Beyond Reality discussion

Hi everyone,

It's time to make your nominations for our July 2010 Books of the Month. As always, every member may nominate one SF and/or one fantasy novel by posting a reply to this message with the title and author of the novel. Please also let us know why you're nominating the novel - it may help motivate people to vote for it! Almost any SFF novel is eligible: an old favorite, something you've just read and would like to discuss, something on your to-read shelf. You can also re-nominate any book that was nominated before but didn't win. We'll take nominations until April 20th.

Stefan

NOMINATIONS SO FAR:

FANTASY:

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson (phoenixfalls)
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (ron)
The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee (shel)
Scar Night by Alan Campbell (chris)
The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke (jo)
A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin (jane)

SCIENCE FICTION:


Light by M. John Harrison (phoenixfallls)
The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert (shel)
The Children of Men by P.D. James (chris)
The Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe (stefan)

Well I'll renominate the books I nominated last month, because they're still on my TBR stack. . .

Fantasy: Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson
Science Fiction: Light, by M. John Harrison

I second Phoenixfall's nomination of "Light", so I won't nominate another sf novel against it.
For Fantasy I nominate Flann O'Brien's wonderful book The Third Policeman. It's dark, it's very funny and inescapably Irish. There are no elfs or dwarfs or magic swords, but there are some very cunning bicycles.

For fantasy, I'd like to nominate The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee, an author I've been wanting to try for a long time - this looks really interesting, I've never before read a fantasy set in the Arctic!

For science fiction, The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert, because I've never read anything non-Dune by him, and also because my husband's been bugging me to read it because it's one of his favorite books :)

I'm not sure I want to noimnate something that competes with cunning bikes, but

For fantasy: Scar Night by Alan Campbell

For SF: The Children of Men by P.D. James

I've got to nominate my favourite book recently I have read this and the sequel Stormlord Rising which is only out in Oz at the moment. Fantastic Books.

Great nominations so far! I've added one of my own this time: The Best of Gene Wolfe, which was recently released in paperback. In my opinion, it's one of the best SF story collections ever. Since we had some discussion about the author recently, I thought it'd be nice to nominate a good introduction to his work. Here's a quote from the Booklist review:

"Thirty-one stories by the most distinguished creator of literary sf makes for a pretty indispensable volume. Of course, “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” and “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”—recognized as classics for many years now—are here. So are such objects of amused contemplation (on account of their titles) well before they are read (and as amusedly enjoyed) as “The Hero as Werewolf,” “The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton” (steampunk with more than one difference), “Seven American Nights” (an account of archaeology of the future), and “Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” written in homage to the witty Catholic sf (and historical) novelist R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002). Each of those and the rest of these stories characteristically begin at a point from which Wolfe diverges in a number of different directions—with just how many depending, surprisingly enough, on the particular reader. By the time one has, preferably slowly, digested Wolfe’s creativity, one could be humming Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Things Are Seldom What They Seem” and rejoicingly remarking, “with Wolfe, too.” --Roland Green

I won't nominate a fantasy novel because 1) it's unlikely that I'd have time to read it and 2) Jo nominated the book I would have nominated already.

I've added the nominations so far to the first post in the topic. Two more days to add books to the list!

Okay folks, I've set up the polls, so please take a moment to go vote! We didn't get as many nominations as usual this month, so I'm only doing one round of polls unless we need a tie-breaker.

Last day to vote, folks! We seem to have a tie in the SF poll, so if anyone feels inclined to add a vote for their favorite, this would be the time to do so...