Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!
Feel free to contribute!
Time to Decide: Which Secondary or Ensemble Sci-Fi Characters Deserve Their... Time to Decide: Which Secondary or Ensemble Sci-Fi Characters Deserve Their...
Umm… American Gods was originally published in 2001. Don’t think that should be on the list.
My vote is for Ruins Of The Earth book 1 by Hopper and Chaney!
Has to be Inversion as it on the list twice.
The obviously correct answer is, “None of the above”.
Really, how many of these books will be anything other than forgotten, buck-a-book at the library sale, two years from now? One? At most.
Pick up any SF magazine or book from the, say, 1990s. Look at the book ads in the magazine, or the other books listed by the publisher at the end of the book. Look at the hype. Now ask yourself, “how many of these books have I even heard of, much less want to read?” Not too many, eh? And yet they were on the “what was the best book of the year” poll for 1994 or 1996 or 1998.
Most books that come out in a year are not worth reading, as this little thought experiment (hopefully) shows. So why read stuff only because it’s new? Why not wait, say, five years to see what shakes out? Gives time for the “political hot button of the day” books, the “flash in the pan” author books, the “I misused the English language to signal my virtue” books, and the “just plain uninteresting” books to fade away, and leave stuff worth reading.
As you can guess, I’ve read exactly zero books published in 2020 (the only book on the list above that I’d even consider reading is the Ken Liu collection). And, I have no current plans to read any 2021 books except for the next Laundry Files book, and the last book in the Expanse series–both proven commodities.
So, I’m not one of the cool kids. Ask me if I effing care. I like the vast majority of the books that I read, which I think is more important. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
I still think it’s hilarious that the majority of the “best of” books being touted here have been written by the authors who run this giveaway site.