#c.j. cherryh

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Book rec: Cuckoo's Egg by C.J. Cherryh

Here is my first non-DC book rec, which originally came to me by recommendation from @audreycritter.

Cuckoo's Egg is an old school sci-fi from award-winning author C.J. Cherryh, who is a big deal and yet whom I'd never read before this book. (Also, her website is bananas. 10/10.) It's technically third in the series, but I think Cuckoo's Egg functions really well as a standalone, and this is where those rock-solid found family and good dadman feels are.

All you need to know is there's a stone-cold soldier who is highly respected in his field who takes an abrupt retirement to raise an alien infant. (Well, alien to him. To us, the dad is the alien; the child is human.) And you guys, he. loves. his. ugly alien son. so. much.

It's like Disney's Tarzan if all the other apes were like "ew what a little freak" and Kerchak were the one being like "THIS IS MY KID BACK OFF."

Like someone else we know, the dad is very very bad at using his words to tell his son how much he loves him, but it's there. It's there. And as the son grows, the narrative alternates between their POVs which is delicious.

There is also an absolute banger of a line that I am going to steal for a fic title someday: "This one was his safety that kept the games all games."

#book recs #batfam #c.j. cherryh

[geoderocks]

I made some sketches for C.J. Cherryh’s amazing Foreigner series. (I’m no great artist, obviously, but had a lot of fun doing these).

In the first book Cherryh describes atevi faces as ‘not by any remote kinship human, but sternly handsome in planes and angles’. So here is my attempt with the Banichi portrait - and of course Bren in one of his long coats (subtle lace included). I haven’t dared to have a go at Jago, Ilisidi or Cajeiri yet, but maybe will put my subpar drawing skills to the test sometime ✏️

#c.j. cherryh #foreigner #foreigner series #bren cameron #banichi #science fiction #scifi #science fiction books #atevi #shejidan #sketches #fanart #my drawings #cherryh #paidhi #bren-ji #pencil sketch

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#scifi #books #C.J. Cherryh #The Pride of Chanur #Chanur #poll #result: no #l: English

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#fantasy #The Tree of Swords and Jewels #Arafel #The Dreaming Tree #C.J. Cherryh #books #poll #result: no #l: English

[literary-illuminati]

favourite books, or favourite books from this year?

This is too difficult to narrow down to one or two, so here's a top five? (As of the start of September, because this has been sitting in my drafts for a WHILE)

In no particular order

Circe, by Madeline Miller - in terms of prose, Miller might literally be my favorite author writing today. She needs to have written more, please. Just perfectly beautiful and tragic and properly mythic and altogether sublime. Lodged in my head as the canonical telling of the myth of Circe to compare others to.

Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh - I've rambled on about this at length already, but this is the rare piece of SFF that really feels plausible to me? Like, not in the sense of technology, but that there's no main character, that chance and contingency and weight of history matter more than the grand destiny of any individual or family, that the world is fundamentally amoral without being fundamentally malevolent, and just, it reads like it could be the history of the future. That's a really rare accomplishment. Also for what a cultural wasteland the 80s are supposed to have been it really didn't feel dated at all. (I've got two other Cherryh books that have been sitting on my dresser for six months I should really get to)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee - The acknowledgements for this book mention it was inspired by The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and you can tell (in the best possible way). One of the rare pop-sci books that really feels like it expands you understanding of the world and lifts some small few of the scales from your eyes. Also oddly hopeful and inspiring, for all the horrors (the very, very well-described horrors. I went form barely knowing what leukemia was to having nightmares about it).

Radiance, by Catherynne Valente - I do adore Valente's writing, but this is probably the first full length work of hers I've read that lives up to the novellas and short stories. It coasts by almost entirely on style and aesthetic and how perfectly aimed the character and arc of the protagonist is at me in particular, but my god the style and aesthetic are worth the price of admission. The whole thing should really fall apart under the weight of its pretension, and I really love it for the fact that it doesn't.

India in the Persianate Age, by Richard M. Eaton - A rather dry history text, really, and not one I'd really recommend to someone who just asked me for a book to read. But I've got at least a vague view-from-ten-thousand-feet idea of the shape of history from the medieval era on, and India was (and to a lesser extent is) one of the main remaining gaps. So I'm deeply appreciative for providing an organizing narrative of the region's development to use. And just generally, one of those books that really feels like its filling in little blank spots on the map? Sure it's dry, but just incredibly interesting subject matter and well-argued thesis.

(Honorable Mentions: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi, The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri)

#anon #book review #India in the Persianate Age #Richard M. Eaton #Radiance #Catherynne Valente #The Emperor of All Maladies #Siddhartha Mukherjee #Downbelow Station #C.J. Cherryh #Circe #Madeline Miller

[alfvaen]

Novel Battle

Last month I did a roundup of books I read, and it looks like I managed to do it again this month, woot. It's not quite the end of the month yet, but there's only day left in December 2023 and I don't think I'll be getting anything else finished this month (and I finished my 100 books on Goodreads), so I might as well do it now. (I have been trying to not leave it all to the last minute, writing bits of it during the month, which may be an effective strategy.)

Actual books under the cut--possible spoilers for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Michelle West's House War series, and maybe C.J. Cherryh's Atevi series, though I'm trying not to.

Michelle West: Battle, completed December 6

This is a slot for a female (or non-male) "diversity" slot author. It almost feels a bit cheating for me to use the slot for Michelle West (a.k.a. Michelle Sagara), who I've been reading for a long time now, and is somebody I'd read anyway, but her books are pretty thick and I have a tendency to fall behind on them, so I'll take whatever will get me to actually read them.

Back when I first read Michelle Sagara, I was heavily into Canadian SF and wanted to read everything that was eligible for the Aurora Awards every year, if possible. (It soon became clear that it was not, for all practical purposes, possible.) So I saw her on the list with her first series, The Sundered, and read them all. It's a series where the good guys lose at the end of the first book, and our protagonist ends up imprisoned by a demon lord type who is also her main romantic interest. This kind of dynamic has turned up a few times in her other books, to some degree or another. Later she came out with the Sun Sword series under the name Michelle West, a series of six quite thick books. (And, it turns out, there had been a previous duology, Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters.) And after that, she started coming out with her Elantra series (a.k.a. the "Cast" series, since the titles are all like Cast In Shadow or Cast In Courtlight etc.), again under the Sagara name; slightly lighter, and thinner, fantasy novels featuring a guardswoman named Kaylin Neya living in a multiracial fantasy city (and by multiracial, we have like hawk people, lion people, dragons, elf-types, and telepaths, and probably others I'm forgetting). And after that, she started coming out with the House War series, which was designed to tie up some loose ends from the Sun Sword series. (She's also got another series, a YA-ish urban fantasy series called "Queen of The Dead", but I haven't tried those yet.)

So at the moment I'm reading both the Elantra series and the House War series; I try to get through one of each a year so that maybe I won't fall further behind. Battle is, as one might guess, in the House War series, which, as a series, is a bit odd. The first three books in the series are really their own trilogy, since they take place before The Sun Sword entirely (and one of them overlaps with Hunter's Death). And then comes Skirmish, which takes place after The Sun Sword, and continues on with Battle, Firstborn, Oracle, and War. (Firstborn and Oracle were not part of the original series listing, so I assume that the series stretched as she was writing it.)

The central character of the House War is Jewel Markess ATerafin, who I believe was introduced all the way back in Hunter's Oath and may have been in all of the Michelle West books to date. She started out as a street kid, leader of a "den" of orphans and homeless kids, until she gained the attention of the powerful House Terafin, and managed to win entry for herself and her den; later it turned out that she was a rare "seer-born", and she grew in power and influence. She is a fundamentally nice person, though, who would be happy if everybody just got along and nobody got hurt, so she's not comfortable wielding her power--something she may have to overcome by the end of the series, I suspect. (And, unlike some of Sagara/West's characters, she seems deeply aromantic-coded. Not even a hint of romantic feelings in any of the books to date.) Also, in these books it seems like any random character can turn out to be a retired assassin with a dark past, or a troubled immortal, or a secret mage, or some other such archetype. It works better than it has a right to.

So what is the House War? That's a good question. It's not, fundamentally, a struggle within House Terafin, or between any of the Ten Houses, at least as of yet. It seems more like a struggle of House Terafin, or all of human civilization, against outside forces, quite frankly. Battle has relatively little battle in it, in fact; it still feels like we're readying for the battles to come.

I've started supporting the author on Patreon, mostly because she was working on a new book in this world, Hunter's Redoubt, which the publishers passed on (possibly because she couldn't guarantee it being a reasonable length, or maybe the series just wasn't selling well enough for them), and I've only got three more House War books after this one, so probably by 2027 I'll get to reading it.

Ian Fleming: For Your Eyes Only, completed December 8

Feeling a little behind on my Goodreads challenge after the length of Battle, I decided to scan my shelves for something somewhat shorter, and less fantasy. And Ian Fleming is what I came up with.

I remember James Bond from an early age, between the HBO we (probably illicitly) had when I was a kid, and the promotion for the movie "For Your Eyes Only" (including the Sheena Easton song and the Marvel comics adaptation). These days "FYEO" is considered a lesser entry in the Bond canon, but I have a soft spot for it. I watched and rewatched a lot of the movies over the years, and at some point I started reading the original novels. They're not bad, though of course a product of a different time with all sorts of deeply-ingrained sexism (and probably racism too).

For Your Eyes Only the book is actually a collection of short stories. The first one, "From A View To A Kill", is perhaps the best, a straightforward but engaging story of Bond outwitting an embedded spy nest in France. (Little or nothing in common with the "A View To A Kill" movie.) The title story and "Risico" are the two that the "For Your Eyes Only" movie was built around--the former a story of an off-the-books mission where Bond avenges a pair of M's old friends (with the aid of their bereaved archer daughter, who became Melina in the movie), and the latter being the story of double agent Kristatos trying to set Bond against rival Colombo; the stories themselves are pretty good. Then there's "Quantum of Solace", which also has nothing to do with the later movie, and hardly anything to do with James Bond, being mostly a story told to Bond about a relationship that went sour, and "The Hildebrand Rarity", which oddly didn't get any movies named after it, about a horrible person who comes to a bad end on a boat on the Indian Ocean, and good riddance. While uneven, it was actually a bit refreshing to see Bond in different contexts and shorter pieces.

Jim Butcher: Warriorborn, completed December 9

Next, I wanted another male author, and still probably a shorter book. The Olympian Affair, the latest Jim Butcher novel, had just come out, and was devoured by several members of the household; this e-novella was kind of a precursor to it, and my wife had recommended I read it, and I decided it might be just the thing.

I have a read a lot of Jim Butcher--almost all of the Dresden Files (saving only a few of the more recent stories), the Codex Alera, and The Aeronaut's Windlass, the first Cinder Spires book (to which The Olympian Affair is the sequel). It's been some time since his last novel, Battle Ground, and quite frankly, that one left a really bad taste in my mouth. A lot of that was due to a particular character death which I really did not appreciate, but I can't tell if it's just that or if I've gone off him completely. So I have deliberately been avoiding the last few Dresden Files stories, and I wasn't sure if I was going to read any more at all, so I guess this was also a way of giving him another chance.

I apparently didn't remember The Aeronaut's Windlass that well, because I did not remember the main character of the story, or the whole Warriorborn class at all (they seem to be humanoid but part cat or something?). I remembered actual intelligent cat characters, but not these guys. Anyway, there was a story, it was mildly exciting, and it only took me a day to read it. I'm still not sure if Butcher has redeemed himself, but I did put The Olympian Affair on my to-read list, even if I probably won't actually read it any time soon. He may not be "don't read ever again", but he hasn't earned his way back up to "read as soon as the hardcover comes out" yet by a long shot.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Ethan of Athos, completed December 12

Three books since my last reread, so it was time for another one, the next (chronological) Vorkosigan book, Ethan of Athos. It's an odd duck in the series--no Vorkosigans appear in it at all, but we do get Elli Quinn, last seen getting sent off for extensive facial reconstruction surgery in The Warrior's Apprentice, in which she had barely any screen time. The book's POV character, though, is the titular Ethan, from the planet Athos, a planet of a reclusive misogynistic society that bans women entirely and reproduces entirely through uterine replicators and ovarian cultures. But when the ovarian cultures start senescing, and their replacement shipment is hijacked, Ethan is forced to head into the big bad woman-infested galaxy and try to remedy the problem. Which brings him into contact and/or conflict with Elli Quinn, Cetagandans, and other forces. And ends up broadening his worldview ever so slightly, though he does return home at the end…with perhaps the biggest dangling plot thread that never got revisited in the entire series. I was lukewarm about it my first time through, but by now I consider it pretty fun, but inessential. It does give you a chance to see Elli as a full-fledged character before you see her back with Miles again.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton: The Ill-Made Mute, completed December 18

After three short reads in a row, I was now ahead again. It was time for another female author, and for "trying out" one I hadn't read before. When I'd first started doing this, I limited it strictly to authors where I'd picked up one book at random and that was it, but I later broadened it to include other authors, particularly ones where I'd picked up two books by them and not yet read either. And the one I happened to have sitting on my shelf was Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute, which was both an interesting author name and an interesting book title.

It's an odd book in a lot of ways. The language is…well, you could say "rich", you could say "not afraid of using obscure vocabulary words". The setting is interesting--there's a metal that floats above the ground (not unlike something that they have in the Cinder Spires, actually), and some people use it to travel by floating ship or floating horse…which makes sense once you find out how dangerous overland travel is, because of all the wights (a.k.a. fairy folk, seelie and unseelie, many of which seem to be drawn from actual Celtic folklore, given the extensive references at the back).

Our protagonist is the mute of the title--stripped of their memory, speech, and name, disfigured by accident, and receiving only grudging kindness by their rescuers. Could be a more proactive character than they are, since they spend a lot of the time at the mercy of more powerful forces (and many capricious wights), but you do root for them to come through.

It turns out, by the way, that the other book in the series which I own, The Battle of Evernight, is the third book, not the second, so I guess I need to track down a copy of The Lady of The Sorrows sometime. Sigh.

C.J. Cherryh & Jane Fancher: Defiance, completed December 22

I only had three books left to read for the year, and 13 days to do it in, so I still seemed more or less on track, but maybe a shorter book would not go amiss--especially since we were planning to go out of town on the 23rd, something that I could finish by the 22nd might be a good idea. Female author still, and not high fantasy.

I often like to let books sit on my to-read shelf for a while; or, to put it another way, to not neglect forever the books that have been sitting there for a long time in favour of newer and shinier ones. But there are exceptions, for authors that I've read a lot of and am actually caught up on, where I try to keep caught up by reading their newest books.

I've been reading C.J. Cherryh for a long time--I started with her Morgaine books, after seeing her mentioned in Dragon magazine, and went through whatever I could find--Cuckoo's Egg, Serpent's Reach, the Faded Sun books, the Chanur books, etc. I fell behind for a long time, but the Atevi books (starting with Foreigner) helped, because I started reading them to my son. They're not kids' books, but he was a teenager when I read them to him so that was okay. (If it bothers you to think of a teenager still being read to by his parents, think of it as a "parental audiobook experience".) I had gotten about twelve books in on my own, but even restarting from the beginning, I was able to plow through the series (up to at least book 20) reading them aloud. (By this point he can read them on his own if he wants to, though.)

This is book 22 in the series, and while it seems to be starting out with recap (which was less useful when reading them back-to-back, but helpful now) it's probably not a recommended starting point. The length of the series is a tribute to the complex political situations that our characters get involved in, and she's probably not in danger of running out. This is her second novel, and first Atevi novel, crediting her longtime companion Jane Fancher as a cowriter, probably for reasons.

The Atevi series in general takes place on (mostly) a planet inhabited by a species called atevi, where a group of humans were forced to settle after a hyperspace accident left them unable to return home. After some initial friction, they are coexisting mostly peacefully, with one human (called a "paidhi") as a cultural interface. The current paidhi, Bren Cameron, ends up getting involved more deeply than usual in atevi politics, which is all I'll say in lieu of spoilers.

Josiah Bancroft: Arm of The Sphinx, completed December 27

I also picked this one largely on page count--I was planning on reading it in 5-6 days, which would cover the days when I was visiting my mother for Christmas. In a slight deviation from my normal tactic, I ended up allocating reading pages so that the two travel days (it usually takes us about six hours to do the drive) required fewer pages, and it worked pretty well.

The first book in the series, Senlin Ascends, involved Thomas Senlin and his young wife travelling to the Tower of Babel, the wife getting abducted, and Senlin going into the tower after her. The details of the world aren't particularly clear--there is a Tower of Babel but there's also steampunk technology and people with European names, and there's no map of anything besides the Tower itself so I don't worry about it too much.

In this book, the second, we have more an ensemble cast rather than just Senlin, and I think the change is quite effective. Senlin is a reserved gentleman thrust into unfamiliar situations, and sometimes he's a little bit repressed, so having more viewpoints was helpful. Plus it allows us, the reader, to learn things without Senlin necessarily learning those things as well.

I'm hoping that we'll shift our plot from "Senlin looking for his wife" to something with slightly larger stakes about the fate of the Tower itself, and the world. Because it's beginning to seem like Senlin and his wife may not have the most successful, loving reunion. We haven't seen much of her at all, really, and I hope that when we do, she'll have a stronger character than just "damsel in distress".

There's two more books in the series, which of course may be out of print by this point, but I think the odds of my finishing the series at all have definitely gone up.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Borders of Infinity, completed December 30

And then it was time for another read, another Vorkosigan book, whose placement may be a little bit controversial. It consists of three novellas, the first of which, "The Mountains of Mourning", takes place between The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game. The others do take place between Ethan of Athos and Brothers In Arms, but in this book there's also a framing story that takes place after Brothers In Arms. (In the more recent omnibus editions the novellas are rearranged, and the framing story disappears entirely. There's not much to it, so it's not a huge loss.) But there's no spoilers from BIA, it turns out (Miles is in the hospital with broken arms from an unchronicles adventure that happens after BIA, and while its events are alluded to, all that really comes up is that they were on Earth). BIA in fact takes place directly after "Borders of Infinity".

"Mountains of Morning" is probably the most affecting of the three novellas, as Miles has to investigate the murder of a baby in the backwoods of his district, with characters that show up again in Memory. "Labyrinth" is my least favourite of the three, though it's still good. It is the most novel-structured of them, with subplots and multiple settings, and its events serve as setup for the events on Jackson's Whole later in Mirror Dance. "Borders of Infinity" is a tour de force showing how Miles can accomplish his goals after stripped of pretty much everything, and also a good example of how to hide things from the reader that your viewpoint characters knows.

And that's December, and the end of 2023. Next up it will be a book from my dwindling supply of male "diversity" authors, Siege of Mithila by Indian author Ashok Banker. I also got a copy of the nonfiction book Paths of Pollen, written by my very own brother, that came out a month ago.

#books #Lois McMaster Bujold #Vorkosigan Saga #Michelle West #Ian Fleming #James Bond #Jim Butcher #Cinder Spires #Cecilia Dart-Thornton #C.J. Cherryh #Atevi #Josiah Bancroft

[twinkubus]

Human beings had to remember that the universe was far wider than their little nest of stars—that, in the universe at large, silence was always more than the noisiest shout of life. Humans explored and intruded against it, and built their stations and lived their lives, a biological contamination of the infinite, a local and temporary condition.

–Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh

#c.j. cherryh #foreigner #currently reading

[benjaminjgbarnes]

Pyanfar's Tranquil Evening (Pride of Chanur Fan Fiction)

The airlock hissed closed behind her as the silken tufts at her tail’s extremity whipped out of harm’s way, a semi-autonomous entity toying with its own demise. That sound - so soft and yet so distinct - brought a special relief, assurance, finally, of solitude. Pyanfar felt her shoulders slump forward like those of sullen Mahi deck lingerer - Gods, she thought, if Hilfy were to see me now she might well throw every stern word I’ve ever said to her out with the next expulsion.

She thought of galactic garbage because one such deposit was, at this moment, making its way past a crescent shaped void. Little pieces of engineering waste glinted in the darkness as they dispersed. She’d cut out this crescent moon from an old vulcanised fibre sheet and stuck it against the inch of plexi-glass between her room, her space - and the space outside. This window decoration, among other personalised features of Pyanfar’s quarters betrayed a much gentler, and perhaps more idealistic self than the hardnose pragmatist her days and nights uniformed on deck required.

There was the diamond shaped container of a red neon goo that, when heated, would bounce, break and mould with the rest of itself in a soothing tide. This thing, a ‘lava lamp,’ the human had called it, was so quaint, so trivial in it’s essential proposition and yet, Pyanfar found it amazing and could lose herself for hours at a time, gazing happily in the knowledge that there was no hidden motivation. Just a gentle ebb and flow.

She liked to flick her pointed ears lazily back and forth, pausing as her pendant pearl earring teetered and fell onto the other side. She removed her gold arm band and laid it down on the small surface, beside the room’s central control unit.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Time for some luxuriant tech…”

“Relaxing mist,” She almost whispered after activating the voice command system. And soon, a light blanket of mist rippled in anti-gravity relation with the roof. It was time now for a drink - “something to take the edge off” she enacted for herself. How fun it was to play! Perhaps she could allow herself another ridiculous human artefact she’d whisked away from the mistaken cargo collection in the hold. What had Tully called it? Ah yes, a ‘martini’ glass.

Despite its gaudy appearance, this vessel was actually very convenient for her tightly curled claws. The delicate glass stem sat nicely between her knuckles. She liked to let it droop before squeezing and arcing it back to equilibrium. But that awful transparent mixture with the green pellet - that was where the role play ended. 

Pyanfar poured herself a half strength rum and coke, swirling the glass as she went so as to flatten the cola to her liking. One led to seven, and quite soon, Pyanfar was feeling pure impulse. She ran her red gold mane up against the arm of her ottoman, pushed up and cleared the top of it, then slowly slid head first down the other side, coming to rest in a glorious pile beside the platinum claw shaped foot that glinted and mimicked her own. Pyanfar brought hers over it. “More mist…” She whispered.

“More mist!” She called out this time. “I love me a space room full of mist…”

#fan fiction #the pride of chanur #c.j. cherryh #pyanfar #cat world

[wandringaesthetic]

I'm not up to the minute on the physics so I don't even know if this is the thinking anymore, but this is the explanation of this concept that I have grokked the best

#c.j. cherryh

[st-just]

Something tight and unpleasant welled up in Galey's throat when he thought of that. Somehow it was Haven again, and civs getting killed. He had come very far to feel something, finally. It was ironic he felt it for the enemy, that deep-down sickness at the belly that came of seeing an unequal contest. It would have been that kind of blind, helpless death for his own kin. It gave him nightmares now, after so many years. No fighting back; a city under fire from orbit; no ships; no hope: folks armed with handguns and knives against orbital strike. Everything dead, and no way out.

The Faded Sun, by C.J. Cherryh

#quote #the faded sun #c.j. cherryh

[epoxyconfetti]

Balticon

Heading out to a one-day pass at Balticon. Met most of my old friends (and ex-girlfriends) at Balticon and a handful of other Mid-Atlantic conventions back in the 80s when I was a college-age geek. Maybe some of them will be there.

I'll attend some programming, sweep the dealers room, and hopefully see Seanan McGuire at a panel. The last time I went to as con to see a specific author was 2004, also a Balticon. Unfortunately rushing to get to some programming, I went around a corner too fast, and nearly ran over this lady. I didn't hit her, but I hit the ground hard to avoid doing so. Someone helped me up, but whispered violently in my ear, "You asshole! You almost steamrollered the Guest of Honor!" Sorry, Lois. But Nancy Springer and C.J. Cherryh and David Gerrold will be there, so chances are excellent for interesting programming.

I'd been planning to do a one day pass for a while now. It was supposed to be yesterday, but I got to sleep too late Friday, and overslept. Yesterday was the Masquerade, and the filking. It's funny, i couldn't make a costume worth a damn back in the 80s, and now that I have the skills (years of helping my kids make anime cosplay), I don't get to enjoy it.

I think, though, I'm just going to be reminded that going reminded that going to cons alone is a whole lot of no fun. It's wonderful with a group of geeky-minded friends. I've lost touch with my old friends, and the one person that responded to my "Is anyone going to Balticon this year?" replied that he and his wife are not, as she's going through chemo. My wife thinks science fiction conventions are stupid and boring, and refuses to go with me. And as I'm basically not allowed to have my own friends, I'm going this alone.

Wish me luck.

#Balticon #Balticon 56 #Seanan McGuire #Nancy Springer #C.J. Cherryh #David Gerrold

[theresabookreviews]

#C.J. Cherryh

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#scifi #books #Kesrith #The Faded Sun #C.J. Cherryh #poll #result: no #l: English

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#fantasy #books #Gate of Ivrel #C.J. Cherryh #poll #result: no #l: English

[literary-illuminati]

Holy shit Downbelow Station filk

#Downbelow Station #c.j. cherryh #filk #signy mallory problematic #Youtube

[eightopals]

It’s almost here!

Release date October 17, 2023.

#c.j. cherryh #foreigner series #defiance #foreigner vol. 22