Review - Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey

Short review: A new kind of super soldier destroys the fragile peace on Ganymede, and James Holden once again finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy to exploit the alien protomolecule no matter the cost in human lives.

Haiku
Dead Marine platoon
Wrecked lunar ecology
All for more profits

Full review: Caliban's War continues the story started in Leviathan Wakes, with James Holden returning along with the rest of the crew of the Rocinante to deal with yet another interplanetary crisis. They are joined by new characters who replace the missing Detective Miller as view point characters - the tough Martian marine Bobbie, the naive Ganymedean botanist Prax, and the calculating and shrewd U.N. official Avasarala, all of whom must navigate the crisis caused by the raw tensions between the governments of Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Against the backdrop of this raging internecine human conflict, the mysterious alien protomolecule carries out its enigmatic programming on the surface of Venus, sitting in the back of everyone's mind like a puzzle they cannot understand and an itch they cannot scratch.

As the second novel in the Expanse series, the primary question one must ask about Caliban's War is does the novel suffer from the "sophomore slump" that plagues so many sequels. The answer to a certain extent, is yes. Although the plot of this book isn't bad, a lot of it feels like a rehash of the plot of the first book in the series. A mysterious entity has been experimenting with the protomolecule, with unexpected and lethal results, just like in Leviathan Wakes. To cover up their activities, the evil doers have sparked a war by exploiting the tensions between Earth, Mars, and the OPA, just like in Leviathan Wakes. A missing daughter turns out to be the key to figuring out what the nefarious forces are up to, just like in Leviathan Wakes. Holden uses his fame in an effort to publicize a problem, and mostly makes things worse, just like in Leviathan Wakes. And so on. Further, the entire book feels almost like a place holder that exists mostly to put some distance between the big revelation concerning the alien protomolecule that took place at the end of Leviathan Wakes and the big revelation concerning the alien protomolecule that takes place at the end of this book.

From one perspective, the similarities between this volume and the previous one in the series are not really a weakness, as Leviathan Wakes is a really good book, which means that even though there is a lot in Caliban's War that echoes the plot of its predecessor, it is at least a decent framework to use. What ultimately saves this book is also what made the first book so good even when its plot was kind of wandering: The characters, from the primary viewpoint characters all the way down to the bit players who pass through the narrative once and then move on with their lives. Holden is back as the only viewpoint character to move from the first novel to this one, but his experiences have changed him. Whereas once he was a naive idealist, he has become a harder and rougher man, more callous, more willing to resort to violence, and more suspicious, but there is still enough of the old Holden left in him that when a distraught scientist looking for his missing daughter pleads for help, he can't turn the man down.

Three new characters step into the void left by the apparent deaths of Joe Miller and Julie Mao, and the distancing of Fred Johnson, with the book rotating between chapters told from their perspectives mixed in with chapters related in Holden's voice. The first is Bobbie Draper, a veteran Martian marine of Polynesian descent with a mountainous physique stationed on Ganymede whose entire unit is annihilated by an alien creature in the opening pages of the book. As the sole survivor of the attack that sparked a disastrous confrontation between the Martian troops and the U.N. forces on this economically vital moon of Jupiter, Bobbie finds herself thrust into the maelstrom of interplanetary politics and swept into events beyond her control. As a tough and experienced Marine, Bobbie is used to a world of discipline, honor, and loyalty. In the course of the story, she finds herself working alongside people for whom those values are not quite as important, in situations where she is a fish out of water. When Bobbie goes to Earth, the reader sees its society through her eyes. When the authors need to explain the ins and outs of the various political machinations to the reader, they do so by having Avasarala explain them to Bobbie. In many ways, Bobbie is the reader's window into the workings of Earth's government and society, a window that is made more effective by her own unfamiliarity with the subjects.

Also present for the disaster on Ganymede is Praxdike Meng, the Chief Botanist of a soy farm project on Ganymede whose work on engineering a superior strain of soybean is interrupted by the conflict that erupts on and above the moon, and whose daughter Mei is abducted in the very opening chapter of the book. Much of Prax's part in the story is taken up by his efforts to locate his missing daughter - a set of efforts that quite serendipitously turn out to be integral to figuring out what the villains experimenting with the protomolecule are up to. Unlike Bobbie, who is whisked away from Ganymede almost as soon as the shooting is over, Prax remains behind, and gives the reader an eyewitness to the disintegration and collapse of the Ganymedean infrastructure and biosphere. As in the first book, one of the elements that makes this series so good is the way that the authors convey the lived-in nature of the universe they have created, and in Caliban's War, no character conveys that as well as Prax does in the chapters in which he is trying to scrape by in the collapsing society left behind by the bombs and bullets of the Mars-Earth conflict. Unlike Bobbie, Prax is intimately familiar with the world that surrounds him, and knows (and conveys to the reader) exactly how it is progressively failing.

The final viewpoint character is Chrisjen Avasarala, a seventy year old Indian woman who is the third most powerful figure in the U.N. government that runs Earth. As a somewhat cynical and world-weary government official who is dedicated to getting to the bottom of what actually happened on Ganymede, Avasarala mostly fills the role Miller played in the first book, but since she has so much more political clout, everything she does in this vein is more of less Miller writ large, for good and for ill. The most notable thing about Avasarala is how different she is from all of the other viewpoint characters in the series thus far. Other than Avasarala, the books have had an officer on an ice freighter, an alcoholic detective in a backwater colony, a grunt Marine assigned to duty on a distant moon, and a divorced botanical researcher - all characters whose lives could best be described as ordinary, or even boring before their entanglement in the events of the books. In some cases, these character were at a dead-end in their careers and lives. Avasarala, on the other hand, is the one character for whom being involved in big events is not a fluke. In fact, Avasarala has spent much of her life intentionally inserting herself into world and even Solar system changing events. She is the one character who could be described as a "mover and a shaker", and as such, she provides a perspective on events that is unique in the series to this point.

The other element that makes this book work as well as it does is how, just like in Leviathan Wakes, the authors make their fictional world feel like a lived in place. One way that this book does that is by making things that were mentioned in passing in the previous book into important plot points in this one. When Avasarala is sent off on an investigatory mission to Ganymede, she is booked on the luxury space yacht of Jules-Pierre Mao, the man who had issued the contract to track down his daughter that sent Joe Miller on his quest in Leviathan Wakes. When Avasarala and Bobbie need to speed up their journey, they take over Julie's racing ship the Razorback, which was previously only mentioned in passing during Miller's investigation. It is these threads of connection that help tie the series together, and link the books together, but they also help make the world feel complete - the racing boat wasn't just some character building detail that served its purpose and then left the narrative, but is rather something that feels like it has its own existence that continues off-stage.

Although Caliban's War represents something of a mild drop-off in quality following Leviathan Wakes, it remains a strong book. To be blunt, the first volume in the series was so good that there was a lot of room for this book to drop-off into before it became disappointing. As noted above, the plot of this book does feel at times like a rehash of the plot of the first book, and one gets the sense that the primary reason this volume exists is to put some mental distance between the last big thing the protomolecule did and the big thing the protomolecule does at the end of this book, but there is still enough here to make this book worth one's reading time. The development of the new characters, the development of the fictional world they live in, and the deepening of the mystery of the alien protomolecule all serve the rescue this book from its rather rote plot, and keep the series as a whole moving forward. In the end, Caliban's War represents a minor sophomore slump, but is still good enough to be a superior book.

Previous book in the series: Leviathan Wakes
Subsequent book in the series: Abaddon's Gate

2013 Hugo Award Longlist
2013 Locus Award Nominees

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Book Blogger Hop May 5th - May 11th: Scipio Africanus Defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C.

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: Do you re-arrange and move books around on the shelves or move books off of your bookshelves to another area after a certain amount of time or do you just leave them the way they are?

I suppose one might say I rearrange my books, albeit very slowly. I have certain shelves that contain the books I have read, and other shelves that house the books that I have not yet read. As I read books, I move them from the "haven't read" shelves to the "read" shelves. One might best describe this as a kind of slow-motion rearranging of my books.

One caveat I will offer concerning this process is that due to the fact that my current living arrangement requires me to have a large portion of my books boxed up, and a further portion stacked somewhat haphazardly in piles, this system of moving books from the "unread" shelves to the "read" shelves is observed as much in the breach as it is in actuality. I am hoping to alter this situation at some point in the reasonably near future, but there is no guarantee I will be able to - especially with the impending arrival due in August.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: The Second Punic War Ended in 201 B.C.

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Septimius Severus Rebuilt Byzantium in 203 A.D.

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2017 Clarke Award Nominees

Location: Sci-Fi London at Foyles Bookshop in London, United Kingdom.

Comments: The most interesting thing about the Clarke Award in 2017 has nothing at all to do with the award itself in any official sense. In February, a group of critics led by Nina Allen formed a "shadow jury" and announced their intention to evaluate the books that had been submitted for the Clarke Award and create their own shortlist out of that assembly of works. This shadow jury consisted of Nina Allan plus Megan AM, Vajra Chandrasekera, David Hebblethwaite, Victoria Hoyle, Nick Hubble, Paul Kincaid, Maureen Kincaid Speller, and Jonathan McCalmont. Over the ensuing two months, they read many of the eligible books and commented upon them. Many of the members of the "shadow jury" came up with their own personal shortlist of finalists, but, more importantly, they all got together and came up with a joint shortlist, which they dubbed the "Sharke Six". This joint shortlist was announced the day before the official Clarke Award shortlist was released, and consisted of the following six books:

• The Arrival of Missives  by Aliya Whiteley
• Central Station  by Lavie Tidhar^*
• A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna
• Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes
• The Power  by Naomi Alderman
• The Underground Railroad by  Colson Whitehead^*


^*Also an official finalist.

The first thing one might note about this "alternate" shortlist is that there is some overlap with the official shortlist, although that overlap only amounts to two books. This overlap is notable, because it happens to include one of the books that one of the shadow jurors described as "essential", and declared he would judge the official Clarke Award on whether or not it was included in the shortlist. This declaration came despite assurances from the organizers of the shadow jury that their "idea is not to ‘challenge’ the official jury in any way". It seems that for some of the critics involved, the idea was, in fact, to challenge the official jury.

The real question to ask is whether the creators of the shadow jury lived up to their stated intention to "bring more to the party: more readers, more critics, more books, more discussion". Well, maybe. They certainly brought more critics into the discussion by bringing themselves. From one perspective, they brought more books by having an alternate shortlist that diverged from the official shortlist by four books. On the other hand, they were working from the same longlist of works, so the "more books" claim might be something of a stretch. They brought more discussion by discussing the books they put on their personal lists and giving an account of how they came up with their alternate shortlist, but they probably would have discussed those books anyway, which tempers the claim to more discussion somewhat. On the other hand, I (and others like me) probably wouldn't be discussing this had they not formed a shadow jury, so that can be said to be more discussion. Did they create more readers? Maybe, although I don't see how one could measure that.

On the whole, I'd say that by the metrics they set forth, the shadow jury is a moderate success. What it does mean is that instead of merely having six official Clarke Award finalists, we now have a list of six "official" and four additional "shadow" finalists. I'd say that is something of a win for genre fiction fans no matter how you look at it.

Winner

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead^*

Shortlist
After Atlas by Emma Newman
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar^*
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan

^* Also a shadow finalist.

What Are the Arthur C. Clarke Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 2016
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2018

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Random Thought - Some Thoughts About Library Book Sales

I love library book sales¹. I love the hunt - perusing the rows of books and separating the wheat from the chaff, and then coming across the unexpected find that you never knew you absolutely needed. There is something magical about standing among the piles of books, shoulder to shoulder with other bibliophiles,most of you searching for something none of you had any idea you were looking for. I love that I can usually get dozens of books for the price of one or two new hardbacks.

This past weekend, the redhead and I went to three different library book sales - one in Reston, one in Annandale, and one in Arlington - and added a few books to our collection. Here is the bounty that resulted from our efforts:

Okay, it was more than a few books, which is pretty much what happens every time I go to a library book sale. Going to a library book sale requires a kind of chaotic mind-set. The sales are not like book stores, where you can walk in hoping to buy a specific book and have a reasonable expectation that you will be able to do so. Since the stock being sold at a library book sale is what had been donated to the cause, what one will find is almost completely random. One has to walk into the sale much like one walks into a used book store, willing to hunt through stacks of books looking for the handful of diamonds in the rough, and willing to more or less take whatever one finds. Usually, the selection is heavy on "classics" of the science fiction and fantasy genres. It isn't too difficult to find a copy of Ringworld by Larry Niven or The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, or any number of books by Isaac Asimov at a library book sale, but if you are looking for a particular book by Murray Leinster or James White, you're going to have to look a little harder. That said, there are some patterns that I have noticed over the years.

1. The closer a library is to an urban center, the better the selection of fantasy and science fiction it will have. One might even expand that to an assertion that the closer a library is to an urban center the better overall selection of books it will have, but there do seem to be certain categories of books that are more commonly found in rural areas - mostly books that one might find in a Christian book store. I live outside of the District of Columbia, and I find that the closer I get to the city itself, the more expansive and more interesting the science fiction section of a library book sale becomes.

2. The closer a library is to an urban center, the better the selection of DVDs and Bluerays is as well. I primarily go to library book sales for books, but I always check the DVD sales as well, and usually end up picking up at least a couple. I might not be willing to pay full price for a DVD of Minority Report or Elizabeth, but at two dollars each, they are worth getting. Even better, one can sometimes find stuff that you never would have thought of getting, but once you see it, you realize that you must have it. For example, at one of the sales this past weekend, I found volume two of the Superfriends, which immediately went into my shopping bag.

3. Though the specifics of a library books sale's stock are somewhat random, there are some types of books that crop up on something of a schedule. The stock of a library book sale is more or less a snap shot of what was really popular a year or two ago. Every book sale I went to this past weekend had piles of books by Veronica Roth and Rick Riordan. If I didn't already have them, I could have easily assembled the entire Percy Jackson series. A few years ago, the shelves were overflowing with copies of Harry Potter and Twilight novels. You can still find those, but they don't show up in the same numbers as they used to. On a more adult side, one can find piles of books by authors like Laurell K. Hamilton and Kelley Armstrong, along with a handful of books by authors like Jim Butcher.

4. On a fairly regular basis, one will find an intriguing puzzle in the books. It is relatively apparent that most books are donated by people who are cleaning out their homes and getting rid of the books that their kids read a few years ago, but have now lost interest in, or books that they got to read at the beach or on an airplane ride or something similar. But sometimes it is clear that the books were part of a collection put together by someone who really loved a particular author. When I find such troves, I always wonder what the story is behind their donation. Perhaps these books get donated when someone dies and their relatives clean their house out, or when they move from their home into a retirement community or some similar situation. For obvious reasons one will never almost certainly never know the story. At one of the three library book sales I found a pile of books by E.C. Tubb, an author that I had only a passing familiarity with. Last Friday, I owned no books by E.C. Tubb. Now I have sixteen.

5. The selection of graphic novels is always terrible. Over the years, I have only been able to find a handful of graphic novels that were worth getting, and some of those were ones I got because they were quirky - this past weekend I found a volume titled Library Mascot Cage Match, about which I know nothing about and picked up entirely due to the weirdness of the title. I also found a copy of The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, which was a rare find for a library book sale. Manga, on the other hand, is amazingly easy to find at library book sales. I could, if I was interested, come away from most library book sales with dozens of manga books.

6. It is fairly rare to find recent books. Most of the time the selection consists of books that are at least a few years out of date, and in some cases, many years out of date. Even so, sometimes one gets lucky: One of the books I found last weekend was Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, which is currently on the list of finalists for the Hugo Award.

None of these observations are grounded in anything other than my personal experience of going to library book sales for several years. I suppose that at some point it is inevitable that I will run across a library book sale that confounds all of these impressions, but thus far, they all seem to hold true.

As a final note, I recommend Book Sale Finder as a way to locate library book sales near you.

¹ Technically, most "library book sales" (at least in the area I live in) aren't actually run by the library itself, but rather by a quasi-affiliated "friends of the library" organization, but that is not a distinction that really makes much of a difference.

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Musical Monday - Convoy by C.W. McCall

As I said last week, the redhead and I recently went on a road trip. One little known fact is that I cannot go on a long road trip without playing this song at the beginning of the journey. I don't drive a big rig - in point of fact my car is about as far from the trucks described in Convoy as one can get and still call it a car - but there is just something perfect about heading out onto the highway with this song as the soundtrack to drive by.

Previous Musical Monday: The Old Home Fill 'er Up and Keep On a-Truckin' Cafe by C.W. McCall

Subsequent Musical Monday: Brandy (You're a Fine Girl) by Looking Glass

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Book Blogger Hop April 28th - May 4th: The Second Punic War Ended in 201 B.C.

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: How many books have you re-read? If you have re-read books, please tell us the book's title and why you re-read it.

I reread books on occasion. Sometimes I reread books just because I enjoyed them, and it has been a while since I last read them. Most books in this category are books that I first encountered when I was younger, and have reread every now and then just to revisit a world that I enjoyed before. Books like The Lord of the Rings, A Wizard of Earthsea, and Dune are the type of books that I have reread a couple of times over the years for this reason.

The other reason I reread books is to review them. Usually this involves a book that I read a while ago, but I am intent on reviewing now. There are a lot of classic works of science fiction and fantasy that I read in my youth that I would like to review as part of my long term goal of reviewing at least a reasonable proportion of the important works of genre fiction - which includes most of the books that won or nominated for the major awards in the field. Time dims the memory, and so when I am getting ready to review a book, I always make sure to read it in close proximity to the time that I will be reviewing it, even if I have read it before.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: The HTTP Status Code Indicating Success Is "200"

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Scipio Africanus Defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C.

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Review - Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Short review: Holden wants revenge for the destruction of his shipmates. Miller wants to find a mysterious missing girl. Their paths cross, and then lead to an alien threat that could destroy all humanity.

Haiku
Naive idealist
And a hard-boiled detective
Join to save the world

Full review: The first book in the Expanse series, Leviathan Wakes is a kind of hard-ish medium future science fiction almost Space Opera story that feels a little bit like Firefly and a little bit like a Dashiell Hammett novel. The book is full of adventure, intrigue, and excitement, but it is the kind of industrial, oil-covered adventure, intrigue, and excitement that results in broken bones, bullet holes, and dead characters. Alongside the truckers and detectives in space in the book is just enough alien weirdness to shake things up and add a bit of inhuman horror to the impersonal dangers of living in a hostile environment that will probably kill you if you make a mistake.

Leviathan Wakes takes place in a future in which mankind has managed to spread out across the Solar System, but is still confined within its boundaries, although the Mormons have commissioned the construction of a generation ship to take them out among the stars. The book isn't really "hard" science fiction, but the human technology presented doesn't obviously break any known laws of physics, although the "Epstein Drive" that powers the spaceships used to flit about the void are improbably efficient. Having colonized Mars, the asteroid belt, and at least some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, humanity has split into rival factions. Earth is still the home to most of humanity, but it is overcrowded and its populace is regarded as decadent and lazy. Mars is in the process of being terraformed, and is on the cutting edge of everything. The "Belters" who live hardscrabble lives on the edge of human civilization are regarded as little better than savages by the inhabitants of the inner planets, which has resulted in the rise of a Belter political force called the Outer Planets Alliance that is, depending on who one talks to, a terrorist threat, a trade union, or a legitimate government.

One of the strengths of this book is how well it establishes its setting, and how well it gives it a real sense of place - Ceres, Eros, Tycho Station, and all the other places the heroes inhabit feel lived in, like a place one could go if one could just get the ship to take them there. All of this is accomplished skillfully via atmospheric storytelling, with a minimum of walls of exposition: In one scene, the rice and beans that someone is eating will be mentioned, in another the configuration of a character's miniscule dwelling will be described, and so on. Throughout the book, Corey fills the story with little details that give the reader the confidence that they thought about what living in and around the asteroid belt would be like, and even if the details wouldn't hold up to a detailed examination, they feel right, and that gives the book a solidity that is comforting at times, and incredibly disturbing at others.

The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of two viewpoint characters, bouncing back and forth between them each chapter. The first is Jim Holden, an competent and somewhat overeager idealistic and naive executive officer on the ice freighter Canterbury who leads an expedition to explore a derelict ship broadcasting a distress beacon that turns out to be a trap that results in the destruction of the Canterbury and the death of almost everyone he knows. While on the run with the tiny handful of survivors, Holden uncovers what he believes to be damning evidence about who attacked them, makes a couple of somewhat overhasty broadcasts and sparks a three-way interplanetary conflict of epic proportions. As the story progresses, it seems that Holden has a knack for taking a bad situation and making it worse for everyone outside of his little bubble, although he seems to fail upwards - winding up basically owning and captaining his own warship which, in a fit of literary symbolism, he christens the Rocicante.

The second is Joe Miller, a world-weary, hard-drinking, cynical detective working on the grimy and corrupt tunnels of his native Ceres who would have been comfortable sharing an office with Sam Spade, but starts the story saddled with a partner who is originally from Earth. This pairing is interesting, because it allows the authors to illustrate the tensions between the inner planets and the Belters in a fairly convincing manner without being particularly heavy-handed about it. Early in the book, Miller is handed a missing persons case that he first ignores, but as events unfold and he had time on his hands, he pursues long enough that he becomes intrigued, and then obsessed. Like Holden, Miller is a deeply flawed character whose own weaknesses result in him mostly reacting to events for a substantial portion of the book. In fact, neither character seems to really start to take the initiative until they are all out of other options and almost literally run into one another.

One might think that a book in which the main characters are driven forward for much of its legth by events beyond their control would seem somewhat unsatisfying. To offset this, Leviathan Wakes relies upon a cast of supporting characters that surround Miller and Holden and feel like they belong completely to this imagined future. The primary characters are all fleshed out entities in their own right, from Naomi the incredibly skilled engineer, to Amos the hard-nosed mechanic with a heart of gold, to Alex the daring pilot who looks like a schoolteacher, to Fred Johnson the leader of the OPA (or at least some of it). The secondary characters like Havelock the Earther detective working on the colony of Ceres, and Julie Mao the scion of a wealthy family who has left her privileged life behind are less fully developed, but they are presented in such a way that it seems as if what is shown is merely the tip of the iceberg, and lurking behind what is on the page are the details of an entire life that has been lived. Even the minor characters who don't appear in more than a scene or two feel alive - notably the ill-fated medic Shed, the wrong-headed captain Shaddid, the slang-slinging Belter assault trooper Miller strikes up a friendship with, and even the low-key missionary Miller happens across while taking a low-budget shuttle to Eros. All of these characters help drive the book forward, even when Miller and Holden aren't really seizing the initiative on their own, giving the pair others to bounce off of while they get their acts together.

The point at which Holden and Miller come together is where Leviathan Wakes really starts rolling, grabbing the reader with both hands and never letting go until the very last page. This is also the point at which everything around these two characters starts to go pear-shaped and the world starts to become pretty weird. Holden and Miller form an alliance of convenience, albeit one that is continually strained by their fairly incompatible personalities, and begin to try to push back at what the world has unleashed at them - which turns out to be the fruits of a sociopathic megacorporation playing around with alien technology they don't understand, but are willing to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of people to find out. At a certain point, the book starts to feel like a runaway train, as every time the heroes think they have found a solution to the current problem, they find a new, even worse problem behind it. Eventually, everything comes to a head and requires an extreme, and somewhat improbable sacrifice that puts things to rest for the moment, but leaves the world changes in rather substantial ways.

Leviathan Wakes is often described as a space opera, and it does have a fair number of space opera-ish elements, but to the extent this is possible, it is a gritty, semi-realistic feeling space opera. The book is an almost impossible mish-mash of influences that seems like it should be an unpalatable mess, but somehow this unruly amalgamation works beautifully, resulting in a thrilling ride through its pages that are full of intrigue, action, adventure, mystery, and wonder. In many ways, this story is one that really shouldn't work, and yet has been executed in such a fashion as to yield a finished product that is quite simply top notch.

Subsequent book in the series: Caliban's War

2017 Hugo Award Finalists
2012 Hugo Award Finalists
2012 Hugo Award Longlist
2012 Locus Award Nominees

2018 Hugo Longlist

James S.A. Corey     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Musical Monday - The Old Home Fill 'er Up and Keep On a-Truckin' Cafe by C.W. McCall

The redhead and I went on a road trip to Indiana and back the week before last, and between that and moving a lot of furniture to get ready for the impending baby this past weekend, I'm pretty worn out. The house is still a disaster, there are piles of things still all over the place, I had to pack up the table and supplies I use for miniatures to make room, and I still have no idea where we are going to store our bicycles, but there is now a room that is more or less ready for us to have a newborn live in it.

What does this have to do with C.W. McCall's ode to the glories of a truck stop cafe? Nothing really, but whenever I go on a long drive, I always think about McCall, especially if I'm on a road with a lot of long haul truckers like I-70 or I-81, both of which I spent a fair amount of time upon in the last couple of weeks. So here it is. Now I'm going to go ask Mavis for a cup of her best and a number three.

Previous Musical Monday: Heavy Boobs by Rachel Bloom

Previous Musical Monday: Convoy by C.W. McCall

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Book Blogger Hop April 21st - April 27th: The HTTP Status Code Indicating Success Is "200"

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: Would you stop reading a book if an element of the plot strongly clashed with your personal beliefs, or would you continue reading until you finished the book?

I can answer this question from experience, because I have read books that had elements that clashed with my personal beliefs. I finished those books. I can't say that my reading experience was enhanced by such elements, but it wasn't ruined either. For the most part, I simply move past such elements when they pop up. In some cases, such elements make a book unintentionally comical, such as when a libertarian leaning writer tries to put in some libertarian propaganda in their text, or when I a "Christian" science fiction or fantasy writer tries to insert their message into their story. I may not end up reading these texts the way their authors intended me to, but I do finish them.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: In 2007, Ryan Howard Set a Major League Record With 199 Strikeouts

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: The Second Punic War Ended in 201 B.C.

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Review - Painting by Numbers by Jason Makansi

Short review: Numbers are used for all kinds of purposes, and this book seeks to make it possible for readers to separate the numerical wheat from the chaff.

Haiku
People can be fooled
By numerical models
Think skeptically

Disclosure: I received this book as a Review Copy. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review: Subtitled How to sharpen your BS detector and smoke out all the "experts", Jason Makansi's book Painting by Numbers isn't so much about numbers, but rather about how to understand and evaluate the use of numbers in the media, in business, and everywhere else models, charts, graphs, and other statistical representations are used in support of a particular position or projection. Despite being a book about "numbers", there are very few actual numbers in it, because the point of the book is not how to conduct analysis and create mathematical models, but it instead directed at providing the tools that an ordinary non-technically proficient person needs to be able to assess, at least to some extent, the reliability of the myriad of statistical models they are presented with in everyday life.

Painting by Numbers is divided into two broad sections. In the first, Makansi lays out the "Twelve Commandments of a Numerical Skeptic", taking twelve chapters to discuss each commandment in turn. Each chapter outlines one of these "commandments", seeking to arm the reader with a tool capable of picking apart models and presentations that rely upon the use of numerical information. Makansi presents these in an approachable manner, allowing those who are not versed in the intricacies of mathematical analysis to gain an appreciation for the limitations of such methods, and identify when such limitations are present. The commandments also, to a certain extent, allow a skeptic to assess just how critical those limitations are, and how severely they impact the reliability of the model being used. This is not to say that reading this section will make someone capable of doing a complete assessment themselves - that would be well beyond the scope and intent of the book - but rather that they can make a rough evaluation that will serve to separate the wheat from the chaff of numerical models.

The second section of the book is titled "Putting Your BS Detector to Work" and contains ten examples of numerical models to which the author applies the commandments outlined in the first section. Each of the examples is drawn from the real world, and the author states that he picked them and then evaluated them, in order to show how the "twelve commandment" system is applied rather than picking examples that were specifically chosen to make a particular point. This section is interesting, but not quite as effective as the first section. This is, in part, because the examples provided are only sketched out to the extent needed to show how the twelve commandments apply, which means that they feel a little bit disjointed and lacking in context. I would have preferred to see the entire item being discussed (although, to be fair, that would have made the book considerably longer), and then seen an exploration of how the twelve commandments applied to it, as this would have fleshed them out more completely. In a book dedicated to providing readers with the tools to evaluate the context of numerical models, the lack of context for many of the examples given seems odd. The other thing that sticks out about this section is that every example provided is riddled with problems. As I said before, the author chose these examples blind, in an effort to essentially "play fair", but one could come away with the impression that there are no numerical models that are worthwhile. This may be an impression that the author intended, but if so, he doesn't say so.

Despite those minor quibbles, Painting by Numbers remains a useful and informative work, aimed squarely at arming the non-numerically inclined with the tools necessary for them to deal with information provided via numerical models and their close companions, graphs and diagrams. This book is not a technical guide to numerical analysis, and it is not intended to be. The collection of "commandments" cover a wide range of issues that crop up in numerical models, and are presented in a manner that those who are not particularly comfortable with numerical analysis can both understand and apply them. The examples are, in general, easy to follow, and provide a broad spectrum of illustrations of the "commandments" in action. For those looking for a more in depth exploration of numerical analysis, Painting by Numbers comes equipped with a list of fifteen recommended titles on the subject.

At just over 150 pages, Painting by Numbers is exactly what it sets out to be: A clear and concise primer on how to evaluate the numerical data that bombards us on a daily basis. Although the tools provided in its pages are very basic, that should be considered a feature and not a bug. This book is not aimed at those who are already skilled at understanding numerical analysis, but instead seeks to equip those who do not have such a background to they can look at what they find in newspapers, on television, and in the board room with a properly skeptical, and hopefully, reasonably informed eye. For anyone looking for a guide to becoming a skeptic concerning numbers and their meaning, then this book would be an excellent resource.

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Review - Ms. Marvel: Super Famous by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Adrian Alphona, and Nico Leon

Short review: Kamala Khan has gotten everything she ever dreamed of, so her life should be perfect. The only trouble is that being a super famous Avenger is a lot harder than she ever expected.

Haiku
She's super famous
But that isn't super great
For a teenager

Full review: In the fifth installment of the Ms. Marvel series, Kamala Khan has gotten pretty much everything she ever dreamed of. Not only did the world not end as threatened in Last Days, but she has mastered her powers, become the defender of Jersey City, and even joined the Avengers. The opening pages of this volume show Khan reveling in this fantasy come true as she fights alongside Captain America and Iron Man. Unfortunately, as is made clear in this volume, sometimes getting everything you want only leads to more problems and more heartache than you had before. Kamala is, as the title says, Super Famous, but the price of that fame is high, especially for a teenager still struggling to find her place in the world.

The volume contains two major "heroic" story arcs, as well as a collection of complementary story lines that deal with Kamala's personal life. The first story arc revolves around the Hope Yards Development/Relocation Association, and their use of Ms. Marvel's image in their advertising. Now, this plot line does raise questions about the legalities of using a super-hero's image for promotional purposes without their consent, but those concerns can be set aside due to the fact that Kamala is a teenager who may not really know what her legal rights are, and even if she did know them, enforcing her rights while remaining anonymous might be problematic. This story line does highlight the down side of being "Super Famous", which is that others will try to use that fame for their own ends. This story proceeds in a fairly typical super-hero story manner, with Kamala uncovering progressively sinister secrets concerning Hope Yards, which eventually culminates in the need to foil a villainous plot involving mind-controlling nanobots, but that is not really the point of this plot. The meat of the story is the headaches that come from sudden fame: Kamala is good at punching villains into submission, and she is even good at coming up with ways to defeat mind-controlling chemicals, but she is not so good at managing her public persona. Even when she defeats the villains, Ms. Marvel's reputation is tarnished because people assume that she was in cahoots with them until it became convenient to disavow their perfidy. This is brilliant, because this is exactly the sort of thing that a teenage super-hero would be terrible at handling, and the story retains its authenticity by showing that Kamala deals with the problem like an inexperience sleep-deprived teenager.

The second "heroic" arc involves a mostly self-inflicted disaster stemming from Kamala's efforts to keep up with her hectic schedule. As a member of the Avengers, the defender of Jersey City, a full-time high school student, and a Muslim girl with obligations to her family and community, Kamala has a more than full plate of commitments. In an effort to create some space in her hectic schedule, Kamala jumps into some experiments her friend Bruno has been conducting on the lightning golems Loki left behind at their high school after the events in Last Days and has him create simulacra that look like her. Kamala's idea is to send these replicated versions of herself to school and family events so that she will get credit for being there, but free up time for pursuing her other obligations such as Avenging. This almost immediately turns out to be a misstep, as the inherent limitations of the lightning golem material results in Kamala-golems that are similarly limited - with results that prove dismaying to her friends and family. Before too long, the situation gets entirely out of hand due to unforeseen complications that more or less drive home the fact that one should not mess with technology that has Loki as its progenitor. This is quickly followed by the corollary, "Never turn to Loki in an effort to try to fix a disaster", and the further note that calling on Captain Marvel is pretty much never a bad option. This story highlights that trying to always please people is its own trap, and Kamala has fallen into it through her own inexperience and inability to say "no". Once again, this story turns upon the fact that Kamala is a believable teenager, subject to all of the pressures teenagers face, and as inept at handling them as most teenagers are.

These two "heroic" arcs make up the super-hero portion of the story, but what makes the Ms. Marvel series truly special is everything that surrounds her heroic persona and highlights Kamala's travails as a Muslim daughter of Pakastani immigrants trying to navigate her way through her teenage years in the United States. On this front, there are two critical "personal life" story lines presented in this volume. The first revolves around Kamala's best friend Bruno, who had professed her love for Kamala in the previous volume, and who had been gently turned down, with Kamala protesting that her life was simply too unsettled to even consider romance coupled with a suggestion that Bruno should probably move on with his own life. Within the first few pages of this book, an oblivious Kamala learns that Bruno has indeed taken her advice and has struck up a relationship with a girl named Michaela, called "Mike" for short. Despite the fact that she had turned Bruno down, Kamala finds herself combating feelings of jealousy that both surprise and disturb her. This internal battle is presented amazingly well, with Kamala behaving pretty much like one would expect an awkward and confused teenager to behave, and at the same time berating herself for not being a better person. Eventually everything works out between the two women as Kamala comes to terms with the situation, but that is really only half of what makes this story line so good: Mike herself is an interesting character who brings a lot to the story. She is not brilliant like Bruno, but she is still smart and brave, and willing to put herself at risk in order to help others. In a twist, Mike has a very different look than Kamala, or really from most characters in comics. She is a little pudgy, with big thighs and a figure that can only be adequately described as a bit round. Despite this, everyone in the story appears to regard her as being attractive - and no one even comments upon her size or shape. She is a cute girl, and everyone in the story simply treats her that way, with no added commentary.

The other personal story line, and the one that probably causes Kamala more stress, revolves around her ultra-religious brother Aamir courting and then marrying Tyesha, a black American Muslim. From Kamala's perspective, this means more family obligations as she is expected to attend the various pre-wedding events dictated by traditional Islamic practices, but in exchange she gets a sister-in-law who makes references involving the science fiction novel Dune, so she is reasonably happy with the arrangement. What the story really shows, however, is the diversity and tensions within the Islamic community. The Khan's are immigrants from Pakistan, who brought their faith and customs with them from their home country. As what could be best described as secular Muslims, neither of Kamala's parents are as devout as Kamala's brother, but they have expectations that their lives will be organized along certain lines, and that certain things will be done in a certain way. Tyesha, on the other hand, is an American convert, whose parents are church-going Christians. Through the relationships between Aamir and Tyesha, and the elder Kamalas and Hillmans, one can see the undercurrent of cultural chauvinism and even racism that everyone tries to combat within themselves, reaching for their better natures despite their internalized prejudices. What this highlights is the fact that the Muslim community is not a monolithic entity, and even a minority group is prone to prejudices against others who they have something, but not everything, in common. As with most other story lines that touch upon culture and religion in Ms. Marvel, this thread is handled with grace and skill, and never once rings false even as it winds its way to an ultimately happy conclusion.

Ms. Marvel: Super Famous is, quite simply, the best installment in the series since the first volume No Normal. This is not to say that the intervening books have been weak, but rather that this one is so very good that it shines even when compared to the excellence of Generation Why, Crushed, and Last Days. Both of the super-heroic arcs are well done and help to develop both Kamala and her world while being full of action and humor. The personal story lines serve to both buttress the super-heroic arcs and make Kamala and those around her more fully realized characters. This is, in short, one of the best graphic novels of the past year, and well worth any fan's time.

Previous book in the series: Ms. Marvel: Last Days
Subsequent book in the series: Ms. Marvel: Civil War II

2017 Hugo Finalists

G. Willow Wilson     Takeshi Miyazawa     Adrian Alphona     Nico Leon

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Review - Pretty Deadly, Vol. 2: The Bear by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios

Short review: The world is at war and the Reaper of War rides triumphant, but Deathface Ginny means to do something about that.

Haiku
A reaper of grace
And reapers of war and fear
Reaper of courage

Full review: The second volume of the Pretty Deadly series, The Bear doesn't follow on directly after The Shrike, but instead picks up several decades after the events of the previous book, deep in the heart of the horrors of World War I. DeConnick's writing is still terse and pointed, Rios' artwork is still beautiful and hypnotic, and the story is still epic in scale and intensely personal in nature. In short, this is an excellent follow-up to an excellent opening act that serves to deepen the background and carry forward the overall narrative.

The most crucial difference between this volume and the previous one is that of tone. The Bear takes the mythic and at times ethereal nature of Pretty Deadly and grounds it quite firmly in our world. While The Shrike took place in a time no more distinct than "sometime when revolvers where the height of firearm technology, and in a location no more specific than "the Old West", The Bear quite explicitly takes place during World War I, and many of the events of the book are quite clearly located in France, in the trenches of the Western Front. This grounding givens the entire volume a different feel than the previous volume: Grittier, more visceral, and more tragic. By carrying the fairy-tale like atmosphere forward from the first volume, and weaving it together with the all too real horrors of the Great War, DeConnick and Rios have revealed the true terror behind the magical and almost airily surreal supernatural elements of the story. This contrast drives the book forward, and gives the book weight and strength that could not be achieved without this mixture.

Despite the years between the previous volume and this one, almost all of the characters from The Shrike return in The Bear, which isn't really all that surprising given that most of them are nigh-immortal servants of Death itself. Both the Bunny and the Butterfly are present in this volume, serving their roles as a framing device to help narrate the story. Deathface Ginny and Fox are back, as are Big Alice and Johnny Coyote. Sissy, the current incarnation of Death, and an elderly Sarah Fields, at the very end of her life both return in this volume as well. Sarah's impending death provides the impetus for the story, as Fox comes to reap her into Death's domain, while Sarah's daughter Verine demands a reprieve so that her brother Cyrus can return home to bid their mother farewell. This is complicated by the fact that Cyrus is away in France, fighting on the Western Front and making friends with Frenchmen and cavalry horses.

To a certain extent, the plot of The Bear is not the point of the story. Instead, the real meat of the book is in how it develops the mythology that underpins the world that DeConnick and Rios have created. In this volume, the nature of the reapers is made more clear - especially where they come from and why. In these pages, we not only see a clash between two reapers over the course of the First World War, we also see the birth of a new reaper born in the shadow of that conflict. Since this is Pretty Deadly, this birth is accompanied by death, as nothing can happen in this series that is not paired with death. One interesting element is that the line between life and death in Pretty Deadly is so indistinct: Characters slip from life into death without even knowing it, and without the reader even noticing until later, when the fact that these characters are no longer living is brought to one's attention. In a very real sense, death sneaks up on both the characters and the reader, wrapped up in pretty riddles and parables that cloak its real nature until it is too late.

The mythology of the book also revolves around the symbolic stories that it uses, and in this volume the most notable such story revolves around the characters of Johnny Coyote and Molly, the Reapers of Luck. Which reaper represents good luck and which is bad luck is not clear, and as Johnny Coyote points out, that's more or less the point. Their story is told using a folksy tale involving a Chinese farmer, a runaway horse, the farmer's son, and the Emperor's soldiers, with the repeated refrain "Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" This piece of folklore is reflected in the path followed by Cyrus and his fellow soldiers, as they come across things that both hearten and dismay them, as they believe their fortunes have turned for the better, or turned for ill. The problem is that neither they, nor the reapers who circle around them invisibly, can know the ultimate meaning of these happenstances until they reach the end of their journey. In a related tale (which serves as the basis for the title of the volume), the bunny and the butterfly tell a story about a bear and a hive of bees, in which the hungry bear tries to get into the hive to eat the honey and larvae found within, but is driven off by the stings of the bees. The butterfly asserts that this is wonderful, which the bunny agrees with, provided one is a bee. Once again, the story highlights how whether something is good or bad depends entirely upon one's perspective - as the bunny says, "the needs of the bear are not the same as the needs of the bee". One might even say, what is good for death is not good for the living, and the needs of the reapers are not the same as the needs of their quarry.

Pretty Deadly, Vol. 2: The Bear is a maturation of the beautiful and affecting story begun in The Shrike. Taking the fable-driven story introduced in the first volume and melding it with the harsh reality of one of the most vicious and destructive events in real world history results in a final product that is both hauntingly stunning and horrifyingly brutal. This combination of the mundane and the supernatural makes the mythic elements seem more fairy-tale-like, but also roots them in a reality that grounds them at the same time, while it takes the bitter harshness of war and elevates it to the status of fable. With this volume, DeConnick and Rios have taken the strong story they launched with the first installment and raised it up to even greater heights of excellence.

Previous book in the series: Pretty Deadly, Vol. 1: The Shrike by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios

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Musical Monday - Heavy Boobs by Rachel Bloom

As anyone who has been following this blog knows, the Redhead is pregnant with our impending daughter Sophia. This has resulted in some rather predictable physical changes. The Redhead is reasonably busty even under normal circumstances, but now that she is pregnant, let's just say that each of her assets has its own gravitational field. This situation brought to mind Rachel Bloom's ode to her own mammaries, and consequently this Musical Monday is in honor of my Redhead's dense white dwarfs.

Previous Musical Monday: Chicken Attack by the Gregory Brothers featuring Takeo Ishii

Subsequent Musical Monday: The Old Home Fill 'er Up and Keep On a-Truckin' Cafe by C.W. McCall

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1984 Expanded Hugo Nominees

As I have noted before, due to a unique fluke, all of the raw balloting data from the 1984 Hugo Awards is publically available. This means that one can reconstruct not only the Longlist from this data, but essentially every work that received any nominations at all. The same dedicated science fiction fan who provided me with the information needed to reconstruct the "Longlist" for this year, also provided me with the information contained in this post. This is the "long tail" of the Hugo nominating process, and as far as I know, this is the only year for which we can see behind the curtain in this manner.

While it is somewhat interesting to see the array of works that received nominations but missed the cut to make the "Longlist", what I find more interesting is the overall landscape of the nominations. Some categories, such as Best Novel and Best Novelette, had a wide array of nominees, with an incredibly deep field of works receiving votes. Other categories, such as Best Novella and Best Semi-Prozine, had less than a handful of additional candidates receive votes. Still others, such as Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist, had none: Except for those who made the list of finalists and the longlist, no one received any votes in those categories. It seems that there were a wide variety of opinions about what novels and short stories were worthy of a Hugo nomination, but not nearly such a range of feeling in some of the other categories. I don't think any real insigtful conclusions about the state of fandom can be drawn from this pattern, especially not from a distance of more than thirty years, but it is a unique window into the mechanics of the Hugo process, and thus is interesting to look at.

Best Novel

Expanded Nominees:
40,000 in Gehenna by C.J. Cherryh
Annals of Klepsis by R.A. Lafferty
The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly
The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica by John C. Batchelor
The Blackcollar by Timothy Zahn
Broken Symmetries by Paul Preuss
Christine by Stephen King
Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan
The Crucible of Time by John Brunner
Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance
Damiano by R.A. MacAvoy
Dragon on a Pedestal by Piers A. Anthony
The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford
The Dreamstone by C.J. Cherryh
Escape Velocity by Christopher Stasheff
Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
The Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer
Hart's Hope by Orson Scott Card
Lammas Night by Katherine Kurtz
Lyonesse by Jack Vance
Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster
Manna by Lee Correy
A Matter for Men by David Gerrold
The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende
Neveryona by Samuel R. Delany
The Nonborn King by Julian May
On a Pale Horse by Piers A. Anthony
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg
Rocheworld by Robert L. Forward
Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster
Streetlethal by Steven Barnes
The Sword of Winter by Marta Randall
The Tree of Swords and Jewels by C.J. Cherryh
The Unforsaken Hiero by Sterline Lanier
Valentine Pontifex by Robert Silverberg
Wall Around a Star by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm
White Gold Wielder by Stephen R. Donaldson
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman
The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card
The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane
Yesterday's Son by A.C. Crispin

Best Novella

Expanded Nominees:
Credos by Ray Brown
The New Untouchables by Joseph Delaney

Best Novelette

Expanded Nominees:
And the Marlin Spoke by Michael Bishop
Beauty by Tanith Lee
Borovsky's Hollow Woman by Jeff Duntemann and Nancy Kress
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Cicada Queen by Bruce Sterling
A Day in the Life of Justin Argento Morrel by Greg Frost
Deathwomb by Poul Anderson
Deep Song by Reginald Bretnor
The Eternity Wave by Scott Elliot Marbach
Fire-Caller by Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Gemstone by Vernor Vinge
The Glitch by Britton Bloom
The Hand of Friendship by Rob Chilson
Hard Times by Howard Chaykin
Heritage of Flight by Susan Shwartz
The Hills Behind Hollywood High by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis
The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost by Russell Kirk
The Kidnapped Key by Jayge Carr
Knight of Shallows by Rand B. Lee
The Leaves of October by Don Sakers
Life on the Tether by Mark Wheeler
The Lurking Duck by Scott Baker
Mirror Image by Diana L. Paxson
Mirror of the Soul by L.S. Blanchard
The Monkey's Bride by Michael Bishop
Multiples by Robert Silverberg
The Nanny by Tom Wilde
Night Win by Nancy Kress
Nunc Dimittis by Tanith Lee
Rogueworld by Charles Sheffield
A Simple Case of Suicide by Marc Stiegler
To Slay the Dragon by P.E. Cunningham
Subworld by Phyllis Eisenstein
Taking the Fifth by Hayford Peirce
The Taylorsville Reconstruction by Lucius Shepard

Best Short Story

Expanded Nominees:
Amanda and the Alien by Robert Silverberg
Basileus by Robert Silverberg
Brothers by Richard Cowper
Buchanan's Head by Avram Davidson
The Cassandra by Timothy Zahn
The Cruelest Month by James Patrick Kelly
Cruising by Ian Watson
Cryptic by Jack McDevitt
Darts by Steve Perry
The Emigrant by Joel Rosenberg
Feat of Clay by Gene De Weese
Ghost Town by Chad Oliver
Golden Gate by R.A. Lafferty
In the Islands by Pat Murphy
La Reine Blanche by Tanith Lee
La Ronde by Damon Knight
The Man Outside by George Alec Effinger
Memory by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Needle in a Timestack by Robert Silverberg
The Palace at 4 A.M. by Donald Barthelme
Potential by Isaac Asimov
The Power of the Press by Richard Kearns
The Reluctant Torturer by Hayford Peirce
Revisions by Gordon Eklund
The Sense of Discovery by Jerry Oltion
The Shadows of Evening by Timothy Zahn
Slow Dancing with Jesus by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann
A Small Kindness by Ben Bova
Solitario's Eyes by Lucius Shepard
A Song for Justin by Richard Mueller
Stone Eggs by Kim Stanley Robinson
Tank-Farm Dynamo by David Brin
We the People by Jack C. Haldeman
Welcome to Wizcon by John Morressy
What We Did That Night in the Ruins by Warren Brown

Best Nonfiction, Related, or Reference Work

Expanded Nominees:
Against the Night, the Stars: The SF of Clarke by John Hollow
The Art of Return of the Jedi by Carol Titelman

De Camp: An L. Sprague De Camp Bibliography by Charlotte Laughlin and Daniel J.H. Levack

The Guide to Supernatural Fiction by Everett F. Bleiler
The Science in Science Fiction edited by Peter Nicholls

Best Dramatic Presentation

Expanded Nominees:
Android [ineligible]
British Airways Cities in Flight (Television Commercial)
The Empire Strikes Back [ineligible]
The Keep
Never Say Never Again
Prototype (CBS Television Movie)
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
Special Bulletin (NBC Television Movie)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan [ineligible]
Strange Invaders
Thriller (music video)

Best Professional Editor

Expanded Nominees:
Lou Aronica
Robert Asprin
Charles N. Brown
Sheila Gilbert
Beth Meacham
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Karl Edward Wagner

Best Professional Artist

Expanded Nominees:
Janet Auliso
Alicia Austin
Wayne D. Barlowe
George Barr
Doug Beekman
John Berkey
Jim Burns
David A. Cherry
James C. Christensen
Rick Demarco
Stephen Fabian
Phil Foglio
Frank Frazetta
Gary Freeman
Jack Gaughan
James Gurney
David Hardy
Stephen Hickman
Ralph McQuarrie
Real Musgrave
Wendy Pini
Richard M. Powers
Don Ivan Punchatz
Hannah Shapiro
Rick Sternbach
Walter Velez
Robert Walters
Dawn Wilson

Best Semi-Prozine

Expanded Nominees:
Pandora edited by Jean Lorrah and Lois Wickstrom

Best Fanzine

Expanded Nominees:
Anvil edited by Charlotte Proctor
Masiform D edited by Devra Michele Langsam
Private Heat edited by Lee Pelton
Weber Woman's Wrevenge edited by Jean Weber
Wiz edited by Richard Bergeron

Best Fan Writer

Expanded Nominees:
None

Best Fan Artist

Expanded Nominees:
None

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Expanded Nominees:
Clare Bell
Linda Blanchard
Susan Casper
David Eddings
Gregory Frost [ineligible]
Bruce T. Holmes
Rand B. Lee
David R. Palmer [ineligible]
Patricia C. Wrede

Go to 1984 Hugo Longlist

Go to 1984 Hugo Finalists and Winners

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Book Blogger Hop April 7th - April 13th: In 2007, Ryan Howard Set a Major League Record With 199 Strikeouts

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: If you could meet one author, dead or alive, who would it be?

Ursula K. Le Guin. For me, there really is no other choice. There is no other author who I find as fascinating either through their writing or just in their interviews and public statements. She is quite simply a brilliant writer who has written many of my very favorite books and stories including The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Day Before the Revolution, The Word for World Is Forest, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and many other. In addition to her magnificent oeuvre, she is the daughter of notable anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber and writer Theodora Kracaw, and was raised in a vibrant academic environment culminating in her own studies in French and Italian literature. As a result of this background, she is a tremendously insightful and thoughtful person. I can think of almost nothing better than to meet her and listen to her talk about pretty much anything she wants to expound upon.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: Public Law 93-198 Provided for Local Government for the District of Columbia

Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: The HTTP Status Code Indicating Success Is "200"

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