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Worlds Without End Blog

The COVID-19 Reading Challenge Posted at 8:00 AM by Rico Simpkins

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COVID-19: The Novel Coronavirus Novel Reading ChallengeAre you feeling a little stir crazy? Does your reading material suddenly seem a little to irrelevant to our current shared circumstances? Us too! Yes, our website is full of books that can distract you from the problems of our everyday lives, but what if the story you want to read IS the thing we’re living through.

That is where the COVID-19: The Novel Coronavirus Novel Reading Challenge comes in. Strangely enough, many folks find some kind of relief or distraction in reading books about pandemics. So for this challenge we are going to read about some fictional pandemics to help take our minds off the real one raging outside. Pick one of four different reading levels and then pick from among any books in our database having to do with diseases – real or alien. If you think we’re missing any books (SF/F/H) that you believe should belong in our database, let us know and we’ll add them.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.


The Last ManThe Last Man
by Mary Shelley

Not only is Ms. Shelley credited with writing the first work of science fiction, she also wrote the first outbreak novel as far as we can tell. Yes, Sophocles wrote about a Theban plague in Oedipus Rex, and the residents of Noricum suffered their own (fictional?) epidemic in Virgil’s Georgics, but plays and poems, being more ancient forms of literature, could never be science fiction. That art form couldn’t blossom until the arrival of the novel, which, as its name suggests, was an art form oriented toward the new. And science certainly felt new and exciting in 1826, when Shelley wrote her exploration of the outbreak sub-genre only 10 years after the legendary year of no summer inspired her fascination with medical aberration and catastrophe.

The Last Man is set in the 21st century, and, while descriptions of technology will strike contemporary readers as quaint, some of Shelley’s predictions are accurate enough. England has become a Republic thanks to a royal exit. The story’s plague starts in the walls of a major city in the East (in this case, the Near East: Constantinople) and travels across oceans to infect the known world. England’s Lord Protector, as now seems prescient, finds the country unprepared for an epidemic and flees, hoarding provisions. Charlatans and faith healers hawk cures that don’t exist.


Love in the Time of CholeraLove in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Gabriel Garcia Márquez essentially invented magical realism, which is not only a WWEnd sub-genre, but is regarded as a whole genre of its own. Love in the Time of Cholera might not be as overtly fantastical as the iconic One Hundred Years of Solitude, but Garcia Márquez was still working his way from ordinary realism to his new style of writing. In this story, a very real outbreak of cholera was commonly diagnosed, and the protagonist’s own heartbreak — the mystical force we all know as love — presents the same symptoms. Love manifests itself as disease, and, in this world, they may as well be the same thing (sound familiar?). Unlike The Last Man, this novel doesn’t offer a parallel to the physical epidemic we are all experiencing so much as it presents a meditation on the sickness that has visited all our hearts at one time or another.

Shakespeare once commented in his mythic pair of sonnets that Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love. Unlike cholera, the most human of afflictions has no cure… and never will. So if you’d like to distract yourself from the comparably boring affliction of COVID-19, we recommend adding Love in the Time of Cholera to your reading list.


Station ElevenStation Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel

We think of epidemics as if they always come from somewhere else. But the 1906 contagion precipitated by “Typhoid Mary,” the swine flu epidemic of 1976, and the decade long measles outbreak in the 1980s were all homegrown. This is also the case with the “Georgian Flu” that torments the characters of Station Eleven. If you’re looking for a deep study of epidemiology, this isn’t the book you’re looking for. This is about what happens after a disease topples civilization the way only big pandemics like the bubonic plague could. The story really gets going 20 years later with a troupe of traveling actors who struggle to bring entertainment to anyone who is left.

Station Eleven will soon be a 10 episode series on the upcoming HBO Max platform. While HBO Max looks to go online earlier than expected (in May), the series only started filming in January. It’s unclear how many if any episodes finished filming before production companies interfered with their schedules due to COVID-19. Yes, the irony of an post-pandemic TV show being interrupted by an actual pandemic was not lost on us.


WWEnd Roll-Your-Own Reading ChallengeThe COVID-19 reading challenge is just one of 30+ Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge themes that you can join. You can even create your own custom theme, determine your own requirements, and host your challenge right here on WWEnd. What’s more, you can share your challenge with other members, friends, family, reading groups, and even your own blog followers.

More from Oz: Aurealis SF/F/H Awards on WWEnd and a New Reading Challenge Posted at 8:00 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

RYO_SFDownUnderA few days ago we added the Aurealis Science Fiction Award to WWEnd and now we’ve followed up with the Aurealis Fantasy and Aurealis Horror. We’re now representin’ Down Under like never before and with all these new Australian authors in our database I thought it would be fun to start a new Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge.

We’ve been getting a lot of comments from our members about just how few Aussie authors they’ve read and how those blanks in their awards stats are really bugging them.  Thus was born the Keep Calm and Read SF from Down Under Reading Challenge.

This challenge is simplicity itself.  All you have to do is read some books from the Aurealis Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror Awards we’ve just added to the site or any Aussie author you like.  The SF in this case is “Speculative Fiction” rather than just “Sci-Fi”.  We have 4 reading levels, named after Australian candies, for this challenge so you can jump in at a level that’s right for you.  Sweet!

And this challenge plays nicely most of the other RYO challenges too so combining with the Women of Genre Fiction or Space Opera or pretty much any of the others is easily done.

Grand Master Reading Challenge December Poll Results and Final Wrap Up Posted at 6:33 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Grand Master Reading Challenge

Scott LazerusThe December GMRC Review Poll is over and our winner is Scott Lazerus (Scott Laz) who actually tied himself in the voting for the 2 reviews he submitted: The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov and Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin. Congrats to Scott for exiting the GMRC in style!

For his efforts, Scott has won a GMRC T-shirt, a GMRC button and a set of commemorative WWEnd Hugo Award bookmarks as well as his choice of book from the WWEnd bookshelf. All runners-up will receive a button and a set of bookmarks.

2012 GMRC Finishers:

Some Final GMRC Numbers

So, how did it all turn out? Fantastic! We had really great participation throughout the whole year and learned a lot about running a challenge – info that has already helped us improve on this year’s challenge. Here are the final stats and some thoughts on each:

Participants: 174
When we started the challenge we had no idea how many people would sign up. Our expectations ranged from 10 on the low end to 100 in our dreams. We would have been quite happy to hit somewhere in the middle so 174 was a nice surprise. Of the 174 readers 28 read the full 12 books with 17 members who completed the whole challenge by submitting the required 6 reviews (names in bold). Congrats to all our finishers!

Books Read: 737
Taking out the 46 people who signed up but didn’t read any books we end up with and average of 5.76 books read per challenge participant. The folks who did not finish the challenge accounted for 401 of the books read while those who did managed the other 336.  Not too bad, I’d say!

Books Reviewed: 230
This is my favorite stat of the bunch! WWEnd members really came through on this count and out of 230 reviews we featured 90 of the best in the WWEnd blog. Well done everyone!

So that’s the end of the 2012 WWEnd Grand Master Reading Challenge! I hope you all enjoyed the experience and the great books and we want to thank all our readers for making it such a success. We had a lot of fun, brought in a ton of great new members into our little community and far exceeded our expectations on every level. The success of the GMRC has put us in a really great position for the Women of Genre Fiction challenge this year too. Many of the same readers are back for a second go and early indications are good that we’ll blow past last year’s numbers across the board.

Happy reading everyone and thanks again for being on the ride with us!

Introducing the 2013 Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge! Posted at 4:45 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

2013 Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge

With the Grand Master Reading Challenge coming to a massively successful close we’ve been racking our brains trying to come up with something great for 2013 and we think we’ve done just that. Introducing the 2013 Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge! The challenge is to read 12 women authors you haven’t read before (including one completely random author pick) in 12 months and to write 12 reviews.  We’ll be using BookTrackr again to help you keep up with your books and so you can follow along with the other challenge participants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reading Challenge: Mind Voyages Posted at 7:01 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

DuneThe Forever WarDoomsday BookPaladin of SoulsThe Man in the High Castle

I’ve been thinking about doing a reading challenge here on WWEnd for some time but just never got around to it.  I was just planning to start one for the New Year when I found Mind Voyages.  Mind Voyages is a yearlong reading challenge and blog set up by Robin of My Two Blessings that focuses on the Hugo and Nebula award winners and noms.  A perfect fit for me and WWEnd members as well, methinks.

The challenge is divided up into several "voyages" of differing lengths and themes.  You choose the books you want to read within the loosely defined parameters of each voyage rather than having to read from a pre-determined list.  You can set yourself a modest goal like the Moon Voyage, which is to read 6 Hugo winners, or you can go for a bigger challenge like Jupiter which is all the 1990’s winners.  Of course you can go for as many voyages as you like throughout the year if you want a bigger challenge.

The savvy reader will find lots of ways to get max value out of the books they choose.  Look for the books that overlap voyages like dual Hugo and Nebula winners (two birds, one stone) or pick 2 Philip K. Dick books for your Moon Voyage and knock out the Venus Voyage at the same time.  Someone will eventually figure out the least number of books you would have to read to complete all voyages.  I’m going for the Moon and will try for Mars as well.  Along the way I’ll knock out Venus, Mercury and the Slingshot Back to Earth by reading 12 books.  Here’s my list as it stands:

There are shorter ways to get there I think but many of those books I’ve already read so I had to dance around a bit to get to this list.  The best thing about this challenge is that almost all these books were on my list anyway and I’m still trying to read all the Hugo and Nebula winners so this will bring me closer to that goal as well.

So who’s in and what does your list look like?