And now for all the F&SF books that I read that were written
by authors whose surnames begin with B:
Title Author Publication
Date
DIVERGENCE Ballantyne, Tony 5/1/2007
There is what I think of as a subgenre of British SF about
post-singularity worlds that James finds nearly unreadable for some
reason (Justina Robson's SF also seems to fall into that catagory).
I don't recall much about this and I cannot be sure that what I do
recall isn't me remembering the previous book.
MATTER Banks, Iain M. 2/27/2008
This is the latest Culture book, set for the most part on an
artificial planet composed of inhabited concentric shells and populated
by relatively low-tech natives. It's not USE OF WEAPONS but I liked it
more than THE ALGEBRAIST.
GOD'S DEMON Barlowe, Wayne 10/1/2007
A demon decides after some millennia in Hell that he would
rather die fighting to get back into Heaven than spend more time in
Hell. Unsurprisingly, he managed to attract a large crowd of sup****ters
in this effort.
NAVIGATOR Baxter, Stephen 1/2/2008
This is part of a historical series whose SFnal content is
that our history is the product of tampering by time travellers
(Well, time communicators) unhappy with their histories.
This has Clash of Civilizations stuff for people who like that
sort of thing and a take on paths not taken that reminds me of Marvel's
WHAT IF, where most alternate histories are much worse than ours.
DUST (Bear) Bear, Elizabeth
I sometimes get the feeling that Bear has a checklist of social
norms against for her protagonists to transgress. This is about a
generation ****p stranded in a system whose habitability is about to
experience a sudden decline and the norms that are transgressed are
"*****" and "lesbianism".
WHISKEY AND WATER Bear,Elizabeth 7/3/2007
Sequel to Blood and Iron, this is more of a straight castle
opera than the previous book.
BEYOND HUMAN Benford, Gregory 9/18/2007
Elisabeth Malartre
Non-fiction about SFnal issues like cyborgs. As I recall, this
could have been written in 1978.
THE AFTERMATH Bova, Ben 8/7/2007
A family ends up trapped drifting in the asteroid belt during
the Belter war earlier in the Grand Tour series.
TO SAVE A WORLD Bradley, Marion Zimmer 12/1/2004
This is a 2-in-1 of THE PLANET SAVERS and THE WORLD WRECKERS.
While I in general sup****t most policies that will end with the Comyn
being deposed, the methods used in the second book are unnecessarily
destuctive.
RIVER OF THE WORLD Brenchley, Chaz 4/3/2007
The sequel to BRIDGE OF DREAMS. A young man from an occupied
city and a young woman from the occupying nation work to force reform
on an oppressive culture.
This was one of several Turkish-flavored books that I got
last year.
MAD ABOUT STAR WARS Bresman, Jonathan
A collection of STAR WARS-related material from MAD MAGAZINE,
this killed any lingering affection I had for MAD.
It did make me realise how very odd it is for a comic magazine
to feature musicals as regular feature.
THE HIGH KING'S TOMB Britain, Kristen 11/1/2007
I retain no memory of this book.
THE ELVES OF CINTRA Brooks, Terry 8/28/2007
The second (?) in a series explaining how the world got from
our time to the setting in SHANNARA.
SPIDER STAR Brotherton, Mike 3/4/2008
This is one of the few hard SF books that I was sent last year.
The relics of a long-dead alien culture turn out to be not quite as dead
as one might wish, forcing a small group of humans to undertake a risky
voyage to what appears to be the bastion of a still-functioning, highly
advanced civilization.
As I've made clear before, I liked this a lot.
HELIX Brown, Eric 6/1/2007
This was a Big Dumb Object novel by an author who took the
"Dumb" part too much to heart.
RAGAMUFFIN Buckell,Tobias S. 6/12/2007
The sequel to CRYSTAL RAIN. Humans struggle to free themselves
from the oppressive alien Satrapy.
THE SHARING KNIFE: LEGACY Bujold, Lois McMaster 7/1/2007
Can mixed marriages work? Does it help if you add monsters?
A young farm girl and her new husband visit her Lakewalker in-laws,
who aren't woodsy descendents of Melnebonians (Or perhaps Pan Tangans) but
who could be. Curiously, the Lakewalker habit of veiwing farmers as a kind
of talking domestic animals does not prove to be an asset as far as inter-
cultural amity is concerned.
BACK TO THE STONE AGE Burroughs, Edgar Rice 5/1/2007
LAND OF TERROR Burroughs,Edgar Rice 5/1/2007
SAVAGE PELLUCIDAR Burroughs,Edgar Rice 5/1/2007
These are all set in ERB's Pellicudar, a savage world within the
hollow Earth. People wander around in them having adventures. No gliding
stegosaurs in these, unlike TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll
(For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-****rt, cup and tote-bag needs)
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