Locus magazine has announced the finalists for its annual awards. In addition to awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, awards are also given for Best Fantasy Novel, Best First Novel and Best Young Adult Book, all based on a readers’ poll.
This year’s best sf novel finalists are: The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks; Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow; Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Baroque Cycle: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson; and, Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. Once again, I have not read any of the finalists. Iron Sunrise has made so many shortlists it is rapidly moving up my “to read” list, though. Stross seems on an excellent run. He also made the finalist list for best fantasy novel with The Family Trade and best novella with “The Concrete Jungle,” which appears in The Atrocity Archives.
Surprisingly, I have read two of the five best fantasy novel nominees, Stephen King’s Song of Susannah and Iron Council by China Miéville.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Frank Herbert
