My review of 'Kiln People' by David Brin is right below this post, and I need to say it contains some pretty big spoilers.  I've tried to keep my reviews open to whatever I think is important to note about a novel, and I've tried to keep my posts pretty general and not delve too deep into the specifics of a novel.  The problem is they're all posted right here, one after the other.  So if you don't want to know any secrets about 'Kiln People' don't scroll any further down. 

I stumbled across Kiln not knowing anything at all about it, and I've got to say it's an interesting way to approach the book.  There's some problems there for sure, but overall it's a really fun read.  Though I would say to read 'Earth' first, Brin's novel from the early nineties.  There are some similarities between the two and I think it would be important to read that other novel before starting Kiln.

I've moved on to reading 'Throne of the Crescent Moon' by Saladin Ahmed.  I feel like I need to read all the nominees for his year before I can complain about 'Caliban's War' not being nominated for anything.  So, it looks like if I want to complain about any sort of award snubs I need to get to reading.  Prepare yourself for all sorts of complaints here in like six weeks, so long as I don't end up thinking all these books are better than Caliban.  We'll see.

So the Hugo Award Nominations came out a few days ago and I'm a little disappointed in some of the nominations.  I'd hoped to see 'Caliban's War' by James S. A. Corey receive a nomination for something this year but it was snubbed.  As promised I'm going to review it anyway and start up a folder for other books that I think were snubbed for the major awards.  The other books I'll put on that list are 'The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester, and 'Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand' by Samuel Delany.  I don't mean to say that Caliban is by any means as good as those two, it's unbelievable that those two books weren't nominated for awards, but Caliban deserved some kind of recognition I thought.

Lois McMaster Bujold shows up in the nomination list again for another Vorkosigan novel which is always pretty cool.  I haven't read that book but I knew I would at some point, and John Scalzi gets a nomination for 'Redshirt,' a take on the classic Star Trek cliche where the guy in the red shirt always gets killed.  I haven't read it either (I'll just come right out and say that I haven't read any nominees for this year, Hugo or Nebula, I'm reading 'Throne of the Crescent Moon' now because it was nominated for both).  I didn't really expect to see Redshirt nominated for any awards, I was under the assumption that the whole thing was one long gag.

I guess I'll reserve any judgement on the actual nominations until I've read them all, but I am a little disappointed that Caliban didn't get any recognition.  Though maybe I'm wrong and those books that did get nominated over it are all more deserving.  We'll see once I've finished them all.

I'm done reading 'Kiln People' by David Brin.  I compared the novel earlier to another of Brin's novels, 'Earth' in that they both presented a fairly optimistic view of the future.  Having finished it off I can say that statement holds true, but in the end I believe the novel resembled 'Earth' a little too closely.  There were a few laughable similarities between the two novels.  Since even listing them here would constitute spoiling both novels I'll hold off on studying them until my review.  I'll get a review up for Kiln here before the end of the week.

Nominee season is also kind of a downer for me in that it takes away a little bit of the progress I make in finishing off all the Hugo and Nebula nominees.  I think I'd just cracked being 40% complete when all the nominees came out, and now I'm back down to 39.38%.  That's just part of the deal when you set yourself this kind of goal.  Every year you set yourself back a little bit.  The equation I use to see how far away from being finished is: (294+11X)/40=X.  294 being the number of books I have remaining now, and 11 being the maximum number of books that can be added every year, the 40 comes from my assumption for what I'll read each year.  If you solve the equation it comes out to be about ten years, which is discouraging.  I take a little solace in the fact that there are almost always some crossover between Hugo and Nebula nominees so eleven books are never added every year, and I think last year I read more like sixty nominees.  So that means I could be all wrapped up some time in the 2020's right? Right?

If anyone wants to point out to me that my math is wrong and I'll actually be done much sooner go right ahead.  If anyone wants to tell me it will actually take me much longer they can keep their facts to themselves.