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Here, there be Dragons… and, er… Spaceships…
This week’s additions are all Gordon R. Dickson. Dickson was a prolific writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction with over 60 novels to his credit. He is perhaps best remembered for his 2 big series: The Dragon Knight and The Childe Cycle (Dorsai) .
The Dragon Knight is a fantasy series of 9 books starting with The Dragon and the George (1977 BFS winner and WFA nominee) and finishing with The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent in 2000. This is classic "man from our world is transported to a fantasy land where he becomes a hero" fantasy that somehow escaped my notice all these years. This is just the sort of thing I would have flown through back in the day.
Dickson’s Childe Cycle, also referred to as the Dorsai series, is his most famous foray into science fiction. The first book in the series is 1960 Hugo nominee, Dorsai! Dickson followed up with 9 other novels (I’m counting The Final Encyclopedia as 2 novels) plus several novellas and short stories. Dickson passed away in 2001 before he could complete the rest of the series he envisioned and the final Childe volume, Antagonist, was eventually completed by his long-time assistant David W. Wixon in 2007.
Happy reading.
Big Sc-Fi!
The last few weeks I’ve added in some serious fantasy series with Xanth, The Wheel of Time and Discworld topping the list.
This week I wanted to show that there are some sizeable SF series out there too. I started off with The Saga of the Skolian Empire by Catherine Asaro. This is a big SF series with 13 books. We already had The Last Hawk (1998 Nebula nominated) and The Quantum Rose (2001 Nebula winner) – books 3 and 6 respectively – so I added in the other 11 books ending with Diamond Star, out just this year.
To top that I went in for an old classic series from Marion Zimmer Bradley, Darkover. Twenty-two books! The Sword of Aldones (1963 Hugo nom), The Heritage of Hastur (1975 Nebula nominee) and 1978 Hugo nominee, The Forbidden Tower, are the most celebrated books of a series that spans 40 years. This is a series that you often hear mentioned when people talk about what got them hooked on SF.
Keeping in the SF vein, I’ve also finished out several smaller SF series like Peter F. Hamilton‘s Greg Mandel Trilogy, which includes 1995 BSFA nominee The Nano Flower, and Greg Bear‘s Anvil of Stars – the sequel to triple nominee The Forge of God (Nebula 1987, Hugo and Locus SF 1988).
Next comes Karl Schroeder‘s Virga, beginning with Sun of Suns (2007 Campbell nom) and ending with The Sunless Countries published by Tor in 2009. I love the Stephan Martinere cover art for these books and the excerpts sound intriguing. I’ve added these to my reading list!
Stephen Baxter‘s Xeelee Sequence is now complete with the 3 middle volumes added between Raft (1992 Clarke nominee) and Vacuum Diagrams, winner of the 1999 Philip K. Dick Award.
That’s a lot of sci-fi but don’t fret fantasy fans – I didn’t forget you. I went old-school again by finishing out Barbara Hambly‘s Winterlands series with books 2-4 added to 1986 Locus Fantasy nominated Dragonsbane. And finally, to round things out, I give you the last volume of Orson Scott Card‘s The Tales of Alvin Maker. I somehow managed to miss The Crystal City last go ’round.
That’s 46 new books for you to tag, so get busy.
Discworlds Without End
This weekend was all about Terry Pratchett and his enormous Discworld saga. Is there a longer SF/F series out there? Xanth was close at 32 books but Discworld is the current champ weighing in at 37 books!
Eight nominated novels were already in our data base including Hogfather (1997 BFS nom), Night Watch (2003 Locus nom), Going Postal (2005 Locus and Nebula nominated) and Making Money (2008 Locus Fantasy winner and Nebula nominee). The other 29 have been added starting with the first of the series 1983’s The Color of Magic and ending with the lastest installment, Unseen Academicals, out this year. If you’re a Discworld fan you’ve got a lot of new books to tag as read.
You may have noticed that most of the covers for these are reprints from HarperTorch. I loves me a cover art series and these are fun and definitely colorful. This is a series that’s been printed in many editions and translations over the years so I was happy to find the anniversary set from HT. If you’re a fan of cover art AND Discworld, you’re in luck. The Discworld Cover Wiki has an amazing collection of covers for all the books. Go ahead and check it out. It’s mind-boggling. Just make sure to come back, OK?
A Productive Weekend for Series Books
This weekend I made an effort to get some more women authors’ works into the database starting with Ursula K. LeGuin‘s Earthsea Cycle. I added the first 3 books in that series: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore . We already had Powers (Nebula winner 2008 ) from her Annals of the Western Shore so I completed the trilogy with Gifts and Voices.
Next up is C.J. Cherryh. Completed The Faded Sun and The Merchanter Novels series with 5 more books, bringing her total to 31 books in the WWEnd database.
Kate Elliott‘s Kings Dragon , part 1 of the Crown of Stars series was nominated for a Nebula in 1997 . I added in the other 6 books with the really nice re-print covers from Orbit. Be sure to check those out.
Christopher Fowler‘s Bryant and May Series is popular with the British Fantasy Society. They’ve nominated 3 out of 7 books in that series including The Victoria Vanishes. These look intriguing.
Mark Chadbourn‘s third trilogy, The Kingdom of the Serpent, is up to date now. Nice cover art for these as well. Nice to see a fantasy series break from the norm.
The Bridge Trilogy from William Gibson is now complete with the addition of Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties. They join Virtual Light his Hugo and Locus SF (1994) nominated book.
Last, but not least is Brian Stableford‘s Emortality Series. Six books in this one including Dark Ararat, Campbell nominated in 2003. This one is kind of strange in that the books were written out of series order. How is one supposed to read this series? The order in which they were written or the series order? I’ve listed them in series order because that seems to be the way it’s done everywhere I’ve seen.
For those keeping score, that’s 33 new books added. Only a billion more to go.
More Series Books Added to WWEnd
Added some more books over the weekend.
David Eddings‘ King of the Murgos was a Locus Fantasy nominee in 1989 so I added the other 4 books of The Malloreon to complete the series.
But what’s the Malloreon without The Belgariad? Uh… just 5 books instead of 10? Yep. Had to add the whole saga.
To keep the fantasy series theme going I added in the rest of the books for Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams. Book 3 was nominated for the Locus Fantasy Award in 1994. If you read it, you know that the last book of the trilogy was over 1,000 pages – too many pages for a single paperback, so the publishers divided it into 2 volumes. So the Trilogy is actually 4 books in paperback form but not in hardcover. To get around this problem, I tagged both volumes of To Green Angel Tower as book 3 and added Part 1 – Seige and Part 2 – Storm as sub-titles. It’s still a trilogy but you get credit for 4 books if you read them. Bonus! The new Orbit covers are tasty too.
And now for something completely different… A guy so nice you say the "E" twice – E.E. "Doc" Smith. This is old school SF we’re talking about. Skylark DuQuesne was nominated for the Hugo in 1966. (Check out the Hugo lineup for 1966!) After reading the synopsis I decided I’d have to read this one. Turns out it’s the 4th book of the Skylark Series written 16 years after book 3. The series was a pulp serial originally and published in a book starting in 1946! Check out the covers on this series. These are the stuff of dreams. Classic SF goodness.
These and other new additions to the WWEnd database can be found in the forum. I’ll post up all the newest books each Monday.
