John J. Vinacci

I spent a year reading only sci-fi in an effort to explore new ideas and hopefully enhance my own creativity and writing skills. I certainly learned a lot about what to do and more importantly, what not to do when undertaking the task of writing fiction. I managed to read 12 books which for this slow reader is nothing short of miraculous. To summarize the books I've read in the past year, I've 'awarded' them below:  Best Overall: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu Most Fun: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi Weirdest: Blood Music by Greg Bear Hardest/Strict Sci-fi: The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle Moodiest/Most Haunting: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem Most Riveting: The Martian by Andy Weir Most Unpredictable: All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai Most Over-rated: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin Best for Young Adults: The Loop by Ben Oliver Absolute Worst: The Employees by Olga Ravn

My last 'sci-fi' read of the year is the story of a time-agent, a person tasked with preventing criminals from taking advantage of time travel, getting stuck in the past and his 'rescue' after 18 years. Problem is, he is emotionally torn between the family he leaves behind in the past and the family from his proper timeline he returns to. In short, it's an emotional rollercoaster painted with a veneer of sci-fi shenanigans. And that's the book's main problem.  As a family drama, the book works well enough (though I surely wouldn't say 'gripping') and is generally well-written. I just couldn't get behind the overall story, though, because the book is billed as being sci-fi - given the element of time travel - but the time-traveling merely serves as a plot device whose particulars aren't given much thought by the author. This tended to make the book almost read like advanced Young Adult material than a thought-provoking exercise in sci-fi. ...

First, a synopsis from Amazon: " The Employees  chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids."  Apparently, this book had been shortlisted for several sci-fi book awards and honestly, I can't even begin to understand why.  As stated in the book's synopsis, each chapter is a report/statement from an employee aboard the Six Thousand Ship t o a corporate investigatory board concerning the attachment of the employees to 'objects' that are taken on the ship. What the objects are exactly is never stated. There is no particular character to root for. A murder mystery is teased but never properly addressed. There is no deep philosophical exploration (much le...