Wednesday, December 30, 2015

My favorite looks back at 2015 of 2015

Well, another year has gone by, and at the end of that year, a month has gone by, and boy what a month it's been for blog posts initially just looking back at what were then the past eleven months and then, just when you thought the round-ups couldn't get any more rich, at the past eleven-and-a-half months until today, when posts began to appear looking back at a whopping eleven-and-30/31sts months. I thought I'd take the time to look over some of the very best looks back at 2015 of 2015.

See below for Aargh posts this year (plus 2015 recommendations in the new Interzone, & I wrote two bits of fiction: here & here)

Roundups, Recaps, Recollections, Reccs, Reccies & Wrecks

1. More sort of "What I Wrote"-ish

Carrie Patel
Natalie Luhrs
Sofia Samata
Emma Newman
Susan Gray
Alyssa Wong (recap & sneak preview also see eligibility post)
Peter Newman's filler episode (I love filler episodes, bring back filler episodes)
Fran Wilde
Rose Lemberg
Amal El-Mohtar
NK Jesmin
Cat Rambo
Bogi Takács
A.C. Wise
E. Catherine Tobler
Isabel Yap
Nin Harris
Alexis A. Hunter
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Sunil Patel
Andrea Phillips
Arkady Martine
Kate Elliott
Carmen Maria Machado
JY Yang: the year I quit writing
Sarah Chorn
Mur Lafferty

2. More sort of "What I Read"-ish + misc. / uncategorized

Another busy copyright year
Nina Allan
Fran Wilde
Peter Sutton's books read in 2015
Joseph Tomaras's worst book of 2015 (plus year in review plus Tentative Nebula Nominations)
Joanne Hall ("The Year in Reading Stats")
Andrew Liptak / io9
Ken MacLeod
Books Ethan Robinson read in 2015
Okayafrica
Strange Horizons (incl. like Nina Allan, Sofia Samatar, Carmen Maria Machado, Abigail Nussbaum, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Paul Kincaid, Christina Scholz, Aishwarya Subramanian & many more)
Adam Roberts / Guardian (notable pubs in 2015)
Elizabeth / Books & Pieces (YouTube)
Three books that disappointed Nick Mamatas this year
Jeff VanderMeer (facing the wrong direction: looking forward to 2016) (see also)
Rosie Oliver (likewise)
Yoon Ha Lee (favorite new-to-Yoon books of 2015)
Jodie's Reading Roundup at Lady Business
Sofia Samatar's books read in 2015
Cecily Kane ("Obligatory year in review/awards recommendation post. Virtually all I read was short fiction and nonfiction, so at least it’s brief!")
Ian Sales (books / films / albums experienced in 2015)
Charles Payseur
Books loved by Kat Howard in 2015
Abigail Nussbaum (Best Books of 2015)
SJ Higbee's Outstanding Reads of 2015
Rinn's Top Reads of 2015
Peter Tennant's Best in Class

Come home 2015, you're drunk. Please come home. We need you. We need you.

*   *   *

Earlier: Aargh in 2015

Listicles Updated
SFF about gamification
SFF about economics

New Genres Invented in 2015
Utopian Science Fiction
Not the Chosen One
See also earlier new genres

Hypotheses Hypothed in 2015
Destrangement
Specters
See also three mini-theses on epic fantasy and raceThesis on Witches' Cats, earlier hypotheses

Naming Names
Benedict Cumberbatch
George Lucas's Luke Skywalker (according to Samuel Delany)
Emma Newman's Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver (in progress)
Neal Stephenson's Bobby Shaftoe
Ann Leckie's Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen 
Ursula LeGuin's Ged
Ursula LeGuin's Shevek
Cory Doctorow's Buhle
Tom Pollock's Parva "Pen" Khan 
Tom Pollock's Beth Bradley (& one more, probably Reach, still to do from the same book)
Rumpelstiltskin 
Lucy (incl. e.g. Amal El-Mohtar's Lucyite)
Samuel Beckett's Winnie

Fiction
Full text of "It's OK to Say if You Went Back in Time to Kill Baby Hitler"
Acknowledgements for "The Internet of Things Your Mother Never Told You"
Excerpt from "Interpellation" (in progress)

Games-Related
(See also Games tab)
Drama & Dice - free, generic, rules-lite tabletop RPG
Dreams & Dystopias - a free diceless tabletop RPG (in progress) which uses Chess mechanics (& Reddit thread)
Daiquiris & Demigods - free, generic, rules-lite tabletop RPG that uses drinking instead of dice
Signal-boosted call for submissions: How to Win at Ultravision
Sad Chess (Ten Laws is out of print for now, but email me if you want a pdf)
Sample campaign material, since been incorporated into Daiquiris & Demigods as an appendix
Skycrawl: text-based RPG created in Twine (in progress)
See also Sad PuppiesExcerpt from "Interpellation", excerpt from "Integration"gamification SFF listicle (updated)

Disjecta Membra
Hinkley Point
Star Wars tweak
Crouching Dire Haggis, Hygge Grue
Lady Windermere's Chatterbutler
Regurgitation
From a WIP (Swift / 1001 Nights)
Jonesing (see also Nugget of Pratchettology)
The Gold Touch
Excerpt from Popular Magic
Excerpt from How to Behave

Writing, Narrative, SFF Studies, SFF Poetics
Today, Tomorrow - a talk on near future sf (direct link)
Story Sludge Redux - link to a Galen Strawson article, plus an attack on stories
Marxist Science Fiction - "... while science fiction studies has got comfortable with the idea that science fiction doesn't predict the future, the study of future-predicting practices has started investigating the ways in which they are science fiction ..."
What is a spoiler?
Also, how would you ever know how long it took you to write a book?

Economics / Money
Unequal Pricing - long post loosely based on Georg Simmel's "perfect money" thought experiment
Quick thought about Carl Menger and the social construction of economic value
Thesis on Witches' Cats
See also Note on Mieville's The City & The City, Sales-Fieconomics SFF listicle (updated)
& elsewhere: Economic Humanities scrapbook

Notes on Terry Pratchett
Nugget of Pratchettology - toward the establishment of Pratchett Studies
The ambivalent figure of the pig not-pig in Terry Pratchett's Thud!
What kind of satire is the Discworld?

Other Reviews / Notes
Sales-Fi: on David D. Levine's "Tk'tk'tk" and Cory Doctorow's "Chicken Little" (in progress)
Naomi Foyles's Seoul Survivors
Lauren Beukes's Moxyland

Conventions
BristolCon - links to reports, my report on the last bit
BristolCon Fringe with Joanne Hall and Jonathan L. Howard
WorldCon 2017 site selection ballot
See also Happy Puppies

Publishing, Publicizing, Social Media
Star Star Star Star Star - a collapsing nebula of questions about reviews and ratings
What counts as "published"?
Elsewhere: five suggestions for Making Twitter Better
Podcasts - any recommendations?
Elsewhere: my Patreon
See also Happy Puppies

Prizes, Voting, Democracy
BSFA nomination process suggestion: six per member? (& see also BSFA & Hugo noms ruminations. Can you nominate a blog label?)
My Obligatory Eligibility Post
Thoughts on Eligibility Posts - if you believe in #dontselfreject, then don't let your vote get split either
Hugo Nomination Ruminations (& Nebula murmuration)
Happy Puppies: my suggestion for an improved voting system (for the Hugos or any literary prize)
Quick Hugo Thought & Stupid Obvious Hugo Question
Sketch for a new bottom-up SFF award, friendly to indie publishing
PR under FPTP: "hacking" the existing parliamentary to emulate direct democracy, probably catastrophically

Lists
link list, and some thoughts on epic fantasy and race
Big list of some short SFF I liked in 2014
See also gamification SFF (updated), economics SFF (updated)

Will try to do better next year :/

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