Hey guys. Sorry I’ve been bad about updating; it just feels like I can only post “I’m working on it” so many times. 😉 But yeah, the manuscript is done. I’m now waiting for my beta readers to get back to me, and their notes are trickling in.
I met with a high school book club on Monday, which garnered me 10 contacts in my target audience! I’m extremely pleased but also nervous as butts. Writing it is one thing, having other people read it is entirely another. Good ol’ Alot of Doubts rearing his stupid ugly head again…
Onwards! I have decided, to keep my posts regular, that I shall post a Top 5 list every week, with an accompanying poll for all you awesome readers to take part in. I’m hoping this can get us all thinking and talking about our favourite whatevers!
Why top 5? Well, top 10 seems overdone, and much too easy. I tried to just do top 3, but that was far too hard! I ended up with runners up, which defeats the purpose. So, I have settled on a top 5. Each choice pertains to my ‘elemental’ theme, with each selection relating to the ‘element’ I pair it with, if only esoterically, and often without explanation Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and, sort of the runner-up category, Heart.
I was going to call it the EFWWH List, but that felt like tripping at the finish line. So I’m going to go with “The Captain’s Five”. Aside from the obvious Captain Planet reference, it sounds cooler, and more sci-fi.
So I give you, without much further ado, the first “The Captain’s Five” List and Poll!
The Captain’s Five:
Top Sci-Fi Novels
“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card
This is a quintessential Sci-Fi read. Compelling and extremely well written, it has characters that get under your skin, that get inside your head. The story follows a boy bred for Battle School who must take charge and lead the other children as they prepare for another war with the alien “buggers”. The whole series, and the shadow series from another character’s perspective, is at the top of the sci-fi food-group pyramid.
“The Hyperion Cantos” by Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion” are just, absolutely, stunning. Sci-fi at its best. Set in the far future, the first book contains the stories of the pilgrims sent on the suicidal Shrike Pilgrimage to face a terrible being who contorts time and breathes death. Beautiful and terrifying, it is full of wonder.
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
It may have been the timing of me reading this one, namely in the formative grade 8 adventures into more ‘adult’ lit, but this one really struck home. I think my English teacher was rather horrified when I championed some of the ideas in the book. Eugenics to steer the future of the human race? What’s not to love! Oh, maybe not the way they taylor the classes, people bred to be stupid, you know, for slaves. 0_O
“Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus” by Orson Scott Card
I know I know, two OS Card’s on the list? Well, he *is* my favourite author. And the two I picked are knight and day different. Pastwatch goes about the business of studying humanity by peering back through time, literally spying on people as they go about their lives, unaware they’re being watched by the future’s anthropologists. But when the earth reaches the tipping point where we’ll be unable to survive on it, Pastwatch embarks on a mission to save it by sending people back in time, to strategic places, to try and correct the mistakes of our past. Absolutely fantastic. This is my most lent, and most bought-as-a-gift book.
“WWW” (“Wake”, “Watch”, and “Wonder”) by Robert J. Sawyer
I think Robert J. Sawyer is brilliant at seeing the world, and telling us how it’s going to be. Or rather, how it’s going to be if just this one thing happened. In WWW, that one thing is a sentient being coming into existence in cyberspace. It’s gripping, and asks some truly important questions on what it means to be human, and what our reaction to such a scenario is likely to be.
So, thus concludes the first ever Captain’s Five! I hope you enjoyed it. Mayhaps I’ve left you with a new book or two to find and read? 🙂
Now: take the poll! Let everyone know what *your* favourite sci-fi book is. Results published along with next week’s “Captain’s Five”!
…Please ignore “Sample Question 2″… Ain’t nobody got time for that. >_<
H.G. Bells 