/lit/ - Literature

>>20246947
Swanwatch - Yoon Ha Lee (2009)
A small group of exiles aren't allowed to leave the space station unless they perform a masterpiece. The highest form of art involves suicide.
Meh

Spirey and the Queen - Alastair Reynolds (1996)
Betrayals, desperation, and sentient AI with vast plans.
Ok

Pardon Our Conquest - Alan Dean Foster (2009)
A comedy of three species involved in conquest, surrender, confusion, and friendship. This is set in his Commonwealth series, none of which I've read, but I was amused regardless.
Highly Enjoyable

Symbiont - Robert Silverberg (1985)
Biological warfare between humans and an alien species makes living through an attack worse than dying, so his friend asks, "Why didn't you kill me?"
Meh

The Ship Who Returned - Anne McCaffrey (1999)
A mind ship laments the loss of her pilot she had for over three quarters of a century. She then returns to a people she saved a century ago and may have to again.
Enjoyable

My She - Mary Rosenblum (2009)
Clones are bred in convents on each planet to serve as quantum communication devices. The protagonist is a sapient seeing-eye dog, which allows the clone to see through their eyes. His newest clone to be paired with is different from all the others.
Enjoyable

The Shoulders of Giants - Robert J. Sawyer (2000)
Space pioneers have been in cryosleep for 1,200 years, but now they've reached their destination, only to find it was colonized long ago by far faster ships. What's to be done?
Enjoyable

The Culture Archivist - Jeremiah Tolbert (2009)
A rogue ethnographer's day is ruined when the United Planets's spaceship Jolly Happy Fun Time comes to assimilate the previously uncontacted sentients, except by him, into their consumerist hegemony.
Ok

The Other Side of Jordan - Allen Steele (2009)
A blue collar working class man escapes Earth to travel the galaxy by doing manual labor jobs on space freighters and at space ports. There are several alien species described. It has a retrofuture aesthetic that reminded me of leaving Europe for the New World. There's also a romance with the daughter of a plantation owner.
Enjoyable

Like They Always Been Free - Georgina Li (2009)
The specifics of this sexual relationship elude me, but it's some kind of literary alien sex erotic romance.
Blah

Eskhara - Trent Hergenrader (2009)
US occupation of Baghdad, but in space.
Ok

The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousnesses - James Alan Gardner (2009)
A romantic comedy where entire civilizations are cast as individuals.
Enjoyable

Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy - Catherynne M. Valente (2009)
A tale of history and war told through wine vintages.
Ok