The Big Idea Index, 2009

And now, for your linking convenience, an index of every author who contributed a Big Idea essay this year, in alphabetical order, From Adams to Williamson. Catch up on what you missed, and keep these authors in mind when you’re cashing in your bookstore gift cards this week.

John Joseph Adams

C.L. Anderson

Julia Angwin

Paolo Bacigalupi

Steven R. Boyett

Sarah Rees Brennan

John Brown

Jeff Carlson

Harry Connolly

Megan Crewe

David Anthony Durham

Greg van Eekhout

Brian Evenson

C.C. Finlay

Jasper Fforde

Diana Pharaoh Francis

Daniel Fox

Laura Anne Gilman

Lev Grossman

Janice Hardy

Jim C. Hines

Charlie Huston

J.C. Hutchins

Kaza Kingsley

Mindy Klasky

Jay Lake

Tom Levenson

Malinda Lo

Paul Melko

China Miéville

James Morrow

Chad Orzel

Nicole Peeler

Diana Peterfreund

Sarah Prineas

Cherie Priest

Margaret Ronald

Diana Rowland

Carrie Ryan

Robert J. Sawyer

Seth Shostak

James Swallow

S. Andrew Swann

Catherynne Valente

Jeff VanderMeer

Carrie Vaughn

Scott Westerfeld

Edward Willett

Michael Z. Williamson

An excellent collection of authors, if I do say so myself.

Also, for any of you who are wondering when or if BigIdeaAuthors.com will ever see the light of day: Yes, we’re still working on spinning off the Big Idea to its own, fully-featured site. It’s just taking longer than we thought. In the meantime, of course, I’ll still be presenting The Big Idea here, as long as authors are still interested in participating. Indeed, after the new year (and when publicists are back at work), I’ll make a formal call for more of them.

But for now, please enjoy these.

29 Comments on “The Big Idea Index, 2009”

  1. Love the Big Idea posts. Keep it up. But wasn’t there supposed to be a website for just those? Did this get tabled and I missed it? Don’t get me wrong, I love reading them here.

  2. Next year, instead of gift cards I’m going to ask for time cards. ‘Cause I can afford far more books than I have time to read. This is made clear to me every time I look at my pile of unread books.

  3. One guy’s opinion: I enjoy seeing the Big Idea stuff here. If it goes elsewhere, your readership might drop off a big.

    Then again, that might be a positive, letting your website swing back to being more personal. What the hell. Whatever you wanna do. Cut the cards and deal. I’m in.

  4. Another guy’s opinion: I’m eagerly awaiting the Big Idea website.

    I’d love to be able to go to a bookstore and find the books while reading through the Big Idea site on my Blackberry.

  5. I’m not a writer but if I was I think I would have to fire any publisher too dumb/lazy not to take advantage of this great service for both readers and writers/publishers.

  6. You don’t “fire” publishers. Publishers are the company, not the person in charge of publicity. That’s a publicist. You can’t even fire a publicist who’s not doing his job the way you want. If you’re an author, you’re not employing the publisher of the publicist. If anything, they’re contracting your services to produce a book that they’ll market how they see fit.

  7. Or Ryk.

    Thank you, John, I was just going to attempt to find all of those! You’re very bad on my allowance, btw, but that’s ok. Books last longer than booze!

  8. @Christopher – Done!

    Signed. RickWhoIsNotThatRick (formerly rick).

    John – I know this is a long shot but is the site holdup technical? If so, I bet there are several folks here who might be able to help. Doesn’t really matter to me in that I’ll read them her or there, just wondering.

  9. RWINR:

    Nope, it’s not technical at this point. It’s time issues involved in setting up the site. We’ve got it under control, we’re just moving slowly, is all.

  10. Damn I only bought paperbacks of 9 of them. Admittedly a couple of those I have all their paperback books ;)

    Must review list further.

    Thanks for bringing to our attention these great authors as unfortunately there is no longer a local reliable source(indie sf bookstore) for recommendations for all too many of us.

  11. The Big Idea has been like a Christmas gift all year long for me this year, helping me find several books that I might not otherwise have looked at. Thank you for all of your efforts.

  12. While I was aware of a number of these authors before reading their Big Idea posts, I’d like to thank you for the tremendous number of new authors I’ve found through your blog. Some of them I’d heard of but had never gotten around to reading (like Robert J Sawyer); others I’d never heard of, but purchased on the strength of their interview and your recommendation (like Harry Connelly). It’s been a great source of new lit, thank you.

  13. The one writer I’m really surprised you haven’t done a Big Idea with is Naomi Novik – it strikes me that “How would the Napoleonic wars have worked out if dragons existed?” is a pretty big idea!

  14. woot! this is perfect. I’ve already purchased 5 of these books based on the posts and now I get to read more.

    As someone whose read science fiction for 35 years, these are great intros to new and not so new writers I may have missed. especially since I no longer live near powell’s in portland

  15. I’ve only read two of the BigIdea’s author (3 books total), but I probably wouldn’t have found them otherwise, so I say Thank You! This has been the first year in a while that of the 100 or so books I read, on the fiction side, the ones that made the best impression on me were all unusual scifi/fantasy. I’m not sure what that means, if anything (and it probably doesn’t, in the big scheme of things), but I like it, and that’s what counts.

  16. The Big Idea is an invaluable resource to those of us who read too damned fast. (Evil Rob has a saying: “We’re out of books again!” said while looking desperately at the Wall-O-Books that have been re-read one too many times.) We’ve gotten many of them and discovered many new favorites in the process.

    Once you get the Big Idea site launched, just treat it as you do your AMC columns, with a link and the comments turned off. That should keep up the traffic while not cluttering up this site too badly.

  17. I totally dig the whole Big Idea concept, and this end of year compilation is teh awesome. That being said, author names, especially new (to me) authors, are an almost useless referent as I am one of those visual artistic types.

    I know it would be a ton of work, but your list would be more helpful if each author was also listed with a thumbnail of the book cover, and possibly the title as well.

    Being out of books at Che Tolladay is a serious problem, your Big Ideas concept has done much to prevent this needless crime. Raging, lunatic, under-read artists are such a menace to society. Congress should give you a medal or something.

  18. Two names missing! Mathew Reilly ( Australian Author) yes we do have em Down Under
    and Robert Buettner. If you need a read both serve us (their masters) well.

%d bloggers like this: