SF Signal has a mind meld post looking forward to new SF&F material due in 2012. This has reminded me what a lot of good books are due. Here’s some of the things I am hoping to read next year:
- In the Mouth of the Whale, Paul McAuley
- Transmission, John Meaney
- Blue Remembered Earth, Al Reynolds
- Arctic Rising, Tobias S. Buckell
- Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce
- The Outcast Blade, Jon Courteny Grimwood
- The Kingdoms of Dust, Amanda Downum
- The Drowning Girl, CaitlÃn R. Kiernan
- Intrusion, Ken MacLeod
- Hide Me Among the Graves, Tim Powers
- The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi
- Black Heart, Holly Black
- Ison of the Isles, Carolyn Ives Gilman
- Radiant Days, Elizabeth Hand
- Empty Space, M. John Harrison
- The King’s Blood, Daniel Abraham
- The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi
- The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin
- 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
- Blackout, Mira Grant
- The Shadowed Sun, N.K. Jemisin
- Railsea, China Miéville
- Weapon of Flowers, Liz Williams
And that only takes us up to July on the Locus Forthcoming Books list. I know there are more books from Cat Valente, Kameron Hurley, Elizabeth Hand, Mary Gentle and Chris Moriarty that I’ll want to get. Then there’s all the YA that doesn’t get on the Locus lists. This is an embarrassment of riches.
Update: And Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker, which unaccountably is not on the Locus list.
Update 2: And Roz Kaveney’s novel is finally coming out in July, and is also not on the Locus list.
“This is an embarrassment of riches.”
Truly.
I would add some single-author collections:
The Pottawatomie Giant by Andy Duncan
Angels and You Dogs by Kathleen Ann Goonan (her first collection I believe)
There are some promising first novels due as well.
I deliberately left off several books from PS Publishing and Subterranean that I’m not going to be able to afford.
Your point is a valid real-world concern. Taken to the next step, it might be a useful exercise to suggest groups of titles based on a variety of budgets.
I think that mainly involves waiting for the mass market editions to come out, or for the ebook prices to drop, some of which I may be doing if the books are hardcover only on release.
Is this the mind meld you’re thinking of?
Top of my list right now is Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the sequel to City of Ruins, which is so far easily the best book of 2011 that I’ve read.
Huh, the anchor tag got parsed out. Let’s try this: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/12/mind-meld-sff-books-movies-and-tv-to-look-forward-to-in-2012/
Well spotted! Fixed now, thanks!
Yes, I should read both of those.