So, what's good to read in SF lately?

[rolanni]

I just had the occasion to review my wish list over on Amazon.com and notice something...peculiar. Excluding non-fiction, my book list is exclusively fantasy -- no, I'm wrong. Surely Palimpsest is science fiction. So, the Overwhelming Majority of my fictional wants is fantasy.

I can't help but think that there's something wrong with this. Back before I uttered the Fateful Phrase, "I can do better than this!" and so embarked upon my career as a writer, I was pretty much reading science fiction, having gotten there via a crooked path through mystery, classics, romance, and general literature. Granted, because I'm a natural mimic, I tend to stay away from reading SF when I'm writing SF, but I'm not even buying SF anymore (another exception -- the new Bren Cameron novel hit the mailbox this week). I have here in my TBR pile:

New Amsterdam, E. Bear (fantasy)
The Last Days of the Incas, K. MacQuarrie (non-fiction)
Nine Years Among the Indians, H. Lehmann (autobiography)
A Song in Stone, W. Hunt (fantasy)
The Animal Dialogues, C. Childs (non-fiction)
Thirteenth Child, P. Wrede (fantasy)
Conspirator, CJ Cherryh (sf)
The Source of the Nile, R. Burton (non-fiction)
The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru,Till, Warkentyne, Patt (non-fiction)

...and I'm currently reading Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by G. Wood (which by the way is fascinating) -- nonfiction.

I remember hitting a thick patch with SF a couple of years back, where I was reading books that people whose taste I trusted raved about -- and finding them (choose all that apply): (1) dull (2) incomprehensible (3) Inflated with a sense of their own Importance (4) lack sympathetic characters -- and I guess I found that my itch for exciting! character driven! stories! got scratched better elsewhere. But, surely, there's SF that's worth reading out there. Right?

What're you reading that's good in SF? And! Special Bonus Question: What makes it good?


edited to fix spelling

Comments

Re: Books...

[(Anonymous)]

I call the Pliocene Exiles saga fantasy more than SF. I wasn't all that keen on it; don't think I finished it. And I don't buy hardbacks either. Valor's Trial was a case where I absolutely HAD to read it so I went to the library. In fact I find I'm doing that more and more and becoming a little more discriminating in what I actually buy. The library now has an excellent online system which I use extensively. I always found it difficult to traipse down there and look for what I wanted only to find it wasn't there and I'd have to wait. Now, I just reserve it online, they email me and off I go.

Re: Books...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

If I waited for my local library (in the UK, in case it wasn't obvious from my spelling) to get books from across the Pond then I wouldn't be seeing them at all. It doesn't help that I can only get there on a Saturday morning (so am unlikely to get there at all). They close around midday on Saturday, and I work in the week.