MobileRead May 2016 Book Club Nominations

[CRussel]

I'll nominate The Steerswoman, by Rosemary Kirstein. 288 pages according to Amazon. Price, $2.99 on Amazon.com.

This book is not fantasy, though you might think so initially. More than that would be a spoiler.

Amazon description:

Spoiler:

Freedom of Information
If you ask, she must answer. A steerswoman's knowledge is shared with any who request it; no steerswoman may refuse a question, and no steerswoman may answer with anything but the truth.

And if she asks, you must answer. It is the other side of tradition's contract -- and if you refuse the question, or lie, no steerswoman will ever again answer even your most casual question.

And so, the steerswomen — always seeking, always investigating — have gathered more and more knowledge about the world they traveled, and they share that knowledge freely.

Until the day that the steerswoman Rowan begins asking innocent questions about one small, lovely, inexplicable object…

Her discoveries grow stranger and deeper, and more dangerous, until suddenly she finds she must flee or fight for her life. Or worse -- lie.

Because one kind of knowledge has always been denied the the steerswomen:
Magic.

Reviewers comments:

Spoiler:

“If you haven’t read Kirstein’s Steerswoman books I envy you the chance to read them now for the first time.... I think they have a very good claim to be my favorite thing still being written. […] If you like science, and if you like watching someone work out mysteries, and if you like detailed weird alien worlds and human cultures, if really good prose appeals... you’re really in luck.” — Jo Walton, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner, author of Among Others and Farthing.

"[Kirstein] walks the tightrope between fantasy and science fiction with precision and grace... [her] compassion for even minor characters is evident on every page, and her prose is measured and alluring without being overworked." -- Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, in Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010

Amazon US - $2.99 USD
Amazon.ca - $2.99 CDN
Amazon UK - £1.99 UK
Kobo US - $2.99 USD

[Dazrin]

I will second The End of Eternity.

Similar concept to The Adjustment Bureau movie based on Philip K. Dick's Adjustment Team story that I have been wanting to try.

[CRussel]

As for allowed, I'm with Tom on this. But I'll vote on Mistborn by NOT seconding it. (But if szarroug3 or anyone else nominates it for July or December, I will second it. With the warning that it's LONG.)

As for Azimov, I'm considering a second there, but holding off a bit to see what other options are put forward. It's been 50 years since I read The End of Eternity, so I will not remember any of it, but I'd also hoped for something a bit newer.

Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.

Nothing by Eric Flint is on the Selections List. 1632 has been on my to be read list for a while but it is another LONG one at over 600 pages. Of course it is free from the Baen free library so that would help.

[CRussel]

Yes, it's long. But it goes quickly. And I need a good excuse to get back into this series.

So, I nominate 1632, by Eric Flint. 612 pages, FREE from Baen directly, or Amazon directly. And we get SF, History, and fun, all in one.

Amazon:

Spoiler:

The Ultimate Y2K Glitch....

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Amazon US - $0.00 - WhisperSync Ready
Audible - $2.99 WhisperSync price
Baen Multiformat DRM-Free - $0.00

[Dazrin]

I did this last month and forgot this month but here are the last couple nomination threads for Science Fiction:

August 2015
August 2014
August 2013

Here are a couple awards specifically for science fiction (and fantasy):
Hugo Awards - Novels, Novellas, Novellettes - Best science fiction according to the World Science Fiction Society
Nebula Awards - Novels, Novellas, Novellettes - best science fiction according to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

It looks like CRussell's current nomination of The Steerswoman was nominated last year (and had only 3 less votes than our eventual winner). Rendezvous with Rama has been a finalist each of the last three years (I enjoyed it a lot) so maybe it is time to finally read it, it is only 256 pages.

[treadlightly]

I second The Steerswoman.

[Grey Ram]

I third The Steerswoman, I've been meaning to read it for some time now

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by CRussel

As for allowed, I'm with Tom on this. But I'll vote on Mistborn by NOT seconding it. (But if szarroug3 or anyone else nominates it for July or December, I will second it. With the warning that it's LONG.)

As for Azimov, I'm considering a second there, but holding off a bit to see what other options are put forward. It's been 50 years since I read The End of Eternity, so I will not remember any of it, but I'd also hoped for something a bit newer.

Have we ever nominated or read any of the 1632 series? I'd happily nominate that if we haven't.

I thought about it earlier. I have it in my TBR collection. It's just that after the marathon we just participated in for April, I didn't know how many people would like to jump into a book with 612 pages.

[WT Sharpe]

Oh for the love of....

Originally Posted by CRussel

Yes, it's long. But it goes quickly. And I need a good excuse to get back into this series.

So, I nominate 1632, by Eric Flint. 612 pages....

Seconded. What the heck?

[issybird]

I'll third 1632.

[Dazrin]

We need something different to consider, so I will nominate Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold.

Goodreads | Amazon US / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble
Length: 79 Pages

As the only woman on the first contact team, xenolinguist Toni Donato expected her assignment on Christmas would be to analyze the secret women's language -- but then the chief linguist begins to sabotage her work. What is behind it? Why do the men and women have separate languages in the first place? What Toni learns turns everything she thought they knew on its head.

Originally published in Asimov's in 2003, "Looking Through Lace" was a finalist for the Tiptree and Sturgeon awards. The Italian translation won the Premio Italia for best work of speculative fiction in translation in 2007.

The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual award given to the "best short science fiction." The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award is "an award encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender" and is named for one of the the pen names for Alice Bradley Sheldon. Mrs. Sheldon was an "American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. She was most notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently "male" or "female"—it was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree, Jr. was a woman."

Disclosure: This is in Kindle Unlimited which generally means the e-book is only available on Amazon but it should be easy to convert to another format in Calibre. It is available to purchase (rather than borrow thru KU) at $2.99 right now. There is a paper edition available at B&N.

[Dazrin]

So far, I would like to read (or have already read) all of the nominated works. I like to see that.

[pdurrant]

I'd like to nominate Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. But it seems to be one of those books that has fallen in the crack between new publications that automatically have ebooks, and older publications that have been reissued as ebooks.

I bought it from Fictionwise. Perhaps it's still available as an ebook in the US.

It was my first 10/10 read of 2010, an unexpected gem. "Wonderful aliens, an interesting scenario"

"Most readers won't be surprised by Cosmic Unity's bloody-minded missionary zeal, but Heaven offers some great surprises in its big ideas and its richly imagined alien races. Reminiscent of Hal Clement and Bruce Sterling, Heaven is a fun, thought-provoking, impressive example of classic sense-of-wonder science fiction." --Cynthia Ward

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'd like to nominate Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. But it seems to be one of those books that has fallen in the crack between new publications that automatically have ebooks, and older publications that have been reissued as ebooks.

I bought it from Fictionwise. Perhaps it's still available as an ebook in the US.

Here's the US Kindle link.