New authors to enjoy in 2011.

New year, new lists.
Once again I've composed a list of authors that I haven't read anything by, that I'd like to rectify this year.
Asterisks if I've got something by them already.
No inclusions if an author only has one specific item that I'd want to read.
Be nice if I could do about half.
Obviously it's somewhat difficult for people to complain about who's not on the list, if they're not familiar with what I've already read, but there's plenty of scope for complaining about the ones I haven't read, or recommending specific titles.
I'll stroke them off when applicable: (watch for the mesmerizing absense of striking!) and perhaps update it with forgotten / new entries.

• joe abercrombie
• catherine asaro *
• robert asprin *
• JG ballard *
• damien broderick * (I've read some non-fiction)
• louis mcmaster bujold *
• octavia butler * 
• gardner dozois * (I've read stuff he's edited)
• greg egan * (I have read some short stories from luminous)
• mary gentle *
• robin hobb * 
• ian irvine *
• dean koontz *
• nancy kress * (I have read a short story)
• mercedes lackey *
• stanislaw lem
• ken macleod * 
• cormac mccarthy *
• george RR Martin *
• richard matheson *
• elizabeth moon *
• ayn rand *
• alastair reynolds * 
• anne rice *
• kim stanley robinson * 
• RA salvatore *
• john scalzi
• karl schroeder
• clifford D simak *
• olaf stapledon *
• charles stross *
• eric van lustbader *
• joan d vinge *
• vernor vinge * 
• tad williams * 
• sean williams *
• robert charles wilson *
• gene wolfe *

Of course, 'ordinary' reading by authors I love (or random titles that perchance take my fancy) will continue to intrude...

Vampires in World War 2 and the fiction disclaimer

 I recently came across a book called Fiends of the Rising Sun, which features vampires fighting together with the Japanese against the Americans during World War 2.
The copyright page of the book features the following section:

Historical Note:
This novel is a work of fiction set during the Second World War.  As far as possible, the historical details are accurate but the story takes liberties with reality for narrative effect.

It doesn't spell it out, but I'm guessing some of those liberties have to do with the vampires.

This of course brings up the question of the purpose of the fiction disclaimer in general, and its legal requirements and ramifications.

Not all fiction novels contain such a disclaimer.  I don't know the statistics, but I've got a 1983 printing of Brave New World sitting here on the desk and a quick check reveals no such disclaimer.  A David and Leigh Eddings book, The Redemption of Althalus, that I randomly took down from a shelf also contains no such disclaimer.

Apparently the disclaimer originated because of the movie Rasputin and the Empress.  The Russian Princess Youssoupoff sued MGM for libel over the portrayal of a character that she claimed (and the court agreed) was based on her.  The movie was released in 1932, the court case occurred in 1934, but I can't find what movie was the first to use the disclaimer.  It may have been Rasputin and the Empress (they pulled the movie for several years) though I can find no reference to it.

So some form of fictional disclaimer tends to be tacked onto movies and books in order to prevent the author(s) from being sued.  Does this really work?  Well, the answer is somewhat.

At this point we are venturing into matters of law, which naturally varying from country to country.  What follows is mostly US law, since other western libel laws are similar enough; that or you are more likely to get sued by someone from the US.

The problem is that if people who know the plaintiff would identify a character with them, then argument can be made that, fictional disclaimer or no, the defendent has defamed them.  It doesn't have to be a match, but the differences do have to be fairly minimal.
Once you've got the match, you then have to demonstrate that it's not a satire or parody, and, generally speaking, you have to demonstrate that it's not actually true (I'm not even going to touch the sue-for-bad-restaurant-review fiasco).

Still, if you defame a vampire, they're not going to take you to court.
They'll just rip your throat out.

The Sci-Fi Blurb

With so many different sub-genres and styles within science fiction, sometimes it can be difficult to properly pigeonhole a new book.  Is it space opera?  Is it hard sci-fi?  Comedic?  Adventure?  Sometimes the title is a giveaway, sometimes the title is ambiguous, and of course sometimes the title is downright misleading.

Case in point:
The Hundredfold Problem.

The title here is in the ambiguous category.  I might lean a little towards hard sci-fi with the title suggesting a mathematical puzzle to be explored through the text, but I'm going to need more clues.
So we turn to the blurb:
"Four million years ago a Dyson sphere was built on the fringes of our solar system."

Okay, we're a single sentence in, but it's pretty safe to say that once we start exploring long term time scales and Dyson spheres, we are fully ensconced in hard sci-fi.
But let's read on a little bit more:
"...secretly sending its most dangerous criminals through a matter transmitter to the sphere nicknamed Big Dunkin Donut.  But now arch-villain Dennis the Complete Bloody Sadist is threatening to destroy the sphere.."

Ah.  That would be the part where the blurb takes an utter right hand turn and the book finds itself hauled post-haste out of hard sci-fi and plonked in the zany bucket.


When it comes to blurbs, however, The Hundredfold Problem is a mere lightweight.  Whilst the more lettered may be able to rattle off a hundredfold blurbs before breakfast, the rest of us may want to consult Ghastly Beyond Belief.  Which, I must say, deserves the award for least appropriate title.  It should also win an award for least appropriate tag line: "Sterilize yourself with fear...".  Finally, it does have a starred sentence on the cover exclaiming "The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations", which is in fact highly accurate and descriptive.

The early chapters contain a wealth of blurbs, scraped, stripped and exposed, with a little commentary for those who haven't read the contents of the book that the blurbs are attempting to sell.
Some are highly inaccurate; some appear to be deliberately misleading (A Handful of Silver?).  But blurbs are meant to stand out.  Here are a few that stood out for me:

"The truly amazing story of a world much like our own, only startlingly different."

"He had to be stopped, for all women were his playthings and all men his pawns!"

"Free drugs!  Easy sex!  No job hassles!  Some people just don't know when they're being oppressed!"

"It was love - between a mad scientist and a degenerate speck of hypermatter"

"She was all woman - ask the men who made her!"

"He was a destroyer from another planet, bent on the destruction of the world"

"Fluids running out of my brakes." - (this is the entire blurb)

"Only an intergalactic guerrilla force of pigs could destroy the monsters of the Ghost Plateau!"

And of course the one I most want to read:
"Harder than human!  A bionic man with a computer crotch satisfies the lust cravings of a super feminine world!  More than Mortal Meat!"


With so many great blurbs, where's the time to read the damn contents?