Thoughts on Forthcoming Books?

[J-Sun]

The Locus website prints a list of forthcoming books which they periodically update. While it starts chronologically, probably the easiest way to look over the whole listing is to look at the list which is alphabetized by author (for US folks or UK folks). While it's a good and handy list, the one bad thing about it is that it's a bare list. I thought people could post any thoughts they had about it to amplify it. For instance, if you're really looking forward to a book or you know something about it or its author or anything that occurred to you. (Locus does have a "New Books" section which expands on them a little as they come out but there's no reason we can't jump ahead. )

For me, I've read previous books by Anthony, Ashby, Asher, Benford/Niven, (maybe Blaylock), Bova, Bujold, Cherryh, Dozois, Egan, PF Hamilton, Heinlein, King, Kress, Le Guin, Niven, Weber, Resnick, Robinson, Sawyer, Stross, Swanwick, Wolfe, and Zahn, as well anthologies by Datlow and Strahan but (a) most people are probably familiar with most of them and (b) that's too much to get into, so I'll just say that I'm really looking forward to the Benford/Niven (Glorious) because I think it'll include a really fun, huge-scale, idea-packed story that felt like it needed more to fully explore - the novel (book 3 of the Bowl of Heaven/Shipstar series) should do that. An author I haven't yet read a book of is Martin L. Shoemaker. He's written several decent stories but found a new gear with "Today I Am Paul" which is a really great story. He's expanded that into a novel, Today I Am Carey, which I plan to buy soon, and I'd also be interested in his listed collection, Today I Remember. "Paul" is an emotional story about a robot who starts out as a caretaker for an elderly woman and the novel carries him on to whatever else he gets up to.

I may post more later, but hopefully that'll get the ball rolling.

 

[tinkerdan]

I see that Neal Asher's The Human is coming out.
Since I have read The Soldier and The Warship I will be getting this one.
Honestly I'm not an Asher fan and it might be because those two are the only books of his Polity that I have read.
However, my troubles stem from the books taking so much time to examine the buildup of weapons and technologies that there is little room for character development--though there seem to be focus characters from the several different war-machine factions. It all culminates into a final brief war where the technologies and weapons are finally tested and the devastating conclusion seems to be where the next book will start.

There has to be something here that does manage to get through to me because I do want to continue the Rise of the Jain series.
I just haven't been tempted to look into any of the rest of his books.

I'm sure there are fans of his who are going to be puzzled by my take....

 

[Bick]

I haven't had time to browse through the full list yet, but great link - thanks for providing.

Something that does immediately pop out at me is Bova's Uranus. Oh, also I see the follow up book by Arkady Martine is out in September; I presume that's the sequel to A Memory Called Empire.

EDIT: I'm not sure its complete, mind you, as I'm pretty sure Alan Dean Foster has a new book out in the next 6 months and he's not listed.

 

[Rodders]

I love Asher and will most definitely get The Human.
I’ll also pick up the Iain M. Banks The Culture: Notes and drawings too.

 

[Serendipity]

Me? My list of three books I'm really looking forward from the current Locus list are:

• Network Effect by Martha Wells (May 2020) - Murderbot diaries book 5 - what a lovely character!
• Uranus by Ben Bova (May 2020) - this planet has so little written about it - it'll be interesting to see how Bova uses it
• Gallowglass by Simon Morden (November 2020) - near future asking the fundamental question about whether to concentrate going into space or countering climate change - something that needs serious debate now!

 

[Elckerlyc]

There were several interesting-looking books in the making. But mostly I'm looking forward to :

• TIM POWERS • Forced Perspectives • Baen, Mar 2020 (hc, eb) (actually already bought this one on 3 March)
• TIM POWERS • The Properties of Rooftop Air • Subterranean Press, Jun 2020 (na, hc, eb)
• SUSANNA CLARKE • Piranesi • Bloomsbury, Sep 2020 (hc)
• ADA PALMER • Perhaps the Stars • Head of Zeus, Jun 2020 (hc)

 

[J-Sun]

I see that Neal Asher's The Human is coming out.
Since I have read The Soldier and The Warship I will be getting this one.
Honestly I'm not an Asher fan and it might be because those two are the only books of his Polity that I have read.
However, my troubles stem from the books taking so much time to examine the buildup of weapons and technologies that there is little room for character development--though there seem to be focus characters from the several different war-machine factions. It all culminates into a final brief war where the technologies and weapons are finally tested and the devastating conclusion seems to be where the next book will start.

There has to be something here that does manage to get through to me because I do want to continue the Rise of the Jain series.
I just haven't been tempted to look into any of the rest of his books.

I'm sure there are fans of his who are going to be puzzled by my take....

Well, I think it's safe to say that the Dragon/Cormac books are the core of the Polity books (or at least the initial core) and those plus a Cormac prequel do get into his character (though I'll admit that (a) he's oddly off-center for much of his own books and (b) I focus more on the concepts and action when it comes to Asher).

I haven't had time to browse through the full list yet, but great link - thanks for providing.

Something that does immediately pop out at me is Bova's Uranus. Oh, also I see the follow up book by Arkady Martine is out in September; I presume that's the sequel to A Memory Called Empire.

EDIT: I'm not sure its complete, mind you, as I'm pretty sure Alan Dean Foster has a new book out in the next 6 months and he's not listed.

Glad you liked the link. The ISFDB does have a Star Trek tie listed as forthcoming from Foster - I'm not sure if Locus includes those or not, but they likely aren't complete, especially not the further out you go - they update the list each month or so, so it's kind of like a weather forecast.

As far as both Asher and Bova go, I would be looking forward to those but they write so much and I read so slowly that I've got a lot of their books in the Pile and just don't know about adding more yet.

What's the Martine like? I read a story by her that I loved the first time (though it didn't seem to hang together as well logically on a re-reading) so I was curious about her first book.

There were several interesting-looking books in the making. But mostly I'm looking forward to :

• TIM POWERS • Forced Perspectives • Baen, Mar 2020 (hc, eb) (actually already bought this one on 3 March)
• TIM POWERS • The Properties of Rooftop Air • Subterranean Press, Jun 2020 (na, hc, eb)
• SUSANNA CLARKE • Piranesi • Bloomsbury, Sep 2020 (hc)
• ADA PALMER • Perhaps the Stars • Head of Zeus, Jun 2020 (hc)

I'm not familiar with Clarke or Palmer - what are they like?

 

[williamjm]

These are the ones I'm planning to get:

• Joe Abercombie - The Trouble With Peace
• Robert Jackson Bennett - Shorefall
• Susanna Clarke - Piranesi, Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favourite fantasy novels so I feel I have to read her second book, even if it's not connected
• Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Doors of Eden

There were several interesting-looking books in the making. But mostly I'm looking forward to :

• TIM POWERS • Forced Perspectives • Baen, Mar 2020 (hc, eb) (actually already bought this one on 3 March)

I'll probably get this at some point, although I thought the first book in the series was reasonably good but not among Powers' best works.

I'm not familiar with Clarke or Palmer - what are they like?

I'm not sure what to compare Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to since it is such a distinctive book, the writing style feels like it is inspired a lot by the authors of the Regency period it is set in. It's a long book and not a fast-paced one, partially due to the frequent long rambling footnotes. It took me a little bit of time to get into it but I thought the story did become very compelling as it went along, it has several memorable characters including a great villain. I thought it did a great job of showing how different the mindset of the faerie characters in it is to the humans.

I read Ada Palmer's first two books, it's another series that's a bit difficult to compare to anything else. There are a huge number of ideas thrown into the series and the plot is impressively intricate. However, I'm not sure I ever really found her futuristic society to be convincing, it felt a bit artificial, and it felt like the plot was starting to get a bit too far-fetched by the end of the second book.

 

[tinkerdan]

My best description is...

I'm not sure what to compare Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to since it is such a distinctive book

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is like something you would get if Harry Potter was written by Sheridan Le Fanu .

 

[tobl]

peace talks -jim butcher
sucker punch - laurell hamilton
robert heinlein - the pursuit of pankera
these are some of my favorite things....