Charlie is one of the great characters of SF and the story resonates with his voice. If you're interested in finding out more about how to write great dialogue, check out my Speaking in Another's Voice: Dialogue online class tonight, 7-8 PM PST. Cost is $29.99 ($19.99 for former and current students) For more details, click on "Take an Online Class with Cat" at the top of this page.Flowers for Algernon was originally a short story by Daniel Keyes that appeared in 1959 in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and won the Hugo Award the following year. Seven years after the story’s publication, it appeared in novel form under the same name, and shared that year’s Nebula Award with Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17.
What: The story is told by Charlie Gordon and involves intelligence experiments being done on both Gordon and the title character Algernon, who is a white mouse.
Who: Anyone who wants to be decently well read in science fiction should read this book. It’s a classic, and one referenced and discussed elsewhere. One of my favorite stories by Susan Palwick, the title story in The Fate of Mice, is told from Algernon’s POV.
Why: Read it because you will want to know Charlie, to hear him tell his story, and to see a master use the device of an unreliable narrator in a way that takes your heart and breaks it over the book’s knee. Read it to discover a story that has survived the test of time and will, I strongly believe, continue to do so.
When: Read this when you’re thinking about things like how a character gets the reader on their side, as well as how what a character doesn’t say is sometimes as telling as what they do. Read this when you are ready to sit down and read it in one full sitting, preferably, which is doable for faster readers since it’s a slender book.
Where and how: Read it where you won’t mind weeping; public spaces (like airplanes) are unsuitable because you will have to have a heart as hard as winter to not tear up some. This is, in fact, one of the best examples of a fabulous tearjerker of a story that I know.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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End of the Year Reading Recommendations
Now available on Smashwords, "All the Pretty Little Mermaids," which originally appeared in Asimov's. You set the price! If you enjoy it, please leave a review.I spent a good chunk of my summer reading through a multi-volume fantasy series for the sake of completeness. The series will remain nameless, because I can’t in good conscience recommend it, but it did impact the amount of other reading I did. Most of these are particular to 2014, but not all.
Daniel Abraham came out with the most recent of his Dagger and Coin series, The Widow’s House, and it was just as enjoyable as the first three. Abraham has a gift for flawed characters that you care deeply about, whose dilemmas rack the reader to the heart even when they’re doing despicable things.
Carol Berg’s Dust and Light. Carol consistently hits it out of the ballpark when it comes to epic fantasy, and this start to a trilogy is no exception. If you like Sanderson, Martin, or Bujold’s fantasy, you will like Carol Berg.
The Hole Behind Midnight by Clinton Boomer is terrific urban fantasy with a highly original protagonist. Think of a mash-up of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files with the Tyrion Lannister sections of Game of Thrones and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and you’re in the general vicinity.
M.L. Brennan manages urban fantasy outside the tired norm with Iron Night, the latest in her Generation V series. I will admit, her kitsune character has me totally captivated, but the vampires manage not to be cliche, and protagonist Fortitude Scott is wonderful, reminding me of Rob Thurman’s engaging Caliban series.
Stephen Brust and Skyler White’s The Incrementalists is urban fantasy taken in a different direction, with an ancient society intent on nudging humanity along in the right directions.
Harry Connolly’s Twenty Palaces series is still more urban fantasy. There’s only four of them, and I wish it were twenty-four. I really enjoy the flavor and wonderful, terrible magic that fills this books. Great stuff.
Caren Gussoff’s The Birthday Problem. Seattle and a plague of madness-inducing nanobots? Sign me up. This is a terrific short novel that should be kept in mind for award ballots.
M.C.A. Hogarth’s The Mindhealer’s Series, Mindtouch and Mindline, were lovely, charming reads about a friendship between two disparate but equally compassionate healers. Looking forward to more in this series. Also recommended: Even the Wingless (looking forward to that serial as well.)
Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire, the first volume of the Worldbreaker Saga. Beautiful fantasy with all sorts of wonderful world-building detail and absolutely gripping characters. Highly recommended, and another to keep in mind for award ballots.
Elliott Kay’s Poor Man’s Fight and Rich Man’s War. I love books with an economic underpinning to them, and this far future military SF delivers wonderfully. Sometimes the villain is almost a little too cartoony, but if you take it as space opera, it’s pretty wonderful.
Meilan Miranda’s Son in Sorrow is the engaging second volume of her An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom. There’s a level of intrigue and sexuality to these books that reminds one of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel books, with equally deft prose and dialogue.
Linda Nagata’s The Red: First Light was terrific military SF/political thriller with lots of engaging detail and a solid dash of cyberpunk. Good stuff, highly recommended.
Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers is lovely, and significantly better (imo) than the HBO series. It has a wonderful poetry to it that i will match against any lit fic by Paul Auster or T.C. Boyle.
Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria was beautiful, reminding me at times of LeGuin’s Earthsea books. Samatar is burning up the charts lately with awards, and this was no exception.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy is tremendous. Often unsettling, eerie, and always striking, like playing a massive multi-player game where no one else is logged on. Highly recommended, also award ballot material. Wayne read these while we were in Costa Rica and liked them just as much
I also reviewed Jo Walton’s My Real Children and What Makes This Book So Great for CSZ, and really enjoyed the heck out of both, though I know I’ll come back to the second much more than the first. As an inveterate re-reader, it’s highly satisfying to read someone else’s account and analysis of the practice, and I emerged from the book with both a to-read and a to-reread list. WMTBSG is highly, highly recommended for fellow genre re-readers.
Andy Weir’s The Martian was engaging as heck because of its protagonist, who is one of the most likable main characters I have ever encountered. A man is trapped on Mars – will he escape? It’s been done before, but rarely so well.
I greatly enjoyed the first of Django Wexler’s flintlock fantasy, , and the second, The Shadow Throne, was equally enjoyable. Engaging POVs that remain tightly controlled and well-plotted.
2017 Award-Eligible Work Blog Posts & Roundups for F&SF
Time to start reading!Hello! I’m posting my yearly round-up of eligibility posts. If you’ve got one, let me know by commenting here, e-mailing me, or messaging on social media. I’ll update daily.
An eligibility post is a blog or social media post listing what you published in 2017 that is eligible for awards such as the Compton Crook, Dragon, Endeavour, Hugo, Lambda, Nebula, World Fantasy Award, and WSFA awards, and sometimes including information such as which pieces you like the best or think are the strongest, word length, and genre. You can click through for many examples.
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