I ordered three new books yesterday, all of them on pre-order, the first of them still several weeks away, but I am excited about each of them. I also ordered two used books–the first that I’ve ordered in some time. One has already arrived and the other is on its way.
The new books:
I really enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson’s previous novel, Galileo’s Dream and the description of his new book, 2312 sounded like just the kind of thing I’ve been looking for lately. The book is scheduled to arrive on my Kindle on May 22.
I enjoyed Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and some of his other books as well. The publicity to Redshirts has gotten me curious about the book and I’m looking forward to the book arriving on June 5.
The last David Brin book I read (and truly enjoyed) was his remarkable conclusion to the overarching Foundation series, Foundation’s Triumph. I had hesitated reading that “second trilogy” written with permission of Isaac Asimov’s estate by the Killer Bees (Benford, Bear and Brin) but Brin’s book make it worthwhile and indeed, concluded the series in such a way as to be very satisfying to a long-time fan. Existence is the first book of his that has really interested me since then, and I’m looking forward to that arriving on June 19.
I also ordered a few old paperbacks. The first of these has already arrived:
I read Silverberg’s novella, “Beauty in the Night” back in December and absolutely adored it. That novella eventually found its way into this opus of alien invasion and I can’t wait to read it. And then there is this:
I’d never heard of Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan until I saw it in a recent blog post. I read the description and was instantly fascinated by it. So I ordered a paperback copy, not aware at the time that an e-book version existed through Baen’s website. In any case, the paperback should be arriving shortly.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what my summer reading is shaping up to look like. I know it doesn’t look like much, but when you consider that in addition to these books, I am reading an issue of Astounding every 2 weeks for my Vacation in the Golden Age, reading as much short fiction as I possibly can; and also reading books for some upcoming book review columns, well, it’s plenty. I only wish I had time for more.
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You may recall I had a blog post on Apex Blog a while back about Hogan. I was going to link you to it again just as food for thought but it seems to have been taken down.
I’ve read The Alien Years. It didn’t grip me, but it wasn’t bad.
Wait, how did I get *that* icon?!!?
I believe my WordPress system will try to pull images from Gravitar that match the email address of the commenter. Maybe from there?
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been catching up on all the “new” Silverberg that I’ve missed – namely those extraordinary novels that Silverberg wrote from 1967 to 1975, after he stopped churning out pornography for ready cash. Sadly, “The Alien Years” falls outside my current project.
It too have on order the KSR and the Brin, along with the new China Mieville YA novel and the most recent novella by the best SF author writing today: Nancy Kress.
Mark, my 3 favorite Silverberg novels (that I’ve read so far) are all from that era: Dying Inside, Up The Line, and The World Inside. I think Up The Line is one of the best time travel novels I’ve ever read.
FWIW: I read Dying Inside over a decade ago, The World Inside a couple of weeks ago, and Up the Line – because of your post last year – I am saving for the grand finale of my SilverBob project.