There Will Be Time (to Read): Books I Read in 2024

Two years running! 

For the second year in a row, I've read 100 books in 12 months. That number used to be what I considered a minimum annual number for me, but as chronicled here at The Earliad, my speed and focus have diminished somewhat with the growing responsibilities and waning capabilities of middle age. Maybe I'm rebuilding to what used to be my old normal? 

OVERVIEW

In 2024, I read

• 83 works of fiction and 17 works of non-fiction
• 52 science fiction novels, 15 Star Trek media tie-ins, 11 mainstream, three horror, and two fantasy
• 33 books by women and 67 books by men
• 28 books from the 2020s, 18 from the 2010s, 18 from the 2000s, 13 from the 1990s, six from the 1980s, eight from the 1970s, 4 from the 1960s, 3 from the 1950s, and one each from the 1940s and 1890s. 
• Eight books by Hugh Howey, six by Catherine Asaro, four by Stephen Baxter, and three each from Robert Silverberg, Jo Walton, and Connie Willis

   COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Of the books I read this year, 30 were re-reads from authors including Jo Walton, Connie Willis, Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Patricia Highsmith, Stephen Baxter, Les Daniels, Isaac Asimov, and others. 

I also revisited several works by Catherine Asaro while at the same time reading her newest novels for the first time. Prior to this year I hadn't read her first novel, Primary Inversion, since it was released as a mass market paperback in 1995. I was still in my 20s! The horror. I found myself surprised by how much plot is crammed into Primary Inversion; I could have sworn at least a couple of its major events occurred in later books of the Skolian Empire series. 

Speaking of the 1990s, I picked up B.F. Skinner's Walden Two at the Wee Book Inn sometime during that decade. It sat on a shelf until Skinner's name came up in the infamous orientation film featured in the season two premiere of Lost. Having read only the back cover to that point, I figured I'd read the book to see if there were any clues to what might be going on in the world of the show. Unfortunately, Skinner's prose is incredibly dry, so I put the book aside until, well, this year. Walden Two is really more manifesto than novel, and reads like a professor's self-assured polemic against the status quo as it was back in the 1940s. His solution, which in hindsight absolutely informed the Dharma Initiative backstory for Lost, was utopian social engineering, a method for creating self-sufficient communes free of want and violence. 

Walden Two was something of a curiosity for me this year, so I'll turn to the books that really impressed me (for good or ill) in 2024: 

• The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020. This near-future SF novel begins with a catastrophic heat wave in India that kills millions and triggers, at last, serious global action on climate change. It's a harrowing read, because Robinson describes an all-too-plausible future of diminishing resources and increasing violence. The titular Ministry is tasked with overseeing a kind of holding action against the collapse of civilization, and he goes into some fascinating detail about the societal changes required to achieve a best-case scenario that, from our perspective today, remains terrifying to contemplate. 
• System Collapse, Martha Wells, 2023. Another Murderbot tale, yay! 
  
• Demon Daughter and Penric and the Bandit, Lois McMaster Bujold, 2023 and 2024. More Penric and Desdemona adventures, yay! 
• The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis, 2023. A lovely comedic tale of love, aliens, and UFO enthusiasts pratfalling around the deserts of the US southwest. Seems timely in the wake of all the UAP buzz in the news this year. 
  
• Shift and Dust by Hugh Howley, 2013. I read Wool, the first of Howley's Silo books, way back in the teens, but only finished the series this year. I really enjoyed Shift, which explains the origins of the mysterious silos, and Dust was a satisfying conclusion, though the series epilogue in the Silo collection left something of a bittersweet taste in my mouth. 
• Shadrach in the Furnace, Robert Silverberg, 1976. I've been working my way through the Hugo and Nebula nominations for years now, and Robert Silverberg has his share of those nominations, of which I read three in 2024. Shadrach in the Furnace was my favourite, a psychedelic fever dream of body horror, totalitarian dystopia, and state surveillance. 
  
• Never Let Me Go, Kzuo Ishiguro, 2005. In science fiction there are several examples of a peculiar trope involving societies that grow clones strictly to harvest their organs to extend the lives of the rich and powerful. Ishiguro weaves a dreadful poignancy into the trope, gently bringing us into the world of several such clones who are conditioned from birth to accept and embrace their fate. It's heartbreaking, as any such inhuman system should be. Inhuman? No. All too depressingly human, and something that could plausibly happen someday...if it hasn't already in some dark corner of the world. 
• Planet X, Michael Jan Friedman, 1998). Not all media tie-in novels are bad. Planet X is bad. Very bad. Imagine a world in which Marvel's X-Men meet up with Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise to investigate the sudden appearance of new mutants springing up on a non-aligned world in the Star Trek universe. The original X-Men comics have been rightly identified as a solid vehicle for telling stories about prejudice and othering, and that's the theme Planet X tries to take. It's not an awful idea on its face, but the novel reads like a kid playing with random action figures, mashing them together with sound and fury. 

MONTH-BY-MONTH

January

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (John Godey, 1973) 

Dawn of Rebellion: The Visual Guide (Pablo Hidalgo and Emily Shkoukani, 2023)

The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020)  

The Jigsaw Assassin (Catherine Asaro, 2022) 

Double or Nothing (Kim Sherwood, 2023) 

The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Arthur C. Clarke, 1972)

The Turning of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) 

Voyage (Stephen Baxter, 1996) 

System Collapse (Martha Wells, 2023) 

The Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks, 2003) 

February
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Max Brooks, 2006)  

Demon Daughter (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2023)

There Will Be Time (Poul Anderson, 1972) 

Moonseed (Stephen Baxter, 1998) 

The Star Fox (Poul Anderson, 1965) 

The Spacetime Pool (Catherine Asaro, 2008) 

Life After God (Douglas Coupland, 1994) 

The Road to Roswell (Connie Willis, 2023) 

Superman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 1998) 

Primary Inversion (Catherine Asaro, 1995) 

March

Turtles All the Way Down (John Green, 2017) 

The Last Hawk (Catherine Asaro, 1997) 

More Than the Sum of His Parts: Collected Stories (Joe Haldeman, 2020) 

Wool (Hugh Howley, 2012) 

Shift (Hugh Howley, 2013)

Dust (Hugh Howley, 2013) 

Silo (Hugh Howley, 2020) 

Girls, Interrupted: How Pop Culture Is Failing Women (Lisa Whittington-Hill, 2024) 

Space (James Michener, 1982) 

Just the Nicest Couple (Mary Kubica, 2023) 

April

Firestarter (Stephen King, 1980)

Walden Two (B.F. Skinner, 1948)

Homecoming (Christie Golden, 2003) 

The Giver (Lois Lowry, 1993)  

Batman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 1999) 

Flood (Stephen Baxter, 2008) 

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (Peter Zeihan, 2022) 

The Farther Shore (Christie Golden, 2003) 

The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (Isaac Asimov, 1976)

Burn (Bill Ransom, 1995) 

May

A Choice of Catastrophes (Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann, 2011) 

Crisis of Consciousness (Dave Galanter, 2015) 

Savage Trade (Tony Daniel, 2015)

Beacon 23 (Hugh Howley, 2015) 

With a Mind to Kill (Anthony Horowitz, 2022)  

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005) 

The Downloaded (Robert J. Sawyer, 2024) 

When the Sparrow Falls (Neil Sharpson, 2021) 

Shadrach in the Furnace (Robert Silverberg, 1976) 

The Stochastic Man (Robert Silverberg, 1975) 

June

Thorns (Robert Silverberg, 1967) 

You Like It Darker (Stephen King, 2024) 

Half Way Home (Hugh Howey, 2010) 

Wonder Woman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 2000) 

Sand (Hugh Howey, 2014)

The Speed of Dark (Elizabeth Moon, 2002) 

Black Fire (Sonni Cooper, 1983) 

Finding Serenity (Jane Espenson, 2004) 

July

Across the Sand (Hugh Howey, 2022)

Foundation’s Triumph (David Brin, 1999) 

Ark (Stephen Baxter, 2009)

Planet X (Michael Jan Friedman, 1998)

Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise (Shane Johnson, 1987) 

The Three-Minute Universe (Barbara Paul, 1988) 

No Time Like the Past (Greg Cox, 2014) 

August

Penric and the Bandit (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2024) 

The Incident Report (Martha Baillie, 2009) 

Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobson, 2024) 

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (Shiguru Kayama, 1955) 

The Man Who Saw Seconds (Alexander Boldizar, 2024)

Serpents in the Garden (Jeff Mariotte, 2014)

The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley, 2024) 

The Rings of Time (Greg Cox, 2012) 

The Last Day (Andrew Hunter Murray, 2020)  

S.H.A.D.O. Technical Operations Manual (Chris Thompson and Andrew Clements, 2022)

September

The Twin Paradox (Charles Wachter, 2020) 

The Down Deep (Catherine Asaro, 2024) 

Report from Planet Midnight (Nalo Hopkinson, 2012) 

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith, 1955) 

October

Humans: An A to Z (Matt Haig, 2014) 

Pawns and Symbols (Majliss Larson, 1985)

What Entropy Means to Me (George Alec Effinger, 1972) 

Cast No Shadow (James Swallow, 2011) 

Half Past Human (TJ Bass, 1971) 

Here (Richard McGuire, 2014) 

November

Tunnel in the Sky (Robert Heinlein, 1955) 

The Hollow Man (Dan Simmons, 1992) 

Farthing (Jo Walton, 2006) 

Ha’penny (Jo Walton, 2007) 

Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan (Robin Maxwell, 2012) 

The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger, 2003) 

Half a Crown (Jo Walton, 2008) 

December

Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (Connie Willis, 1999)

The Art of the Amazing Spider-Man (John Romita and Stan Lee, 2024) 

Fantastic Four: Full Circle Expanded Edition (Alex Ross, 2024) 

Time Tunnel (Murray Leinster, 1964) 

DC Comics Style Guide (Paul Levitz, 2024) 

The Wailing Asteroid (Murray Leinster, 1960) 

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (David E. Hoffman, 2009) 

The Life Impossible (Matt Haig, 2024) 

And finally, here are Bruce and Leslie's stats for 2024! 

That's it for 2024. Happy New Year, all. Keep fighting the good fight. 

Components of a Satisfying Shipwreck Story

Being marooned on a tropical island would probably not be much fun in real life, but in popular culture it's not always a completely bad thing - witness Gilligan's Island, for example, or Lost.

Living out the ideal tropical island fantasy can be simulated through the medium of role-playing games. I am not aware of an existing role-playing game of this type, though I'm sure they exist; it also seems like good fodder for a computer RPG. What tropes are necessary to create a satisfying tropical island experience?

• A shipwreck in a tropical climate
• Washing up on a sandy beach
• Salvaging supplies and food from the wreck (ideally toiletries, clothes, hunting, fishing and cooking equipment, guns and ammunition, entertainment (chiefly books), personal items, navigation tools, fire-making tools, cutlery, towels, blankets, pillows, footwear, swords, knives, spyglass, a radio or cell phone if temporally appropriate, etc.)
• The possibility of other survivors, who could be allies or enemies
• Loneliness
• The Waterfall (for bathing and drinking water)
• The Hot Spring (for hot baths)
• Coconut palms
• Banana trees (bushes?)
• Plentiful fish and pigs 
• Mysterious, initially unseen human inhabitants of the island, who may be good or evil
• A gorilla or two
• Parrots
• Pirates
• Building a shelter, preferably an expansive treehouse
• Eventual romance
• Exploration of the island's interior
• Mysterious ruins
• Caves
• Snakes
• Mountains
• Creating fire
• Learning how to hunt/fish
• Writing in your diary for posterity
• Sending messages in bottles
• Tropical storms
• Occasional visitors who for one reason or another can't rescue you
• A raft for exploring the river or circumnavigating the island
• The eventual, inevitable escape attempt and/or bringing civilization to the island

Character Classes!

Diplomat

Scientist

Writer

Ship Captain

First Mate

Ship Officer

Crewman

Stowaway

Passenger

Nobility

Pirate

Musician

Actor

Gravedigger

Rat Catcher

Farmer

Settler

Character Traits!

Strength

Survival

Willpower

Cunning

Wits

Charisma

Character Skills!

Fishing

Foraging

Hunting

Carpentry

Sewing

Cooking

Navigation

Repair

Diplomacy

Writing

Swordfighting

Gunnery

Brawling

Fire-making

Fermenting

Swimming

Orientation

Meditation

Language(s) (specify)

Shipwreck Cause Table

Mutiny - marooned ashore in rowboat with supplies

Storm - wrecked on reefs

Human Error - navigator crashes into uncharted island

Becalmed/out of fuel - ship remains intact but useless

Act of God(s) - divine mischief

Cinema Crossover

Interest Peaking

I've written twice before about CBS' Person of Interest, which just wrapped up its inaugural season with a stakes-raising cliffhanger. I speculated - and hoped - that the show might both continue its subversive storytelling and further explore the nature of "the machine," the computer that watches over the world of the show. Those wishes have been granted.

While earlier episodes offered only hints that the machine has some degree of self-awareness, the final seconds of last night's finale made it explicit: with Mr. Finch kidnapped, Reese makes a direct appeal to the machine by speaking to it through a street-corner surveillance camera. We see the machine's point of view, with an ominous "operations compromised" alert. Seconds later a pay phone near Reese rings, and Reese picks it up, presumably about to speak directly to the machine...but then of course the season ends.

Earlier this year I asked if another J.J. Abrams production, Alcatraz, might be the next Lost. That show ended on a cliffhanger and wasn't picked up for another season, but oddly enough I don't mind; Person of Interest is far more - well - interesting. Fortunately Person of Interest has done very well in the ratings this year and will be back for another season. I'll be watching.

D&D TPK

I made this with a fun little iPhone app created by Bad Robot, the guys behind Lost, the rebooted Star Trek And Mission Impossible III and IV.

"TPK," in this context, stands for "total party kill."

Created with ACTION MOVIE FX
Get the App!

Dharma Station: The Shield

They'd already stumbled across the Swan, the Door, the Hydra, the Flame, the Arrow, the Staff and others - and The Others, of course - but now they faced a new enigma: the Shield. What new dangers - or opportunities - lie beyond the heavy steel door, opened only by a key so huge and heavy it took six survivors to lift it into the keyhole? Did the Shield offer shelter, contact with the outside world, a means of escape? Or was it another blind alley, an abandoned enigma, unknowable?

Inside they found a silver-robed scientist studying crystals, a spitcurl of white hair falling carelessly across his brow.

"Who are you?" they asked. "How did you get here?"

"It's complicated," he answered.

Is Alcatraz the next Lost?

It's an unfair, silly question, of course; each television program, like any work of art, should be judged on its own merits. But millions of Lost fans, people like me, would dearly love to once again enjoy the experience Lost gave us for six years: a compelling mystery with engaging characters, a great central concept, sharp writing, superb acting, great music and excellent production values.

Now three episodes in, Alcatraz already possesses a few of these elements. It has a wonderful science-fiction premise: Alcatraz was never really shut down, rather, all its prisoners and guards vanished without a trace back in the 60s. Now, in 2012, they're beginning to reappear, aged not a day, and they're a dangerous menace being driven by as-yet-unrevealed masters to commit acts of crime and terror. A secret government organization has been formed to track down the time-travelling convicts. A spunky cop (Sarah Jones) and a professorial comic book nerd (Jorge Garcia) stumble upon the organization and join up, using their unique connections to Alcatraz to aid in the quest.

The show already has some connections to Lost: they share a composer (Michael Giacchino), an executive producer (JJ Abrams), an actor (Jorge Garcia). A mysterious island is of central importance to both shows.

Thus far, however, Alcatraz's central mystery and plot are not nearly as complex as Lost's. There are no smoke monsters, no strange voices, and only one credulity-stretching coincidence.

The creators must be aware of the inevitable comparisons, for in the third episode, ex-corrections officer and now head of the shadowy cabal tracking down the inmates, Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), utters the most infamous, frustrating line delivered in Lost: "It's complicated." But Reyes' riposte is a clever inversion of the Lost trope: "No, it's not complicated."

And so far, it isn't. Each episode, the protagonists track down a bad guy who gets shipped to what I'm calling Alcatraz II, an underground prison built to hold the recaptured inmates. It's an entertaining good-vs-evil formula that's satisfying on its own merits. I'm hoping - and I'm sure that the creators are planning it - that the show's storytelling will evolve in complexity. Like Person of Interest, Alcatraz isn't a great show yet - it is, perhaps, not yet complicated enough - but one day it could be. 

Coming This Fall

One Last Look at Lost: The New Man in Charge

Back in May, I wrote about my disappointment with the finale of Lost. My greatest complaint was the episode's failure to address some of the most intruiging mysteries surrounding the island and the Dharma Initiative. The show provided an emotional resolution, but I was looking for intellectual satisfaction too. In other words, I wanted some answers to the questions the show so gleefully raised over the course of six years.

Last night, Sylvia and I watched "The New Man in Charge," the twelve-minute epilogue included as a bonus feature on the Lost Blu-Ray set. Without giving too much away, the mini-sode chronicles a short vignette providing a glimpse into Hurley's new role as island overseer, with Benjamin Linus as his right-hand man.

As might be expected, the short didn't answer every unresolved question, but it did tackle a few minor mysteries; and more importantly, it gave one neglected character some resolution and the possibility of new adventures.

Deliberately, I think, the answers provided by the short were fairly predictable, the sort of thing viewers could have - and perhaps should have - come up with on our own. The episode almost reads like fan fiction, with its love of minutiae. In fact, the answers given are so logical and straightforward one should assume that the showrunners are taking a bit of a poke at the audience - admittedly with some justification. It's as if they're asking "Really - you needed us to answer that question for you?"

And yet there's clearly a method to their madness, because I find myself with somewhat warmer feelings toward a show that disappointed me in the end. "The New Man in Charge" by no means completely redeems the series' climax, but it does mitigate some of its sins, if only by reminding the audience that our own imagination is a perfectly valid a tool for interpreting and continuing stories crafted by others.

In effect, the producers are saying that the answers are out there - now go find them. Or create them. Perhaps, in the final analysis, that's the best way to end this show...by encouraging viewers to "get lost" in the best possible sense, by finding their own answers - answers quite possibly more satisfying and creative than any Lost's producers could have given. This epilogue encourages viewers to add to the show's mythology on their own.

I think that's a pretty good message from a medium that usually encourages passive absorption of culture, rather than active engagement. And now I've found a way to make peace with Lost after all.

Lost Opportunity: How the Finale Could Have Been Redeemed

WARNING: SPOILERS for the season finale of LOST

On Sunday night, cult TV series Lost ended with dozens of mysteries unanswered and a happily-ever-afterlife that felt arbitrary and tacked-on for the sake of giving beloved characters some measure of reward for their sacrifices.

Like many other viewers who have followed the show with devotion since 2004, I was disappointed with "The End" (the finale's title). The conflict between the smoke monster and the castaways was resolved clumsily, with character motivations unclear and a plot full of holes - why, for example, did the smoke monster and Jack have any reason to believe that lowering Desmond into the source would benefit either of them and not the other? I guess Jack just got lucky that Desmond's act of pulling the island's plug robbed the smoke monster of his otherworldly powers, allowing the climactic...fist fight. Hooray. Jack gets stabbed during the fight, kills the depowered smoke monster, plugs the hole Desmond made and wanders, mortally wounded, back into the jungle, dying in the very spot the crash flung him in 2004. Poetic, yes - but unsatisfying on many levels.

The revelation that the season six flash-sideways plotline was nothing more than God's waiting room is, quite simply, a cheat. All season long, viewers were led to believe that what happened in this alternate timeline (or at least, we thought it was an alternate timeline) mattered; that the gradual awakening of the characters would have some impact on the prime storyline on the island. But no. In the final minutes of the finale, we discover that perhaps thousands of years have passed, and Jack is in purgatory, waiting for all his friends to be together so that they can move on to heaven.

I should make it clear that the scene itself was moving and well-written. My only problem is that it makes the entire island storyline, the one we've followed for the last six years, meaningless; everyone winds up in heaven (or near enough), so what were the stakes? Why was it so important that the island be protected?

Here's how the finale could have been saved. When Christian reveals the truth to Jack, he tells him that his time on the island was the most important time in his life. But he doesn't say why. It's just a given, and it's why he needed all his friends together in purgatory to achieve closure and "move on."

Christian needed to say one more thing. He needed to say,

"Jack, your time on the island was the most important time in your life...and in the lives of all these other people. Because the sacrifices you made on that island made all this [gesturing to the afterlife] possible...not just for you and your friends - but for everyone, everywhere, for all time. Without you, after death there would be only darkness."

If it had turned out that Jack and company were fighting for an afterlife for all humanity...wouldn't those stakes have been worth all they endured? Wouldn't that have made the unresolved mysteries at least a little more bearable? I would have been quite content never to learn who made the drain and the plug at the heart of the island if I had reason to believe that they had a very good reason - the best possible existential reason - for doing so.