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by Neil Walsh
For more than a decade now, SF Site has been annually soliciting you, our readers, to vote for your favourite books of the past year. Over the past couple of months, we've been receiving your input on the best of 2008 with interest, and now we're ready to present the results. What follows is the best books of 2008 as chosen by the SF Site readers.
It's an interesting list this year and one that I personally feel good about, since there's so much overlap with the Editors' Choice Top 10 which we presented last issue. Whenever I see that the SF Site reviewers and readership are in agreement about what the best books are, it gives confidence that we're reviewing and recommending books you want to hear about, and you're reading books that maybe you first heard about right here.
The only significant difference that really leaps out at me this time is that the SF Site Editors' Choice Top 10 for 2008 includes 4 graphic novel titles, whereas the Readers' Choice Top 10, below, has none. I'm not sure what this means: perhaps the SF Site audience isn't big on comics, or perhaps you just haven't given them a real chance.
In any case, there are plenty of excellent recommendations for good reading between the two lists, and I hope we all find something new and exciting to read which we might otherwise have missed.
[Editor's Note: Where possible, links lead to SF Site reviews of the books.
You can find links to other Best of the Year columns here.]
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(Tor, July 2008)
A novel in the Old Man's War universe, fourth in the sequence. This one, however, is largely a retelling of events depicted in the third, The Last Colony (Tor, April 2007) which was #7 on this list last year. This time, we see things from the point of view of Zoe, teenaged daughter of a traitor and adopted daughter of John and Jane Perry. A few puzzle pieces from the previous novels are fit more snugly into place, and Scalzi's writing is as tight as ever. High praise when you recall that Old Man's War (Tor, January 2005) received a Hugo nomination.
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(Tor, January 2008)
In this extremely clever and satiric novel, Swanwick returns to the world he created in his classic "anti-fantasy" The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993). Both books are likely not quite what you would expect from the title, as Swanwick's dragons are as much machine as they are magic or mythology, and his world is an oddly familiar mix of the one we live in and the ones we explore in fantasy literature. Dragons of Babel examines some issues that are particularly relevant in our modern world today, such as terrorism and the corruption inherent in great power. A truly inspired work. Only just barely squeezed out of the top 10 Editors' Choice.
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(Orbit, February 2008)
In this novel, Banks makes a long-awaited return to his Culture universe. He takes us to another low-tech shellworld, but this time one of the natives (a member of the royal family) has lived most of her life in the Culture and is now an agent of Special Circumstances. When she learns of her father's death and the resulting political upheavals, she decides to return to her rather backwards world and take a more active interest. Banks once again demonstrates a masterful handling of a variety of styles and genres all in one book, with some surprising twists along the way.
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(Gollancz, August 2008 / Del Rey, January 2009)
Morgan has established himself as an award-winning author of SF thrillers; this book is his first fantasy novel. His protagonist is a middle-aged and mostly retired war hero who has fallen somewhat out of favour, and is lured back into further adventure. It's very much in Morgan's now-familiar style of sleekly-plotted, gloves off and no punches pulled storytelling. However, Morgan takes what you might expect from sword and sorcery fantasy and gives it a brutal thrashing until he has molded it into something that is uniquely his own. And that means, of course, convincing characters and dialogue, and an unflinching treatment of sex and violence. It's a powerful kick-butt novel, not for overly delicate readers.
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(HarperCollins, September 2008 / Bloomsbury & Subterranean, October 2008)
Gaiman is no stranger to SF Site readers -- and contributors (this book also appeared at #5 on the Editors' Choice Top 10 for 2008). He's a universal favourite, and his latest is a young adult fantasy that is cleverly constructed to parallel Kipling's The Jungle Book. The crucial difference is that instead of being taken in and raised by animals in the forests of India, Gaiman's orphan child is adopted by the undead inhabitants of a graveyard. The US editions are illustrated by Dave McKean, who has collaborated with Gaiman on many past projects. If you haven't already, you should read this book before they make the film version of it.
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(Bantam UK, August 2008 / Tor, September 2008)
Erikson is another perennial favourite of SF Site readers and editors. This book also appeared on the Top 10 books chosen by the SF Site Editors as #4. This time, Erikson takes us back to Darujhistan, where we began in Book 1. But going home again is never easy. So discovers the heartbroken Cutter, formerly Crokus Younghand. And the surviving Bridgeburners, who set out to open a tavern and live peaceably. (This book boasts one of the most brilliantly-described battle scenes, involving retired Bridgeburners and the unlucky assassins hired to kill them.) Meanwhile, the city of Black Coral, occupied by Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, is enshrouded in permanent darkness, with evil brewing in the form of a plague of addiction and insanity, courtesy of the Dying God's blood. And inside Rake's cursed sword, Dragnipur, the wagon of eternal torment is running out of road. What will the dead do when eternity ends?
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(Night Shade Books, February 2008)
Bacigalupi is an author of short SF, generally hard SF, and typically his stories have an environmental theme. "Pump Six" is a new story, and the remainder of the collection is represented by his previous output, including the Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning "The Calorie Man" (2006) and the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated "The People of Sand and Slag" (2005) and the Hugo-nominated "The Yellow Card Man" (2007). His short fiction has definitely been noticed, and this collection will show you why. Now we're all curious to see what his first novel will be like: The Windup Girl is coming from Night Shade Books in September 2009.
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(Tor, April 2008 / HarperVoyager UK, October 2008)
This is another one that appeared on both lists: SF Site Contributors ranked it at #7. Doctorow's Orwellian vision rings frighteningly true. Four high school students are apprehended after a terrorist bombing of the San Francisco Bay bridge, because they happen to be in the area. They are held as enemy combatants based only on the flimsiest evidence. The Department of Homeland Security has effectively revoked the Bill of Rights, and San Francisco has become a police state. It's up to Marcus Yallow, student and suspected terrorist, to fight for freedom and liberty using his technological know-how and natural cleverness.
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(Gollancz, March 2008 / Pyr Books, September 2008)
Abercrombie burst onto the fantasy landscape with bloody murder in his eye and a snarling shout that was not to be ignored. Volume 2, Before They Are Hanged, was #5 on this list last year; that the concluding volume has moved into the #2 spot is a clear indication that the author has not disappointed with his first fantasy trilogy. The Last Argument of Kings offers more black humour, realistic characters, bloody battle scenes, political intrigue, and all around high quality entertainment. And it provides an unyielding, cynical end to the series -- precisely what was demanded by what had come before.
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(William Morrow / Atlantic Books, September 2008)
Here again the SF Site readers and contributors are in agreement: if you're only going to read one novel from 2008, it should be this one. In this ambitious novel, Stephenson playfully tackles philosophy and physics, and wrestles them into a plot of adventure that rivals the best thrillers. It is, simply put, a demonstration of the highest standards that science fiction can achieve. Arbre is a world not so different from our own, except that there's a sort of monastic system in place which shuts its members off from the rest of society to maintain and to further all knowledge. Once per decade, the monks of all knowledge open their doors and interact with the rest of humanity. This time, however, it's not just the rest of humanity, it's also aliens -- leading our protagonist, Fraa Erasmus, into great adventure, mystery and sophisticated debate, interspersed with healthy doses of humour. Stephenson really outdoes himself in this one -- it's not to be missed.
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