... I wish every so often you would also ask, "What is the best novel you've read this year so far? " Maybe that would be a good thing for you to do at the end of the year.
You didn't ask it this time, but I'm going to answer that question anyway. The best novel I've read of the couple dozen or so I've read this year so far, no question, is "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. I can always tell I've read a really good one when I find myself thinking constantly about it for days and even weeks afterward. It's still staying with me three months after I read it. So much science fiction is about humans and extraterrestrials not getting along, fighting, trying to kill each other and even destroying each other's civilizations, each one trying to survive the other's attempts to genocide them, and it's hard to find the kind of science fiction in which the two species are cooperating, helping each other out, becoming friends, lending each other a helping hand. Robert L. Forward wrote science fiction novels with that theme. "Dragon's Egg" and its sequel "Starquake" were the hardest-to-put-down novels I've ever read. There were a couple of days when I went to work with no sleep.
Well, "Project Hail Mary" is that kind of novel. The human astronaut and the representative of the alien species meet at the nexus of an existential threat to their mutual civilizations, both of them with a long-shot task of trying to figure out how to deal with the threat to their species, and they get to be friends, then best friends, then saviors, each to the other, both individually and to their civilizations. That novel is so positive, so optimistic, so uplifting, I'm thinking about reading it again.
Anyway, Hermetic, just a suggestion, think about it, the last time you post your "What fiction are you reading" question this year, add to it the question, "And also, what is the best novel you've read this year? "
-- Ron
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