31 Comments on “Redshirts on the Locus Magazine 2012 Recommended Reading List”

1. Great recommendations there. And, speaking as one in the magazine business and a one-time (too expensive now) pulp magazine collector), that’s the best cover I’ve seen on Locus, maybe ever. Flashy!

2. Oh, sounds neat. I’d like to pick that up in epub, but I don’t think it’s available yet.

3. Where is RSHD on the list?

4. Oh, let’s confine that discussion to a single thread, please.

5. Sorry John. Congratulations on the list, it’s a very good group this year – a lot of my favourite authors on there.

6. Dave John wrote a book?

7. I always enjoy the Locus Annual poll and am glad that you made their recommended list. I will say that as a reader that loves my literature in the accessible (Scalzi/ Resnick/ Dietz, etc.) mode rather than the “literary” mode, I always feel a bit bad when I vote knowing that my favorites are rarely on the recommended list and have very little chance of placing on the final list of winners and runner-ups. The ballot lets you do write-ins, no question that it is open to more than the recommended list, but I would be willing to bet that a significant number of voters will tend to pick from the drop down list (rather than write in their own choices). Don’t know if there is a way around it, but still…

8. I’m baffled by the classification of ‘Railsea’ as a YA novel.

9. I don’t know how you got lucky enough to meet me either! Uh, I mean thanks, and back atcha.

10. Name dropper…congrats.

11. Congrats John. I’ve read a few off that list, including Redshirts. I can that there’s lots more reading to do…. Now if I only had time…

    One oversight on the list, though. No love for Richard Kadrey? I found him through The Big Idea, and tore through the Sandman Slim series, loving every second of them. I’m actually working through them again while waiting for new installments of The Human Division.

    Kadrey’s take on theology is very interesting….

12. Jolly good! And I am looking forward even more to this copy of Locus dropping through my postbox.

13. Probly got that lucky ’cause you are one?

14. Congrats.

    Question for the group: Why do Sci-Fi magazines have such awful websites? I know quality web design is expensive, but Jiminy Christmas, there’s a random icon on the bottom of the page that links to a news article from 2002.

15. Crikey O’reilly. That’s a good list. I have read several on it including yours, but I clearly have some reading to do . . .

16. If you look carefully, the news article from 2002 does mention the website…

17. Completely OT, but I don’t read science fiction magazines regularly – and have never read Locus before today. I bought the digital download and I gotta tell you, to me it’s a perfect example of something that’s better in print than on a screen. Even with a reasonably sized monitor on my desk, I spent a whole lot of time scrolling and fussing to read the pages of dense type. It reminded me of an old Whole Earth Catalog or something. That said, reading it led me to half a dozen books I’d never heard of that I’ve noted to buy.

    Scott A.

18. Apparently having two of your books in our book group’s current reading cycle isn’t enough Scalzi for some people ….. we’ll be reading/discussing Redshirts sometime after June (which is when we’re talking about Fuzzy Nation). there’s no such thing as too much Scalzi for some folks, I guess. ;)~

19. Studer: Ah, yes, I see that now. Still, not a well designed front page.

20. Two notes: I work as a lowly senior editor at Locus, but should not be construed to be speaking for Locus, and I was one of a couple dozen people with input into the rec list. Having thus disclaimed myself:

    Thanks for the links, John!

    that’s the best cover I’ve seen on Locus, maybe ever. Flashy!

    Thanks! We have a dedicated design editor now, Francesca Myman, who’s been doing some really beautiful work lately. (I have nothing at all to do with designing the covers, so I’m comfortable praising them wholeheartedly. She’s doing good work.)

    I’m baffled by the classification of ‘Railsea’ as a YA novel.

    Eh, that’s how it was marketed, as a successor to Un Lun Dun, for “readers of all ages,” AKA a YA book they hope has crossover appeal — which of course it does. YA is a slippery category a lot of times though, and has as much to do with marketing as anything else. (Margo Lanagan’s one of my favorite writers, for instance, and I’m often surprised by the books of hers that are called YA.)

    No love for Richard Kadrey

    The short and unsatisfying explanation is “Not enough of the people who put together the recommended list voted for it.” The more nuanced answer — based on general impressions gathered over the past dozen years of seeing the list made — is that after the first couple of books in an ongoing series, there tends to be less enthusiasm for recommending the new titles, unless it’s an extraordinary installment — a writer doing more of the same, no matter how entertainingly or competently, doesn’t seem to hit the threshold of inclusion for our reviewers. (I comfort myself by hoping that’s the reason my latest series novel didn’t make the list either…)

    Why do Sci-Fi magazines have such awful websites?

    I confess I have nothing to do with the website, either, besides posting news there occasionally. Our situation is a bit weird, though — the website, Locus Online, is run separately from the print magazine, though some material from the magazine appears on the site, and of course we cooperate closely with the online editor-in-chief. He runs his own original content, too, though (short fiction/film/book reviews, etc.), and indeed won a Hugo of his own for the site (in the “Best Web Site” category) back in ’02. The magazine and website are more collaborative partners than parent/subsidiary, at least in my view.

21. Congrats, John. Some fine reading to be found on that list.

22. Congratulations. I have mixed feelings about Redshirts. The main story I find to be really slight, deserving of the ‘hey, this is a funny book’ attitude and depending on recognition of genre cliches, and I was disappointed with the slide to ‘but it’s all fiction’, which seemed to me to make pointless the struggles of the characters we had followed up to that point. But the codas… the codas are beautiful and heartbreaking, tragic and comic vignettes of real characters that couldn’t exist without the cliches in the main story. Jo Walton writes about the long spear, where a payoff perhaps several books into a series (the spear point) depends on the buildup over the previous work (the spear shaft). I think you achieved that with the codas as the point of Redshirts, stabbing right to the heart.

23. I don’t think I agree there was a slide to ‘but it’s all fiction’. Friend of mine also had the reaction that the Codas somehow invalidated the main story and made clear it was just fiction as well (same conclusion, different route than you).
    I dunno, after the big reveal and their… “trip” to solve their problem (trying to avoid spoilers), nothing directly or indirectly contravenes what is established. We never find out if the script writer is crazy or if it actually happened.
    Ah well, I enjoyed the novel itself more than the Codas, but to each his/her own :)

24. Nicely put, Elaine!

25. Tim – thank you for the response!

    I must admit to a complete ignorance of the _marketing_ of _Railsea_; from what I remember my experience was that something (probably Locus’ forthcoming books section) notified me that there was a new Mieville novel coming out, I ordered the e-book from Amazon, and then completely forgot about it until the happy day it showed up on my Kindle, free of blurbs, book covers, or other advertising material.

    That said … ‘Un Lun Dun’ I understand as a juvenile novel; ‘Railsea’ felt just like one of his adult books to me. Hence the surprise. :)

26. Kittens are so soft and fuzzy! Give me yarn and I will play with them for hours!

    [NOTE: Meow — JS]

27. Congrats John, Let the Kitten Roar! Haters are going to hate. Continue on the high road brother.

28. It’s so cute! Can I play with it?

29. I am a freshman writer and I am currently in an English class. I agree with most of the thing you say in this article. I will give my view on teenage writers. I am a teenage writer so I believe that it is best coming from my eyes. A lot of teens enjoy writing and some of them are very good at it when they actually try. But there are other teens who really do not enjoy writing at all. Those who do not like to write will basically turn anything in to get credit and most of the time just rushed through and did a crappy job. I know that i do not like writing about things that do not interest me but as soon as I find something to write about that does interest me I am great at writing because it is fun for me. That is probably how it is with most teens.That is my view on teen writers.

30. [NOTE: THIS COMMENT HAS SPOILERS FOR REDSHIRTS, BIG ONES. — JS]

    Alexander, every major incident, from the first one where the character dies attacked by the worms, is screenwritten by an uncaring hack in the twentieth century. That is the entire point of the main story. The viewpoint characters figure out that they are being written, that they are themselves fiction. They take control of their lives by referencing the fictional pseudoscience of the original show to go and remonstrate with their writers. They are fictional. They look like the actors who play them on the TV show, to the point where they can impersonate them to go into the TV studio.

    And then they become real. And their actions have real consequences which are explored beautifully in the codas.

31. Just finished Redshirts enjoyed it immensely.Very imaginative and funny. Love all your books-Keep writing