Epic Plains

There was a good post over on SF Signal this morning about favorite Space Operas.  A number of the ones listed I have read, though I did note a few I felt were missing.  Book lists are always very subjective things, so perhaps missing is the wrong term.  Books or series that I personally feel are must reads in the genre and that I classify as Space Opera.

First though, I did see some that I expected and fully agree with.

The Dune novels I see listed a couple of times and is a long time favorite.  I do note that they mention just the first three in this and I have to agree.  I have read some of the follow on on books and some of the prequel books as well and while I do like them, rarely drug me as into the story as the original.  I still remember (and own along with the soundtrack) the 1982 movie version of Dune.  I remember watching this with a mixture of love and horror.  I liked the cast and the music was incredible, but it was like someone had taken 10 pages here and there out of the original novel and pasted them all together.  I could follow the plot, but I knew the level of complexity that was being skipped over.  Yet I digress, the novel is epic in scope, but the stories and plots within plots stands to this day.

Also listed are The Mote in God’s Eye and Eon which I found great world building and believable first contact situations.  I was a little disappointed to see not a whole Asimov books included since there are many standalone stories that fit well with these.  While they are getting a bit dated now, perhaps it was felt they weren’t a “Space Opera.”   (The one off novels.) Though I would submit that the Foundation Series or the Robot novels are Operatic in scope and worth a look at – they were indeed mentioned.

The most surprising to me of what I didn’t see, was the lack of any David Weber novels.  Weber is a very prolific writer who is currently the master of military scifi. Empire from the Ashes is probably still my favorite trilogy from him, though his current Safehold series is catching up there, though the Safehold series branches away from the more Space Opera side of Scifi.  His Honor Harrington series keeps you in space with plenty of action and political intrigue.

Even with those gaps, the list is worth reading.  I found a couple of recommended books that I added to my reading list as they sounded interesting, but somehow I have missed ever picking them up.

A couple of honorible mentiones I would like to make are Graham Paul Sharp’s Helfort’s War series (Link to Helfort’s War: Book I) and Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series.  Both are fairly quick reads but I really like the word building and general story construction.  Since they are fairly quick reads I would suggest picking up the first novel in each series and seeing if it suits.  Helfort’s War Book 4 is coming out in November 2010 and The Lost fleet series recently had book 6 of 6 come out.

Any others to add?

Been a little off my track here on EP for a few different reasons.  Life off the web got a little crazy has a lot to do with it, so haven’t really been able to get caught up on all of my side projects.  (This site being one of them.)  I have about 2-3 book reviews I need to get done and a stack of books I would like to get reading!

I have recently started a new site that also probably has something to do with my being behind on things, Hosehead Life is my new site on Life with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  Some might find it interesting, so feel free to stop by and let me know what you think.

I have added a couple of more author blogs to the resources page.  Jim C. Hines and Kelly McCullough.

Both of these authors are actually new discoveries for me.  I just discovered them in the past year.  Both have had reviews done fairly recently on this site as well.

Jim is the author of the Princess series which takes the classic Disney characters and puts a Grimm’s meets Charley’s Angels sort of spin on them.  Read the review for The Mermaid’s Madness.  He also has a Goblin trilogy out that I have read great things about.  Since I know I like his writing style, I will have to pick those up and review them at some point as well.

Kelly is the author of the Ravirn series.  I have reviewed Cybermancy, Codespell, and MythOS so far on this site.  These books are a fun mix of Greek mythology, cyberpunk, and fantasy.  They are a blast to read and his fun quirky style is a pleasure to read.

I encourage you to check out their sites and if you haven’t, pick up a copy of their books.  I enjoy following both of them outside of their novels and you might too.

I have been meaning to do a post for a while.  Jeff over at Fantasy Book News & Reviews had a good post discussing and responding to some comments on his reading preferences.  A lot of the responding originates from this post on a different site.

The key part of the discussion I picked up on is whether the gender of an author determines whether or not I read a book.  Apparently a few folks did “Best of” lists that didn’t include female authors or something along those lines.  I am going to have to agree with Jess on this one – the gender of an author has nothing to do with whether or not I will read a book.

The post goes on to discuss some of the comments in the one article criticizing Jeff’s reading habits.  The thing that most bothered me about the post and the comments is that by somehow reading more male authors than female makes you sexist, limits your horizons, or other such stuff at that.  One commentor actually seemed to have a level head though.

The key part of what Aiden said was this:

It bothers me that Jeff even has to think consider whether he’s ‘sexist’, because of the gender of the authors he enjoys.

Bottom-line, I don’t think people should worry about the authors race/number of fingers/gender, and just read books they enjoy. Just because all the books on my ‘Favourites of ’09′ list are written by white males doesn’t mean I chose them for that reason, it just means that those white males wrote the best books I read this year.

Jeff somewhat agreed with this for his own reasons, though he did say he tends to purposely select male protagonists.  You know what – that’s fine.  I read what I like, he reads what he likes, and we both post about it.  People tend to enjoy the best what they can identify with.  The whole discussion seems a bit silly to me.  Who cares if someone is “limiting” their choices or not?

All that being said, I would be annoyed if the same was said about me.  True this site is fairly new and to date I have reviewed and written about all male authors, though one does approach things from a female protagonist reviews.  Most of my favorite authors are males, but there are quite a few female authors I read.  My own novel I am writing does have a male protagonist, but certainly contains inspiration from Katherine Kurtz more than anyone else.

To be honest though, I don’t pay that much attention to the gender of an author.  I see a book title, description, or blurb that interests me, I read the back (description) and if I like it flag it on my “To-Read” list on Goodreads.  Seeing as I subscribe to quite a few Review sites, sign up for book contests, and now am starting to get PR releases (and hopefully ARC’s soon) I get flooded with possibilities.  I really don’t even pay attention to whether or not the name is male or female, etc.   I tend to look at the cover and read the description before even really seeing who the book is by.

This post got a little longer than expected and I hope the topic is beat to death.  The only change I anticipate making here on Epic Plains is to review books whether or not I actually like them.  Seeing as my “To-Read” list is rarely less than 50 books, I end up being pretty selective in what I purchase, so generally only buy books I know I am going to like.  However, I do have a ARC and contest book coming in, so consider those randoms that while in my genre I may or may not like.

Any thoughts?

Here are a few interesting posts/links I came across over the weekend:

Fantasy Book Critic – Cindy’s Anticipated 2010 List.

Nice list of books coming out in 2010 that might be of interest

Scifi Signal – Scifi Tidbits for 1/17/10

Of particular note on this is the CultPop interview with John Scalzi and Jim C. Hines.  Having just reviewed a book by Jim I enjoyed his part of the interview the most.

Scifi Signal – A Dozen Doses of Free Fiction From Robert A. Heinlein and Fritz Leiber

Links to a bit of free fiction from those two authors.

Tribal Writer – the problem with outlines and word quotas (and why they sometimes might lead to sucky writing)

Good post on how outlines and wordcounts might hinder your writing process.

I am sure there are plenty of others that I missed linking.  This post is scheduled for Monday morning and I will add more if I come across others before then.

I am currently trying out TextBrokers.com.  The site came up on a freelance writing site that I subscribe to and I looked like it might be worth giving a shot.

First impression is that while it is possible to make some additional income from writing, the volume one would have to do at the relatively low pay rate seems prohibitive for making it into a viable revenue stream.  That is while working a day job, blogging, writing, editing, and somewhere in there spending time with the family.

The other difficulty that I ran into with the one article I wrote and sold via the site was that it took me longer to write a 320 word article than I thought it would.  When you have no interest in the subject mater it takes quite a bit more time to research and produce the content.  Now with a little practice, I suspect that will get easier.  Though knowing you are essentially ghost writing is somewhat disheartening as well.

However, difficulties aside, it does seem possible to make the occasional extra few dollars writing a piece every now and then.  So I don’t think I am going to give up trying out that site.  I am just going to make sure it doesn’t take away from blogging or writing since both of those are more important to me.

My friend Shane has set up a new writing site called “Novelnaut.“  It looks like he has similar goals with his site to what I have for Epic Plains.  He is intending it to be his “Writer’s Blog.”

In his own words:

A blog where I can ponder the life of a writer, review the books that I read, and maybe learn a thing or two about the writing, editing, and publishing worlds

He actually has first first book review up already.  He reviewed Ghengis: Lords of the Bow.  (A book I intend to borrow from him sometime soon.) Head on over and check it out.