…in which your humble host takes you on a journey to promote 2 worthy reading challenges, one science fiction mini-challenge, and the SF Site Readers’ Choice Awards.
All posts by Carl V. Anderson
Space Lords ~Cordwainer Smith
Space Lords ~Cordwainer Smith
–first edition 1965, this edition 1968
–206 pages, Pyramid Books
–4.75/5 stars
“This is science fiction, yes. But it comes from your own time, from your own world, even from your own mind. All I can do is work the symbols. The magic and the beauty will come from our own past, your present, your hopes and your experience. This may look alien but it is really as close to you as your own fingers. Some people will like this very much. Many will not understand it, and push it aside.
That is their loss, reader, not yours, not mine.
We two, we have this story between us. Read a bit and see how it goes.”
(Cordwainer Smith, from the Prologue)
Some people will indeed like this very much. I know that I did.
Friday Favorites: Spectrum 15
(Island #1, Cover image by Michael Whelan)
(-all images taken from the artists’ respective websites for use in promoting this book and their individual websites and artwork. Call for Entries image taken from Spectrum website)
Though I read this for the first time in 2008, I could not think of a better way to inaugurate the Friday Favorites posts for 2009 than to do a brief review of the best art book to come out last year, Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner.
Year after year the Fenners pull together a panel of artists and people in the industry and they converge upon Kansas City to pick the entries for the latest volume of Spectrum. For 15 years now the Fenners have been putting together the most amazing collection of fantastic art illustration and though it seems like it would be impossible to do, they manage to top themselves every year.
Spectrum 15 is no exception. This large, high quality art book is filled with hundreds of pages containing hundreds upon hundreds of examples of amazing art from many different categories. It is a thrill every year when the latest issue of Spectrum comes out. For the past 3 years my friend Jeff and I have cracked into our copies together, pouring through it page by page and commenting on the various pieces. It is a real treat and one of the highlights of every year. By way of review, and to whet your appetite for future Friday Favorites, I am including a random sampling of images from Spectrum 15. These are all images that I like, but they do not even come close to representing the variety of images contained in this volume.
Greetings from 2009
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
Hope.
That is what a day like today can bring. True, it is merely another Thursday. Just another day on the calendar. Magic did not settle upon our lives at the stroke of midnight. All our problems have not disappeared, all of our dreams have not suddenly come true. And the fact is that neither of those things will be happening any time soon. But they can and will happen.
Opportunity.
This ‘day like any other day’ is truly a chance for us to stop, to reflect, to record on paper, and in our hearts, the changes we would like to make, the things we would like to accomplish, the dreams that we would like to make come true.
2008: A Literary Year in Review
Though I would swear in a court of law with my hand upon the Bible that it is simply impossible for 365 days (or 366, leap year and all) to have passed by already, the calendar indicates that it is the time of year for looking back over the past year’s literary journey. For some, these Year End/Best Of lists are likely an obligation that they feel they must do because everyone else is doing it. Not so for this blogger. For me this year-ending ritual is a literary love letter for another year of having the privilege to read (mostly) great books. I have faithfully tracked the course of my literary journey over the past year with a great anticipation about what the end of 2008 would reveal. The only real challenge for me in constructing a Year in Review post is to not make the world’s longest year end post. In this challenge I will no doubt fail.
However, to spare you dear readers the agony of having to wade through this entire post I have broken it up into sections*. The first section consists of a some thoughts on the year in reading, particularly focused on the events of January 2008. The next section details Best Of’s and Pleasant Surprises. After that, for you stats geeks, the various breakdowns of things I tracked throughout the reading year. And finally, the comprehensive list with links to those books that I managed to do reviews of this year (63 out of 76). I put the list and stats at the end in order to give an out for those who simply will have had enough by that point and will want to end the torture of my Year in Review.
To make the post even longer, I will link to the Year in Review posts of my fellow bloggers. If you would like your list included here, please leave me a link in the comments section.
*sections brought to you courtesy of the Leia Heads from my June 2007 post “Picture Practice, or Fun with Leia”, in honor of the recently announced Sci Fi Experience 2009.
And now, for the fun part: