Solutions vs. Problems

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who look at problems and try to solve them, and those who have a set of solutions and try to make the problems fit.

We call the later kind of people "idealists" and the former "pragmatists."

The problem with idealists is that they try to force their solutions on every problem, whether nor not it's a good solution for the problem. They are also slow to accept feedback, such as "this ain't working."

Don't get me wrong - if it weren't for idealism, we'd all still be living in caves. But for every successful idealist, there's at least one pragmatist behind them, making adjustments to the plan.

Personal Best of 2007

One of my panels at Windycon is "Best Science Fiction of 2007." In that spirit, here are my completely subjective picks. The listings in each category are completely random, listed in the order I thought of them.

Novel-length fiction

* Tobias Buckell, Ragamuffin. This is his second novel, a loose sequel to 2006's Crystal Rain. My review is available here.

* John G. Hemry writing as Jack Campbell, The Lost Fleet: Fearless. Also book 2 of a series, this is one of the few SF "Fleet action" novels that considers relativistic effects. The series concept is based on the story of Xenophon's March. You can see my review here.

* Kristine Smith, Endgame. Kristine won the Campbell Award a few years back for Best New Writer, and this story, the final one in her Jani Kilian series, is a good example why. Click here to see my review.

Short fiction and anthologies

* The anthology Visual Journeys, edited by Eric T. Reynolds of Hadley Rille Books. This is a small-press release, so you'll have to order it. It features stories by Tobias Buckell, Richard Chwedyk, Ron Miller and Frank Wu. Click here to read my review.

* Jim Baen's Universe, an online magazine offering over 150,000 words of fiction every other month. This is not "all military SF, all the time" but a balanced mix of fantasy and SF. They've publishes stuff from Kristine Smith to Julie Czerneda.

* Shimmer Magazine. This is a semi-pro magazine with strong editing and layout, and represents the future of SF.

My novel The Mars Run came out in 2006, so even if I thought it was the best SF novel around (it's good, but not the best) it's not eligible.