MIND MELD: Recent SF/F/H You’ve Read & Enjoyed About Which You Knew Little

This one requires a little bit of introduction. As many in the online SFF community now know, John DeNardo and J.P. Frantz closed the doors on SF Signal last week. However, my Mind Meld was in progress and my friend Dag Rambraut was kind enough to offer up SFFWorld as a home for this Mind Meld.

N. E. White 

N.E. White is an author of heretical qualifications, N. E. White enjoys hanging out with real writers, adopting their personas and skins until they think she’s just like them. When not trying tofool everyone she knows what she’s talking about, Ms. White compiles and writes dubious fiction. She reviews independent titles as well as traditional published works. She participates and contributes on the Writing forum regularly, and is the driving force behind the anthologies The End – Visions of the Apocalypse, Lucky or Unlucky? 13 Stories of Fate, and Wars to Ends All Wars. Follow her on Twitter @n_e_white.

I hate to admit it, but I rarely go into a bookstore anymore. I shop online.

I know, I know. You can shoot me later.

Browsing online is much the same, though. Online stores and author’s (via their websites) provide ample samples to allow one to skim the first few paragraphs. I often follow links from one place to another and before I know it, I’m somewhere completely new and suddenly, for no (seemingly) apparent reason, I hit the buy button.

That’s what happened to me with Lindsay Buroker’s The Emperor’s Edge.

Before buying her book, I hadn’t heard of her.

Actually, that’s not true. I had heard of Ms. Buroker, but it was in reference to her writing advice. Someone on SFFWorld.com’s forum mentioned she had a few blog posts on how to market fiction. At some point, someone provided a link and down the rabbit hole I followed. I hadn’t intended to read her fiction.

I mean, how many fiction writers out there also dole out writing advice? They are legion (including yours truly). I read many author blogs, but I rarely pick up their fiction. With Ms. Buroker, however, I made the plunge. I guess it was because her Emperor’s Edge series had a woman lead or maybe it was because it combined a Roman-like empire with aliens or maybe it was just fun. Whatever the reason, I was hooked. I think I read the entire seven book (or was it eight?) series in two weeks. I didn’t sleep. It was both distressing (I can’t believe I’m jeopardizing my job and my life to find out what happens next) and exhilarating (the heroine made it!).

The last time that happened was when I discovered Robin Hobb.

That did happen in a bookstore; a used bookstore, in fact. The first of Hobb’s Fareer Trilogy was tucked underneath a pile of books that were getting thrown out (I think). At the time (sometime in the early 1990s), I hadn’t heard of Ms. Hobb. Most of my book recommendations came from my bookclub members who decided did NOT read fantasy or science fiction. Occasionally, a librarian friend of mine would alert me to genre books I should read (i.e. Game of Thrones). But before I discovered online forums, I relied on “blind” browsing in the library stacks to appease my SFF habit.

For The Assassin’s Apprentice, I remember the cover didn’t entice me. I thought, what the hell is that old man doing to that kid? (shudder) Maybe it was the back copy that convinced me. Or maybe I read the first few paragraphs. To be honest, I don’t know. For whatever reason, I grabbed the book, took it to the counter, and my decades-long love affair with Fitz started.

Our analytically minds (and marketing gurus) tells us that most folks find their books through recommendations. That whole “word of mouth” mantra. While that may be true, I’ll stick to browsing. It’s the only way I’ve found stories and characters that touch my heart.

Jonah Sutton-Morse

Jonah Sutton-Morse is a stay-at-home-dad, reader, and host of the Cabbages & Kings podcast. He really does mean to keep up with new releases, but the kids need to be fed, rereading is a lot of fun, and there’s always Twitter @jsuttonmorse.

Thanks to Twitter, I don’t pick up many books without knowing something beforehand, but there have been a few that I’ve gone into relatively blind recently.

First, Version Control which I did literally pick up on the strength of its cover after the bookseller asked if I knew anything about it. It seems to be somewhere along the boundary of literary and science fiction, but I haven’t found out much more because after a few different references to women wriggling into slinky dresses and worrying about an ex-boyfriend in the early chapters I set it aside to be buried under more newly acquired (and more appealing) to-be-reads.

I also recently picked up Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie on the strength of my love for Grace of Kings as well as the few of Ken’s short stories I’ve read before. Thus far, I’m finding this a delightful read, best approached slowly. At their best, Ken’s stories twist how I look at the world, or threaten to pull the rug out from under me. The downside is that when I read them in too-close succession I spend more time noticing the writing tics than being pulled into the story. A perfect book to set down and pick up whenever I’m ready to be bowled over.

The third book I acquired on not much more than the premise is Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by André Carrington. I preordered this book knowing nothing more than the cover says – an academic text on blackness in speculative fiction. I’m still processing it, but Speculative Blackness is fundamentally changing how I read and think about the genre I love. Carrington pulls together comics, television, the history of fandom, and fanfiction to talk about the various ways that black creators and characters exist in “the whiteness of science fiction”. This is an academic text that was sometimes heavy going, but it’s fascinating and empowering – the readings of Uhura and Captain Sisko in a key episode of DS9 were particularly interesting.

I don’t walk into books blind often, but an advantage to knowing authors and subjects I’m interested in is that I can approach a book with the expectation that I’ll enjoy it but not much knowledge of the details. (All The Birds In the Sky is currently sitting on my bookshelf staring at me and yelling “all your friends love me and you haven’t read me yet!”, but I’m similarly ignorant of what more to expect.)

Yanni Kuznia

Yanni Kuznia is the newly-minted COO and Managing Editor of Subterranean Press, where she was formerly the Director of Production. You can find her at subterraneanpress.com or on Twitter @YanniKuznia.

There are five books that immediately come to mind:

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I loved the front cover design with the turquoise and gold, and it was supposed to be about a golem and a jinni in New York! How could it go wrong! The story and characterizations surpassed my wildest dreams and now I hand out copies like they are candy to my friends.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. A friend said it was amazing and that I should read it, without giving me any further information. The intricate lines of the cover convinced me to open the book. The characters and mystery convinced me to stay.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. The Russian-style architecture on the cover drew my eye, and the blurb which revealed a Russian-inspired world cinched the desire the read it. I rediscovered my love of YA while reading this book into the wee hours of the morning.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. A competent woman wielding double blades? The voice was amazing, and the characters are some of the most compelling I’ve read in YA. Take my money!

and finally,

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Honestly, they had me at Russian science fiction. Then I saw foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and I knew I had to pick up a copy that moment. The idea that aliens visited briefly, which was seemingly insignificant to them, but hugely impactful to us really drew me in.

Summer Brooks

Summer Brooks is the Host and Producer of Slice of SciFi and “Writers, After Dark”, and has previously lent her encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction & fantasy to “The Babylon Podcast” and “Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas”. She also does voiceover work reading short stories for District of Wonders, including “Starship Sofa” and “Tales to Terrify”, and has rediscovered her love of good horror stories. Twitter: @sliceofscifi and @writeafterdark.

Lately, I haven’t spent as much time reading as I like to, but I do try to make the time, just to give myself a break from everything else and recharge a little bit. There are times when vegetating in front of the TV helps in taking breaks, but to really recharge, I need a book, a good story.

Books from the past 12 months that I knew nothing about before cracking them open, and then exceeded all my expectations:

Cthulhu Fhtagn! a collection of Lovecraft-inspired stories edited by Ross Lockhart (August 2015, Word Horde). I am a fan of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mythology, thrillers and mysteries, and often, I run across books or stories that are a delightful mashup of several of my favorite genres. This book was the very first time I could honestly call a collection “Cthulhu cozies,” simply because of the common thread of “home” running through all the tales, and all of them were delightful.

The Immortals by Jordanna Max Brodsky (Feb 2016, Orbit). A supernatural thriller steeped in ancient gods and myths. A debut novel I knew nothing about, but the combination of mystery, thriller and myth intrigued me. I made the mistake of starting to read the book at about 10pm one night, and forced myself to put it down just before 2am, since I needed my sleep. I did finish it the next evening, forgoing a necessary Hulu binge watch for a television review just so I wouldn’t have to put it down for another night.

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