Last week I finished Stephen Baxter's Proxima and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312. Proxima was a fun read. It relied on a good amount of "unobtanium" to drive the plot but was enjoyable nonetheless. I like Baxter's style of following characters or families through decades or centuries of time. 2312 was meh. The world building was great, but the characters were flat at best. Not sure what I'll start next.
Yeah I agree with your description of 2312. Not just flat, but really hard to like too. Something good might have come from the book after all! I was looking at it's goodreads page when I noticed this review: That sounds amazing! I'm going to try that this year. I definitely spend too much on scifi already.For the past three years, I’ve paid for the privilege of voting in the Hugo Awards. I do this not because I love voting in the Hugo Awards (though that’s cool) but because, for the past few years, they have made available a voter packet containing digital copies of most of the nominated works. All I need do is purchase a supporting membership at the year’s WorldCon, which is always cheaper than if I were to buy the various novels and anthologies in which these works might be found. (Also, all the digital copies are DRM-free, a philosophy I support.)