Time Travel and Reading Recommendations

I got another latish start after thunderstorms repeatedly woke me during the night. Then I woke to find snow on the ground. So, apparently thundersnow is a thing.

It turns out I have until March 10 for Hugo nominations and February 15 for Nebula nominations, so I still have time to read books published last year. SFWA has a list of books recommended by members, and I've already put a few titles there on hold at the library, but those are the ones people obviously know about and that are likely to be nominated. If you know of a science fiction or fantasy book published in 2012 that you didn't write (I don't want to get into the thing of authors recommending their own books because that turns into just self-promo) that you think is award-worthy, let me know. Nebula has a separate category for children's/young adult, but they're all lumped together for the Hugo. I'm not making any promises about reading all recommendations, but I am trying to broaden my horizons enough that I might be able to make a contribution to the nominations. Plus, if the books I read now get nominated, then that will decrease my frantic reading for the final ballot. I have to run some errands this afternoon, so I'll have to swing by the library.

I watched the new series Continuum on SyFy last night, and I'm definitely intrigued. It scratches my Terminator itch, with all sorts of lovely time travel tropes. I have this weird fondness for time travel stories -- not the romance version where person from the present travels back in time and falls in love with a knight, but more the kind where wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff happens that complicates matters. Time loops are really cool. This series starts in the future, which seems to be run by some kind of corporate dictatorship, and there's a group of terrorists opposed to this. The group of imprisoned terrorists stages a big jailbreak, accidentally (or not) taking a cop with them. They don't actually leave the prison. They just go back in time 60 years. Their plan is to start the war back then and keep things from happening the way they did. The cop, now stuck in the past away from her husband and son, just wants to get home, but she also wants to catch these dangerous fugitives. She ends up working with a "local" cop and with the teenage hacker she hears on her earpiece. It turns out that he's the one who invented the technology, and he's managed to get onto her signal with his prototype. There's a bit of fish out of water, which I love, and there's the finding the past origins of "current" things, plus some philosophy of time travel -- can you really change the future by changing the past, or did it always happen that way? Plus, Cancer Man is back! William B. Davis is one of the most charming men I've ever met, and it's fun to see him on the screen again. He may even be a good guy, or is he?

It looks like I'll add this one to my schedule. It's about the only real "science fiction" show around right now. Everything else falls more into the fantasy/paranormal/supernatural vein.