The WAL

Lately, I don’t seem to be reading as much short fiction as I normally do.  Odd, because I really enjoy short fiction in both of my preferred genres.  I picked up the current volume (the 25th) of Gardner Dozois’ annual Year’s Best Science Fiction collection to fill this void.  Thirty-two stories and something over 300k words (claimed by the cover) so it should keep me busy for a while.  I’ve got several volumes of the series around and have given a couple of others as gifts in recent years and while I haven’t like all of the thirteen stories I’ve read so far, I don’t regret reading any of them.

I haven’t traditionally bought the equivalent volume for fantasy as it lumps together with horror, but considering my own recent foray into the genre, I’m giving that a second thought.  If you think you can write something, you should try to read some of it if only to see where you’re at.

On an almost related note, I sent out “The Last Eclipse” several days ago and now need to give a final polish to “Dragon Gold” before I try to find it a home.

The other night, while finishing the last of my Christmas shopping (I hope), I picked up a book. Not at all unusual in and of itself. Anyone can tell you that I’m a voracious reader and have been for more or less my entire life since I learned to read. In the past twelve months I’ve read several dozens of books on history, cosmology, body language, politics, poker, physics, education, number theory, and even a couple of biographies – I have eclectic tastes (my wife would say bizarre). But my fiction readings have been few and far between. Not like me.

I used to go through several books of fiction every week, mainly SF and Fantasy – my tastes have always tended toward escapism and there’s lots of it hanging around the house, but it’s been several months since I’ve picked one up (Thud! By Terry Pratchett – a Discworld novel and a truly excellent read – the man is a brilliant satirist as well as hilarious). While shopping, I slipped an early present for me into the basket didn’t bother to wrap it. The book is We Few by David Weber and John Ringo, fourth (and supposedly last, but we’ll see) in a series that I enjoyed and remember more than enough of to slide back into without rereading the first three.

There was a time when David Weber and John Ringo ranked high among my favourite SF authors. I’m disappointed in both of them for different reasons (Weber because he just doesn’t seem to know when to stop and Ringo because he invested large amounts of paper, and therefore my time and interest, in a character that he ultimately killed “off screen” for no apparent reason). However, I enjoyed the first three books in the series, relatively mindless shoot-em-up military SF with a political back story though they were. The politics are more relevant to the fourth book, but action is promised. It should be an easy read and might slide me back toward fiction a bit. We’ll see.

I also grabbed another book to be surreptitiously slipped into my Christmas stocking. Destroyer by C.J. Cherryh whom I’m most certainly not disappointed in but still haven’t read much of in some time, and it’s past time to fix that.