Another month has drawn to a close and I remain a sleep deprived mess of a man. That’s not science fiction’s fault though, it’s all down to a little thing called lambing season. If I’ve come across as incoherent at any point this month, blame it on the lambs.

Reading

The upside of long night shifts spent waiting for sheep to give birth is that I’ve had plenty of time to read. In fact, I managed to put away no fewer than fourteen books this month. This included the last of my acquisition’s from last year’s New York visit (so I guess I’ll have to head back over there to resupply at some point) and also demolished my Christmas gifts pile. Right now, The Sanctuary by Andrew Hunter Murray is the only book I have left on my TBR from 2023. Everything else is a new addition to the seemingly never-ending towers of books that daily threaten to squish me like a bug.

There have been some absolutely fantastic books this month. Ben Bova’s Grand Tour continues on a high with the Star Quest series (I’ll have a review of the third volume up shortly), while last year’s big releases from Chris Hadfield and Christopher Ruocchio were everything I hoped they’d be. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by some of the shorter Star Trek novels I’ve been slotting into my schedule.

A lot of this reading has been me wrapping up and/or getting on top of longer series, continuing that trend from January. I’ve now completed seven series this year, and made significant movement on three more. This has been immensely satisfying in its own right, but also means my schedule for the months ahead is freer for new books. Which is handy, because I’ve also bought a whole bunch.

This month’s new book tally stands at twenty-seven. All of them second-hand, and a mixture of eBay purchases and pickups from a local used bookshop. The former I’ve used to pick up bundles of books by authors I’m confident of enjoying, whereas I’ve been a lot more experimental with the latter. I now have authors on my shelves I’d never heard of before I saw their books in the used bookstore. I am loving that thrill of unknown potential.

Blogging

As usual most of my blogging came in the form of book reviews, and I’m actually still two books behind on that front, Ben Bova’s Survival and David Brin’s The Uplift War will get reviewed shortly, all other things being equal. One surprise review this month came in the form of Star Trek. I was fortunate enough to get a digital review copy of the latest Picard novel Firewall. As with all eBooks, this took me a while to get through, but was worth it in the end. I also got the chance to interview author David Mack about the book. My first review of the year, but certainly not the last. I have to say, it was a nice change from the usual radio silence I get when it comes to review copies. Hopefully a sign of good things to come.

The other non-review posts were related to collecting and maintaining a library. I’m approaching completion of my endeavour to catalogue all my books (I became briefly distracted by doing the same for my fantasy collection) and this led to some interesting discoveries. You can read more about those HERE. In a similar vein, I dissected a recent book haul and mused on the way I collect series, often without knowing how much I’ll actually enjoy them. More on that HERE.

In the News

Black Library Celebration 2024 – This year’s Celebration was a somewhat muted affair, in no small art due to a delay on the arrival of Black Library’s fabled special editions, which will presumably now be released later in the year. The month did still see some new releases, however, most notably The End and the Death Volume III, in which Dan Abnett brought the Horus Heresy to a close after two decades and around a hundred releases. Though it’s a series that doesn’t overly appeal to me, I can’t think of any other story told on such a scale, and I doubt we’ll see its like again.

Brian Stableford (1948-2024) – Stableford is one of those names I’ve seen a thousand times on second-hand bookshelves, though I have never read any of his work myself. Like a lot of people, I hadn’t realised quite how sizable his contribution was to the genre, as both a writer and a critic. It’s a sad truth that we often don’t appreciate what someone has to offer until they are gone, and I can be pretty sure I’ll not be the only one keeping an eye out for his books over the coming months.

Hugo Awards – Somehow the story gets even stranger. It turns out that the Chinese government are innocent in the recent Hugos scandal, and that it was actually an act of self-censorship that gave the shortlists their unusual shape. There’s better investigatory reporting out there than I’ll ever do, but one of the more notable results of the fallout from all this is that Adrian Tchaikovsky has announced he will not cite himself as a Hugo Award winner for Best Series (Children of Time), due to the irregularities. This is significant because the Hugo Award rules forbid a winning work being resubmitted in a different year (The Best Series criteria are a little confusing). This effectively means that one of the most significant works of British science fiction of the past decade has an unfortunate shadow hanging over the legitimacy of its acclaim. While I have no doubts that the series is worthy of the Award, this does go to show how seriously those affected are taking the recent scandal.

Updates

I’m likely to be busy with a unique mix of farming and travelling next month, so I’ve been scheduling posts ahead of time for that. These are a bunch of Warhammer 40,000 audio reviews for WarhamMarch, which is running on a slightly reduced capacity this year due to that pesky real life I keep getting involved in. There’s also a particularly fun post where I use mathematics* to prove who the best Black Library authors are.
*mathematics may be influenced by personal bias

As well as that I’ve got a bit more cataloguing to do with my library, there’s a whole batch of new authors calling out to me from my TBR, a new interview in the works with one of my favourite up and coming writers, and some longer articles slowly percolating through the blog brain.

Finally, the Boundary’s Edge Social Club is well and truly underway. We’re currently rounding up our buddy read of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. In April we’ll be tackling Douglas Adams’ singular The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You are all more than welcome to join us.