iPad as well. Not all of my ebooks are apple based, but most are. I have thought many times do I want an Amazon ebook account, so far no.

For one reason or another Indigo/Chapters, our national book chain, sells Kobo but not Kindle. Also, though I can't speak for all library systems the one for where I live only gets ebooks in the Kobo format. I suspect part of the reason the rest of the English-speaking world uses Kobo rather than Kindle is to prevent US domination of our reading materials. Kindle would probably be unhappy if it found it had to translate all its material for certain markets into the spelling used in that market, i.e. honour not honor.