23 Tuesday Jan 2018
By Gorthian (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Someday I’ll write a longer appreciation of her work in which I try to explain how meaningful her writing has been for me. For now, I’ll simply reprise the last essay I wrote about Le Guin, a post about her marvelous book The Lathe of Heaven.
26 Sunday Mar 2017
I’ve put on a good act that I don’t care much about external validation for my work. That’s really more of an aspirational sentiment than anything else. Like Groucho Marx, I can say pretty breezily that I wouldn’t belong to any club that will have me as a member–however, if you invite me into your club, I’ll turn pretty moony-eyed.
Last year I was accepted into the Science Fiction Writers of America, which cost me $100 and came with this snazzy membership card:
Since I joined, I haven’t given the membership much thought or availed myself of the SFWA’s surely awesome services. But this month, SFWA sent me the ballot for the Nebula Awards:
Novel
Novella
Novelette
Short Story
Looking at the roster of writers, I realized that I’m the last person who should vote on these awards: while I’m familiar with some of the writers, I haven’t read any of the works on this ballot. One could argue that I’m not much of a science fiction writer if I don’t actually read works of contemporary science fiction. (I do read sci fi and fantasy–at least some–but practically all fiction that I read in any genre is older stuff. In 2016 I didn’t read a single book that was published that year.)
I do know the work of some of these writers–in particular I’m a big fan of Kij Johnson. Without reading all of these folks, though, I probably won’t be voting. I may have time to get through the whole short story category, but I doubt I’ll get far beyond that by March 31.
However, I do want to proclaim these names to you. Have you read any of these pieces? What’s not on the list that should be? Who of these writers would you recommend?
The Subway Test 