With half an hour to go before I must head into London for the ceremony, time for a few final thoughts on this year's Arthur C Clarke Award, the shortlist for which I've been posting about over the past week.
The first thing to note is that, sadly, I didn't manage to get through all the books on time this year. (I blame Anathem... :-)) A review of Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns will follow in due course; my initial impressions are of an enjoyably arch space opera, the sort that revels in the exoticism of its extravagantly-drawn universe and the enormously larger-than-life exploits of its cheerfully amoral (and unfeasibly rich) characters. Said characters apparently being (immortal?) clones of a young woman raised in a Gormenghast-esque city-sized mansion. Time will tell, but it's fun so far.
As for what I have read: my impression is that 2008 was a solid but unspectacular year for sf published in the UK. Whereas the past few years threw up - in roughly equal measure - books that aroused my passion and others that aroused my ire, 2008's cohort contains only one standout (Ian MacLeod's lovely Song of Time); only one that really got on my nerves (Mark Wernham's Martin Martin's on the Other Side), and even that - helped in no small part, I'm sure, by the fact that I was able to read it in an afternoon - didn't rouse me to the heights of fury of, say, Streaking. Everything else... I don't really have strong feelings about.
Anyway, that shortlist again, with links to my reviews:
And I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for Ian MacLeod tonight!
~~Nic