1st up, "The Unfinished Land", by Greg Bear, 2021, 369 pages, 100k words. Greg Bear was one of my fav authors for decades. To my knowledge, this is his 1st novel-length foray into fantasy since "The Infinity Concerto" (1984) and "The Serpent Mage" (1986). I have done rereads of both of those, and in fact recently purchased a bargain e-book version of "The Infinity Concerto" contemplating another reread.
"The Unfinished Land" is set at the time of the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada (1588). A young English boy whose ship is sunk winds up aboard a Spanish galleon that winds up in the magical islands of the North Atlantic, in particular High Brasil. The ruler is a Vanir godess (never directly encountered), there are various (semi)immortals, magical beings, etc. A decent page-turner, but I never really engaged with it. Also, it was 1 of those stories where things seem to get destroyed as the central characters pass through them, which I usually find annoying.
#2, "City", by Clifford D. Simak, 1952, 302 pages, 82k words. I'm sure I got offered a cheap ebook on this. I always liked Simak, and I remembered this 1 as being good. It was good, a collection of short stories with narration in between tying them together, following humanity going post-singularity (but a completely 1952 version) and leaving the world to robots and uplifted dogs. I enjoyed the read.
It was funny, tho. I have kvetched lately about the preponderance of LGBTQAZ issues in recent sci-fi, this book definitely was a blast from the past. There are 2 female characters with very small parts, other than that all (white) men. Even the uplifted dogs all seem to be male. The lack of diversity was actually jarring.
#3, "Piranesi", by Susanna Clarke, 2020, 226 pages, 61k words. Hmmm, I would have thought this book was longer than that. I enjoyed Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell" a couple of years ago. I liked "Paranesi" so much I gave it 5 stars & actually wrote an online review:
The best story I have ever read?I sleep and dream a lot, and my dreams had been getting stale. My dreaming actually did get some new energy from this story. Beautiful, haunting, full of love, and with a very sweet ending. Also, 1 of those books that presents as fantasy but is actually science fiction.I will be 70 years old in June. This may be the best story I have ever read. It's just perfect. It is the stuff of dreams.
#4, "Make Shift", subtitled "Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future", 2021, 247 pages, 67k words. This year's installment of "Twelve Tomorrows", published annually by MIT Technology Review. I was excited when I saw that this had come out, dug right in. I got a story or 2 in and was like, "Oh crap, these are all pandemic stories, I don't want to be reading pandemic stories right now." I got my 1st vaccination March 4, but, I have been a hunkered-down fool for 1 year now, and I have a pretty bad case of pandemic fatigue.
Still, good stories by some of my fav current authors: Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Malka Older, and Karl Schroeder. The last story, "Vaccine Season" by Hannu Rajaniemi, gave an incredibly hopefully future vision. Phew, thanks Hannu, I needed that!
#5, "Klara and the Sun", by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021, 330 pages, 89k words. A totally charming book. Klara is an AF - Artificial Friend, who are sold to be companions to tweens and teens. AFs are solar-powered and as such worthip the sun - Klara does anyway. She strongly reminded me of ... Piranesi!!! Both are unfinished, child-like individuals, and as such form completely bogus theories about reality and their place in it. (1 of the things I love about children is their persistent but usually spectacularly failing attempts to do science, to explain the world.)
This book has to be considered science fiction, but it also has magical and fantastical components. A great read.
