Month 25: You are someone else

Month 25 of 260 (9.62 percent)

Size of list: 85,470 pages (dropped 8 pages from Cyteen based on actual page count)

Pages read: 12,559 (14.69 percent)

H-list: 3,729/23,114 (16.13 percent)

N-list: 4,797/36,694 (13.07 percent)

O-list: 4,033/25,662 (15.72 percent)

Finished: Cyteen

Reading: The Shadow Rising, The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft 

My working definition of good science fiction is a story that changes something about the world and then explores the consequences. Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are my Platonic ideal of this idea, but Cyteen also matches it.

What if you were someone else, a duplicate, a clone? C.J. Cherryh's answer is that you'd be someone cloned on purpose because the original was someone extraordinary, and we wanted another. But nature and nurture, so you'd be raised in a way that matches the original's childhood, even if that means your mother disappears when you're eight. And you would have the pressures of being a replica of the original, inheriting allies and enemies. And the society that created you would be able to create other people, as well, and to shape their personalities, creating not just more extraordinary people — "Specials," in this world — but people designed to be servants. They're called azi in Cyteen, and they're basically slaves. Cherryh doesn't fully deal with the issue of azi slavery as we would expect in today's political climate, but there are abolitionists in the story. 

Cyteen took forever because it's huge — 680 pages, but large format, so it'd be something like 1,200 pages if it were mass-market paperback dimensions. So even bigger than The Shadow Rising, which is pretty much tied as the largest Wheel of Time book, which I'm also reading.

Also, I've started the second volume of the Complete Lovecraft, and while I've been aware of people talking about his racism, "The Street" is a filthy piece of racism-dressed-as-patriotism, the kind of bilge I'd expect from today's white supremacist websites. Blech. I proceed onward, noting that it's listed as one of his early stories, and hope he at least hides it better as we go on. 

Month 24: Nothing to report

Month 24 of 260 (9.23 percent)

Size of list: 85,478 pages (9.9 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 12,145 (14.21 percent)

H-list: 3,610/23,122 (15.61 percent)

N-list: 4,502/36,694 (12.27 percent)

O-list: 4,033/25,662 (15.72 percent)

Finished: none

Reading: Cyteen, The Shadow Rising

Added: Life Debt, Empire's End

More change on the denominator than the numerator: I gave up on the idea of reading the remainder of the Aftermath trilogy to my teenager and just threw them on the list. I might shoot for one this year; they're fast, and Cyteen is slow.

Month 23: Nothing to report

Month 23 of 260 (8.85 percent)

Size of list: 84,625 pages (8.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 11,763 (13.90 percent)

H-list: 3,431/23,122 (14.84 percent)

N-list: 4.299/36,694 (11.72 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,809 (16.26 percent)

Finished: none

Reading: Cyteen, The Shadow Rising

Added: none

Progress is slow. 

Month 22: Saviors and Avatars

Month 22 of 260 (8.46 percent)

Size of list: 84,625 pages (8.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 11,406 (13.48 percent)

H-list: 3,195/23,122 (13.82 percent)

N-list: 4,178/36,694 (11.39 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,809 (16.26 percent)

Finished: A Case of Conscience

Reading: Cyteen, The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time 4)

Added: none

A Case of Conscience, the 1959 Hugo winner, was the fourth Hugo winner, and better than its two immediate predecessors. It, oddly, fits alongside 1987's Speaker for the Dead in the microgenre of Catholics in Space. It concerns the fallout of a mission to another planet, in which only four men are sent, but they all have different roles and different goals. The Catholic, the main character, is the one with the titular conscience. And it's followed by a reverse mission, in which the aliens come to Earth, with very different results.

The book reminded me of the movie Avatar, to the point where I wondered whether the book provided at least unconscious inspiration. There are humans seeking to exploit another planet, and other humans trying to stop them, and a tree plays a pivotal role.

Despite being a relatively short novel, this is one where I sometimes had trouble keeping straight the cast of characters. The priest and the alien were clear; the supporting characters less so.

And, of course, I can't avoid mentioning the parallels between the alien going on TV and the demagoguery out of the White House. He was possibly meant as an extraterrestrial Father Coughlin, but today seems more like Sean Hannity. Over and over again...

Month 21: New Crobuzon and New Orleans

Month 21 of 260 (8.08 percent)

Size of list: 84,625 pages (8.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,855 (12.83 percent)

H-list: 2,865/23,122 (12.39 percent)

N-list: 3,857/36,694 (10.78 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,809 (16.26 percent)

Finished: Perdido Street Station

Reading: A Case of Conscience

Added: The Obelisk Gate, The Scar, All the Birds in the Sky

I moved Perdido Street Station up on the list because in a book I read last year, A Trip to the Stars, Mala takes an apartment on Perdido Street in New Orleans. Well, if this book takes place in New Orleans, I'm the only one who believes it. It's a far-future post-apocalyptic multi-racial/species magical fantasy, that at times felt like a fantasy version of Infinite Jest. I quite enjoyed it, although I enjoyed the worldbuilding more than the plot, and unlike Infinite Jest it dragged a bit in the final third, as the plot was taken care of. The final chapter ties up one loose end and throws a haymaker, and I loved it. It was definitely good enough to add the sequel to my list.

The book was on the list because it was recommended in the D&D Inspirational Reading list, and it got me thinking about a game set in a single sprawling city. The icons of 13th Age would be great for something like that, with the Emperor, the Archmage, the Crusader, the Priestess, the Prince of Shadows, the Lich King and the Diabolist all representing factions within a city. I'd toss out the race-specific leaders and replace the High Druid with a lord of the sewers, maybe a Rat King or something. 

I added The Obeslisk Gate because it won the Hugo, and I added All the Birds in the Sky because it was a close second -- actually getting more first-choice ballots -- and I love Charlie Jane Anders anyway.

Time to read more!

Month 20: A Decided Lack of Progress

Month 20 of 260 (7.69 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,364 (12.44 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,538/36,116 (9.80 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: none

Reading: Perdido Street Station

I read 54 pages this month. Plus some Hugo reading, but still. This is not progress.

Month 19: No more exceptions

Month 19 of 260 (7.31 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,310 (12.38 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,484/36,116 (9.65 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: The Dragon Reborn

Reading: Perdido Street Station

This month, I finished The Dragon Reborn, the last book on my plan that I'd already read, because it counts as part of the ultimate whale of fantasy, The Wheel of Time. From here on out, it's all new stuff.

The Dragon Reborn is better than its ending lets it be. The titular character, Rand, is barely in the book. It's as if Jordan realized at the beginning that Rand was whiny and boring, so he went off on three other stories: Egwene and the other women at Tar Valon, Perrin dealing with his wolfishness, and Mat dealing with his luck. A few more characters come in, but it's really about those three, and it's fine, until the end features a big climactic battle between Sir Barely Appearing in This Book and Ba'alzagain, the Evil Lord of Being an Evil Lord, which is just boring because who cares about either one? 

I've started into Perdido Street Station, which is kind of weird because I went in assuming it takes place in New Orleans, but it doesn't, it's in New Crobuzon, so I keep watching for a sign that it's really in New Orleans. I'm only about a quarter of the way through, so more reports later.

Month 18: Franchise fiction

Month 18 of 260 (6.92 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 9,804 (11.77 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,038/36,116 (8.41 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: Labyrinth of Evil, Avatar (books one and two)

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

Added: Avatar Book Two

This month was about fast reading from the big sci-fi franchises. It was nice to just turn pages. This seems kind of silly to say; it's not like I've been reading War and Peace or Capital in the 21st Century here, but after The Uplift War, Star Wars and Star Trek books were fast reads.

Labyrinth of Evil is a direct prequel to Revenge of the Sith, and it includes an interesting backstory for General Grievous that is revealed over a couple chapters from different characters' points of view. When we learn things about Grievous that even he doesn't know, it's a fun revelation. The end, which had to be in line with the beginning of the movie, suffers a little; it's especially hard to believe Count Dooku is so naïve about the situation he's walking into. Still, by tie-in standards, it's a good read; not as good as Death Star or the X-Wing series, but pretty good. 

Avatar is a novel spread across two volumes that follows the end of the TV series Deep Space Nine, my favorite Star Trek. This felt like a two-part episode, a pilot for a delayed Season Eight. About half the characters were returning — Dax, Bashir, Kira, Quark — and then there were new characters brought in, mostly new but including Ensign Ro, the Bajoran from TNG. The plot was okay but felt a little thin across this many words. More interesting were the characters and how they dealt with each other — Ezri and Julian dealing with symbiont relationships, Kira and Ro dealing with opposite views of Bajoran religion, Nog and Quark adjusting to life without Rom. 

They're books I enjoyed because I already love the underlying characters and worlds; I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who doesn't already.

Month 17: Where Dungeons Come From

Month 17 of 260 (6.54 percent)

Size of list: 83,045 pages (6.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 9,722 (11.11 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 2,978/36,116 (8.25 percent)

O-list: 3,455/24,255 (13.44 percent)

Finished: Sign of the Labrys

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

Added: Revenge of the Sith, Dark Lord

This is the amazing back cover to Sign of the Labrys, a 1963 novel by Margaret St. Clair, who was called out by Gary Gygax in his original Appendix N; this novel was one of three listed on the 5th Edition update. Another Appendix N writer pointed to this novel as specifically inspiring what we now think of as the Gygaxian mega-dungeon, and that's certainly there, with a multi-level complex connected by tunnels and guarded by traps and populated by groups that might as well be weird cults; each level is different, but a common theme runs through them. But this novel is explicitly post-apocalyptic, most of the population having been wiped out by a plague, and not much government left. It's very late-'60s, and the ending is so not compelling that, a week later, I don't really remember what happened. (It's almost like a song that fades out because the writer couldn't think of a good ending... which is sort of how I feel about the ending of Infinite Jest, but for a completely different reason.)

I also started reading Labyrinth of Evil, a prequel-era Star Wars book; I've read enough accounts saying the novelization of Revenge of the Sith is better than the movie, and even better as the middle portion of a trilogy, that I added the second and third volumes to my list. (And in the wake of The Uplift War and Sign of the Labrys, I wanted something fast, familiar and modern as a palette cleanser.) And I've been slowly, slowly, working my way through The Dragon Reborn, the third volume of The Wheel of Time (and last of my rereads); the story of Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne in the White Tower is some of the most interesting the series has been so far.

Month 16: A banana and a beer

Month 16 of 260 (6.15 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size, unchanged for three months)

Pages read: 8,796 (10.69 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 2,850/36,116 (7.89 percent)

O-list: 3,153/23,466 (13.44 percent)

Finished: The Uplift War

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

The only book I finished this month was The Uplift War, the 1988 Hugo winner and a direct sequel to Startide Rising, which I read last year. But I mean it's a direct sequel in that it's more of a sequel than Startide Rising was to Sundiver, nominally the first book in the Uplift Trilogy. The Uplift War shares none of the same characters or even the same planets, but what happens in this book is caused by what happens in the previous.

The Uplift War features chimpanzees as an uplifted species, and pits them against the Gubru, an avian race that has invaded Garth, the planet that is the setting of this story. (An aside: I used to have an old Mac game, the kind where you send spaceships from one planet to another and they fight when they arrive, and it pit the player as humans against two races: the Kzin and the Gubru. I had never known where the Gubru came from before reading this.) A few other characters are human and Tymbrini, another alien species. 

The best part of this book is the Gubru. David Brin succeeds in making a race feel alien while still comprehensible to the human reader. The other alien species are interesting too, and life as an uplifted chimpanzee was wonderful to read about.

When I got to about 100 pages to go, as the climax was coming, and chimpanzees were walking up a hill taking tests, I couldn't put it down. It was an excellent climax.

Brin wrote another whole Uplift Trilogy, which isn't on my list at all, but I may throw the next book on if I'm in the mood.

Month 15: The first book I hate

Month 15 of 260 (5.77 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size, unchanged for two months)

Pages read: 8,369 (10.17 percent)

H-list: 2,456/22,674 (10.83 percent)

N-list: 2,760/36,116 (7.64 percent)

O-list: 3,153/23,466 (13.44 percent)

Finished: Fool's Errand, The Big Time

Reading: The Dragon Reborn, The Uplift War

The Big Time is the 1958 Hugo winner, and when I finished it I was glad, because it meant I didn't have to read it any more. The book is set in a bubble in time and space; half the characters are soldiers in an endless war across time and space, and the others are charged with providing R&R to those soldiers. There are many reasons for hating this book. Some of it is just an outdated version of gender roles, although the main character, a woman, always being casually in fear of being hit by her boyfriend goes beyond that. Some of it is the main character herself; I hate her voice, from her accent to what she says. Part was the supporting characters; although some were soldiers recruited from across time, and some were doctors or entertainers, it was hard to really keep track of their roles and motivations. I loved the big-picture concept of the war between two factions of unknown entities, fighting across Earth's history for unknown goals, and I could enjoy books set in this universe. Just not this book.

Fool's Errand is the first book in Robin Hobb's third trilogy in her world. It returns to the first-person character of the first trilogy, and really repeats a lot of flaws with Assassin's Quest, the third volume of said first trilogy. Specifically, this is largely another Tolkien-esque fantasy road trip, where we get interesting but ultimately inconsequential pages and pages about every inn, every ferry, and stops on the way. The second trilogy, the Liveship Traders, was third-person with shifting POV characters, and these characters had much more interesting goals. I'll keep reading, because the first two books in the first trilogy were more interesting, but really, I'm already tired of the fantasy road trip.

I'm halfway through The Uplift War, the 1987 Hugo winner and sequel to Startide Rising, which I read last year; and have just barely cracked into The Dragon Reborn, the third volume of The Wheel of Time. I'm still behind on the year, but I'll catch up.

Month 14: Why must we wait?

Month 14 of 260 (5.38 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 7,819 (9.51 percent)

H-list: 2,096/22,674 (9.24 percent)

N-list: 2,670/35,009 (7.39 percent)

O-list: 3,053/23,466 (13.01 percent)

Reading: Fool's Errand, The Big Time

This has been a terrible month for reading. I could list off reasons: a wave of sickness, having relatives visit for two of the last four weeks, continued work on the new house. Really, though, the reason is that I got a new console and have been playing an MMO. Video games are the enemy of reading.

My intention is to start each year (and each midyear) with a Wheel of Time volume until it's done. In this case, because I'm still plugging away at Fool's Errand, I restarted The Big Time on my phone, because it's short and it's a Hugo winner. I'm a little more than halfway through, and I kind of hate it, but I did just read a chapter that made for interesting concepts, but why did we have to wait until halfway through? Fool's Errand, too, introduced a twist two-thirds of the way through that introduces interesting concepts (or, actually, fleshes out a concept developed in an earlier book) that makes me wish it had come up earlier, to be explored more. (It's the first in a trilogy, so maybe it is being saved.)

Onward! To finish books!

Month 13 / Year 1

Month 13 of 260 (5 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 7,556 (9.19 percent)

H-list: 2,027/22,674 (8.94 percent)

N-list: 2,670/35,009 (7.39 percent)

O-list: 2,859/23,466 (12.18 percent)

Finished: The Name of the Wind

Reading: Fool's Errand

Added: A Wise Man's Fear

One year down! I had hoped to be 10 percent into the plan by the end of the year, but I did not quite make it. Stuff happened this year, and this month we bought a house and moved, so that took up a lot of time. I didn't even finish my pre-made list for the year; I'm still only half-done with Fool's Errand. But I bought a house and moved, and we hope that will never happen again, so I have 19 years to make up for it.

The Name of the Wind was a fantastic, enjoyable, but meaningless, book. I added the sequel, A Wise Man's Fear, and I'm sure I'll add the third book (when it comes out). The magic system is interesting in that it has the trappings of something internally consistent, and that would act like magic would, sort of. And the relationships with friends and rivals and contacts is interesting. It's not revolutionary, it's not profound, it's just a joy to read.

I haven't touched The Big Time in months, so I decided to take the pages so far away and restart it. It's short, it deserves a blitz. I'll read it on my phone while finishing Fool's Errand in print, before starting the next Wheel of Time on my phone.