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Worlds Without End Blog

Three New Book Lists! Posted at 12:12 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

I love a good list. From Letterman’s latest Top Ten to IMDb’s Top 250 Movies to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted I can’t get enough of them. Especially book lists! They fascinate and infuriate in equal parts and provide endless points for discussion and contention among fans. Especially when the list purports to be the "best of" something or other.

Genre fiction is replete with "best of" lists and based on your response to the 20 SF/F/H Lists we have here on WWEnd it seems you folks can’t get enough of ’em either. No sooner do we post a new one than we start getting calls for another! I love it. There are so many out there I doubt we’ll ever run out of new ones and since each list offers a different take on what’s best we’re perfectly happy to keep adding more.

We’ve added some new ones recently–including one just yesterday–that you guys asked for specifically and we wanted to let you know they’re up. Enjoy!


 

Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo’s book list, from their new book Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010, is a continuation of David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. Pringle passes the torch in a foreword to the new volume: "Having been unable to keep up with all those new SF works myself, I am delighted that Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo have taken it upon themselves to do the job, and I am very happy to endorse their excellent book."

 

David Pringle's Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best NovelsDavid Pringle has written several guides to science fiction and fantasy. His famous book, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, is a highly regarded primer for the genre. In 1988 Pringle followed up with his Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels (1946-1987). Primarily the book comprises 100 short essays on the selected works, covered in order of publication, without any ranking. It is considered an important critical summary of the field of modern fantasy literature.

 

Books Reviewed on WWEndWorlds Without End has over 800 reviews of some of the best books in science fiction, fantasy and horror. These reviews have been submitted by our members and range from simple opinions ("This book sucked!") to well reasoned technical reviews of some of your favorite genre books. We’ve created this list so you can find all the reviewed books in one place and, if you’re a logged in WWEnd member, you can use BookTrackr™ to easily find reviews for any of the books you’ve read.

 

2012 WWEnd Grand Master Reading Challenge Posted at 6:39 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

WWEnd Grand Master Reading ChallengeWell, we’re a little bit late to the party but we have finally launched our reading challenge! As you may have guessed from the title and the badge our reading challenge is focused on the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award winning authors. If you’re not familiar with the Grand Master Award it’s an award for lifetime achievement in SF/F given out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The award is given semi-annually to a living author usually during the Nebula Award ceremony though it’s not a Nebula itself.

Heinlein, Bester, McCaffrey, Asimov, Clarke and of course Damon Knight himself… these authors are some of the giants of genre fiction and after adding the list to the site we hit on the idea of building a challenge around them. But not just a challenge. Here at WWEnd we have to do things just a bit differently so we decided to incorporate BookTrackr™ into it so you can track your progress throughout the year.

Why? Well, your typical reading challenge usually starts out with a lot of enthusiasm but over time it’s easy to get lazy and lose interest. Reading for a challenge is a solitary endeavor that goes something like this: you pick a book for your challenge, bugger off to read it, two weeks later when you’re done you blog about it and hope somebody reads your blog. Then you do it again and again – pretty much in a vaccuum. Sure you can hit the blogs to see how other people are doing but that takes a lot of time and gets pretty spread out as the months go on.

BookTrackr makes it easy to get involved and stay involved. If you look at the Grand Master Reading Challenge page you’ll see our solution in action. Every particpant in the challenge goes into a single table where you can directly compare your progress with everyone else. From that page you’ll be able to see which authors and books are being read and access all the reviews for the challenge. It’s meant to foster a bit of friendly competition between members; where we can all help to keep each other motivated. Plus, it’s just fun to fill out all the slots!

Grand Masters

How the GMRC works:

The goal of the WWEnd Grand Master Reading Challenge is to read 12 books — 1 each by 12 Grand Master authors — in 12 months and write at least 6 reviews. That’s it. Not a huge challenge compared to some others you’ve probably seen but it’s a good steady challenge for those of us with limited time. It’s also one that won’t scare off the slow readers amongst us. Raise your hand if you’re one of us.

Now I know some of you Evelyn Wood grads are thinking "I can read 12 books in a couple months…" That’s awesome, but that’s not what this challenge is about. You’re supposed to pace yourself and read a book each month then share your thoughts with the rest of us. Think of it as a "relax-a-challenge" if you will. Read a book. Post your review here on WWEnd, or post an extract here and link back to your blog for the full review. Then do it again. Read. Review. Repeat.

Further incentive:

We get a lot of great reviews here on WWEnd every week and we expect that we’ll get a bunch more through this challenge so we want to reward you for the effort with some prizes and some love. Each week we’re going to cherry pick the best reviews to feature in the WWEnd blog as a guest post. We’ll include an intro for you and promote your blog to our members. Try and drive a little traffic your way. You’ll also receive a GMRC button for the effort. Wear it proudly to your next convention.

At the end of each month WWEnd members will vote on the featured reviews and the winner will earn everlasting glory and some swag from the WWEnd prize box. Prizes include: T-Shirts, buttons, books and bookmarks etc. Remember how I said we want you to pace yourself? If you do, you’ll have 12 chances to win. And, of course, everyone who completes the challenge will receive a prize at the end. Schweet.

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long. Kudos if you read down this far! There’s more information and instructions on the GMRC page and on the Grand Master Award page and you can hit us with questions in the comments or in the forums.

So, who’s in? What do you think of our little scheme of marching up and down the square?

WWEnd BookTrackr™ Update: Stats at a Glance Posted at 12:18 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

You may have noticed a few changes around WWEnd lately. We’ve been hard at work pushing out new updates as fast as we can. We just finished a major push to update our Horror coverage with the addition of The Bram Stoker Award and the HWA Reading List. That’s a couple hundred more of the best books to pick from my friends!

American GodsAnd since finding the best books is what this site is all about we’ve just added a new feature to our BookTrackr™ that we think you’re really gonna like. You’ve probably already noticed the new numbered icons that appear on the book covers in the awards pages and elsewhere on the site. These new info icons are designed to help you identify the most celebrated books, at a glance, from amongst the thousands of books in our database. The red icon represents the number of award nominations that book has received, across the 11 awards we cover, while the black icon represents the number of Book Lists that the book appears on.

In the example above, which happens to show the nominees for the 2002 Hugo Award, you can see that all 5 books received multiple nominations but China Mieville‘s Perdido Street Station has a whopping 7 nominations and is included in 3 out of our 14 book lists! The yellow highlight indicates that it’s on my reading list. Can you guess why? The book that won the Hugo in 2002, Neil Gaiman‘s American Gods, boasts a 7/4 and is one of my favorite fantasy books.

These numbers do more than just show nominations and lists, however. They reveal all kinds of interesting and useful information that you can use to find the books you want to read. For example, if you’re wanting to try Vernor Vinge you would find A Fire Upon the Deep at a 4/4 to be pretty tempting.

A Fire Upon the DeepYou can even see which years an author was hottest. Take a look at Gene Wolfe to see what I mean. He’s been hugely popular for many years but was absolutely killing it in the early 80’s in particular. Stephen King has nominations for 25 of the 29 of his books in our database which is a pretty clear indication of his consistent quality.

Say you want to try a cyberpunk novel but you don’t know where to start. You can go to our sub-genres page, click on cyberpunk to get a list of all the books that have been tagged as cyberpunk. Now you can look for the books with the highest number of award nominations and list appearances. Neuromancer at a 5/7 looks like a pretty safe bet. Of course, an 8 1/2 rating from 131 member votes will further that impression too.

Some other indicators that have become apparent are that higher award noms tends to indicate a more recent book. There are more awards now than there were in the past so there’s a better chance of getting multiple nominations. The converse of that is that the books with a higer number of book list appearances tend to be older works because they have been more widely read over the years. They’ve stood the test of time as it were. Frank Herbert‘s classic, Dune, is a great example. It has only 2 award nominations, from a time when there were only 2 awards, but that’s offset by 7 book list appearances! They don’t call it a classic for nuttin’!

These numbers can be found on all the awards lists, the author and publisher pages as well as the search page right now. We’ll be adding them to the book lists pages and the members lists next so stand by for that update in the next few days. Take a look at this new feature and let us know what you think. What other useful information can you glean from these numbers? How do your favorite books stack up in noms and lists?

Science Fiction & Fantasy Series Posted at 7:05 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

SF/F Series

Most Science Fiction and Fantasy fans like a good series. Once we find a book we like we want to return to that universe time and again for more great adventures with the characters and settings we already know. Of course, Science Fiction and Fantasy authors and publishers are only too happy to indulge our obsession. Indeed, single stand-alone books are becoming a thing of the past with trilogies or better being the norm. More is more these days.

Our new list of Science Fiction & Fantasy Series contains all of the series in the WWEnd database for your easy perusal. So whether you’re looking for a trilogy, tetralogy, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy or decalogy you’ve come to the right place. We’ve even got a trigintoctology for you serious gluttons.

Of course, if you’re a WWEnd Member you’ll be able to use BookTrackr™ to monitor your progress with the series you’re reading and tag those that you want to read later. Check it out and let us know what you think of the list. What series have we missed that you’d recommend to your friends? Which series are your favorites? Full points if you can tell me how many books make up a trigintoctology and the name of the series we’re referring to. Enjoy!

SF Mistressworks Posted at 8:09 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

SF Mistressworks

One thing that science fiction fans love is a good list of great books.  There’s something very satisfying about poring over a list like the SF Masterworks or The Classics of Science Fiction to see which ones we’ve read and which we’ve missed.  We get to determine for ourselves if the list creators got it right with their selections and there is endless opportunity to speculate, and argue about, the books we’d have put on the list if only we’d been consulted.

There are some great lists out there for us to choose from and many are covered here on WWEnd for your edification.  Each list has its own slant and biases built in and because we often don’t agree with their contents, or we just want to fill a particular niche that’s underserved, we just keep making more.

I’ve been making an effort to read more women authors this last year or so and the first thing I did was go looking for a list.  I found many to choose from but ultimately none were quite what I wanted.  The answer was to make my own list:  Award Winning Books by Woman Authors.  Like the name indicates it’s just a simple list of all the winning books by women from the 10 awards we cover here on WWEnd.  Of course, that’s a pretty easy list to make.  All I had to do was poll the database and post the results.  A useful list and good start but I wanted more.

Then along comes this great list called the SF Mistressworks by SF/F writer and blogger Ian Sales on It Doesn’t Have to be Right….  This list is exactly what I was looking for and a great fit for WWEnd. The goal of his list is to highlight great works by women authors that are worthy of the attention given to those books on the SF Masterworks list – which is a bit thin on women authors.  Ian turned his list into a meme and it took off across the internets – a clear indication of the quality of the list and of the un-tapped desire for such a list.

Says Ian: "I’ve used my own taste in novels, awards shortlists, recommendations by various folk, and some judicious online research to generate the list."  He goes on with this caveat: "I can’t guarantee I’ve picked a writer’s best book, or indeed that any of the books on the list that I’ve not read myself are in any way ‘classic’."  Fair enough.  As with all lists it’s not perfect but some real effort went into it and the result is pretty impressive.  All the usual suspects are in there but there are many authors and titles you’ve probably never heard of too.  Plenty of room to branch out and try someone new.

The list of 90 books is restricted to SF works with only one book per author and a cut-off date of 2000.  He’s got a 21st Century SF Mistressworks list in the works so don’t get too upset if you don’t find the most recent authors and books in the list.  We had about half of these books in our database already and I spent the last week adding the others – not to mention some 30-odd new authors!

Take a look at the list and see how you fare.  If you’re a WWEnd member you can use BookTrackr™ to tag the ones you’ve read.  What books would you add to it?  What books would you replace for your favorite authors?

Many thanks to Ian Sales for the great list.

The Classics of Science Fiction Posted at 9:05 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

The Classics of Science Fiction

We’ve just added a new book list to WWEnd: The Classics of Science Fiction.

The Classics of Science Fiction list, compiled by James Wallace Harris and Anthony Bernardo, is an attempt to create a definitive list of the best Science Fiction books. Harris and Bernardo collected 28 different recommended and "best of" lists by noted fans, critics and writers and then cross-tabulated the lists to see which books showed up with the most frequency. The result is a ranked list of 193 books, each having seven or more citations.

This is a really extensive list with most of the usual suspects represented along with a few surprises.  Check out the list and use our BookTrackr to see how many you’ve already read. 

Also, be sure to visit http://classics.jameswallaceharris.com for more information including an extensive essay on the methodology used to create the list.

Gollancz SF Masterworks Meme Posted at 8:32 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

SF MasterworksSo there’s been a lot of recent buzz on the internets about the SF Masterworks series from Gollancz including this meme.  Mostly it’s because of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks Reading Project that kicked off a few weeks ago.  The reading project is a "a group blog dedicated to reading and reviewing Gollanczs series of genre classics in its entirety".  They have several reviews posted already that are worth a read.

As you might have guessed from looking at WWEnd I really love this idea.  The Masterworks collections contain some of the best works in the genre and have some great cover art to boot.  I’ve only read a few from the list but it’s my goal to eventually read them all – though I’ll be taking my time.  These guys will be reading them all within a year.  Sheesh!

Of course, if you’re interested in reading them too, WWEnd’s BookTrackr can help you keep tabs on your progress.  We’ve got the complete lists for the SF Masterworks and the Fantasy Masterworks and you can use BookTrackr to tag the ones you’ve read as you go along.  The color coding will show you how many you’ve read and which ones you still need to read.  Give it a shot.

Anyway, without further ado, here is my SF list so far.  I’ve bolded and linked the ones I’ve read.

  1. The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
  2. I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
  3. Cities in Flight – James Blish
  4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
  5. The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
  6. Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
  7. Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
  8. The Fifth Head of Cerberus – Gene Wolfe
  9. Gateway – Frederik Pohl
  10. The Rediscovery of Man – Cordwainer Smith
  11. Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon
  12. Earth Abides – George R. Stewart
  13. Martian Time-Slip – Philip K. Dick
  14. The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
  15. Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner
  16. The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
  17. The Drowned World – J. G. Ballard
  18. The Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut
  19. Emphyrio – Jack Vance
  20. A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
  21. Star Maker – Olaf Stapledon
  22. Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock
  23. The Book of Skulls – Robert Silverberg
  24. The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
  25. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
  26. Ubik – Philip K. Dick
  27. Timescape – Gregory Benford
  28. More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
  29. Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
  30. A Case of Conscience – James Blish
  31. The Centauri Device – M. John Harrison
  32. Dr. Bloodmoney – Philip K. Dick
  33. Non-Stop – Brian Aldiss
  34. The Fountains of Paradise – Arthur C. Clarke
  35. Pavane – Keith Roberts
  36. Now Wait for Last Year – Philip K. Dick
  37. Nova – Samuel R. Delany
  38. The First Men in the Moon – H. G. Wells
  39. The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
  40. Blood Music – Greg Bear
  41. Jem – Frederik Pohl
  42. Bring the Jubilee – Ward Moore
  43. VALIS – Philip K. Dick
  44. The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula K. Le Guin
  45. The Complete Roderick – John Sladek
  46. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
  47. The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
  48. Grass – Sheri S. Tepper
  49. A Fall of Moondust – Arthur C. Clarke
  50. Eon – Greg Bear
  51. The Shrinking Man – Richard Matheson
  52. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick
  53. The Dancers at the End of Time – Michael Moorcock
  54. The Space Merchants – Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
  55. Time Out of Joint – Philip K. Dick
  56. Downward to the Earth – Robert Silverberg
  57. The Simulacra – Philip K. Dick
  58. The Penultimate Truth – Philip K. Dick
  59. Dying Inside – Robert Silverberg
  60. Ringworld – Larry Niven
  61. The Child Garden – Geoff Ryman
  62. Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
  63. A Maze of Death – Philip K. Dick
  64. Tau Zero – Poul Anderson
  65. Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
  66. Life During Wartime – Lucius Shepard
  67. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm
  68. Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
  69. Dark Benediction – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
  70. Mockingbird – Walter Tevis
  71. Dune – Frank Herbert
  72. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
  73. The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
  74. Inverted World – Christopher Priest
  75. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
  76. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
  77. Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
  78. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
  79. Dhalgren (July 2010) – Samuel R. Delany
  80. Helliconia (August 2010) – Brian Aldiss
  81. Food of the Gods (Sept. 2010) – H.G. Wells
  82. The Body Snatchers (Oct. 2010) – Jack Finney
  83. The Female Man (Nov. 2010) – Joanna Russ
  84. Arslan (Dec. 2010) – M.J. Engh

As you can see, I’ve got my work cut out for me to finish this list.  I own my shame.   So how many have you read?  Are you trying to read them all?

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels: A List of Lists Posted at 11:59 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Oh, my!

In our quest to bring you the best books in Science Fiction and Fantasy we’re expanding our database beyond the confines of the 10 awards we cover. But where else do you go to find great books besides the awards? Well, it turns out that SF/F geeks like to make lists of the great books they read and there are many great lists already out there.

We’ve got seven lists so far including two new ones we just added that you should check out:

We’ll continue to bring you new lists from time to time so you’ll never run out of books to read. If you’re already a member you can follow along with BookTrackr™ and see how you match up.  If you’re not, you can join now by signing up in our forum.  You know you want to.

Upgrades to WWEnd Posted at 7:02 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Worlds Without EndAs you can see, if you’ve been here before (you’ll just have to trust us if you have not), we’ve made some major changes to WWEnd.  The biggest change is the over all site design with new full screen background fractals instead of the header strip and a snazzy new logo.  You’ll also notice some new tabs at the top of the page for the log in and the search as well as a fun little bit in the center.

With the design upgrade comes some fixes to existing features like the BookTrackr and the My World page.  We’ve also made the move to JQuery for all our js scripts to simplify and speed things up.  The most evident bit is the shadowbox script for the video galleries.  Speaking of videos, we’ve moved the author vids out of the resources section and into the authors section and changed the layout so you can see all the author vids on the same page now.  There are a bunch more vids in there now too so check it out.

Still more to come.  If you have any questions or comments, leave them in the forum.  We’d love to hear what you think.

WWEnd Update: Novel Ratings Avatars Posted at 9:59 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

We’ve just updated the novel page to display member avatars in the novel rating. Click “+ Member Rating” to see all the members who read and/or rated the novel. You can click on the avatars to go to that member’s profile to see what other books they liked etc.

Ender’s Game has gotten a lot of reads as you might expect. Check it out.