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-   -   MobileRead May 2016 Book Club Nominations (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=273233)

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 01:02 AM
May 2016 Book Club Nominations
 
Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for May, 2016.

The nominations will run through midnight EST April 26 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

The book selection category for May is: Science Fiction.

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a poll at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the initial poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations. Please comment if you discover a nomination is not available as an ebook in your area.


Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
Goodreads | Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 288 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

Freedom of Information
If you ask, she must answer. A steerswoman's knowledge is shared with any who request it; no steerswoman may refuse a question, and no steerswoman may answer with anything but the truth.

And if she asks, you must answer. It is the other side of tradition's contract -- and if you refuse the question, or lie, no steerswoman will ever again answer even your most casual question.

And so, the steerswomen — always seeking, always investigating — have gathered more and more knowledge about the world they traveled, and they share that knowledge freely.

Until the day that the steerswoman Rowan begins asking innocent questions about one small, lovely, inexplicable object…

Her discoveries grow stranger and deeper, and more dangerous, until suddenly she finds she must flee or fight for her life. Or worse -- lie.

Because one kind of knowledge has always been denied the the steerswomen:
Magic.

Reviewers comments:

“If you haven’t read Kirstein’s Steerswoman books I envy you the chance to read them now for the first time.... I think they have a very good claim to be my favorite thing still being written. […] If you like science, and if you like watching someone work out mysteries, and if you like detailed weird alien worlds and human cultures, if really good prose appeals... you’re really in luck.” — Jo Walton, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner, author of Among Others and Farthing.

"[Kirstein] walks the tightrope between fantasy and science fiction with precision and grace... [her] compassion for even minor characters is evident on every page, and her prose is measured and alluring without being overworked." -- Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, in Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010


(2) 1632 by Eric Flint
Goodreads | Amazon US / Audible / Baen
Print Length: 612 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

The Ultimate Y2K Glitch....

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).


(3) The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 256 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

One of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the twentieth century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan's job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Changes are small, exactingly calculated shifts in the course of history, made for the benefit of humankind. Though each Change has been made for the greater good, there are also always costs.

During one of his assignments, Harlan meets and falls in love with Noÿs Lambent, a woman who lives in real time and space. Then Harlan learns that Noÿs will cease to exist after the next Change, and he risks everything to sneak her into Eternity.

Unfortunately, they are caught. Harlan's punishment? His next assignment: Kill the woman he loves before the paradox they have created results in the destruction of Eternity.


(4) The Giver by Lois Lowry
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo
Print Length: 204 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.


(5) A Door Into Summer by Robert A Heinlein
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 304 pages
Spoiler:
When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking.
The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously, been patented in his name is. There's only one thing for it. Dan somehow has to travel back in time to investigate.
He may even find Pete ...


(6) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 158 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.


(7) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 338 pages pages
Spoiler:
The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’s a catch to the invitation–and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.


The nominations are now closed.

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 01:10 AM
Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list. Also, if you find one on the list that is no longer in operation, let me know and I'll remove it from the list.

Spoiler:
Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
Fishpond
Google

Canada
Amazon. Make sure you are logged out. Then go to the Kindle Store. Search for a book. After the search results come up, in the upper right corner of the screen, change the country to Canada and search away.
Google
Sony eBookstore (Upper right corner switch to/from US/CA)

UK
BooksOnBoard (In the upper right corner is a way to switch to the UK store)
Amazon
Foyle's
Google
Penguin
Random House
Waterstones
WH Smith


** The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross [JSWolf, caleb72]
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo UK / Kobo US / Overdrive
Print Length: 368 pages
Spoiler:
Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for The Laundry, a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. None of them receive any thanks for the jobs they do, but at least a techie doesn't risk getting shot or eaten in the line of duty. Bob's world is dull but safe, and that's the way it should have stayed; but then he went and got Noticed.

Now, Bob Howard is up to his neck in spycraft, alternative universes, dimension-hopping nazis, Middle Eastern terrorists, damsels in distress, ancient Lovecraftian horror and the end of the world.

Only one thing is certain: it will take more than control-alt-delete to sort this mess out...


* Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson [szarroug3]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Overdrive
Print Length: 676 pages
Spoiler:
In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with color once more?


*** The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov [WT Sharpe, Dazrin, issybird]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 256 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

One of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the twentieth century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan's job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Changes are small, exactingly calculated shifts in the course of history, made for the benefit of humankind. Though each Change has been made for the greater good, there are also always costs.

During one of his assignments, Harlan meets and falls in love with Noÿs Lambent, a woman who lives in real time and space. Then Harlan learns that Noÿs will cease to exist after the next Change, and he risks everything to sneak her into Eternity.

Unfortunately, they are caught. Harlan's punishment? His next assignment: Kill the woman he loves before the paradox they have created results in the destruction of Eternity.


*** The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein [CRussel, treadlightly, Grey Ram]
Goodreads | Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 288 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

Freedom of Information
If you ask, she must answer. A steerswoman's knowledge is shared with any who request it; no steerswoman may refuse a question, and no steerswoman may answer with anything but the truth.

And if she asks, you must answer. It is the other side of tradition's contract -- and if you refuse the question, or lie, no steerswoman will ever again answer even your most casual question.

And so, the steerswomen — always seeking, always investigating — have gathered more and more knowledge about the world they traveled, and they share that knowledge freely.

Until the day that the steerswoman Rowan begins asking innocent questions about one small, lovely, inexplicable object…

Her discoveries grow stranger and deeper, and more dangerous, until suddenly she finds she must flee or fight for her life. Or worse -- lie.

Because one kind of knowledge has always been denied the the steerswomen:
Magic.

Reviewers comments:

“If you haven’t read Kirstein’s Steerswoman books I envy you the chance to read them now for the first time.... I think they have a very good claim to be my favorite thing still being written. […] If you like science, and if you like watching someone work out mysteries, and if you like detailed weird alien worlds and human cultures, if really good prose appeals... you’re really in luck.” — Jo Walton, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner, author of Among Others and Farthing.

"[Kirstein] walks the tightrope between fantasy and science fiction with precision and grace... [her] compassion for even minor characters is evident on every page, and her prose is measured and alluring without being overworked." -- Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, in Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010


*** 1632 by Eric Flint [CRussel, WT Sharpe, issybird]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Audible / Baen
Print Length: 612 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

The Ultimate Y2K Glitch....

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).


** Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold [Dazrin, Grey Ram]
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble
Print Length: 79 pages
Spoiler:
As the only woman on the first contact team, xenolinguist Toni Donato expected her assignment on Christmas would be to analyze the secret women's language -- but then the chief linguist begins to sabotage her work. What is behind it? Why do the men and women have separate languages in the first place? What Toni learns turns everything she thought they knew on its head.

Originally published in Asimov's in 2003, "Looking Through Lace" was a finalist for the Tiptree and Sturgeon awards. The Italian translation won the Premio Italia for best work of speculative fiction in translation in 2007.


** Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen [pdurrant, CRussel]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 364 pages
Spoiler:
All Second-Best Sailor wants is to sail his boat and trade with the wandering Neanderthals. But when the reefwives discover that a Cosmic Unity mission fleet is heading for his homeworld, his comfortable lifestyle vanishes in an instant. All Servant-of-Unity XIV Samuel wants is to help spread Cosmic Unity's message of harmony to a grateful galaxy. But the ecclesiarchs decide that Samuel is destined for greater things. Flung together by fate, the two men find themselves on opposite sides of a battle for the hearts and minds of every sentient creature in the galaxy. Together, they uncover Cosmic Unity's deepest secret, and come up with a kamikaze plan to fight off the invaders. But along the way, they will need help from the unlikeliest of allies.


*** The Giver by Lois Lowry [Grey Ram, treadlightly, JSWolf]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo
Print Length: 204 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.


*** Brave New World by Aldous Huxley [drofgnal, issybird, GA Russell]
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 158 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.


*** A Door Into Summer by Robert A Heinlein [fantasyfan, drofgnal, pdurrant]
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 304 pages
Spoiler:
When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking.
The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously, been patented in his name is. There's only one thing for it. Dan somehow has to travel back in time to investigate.
He may even find Pete ...


** The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells [GA Russell, caleb72]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US
Print Length: 130 pages
Spoiler:
From Wikipedia:

The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it.


*** The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. [WT Sharpe, din155, Dazrin]
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 338 pages pages
Spoiler:
The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’s a catch to the invitation–and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.


** Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein [caleb72, GA Russell]
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 452 pages
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

Here at last is the complete, uncut version of Heinlein's all-time masterpiece, the brilliant novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind grokking and water-sharing. And love.


The nominations are now closed.

JSWolf 04-20-2016 05:07 AM
I'd like to nominate The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross (368 pages)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...4,203,200_.jpg
Quote:
Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for The Laundry, a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. None of them receive any thanks for the jobs they do, but at least a techie doesn't risk getting shot or eaten in the line of duty. Bob's world is dull but safe, and that's the way it should have stayed; but then he went and got Noticed.

Now, Bob Howard is up to his neck in spycraft, alternative universes, dimension-hopping nazis, Middle Eastern terrorists, damsels in distress, ancient Lovecraftian horror and the end of the world.

Only one thing is certain: it will take more than control-alt-delete to sort this mess out...
Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/6129...ocity-archives
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Atrocity-Archi.../dp/B000OIZUIA
Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atrocity-Arc...486U23M?ie=UTF
Kobo US: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/eb...ity-archives-1
Kobo UK: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-uk/eb...0-47d4b235ff89

szarroug3 04-20-2016 02:37 PM
1 Attachment(s)
I want to nominate "Mistborn: The Final Empire" by Brandon Sanderson.

Attachment 148064

Quote:
In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with color once more?
Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/1569...e-final-empire
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mistborn-Final...5&sr=8-1-spell
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ersion=service

CRussel 04-20-2016 03:10 PM
More Fantasy than SF, IMO, and we appear to have split the two categories this year. I admit, I did enjoy the book, read as an Audible book. But apparently not enough to actually read later volumes. And it's 676 pages. :( :( That being said, if the consensus is that the category allows it, I'd probably give it a second. If only as an excuse to read the eBook version. But I was really hoping we'd see some real SF in this category. Of course, we just read an SF book last month, so we may have some dropoff this month.

Dazrin 04-20-2016 03:18 PM
I agree, I don't think Mistborn is really "science fiction", it is pretty clearly a "fantasy" novel and would be a better fit for either July (Free-For-All) or December (Fantasy). I really enjoyed it, and the rest of the series, but I don't think it fits the category.

My problem has been finding the right science fiction to nominate. Red Mars has me wanting something light-hearted or at least short. Too bad we have already read The Hitchhiker's Guide for the book club. Maybe Dirk Gently instead?

I am also hoping to find something that could have a good non-fiction tie-in for June.

JSWolf 04-20-2016 03:28 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by szarroug3 (Post 3303096)
I want to nominate "Mistborn: The Final Empire" by Brandon Sanderson.
That's fantasy, not science fiction. While it is a good book, it's not appropriate.

JSWolf 04-20-2016 03:39 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazrin (Post 3303138)
My problem has been finding the right science fiction to nominate. Red Mars has me wanting something light-hearted or at least short. Too bad we have already read The Hitchhiker's Guide for the book club. Maybe Dirk Gently instead?
Well, you could second The Atrocity Archives because it fits your criteria.

Dazrin 04-20-2016 03:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf (Post 3303156)
Well, you could second The Atrocity Archives because it fits your criteria.
I'm considering it. Although books that refer to Lovecraft's work as much as these do aren't what I would call "light hearted" in general. There is certainly some humor in them to balance it out though.

JSWolf 04-20-2016 04:13 PM
Why is Mistborn: The Final Empire in post 2? It's not SF.

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 04:14 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3303135)
More Fantasy than SF, IMO ... That being said, if the consensus is that the category allows it, I'd probably give it a second....
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf (Post 3303182)
Why is Mistborn: The Final Empire in post 2? It's not SF.
My rule of thumb as to what is allowed as far as the current month's category is concerned is to let the members decide with their votes. If someone makes a nomination, I'll enter it in the second post, then sit back and see if it gets a 2nd and a 3rd. If it wins, more power to it. I'm not proud. If someone nominated Bunnicula during the History nominations I'd run it up the flagpole and see if anyone saluted. :p

JSWolf 04-20-2016 04:20 PM
So if I nominated War & Peace or Gone with the Wind you'd allow them even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with the category?

If that is the case, why do we have categories? If that's not the case, then the Sanderson book should go.

issybird 04-20-2016 04:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf (Post 3303188)
So if I nominated War & Peace or Gone with the Wind you'd allow them even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with the category?
Now those I'd read! Go for it. And hope no one notices that GWTW has already been a selection.

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 05:13 PM
I nominate The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov.
Spoiler:
From Amazon:

One of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the twentieth century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan's job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Changes are small, exactingly calculated shifts in the course of history, made for the benefit of humankind. Though each Change has been made for the greater good, there are also always costs.

During one of his assignments, Harlan meets and falls in love with Noÿs Lambent, a woman who lives in real time and space. Then Harlan learns that Noÿs will cease to exist after the next Change, and he risks everything to sneak her into Eternity.

Unfortunately, they are caught. Harlan's punishment? His next assignment: Kill the woman he loves before the paradox they have created results in the destruction of Eternity.


Amazon US
Print Length: 256 pages

JSWolf 04-20-2016 05:18 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird (Post 3303204)
Now those I'd read! Go for it. And hope no one notices that GWTW has already been a selection.
What if I nominated 50 Shades of Gray or The Story of O? The point being, if a book doesn't belong in a given month's category, it should not be allowed.

CRussel 04-20-2016 05:46 PM
I'll nominate The Steerswoman, by Rosemary Kirstein. 288 pages according to Amazon. Price, $2.99 on Amazon.com.

This book is not fantasy, though you might think so initially. More than that would be a spoiler.

Amazon description:
Spoiler:

Freedom of Information
If you ask, she must answer. A steerswoman's knowledge is shared with any who request it; no steerswoman may refuse a question, and no steerswoman may answer with anything but the truth.

And if she asks, you must answer. It is the other side of tradition's contract -- and if you refuse the question, or lie, no steerswoman will ever again answer even your most casual question.

And so, the steerswomen — always seeking, always investigating — have gathered more and more knowledge about the world they traveled, and they share that knowledge freely.

Until the day that the steerswoman Rowan begins asking innocent questions about one small, lovely, inexplicable object…

Her discoveries grow stranger and deeper, and more dangerous, until suddenly she finds she must flee or fight for her life. Or worse -- lie.

Because one kind of knowledge has always been denied the the steerswomen:
Magic.


Reviewers comments:
Spoiler:
“If you haven’t read Kirstein’s Steerswoman books I envy you the chance to read them now for the first time.... I think they have a very good claim to be my favorite thing still being written. […] If you like science, and if you like watching someone work out mysteries, and if you like detailed weird alien worlds and human cultures, if really good prose appeals... you’re really in luck.” — Jo Walton, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner, author of Among Others and Farthing.

"[Kirstein] walks the tightrope between fantasy and science fiction with precision and grace... [her] compassion for even minor characters is evident on every page, and her prose is measured and alluring without being overworked." -- Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, in Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010


Amazon US - $2.99 USD
Amazon.ca - $2.99 CDN
Amazon UK - £1.99 UK
Kobo US - $2.99 USD

Dazrin 04-20-2016 05:48 PM
I will second The End of Eternity.

Similar concept to The Adjustment Bureau movie based on Philip K. Dick's Adjustment Team story that I have been wanting to try.

CRussel 04-20-2016 05:55 PM
As for allowed, I'm with Tom on this. But I'll vote on Mistborn by NOT seconding it. (But if szarroug3 or anyone else nominates it for July or December, I will second it. With the warning that it's LONG.)

As for Azimov, I'm considering a second there, but holding off a bit to see what other options are put forward. It's been 50 years since I read The End of Eternity, so I will not remember any of it, but I'd also hoped for something a bit newer.

Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.

Dazrin 04-20-2016 06:10 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3303245)
Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.
Nothing by Eric Flint is on the Selections List. 1632 has been on my to be read list for a while but it is another LONG one at over 600 pages. Of course it is free from the Baen free library so that would help.

CRussel 04-20-2016 06:27 PM
Yes, it's long. But it goes quickly. :) And I need a good excuse to get back into this series.

So, I nominate 1632, by Eric Flint. 612 pages, FREE from Baen directly, or Amazon directly. And we get SF, History, and fun, all in one.

Amazon:
Spoiler:
The Ultimate Y2K Glitch....

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Amazon US - $0.00 - WhisperSync Ready
Audible - $2.99 WhisperSync price
Baen Multiformat DRM-Free - $0.00

Dazrin 04-20-2016 06:36 PM
I did this last month and forgot this month but here are the last couple nomination threads for Science Fiction:

August 2015
August 2014
August 2013

Here are a couple awards specifically for science fiction (and fantasy):
Hugo Awards - Novels, Novellas, Novellettes - Best science fiction according to the World Science Fiction Society
Nebula Awards - Novels, Novellas, Novellettes - best science fiction according to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

It looks like CRussell's current nomination of The Steerswoman was nominated last year (and had only 3 less votes than our eventual winner). Rendezvous with Rama has been a finalist each of the last three years (I enjoyed it a lot) so maybe it is time to finally read it, it is only 256 pages.

treadlightly 04-20-2016 06:56 PM
I second The Steerswoman.

Grey Ram 04-20-2016 07:26 PM
I third The Steerswoman, I've been meaning to read it for some time now

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 07:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3303245)
As for allowed, I'm with Tom on this. But I'll vote on Mistborn by NOT seconding it. (But if szarroug3 or anyone else nominates it for July or December, I will second it. With the warning that it's LONG.)

As for Azimov, I'm considering a second there, but holding off a bit to see what other options are put forward. It's been 50 years since I read The End of Eternity, so I will not remember any of it, but I'd also hoped for something a bit newer.

Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.
I thought about it earlier. I have it in my TBR collection. It's just that after the marathon we just participated in for April, I didn't know how many people would like to jump into a book with 612 pages.

WT Sharpe 04-20-2016 08:03 PM
Oh for the love of....

Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3303253)
Yes, it's long. But it goes quickly. :) And I need a good excuse to get back into this series.

So, I nominate 1632, by Eric Flint. 612 pages....
Seconded. What the heck?

issybird 04-20-2016 08:04 PM
I'll third 1632.

Dazrin 04-20-2016 09:54 PM
We need something different to consider, so I will nominate Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold.

Goodreads | Amazon US / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble
Length: 79 Pages

Quote:
As the only woman on the first contact team, xenolinguist Toni Donato expected her assignment on Christmas would be to analyze the secret women's language -- but then the chief linguist begins to sabotage her work. What is behind it? Why do the men and women have separate languages in the first place? What Toni learns turns everything she thought they knew on its head.

Originally published in Asimov's in 2003, "Looking Through Lace" was a finalist for the Tiptree and Sturgeon awards. The Italian translation won the Premio Italia for best work of speculative fiction in translation in 2007.
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual award given to the "best short science fiction." The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award is "an award encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender" and is named for one of the the pen names for Alice Bradley Sheldon. Mrs. Sheldon was an "American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. She was most notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently "male" or "female"—it was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree, Jr. was a woman."

Disclosure: This is in Kindle Unlimited which generally means the e-book is only available on Amazon but it should be easy to convert to another format in Calibre. It is available to purchase (rather than borrow thru KU) at $2.99 right now. There is a paper edition available at B&N.

Dazrin 04-20-2016 09:58 PM
So far, I would like to read (or have already read) all of the nominated works. I like to see that. :)

pdurrant 04-21-2016 04:10 AM
I'd like to nominate Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. But it seems to be one of those books that has fallen in the crack between new publications that automatically have ebooks, and older publications that have been reissued as ebooks.

I bought it from Fictionwise. Perhaps it's still available as an ebook in the US.

It was my first 10/10 read of 2010, an unexpected gem. "Wonderful aliens, an interesting scenario"

"Most readers won't be surprised by Cosmic Unity's bloody-minded missionary zeal, but Heaven offers some great surprises in its big ideas and its richly imagined alien races. Reminiscent of Hal Clement and Bruce Sterling, Heaven is a fun, thought-provoking, impressive example of classic sense-of-wonder science fiction." --Cynthia Ward

issybird 04-21-2016 04:21 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant (Post 3303474)
I'd like to nominate Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. But it seems to be one of those books that has fallen in the crack between new publications that automatically have ebooks, and older publications that have been reissued as ebooks.

I bought it from Fictionwise. Perhaps it's still available as an ebook in the US.
Here's the US Kindle link.

JSWolf 04-21-2016 05:31 AM
Let's give some love to The Atrocity Archives by giving it a second & third. I've read other books by Charles Stross and he's a really good writer.

CRussel 04-21-2016 03:00 PM
It's not high on my list, Jon, so I'm holding my last nomination/second in my hand for the moment. The reference to Lovecraft in the description didn't exactly thrill me. However, that being said, if we don't get any more that I need to spend my last token on, I'll give The Atrocity Archives a nod, at least to get it into the voting stage.

issybird 04-21-2016 03:46 PM
I'll third The End of Eternity.

Dazrin 04-21-2016 04:03 PM
I am in the same boat about the Atrocity Archives, I want to see if there is something I haven't read before first.

For anyone who is possibly interested in the Laundry Files, they are certainly Lovecraftian, but they have a lot of dark humor. Almost a James Bond meets Lovecraft with additional governmental red tape and office politics thrown in for good measure.

There are also some free novella's available that are set in the same world. These are all set after the events in The Atrocity Archives so there might be some spoilers, but I don't remember anything specific. It has been 5 years since I read TAA though.
Down on the Farm - 40 pages - This was my favorite of the three.
Overtime - 25 pages - Hugo Award nominated novellette, 2010
Equoid - 65 pages - Hugo Award winning novella, 2014

Grey Ram 04-21-2016 04:15 PM
I second Looking Through Lace, and I want to nominate The Giver by Lois Lowry.

I watched the film some time ago and not entirely disliked it, but I'm curious about the book since it seems to have received some acclaim. Here is the amazon link: The Giver, kindle edition

treadlightly 04-21-2016 04:44 PM
I'll second The Giver.

JSWolf 04-21-2016 04:49 PM
Before I will give a nod to a book, it needs to have a description so I can read if I am interested and there needs to be a link to an ePub edition. So for now, The Giver is a no go.

Dazrin 04-21-2016 05:07 PM
Description for The Giver from Amazon:

Quote:
In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.

Grey Ram 04-21-2016 07:21 PM
The Giver in ePub
 
Oh yeah, forgot to add links to epub versions, here they are:
The Giver at Kobo
The Giver at Google Play

On further reading about it on Goodreads, it seems that it's aimed at children and is also popular as school reading assignment; that explains the size :chinscratch:

CRussel 04-21-2016 08:34 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant (Post 3303474)
I'd like to nominate Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. But it seems to be one of those books that has fallen in the crack between new publications that automatically have ebooks, and older publications that have been reissued as ebooks.

I bought it from Fictionwise. Perhaps it's still available as an ebook in the US.

If was my first 10/10 read of 2010, an unexpected gem. "Wonderful aliens, an interesting scenario"

"Most readers won't be surprised by Cosmic Unity's bloody-minded missionary zeal, but Heaven offers some great surprises in its big ideas and its richly imagined alien races. Reminiscent of Hal Clement and Bruce Sterling, Heaven is a fun, thought-provoking, impressive example of classic sense-of-wonder science fiction." --Cynthia Ward
With my last token, I'll second this. I'm not happy about the price ($11.99 on Amazon US), but the premise sounds interesting and your recommendation is of significant value.

And here's the Kobo US link for those who will need/want an ePub version.


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