Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

Just wanted to let you all know that we've officially finished Phase 1!

What's Phase 1 you ask?  Phase 1 was to get all the nominated novels for all 10 awards loaded into the database with at least basic details and a synopsis for each book.  With the exception of a handful of hold outs, we're done with that and ready to start Phase 2. 

Phase 2 is filling in all the books that are part of a series that did not get nominated so that we can have complete sets for all our authors.  For example, Gene Wolfe has several series represented on WWEnd.  We've gone in and added all the missing books so that his series are complete.  Now you can get the complete list of books for The Book of the Long Sun (2 nominated books and 2 others we've just added).

You can click the series name on the novel page to get the rest of the books we have for that series.  Some series are already complete but many more are not.  We'll be filling those in as we can, starting with the more obvious series like LOTR and New/Long/Short Sun etc.  The search function has been updated to serach through the series name as well so you can find a series that way too.

Of course, all this means we'll be adding a few hundred more books to WWEnd which takes time so be patient if your favorite series does not get updated right away.  I'll consider any suggestions about which series should be updated first so post them here if you've got one in mind.

- Dave

Yes indeed.  Foundation is high on my list.

The Galactic Center Series

The Queendom of Sol

The Neanderthal Parallax

Some more:

Lord of the Rings

Foreigner

Alex Benedict

The Way Series

Just added:

The Chronicles of Amber

Only 3 of the 10 were nominated.

I read all of these when I was a kid.  I have a fond rememberance for them though I don't remember much about them.  I'm afraid they won't hold up all these years later so I'm not going to attempt a re-read.

- Dave

More series...

Stephen R. Donaldson:

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - only 2 books so far

The Gap Cycle

David Brin:

The Uplift Saga

The Uplift Trilogy

Kim Stanley Robinson

The Capital Code

And more:

Isaac Asimov:

The Foundation Series

The Robot Series

The Galactic Empire

R.A. MacAvoy:

The Damiano Trilogy

And today on WWEnd there is a lot moor Michael Moorcock:

The Elric Saga

The Book of Corum

Elric, is the series that started it all for me. Before Elric, I had never even considered picking up a book on my own.   A buddy of mine was reading Elric of Melnibone at summer camp.  In fact, he brought the whole series with him.  When I asked him what it was about he said "Dude, it's sooo bad-ass!  This guy, Elric, is a sorcerer and a bad-ass, and he's got this evil black rune-sword, Stormbringer, that sucks the souls out of its victims and feeds their strength into Elric so he can kill more people and the sword can drink more souls!"  I was 10 and boy did that sound cool!  Thanks, Mike.

- Dave

Still more series:

The Riverworld Saga - Philip Jose Farmer

The Engines of Light Trilogy - Ken MacLeod

The Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod

The Wess'Har Series - Karen Traviss

- Dave

A couple of crowd pleasers today:

The Dark Tower - Stephen King

Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling

- Dave

The Heechee Saga - Frederick Pohl

The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson

The Ringworld Series - Larry Niven

More series:

The Chronicles of Chaos - John C. Wright

The Golden Age - John C. Wright

The Ender Wiggin Saga - Orson Scott Card

The Shadow Saga - Orson Scott Card

The Dragon Riders of Pern Trilogy - Anne McCaffrey

New addition:

The Dune Chronicles

While I was adding the 4 missing books in the Dune series I cleaned up the old, and confusing, double Dune entry.

Dune was first nominated in serial form in Analog magazine (Dec 1963, Jan, Feb 1964).  It was printed in two parts as Dune World and The Prophet of Dune.

The serial was later expanded and bound into a book which went on to win the Nebula (1965) and the Hugo (1966).

To make the difference more obvious I've put the above description into the synopsis for the serial version and changed the cover graphic to show the excellent cover from Analog.  Some members that have flagged as read or favorited the serial version may want to switch to the final book form to be more accurate.  I hope that clears things up.  Let me know if there is any more confusion.

Just put up a big addition to the series books.  Xanth!  Ye, gods!  I thought I had read most of them back in my youth only to discover there were 32 in the series.  Two books were nominated for awards:   A Spell for Chameleon (1978 BFS Winner) and Castle Roogna (1980 Locus F Nominated).

I stopped at 12, Man from Mundania, and for some reason thought there were maybe 20 total.  There is a 33rd book coming out next month and apparently 2 more after that for sure.  I think Piers Anthony has, single-handidly,  kept Darrell K. Sweet in business since 1977.

Xanth Series - Piers Anthony

How many have you read?  Anybody read them all?

Some big additions over the weekend:

The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

This one is a crowd pleaser.  Book 6, Lord of Chaos, was the only book in the series to garner a nom but this is a beloved series and with the new book going to print I thought I had better get this one up there in full.

The Age of Misrule - Mark Chadbourn

Added book 2 in the series, Darkest Hour, and updated the cover graphics with the snazzy new covers from Pyr.

The Aegypt Cycle - John Crowley

Added book 3, Dæmonomania, to complete the set and posted new cover graphics.  Schweet.

The Birthgrave Trilogy - Tanith Lee

The Probability Trilogy - Nancy Kress

The Sleepless - Nancy Kress

Nanotech Cycle - Kathleen Ann Goonan

The Chanur Series - C. J. Cherryh

Added 3 books to finish the set.

Destiny's Children - Stephen Baxter

Manifold Trilogy - Stephen Baxter

35 new books in all to complete 10 series!

Added some more books over the weekend.

David Eddings' King of the Murgos was a Locus Fantasy nominee in 1989 so I added the other 4 books of The Malloreon to complete the series.

But what's the Malloreon without The Belgariad?  Uh... just 5 books instead of 10?  Yep.  Had to add the whole saga.

To keep the fantasy series theme going I added in the rest of the books for Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams.  Book 3 was nominated for the Locus Fantasy Award in 1994 .  If you read it, you know that the last book of the trilogy was over 1,000 pages - too many pages for a single paperback, so the publishers divided it into 2 volumes. So the Trilogy is actually 4 books in paperback form but not in hardcover.  To get around this problem, I tagged both volumes of To Green Angel Tower as book 3 and added Part 1 - Seige and Part 2 - Storm as sub-titles.  It's still a trilogy but you get credit for 4 books if you read them. Bonus!  The new Orbit covers are tasty too.

And now for something completely different...

A man so nice you say the "E" twice - E.E. "Doc" Smith.  This is old school SF we're talking about. Skylark DuQuesne was nominated for the Hugo in 1966.  (Check out the Hugo lineup for 1966!)  After reading the synopsis I decided I'd have to read this one.  Turns out it's the 4th book of the Skylark Series written 16 years after book 3.  The series was a pulp serial originally and published in a book starting in 1946!  Check out the covers on this series.  These are the stuff of dreams.  Classic SF goodness.

This weekend was all about Terry Pratchett and his enormous Discworld saga.  Is there a longer SF/F series out there?  Xanth was close at 32 books but Discworld is the current champ weighing in at 37 books!

Eight nominated novels were already in our data base including Hogfather (1997 BFS nom), Night Watch (2003 Locus nom), Going Postal (2005 Locus and Nebula nominated) and Making Money (2008 Locus Fantasy winner and Nebula nominee).  The other 29 have been added starting with the first of the series 1983's The Color of Magic and ending with the lastest installment, Unseen Academicals , out this year.  If you're a Discworld fan you've got a lot of new books to tag as read .

You may have noticed that most of the covers for these are reprints from HarperTorch.  I loves me a cover art series and these are fun and definitely colorful. This is a series that's been printed in many editions and translations over the years so I was happy to find the anniversary set from HT.  If you're a fan of cover art and Discworld, you're in luck.  The Discworld Cover Wiki has an amazing collection of covers for all the books.  Go ahead and check it out.  It's mind-boggling.

A machine would be more efficient by far but where's the fun in that?

The last few weeks I've added in some serious fantasy series with Xanth, The Wheel of Time and Discworld topping the list.

This week I wanted to show that there are some sizeable SF series out there too.  I started off with The Saga of the Skolian Empire by Catherine Asaro.  This is a big SF series with 13 books.  We already had The Last Hawk (1998 Nebula nominated) and The Quantum Rose (2001 Nebula winner) - books 3 and 6 respectively - so I added in the other 11 books ending with Diamond Star, out just this year.

To top that I went in for an old classic series from Marion Zimmer Bradley, Darkover.  Twenty-two books!  The Sword of Aldones (1963 Hugo nom), The Heritage of Hastur (1975 Nebula nominee) and 1978 Hugo nominee, The Forbidden Tower, are the most celebrated books of a series that spans 40 years.  This is a series that you often hear mentioned when people talk about what got them hooked on SF.

Keeping in the SF vein, I've also finished out several smaller SF series like Peter F. Hamilton's Greg Mandel Trilogy, which includes 1995 BSFA nominee The Nano Flower, and Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars - the sequel to triple nominee The Forge of God (Nebula 1987, Hugo and Locus SF 1988).

Next comes Karl Schroeder's Virga, beginning with Sun of Suns (2007 Campbell nom) and ending with The Sunless Countries published by Tor in 2009.  I love the Stephan Martinere cover art for these books and the excerpts sound intriguing.  I've added these to my reading list!

Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is now complete with the 3 middle volumes added between Raft (1992 Clarke nominee) and Vacuum Diagrams, winner of the 1999 Philip K. Dick Award.

That's a lot of sci-fi but don't fret fantasy fans - I didn't forget you.  I went old-school again by finishing out Barbara Hambly's Winterlands series with books 2-4 added to 1986 Locus Fantasy nominated Dragonsbane. And finally, to round things out, I give you the last volume of Orson Scott Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker.  I somehow managed to miss The Crystal City last go 'round.

That's 46 new books for you to tag, so get busy.

This week's additions are all Gordon R. Dickson.  Dickson was a prolific writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction with over 60 novels to his credit.  He is perhaps best remembered for his 2 big series:  The Dragon Knight and The Childe Cycle (Dorsai) .