Thursday, February 22, 2018

Books I'm looking forward to in 2018...

It's a little bit late, but I've finally pulled together a good list of books I'm looking forward to in 2018.  There will always be books that pop up as the year goes on, thus what's below probably represents about half of the total at the end of the year.  Hopefully I can get to a good portion of them.  And for the record, I tend to ignore publishing dates on the UK market vs. the US as they are often very similar. If I'm wrong about one or two, so be it.  And of course, if you, loyal Speculiction reader, have recommendations, let me know as my research was not the most tedious.

In no particular order, they are:



Elizabeth Hand's The Keeper's House  (I will read anything by Hand, sight unseen)
Ian McDonald's Time Was... and Luna: Moon Rising (a novella and the conclusion to the Luna trilogy)
Richard Morgan's Thin Air (A risk considering Morgan's fiction of late, and as a whole, but could be good beach reading)
James Patrick Kelly's Promise of Space and Others (After many years without a collection, good to see Kelly will be back)
William Gibson's Agency (Gibson's previous novel The Peripheral was rather pedestrian, so I'm looking to Agency to see if it can revive what makes Gibson singular.)
Simon Ings' The Smoke (Confession, I've yet to read Ings, but keep meaning to, meaning to, meaning to given the number of respectable recommendations.  Maybe his 2018 release will be the place to start...)
Christopher Priest's An American Story (I've yet to read Priest's three latest releases, perhaps I'll catch up this year on where his fiction currently is...)
Julie Day's yet unnamed debut collection (With recommendations from Jeffrey Ford, John Crowley, Kelly Link and others, time to give it a try...)
Peter Watts' The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Echopraxia showed that Watts had run out of gas in the Blindsight universe, so hopefully this year's release allows a fresh restart.)
Jeffrey Ford's Ahab's Return (Ford, like Hand, is an author I read sight unseen.  Curious to see how Ford will riff on Melville...)
2001: An Odyssey in Words edited by Tom Hunter (The premise is gimmicky - every story will be 2,001 words - but this anthology in honor of Arthur C. Clarke has potential. Ian Macleod, Claire North, Bruce Sterling, Adam Roberts and many others are on the slate as well as some lesser quality scribes, but we'll see...)
Adam Roberts' Haven, Tales of the Aftermath (I have not been the biggest fan of Roberts' last few releases given he is attempting mainstream genre recognition, but he always has potential...)
Infinity's End edited by Jonathan Strahan (I did not read the last Infinity anthology in Strahan's series due to the author list, but with this anthology things are looking a little better.)
M. John Harrison's You Should Come With Me Now (Harrison is a god.  'Nuff said.)

1 comment:

  1. Interesting list. Right now, I mostly plan on finishing books that I began in 2017. They are:

    Grant, by Ron Chernow
    The Bastard War, by A.J. Barker (about the WWI Mesopotamian Campaign)
    The Robert Fagels translation of The Iliad
    Last and Fist Men/Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
    The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu

    Once at least 2 of those are put down, I'll pick up The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. I can never be reading less than 4 or 5 books simultaneously. I just finished The World of Null A last night, and Asimov's I, Robot last week.

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