melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2017-10-10 05:31 pm
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FMK #26: This Is Flat-Out Fanfic

#26! The projected halfway point of a year's worth of reading the backlog! And in fact I went in over the last couple weeks and sorted all of the remaining into piles, so I didn't end up stuck with just a bunch of boring mismatched ones toward the end, and it looks like it might actually come out to exactly 52 weeks without me having to try too hard?

It looks like there will be more non-spec-fic weeks coming up, though, I ended up with 8 more weeks worth of that. I know fewer of you get excited about those but that's what I have on my shelves. There's also four more anthology weeks.

This week's anthologies also did not garner a huge number of votes. I will reiterate you don't have to know anything about the books to vote! A lot of these I bought just 'cause I liked the title so you do not have to feel bad if you vote that way. I suspect last week's voting was on that basis, given that it was a dead heat between Carmen Miranda's ghost is haunting space station three and Brave New Girls: Girls and Gadgets. Brave New Girls won F in the end! Cats In Space won K. Surely... surely ya'll don't have something about Cats in Space? I read all the Catfantastics back in the day; I will have to at least check that one to see how much overlap there is.

I finally finished Locke Lamora, so I have three reviews to get through; IDK if I'll do that first, or a proper yuletide letter...

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

For the midway point, we have a very special theme this week: PEOPLE GETTING PAID PRO RATES FOR FANFIC! Hoorah!


Poll #18919 FMK #26: Fanfic
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60


Slan Hunter by Kevin J. Anderson (and Van Vogt) (1995)

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F
5 (20.8%)

M
1 (4.2%)

K
18 (75.0%)

The Enchanter Reborn by L Sprague de Camp (1996)

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F
12 (52.2%)

M
5 (21.7%)

K
6 (26.1%)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (1997)

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F
24 (64.9%)

M
6 (16.2%)

K
7 (18.9%)

Flashman: from the Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser (1969)

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F
12 (42.9%)

M
7 (25.0%)

K
9 (32.1%)

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

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F
18 (41.9%)

M
3 (7.0%)

K
22 (51.2%)

Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (1956)

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F
20 (57.1%)

M
9 (25.7%)

K
6 (17.1%)

Wicked by Gregory Maguire (1996)

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F
21 (46.7%)

M
6 (13.3%)

K
18 (40.0%)

The Girl With The Golden Bouffant: A Jane Bond Parody by Mabel Maney (2004)

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F
13 (56.5%)

M
5 (21.7%)

K
5 (21.7%)

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett by Colleen McCullough (2008)

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F
15 (57.7%)

M
5 (19.2%)

K
6 (23.1%)

There And Back Again by Pat Murphy (1999)

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F
14 (53.8%)

M
8 (30.8%)

K
4 (15.4%)

Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven (1999)

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F
8 (33.3%)

M
2 (8.3%)

K
14 (58.3%)

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (2011)

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F
18 (56.2%)

M
2 (6.2%)

K
12 (37.5%)

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888)

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F
16 (64.0%)

M
7 (28.0%)

K
2 (8.0%)

Pride & Promiscuity edited by Arielle Eckstut (2001)

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F
15 (60.0%)

M
4 (16.0%)

K
6 (24.0%)

Foundation's Friends edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1989)

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F
10 (47.6%)

M
2 (9.5%)

K
9 (42.9%)

Weird Tales from Shakespeare edited by Martin H. Greenberg (1989)

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F
20 (74.1%)

M
3 (11.1%)

K
4 (14.8%)

The Day The Magic Stopped edited by Christopher Stasheff (1995)

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F
8 (42.1%)

M
2 (10.5%)

K
9 (47.4%)

Fantastic Alice edited by Magaret Weis (1995)

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F
14 (58.3%)

M
4 (16.7%)

K
6 (25.0%)


sheliak: Tik-Tok from the Oz books, reading a book. (reading: tik-tok)

[personal profile] sheliak 2017-10-13 06:30 am (UTC)(link)
I know I read The Red Tent; I can remember part of the plot and even some lines, but the closest thing to an opinion I can scrape up is a vague sense of depression. I don't know if this is something I can hold against the book, or just the result of reading it rather too young (I think I must have been about ten or twelve).

I voted F on Til We Have Faces because I'd been vaguely intending to read it and never getting around to doing so for a few years.

K for Wicked. I admit that I have not read it; based on osmosis I do know that its Glinda is taken entirely from the movie, and I'm too fond of who she is in the books to touch it.

I've also never read The Magicians; the reviews I read all made it sound too unpleasant to bother.

For the rest, I judged by title, author, or my fondness (or lack of same) for the source material.