Forthcoming books

The Hugo nominations are out and, as usual, I have not read any of the fiction nominees yet. That will change when Gardner Dozois’ Best Science Fiction of the Year and Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2006 are released and I plan to read both Spin and Learning the World eventually.

The recent Locus had their list of new books being published the rest of this year, and there is some really good-looking stuff ahead which I hope to buy and read, mostly in paperback but some worth buying in hardcover:

• Century Rain, by Alastair Reynolds
• Best Short Novels 2005, edited by Jonathan Strahan
• Year’s Best SF 23, edited by Gardner Doiz
• Olympos, by Dan Simmons
• Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod
• Seeker, by Jack McDevitt
• Fifty Degrees Below, by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Lord Byron’s Novel, by John Crowley
• The Prestige, by Christopher Priest
• The Space Opera Renaissance, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Last Witchfinder, by James Morrow

Is there any wonder why it is almost impossible to keep up with one’s reading? Especially since this past week I have eschewed books altogether to read some issues of Analog from 1971. About 20 years ago, a fellow teacher was cleaning out his father’s collection of prozines and he gave me two huge boxes of magazines from the 60s and 70s, mostly Analog and Amazing, also including many of those reprint Ziff-David zines. I kept all the good ones but have only read very few issues since. For some reason I was in the mood to read a few of them this past week, so that is what I have been doing.