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 The Pursuit of the Pankera, Robert A. Heinlein & some cast of posthumous reconstructors.

I am surprised.

I know The Number of the Beast all too well, having read it as a teenager and then three or four times more, trying to figure out what was going on -- once after Gharlane of Eddore's explanation of it as a text by counter-example. This book is identical for some number of chapters, perhaps 20 or 25%, and then diverges.

I think this book is better than TNOTB. But it's still late-period Heinlein, and steals elements from other of his books. Very minor spoilers start here.

( Read more... )

 ...what the current sales trends are for plague and zombie and apocalyptic fiction?

I read 203 books in 2019, ranging from 120 page novellae to more than a million words of Worm (counted as one book) and another million words of a Worm fanfic (also counted as one book.) I read several comics and webcomics in groupings large enough to count as a book (usually six months at a time). I reread some books.

If I only got a few chapters into a book, I didn't count it. If I nearly finished it but gave up more than 3/4 through, I counted it. I read several books in the process of being published -- oh, including one I didn't count above. 204, then.

I read some terribly derivative professionally-published books, and some blazingly original self-pub.

It was almost all SF -- a little science, history, biography and autobio. To a first approximation, it was all electronic. I read on my phone, I read on my tablet, and I occasionally read on a giant monitor attached to my desktop computer -- comics are really good that way.

From time to time I felt oddly competitive about what I was reading. I don't like that much. On the other hand, I think this was a fairly normal year for me. 204 books in 365 days is 0.56 books a day. I read more on weekends than on weekdays. I read more on weekdays when I go into the office than when I work from home -- I read on the commute.

I'm not going to repeat this experiment in 2020, but I will mention particularly good and particularly bad books that I read.

If you want to see the whole collection for some reason, it begins here:
https://dsrtao.dreamwidth.org/670911.html
and nearly every dreamwidth entry I've made this year has been on-topic.

202. Evil Genius, Logan Jacobs

Lex Luthor expy realizes that the superheroes who won't kill the supervillains are part of the problem, as they all cause tremendous collateral casualties and damage. Clearly the solution is to kill the supervillains. Money and technology are applied to the problem.

198.  Kris Longknife: Stalwart, by Mike Shepherd

Book 20 or so in the space opera about the Princess of Wardhaven who makes her way up the military ladder defeating all her foes and winnng the admiration of her enemies, with her chief bodyguard and romantic interest at her side.

In this book the Iteeche Empire continues to prove that feudalism isn't competitive against the socialist democratic economies of Human space, although this is entirely expressed in military terms. Then there is an interminable battle that clearly required spreadsheets to organize, and certainly requires spreadsheets to understand, and I didn't build a spreadsheet so I got lost several times.

The politicking is better than the warfighting, I guess.

196. Gaudeamus, John Barnes

(reread) Is it the weirdest of the Good John Barnes books? Possibly. Is it the most self-referential? Definitely. Gaudeamus is narrated by John Barnes, the SF writer and theater professor and general semiotician, largely as an ongoing tale told to him by Travis Bismarck (who might also be a person in our world) with occasional minor appearances by Kara Dalkey (John's wife in the novel and reality) and other people who might or might not be real. Gaudeamus is a wildly popular web comic. Gaudeamus is a top secret physics project. Gaudeamus is a new party drug. Gaudeamus is signifier and significant.

Sadly, Gaudeamus is fiction, or else something interesting should have happened in 2011.

194. Rebel Star, Tao Wong
Book 8 of The System Apocalypse.

Fight scenes interrupted by explanations of what's going on. Also, everyone literally has stats, and the underlying quest is to figure out why.

192. Accepting the Lance, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Book 22 or so in the Liaden universe, continuing and possibly even ending the main plot started in Agent of Change (book 1, or 4, depending) and also wrapping up the Bedel plot. Four major strands continue: Theo and Shan will go to Tinsori Light; the reborn [spoilers] have something to do; Surebleak has integration problems; the legal status of AI (sorry, Complex Logic) has changed.


Don't start here. Plausible starting places: Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon form a self-contained story. Balance of Trade and Trade Secret do the same.

It appears that there are contracts for five more books, one a year through 2027.

190. Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer

A very nice book about an AI-run social network and the people it brings together.

(CheshireCat would have Zuck sent back to kindergarten to learn ethics.)

186. The Long Run, Daniel Keys Moran (reread)

The story of Trent the Uncatchable, over the course of about five months, during which time he becomes legendary.

I notice some stylistic tics here that Moran later outgrew. Otherwise, still an amazing story, with hooks forward for books unwritten at the time.