Books of Honor
From the beginning, Potlatch has not been an ordinary science
fiction convention. It did not have a Guest of Honor, choosing instead, to be
about everyone participating in the discussion, and of course about supporting
Clarion West. At Potlatch 2 we thought it would be neat to
have a Book of Honor, starting with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. This has become
a Potlatch tradition.
Potlatch 18, for the first time, has chosen two Books of Honor. This is also the first time we have chosen a book by a living author, and the first time we have chosen a Young Adult book. We hope you will find discovering (or rediscovering) these books interesting, and enjoy the discussions around them at this year's convention.
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BOOK OF HONOR
Always Coming HomeUrsula K. Le Guin Always Coming Home is a book that everyone in S-F knows about. It is part of the zeitgeist. But there are a lot of people who haven't read it, or who last read it 20 years ago. It is an unusually good match for our Potlatch book of honor criteria -- people will have lots of ideas about why they are reading Always Coming Home, but they may learn things they weren't expecting. My memories of reading Always Coming Home are that it
is a joyful book. I know there is conflict and suffering, but it is a
story of survival, of life and culture and hope going on. In many ways
it is the exact opposite of The Dispossessed. I think
the joy in Always Coming Home can be shared. |
BOOK OF HONOR
Growing Up WeightlessJohn M. Ford Mike (John M.) Ford is/was a brilliant science fiction writer whose work is not as well known and well read as we feel it should be. Growing Up Weightless covers territory that's particularly relevant and interesting in the climate of the current YA boom in science fiction. It's a story that features a creative, sympathetic protagonist, opening the door to comparisons with protagonists in other popular S-F YA novels: Matt Ronay and his friends vs. Tally Youngblood and her friends in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy vs. Heinlein's Podkayne and Thorby Baslim vs. Marcus in Cory Doctorow's new Little Brother, etc. Lenny Bailes |
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Past Potlatch Books of Honor:
Potlatch 2, 1993 : Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Potlatch 4, 1995 : The Only Neat Thing to Do by James Tiptree, Jr.
Potlatch 5, 1996 : The Lathe of Heaven (video, based on the novel by Ursula K. Le Guin)
Potlatch 7, 1998 : The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Potlatch 10, 2001 : Thunder and Roses by Theodore Sturgeon
Potlatch 12, 2003 : The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith
Potlatch 13, 2004 : The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
Potlatch 14, 2005 : A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Potlatch 15, 2006 : The Avram Davidson Treasury edited by Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis
Potlatch 16, 2007 : Dimensions of Sheckley: the Selected Novels of Robert Sheckley
Potlatch 17, 2008: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler