Chemist45 wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:36 pm
For real SciFi read Larry Correia, Tim Zahn, David Weber, John Ringo and others like them.
Look for books published by Baen books.
These people will never win a Hugo and they don't care.
Well, it isn't exactly that they don't
care. Back in 2013, Larry Correia took a stand against the lack of diversity in the Hugo nominations, and was quickly joined by Brad Torgersen (some background
here at The Washington Free Beacon). Correia called the campaign to prove the leftist bias "Sad Puppies," because, as he said, "boring
message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness."
The overall effort got one of Larry's books,
Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles, shortlisted for the 2014 Hugo for best novel. Because he classifies himself as an outspoken right-winger, controversy and character assassination ensued. Larry
wrote a long blog post about it in April 2014.
Subsequently, though, and at least to my knowledge, the Hugos settled quickly back into the firmly-to-the-left themes. Leftist but not expressly gender-centric, one perennial nominee (nominated--I think--7 times and won once), China Miéville, is a British, card-carrying, communist; much of his nonfiction writing is about Marxism. Just sayin'.
I'd have to double-check, but I think I've read most of the Hugo novel winners since 2000. J.K. Rowling won one year for the first Harry Potter book (which I read just because the franchise became so popular), but otherwise the only ones that still stand out at all was
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (I like Norse mythology) and
The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, each of the three winning best novel. The winner this year was
A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine. I started reading the precursor to this one, her
A Memory Called Empire, which won in 2020, and couldn't get past the first few chapters. Just not my cup of tea. So I'll skip the 2022 winner.
That said, my preferred genre is more military and thriller fiction, like Brad Thor, Mark Greaney, and Barry Eisler. I've read all five of Jack Carr's books so far, and I'm really hoping that he can clean up some of the mechanical problems he still has. My fear is that he got too much success too quickly. I cannot
not read his stuff--subject matter, his personal expertise, and solid plotting--but he has some beginning-writer issues like POV control, pacing lapses, and failing to understand how much detail the narrative can bear and when. He could also use a better editor; his books aren't rife with them, but there are still occasional grammatical/syntax mistakes that get into print.
All this should probably be in the Books and Videos category, shouldn't it? Sorry. Started as being only about wokeism. But while I'm at it...
Die Hard is the best Christmas movie!
