So in my reading of of The Four Horseman of the ScifiBlogalypse, I’d put John Scalzi at the top of the list for entertainment value, and then a big dropoff to Charles Stross, Neil Gaiman, and Cory Doctorow. The latter two I pretty much don’t even bother with any more, despite their continuing presence in the feedreader. Gaiman is too precious for my taste and Doctorow is thin on anything outside of digital rights/free software. Stross’ problem is that he doesn’t post with the same frequency as Scalzi.
But Charlie’s been closing fast.
His series on Common Misconceptions About Publishing is a great inside look at the writing and publishing industry. Especially from the perspective of an author that knows a bit about technology. If I take one thing away from this series it’s that, “a manuscript is not a book.”
Now he gives the inside scoop on two books he highly recommends. Deep State by Walter Jon Williams is a sequel to This is Not a Game, which I highly enjoyed. I’m all in for this one. Meanwhile, I’m actually a bit scared by Stross’ description of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief. Greg Egan already made my head explode once, and Stross is slotting Rajaniemi in that same “hard sf” bin as Egan. Not to mention that Stross thinks Rajaniemi may be a better writer than…Stross. Yikes!!
I’ll also take this opportunity to pump up This is Not a Game and Stross’ own Halting State. For whatever reason, a number of people I know and/or respect didn’t cotton to Stross. Worse, a couple of them are touting Daniel Suarez’s Daemon as some great work. Sorry folks, Daemon was dreck. Beautiful black female math genius working for the NSA gets blinded and falls in love with the heroic white identity free hacker. Does not compute. This is Not a Game and Halting State just did the near future combination of ARG, VR, and RL way better than Daemon. With actual developed characters to boot!
Just had to get that off my chest!