Skip to main content

What I Read in 2016


This was a great year for speculative fiction, both novels and short stories and I had a little trouble narrowing down my favorites to just five. Which is part of the reason this post is running right up to the end of the year. Every story I'm listing below is one that is still sitting with me all these months later. 
For the record, I have one more of these year-end posts left - a sort of wrap-up of everything else.

In comparison to last year, which was nearly all science fiction (and one very Sfnal fantasy novel) I've got a slightly more eclectic list going here.
  1. The Fisherman by John Langan: This is the last novel I read in 2016 and the best. Langan's tale of two widowers bonding over fishing the streams and rivers of Upstate New York combines intensely personal tragedy, with scenes of compelling weirdness and terror. The story raises interesting questions about the nature of language and the responsibilities of those in grief. 
  2. Infomocracy by Malka Older. A political thriller set perhaps half a century in the future when most of the world has embraced a global form of democracy, every 100,000 people choosing their own government every 10 years or so. After 2016, I could certainly understand the desire to never read another sentence about politics and governance but this novel makes a powerful argument in favor of big visions for a better world. 
  3. I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. A very short, disturbing tale of the perils of bringing a significant other home to meet the folks. You may think you know where this story is heading from the beginning but I'm pretty sure you'd be wrong. 
  4. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. A new genre needs to be coined to describe this story. Is it science fiction or fantasy? Is this world set in the far future with technology based on conflicting mathematical axioms or in the distant past riven by mystic war and heresy? A maverick soldier finds herself partnering with the ghost of a war criminal to conquer a rebel fortress. Much of the novel reads like an Ender's Game as written by China Meivile. 
  5. The Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay. I read parts of this alongside watching Stranger Things which made for an interesting pairing. Unlike the Netflix series, The Disappearance is set in the present day Massachusetts with supernatural elements taking a back seat to the anguish of being young, hyper-connected, and completely alone with your own mind. 
On to short stories.
  1. Sic Semper, Sic Semper, Sic Semper by Carl Wiens. The first line of this story pretty much sums it up: "The time traveler set up a studio apartment in Abraham Lincoln’s skull in the frozen moment before Booth’s bullet burst through and rewired history." This story starts at about a 10 - a masterful hot-wiring of history, science fiction, and great personal loss - before it really gets weird. I read this story in the summer, and felt like I was witnessing an event. 
  2. The Girl Who Escaped from Hell By Rahul Kanakia. A father tries to take care of his biological daughter after her rescue from an apocalyptic cult. The father is well-intentioned but not quite up to the challenge, always falling a step or two behind what is required. 
  3. All the Red Apples Have Withered to Grey by Gwendolyn Kiste. Dark fantasy in the mode of Grimm or Gaiman taking a familiar trope of such stories- the enchanted apple - and imagining a cottage industry of self-administered paralysis. This is first and foremost a compelling and strange tale that just so happens to have a few pointed things to say about life, love, and everything. You know, like all the best fairy tales do. 
  4. Some Pebbles in the Palm by Kenneth Schneyer. I retain faith in the power of short stories to teach and console on the basis of works like this one. A story about a story (or rather stories) concerning the possibility of hope and renewal in a world with a proven track record of tolerating neither. It's the voice that sticks with me: profound and wise, but human and so, so weary. 
  5. A Diet of Worms by Valerie Valdes. In order to work, a horror story should make you feel a connection with a person in peril. No matter what the monster is, we the readers must see ourselves in the story or the effect of terror loses all sense of urgency and risk. Here a young man toils at a movie theater, his job winnowing his dreams, withering him one paragraph at a time. At heart, this story is about the despair of knowing you are much better than the life you can't seem to escape.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation.  Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia  is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel  Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...
Post a Comment
Read more