Novels of the year (halftime report)

Alright, enough discussing issues of meta-importance or older books; time to talk about some contemporary works. I'm not quite sure how it's suddenly got to be halfway through 2009 – Christmas was only last month, right? – but I thought I should start recording stuff I've read this year that I've enjoyed. For the purposes of this post, I'm restricting that to novels of the fantastic published this year. Some lists:

Novels I've read that I was impressed by:

• Chris Beckett, Marcher. Very political near-future sf, and therefore not a bundle of laughs. But sensitively written, thoughtful, and not a million miles from the work of, say, Paolo Bacigalupi.
• Lev Grossman, The Magicians. Only out in the UK so far, so I won't spoil; but an enormously skillful and knowing fantasy. Maybe knowing to a fault, but still a hugely enjoyable read.
• Toby Litt, Journey into Space. A controversial book: Ursula le Guin was very negative about it, but others have expressed more positive views. Much as I admire Ms Le Guin's writing, I come down in the “pro” camp too. Although there's some over-writing (and one ten-page risky passage that just doesn't come off), the story of a generation starship civilisation building up its myths is compelling and accelerates nicely towards the end.
• China Mieville, The City and The City. I have some trouble with the book – chiefly, I think there's a problem of gearing between the noir story and the concept it reveals - but there's so much in here that absolutely stunning: the evocation of Eastern Europe, the superb readability, the central idea and its implications.
• Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia. May be the book in which Roberts has so far best managed to balance his love of sf-as-high-concept-literature with a story that he's engaged in.
• Catherynne M Valente, Palimpsest. To my taste, pretty much the book of the year so far. Estranging, evocative, beautifully written.
• Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock. Only just finished, though I had a headstart having read the earlier PS Publishing novella Julian: A Christmas Story. Very different from the Spin books, though no less (awful term) a novel of ideas.

Novels I haven't read that sound good:

• C.C. Finlay, The Patriot Witch (via Rich Horton)
  
• Felix Gilman, The Gears of the City
• Jay Lake, Green
• David Marusek, Mind Over Ship
• Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer
  
• Kari Sperring, Living With Ghosts
• Bruce Sterling, The Caryatids
• Greg van Eekhout, Norse Code
  
• Jo Walton, Lifelode
• Sarah Waters, The Little Friend
  
• Kit Whitfield, In Great Waters

Novels that sound interesting but aren't out yet:

• Iain Banks, Transition
• Stephen Baxter, Ark
• Rana Dasgupta, Solo
• Cory Doctorow, Makers
  
• Greer Gilman, Cloud and Ashes
• Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim
• Ken Macleod, The Restoration Game
• Paul Mcauley, Gardens of the Sun
• Nelida Pinon, Voices of the Desert
  
• Cherie Priest, Boneshaker
  
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream
• Peter Straub, The Skylark
• Jeff VanderMeer, Finch

I should also say that I'm currently reading John Crowley's Four Freedoms. It's as wonderfully written and moving as you'd expect from Crowley, but I can't (yet) find any way in which it's fantastic. And while I'll definitely be getting Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice when it comes out, the blurb suggests it'll be less sf-nal than Against the Day.

So, with those caveats, please use the comments to tell me what I'm missing from these lists. Obvious note I: I'm not omniscient, and have almost certainly missed good books. Obvious note II: these lists do not represent Official Locus Anything. Obvious note III: please try to keep any recommendations spoiler-free. As I say, we're talking about novels of the fantastic published so far in 2009. (If we were talking about collections, I'd go on for 5000 words again about The Best of Gene Wolfe; and I'm sure no-one wants that....)

ETA: I knew I'd forget some things. Additions to the lists above are in green.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

I don't get to reread much anymore. But every once in a while, a reprint crosses my desk that I can't resist. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Gollancz) which I read in 1966 when it came out and probably reread in the '70s when I still had time, was one. Heinlein's reputation, since his death in 1988, has gone downhill somewhat, with objections to his women characters, his politics, his arrogance, and that his books are more or less dated. Probably true of all authors who wrote mid-century. It's easier to find fault then see what's still good about them.

I loved rereading Moon... and think it may very well be his best book. Why John W. Campbell rejected it I’ll never understand. The plotting is tight, the lead characters, including the computer, interesting, and the voice – the voice! Marvelous. Yes, the lead female character Wyoming Knott isn’t very smart (Hazel Meade at 10 who goes on to be a leading character in The Rolling Stones is more interesting), the Heinlein character, Prof. de la Paz is arrogant and spouts both ideas and nonsense. He isn’t reactionary, but a strange mixture of Marxism and libertarianism. Here’s Heinlein playing jujitsu. The villains are North American corporations. The colonists are transportees a la Australia, their language and customs are mostly Russian! The historical background is the American Revolution. Heinlein is excellent at ratcheting up the tension to a fine ending. I’ll see if some of the others hold up as well.

–Charles N. Brown

A Best of Sturgeon

OK, confession time. Theodore Sturgeon is the one author I've consistently put off writing about in my "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column. A couple of reasons for this: I read him very intensively as a teenager, and am worried he won't read as well now; there's one core work you have to talk about (More than Human) and then some more peripheral stuff it's difficult to choose between. But I also have a pretext-masquerading-as-a-reason: to talk about Sturgeon properly, you need to talk about his short fiction a lot, and none of the extant collections, to my mind, really contains all the good stuff. So, borrowing an idea from Jonathan, I thought I'd put together my own.

My self-imposed rules: collection to contain a maximum of twelve stories; material is ineligible if subsequently incorporated into novel-length works (so no "Baby is Three" or "To Marry Medusa"); no length restrictions other than that, but a selection consisting of mostly novellas would be considered Bad Form. My selection:

• "Microcosmic God"
• "The Man Who Lost The Sea" [[Well, obviously. Hadn't quite clocked till I reread it quite how much like Tiptree it sounds, especially "The Man Who Walked Home".]]
• "Bright Segment" [[To my mind, the most successful of Sturgeon's horror stories.]]
• "A Saucer of Loneliness"
• "...and my fear is great..." [[Sturgeon as lover of language and style at his best.]]
• "The Skills of Xanadu"
• "The [Widget], the [Wadget] and Boff"
• "The Sex Opposite"
• "The Ultimate Egoist"
• "The World Well Lost"
• "Slow Sculpture" [[Pretty much obligatory, given the rarity of late Sturgeon stories, and its status as Hugo and Nebula-winner]]
• "'I say...Ernest...'" [[A 3-page squib, essentially a retelling of an anecdote, but such a good anecdote, and one so emblematic of his world-view, that I can't omit it.]]

A friend of mine keeps saying that one day he's going to compile a book called Great Emo Stories of Isaac Asimov - containing the one percent of Asimov stories where he puts gadgets and ideas to the back of his mind and talks about emotions instead. [1] (Of the novels, The End of Eternity is the one that goes furthest down this track.) This selection is, unashamedly, Great Emo Stories of Theodore Sturgeon. Partly that's because I feel that's his peculiar strength - getting over a message about how human beings should and do interact. The gadget-y stuff in his stories, even in something as accomplished as "Slow Sculpture", has not only dated but feels oddly extraneous to the story. And I find myself actively disliking Sturgeon stories that try to do more orthodox sf-nal things like "It" or "Killdozer!". So... 1) What stories have I missed? 2) What would be your contents list?

And, while I think of it, I'm assuming people who read this will know that Paul Williams, who's been undertaking the mammoth work of putting together the Collected Short Stories of Sturgeon, has been having health problems and could do with any help you might offer.

[1] Said friend has now declared himself, and published the contents list for Great Emo Stories of Isaac Asimov.

Brief notes

1) Some responses to my "Play some old!" post from Jo Walton and M John Harrison. I do agree with MJH that there is such a thing as nostalgia-as-avoidance-strategy, and that it's particularly harmful for the writer. I should also say that the post was in part brought about by the imminent closure of London's bookshop Fantasy Centre, which has provided me with many of my classic sf books over the last few years. Their final day of trading is June 13th.

2) I’ll be at Readercon in July, and they've just announced their list of program items - as ever, an embarrassment of riches.

3) The week’s kerfuffle on the interwebs, if you haven’t seen it: Andy Remic and other UK writers have formed a group blog called SF & Fantasy Ethics, also discussed by them in this SFsignal Mindmeld; some confusion arises from how their stated mission (more of a positive approach, both to writing futures and responding to sff in general) is to do with ethics. Responses from Martin Lewis, David Moles, Abigail Nussbaum, Jeff VanderMeer, and Kathryn Cramer (also).

4) I'm having a Neal Barrett Jr phase at the moment, and was very happy to find that his utterly delightful "Perpetuity Blues" is free online. And speaking of underrated writers, Lewis Shiner's Fiction Liberation Front website contains such superb work as "Jeff Beck", "Love in Vain", "The War at Home", and (great first line) "The Gene Drain".

5) A postscript to my column in the current Locus on Octavia Butler: her work is very well-served in terms of online resources: homepage, very comprehensive fan-made page, another unofficial page, and an interview on Charlie Rose.