The Best of the Year: 2015

It's that end-of-the-year list-making time.

Over at the Coode Street Podcast there was an interesting discussion of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2015. Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe were joined by noted critics Paul Kincaid and Adam Roberts. Prompted to give their individual choices for their top five picks:

Adam Roberts:
Top book: Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. In dialog with the backlist of science fiction. Might be Robinson's best novel. Resonant and deep, clever, sophisticated.
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (the conclusion of a trilogy)
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (which appeared in 2015 in Britain)
Clade by James Bradley
Luna by Ian McDonald
Touch by Claire North
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson, sequel to Europe in Autumn, one of the best books of 2014

Paul Kincaid:
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, sequel to Life After Life (which was even better)
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Where by Kit Reed
Luna by Ian McDonald
Slade House by David Mitchell

Gary K. Wolfe:
Wolfe said he didn't want to overlap too much with Roberts and Kincaid
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Clade by James Bradley
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (Roberts seconds this choice)

Jonathan Strahan:
Top book: Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, most engaged, most timely
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Clade by James Bradley
The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (Roberts seconds this choice)
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashanti Wilson
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Galapagos Regained by James Morrow

I've left out all the discussion around these lists, which was thought provoking and which I recommend listening to. I could quibble with some of the choices, having read several of these titles, yet on the whole these are strong lists. I agree that Aurora is the standout science fiction novel of 2015. (Listen to the Coode Street podcast here or on iTunes.)

Adam Roberts' sharp best of the year essay, with some additional titles, is on the Guardian website.

For a wider net that encompasses sf and fantasy, weird fiction and mainstream, especially international titles, I recommend Jeff VanderMeer's best books of 2015. His choice for best novel of the year is Animal Money by Michael Cisco. I've read an earlier novel by Cisco and I'm not sure I've recovered yet. I am definitely on board for this one.

For an example of poorly informed (or lazy?) list, there's BuzzFeed's 24 best sf books of 2015. About half of them are relevant and interesting. The other half look like someone randomly grabbed some books off a shelf.

Book purchases at Loncon 3, part 2

More profligate book buying at Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, held August 14-18, 2014, in London.

This time I'm focusing on small press publishing in the United Kingdom. Many of these titles are, I think you'll find, are difficult to find in the United States, and where they can be found the price will be a bit high. Click to enlarge the photos.

Three hardbacks and a trade paperback from NewCon Press, United Kingdom.

 The Race by Nina Allan, a debut novel.

 The Peacock Cloak, a collection of 12 stories by Chris Beckett.

 Marcher by Chris Beckett, his second novel.

 

Sibilant Fricative: Essays and Reviews by Adam Roberts,

with an introduction by Paul Kincaid.

This is published under the Steel Quill Books imprint of NewCon Press.

Four trade paperbacks from Beccon Publications, United Kingdom. 

Stay by John Clute, a collection of reviews, essays,

and five short stories. Clute's most recent book.

Pardon This Intrusion by John Clute,

containing essays, addresses, and introductions.

 Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute.

 

 Call and Response by Paul Kincaid, reviews and essays.

Related links:
NewCon Press
Beccon Publications

Related link on this blog:
Book purchases at Loncon 3 (part 1)

NPR's Top 100 SF and Fantasy Novels

Over 60,000 votes were tallied in NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey, a popular vote open to anyone with an internet connection. As a popular vote, it correlates closely with book sales figures and with adaptation across multiple media. What it does not correlate with, sadly, is quality or diversity.

NPR revealed some of the actual counts: Number 1, The Lord of the Rings, 29,701 votes; Number 2, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 20,069 votes; Number 3, Ender's Game, 16,141 votes. Pulling up the rear, Number 100, C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), 1,452 votes.

NPR’s Top 10
1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
Inevitably, this tops the list. They got the title wrong -- it is not a “Trilogy,” rather a single novel split over three volumes for convenience. It is, I believe, a worthy title, although some would disagree. In terms of influence, it’s hard to argue with Tolkien's prominence in modern fantasy. It's easy to criticize, for relegating women to small token roles, when they are mentioned at all, for a big bad guy who is a nonentity, and for an uncomplicatedly binary view of good and evil.

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
This began its existence as a BBC radio play and the novel version doesn’t outgrow that episodic comedy format. I prefer Adams’ Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which is better written and more satisfying as an actual novel.

3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The NPR folks expressly stated that Young Adult novels would be excluded (they specifically cite exclusion of Rowling, Pullman, Lewis’ Narnia, and Le Guin’s Earthsea), yet this is clearly a YA novel. Very popular; not very good. After you’ve read a few of Card’s novels about children, all of whom have either super intelligence or super powers, they become tiresome. To quote Ben Peek: “I mean, seriously, half the books on this list are just old peoples YA books. But such is the way such lists work.”

4. The Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert
I’m guessing this title refers to the six Dune books that Frank Herbert wrote, although I think it’s likely that calling it The Dune Chronicles is a posthumous construction. Herbert said he originally conceived of the books as a trilogy. I’ve read the first three and they vary widely in quality. The disappointing third book was enough to discourage me from reading further. This is a case where they should have listed the first book, Dune, and left off the series. Even it were just the first book, it probably wouldn’t make my top ten list.

5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin
Like The Lord of the Rings, this is a long novel published in serial form, rather than a series of related novels. I think the books are quite good so far, if overly long. Still, this is the first title where I was glad I wasn’t drinking a refreshing beverage when I read the list or I would have spit all over my keyboard. This is an unfinished series. No-one can vote for a series that isn’t finished yet, can they? It’s like reading part of a book and then voting for it as the best book you’ve ever read. Seriously?

6. 1984 by George Orwell
No argument with this choice.

7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
This is the first title on the list that I haven’t read. I’ve seen the movie (see above, the advantages of novels adapted across multiple media), which was pretty good. I like a lot of Bradbury’s work, especially The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Is this one better? I don’t know.

8. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
This one hasn’t aged well and the quality diminishes as the series continues.

9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Another solid choice.

10. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I didn’t get along with this novel when I read it the year it came out. It’s too episodic and doesn’t cohere enough to become a novel. It’s being made into a television series for HBO.

To sum up, three of these titles (Tolkien, Orwell, and Huxley) are strong, all the rest are weak or have significant problems, with one abstention for the Bradbury. Not a very good start and the rest of the NPR Top 100 list have similar problems. Notice the lack of women authors, or cultural or racial diversity.

Again, to quote Ben Peek: “I must say, I hate a lot of the books on this list. A Canticle for Leibowitz is at the top, a book that has always surprised me by its venerated status in the field, and one that I think is simply awful. William Gibson's Neuromancer was likewise a book I thought terribly written (though I loved Pattern Recognition, which Gibson wrote years later). And, outside the books I hated, there's some embarrassing inclusions: Salvatore's Drizzt series, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time saga, Terry Brooks' Shannara trilogy, Raymond Fiest's Riftwar Saga. Weird choices. I read those things when I was a kid, but even the memory doesn't love them that much. It's also, lets be fair, a white list, pretty male, and divided between the British and the Americans. But, that probably reflects more of the people who voted than anything else.”

I disagree with Peek on one point: I liked A Canticle for Leibowitz (Number 35 on the NPR list) quite a bit when I read it as a teenager. Otherwise, I would echo his points.

Gary K. Wolfe, on the shortage of women authors on the list: "It surprises me a bit that you have to get down to Number 20 (Frankenstein) before you come to the first work by a woman, or that there are only 5 women authors in the top 50. I wonder if that might be a reflection of who voted in the poll."

Ursula K. Le Guin would make my Top Ten list (Number 45 and 78 on the NPR list). As would Joanna Russ (nowhere on the NPR list). Just a few of the women authors that would appear on my Top 100 list: Gwyneth Jones, Karen Joy Fowler, Eleanor Arnason, Octavia Butler, Nicola Griffith, Kate Wilhelm, Mary Gentle, Maureen F. McHugh, R.A. MacAvoy, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Angela Carter, Justina Robson, Nalo Hopkinson, and Lisa Goldstein. All ignored by the NPR list.

 The voters had their international blinders on: Stanislaw Lem, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Angelica Gorodischer, Jose Saramago, and Haruki Murakami. All ignored by the NPR list. I think Jules Verne is the only author on the list who is neither British nor American.

Some of the great British authors of science fiction: J.G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, and M. John Harrison. All ignored. American authors Samuel R. Delany, Alfred Bester, Edgar Pangborn, Jack Vance, and Clifford Simak. You get the idea.

The issue of series fiction is badly mishandled throughout this list. It appears random whether a single book in a series is chosen, or an entire series. Or, in the case of Martin, Jordan, Rothfuss, and Sanderson, an unfinished series. The Brandon Sanderson (Number 71 on the NPR list) is the first of a projected 10-volume series of which only the first book has been published. Surely, this is madness? And, don’t get me started on the absurdity of voting for an unfinished series (The Wheel of Time, Number 12 on the NPR list) that was started by one author, Robert Jordan, now deceased, and is being finished by another author, Sanderson. My hat is off to Adam Roberts who has immersed himself in the “stupefyingly bad” Wheel of Time so that the rest of us will be spared.

Related links:
NPR Top 100 SF and Fantasy novels survey
Ben Peek: Magicland and Magic Books
Glen Weldon: NPR's Top 100 SF and Fantasy, parsing the results 
(includes Gary K. Wolfe quotes)

Edited to add:
I keep thinking of more major authors who were left off the list: John Crowley, Ian McDonald, Guy Gavriel Kay, and I could go on and on. Or, top authors who don't appear until nearly the end of the list: Gene Wolfe at Number 87, Kim Stanley Robinson at Number 95, and China Mieville at Number 98. Or authors represented by work that is far from their best. For instance: Roger Zelazny's only title on the list is the Amber series. Popular? Yes. His best work? Nowhere near it. Based on the results, this list was voted on mostly by 13-year-old white males in the U.S. with little knowledge of the depth and breadth of the genre.

A Link, a Dink, and a Nod

Philip K. Dick's Exegesis
According to The New York Times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish a two-volume "consolidated" Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson. Volume one is due 2011, followed by volume two in 2012.

“The title he gave it, ‘Exegesis,’ alludes to the fact that what it really was, was a personal laboratory for philosophical inquiry,” Lethem said. “It’s not even a single manuscript, in a sense – it’s an amassing or a compilation of late-night all-night sessions of him taking on the universe, mano-a-mano, with the tools of the English language and his own paranoiac investigations.” (The New York Times article.)

The City & The City by China Miéville wins Clarke Award
The Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was announced: The City & The City by China Miéville. A respectable result and an interesting book, although here at the Strangelove for Science Fiction blog we likely would have voted for one of the other finalists: Gwyneth Jones’ Spirit,  Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream, Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia, Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, or Marcel Theroux’s Far North. We will have to duck the question of which one we would have picked, since we are still reading the finalists. Follow here for the SF Strangelove review of The City & The City. Torque Control has an interesting analysis of the finalists and a report and context regarding the winner.

Adam Roberts goes 'round and 'round with The Wheel of Time

Reading the multi-volume and popular and as yet unfinished Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan can be described as an epic undertaking. Adam Roberts has bravely shouldered the task. So far, he has reported, in witty detail, on volumes one, two, three, four, five, six and seven.

Lavinia Revisited

Here at the Strangelove for Science Fiction blog we reviewed Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin not too long ago and we found it to be particularly wonderful, a standout book from a distinguished author. As a resource, here is a roundup of interesting reviews and discussions regarding LeGuin's Lavinia (Harcourt, 2008):

Adam Roberts at Punkadiddle puts it succintly: "The single best SFF novel of the year, I'd say." (Roberts' short item.) At Strange Horizons Roberts wrote a full-length review: " ... there is a pervasively numinous quality to LeGuin's imagined world; finely rendered and completely believable, it makes for a brilliantly compelling textual universe." Yes, and yes again.


Roberts also participated in a discussion that spread across several blogs:
Introduction -- Torque Control
Lyric and Narrative -- Punkaddidle.
Fantasy -- Asking the Wrong Questions
History -- Eve's Alexandria


Laura Miller at Salon.com wrote:

Lavinia is an old writer's book -- Le Guin is 79 -- in the best sense of the word; it is ripe with that half-remembered virtue, wisdom. This, Le Guin seems to be saying, is what it feels like to be the personification of your land and your people, to speak the words and perform the rites of "the old, local, earth-deep religion," to be the sacred guardian of harmony and plenty for a handful of rustic villages and farms, and to carry their past and future in your body.

I could go on quoting other reviews, but I think the point has been made. This is a book worth your time.

Booker prize

The 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, went to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009) yesterday.

Here is a recap of recent discussion regarding the Booker prize in the science fiction community:

Kim Stanley Robinson takes a poke at the Booker prize judges

“… it seems to me that three or four of the last 10 Booker prizes should have gone to science fiction novels the juries hadn't read. Should I name names? Why not: Air by Geoff Ryman should have won in 2005, Life by Gwyneth Jones in 2004, and Signs of Life by M. John Harrison in 1997. Indeed this year the prize should probably go to a science fiction comedy called Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts.”

This stirred up some dust. Robinson’s New Scientist article, of course, had more to say than that. Among other things, we learn that Virginia Woolf was a fan of Olaf Stapledon in a previously unpublished letter.

Robinson's argument contains three main points:

1. British science fiction is in a golden age. (SF Strangelove says: Yes indeed.)

2. Science fiction is the literature of now. It engages and explores today’s issues in ways that no other fiction does. (SF Strangelove says: Agreed.)

3. It’s a shame that British science fiction writers and their books don’t get respect from the mainstream literary community. (SF Strangelove says: Um, not really. In the long run that blind spot will reflect poorly on the Booker prize rather than on the science fiction novels that the prize overlooks.)

For those who don’t know: Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the greatest American science fiction authors. His work includes: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, Antarctica, and The Years of Rice and Salt.

Booker prize judges respond

The chair of this year's Booker judges, James Naughtie, admitted that Robinson "may well have a point", but suggested that "perhaps his arrows could be directed even more towards publishers than to judges. ...We judge books that are submitted."

His fellow Booker judge, John Mullan, was less charitable. Full article.

Additional links:
Adam Roberts reacts
The Man Booker Prize coverage
The Man Booker Prize website