MobileRead May 2016 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

May 2016 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the May 2016 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on May 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

• The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
Goodreads | Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 288 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

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:

“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

• 1632 by Eric Flint
Goodreads | Amazon US / Audible / Baen
Print Length: 612 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

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).

• The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 256 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

One of Isaac Asimov's SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the twentieth century. It is widely regarded as Asimov's single best SF novel.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan's job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Changes are small, exactingly calculated shifts in the course of history, made for the benefit of humankind. Though each Change has been made for the greater good, there are also always costs.

During one of his assignments, Harlan meets and falls in love with Noÿs Lambent, a woman who lives in real time and space. Then Harlan learns that Noÿs will cease to exist after the next Change, and he risks everything to sneak her into Eternity.

Unfortunately, they are caught. Harlan's punishment? His next assignment: Kill the woman he loves before the paradox they have created results in the destruction of Eternity.

• The Giver by Lois Lowry
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo
Print Length: 204 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.

• The Door Into Summer by Robert A Heinlein
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 304 pages

Spoiler:

When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking.
The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously, been patented in his name is. There's only one thing for it. Dan somehow has to travel back in time to investigate.
He may even find Pete ...

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 158 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.

• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 338 pages pages

Spoiler:

The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’s a catch to the invitation–and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.

[Angst]

Wow! Excellent choices. I own two of the books already, and just bought two more based on the synopsis and reviews.

[CRussel]

So, how about some votes then? AND, please, when we choose the book, read it and come around and discuss it, starting on the 20th of next month.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

So, how about some votes then? AND, please, when we choose the book, read it and come around and discuss it, starting on the 20th of next month.

Yes! The point is the discussion; we've all got tons to read without letting the internet pick our books.

It is antithetical that for the first time ever, there's not a book I wouldn't mind reading, in a category that's generally inimical to me. The end of days, I think.

I remember the wisdom of that great Yankee, Yogi Berra; just the same, it's looking as if I made a good choice to pull the trigger on The Door into Summer with my about-to-expire $5 Kindle credit. I will admit that in any case, I can't resist the title (nor the charming story behind it). The rest of the selections are available for me at OverDrive.

I haven't decided how I'm voting yet.

[CRussel]

There are only two books in this that I would probably not read -- one that I've read before (Brave New World) and have no desire to re-read, and the other author (Vonnegut) was spoiled for me at a young age and I'm not over it yet. That being said, this one of his at least sounds possible.

Of the others, I've somewhat recently read the first two, The Steerswoman and 1632. Both were read or re-read in the last couple of years, but I will happily re-read as part of this if either is selected. They're both good enough to withstand rereading without issue, and are, in fact favourites. Two others, the Asimov and the Heinlein, I've read in my youth but have zero memory of, so will read either one if it's selected. And the final one, by Lowry, doesn't really have all that much interest, but it's short enough, I'll read it if we select it.

In any event, I will be here for the discussion if the selected book is one I've read. The whole point of this, after all, is to be able to discuss the books, not just to have a discussion about nominating and voting.

As for my votes? Still deciding.

[WT Sharpe]

I am going to read 1632 by Eric Flint, whether as this month's choice or sometime later this year, but I suspect after last month's tome most club members will find 612 pages a bit much. Steerswoman strikes me as containing too much fantasy to be taken seriously as science fiction, but I could be wrong. I'll read anything that wins this month.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I am going to read 1632 by Eric Flint, whether as this month's choice or sometime later this year, but I suspect after last month's tome most club members will find 612 pages a bit much. Steerswoman strikes me as containing too much fantasy to be taken seriously as science fiction, but I could be wrong. I'll read anything that wins this month.

I suspect that's why 1632 isn't doing too well in the poll, because the price is right. If length is the issue, I'm glad people realize it before voting! I'd have read this, too, as it looks quite interesting. I'll get to it; I'm not sure when.

[drofgnal]

I voted for my nominee, A Brave New World. I never do mutiple votes.

[GA Russell]

I've wanted to read Brave New World for decades, so this is my chance.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I am going to read 1632 by Eric Flint, whether as this month's choice or sometime later this year, but I suspect after last month's tome most club members will find 612 pages a bit much. Steerswoman strikes me as containing too much fantasy to be taken seriously as science fiction, but I could be wrong. I'll read anything that wins this month.

Ah, but that's the trick of The Steerswoman. What appears fantasy is actually science. Any more than that, I can't really say without being a huge spoiler, but it really IS a fit for this month. Though I might argue the opposite in December, if necessary.

(And I tend to agree about the length of 1632. But I would add that Eric Flint is a very much tighter writer than Kim Stanley Robinson, and that the 600 pages go very quickly.) So whether we read it now, or you read it later, you're going to have a treat, IMO.

I am not willing to read Brave New World. Once was more than enough.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ah, but that's the trick of The Steerswoman. What appears fantasy is actually science. Any more than that, I can't really say without being a huge spoiler, but it really IS a fit for this month....

Good to know! 👍

[Angst]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ah, but that's the trick of The Steerswoman. What appears fantasy is actually science. Any more than that, I can't really say without being a huge spoiler, but it really IS a fit for this month. Though I might argue the opposite in December, if necessary.

The only books I have ever seen successfully meld science fiction and fantasy are the Caine series by Matthew Stover. I loved the series. Amazing writer! I'm not a fan of his Star Trek novels though.

[CRussel]

In the end, I decided to only vote for The Steerswoman and 1632. Both are books I'd like an excuse to re-read, and both are books that I think are approachable and enjoyable by a wide audience -- something I consider important if we're to have good participation in the discussion. Both are also quite inexpensive - $2.99 for The Steerswoman, and FREE for 1632. I do admit that 1632 is longish - 600 pages, something I would normally avoid for one of our selections, but I think this is tolerable given that there is no library delay required to get a copy for free, and it is a tight, well-written book that doesn't have long, tedious, and mind-numbingly boring sections (unlike last month's book.)

The Steerswoman isn't free (but is available on Overdrive), but is quite reasonable in price and is short enough to be a quick read. The book isn't about action and battles, but does none the less move along well and has the virtue of having strong women characters as the principles.

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by Angst

The only books I have ever seen successfully meld science fiction and fantasy are the Caine series by Matthew Stover. I loved the series. Amazing writer! I'm not a fan of his Star Trek novels though.

The Dark Angel trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce is a brilliant blend of science-fiction and fantasy. In fact, it is the best I have encountered. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an ebook version. The PB is easily available, though, and very well presented.

The volumes are:

The Dark Angel
A Gathering of Gargoyles
The Pearl of the Soul of the World.

[nurseshelly]

I will read whichever one wins I'm a little sad that the number of pages would make a book not a choice, but I'm a fast reader and to me that's a good thing! I burn through books way too fast!
I only voted for the one I wanted to read the most, but they all sound good. The ones I've read before have been such a long time ago it will be like a new book again LOL!