Beyond Reality discussion

Hi everyone,

It’s time to open nominations for our June 2014 Books of the Month. Each group member can make 1 science fiction and/or 1 fantasy nomination in this thread. If you would like to make a nomination, please reply to this post with the title and author of the book(s) you would like to put forward for the group’s consideration.

Telling us a little about the book and why you think it would be a good group read can help get other members interested in reading (and voting for) your nomination. You can also check the group bookshelves for previous Books of the Month to see if your nomination has already been read by the group. (Being chosen as a past BotM does not necessarily disqualify a book from current consideration, but be aware that it may hinder your nomination’s chances at the polls.)

General guidelines:
• Feel free to re-nominate a book that didn’t win in the polls in previous months!
• For questions regarding specifics such as book formats, books in series, etc., please see the group FAQ.
• Seconding isn't necessary in this group.
• Friendly discussion & debate is strongly encouraged, but let's please keep things civil.

Poll schedule:
• Nominations will remain open through Wednesday, March 19.
• The first round of polls will open Thursday, March 20, and will run through 11:59PM PST, Tuesday, March 25 (closing Midnight PST March 26.)
• The run-off polls go up Wednesday, March 26, and will be open through 11:59PM PST Sunday, March 30 (closing Midnight PST March 31.)

Thanks!


NOMINATIONS SO FAR:

FANTASY:
Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Sumant)
Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard (Hélène)
Blood Song by Anthony Ryan (Athena)
The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock (Kurt)
The House of the Stag by Kage Baker (Beth) (standalone in shared world, not serial with set reading order)
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (Andreas)
Memory's Wake by Selina Fenech (Elizabeth)
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (Pickle) (standalone in shared world, not serial with set reading order)
Except the Queen by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder (Mary)
The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley (Bob)
Stray Souls by Kate Griffin (Christine)


SCIENCE FICTION:
The Martian by Andy Weir (This book gets a free spot in the polls due to the tie in last month's run-offs, which necessitated a tie-breaker.)
An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews (Hélène)
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (Kurt)
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (Beth)
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (Andreas)
Alien Taste by Wen Spencer (Elizabeth)
Divergent by Veronica Roth (J.A.)
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod (Pickle)
Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders by Richard Ellis Preston Jr. (Mary)
Three Princes by Ramona Wheeler (Athena)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Christine)
Under the Skin by Michel Faber (Richard)

In fantasy genre i want to add Mistborn

In SF, I'd like to nominate An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews: morally uncomfortable but quite a compelling read.
In Fantasy, Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard, just to try a new context with its aztec culture.

The Martian is awesome. Just read it last month.

I would like to nominate The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi for the Sci fi


I would like to nominate Blood Song by Anthony Ryan for Fantasy

Fantasy: Stray Souls by Kate Griffin

Science Fiction: City of Dreams & Nightmare by Ian Whates

For Fantasy I will nominate by Michael Moorcock. There are new editions of Mr. Moorcocks works being printed and this is part one of the Eternal Champions saga.

For Science Fiction I will nominate by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. June is when Edge of Tomorrow the movie starring Tom Cruise premiers. The movie is adapted from this novel so it should be good to compare what was taken out and what was kept from the novel.

Kurt wrote: "For Fantasy I will nominate by Michael Moorcock. There are new editions of Mr. Moorcocks works being printed and this is part one of the Ete..."

Good nomination with All you need is kill.

I'd like to nominate by the late Kage Baker, for fantasy. And for sci-fi, how about by Karen Lord?...

Sumant wrote: "In fantasy genre i want to add Mistborn"
Mistborn has been read in 2009. This group is quite Sanderson focused. March 2013 - Steelheart; May 2014 - Way of Kings. I'm sorry, but two consecutive Sandersons are too much for my taste.

I'll renominate Alif the Unseen for Fantasy. It nearly made it a couple of times.

For SF I nominate Rainbows End which won Hugo and Nebula in 2007. I recently read the awarded novella Fast Times at Fairmont High and found it great; the novel is based on that story.

I’d like to nominate Alien Taste (Ukiah Oregon #1)
by Wen Spencer for science fiction
and
Memory's Wake (Memory's Wake Trilogy #1)
by Selina Fenech for fantasy

I'd like to nominate Divergent by Veronica Roth in science fiction.

sci fi:

Cosmonaut Keep - a space opera by a scottish author i think in the same vein as Alastair Reynolds but i may be mistaken

Fantasy:

Wyrd Sisters - something id imagine is easy reading snd needs no previous intro to discworld to enjoy.

Fantasy: Except the Queen by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder -- a contemporary fantasy about two fairies thrown to Earth, and middle age, by their queen, and their discoveries about why.

How about The Emperor's Blades for fantasy? Have not read it, but just added to the TBR list.

Wow! What a huge response in a short period of time!

I won't have time to sort through these and post a current list until this evening, but I'll let you know then if there are any complications with any of the nominations.

Pickle wrote: "sci fi:

Cosmonaut Keep - a space opera by a scottish author i think in the same vein as Alastair Reynolds but i may be mistaken..."

Yes, Ken MacLeod writes very much in the vein of Alaistair Reynolds. Yet different. How's that for clarity. Cosmonaut Keep is a good nomination.

SF: Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.. Action! Adventure! Steampunk! In a post-apocalyptic California!

Thanks guys, we're supposed to be reducing my tbr not increasing it!

Only You Can Reduce Your TBR Pile.

so true, but for every book i finish i tend to add three more. oh well, it is great to always have a good book to be read.

Holy guacamole, folks! I've gone through the nominations list up to this point and am updating the first post accordingly with the books that did NOT give rise to some issue or question I've addressed below. Certainly, no one could accuse this month's list of being filled with frequently-discussed books or the same old same old!

Given the less-common nature of the books on the list - which are, amazingly, all relatively easy to find, standard published and available in multiple formats...I was sure some would end up being ebook only or indies, as they often do, but you guys are really on the ball! - I have a number of notes, clarifications, declarations and questions. I'll cross them off as they're addressed.


@Sumant - The group read Mistborn back in 2009. It's been a while, so I included it in the list. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the previous discussion.

@Athena - Your fantasy nom works nicely, but The Quantum Thief was read by the group in February 2013, just over a year ago, which is probably too soon. The recently updated FAQ tries to clarify that anything discussed more recently than two years prior is not a good nomination option. Do you have something else you would like to suggest for SF?

@Christine - Both of your nominations are overwhelmingly shelved as Fantasy by Goodreaders. Which one would you prefer to nominate? And do you have another science fiction nomination?

@Beth - The House of the Stag is #2 in a series. I originally wrote here that we'd have to read #1 first, but research has shown me it is a standalone in a shared world, much like Discworld, and thus it qualifies. I've added it above.

@Pickle - Even though Wyrd Sisters is #6 in a series and the group hasn't read all the previous books, previous discussions have set the precedent that Discworld is comprised of stand-alones, and so your nomination stands.

@KURT! - I have written you an entire essay below, you big trouble-maker! ;) Unless someone is really invested in the peculiarities of Michael Moorcock's prodigious oeuvre and has a lot of patience, no one else need read beyond this point.

@Kurt - I apologize that I must write you a bit of TL;DR, but it can't be helped. Oh, the difficulties you inflict on your poor moderator! ;) Or rather I should say Michael Moorcock (or his publisher) inflicts these difficulties, as his books are notoriously troublesome to sort into series order and seem to be published again and again in ever-differing formats, forms and order, all part of a delightfully confusing multiverse, and the whole thing differs in order yet again depending on which side of the pond you're reading from, because apparently we live in alternate universes or something...which I personally think is just done to drive persnickety people like myself completely mad.

The series thing is important to us as a group because we can't read a #2 or #3 in series, etc., without first reading #1. So we need to decide which book is actually #1 in this series before we can list it in the nominations, and I must preclude my head from exploding in the process. Sorry if I'm being confusing, but it's, er, confusing.

To make matters even more fun, the edition of The Eternal Champion you linked is an omnibus of multiple books - a fact Goodreads doesn't make clear, but researching the ISBN does. Furthermore, you have linked an odd duck of an edition, which is somehow unlinked from the rest of the series on the Goodreads page for said series. I see that it is a recent Gollancz re-issue of this earlier omnibus volume: The Eternal Champion. Now, the first book in this 4-book omnibus is also, vexingly, titled The Eternal Champion. It can be found as a stand-alone book here: The Eternal Champion. So it would seem that that book is actually the book that should go into the nominations list.

But wait! It can't be allowed to be that easy! If we look at the UK series reading order page - https://www.goodreads.com/series/4371... - and compare it to the US one - https://www.goodreads.com/series/4084... - we can see that they differ in which book is considered First In Series. The US order says The Eternal Champion, but the UK order says Von Bek - which is OF COURSE an omnibus volume (*pulls hair out*) that starts with the book The War Hound and the World's Pain.

So - which book is actually first in this series? The stand-alone/non-omnibus The Eternal Champion or The War Hound and the World's Pain? The core of the trouble seems to be that White Wolf, when re-issuing this series (in the PREVIOUS re-issue, not the recent one by Gollancz) sorted the books linked thematically, not necessarily in original publishing order. I actually encountered this some time ago when trying to decide how to "get into reading" Michael Moorcock, spending a lot of time lurking about the official Moorcock fan forums, and ended up not reading any Moorcock at all, because my brain was made to hurt by the book order problem. The non-omnibus The Eternal Champion was published in 1970, whereas The War Hound and the World's Pain was published in 1981. Now, Moorcock is an English writer, so I am inclined to go with the UK series reading order...but that seems counter-intuitive, as the "first book" in that order was written more than a decade after the "first book" in the US order, and it stars a completely different protagonist. (Yes, I know there is some sort of semi-not-quite-Highlander-esque incarnations thing going on here, so perhaps they are in some way "the same" protagonist - not having read them, I have no idea - but there are different protag names and different sub-series surround those names.)

The folks on the Moorcock forums are of multiple minds, as well, arguing and/or agreeing to disagree. The kind and helpful-as-he-can-be-under-the-circumstances Admin of said forums has a suggested reading order here:
http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showth.... There is so much detail and so many further notes in that thread that I need more ibuprofen or a couple of drinks just to scroll through it, so I won't attempt to talk about it further here. But I highly recommend anyone interested in the author's works go there and poke around.

I will state that, kind as it is for the Admin to compile all that info, I find this conclusion singularly frustrating in light of the group's predicament:

"Q. Okay, so what’s the best order to read Mike's novels in?
A. The best order is to just pick up whatever’s at hand and take it from there."

*grumpy face*
*head desk*

So, in the interest of brevity (HA!) and keeping my sanity (ha) and actually getting a book onto the nominations list, let's please go with the book written and published first, which is The Eternal Champion, pub. 1970, ISBN 0425095622, The Eternal Champion, which is the first book in that omnibus you list. I get the feeling that these stories are in essence stand-alones, a la Discworld, as long as one maintains reading order within SUB-SERIES. I have put that book on the noms list, and should it win, anyone who wants to join the discussion can find the book as a stand-alone OR in an omnibus format. If someone feels strongly enough to contest this executive decision, I'll be waiting for your rebuttal essay below. ;)

Ok, how about Three Princes for Scifi.

Athena wrote: "Ok, how about Three Princes for Scifi."

Thanks, Athena!

Wow, you take your mod duty very seriously, I'm impressed.

The Eternal Champion, was the first I read of Moorcock's books. Hooked me....

Candiss wrote: "@Kurt - I apologize that I must write you a bit of TL;DR, but it can't be helped. Oh, the difficulties you inflict on your poor moderator! ;) Or rather I should say Michael Moorcock (or his pub..."

Yeah Cnadiss I know all of that all to well. I spent all of Monday trying to figure out which book is the FIRST book in the Eternal Champion Series. Between Goodreads and Amazon.UK.com I found that the Eternal Champion that I listed is indeed the FIRST book in the series. The War Hound is reprinted in the new editions from Gollancz in Von Bek. Von Bek is number two. I had to resort my to-read list to adjust to all the confusion. I thought either The Eternal Champion or The Cornelius Quartet would be a good choice. I went with the Eternal Champion. Sorry if I caused you any trouble.

Kurt wrote: "Sorry if I caused you any trouble."

@Kurt - any "trouble" I alluded to was in jest. I am a bit crazy for detail orientation, but I also love doing research and organizing things. I was actually very happy - if perhaps even a bit more koo-koo than usual - while trying to parse all the Moorcock stuff out. I like doing stuff like that. You provided me with an hour of brain-fun!

I hope you didn't take my teasing seriously. I wonder if I need to make my "winky" emoticons larger or something.


@Helen - Most people I know consider it a character flaw that I take things seriously, so I'll happily take any bit of positive feedback I can get! :D

Candiss wrote: "Kurt wrote: "Sorry if I caused you any trouble."

@Kurt - any "trouble" I alluded to was in jest. I am a bit crazy for detail orientation, but I also love doing research and organizing things. I ..."

I saw it I hoped that my pick didn't take too much time away from you doing other things. So for July's pick I'll try to find something even more complex for you to rack your brain over. :) (I'm thinking Asimovs Foundation, Prelude to Foundation or maybe the Empire books. No, wait I got it the Robot books, Hmm, this will take a while.)

@Candiss: I go with Stray Souls for fantasy then.

if I come up with scifi I will post later ...

Scifi: Nexus by Ramez Naam

@Christine - Got it! Thanks. :)

@Kurt - Ack! :D

Candiss wrote: "@Beth - The House of the Stag is #2 in a series. I originally wrote here that we'd have to read #1 first, but research has shown me it is a standalone in a shared world, much like Discworld, and thus it qualifies. I've added it above."

In the temporal sense, The House of the Stag actually takes place before the events in the first book, The Anvil of the World. So it shouldn't cause any problems and should serve to encourage the reader to read the first one. I should hasten to add that The House of the Stag is an epic tale, well worth a read in any sequence (The third one, The Bird of the River ain't bad either. I really miss Kage Baker.).

We've got a good roster of choices this month. If anyone has a last-minute nomination you'd like to throw into the ring, this thread will be open until sometime tomorrow morning when I put up the first polls.

For SF Under the Skin by Michel Faber.

Richard wrote: "For SF Under the Skin by Michel Faber."

let's just hope the book is better than the movie.. god its bad and im from glasgow and have a friend that appears as a cameo. Its dreadful.

Ive not seen the movie, but have heard good things about the book from another group.

From what I've heard of the book - which is actually only positive things - it's significantly better than the movie in several ways. (I haven't read or seen the book or movie.)

Noms are closed, and the first polls are going up.

Edit to add: Polls are up. Go vote!

Fantasy: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Science Fiction: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Candiss wrote: "@Kurt - I apologize that I must write you a bit of TL;DR, but it can't be helped. Oh, the difficulties you inflict on your poor moderator! ;) Or rather I should say Michael Moorcock (or his pub..."
Fascinating link - what an utterly daunting task to make sense of all that.

At one time I had read pretty much everything Moorcock had ever written but that was a long time ago and I see that now I've read less than half! Anyhow; I can confirm your suspicion that a lot of the 'cycle' consists of stand-alone story arcs which are not at all dependent on having read the others.

The Hawkmoon/Runestaff, Corum/Swords and the Elric/Black Sword story arcs would all be good starting points for anyone wanting a way through the chaos instead of or after the Eternal Champion/Erekose arc.

The run-off polls for June are up and will be open for voting through 11:59PM PST Sunday, March 30 (closing Midnight PST March 31.)

Fantasy: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Science Fiction: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...