Recommendation for April 8th gathering

[otter]

Having enjoyed several books in the past by Michael Flynn, I'd like to put forward Eifelheim as my suggestion for the next round.

Caveats being that I haven't read it and it *could* be a flaming, stinking, piece of garbage, but past experience would say it should be good.

[Lucy St. Jude]

The book I mentioned last night is Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

"Haldeman originally wrote this novel as an allegory of the Vietnam war, told through the eyes of a reluctant soldier caught up in a battle that never seemed to end, while the world he left behind changed drastically. However, it applies to all wars, in any time, and the book has never lost its timeliness."

Another book I think would be interesting is Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

"The classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the nation with its vivid portrayal of a small town's survival after nuclear holocaust devastates the country"

In a completely different vein, I wanted to suggest Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

"The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams"

[Louisa Ming]

Forever War
...
Alas, Babylon
...
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Can you pick one of the above that you like best for the voting?

[Derrick Heyoka]

Alas, Babylon was awesome.  OTOH I was like 13 when I read it.  Just chiming in.

[Lucy St. Jude]

Forever War
...
Alas, Babylon
...
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Can you pick one of the above that you like best for the voting?

Are we only limited to one recommendation?  I figured more choices would be better. /shrug

[Lucy St. Jude]

Oh, also for those just joining us on this forum:

Otter = Rob
Rainee = Liz
Louisa = Lee
Brak = Bill
Corbin = Mark
Lucy = Joc
fearthegirl = Lenore
Derrick = Shmoo
Luther = Brian


 

[otter]

I know that if I start listing off all the recommendations I'd like, we might run out of storage space on the server, so limiting people to one nomination per round sounds like a good idea to me

Forever War
...
Alas, Babylon
...
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Can you pick one of the above that you like best for the voting?

Are we only limited to one recommendation?  I figured more choices would be better. /shrug

[Brak Zanagin]

Yeah, I think we should only do one per person per round also.  If we have too many choices we won't have a clear winner.  You know, because i'm always going to vote for Sci-fi

[Rainee]

My nomination is Charlie Stross's Halting State.

"In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that's just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But she soon realizes that the virtual world may have a devastating effect in the real one-and that someone is about to launch an attack upon both..."

[Lews Therin]

I've enjoyed every book I've read by Dan Simmons, so I'd like to try The Terror.

From the review on Amazon:

"Hugo-winner Simmons (Olympos) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader of the expedition and captain of the Erebus, is an aging fool. Francis Crozier, his second in command and captain of the Terror, is a competent sailor, but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with better connections given preferment over him. With their two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish from disease, others from the cold, still others from botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And then there's the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence. This complex tale should find many devoted readers and add significantly to Simmons's already considerable reputation."

[Barbzirra]

I'm sure everyone else has already read this book, but I'll throw it in the mix anyway because it sounds good.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

[Louisa Ming]

Forever War
...
Alas, Babylon
...
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Can you pick one of the above that you like best for the voting?

Are we only limited to one recommendation?  I figured more choices would be better. /shrug

Everyone gets to offer a single choice, and then everyone votes. We can't read *everything* for a particular session, and this way, everyone doing one is fair.

[Louisa Ming]

Wow, these all look so good. I'm going to pass on making a suggestion and just try to figure out which one I'll vote for.

[Brak Zanagin]

Wow, these all look so good. I'm going to pass on making a suggestion and just try to figure out which one I'll vote for.

Ditto.  I'll throw my suggestion in later.

[Lucy St. Jude]

Coo, my nom is Forever War.

[Ed Gruberman]

My nomination is Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

"The first lesson Lister learned about space travel was you should never try it. But Lister didn't have a choice. All he remembered was going on a birthday celebration pub crawl through London. When he came to his senses again, he was living in a locker on one of Saturn's moons, with nothing in his pockets but a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstein.
So he did the only thing he could. Amazed to discover they would actually hire him, he joined the Space Corps--and found himself aboard Red Dwarf, a spaceship as big as a small city that, six or seven years from now, would get him back to Earth. What Lister couldn't foresee was that he'd inadvertently signed up for a one-way jaunt three million years into the future--a future which would see him the last living member of the human race, with only a hologram crew mate and a highly evolved Cat for company. Of course, that was before the ship broke the light barrier and things began to get really weird."