What SF/F Will You Consume Over the Holidays?
Besides the holidays being a time for family and sharing (and gifts…let’s not forget the gifts), they are also, for me at least, time away from work. My natural inclination is think that I’ll use that extra time to read and catch up on movies, totally forgetting about all the other things I need to get done around the house.
My ideal sf/f holiday would have me dipping into Iain Bank’s Culture novels, Mike Resnick’s Starship series, Biohell by Andy Remic, one of Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40k books, Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box. This is all pie-in-the-sky, of course. There’s little chance I’ll be able to get to more than a couple of these books, let alone all the other ones that are on my shelf.
On the film side, I’m anxious to re-watch The Dark Knight, check out the Timecrimes screener we were sent, and even Death Race.
How about you? What science fiction and/or fantasy books and movies are you hoping to consume over the holidays?
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I’m a slow reader and I’m still working my way through “Fast Forward #1.” Hopefully I’ll have it read by the end of the year. I’d like to read Timothy Zahn and his “The third lynx” novel. After that, it’s Eric Brown’s “Helix.” That’ll most likely be it up to the end of January of ‘09.
I’m currently wolfing down Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. After that I’ll move on to the new issue of On Spec and then Charles Stross’ Accelerando. If there’s time I’d also like to go through the new anthology Gaslight Grimoire edited by JR Campbell and Charles Prepolec. Of course, this plan could be thrown to the wind if Santa leaves something to read under the tree that’s just so cool it can’t wait for me to get through the others first.
I’ve already watched “Dark Knight” twice since it’s come out on DVD and it’s still so good. “Death Race” was better than I expected. I don’t know if that’s saying much, but it was fun. I have a huge pile of books and I have a hard time deciding which ones to get to first. I’ve never read all the way through “Acacia” yet and I’d like to get to that one. I also have a few sequels lined up, “Last Argument of Kings, “Bloodheir” and “Republic of Thieves,” that I’d really, really like to read. Oh, and I still have to watch the rest of the first season of “True Blood,” though that may be tough with my kids running around since they’re out of school.
Keep an eye out at my blog. I’m hoping to do two short works a day and beat my old record of over 100 books for the year.
Getting dang close on both!
Alastair Reynolds’ THE PREFECT and Jack McDevitt’s THE DEVIL’S EYE.
A number of things:
I hope to finish an Advance Readers Copy of “Propsero Lost”, a first fantasy novel
by an acquaintance (and, as it so happens, the wife of John C. Wright).
I have a couple of movies lined up in the Netflix queue: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dog Soldiers, and I’ve already seen “Librarian: King Solomon’s Mines”
I have the new Exalted RPG supplement: Scroll of Fallen Races. I have started looking at this already, and was amused to see that the opening chapter for the “Dragon Kings” uses a quotation from Enik of the Land of the Lost.
I will be housesitting for friends for a few days, so once I am done with the Prospero book, I am not certain what genre book I will tackle next. I have a number of choices: The latest Erikson novel, or perhaps the Steampunk anthology, or something re-read from their library.
I just finished watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD, so I plan on watching the second season over the holidays.
I’m in the middle of Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain. I hope to finish that and get started on Sly Mongoose soon.
I read the first book in Mike Resnick’s Starship series recently. It is an excellent, quick read. I hope to get going on the second book in that series over the holidays as well.
I’m currently rereading the first couple of books in Gregory Maguire’s The Wicked Years in preparation for the most recent installment, A Lion Among Men. I’ll also be rereading the first couple of books in Kenneth Oppel’s steampunk YA series, Airborn, in preparation for Starclimber.
I’m currently rewatching Buffy, too, so I’ll keep on with that. I may squeeze in a litte Firefly, too, if I can swing it.
Ooh! I might add that I’m planning on reading The Watchmen comics, too.
I plan to finish out the short fiction mags for 2008, then dive into everything you and Niall Harrison have sent me over the last month!
Plus <B>Wizard of the Crow</B>.
Bob, The Prefect is one of Alastair Reynolds’ better novels. That said, I like everything Al writes.
Been awhile since I’ve read any of Dan Abnett. I should pick up his latest
I’ve got Allen Steele’s Spindrift on my shelf along with A Canticle for Lebowitz and Pavane. But I suspect most of my SF consumption will be via YouTube over the break.
Respects,
S. F. Murphy
Alastair Reynolds seems to be on everyones minds, I am reading Chasm City right now just reread the Prefect(very very good, I want a sequel) and plan to finally read all the way through the Revelation Space trilogy(never finished book 3) and the rest of the revelation space stories. Then I have Cyteen in the car so I can read before I go into work and get it read before Regenesis comes out the sequel I did not no was coming and was so happy when I found out. And after that some short story collections.
I’ve got Fast Forward 2 at the top of the pile. Underneath it is Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time, a novel I’ve been meaning to read since I was 15 or so.
This thread got a chuckle out of me because just the other day, when faced with the idea of carrying Anathem on a plane, I cracked into Revelation Space. Alastair Reynolds must be a cold weather author
I’ve been looking to dive into these Reynolds books for a while. 100 pages down – 2500+ pages to go. He’s certainly been prolific.
I’ve asked Santa for Richard K. Morgan’s Thirteen (Black Man), Jeff Somer’s Digital Plague, Neal Asher’s Polity Agent, and Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman. Also, If I’m lucky, I’m hoping to snag The Art of Wall-e along with the DVD to that film (maybe the best film of the year). I usually end up being my own Santa, so a little selfish greed can go a long way.
After a massive effort, I’ve finally got my DH to read Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks. And, from haranguing him on how far he is through the book, that’s started the urge to dip into other Banks’ for me as well. (Gads, I wish he’d get an editor with more spine, though.)
Following on the tradition set by this thread, I had saved up Alastair Reynolds novels and his Galactic North anthology for a while and am finally at the stage where I can spend some time and read through them. The man is seriously brilliant! There are still a couple of Artemis Fowl books on the loose that I also have to hunt down and devour. And, if I can get time, that big-ass trilogy from Neal Stephenson, forget the name of it, even though I have 2 of the 3 books.
The rest of the books on my holiday TBR pile are non-fiction (military and science related) and — of course! — as much romance as I can cram into the waking hours.
I don’t write reviews anymore, but here is the one pro review I wrote way back when for Al Reynolds’ Chasm City.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030616/chasm.shtml
I think it stands pretty good against The Prefect and I often tell people who are just getting started in the Revelation Space universe that they should start with Chasm City first then move onto the other novels.
Respects,
S. F. Murphy
Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell and The Devil You Know by Mike Carey.
My reading list is long and I’m going to try to read as much as I can. George Mann, Affinity Bridge, Karl Schroeder Pirate Sun, Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book, Joe Haldeman Marsbound, Jay Lake Trial of Flowers and some of Matthew Hughes’ back catalogue. Never read the Watchmen comics but the movie trailers make me interested.
For videos, I’m going to look for The Man From Earth, Sunshine, the BBC version of Life on Mars.
Finishing up 1634: The Baltic War by David Weber and Eric Flint. I enjoyed the previous two books in the series that I’ve read, but too often the pages have phrases, sentences, or paragraphs that are just superfluous and slow everything down. A good editor could shrink the book by 5% or more and improve it.
After that I’ll dip back into a collection of Fredric Brown stories for a bit.
I quite like to actually get to the cinema and see Keanu do a robot.
Probably won’t happen.
I just finished up Reynolds’ early Revelation books, so I’m taking a break and starting Banks’ Culture books. But someone should have given me some warning about the Fwi-Song bit in Consider Phlebas–Good Lord!
Rewatch THE DARK KNIGHT and count down the days/minutes/hours/seconds until the LOST S5 premiere.