This will be the final entry as I think anything less than a decade
is insufficient time to consider a career.

Best First Novel

1 The Great Wheel                    Ian R. MacLeod  

        I missed this.

        MacLeod's books are well received. His career is the opposite
of many detailed in this series, with one novel in the 1990s and three
since 2003.

2 Expendable                         James Alan Gardner  

        It's always hard on morale when explorers die. This society
has tried to limit that problem by using people with off-putting
disfigurements as explorers because nobody misses the ugly. Oddly,
this is not a particularly nice society.

        Jim had seven books in the League of Peoples series, one
Lara Croft tie-in and one collection. I am unaware of anything at
book length since 2005's GRAVITY WELLS.

3 Black Wine                         Candas Jane Dorsey  

        I missed this.

        I am having a hard time reconciling her being on this list with
the records I can find for her career and so will leave commentary to the
better informed.

4 An Exchange of Hostages            Susan R. Matthews  

        Our tragic hero discovers that he really, really enjoys torturing
people for the State but since he feels guilty it is OK.

        I hated the two books of hers that I read.

        She had at least seven novels before 2002 and one in 2006.

5 Mars Underground                   William K. Hartmann  

        I don't remember the particulars well enough to describe this,
although it is set on Mars and I think people are looking for something.

        I remember being very disappointed that Hartmann's novel was
not as good as his astronomical non-fiction.

        As far as I know, this is his only novel.

6 The Art of Arrow-Cutting           Stephen Dedman  

        An act of charity lands a tough Brooklyne artist in deep
kinchee, with everything from tough guys to monsters coming after
him.

        I see three novels from Tor, all between 1997 and 2001, and
a more recent Shadowrun novel. He also has two collections and seems
to be fairly prolific at short lengths.

7 The Merro Tree                     Katie Waitman  

        I missed this.

        I think she has had just two novels to date, both in the
1990s.

8 Lightpaths                         Howard V. Hendrix  

        I missed this.

        Hendrix has had seven novels and a collection so far but in my
circles he is better known for the luddite rant that gave the world the
"International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day."

http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/10039.html

9 A Thousand Words for Stranger      Julie E. Czerneda  

        I don't think I read this.

        Czerneda appears to average about one novel per year.

10 Waking Beauty                     Paul Witcover  

        I missed this.

        Witcover appears to have had three novels to date, as well
as shorter works.

11 The Troika                        Stepan Chapman  

        I missed this.

        I think this was his lone novel.

12 The Stone Prince                  Fiona Patton  

        I did not read this.

        Patton had four novels between 1997 and 2001, one in 2005 and
one is forthcoming (For some reason I thought she had a lot more books).

13 Lives of the Monster Dogs         Kirsten Bakis  

        I missed this.

        This appears to be their only book.

14 Iron Dawn                         Matthew Woodring Stover  

        I missed this.

        I believe that Stover has at least a dozen books out, many
of which are STAR WARS tie-in novels.

15 The Seventh Heart                 Marina Fitch  

        I missed this.

        She appears to have had two novels, both in the late 1990s.
Her short story career appears to begin in the mid-1980s and run
until the late 1990s.

16 The Seraphim Rising               Elisabeth DeVos  

        And to round things out nicely, I missed this as well.

        As far as I can tell, this was their only novel.

--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

In article <g4ltks$7s...@reader1.panix.com>,

I own this because the SFBC blurb sounded interesting.  I think I may
even have read the first chapter or two.  I have absolutely no
recollection what it was about.

There are far too many books about which I could say that.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman   | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
woll...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those   | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL.     | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness

I have to ask... what's with the use of "their" instead of
his/her?  I can see doing it where you aren't sure of gender
(say someone named Pat), but Kirsten is almost positively a
female name.

Rebecca

In article <A7vbk.13061$xZ.7...@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>,
Rebecca Rice  <philosphe...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

        It's correct usage and I like to toss it in from time
to time just to show that I know the difference between "there",
"their" and "they're" (Also "its" and "it's", FWIW).
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 19:28:28 +0000 (UTC), jdnic...@panix.com (James

MacLeod's a wonderful writer, but I haven't read this book. I think it
took him some time to modulate from writing at novelette/novella
length (which I suspect is his natural length) to novel.

I missed GRAVITY WELLS.

Gardner's books are usually quite fun, but the underlying concepts are
in their way at least as silly as the concept you complained about so
strenuously at the center of Tony Daniel's METAPLANETARY.

Dorsey has done some excellent short fiction. Haven't read this book,
though I think I have it.

I stopped, I think, at one book -- this one -- for the obvious
reasons. I did used to enjoy the occasional Pete McCutcheon rant on
the subject though. (I miss Pete ...)

Chapman, like James Tiptree, Jr., and Howard Waldrop, is a John  W.
Campbell discovery, late in Campbell's career. And so who says
Campbell was by then a hidebound conservative, unable to adapt to the
newer styles of SF?

I read it. It was published in the mainstream. Got a lot of praise,
and I thought it OK but not great.

I don't think there is any controversy about Bakis' gender -- she's a
she. (I mean, I get it when you use "they" for Raphael Carter, but
...)

I think this is the first one so far that I haven't read _anything_ on yet.

I do own it, but haven't read it yet as far as I know (and have the three after
it as well). If she's who I think she is, I do like some of her short stories,
but have shied away from one of her series... hmmm, okay, looks like she's
not, I was thinking of Diana L. Paxson. So I don't actually know anything yet
about Patton's readability.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that   grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour  The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE        HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

Rich Horton <rrhor...@prodigy.net> wrote in
news:fl0t6411se238727t8977fe7dmm0d7qboo@4ax.com:

Who was surely a lesbian who didn't want all her friends and family to know
about it?

(And who has gone....where? _Learning About Machine Sex_ was cool and _The
Fortunate Fall_ was awesome, where's she gone? We want more!)

It's only correct usage if the distinction between singular and plural
has been obliterated, and I, for one, am still up on the barricades,
shooting and waving banners.

It sets my teeth on edge when a sentence veers into plural for one word
and then back out.

--
Andrew Wheeler

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 19:28:28 +0000 (UTC), jdnic...@panix.com (James

Quite good, I thought, altho' ISTR someone here objecting that it
was too RPGish.  Three adventurers in Bronze Age Tyre, a beat-up
Trojan War vet, an exiled Egyptian ex-priest, and a barbarian
female from whatever they called Britain back then.

The first of a duology; the second one is _Jericho Moon_, in which
our trio anticipates Indiana Jones by several millennia by getting
their hands, briefly, on the Ark of the Covenant.

--
Bill Snyder  [This space unintentionally left blank]

I'll accept for those awkward sentences where English
doesn't have a gender-neutral third person pronoun:  "The
patient should take X chart with X when X leave."  I prefer
"take their chart with them when they leave" to "take
his/her chart with him/her when he/she leaves".  And being
female, I do get tired of seeing "he" used for a pronoun
that refers to a person of undisclosed gender.

Rebecca