james_davis_nicoll | Old Tea Leaf Reviews 16: 1996 Locus Poll Best First Novel (Reply)

Cut for length
 

Best First Novel


1 The Bohr Maker                  Linda Nagata

        If I remember this correctly, a doomed young man's attempt
to avoid death leaves a poor young woman infected with a powerful
form of nanotechnology.

        I liked this enough to buy every book that she has written.

        She had four related books from Bantam Spectra, two stand-
alones from Tor and nothing since about 2003. This is because (QWP):

"Most of my work was done in the mid to late nineties, when I had the
privilege of being a stay-at-home mom. Since 2000 I have been working
full-time as a programmer of online database applications, a circumstance
that has greatly reduced the quantity of fiction I've produced in the
new millennium... but pay no attention to the non-believers! I am still
writing!"


2 The Shape-Changer's Wife        Sharon Shinn

        I did not read this.

        Shinn is reasonably prolific to this day.


3 Lethe                           Tricia Sullivan

        You know, I got a couple of Sullivans to read a year or two
ago but I can't say if this was one of them (The other one was MAUL
which I do remember reading).

        She appears to be reasonably prolific both under her own name
and as Valery Leith).


4 Dead Girls                      Richard Calder

        This I know I read but aside from a faint memory of depravity
and reanimated dead girls, I don't recall much about it. It seemed typical
of a kind of post cyberpunk biotech SF I ran into a lot back then so
I cannot be sure I am not mixing up some other SF novel with this one.

        Calder has at least ten novels out, most recently in 2005.


5 Door Number Three               Patrick O'Leary

        I not only did not read this, I managed to miss it entirely.

        I see three novels by him, the most recent one being 2002's
THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRD.



6 The Baker's Boy                 J. V. Jones

        I also missed this.

        She seems to have had five novels published between 1995 and
1999 but in the 21s century she has had only two novels published, one
in 2002 and one five years later in 2007 (And yes, I did look at her
website but I didn't see a bibliography before I got annoyed at how
slow it was loading).


7 Quasar                          Jamil Nasir

        I also did not read this.

        Nasir had four novels between 1995 and 2000 and one in 2008.


8 Humility Garden                 Felicity Savage

        I missed this.

        As far as I can tell, Savage's career was limited to the 1990s.


9 Planetfall                      Scott G. Gier

        This I read. If I recall correctly, it's about first
contact between a group of humans who have been marooned on a
planet apparently based on what Saskatchewan would be like if
it had Beijing's air quality and a group of aliens.

        I think this was a Del Rey Discovery.

        As far as I can tell, Gier had four novels, all set in the
same universe, all published before 1997.


10 Primary Inversion              Catherine Asaro

        I also did not read this. The one book by her that I did read
was a bit heavier on the tortured romance between psychically gifted
people angle for my taste.

        Asaro is successful and extremely prolific. She seems to
average two or three novels a year.


11 Legacies                       Alison Sinclair

        I own this but have never been able to finish it. I also own
and have not been able to finish her other two novels.

        As far as I can tell, all three of her novels to date came
out between 1995 and 1998.


12 The Printer's Devil            Chico Kidd

        I missed this.

        I am not sure how to describe their career (aside from "badly
documented") so I will just point you at their website:

http://www.chico.nildram.co.uk/