Ancient Logic

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. 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.  Infomocracy by Malka Older....

Finished reading "Disappearance at Devil's Rock" by Paul Tremblay and I'm going to put it on the recommended list for 2016 novels. This is one of a handful of works I've read this year that seem directly influenced or reacting to the True Detective phenomena from a couple years back. The first season, I mean, not the second. The influence in the case of Tremblay is of an established weird fiction writer (His story "Swim Wants to Know If It's As Bad As Swim Thinks" was one of my favorites from the Best Weird Fiction Vol. 1 anthology) embracing the ambiguity of a vaguely supernatural, philosophy major-baiting crime thriller. Like True Detective, the layers of narrative and contradictory witnesses all work to cultivate doubt and suspicion. Unlike True Detective, the setting here is a very fleshed-out and specific evocation of childhood in the media inundated 21st century. Far from lamenting the presence of cell phones, internet, and the 24 hour blizzard...