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Done with 2003
After 28 novellas, 83 novelettes, and 340 short stories, my Locus Awards ballot has been submitted, and it's time to move on from 2003's short fiction. My final top picks are here. Somehow I ended up with exactly 5 in each category, so filling out my ballot was easy. Of course, there are still many hundreds of stories I didn't read; there is a truly astonishing amount of good stuff getting published nowadays.
Since I now have a fairly easy way to keep track of the stories I read, I think this year I'll break my old habit and start trying to read at least some 2004 stories as they're published rather than waiting until the beginning of 2005.
Having more or less wrapped up my short fiction reading for the moment, I decided to read something completely different this weekend, Steve Tomasula's Vas: An Opera in Flatland (co-created with designer and typographer Steve Farrell). This 300-page prose poem (at least, I can think of no better way to describe it) is set not in Abbott's Flatland, but in Flatland, a generic suburb of the flat lands of the American midwest. Square and Circle have aborted what would have been their second child after it was found to have genetic abnormalities, and Square has promised to get a vasectomy to avoid future risks. Vas captures his rambling thoughts as he procrastinates signing the consent form, thoughts which range over eugenics, genetic engineering, evolution, language, history, and plans for the pedestrian stories Square writes. Plot, in any traditional sense, is almost non-existent, but the digressions, wordplay, and sheer beauty of the design and layout kept me throughly engrossed for the length of the book (which, despite the page count, was a fairly quick Saturday-afternoon read).
In other news, I turn 30 on Friday.
Since I now have a fairly easy way to keep track of the stories I read, I think this year I'll break my old habit and start trying to read at least some 2004 stories as they're published rather than waiting until the beginning of 2005.
Having more or less wrapped up my short fiction reading for the moment, I decided to read something completely different this weekend, Steve Tomasula's Vas: An Opera in Flatland (co-created with designer and typographer Steve Farrell). This 300-page prose poem (at least, I can think of no better way to describe it) is set not in Abbott's Flatland, but in Flatland, a generic suburb of the flat lands of the American midwest. Square and Circle have aborted what would have been their second child after it was found to have genetic abnormalities, and Square has promised to get a vasectomy to avoid future risks. Vas captures his rambling thoughts as he procrastinates signing the consent form, thoughts which range over eugenics, genetic engineering, evolution, language, history, and plans for the pedestrian stories Square writes. Plot, in any traditional sense, is almost non-existent, but the digressions, wordplay, and sheer beauty of the design and layout kept me throughly engrossed for the length of the book (which, despite the page count, was a fairly quick Saturday-afternoon read).
In other news, I turn 30 on Friday.
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and have a happy birthday! (Yeesh I don't even remember turning thirty...no wait. I was preggers with my daughter--now in college--and had 24/7 morning sickness, so of course I don't remember it...but it's fun thinking back.)
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Edited to Add: And turning 30 doesn't suck, really. I did it and survived. :)
Wow!
Happy, Happy Birthday! 30 is great! You need to do something big to celebrate! :)
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Ok, a day early. But it's your birthday over here.