Clarke Award Finalists 1994

[james_davis_nicoll]

1994: At least four MPs die from unrelated causes, Tony Blair uses his new position as leader of the Labour Party to make bold economic statements unbounded by reality, and in a bold rebuke of a half million years of effort to isolate Britain from the continent, the Chunnel opens.

Poll #33014 Clarke Award Finalists 1994

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

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Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Vurt by Jeff Noon
10 (16.7%)

A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
17 (28.3%)

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
29 (48.3%)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
49 (81.7%)

The Broken God by David Zindell
6 (10.0%)

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
29 (48.3%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Vurt by Jeff Noon
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Broken God by David Zindell
The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

I'm not saying Zindell is a great author (and his collect-the-plot-coupons fantasy sounds dreadful) but he is a bit undertalkedabout.

[james_davis_nicoll]

The plot coupon book is not great but one got the sense he had great fun writing it.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Five Books the Author Clearly Enjoyed More Than You Will?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Didn't we just talk about the Prometheus finalists?

[patrick_morris_miller]

/rimshot

[zotz]

Vurt is likewise not well enough remembered.

[philrm]

Nor is its excellent sequel, Pollen.

[mikeda]

Still none.

[jreynolds197]

I found Swanwick's Iron Dragon's Daughter enjoyable.

If you ever do 'five books with riddling contests in them', then IDD & The Hobbit will get you 40% of the way there.

[(Anonymous)]

I recall thinking *A Million Open Doors* was interesting but not great, and then the sequel was the most divorcey novel ever to divorce novel, so bad that it retconned the things I found interesting about *Doors* just to further his goal of hating his ex-wife. I haven't bothered with any of the later books in the series.

--
Nathan H.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Was the second one the book the author insisted wasn't a divorce book because he wasn't divorced... and _then_ his marriage fell apart? Or was that a different divorce book.

[patrick_morris_miller]

I think that applies both to the Doors sequel and to Teckla.

[chrysostom]

Teckla is, I think, well-written but very unpleasant to read.

[patrick_morris_miller]

I rarely enjoy "first person pour-kerosene-on-my-life-and-light-a-match", myself.

[fred_mouse]

Multiple I would like to have read, one I somewhat regret reading, except that it was part of my coming to understand that the people I was listening to for book recommendations weren't looking for the same things I was in a book. And helped formulate what I did want.

[dormouse1953]

Incidentally, "chunnel" never caught on as a word. It's usually just called the channel tunnel, or just the tunne.#l.

[zotz]

It caught on enough that at least one style guide deprecated it quite heavily.

[patrick_morris_miller]

The system works!