Invasion From the 21st Century (Plus One)

After sitting through various panel discussions at Confluence 2012, I realized that I have serious gap in my science fiction reading.  All but a handful of the books I have read were published before the year 2000.  I have kept up on the field by being an avid reader of blogs and book reviews in Locus, Analog, etc.  It is now time to take the plunge.


In addition to reading older science fiction, I am going to focus on getting up to date by reading a sampling of books from each year (2000 through the present).  I also plan on trying to read some of the new books in the year they were published.


Currently, I am reading and loving a book that was published this year.  It is the start of a new series by Alastair Reynolds.  The book is called “Blue Remembered Earth”.  Reynolds impressed me with “Revelation Space” when I read it earlier in the year. 


Authors on my "get up to speed list" include:

Confluence 2012

Over the last 20 years, I have been attending anywhere from one to four conventions a year.  So far they have all been comic book conventions.  I decided that this was the year I would go to my first science fiction convention.  My good friend, Terry Kissinger, attended Confluence 2011 and found it to be a good literary convention.  Based on his recommendation, I decided to spend Saturday at Confluence 2012 with him.  Two and a half hours (normally it takes two hours to drive to the Pittsburgh airport but a detour through a residential area added another half hour) after I left my house I pulled in at the hotel.  

Is there a right length for a science fiction story?

I have heard that the novella is the ideal length for a science fiction story. In some ways I have to agree. The short story does not allow enough room for the idea to be presented and the characters to be fleshed out. Over the years I have enjoyed many novellas in Galaxy, Worlds of IF, Analog, the Magazinze of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Amazing.

What is your favorite length?

I tend to favor a short novel like those that were published in the sixties and seventies. It seems like the author is more focused on the story in these books. The stories kept your interest. I was more likely to try a new author if I thought I could read the novel in a few days. The length of many of today's novels discourage readers from trying new authors.

What started me thinking about this? Two things.

First is one of the novels I am currently reading. It is by an author I have never read. The book looked good. The writing is good but to be honest, I was not in a hurry to pick the book up when I took a break from reading. At the local used bookstore, I found a copy of a Philip Jose Farmer book I have not read. I stopped reading the first book and tore into the Farmer book. Once I started it I did not want to stop. I like that in a book. It does not have to be cliffhanger endings to chapters. Sometimes it is the plot, sometimes it is the characters but some books are hard to put down. And this leads into the second thing on my list.

A review on SF Signal. Their review of Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny. I loved this story when it first appeared in Analog. Between it and the early Amber books, Zelazny became one of my favorite authors. The author of the review, Fred Kiesche, comments that this 180 page novel always charms him when he re-reads it. It is economic in language, packed full of ideas, and it still surprises him when he reads it again. I wonder how many of the giant doorstop novels will have that effect on readers in the future.

This does not mean that I will not read a long novel, one look at my bookshelf would tell you otherwise, but I will most likely continue to focus on shorter novels. Sometimes I will post reviews of longer novels. There are many forgotten classics like Doorways in the Sand. I will do my part to help people remember or discover them.