2008 Reading List

January

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

February

Woman On The Edge Of Time, by Marge Piercy

March

Archangel Protocol, by Lyda Morehouse

April

Alanya To Alanya, by L. Timmel Duchamp

May

Half-Life, by Shelly Jackson

June

Two short stories:

• "Lingua Franca", by Carole McDonnell
• "Necahual", by Tobias S. Buckell

(Both stories are from So Long Been Dreaming, ed. by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan.)

July

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

August

Under My Roof, by Nick Mamatas

September

The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller

October

Woken Furies, by Richard K. Morgan

November

Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (orginal title: Triton), by Samuel R. Delany

December

Two short stories:

• "The Mountains of Mourning", by Lois McMaster Bujold
• "Heirs of the Perisphere", by Howard Waldrop

January 2009

Fire Logic, by Laurie J. Marks

Notes on Selection

After much discussion we decided to do a full year's selection, February to January. This would let us put a full two months between the selection process in December and the first new book in February, eliminating the panic-stricken search for the new book in January.

Also, although it's never been an official rule, we decided that we would not have the same author selected two years in a row. So for those who make mental lists of authors for next year, keep in mind Grass by Sherri Tepper, Probability Moon by Nancy Kress, Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason, and "The Persistence of Vision" by John Varley, who were eliminated for consideration for that reason. Towing Jehovah by James Morrow simply lost out on the final vote, but there is definite interest in Morrow for the following year.

Although we kept with the traditional drawing of titles from a hat, we did watch the schedule to make sure that book-buying would be convenient. So The Mount, So Long Been Dreaming, and "The Heirs of Persephone", which are all available from the small press publishers that come to Wiscon, are by an amazing coincidence (actually it mostly was a coincidence) scheduled after Wiscon.

And finally, we are trying an experiment with the graphic novel Watchmen. We've considered graphic novels before, but the barriers were the expense and the availability (they were not necessarily carried by libraries, for example). But Watchmen, which has been in print for twenty years, is certainly an exception, and we felt that between used copies, library copies, and friend's copies, there shouldn't be a problem getting hold of it.