I’d like to invite you to join us in reading Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark this month, part of a year-long chronological reading of the novels nominated as the best science fiction novels written by women in the last ten years.
Published in 2002, Speed of Dark went on to win the Nebula Award the following year, and it was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award. Elizabeth Moon was long-since well-established as a science fiction author, with several series under her belt. She’d been published for fourteen years at the time it came out.
I mail-ordered my copy a few weeks ago, and when it arrived, I found a UK mainline rail train ticket tucked into it, a long-forgotten book mark. It’s an open single from London Terminals to Stansted Airport for the 7th of March, 2003, bought the same day. I wonder if it was a domestic flight that ticket-holder was on with his or her full-priced single ticket. Wherever they were going, I can envision them sitting on that train, reading while en route to further-flung places. I love knowing that this book went somewhere, all those years ago.
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In 2002, Astrid Lingren died. Gwyneth Jones won the Clarke Award for Bold as Love, her fifth time being nominated for the award. The Euro came into use, and the Mars Odyssey probe found signs of water on Mars. In the US, criminal proceedings against Enron began, the Department of Homeland Security was established, and WorldCom went bankrupt.
Appropriately enough, given the book’s topic, the UK designated 2002 as Autism Awareness Year.
Niall will, again, be leading the book discussion in the later part of March. I hope you will join us in reading and discussing it.
vector-bsfa.com 
After talking to you about your new editorship, I snooped around and found your blog. I’ve added this book to my reading queue. I haven’t read a SF book in many many years, but the autism theme got me. The myth of a cognitive disability being curable (vs accommodable) persists today.
Maria: Oh good. I have been linking to it occasionally – it was in no way meant to be a secret. Note that this is a group blog – not just mine. I’m happy to be able to give you an incentive to read a work of SF!