“The End of All Things” an Opening Round Nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards
Posted on November 3, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
In the science fiction category, which should be obvious, and kind of nice. It’s there along with other excellent books from fine authors, as you can see above. It’s always nice to be nominated for this particular award, and last year in this category my book Lock In came in second, rather distantly behind The Martian, which was having a great year (just like it is this year, too. It’s nice to be Andy Weir right about now).
As always, my suggestion to you when it comes to voting is: Vote for the book you like, in this and any other category. Additionally, with this particular award, if the book you like isn’t on this initial list of fifteen for this round, you can write it in. Write-in nominees have made the second around of this award before, so it’s worth making the effort if you are so moved.
Here’s the link to the science fiction category. Happy voting!
Mmmm, that’s a nice list of books. There are several there that I should look up. I really enjoyed the Stephenson.
Nice, the two John Harris covers are next to each other :)
Thomas: Only that one time. Goodread mixes up the titles on the page every time it loads, which I think is a good idea.
I am sufficiently behind the curve that The End of All Things is the only on in the list I had read. So I voted for it.
That is some serious good company.
I have read several, went with Seveneves this time.
I thought Stephenson’s Seveneves was remarkably good.
The End of All Things is still in my queue along with several other books. 2015 has been a good year for me in terms of titles cropping up that I’m really looking forward to.
I just listened to “The End of All Things” and it was a great book and I guess the end of the series too.
I too read Seveneves and liked it, but may be giving EOAT my vote. I think Stephenson peaked at Anathem and has been off his game the last two books. I know Reamde wasn’t sci-fi, but both Reamde and Seveneves had a rambling quality – they are more a catalog of a lot of things that happened rather than a cohesive story. Even though lots of the things that happened in Seveneves are interesting, as a novel I don’t think its story holds up that well. It seemed more like the backstory to a really cool video game that starts up after the last page of the book.
John Scalzi, on the other hand, seems to put more effort into telling a specific story and keeping the pacing even throughout. He’ll never match Stephenson for pure geekery (no one will) – but this isn’t an alpha-geek Goodreads award, it is best sci-fi novel. And Seveneves wasn’t even one of Stephenson’s top 5 best, let alone the best one of 2015 in general.
My mileage varies by quite a bit, though I haven’t read Anathem yet, so I can’t comment on how they compare.
I think it’s fair to say that the first 2/3rds are a novel, and the last third is sort of the beginning of a sequel.
Congrats John. This is my favorite of all the various awards.
Man, it wasn’t until I saw the Goodreads award lists that it sunk in just how far behind I am on my reading list this year. I’m still reading mostly older stuff. I added a new library with better interlibrary access and have made a serious dent in the older parts of my reading list, but at the cost of falling well behind on a number of authors I usually follow more closely. Which is a long winded way to say that I haven’t read a single book on that list yet. Shocking, absolutely shocking. Five of those are already on my lists, and at least one i hadn’t realized was actually available yet. Now excuse me, I’ve got some reading to do.
Just read EOAT. Enjoyed it! I liked the “alternate version” at the end.
As someone with a million+ lines of code and builder of back doors (CLI on embedded systems) I liked that aspect.
Also a character getting too used to jumping onto a planet from space was a nice detail.
I’ve got to say, this is fantastic company and a tough call. There are several books I’ve read and loved in this grouping.
That said, the rest are going into the queue.
Gonna have a find a 3 sided coin to flip for TEoAT, Seveneves and Nemesis Gate.
Sorry, Ann Leckie, loving your Ancillary series (on second book), but not getting quite the same level of enjoyment from it yet.
What happens to books published in November and December? Are they considered for next year’s award?