Do you hear that? It’s the sound of a new year. 2023 is here and I intend to kick it off in style with some top notch science fiction. I’ve got quite a sizeable stack to work my way through as we head into the year. Some of it I know I’ll be putting off until later, but there are some I’m sure I’ll get to in January. I debated discontinuing my full TBR system, but in the end I decided that having some kind of structure is massively helpful for me. Besides, if something else takes my fantasy, breaking a TBR schedule is hardly a crime.

TBR

January marks #VintageSciFiMonth on Twitter, and since I tend to read a fair bit of older material, it’s a celebration I usually try and contribute to. For this celebration, vintage is defined as being released before you were born. This might trigger an existential crisis when I see some youngster reading a book published in the 2000s, but it does mean I have several books that fit the category. Those books are:

• Sidewise in Time, by Murray Leinster
• The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, by Ray Bradbury
• Quantum Leap: Prelude, by Ashley McConnell
• Isaac’s Universe 1,2&3, edited by Martin H. Greenberg
• A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt

I plan to get through as many of these as possible over the course of the next 31 days. In honour of #VintageSciFiMonth, I’m also going to add in the Star Trek: Voyager release Captain Proton, which emulates the pulp period. As an audiobook, I’m also going to embark on another journey through H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. That meets just about every definition of vintage, and will likely account for my listening time this month.

One more recent book I’m definitely going to read is Stephen Baxter’s Proxima. Baxter has been on my radar for a long time, and I’m determined to fianlly start reading his work this year. Love it or hate it, I think the sooner I get around to finding out, the better. That doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of space left on the TBR schedule for January, but if I don’t get around to all of the older works, I’ll be reading something more recent from my Black Library pile, likely Denny Flowers’ Outgunned. The Warhammer stack is where I’ll be going throughout the year to squeeze in extra reading, as it has a tendency to get out of control.

AND BEYOND

Aside from the reading, there is of course the reviewing. I’m going to try something different this month, with deeper dives into each book accompanying the usual spoiler-minimal review. Hopefully this will convey the more academic side of things without drowning both me and you in blog posts. Be sure to let me know what you make of these deep dives, if you like them or not.

I’ve also got one author interview in the works, so keep an eye open for that, and I’m planning to have a couple of longer articles scattered throughout the month. As always, if there’s soemthing I say that you’d like to see dug into in more detail, you just let me know, either here or on social media.

Speaking of social media, I’m hoping to have the At Boundary’s Edge Discord server up and running by the end of this week. Expect some publicity around that when it launches, but essentially it will a cozy place for people to gather and chat about science fiction and related subjects. It will be great to have you there with us. And no, of course I’m not worried about this being a total flop. What a ridiculous thing to suggest.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

Tuesday 3rd – Star Wars: The High Republic: The Battle of Jeddha, by George Mann (Audio Drama)

Tuesday 24th – Critical Mass, by Daniel Suarez (Novel)

Tuesday 31st – Alex Benedict #9: Village in the Sky, by Jack McDevitt (Novel)