March 2010

So I didn't get nearly as much reading or writing done during the month of February, or March, or April, as I'd hoped, but I'll make up for it soon. A few different priorities here:

1: Do a few more Lovecraft Reviews
2: Catch up on Asimov's/Analog reviews, at least until the March Issues (which of course came out earlier, but hey, they say March on the cover, so that's when I'm reading them).
3: Review all the Podcasts from February, and try to keep from falling behind there.
4: Biggest, strangest goal - Post a four or five part review of The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, which I'm reading with one of my friends.

So that's pretty ambitious, let's see if I can live up to any of it.

February 2010: A New Year

I'm designating this month the start of the new year rather than the one all the calendars and whatnot follow. The reason for this is that I spent all of January reviewing Asimov's Science Fiction for the 2009 Reader Awards and so this will be the first round of new reading I'm really doing.

I read more than I reviewed, so I'm going to take a month or two to go back and review all the 2009 Asimov's and Analog stories that I missed, but it isn't going to be this month. To be honest, although they are both lovely magazines, I'm a bit sick of them after powering through 2 years worth (collectively) in 2 months.

But I don't want to do the same thing next year, I want to actually stay on top of things. So for this year I'm going to read and review all of the January and February magazines I get right now, and then leave it alone until next month. But first, or possibly concurrently, I'm going to read and review a whole bunch of H.P. Lovecraft. And I might even read a novel or two.

Lovecraft is one of several famous historical authors whom I'd like to extensively cover here. With these historical authors I worry that reputation, and personal prejudice may influence me overmuch, and honestly I am often going to go for the most famous or important works. The best of an author who is long dead will tend to beat a lot of the stuff found in magazines, by virtue of extra levels of selection. But I'm still going to keep them on the 1 to 5 scale. I may add some extra gradations between x.0 and x.5, but I'm going to keep comparing any short story to any other short story. And I'll try to be as harsh on the Great Old Ones as I am on the New Guys.

Analog May 2009 Wrap-Up

So that is absolutely everything in the May 2009 issue reviewed, not a bad start for half a week.

I didn't like the Fact Article much at all.

The short stories rank pretty easily:

A Story, with Beans was far and away the best.

A Measure of Devotion was in the middle, and

The Brother on the Shelf is the bottom of my barrel.

The Novelettes were a bit harder to rank. They were all at least decent, but the top slot is close between Rendezvous at Angels Thirty and Quickfeathers. After some deliberation I have an ordering:

1: Rendezvous at Angels Thirty

2: Quickfeathers

3: Among the Tchi

4: The Sleeping Beauties

I'm a bit worried my scale isn't sufficiently sensitive to measure the differences, but it makes me waste less time on pondering out exact scores. I'll stick with it, but just keep a grand, unified chart of story rankings going henceforth.

Asimov's/Analog Marathon

So I didn't stop reading scifi magazines, but I stopped writing about my reading. I also never made a decision, short story magazines are like pokemon, gotta catch 'em all.

But 2009 has been a busy year and I haven't had much time to read. The only magazine I've kept up with was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, so I guess that was the de facto winner of the previous failed attempt at Science.

In 3 months (Feb 2), submissions for Analog and Asimov's Reader Favorite stories polls are in, I want to have well thought out votes. So I'm going to read 20 magazines in 3 months (4 of them double issues). I've read some scattered stories, but in effectively 2 years worth of publications, it is a very small amount. So I'm going to post a brief spoiler-light summary and review of EVERY STORY IN THE PAST YEAR in both Asimov's and Analog here, as I read them, over just 3 months. That is 8 single issues of magazine per month. Doable, but barely.

At the end of every issue, I'll sum up the results so far, Issues will be in a particular order that will seem random to anyone not me, don't bother trying to figure it out. Starting with Analog May 2009: