1st up was a collection of stories and essays, including a review of another author and an interview, by John Crowley, entitled "Totalitopia", 2017, 113 pages. The fiction was very good, and the essays interesting - Crowley admits that his secret sauce was always that the characters in his stories know that they are in stories. The author he recommended was Paul Park. I have purchased his "A Princess of Roumania", which Crowley recommended as an entry point.
2nd up was "The Delirium Brief", by Charles Stross, 2017, 384 pages. This is the 8th book of the Laundry Files, which is Dilbert meets H.P. Lovecraft and occasionally James Bond. In reviewing maybe book 5-7 of this series, I said I thought Charlie was kind of burned out on this series, but he is back in top form on this one. I think that his inclusion of modern political issues, in this case privatization of government services, enables him to deploy his snarky wit to its fullest.
3rd up was "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection", 2017, 704 pages. The stories were consistently strong. I have noticed I like less sci-fi about exploring the moon, mars, and other stuff relatively close by. I like it more cosmic, across both time and space. But I did really enjoy, say, the film "The Martian", for its celebration of science and engineering.
I read all 3 of these in hardcopy, as that is how I have all of the many prior works by these authors which are in my collection. I will be glad to get back to eBooks.
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