Finished Norse Mythology (6). Short book, beautifully written stories that I was familiar with - but it was good to read them once more in this form. I've started Echopraxia and I realised that I'd forgotten much of Blindsight.

Finally managed to get through Tregillis's The Mechanical (book 4 of the year) - although I must admit I simply skimmed the last part. It's bad, and I mean really bad, on so many levels. The characters, even the ones you are supposed to like or at least sympathise, are irritating, the plot is uninteresting (and this is book one of the series - I'm not going to read the next for sure) and I finished it only because I really rarely leave books unfinished.
And one more thing - the language. There was simply too much profanity. Now, as you can guess from my being on this forum, I do not mind sex, violence and strong language. But only when it makes sense in the context. Here it looked like the author was shouting "hey, look, I know it's steampunk, but it's not young adult. Seriously, look, I'm swearing a lot, it's not YA! Not YA at all, remember!"
Definitely not recommended.

Now I'm reading something totally strange - a friend of mine asked me to read her husband's unpublished crime novel to see if it was any good. And while it certainly needs a lot of editing and proofreading, I'm already halfway through it (and I started reading on the train on Monday). Because the characters are realistic and believable.

Watched Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency in one sitting. It's quite good, on the one hand absurd and funny, on the other very brutal and depressing. Quite like Douglas Adams (well, without the "brutal" part). And Elijah Wood is great as Todd.

At the moment we're watching Marco Polo, because my husband dearest is always very much into history and at the moment very much into Far East. And also we needed something fun and not very deep to watch. It's fun, it's loosely based on history, it has sex, violence, adventure and a blind kung-fu teacher - what else can you want from a show?

Thanks to Spotify, I've rediscovered Dead Can Dance. I listened to them in high school (still on casettes), then mostly forgot about them - and now I've started again and it's great. Dark, atmospheric, just like I remembered.

I'll try for at least 10 books, hopefully 15 - although I'm so busy at work at least until the end of April that it might be hard. I want to read more Brunner, certainly Shockwave Rider and maybe something else, and Danielewski's House of Leaves. Apart from that, we'll see what comes along.
And for 2016, I managed to read 12, which is fine.

Off the cuff and in no particular order, authors in sci-fi (broadly taken) that I would recommend:
- classics: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin;
- cyberpunk and relatives: William Gibson, Walter Jon Williams, Richard Morgan;
- other/undefined - Iain M. Banks (one of my favourite writers ever), Ian McDonald, Michael Swanwick.

Quote from: Wilshire on December 27, 2016, 02:39:39 pm

Dude, its scifi, not fantasy. Wayyy different.

Lol. Yea, it all feels the same to me. I guess when you have talk about leaping from planet to planet, it becomes Sci-fi.

Remember, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And when you throw powerful religion into the mix, it becomes even more complicated. But yes, by the virtue of happening in the future (very well defined, with timelines, etc.), it's sci-fi.

BTW, blurring the lines between sci-fi and fantasy is a good way to keep your audience guessing and deliver a twist that turns the story on its head. A good example is Morgan's Land Fit for Heroes.