The temperature has dropped below freezing and there’s snow forecast for the coming week. That’s right everyone, it’s December. As ever, it’s looking like a busy month for me. Livestock don’t feed themselves, you know. On the blogging front though, things are a bit more predictable this month. Let’s get into the nitty gritty.

TBR

Fourteen books occupy my TBR, which is not an unreasonable amount to squeeze into a single month. There is, however, a slight problem. Those Ben Bova books are all part of series I’m lacking the second volume of. Now, I’m not entirely averse to skipping ahead in a series, but as there is a non-zero chance that some kind soul will deliver me a missing book in gift form, I’m holding off on those for as long as my TBR remains full. Bova’s aside, my rough plan is to read through what I’ve got in alphabetical order. You can’t get fairer than that.

I’m starting the month with Galaxy of Horrors, the latest Black Library mega-anthology. Also coming from the grimdark future is the latest Red Gobbo novella, the tale of a demon prince, and a new Sisters of Battle novel from Danie Ware. A fair spread of styles and content that is nicely divided by other books in my schedule.

H. Beam Piper’s Empire, Glen Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps, and John Barnes’ A Million Open Doors all have a nice vintage feel to them, and I like what I’ve seen on the cover material for each of them. I also have Poul Anderson’s Harvest of Stars, which will essentially determine if I read any more of his work or not.

I’ve actually read a Star Trek book every month of this year so far, and December’s entry is A Singular Destiny by Keith R. A DeCandido. It looks like this one deals with the fallout from David Mack’s Destiny trilogy, so I look forward to lots of politics, and hopefully some moral dilemmas.

Psychohistorical crisis by Donald Kingsbury is a bit of an odd one. It’s heavily inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, but I don’t actually know anything about it other than that. I’ll be interested to see what approach Kingsbury takes with Asimov’s ideas.

& BEYOND

December 2023 means I’ve been doing this blog for five years. As usual, I’ll be celebrating the big day by celebrating my favourite books of the year in the fifth annual Boundy Awards. there’s been a bit of a category shakeup this year to account for my changing habits, but it will be the usual silly fun, so stay tuned for that.

Naturally I also have a few retrospectives on the year as a whole in the works, including my breakdown of reading stats and a highlights reel of some of my favourite and most popular blogging moments

This month I’m going to learn from my mistakes and not commit to any extensive articles. The only thing I’m planning to get up is my review of the latest season of Lower Decks.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be any science fiction I’m interested releasing this month. It’s the perfect opportunity to catch up with older books before the onslaught of the new year.