{"id":408,"date":"2006-01-22T21:55:20","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T01:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=408"},"modified":"2008-08-03T22:46:30","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T02:46:30","slug":"now-thats-a-short-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/22\/now-thats-a-short-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Now that&#8217;s a short-list!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The short list is up now for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bsfa.co.uk\/index.cfm\/section.awards\">The British Science Fiction Association Awards<\/a>, and what a list it is.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0575076151\/thebritishscienc\">9Tail Fox<\/a><\/i> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.j-cg.co.uk\/\">Jon Courtenay Grimwood<\/a> (Gollancz) <\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1841493902\/thebritishscienc\">Accelerando<\/a><\/i> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/\">Charles Stross<\/a> (Orbit) (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.accelerando.org\/book\/\">Free ebook edition<\/a>) <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0575076976\/thebritishscienc\"><i>Air<\/i><\/a> &#8212; Geoff Ryman (Gollancz) <\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1841493430\/thebritishscienc\">Learning the World<\/a><\/i> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/kenmacleod.blogspot.com\/\">Ken MacLeod<\/a> (Orbit) <\/li>\n<li><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1405021160\/thebritishscienc\">Living Next Door to the God of Love<\/a><\/i> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justinarobson.co.uk\/\">Justina Robson<\/a> (Macmillan) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve actually read all of those.  I&#8217;d call that four excellent books, and one decent one. If I were deciding, I&#8217;d have a hard time deciding first and second between Robson and Ryman, with MacLeod narrowly behind. All three of those books are Damn Fine(tm). Grimwood would be fourth, but only because I preferred the Arabesk to the new one. That leaves Stross&#8217; much-vaunted fix-up novel in last place&#8211;I enjoyed it, but was less impressed than everyone else in the world.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s got to be a good year when all the novels up for an award are at least good, and particularly when so many of them are outstanding.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I knew more about the short story scene, so I could comment more on that, but I&#8217;ve only read the Link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">The short list is up now for The British Science Fiction Association Awards, and what a list it is. 9Tail Fox &#8212; Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Gollancz) Accelerando &#8212; Charles Stross (Orbit) (Free ebook edition) Air &#8212; Geoff Ryman (Gollancz) Learning the World &#8212; Ken MacLeod (Orbit) Living Next Door to the God of Love &#8212; Justina Robson (Macmillan) I&#8217;ve actually&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/22\/now-thats-a-short-list\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[206,458,325],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-awards","tag-books","tag-justina-robson","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-6A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}