We discuss our March Madness winner, salute Martha Wells, and wrap up our copious thoughts about Pandora's Star. Are you in with the motiles?
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QUICK BURNS
WE HAVE A WINNER. A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark outvoted Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky 59.3% to 40.7%. And congrats to "Joyce usually picks badly" who won the bracket predictions with a score of 22, just edging out someone who did not title their brackets by one point. Once again thanks to Roberator for keeping everyone up to date on the progress throughout the tourney! And remember the real winner is our reading lists
Paul: Regarding the 2021 Nebula Awards Finalists
Here's a Quote from the official website:
Author Martha Wells graciously declined her nomination as a novella finalist this year for Fugitive Telemetry: Murderbot Diaries, Book 6, published by Tordotcom. Wells felt that the Murderbot Diaries series has already received incredible praise from her industry peers and wanted to open the floor to highlight other works within the community.
Jan: Esquire has released their list of the best 50 fantasy novels of all time.
And their list of the 50 best science fiction novels of all time!
Jan: The Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) has announced the winners for the 2022 Romantic Novel Awards
Jan: The SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is changing its name to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
Jan: The Tolkien Estate has added lots of new unpublished art by JRR Tolkien to their recently launched website archive creating "a lush painting of Middle Earth.
BARE YOUR SWORD
Brian posted this in Quick Burns but it's not news. However it is funny.
"Vaguely fantasy (of a sort) related that seemed worth sharing.
From twitter: Kane 謝凱堯 @kane
The Lion King is about the brutal counter-coup of a monarchy to restore primogeniture after it was deposed by a popular leader supported by oppressed minorities forced to live in the Elephant Graveyard ghetto. If you supported Simba and thought Scar was a villain you are a pawn of royalist propaganda and lèse-majesté"
Trike has a dissertation on the linguistic history of crow and rooster available in the goodreads thread
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
Next episode we will kick off A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
WRAP UP
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
PS: I’m really enjoying it
From HarryB on Discord:
Since I chimed in earlier on the "ick factor" let me give it another try (I'm more than half way now). Yeah, I get it, future society, sexual liberation, near immortality releases old boundaries, ok. It's not so much the presence of such stuff, it's ubiquitous in many genres, although yeah, some of the age differences are a bit skeevy, but it's not so much that as Hamilton's writing and the attitude it projects, intentionally or not -- I feel like he's leering every time he presents sexual content. Take this random passage description of a woman from page 395 "She had a very short leather skit and a white blouse with a low cut front showing off a huge cleavage." I mean can't you just hear that last phase spoken in a Homer Simpson voice (in the same tone Homer describes donuts)? I mean, I'd expect that from some 50s Jim Thompson paperback junk spy novel or such, but it feels out of place here. There's just something about his way of writing. Look, it's not a big deal I think, even I question my own take on it, I'm enjoying the book, the world building, and so
onCham1nade on Discord:
The way I’ve been explaining it to myself is: it’s like eating homemade chocolate chip walnut cookies, only the home chef cracked their own walnuts and some of the shells got in the cookies. So if you can eat around the bits of shell, the cookie itself is delicious.
I love the detective elements, the espionage elements, and quite a lot of the alien elements. And I’m intrigued by his exploration of what effect regeneration capability would have on a society. I’m not sure his understanding of sociology and human communities is strong enough to make it a believable picture, but there’s definitely some good questions and ideas in there
ADDENDUMS
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