{"id":681,"date":"2008-07-09T18:58:45","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T00:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nerdflood.wordpress.com\/?p=681"},"modified":"2008-07-09T18:58:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T00:58:45","slug":"i-am-a-poor-excuse-for-a-fan-of-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/i-am-a-poor-excuse-for-a-fan-of-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"I am a poor excuse for a fan of science fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denvention.org\/hugos\/08hugonomlist.php\">nominees for the Hugo awards<\/a> have been announced. Here&#8217;s my thoughts:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nominees for Best Novel<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The Yiddish Policemen&#8217;s Union<\/em> Michael Chabon <span style=\"color:#0000ff;\">(I haven&#8217;t read this one yet)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><em>Brasyl<\/em> Ian McDonald <span style=\"color:#0000ff;\">(haven&#8217;t gotten to this one, either)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><em>Rollback<\/em> Robert J. Sawyer <span style=\"color:#0000ff;\">(nope, haven&#8217;t read it)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><em>The Last Colony<\/em> John Scalzi <span style=\"color:#0000ff;\">(I&#8217;ve read <em>Old Man&#8217;s War<\/em> and <em>Ghost Brigades<\/em>&#8230;but not this one)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><em>Halting State<\/em> Charles Stross <span style=\"color:#0000ff;\">(you guessed it; haven&#8217;t read it)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And I&#8217;m not even touching novellas and short stories. Seriously, am I <em>that <\/em>far behind in my science fiction reading? My reading stack contains books that were nominated for Nebulas and Hugos back in 2005 and 2006.<\/p>\n<p>I blame my slippage on apportioning too much of my time to the worlds of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harry_Potter\">Harry Potter<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/House_Stark\">Starks<\/a>, respectively, not that I begrudge any time spent within those wonderful fictional universes. It was just proportionately misaligned.<\/p>\n<p>In the time I was trudging through <em>Half-Blood Prince<\/em> and <em>Storm of Swords<\/em>, amazing science fiction novels were gracing the shelves, and I was carelessly ignoring them. Either I&#8217;m a fool, or a drone, in any case, I have a monumental task ahead of me. I need to get caught up on all of the fantastic science fiction that&#8217;s been written in the past couple of years, starting with the Hugo nominees for this year.<\/p>\n<p>Any other suggestions? Yikes. I don&#8217;t even know where to go next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, nominees for the Hugo awards have been announced. Here&#8217;s my thoughts: Nominees for Best Novel The Yiddish Policemen&#8217;s Union Michael Chabon (I haven&#8217;t read this one yet) Brasyl Ian McDonald (haven&#8217;t gotten to this one, either) Rollback Robert J. Sawyer (nope, haven&#8217;t read it) The Last Colony John Scalzi (I&#8217;ve read Old Man&#8217;s War [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[351],"tags":[594,595,450,116],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","tag-authors","tag-hugo-awards","tag-literature-2","tag-science-fiction","last-post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}