Ah yes... the CATEGORIES!

Category 1: SCIENCE FICTION

I started reading science fiction at a very young age, maybe 8 or 9 and I'm pretty sure that the first true science fiction book I read was Red Planet by Robert Heinlein, followed closely by The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson, and the whole John Carter of Mars series, and then... well, needless to say I was hooked at a young age on the genre. The cover at right is the first edition cover published, I believe, in 1949. Heinlein had all kinds of squabbles with his publishers... he wanted more sex and politics, his publishers were after 'the story' and money.

After this excellent introduction, I went on to read all of Heinlein's 'juveniles', discovered the pulps with Edmond Hamilton's excellent Captain Future series, Frank Herbert's Dune... and have never looked back.

So here I stand some 40 years later, wondering (like we all do) where the time went, and looking around the science fiction landscape... and there's still lots of really good old stuff that I haven't read that I've always meant to... Philip Dick, C.J. Cherryh, David Drake; and of course loads of brilliant authors writing stuff today that I absolutely must read! Like Alistair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, China Mieville, and on and on.

So .. on to the 2012 reading plan. 36 SF books won't go far (but I expect to have some room in my other categories, so...). I'm starting with a reread of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series up to Foundation's Edge (which I'm pretty sure I've never read); along with Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series (which, since I know how it ends, I MUST have read at some point... but for the life of me, as I read through the first two books, I DON'T remember any of the details...). I have Ian McDonald's Dervish House, Desolation Road, and River of Gods; Alistair Reynold's first two Revelation Space books, and Peter Hamilton's sequel to the excellent (and read in 2011) Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained. After that I will see what and where the SF trail leads me... Neal Stephenson looks excellent, Dan Simmons, C.J. Cherryh... lots of directions to go.