Decision-making by DW Poll

[dira]

So, one of the ways in which I am a ginormous nerd is that in the last couple of years, since I started keeping track of what I read, I have started assigning myself goals for the books I read--not just a number of books, but within that a number of non-fiction books, a number of books of poetry, a number of books published in the current year, and so on.

One of my assignments for this year is to read five past award-winning SF/F books, and to keep myself from getting totally overwhelmed I decided to target books from years ending in 1. The first four books I read for the assignment were the Hugo winners I hadn't read before (1981 - Joan D Vinge's The Snow Queen, 1971 - Larry Niven's Ringworld, 1961 - Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the 1951 Retro Hugo - Robert A. Heinlein's A Farmer in the Sky) and that leaves me without an obvious choice for my fifth book.

So, obviously time for a poll! My selections are taken mostly from truepenny's list of SF/F/H award-winners, 1953-2009, plus the Wikipedia entries for the winners of the Lambda Literary Award and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, minus books I've read before, already know I don't want to read, or can't get through my local library system. That still leaves thirteen books I know very little about except that they've won some sort of award in a year ending in 1, so feel free to give your opinions in the comments if your feelings are not sufficiently expressed by clicking a radio button!

Poll #7840 Help me pick a book to read!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48

View Respondents

Which of these books should I read first?

View Answers

A Woman of the Iron People, by Eleanor Arnason
10 (20.8%)

Timescape, by Gregory Benford
5 (10.4%)

Jumping off the Planet, by David Gerrold
1 (2.1%)

The Gilda Stories: a novel, by Jewelle Gomez
3 (6.2%)

White Queen, by Gwyneth Jones
0 (0.0%)

Thomas, the Rhymer, by Ellen Kushner
10 (20.8%)

Only Begotten Daughter, by James Morrow
5 (10.4%)

Declare, by Tim Powers
3 (6.2%)

The Dark Beyond the Stars, by Frank M. Robinson
1 (2.1%)

Ship of Fools, Richard Paul Russo
0 (0.0%)

Point of Dreams, by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
6 (12.5%)

Galveston, by Sean Stewart
4 (8.3%)

Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

A Woman of the Iron People is fantastic anthropological SF-- it's that increasingly rare beast, a first-contact story that's not a tragedy! I would say it's not quite as good as Arneson's Ring of Swords, which is also anthropological SF with some fascinating gender stuff and lots of politics, but it's still very good.

(Of the others, I've read Thomas the Rhymer, which was beautifully written but not particularly surprising, and Stations of the Tide, which has some memorable moments but at this remove I couldn't tell you what it was actually about. And I saw a play based on The Gilda Stories once, which I quite enjoyed, but I have no idea how loose an adaptation it was.)

[dira]

Oooh, thank you for the input! I am definitely up for non-tragic first-contact anthropological SF!