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List: awards:bsfa-award-nominees

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Anathem

by Neal Stephenson · published 2008 · read 2019-09-20

★★★★★

Anathem by Neal Stephenson kept me busy. Between a bunch of conferences, the sufficient concentration was a bit hard to come by. What's worse: Now that I have read it, I can't tell you if it is a good book or not.

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The Player of Games

by Iain M. Banks · published 1988 · last read 2025-02-06

★★★★★

Omg yes. More, please. One of the best Culture books.

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American Gods

by Neil Gaiman · published 2001 · read 2012-02-01

★★★★★

American Gods is a polarising book, and I belong to the people enchanted by it. Gaiman does wonderfully dirty, touching things with language, and mythology, and just drew me in.

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Embassytown

by China Miéville · published 2011 · last read 2024-06-06

★★★★★

Embassytown by China Miéville starts out as okay-if-weird scifi, with decent characters, plausibly weird worldbuilding, and appropriately weird aliens, so everything you'd expect from Miéville. It starts by following a good if generic f

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Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis · published 1992 · last read 2026-01-25

★★★★★

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is the best book about time travel that I know of, with the notable exception of "This is how you lose the time war". It's started out good, and then proceeded to kick me in the feelings. Repeatedly. Time

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Ancillary Justice

by Ann Leckie · published 2013 · read 2018-03-13

★★★★★

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Ancillary Sword

by Ann Leckie · published 2014 · read 2018-04-14

★★★★★

Ancillary Sword was an exceedingly worthy successor to Ancillary Justice. We get a deeper look into the culture of the Radch and (most importantly) the characters we got to know in the first book. Understanding how all of them felt, especia

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Permutation City

by Greg Egan · published 1994 · read 2018-04-24

★★★★☆

3.5 stars, weird one. Greg continues to play with the rules of perception and what perceiving a thing implies, only this time we go on a trippy trip to parallel universe central, launching of parallel universes as we go, dropping through th

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The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell · published 1996 · read 2020-01-08

★★★★☆

I liked The Sparrow a whole lot. Part of that is just that I like the premise: Jesuit First Contact? Hell yes! The Jesuits are the science-minded and intellectual ones among the Catholic orders, and at the same time very capable of actions

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Inversions

by Iain M. Banks · published 1998 · read 2018-07-30

★★★★☆

Inversions by Iain Banks is a non-Culture Culture novel – unexpected and refreshing. The story is told in Banks' usual masterful style, and all of pacing, characters, depth, and content are without significant annoyances. I think this is

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Use of Weapons

by Iain M. Banks · published 1990 · read 2018-03-09

★★★★☆

Very odd one - had me laughing out loud some of the time, and nearly bored at other times. I think the pacing threw me off. Very stunning ending, though, totally worth it.

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The Scar

by China Miéville · published 2000 · read 2018-07-24

★★★★☆

The Scar is the second volume of Chine Miéville's Bas-Lag series, and it's as impressive as the first one. Only very loosely connected, we now explore the wider Bas-Lag world instead of New Crobuzon. Again, China Miéville excells with

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Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville · published 2000 · last read 2022-07-28

★★★★☆

Wow, this book was … a lot to take in. I liked it very much. Getting thrown into an Ankh-Morporkesque city, discovering alien races, and characters, and social structures was awesome. I noted with thanks that there was very little of a conv

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Pyramids

by Terry Pratchett · published 1989 · read 2007-05-01

★★★★☆

Pyramids was fun in many ways – not just the pyramids! The look inside the Assassins Guild was very intriguing. Though the thing I remember best is the long chain of ancestors, who can only communicate with the next one or two in line becau

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Cover of A Desolation Called Peace.

A Desolation Called Peace

by Arkady Martine · published 2021 · read 2021-04-11

★★★★☆

Generally, A Desolation Called Peace is nearly as good as A Memory Called Empire. It replaces parts of the intrical cultural commentary with very alien aliens who need to be communicated with, but

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Provenance

by Ann Leckie · published 2017 · read 2018-10-05

★★★★☆

Provenance by Ann Leckie is set in the Ancillary universe, but doesn't have much to do with the Radch or any of the known characters. Instead, it's a pleasant little space-opera adventure. I enjoyed it a lot, even if it didn't have the sa

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Excession

by Iain M. Banks · published 1996 · read 2018-07-02

★★★☆☆

This is the infamous Culture book that's mostly ships talking. Which is not the part I disliked, the ships and their story were cool! But the humans were terribly one-dimensional and felt lazy, which distracted me from the cool Excession

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The City & the City

by China Miéville · published 2009 · read 2018-11-14

★★★☆☆

The City & the City is a very impressive scifi book, but while I can appreciate its coolness and weirdness, and I can't point to a single flaw, somehow the story didn't quite grip me, although the concept of the two cities was introduced be

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Neuromancer

by William Gibson · published 1984 · read 2017-03-10

★★★☆☆

Not quite sure what to think of this one. It's fast paced, but I think it tries too hard. I liked how it plays with multiple realities, or layers of reality, but both the plot and the pacing felt so … forced.

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A Closed and Common Orbit

by Becky Chambers · published 2016 · read 2019-03-07

★★★☆☆

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is the second part of the Wayfarers series. It's a good match for the first part: expanding different parts of the world, and worldbuilding, and starring characters that were not quite centr

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Hyperion

by Dan Simmons · published 1989 · read 2018-11-16

★★★☆☆

I think my problem with Hyperion were my expectations. The book is touted as one of the best scifi books out there, and it didn't live up to that. Apart from this, though, it's a fine scifi book – relatable characters, each presenting t

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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

by Claire North · published 2014 · read 2022-05-22

★★★☆☆

Hard to rate – I know that I enjoyed reading this book, but then, I am easy to lure in with Groundhog Day variations. However, as I'm writing this review a year later to the day, I find myself remembering nearly nothing of the book – only b

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The Shadow of the Torturer

by Gene Wolfe · published 1980 · read 2018-03-12

★☆☆☆☆

Really not sure what to think. Odd pacing, odd descriptions, odd … everything? I just didn't find my way into this world and this rhythm. The storytelling is a stylistic choice that makes sense within that world, but requires a dedication I