So Iain Banks has been dead for a few years now and I’ve only now gotten around to reading this, considered the first book of his Culture series. I’ve read short stories set in this universe before but never any of the novels. I always knew I was going to have to read this one day and perhaps it is appropriate to do so now as this novel is apparently going to be adapted for television.
I’ve been reading this as it was sold in an omnibus volume together with Merchanter’s Luck. This is course another novel by C.J. Cherryh that is set in her Alliance-Union universe. The two novels are however extremely different in tone, scope and complexity. Here the narrative spans hundreds of years and a score of characters. Considering how I disliked how the earlier novel focused almost exclusively on the PTSD of a single character, it’s no surprise that I like this a whole lot more.
Samuel R. Delany is of course one of the giants of science-fiction and I am once again embarrassed to admit that before this I have never read any of his works. I thought it was high time I rectified this hole in my knowledge base with this pick from Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great. The experience however left me torn. On the other hand, I have absolutely no doubt that Delany’s in an incredible writer and this is an amazing novel. On the other hand, what he does here is so far above my reading level that I can only grasp the merest fraction of what he’s going for and so I found it impossible to truly enjoy this book.
This is a novel originally published in 1982 so it’s another pick from Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great. C.J. Cherryh is a well known name in science-fiction but I don’t believe I’ve ever read any book of hers before this. This novel is part of her Alliance-Union universe but I think it was a mistake to venture into it with this title. There’s very little exposition of the world in here and I believe I would have been better off starting with her best known novel Downbelow Station.
Once again, I had no idea that this was another first book of a trilogy instead of a standalone. In retrospect I guess the titles were an obvious clue. The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for 2016 and the second book The Obelisk Gate won the same award for 2017. Then again, author N.K. Jemisin is hardly a stranger to the awards circuit. This however is the first book I’ve read by her as I’ve been out of the loop for a while.
Since this is an older novel, it was obviously another pick out of Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great. This was Maureen F. McHugh’s debut novel and it was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula though it didn’t win either. As its title suggests, China and Chinese culture takes center stage in this novel. It’s far from being the first Western science-fiction work to do so, notably David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series was started in 1989. Still this book is more highly regarded and is very enjoyable while I found the Chung Kuo series to be an impressively wordy mess back when I tried it ages ago.
Broken Forum has a thread in which the posters regularly list the works that are nominated every year for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Despite being nominally a science-fiction fan, it has been years since I’ve kept myself up to date with these picks so I thought I’d mix up my reading of older novels with newer releases. This one has the added benefit of not being too difficult to read as it’s described as being military science-fiction. In fact, one poster even likened it to the Warhammer 40,000 universe.