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Even if you're not done with last year's reading challenges, time to start planning the ones for next year!

As usual, I'll just recreate these for those that have a specific challenge they want to meet:

Historian Challenge
Graphic Novel Challenge
Subgenre Focus Challenge
Standalone Challenge
Explorer Challenge
Awards Challenge
Female Author Challenge
Short Story Challenge
Series Completist Challenge

And here we get to have fun putting together our BINGO card!

Here's this year's card, to remind you what we've just done:



Here are the slots we keep year after year since they already provide a good basic stretch across things we should all try to do when reading:
Alternate form
Anthology
Award Winner
New-To-You Author
Published before ??? (I'll pick some date)
Published in 2025
Book that was Free (since that's just the center square)
Translated from another language


And our list of existing suggestions, new ones always welcome

Genres:
High Fantasy
Hard Sci-Fi
Speculative
Space Opera
Epic Fantasy
Young Adult
Middle Grade
Urban Fantasy
Humour
Romance
Mystery
Apocalyptic / Dystopian
Optimistic / Utopian
Non-fiction SFF
Fantasy of Manners
Arthurian
Weird West
Romantasy

Authors:
Female Author
Male Author
LGBTQ Author
Author of Color
By a favorite author
Indigenous
With a disability
Non-English author (kind of same as "Translated")
Indie Author

Features:
Female/Male/etc protagonist
Non-human protagonist
Some kind of fantasy creature (dragon, unicorn, demon, god)
Features some SF creature (alien, AI)
Features some kind of job (librarian, doctor, ruler, cop/detective)
Immortality
Time Travel
Distant Future/Past
Parallel/Portal Worlds
Alternate Timelines
Non-Western Country or Culture
Set in a real, non-English-speaking country
Military SF
Near Future
Social SF
Religion
Mythology
Fairytale / folklore
Colony
School
Lost civilization
Generation ship
Features a character with wings/tail/other unusual feature
Tech/Magic run amok
Bio/Nano-tech
Talking animals
Virtual Reality
A holiday (Christmas, Halloween, something specific to the world)
A station or an inn
Telepathy/Psychic
Invasion
Clone/Doppleganger
Takes place in a certain location (continent, underground, etc)

"Punks":
Steampunk/Gaslight
Cyberpunk
Silkpunk
Solarpunk / Clifi
Biopunk
Decopunk
Atompunk
Dieselpunk
Elfpunk
Dreampunk
Gunpowder/Flintlock Fantasy (not really punk but goes with the rest)
A punk character :D You know the kind with spiky green hair and piercings and probably in a band and stuff


"Metadata":
Number of pages
Short story/novella/novelette
Beautiful cover
Cover that is -some colour-
Debut novel
Standalone novel
Last book in a series
Omnibus
SF/F Translated from other than English
Made into a TV show or movie
Media Tie-in
Based on a game
Shared World (multi-author series)
Pre-20th Century SF/F
SF/F Graphic Novel
Complete a duology/trilogy
E-book / Audiobook
A special letter or word in the book title
Published in a certain month of the year
Prequel / Sequel

I wound up taking 2024 year off due to chronic health problems, so I don't know if I have a right to make suggestions. But I am planning to participate this coming year, so I throw a few out there...

Anything that blends the 1800s or the Old West with sci-fi/fantasy elements. Not sure how you'd want to phrase that.

Media Tie-In is always welcome as I am on a Doctor Who tear at the moment.

I'm unsure what "Alternate form" means. Will you enlighten me, please? 😊

Ooh, I like the Old West idea, we haven't done that before and I actually pulled something out on that topic to read next year by chance. I wasn't sure I was actually going to read it but this will make it a certainty.

Alternate form is pretty much anything that isn't a standard prose novel. So a graphic novel, poetry, a play, etc as long as it can be found on ŷ������. An audio book would count too.

Thank you, Andrea. Not what I guessed at all. 😀

At least that's what I intended but everyone is free to interpret how they like

Andrea wrote: "Ooh, I like the Old West idea, we haven't done that before and I actually pulled something out on that topic to read next year by chance. I wasn't sure I was actually going to read it but this will..."

Here's a shelf for Weird West, which has some suggestions. This isn't exhaustive, but it's a starting point.

/genres/weir...

My suggestion for next year would be Atlantis and perhaps a non-fiction book about SFF - we haven't done that one for a few years.

I have done this challenge the last 3 years (at least) and I really enjoy it. It's my favorite challenge! This is the first year I didn't complete the card (I just couldn't with the 1,000 pages). So I don't care at all which we pick, I will gladly enter in and do my best! Thank you for putting it together for us.

Old West would give me a reason to read Cowboys and Aliens, which I have a copy of floating around somewhere.

I know that the Cowboys and Aliens movie was not a box office hit, but I loved it!

I didn't know it was a book! I'm always surprised to find certain movies are based on books like Shrek, Jumanji, Mary Poppins and of course loads of others. Though some may barely resemble the original book ;)

I guess I didn't know that it was a book either, just that it was graphic novel series. I haven't read either. I much preferred the Mary Poppins movie. She was cranky in the book.

I need to get around to Mary Poppins. I might put it on my list for next year.

I watched a documentary about the making of the movie and how hard it was for Disney to get the rights to it, the author herself was pretty cranky (though I understood her POV, seeing as how much they were modifying her original tale...)

Georgann wrote: "I know that the Cowboys and Aliens movie was not a box office hit, but I loved it!"

I thought it was a fun movie 😊

Andrea wrote: "I didn't know it was a book! I'm always surprised to find certain movies are based on books like Shrek, Jumanji, Mary Poppins and of course loads of others. Though some may barely resemble the orig..."

I didn't know it was a book either until I found it in a box of books I had bought at auction - $9 for 10 boxes of ex-library books. Most of them I have no interest in, so I will give them to community book exchanges, or to a charity shop, but there were a few good ones in there.

I wanted to try another "punk", so I was looking into ones we hadn't done before

Decopunk - no GR list for suggestions
Atompunk - One short list
Dieselpunk - Couple of lists, but a lot overlapped with books I always considered steampunk. I mean there's a big difference between a world powered by steam and one by diesel, you can't really be both

But while looking up Dieselpunk I found a list for Dreampunk. This one seemed kind of cool (maybe because I've read quite a few on it)
/list/show/1...

Some descriptions of what it is:

- Dreampunk fiction often makes use of surreal imagery, esoteric symbolism, dream logic (which may not be entirely logical), dream-related technology,

- It's a trippy subgenre of speculative fiction focused on dreamlike states and their interaction with consensus reality.

- Dreampunk is a niche genre of speculative fiction that asks the question "Is this real?" and then follows up with "What does that even mean anyway?"

You've got things like Sandman (which is all about dreams and some of those are pretty trippy), Alice in Wonderland / Oz, Lovecraft's dream worlds, PKD questions reality all the time, The Dark Tower, Amber

Its not a long GR list (I'm sure we can come up with more) but it has a lot of famous titles (that are easy to acquire, more so than the other lists)

Any objections? Figured some strange, mess with your mind, reading might be fun. Unfortunately most of the other punks are a little hard to categorize, or where the category is clear, to find books that fit. Too niche and it become another 1k+ page book challenge ;)

Dreampunk would be an excuse for me to read Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, so it's fine with me.

I did find a Decopunk list, though. If we need it at some point.

/shelf/show/...

I see that Dreamsnake is on the Dreampunk list. I read it eons ago and loved it, so I could reread it. I have a couple others marked TBR, and several titles I found interesting so its good for me!

Georgann wrote: "I see that Dreamsnake is on the Dreampunk list. I read it eons ago and loved it, so I could reread it. I have a couple others marked TBR, and several titles I found interesting so its good for me!"

I'm with you,Georgann. I'd be happy rereading Dreamsnake. Or The Lathe of Heaven, for that matter.

Wanda wrote: "Georgann wrote: "I see that Dreamsnake is on the Dreampunk list. I read it eons ago and loved it, so I could reread it. I have a couple others marked TBR, and several titles I found interesting so ..."
Yes, I have not yet read the Lathe of Heaven, number 1 on the list! So I'd like to read that, too

It seems odd that anyone would conflate steampunk with dieselpunk, although I can see mixing dieselpunk with atompunk - a lot of pulp SF from the 20s through the 50s could probably fit in one of those two categories.

As for dreampunk, I'm fine with that. There's a lot on that list that I haven't read, and I would think a fair number of Moorcock's books from the 60s and 70s could fit in that category.

I found Johannes Cabal the Necromancer series on the Steampunk, Decopunk and Dieselpunk lists. There might be some overlap since Steampunk is about using steam power and Victorian technology but you could probably apply an Art Deco feel to it and it could be both (apparently Decopunk is subset of Dieselpunk)



Apparently there's Clockpunk too which is Renaissance technology, and Mythpunk which I didn't quite get...seems a kind of magical realism genre where its not really fantasy...or is it?

Complicated. At least the Dreampunk feels a bit more defined, while still being vague enough to allow some wiggle room as to what fits it. If its surreal, or trippy, dreamlike, or questions reality its probably a good fit.

Here's a sneak peak at next year's card, grabbed most if not all of the suggestions and tossed in a few based on my planned reading for next year.

My thoughts behind a couple (though you are free to interpret as you see fit)

- Features a Son: I wanted to do "Inspired by Oz" since I'm going to read Wicked, but then realized other than some obscure stuff, there's only two main series, Wicked and Dorothy Must Die...seemed a bit limiting. I tweaked it to be "Features a Son" which means you can't just pick any male characters (since unless you've got some interesting biology going on, every guy is a son of somebody) you have to pick someone who is the son of someone "important". For example, you can read a book about Mordred, who is the son of King Arthur. Or in my case, Liir, son of Elphaba. Maybe Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon. That kind of thing.

- Complete a Trilogy: I kind of envisioned reading all three books in the same year, but it still counts if you just read the last book in a trilogy you started ages ago. Anyway just put the last book in the series on your challenge shelf (or shelve the omnibus if there is one)

- Features a Swordsman: Don't limit yourself to Fantasy, a Jedi would count...unless you already consider Star Wars fantasy as some do...alright getting complicated here :) Swordswoman counts too, it just got hard to fit that in the square.

- Takes Place Underground: I was looking at Gaiman's Neverwhere when I can up with that one, but realized it was fairly flexible, you can be in a mine, some sort of lunar colony, a sewer, in Hell/Hades, or something like Caves of Steel where people went underground because...they were afraid of fresh air (or whatever the logic was in that one I forgot). Obviously characters can come above ground too but needs to be predominantly under it or have the undergroundedness be particularly significant

- Dreampunk: See the discussion above

oooh, Andrea! I love this. What a great mix! Definitely will challenge me! I'm going to have fun this afternoon planning this out!! Yay! (here's me all geeked out)

And now I need to get back to my 2024 challenge, I still have a little over 300 pages in my 1k+ slot...

This will be fun! Thank you, Andrea, for putting together such an interesting card.

Clearly, I finished The Last Dark - the final Thomas Covenant book - too early, as Jeremiah (the adopted son of Linden Avery), features heavily in that book, and would have been good for the Features a Son slot 😝

Im excited to do this challenge, it's my first BINGO challenge. Question- what exactly is a non-fiction SF/F book? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Justine wrote: "Im excited to do this challenge, it's my first BINGO challenge. Question- what exactly is a non-fiction SF/F book? Isn't that an oxymoron?"
I found a couple that look good: Freaky Folklore: Terrifying Tales of the World's Most Elusive Monsters and Enigmatic Cryptids ; The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy ; The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator's Search for the Unexplained

Justine wrote: "Im excited to do this challenge, it's my first BINGO challenge. Question- what exactly is a non-fiction SF/F book? Isn't that an oxymoron?"

Kind of but you'd be surprised. There are "The Science Behind Star Trek" kind of books. Or maybe a Harry Potter cookbook. Or a worlds of fantasy encyclopedia. Or a history of the evolution of SF and/or Fantasy. Maybe a historical textbook researching the "real" King Arthur. Or a textbook on dragons or unicorns or other creature (there are plenty of those)

I plan (though not sure yet) to read a biography of either Anne McCaffrey or Brian Herbert to kind of "complete" my reading of Pern and Dune. A biography is a bit more of a stretch but they will most certainly cover the creation of their master works.

Georgann wrote: "Justine wrote: "Im excited to do this challenge, it's my first BINGO challenge. Question- what exactly is a non-fiction SF/F book? Isn't that an oxymoron?"
I found a couple that look good: [book:Fr..."

I was about to say the Milky Way one is just a plain old science book...but since it seems like it might be told from the POV of the Milky Way itself that might give it a bit of a fantasy twist so that it would still apply...a kind of reverse of the slot (but still good enough a match), a Fantastical Non-Fiction book :)

Biographies of people who are famously known for their work in SF/F TV and movies, such as William Shatner or Patrick Stewart or Sigourney Weaver. Also, episode guides on SF/F TV shows would count. I'm planning to read a history of the steampunk genre.

I decided on Dreamer of Dune (Herbert's biography) since it is literally treated as part of the series and I like seeing all the books checked off :) There's also a Dune Encyclopedia...but doubting that will be easy to find, even OpenLibrary doesn't have it.

Oh, and just remembered, I have the Nitpicker's Guide to the Next Generation, was planning to PVR the series and then, well, nitpick it as I watched. That might happen this year too since I'm part way through season 6 of Stargate and ST:TNG was up next.

Alright, I was looking through Atlantis themed books and didn't find any that I really wanted to read, as well as be able to find it at the library. Then I remembered I had Lost Horizons (Shangri-la) which is another Lost Civilization...so I decided to tweak the card slightly to expand that slot a little. Anyone who picked out an Atlantis book is still totally good to go with that, but now you can also pick from some other lost city.

Andrea wrote: "Alright, I was looking through Atlantis themed books and didn't find any that I really wanted to read, as well as be able to find it at the library. Then I remembered I had Lost Horizons (Shangri-l..."

Sounds good. That gives me a bit of wiggle room.

That seems entirely reasonable, especially as you talked about doing that during the discussions leading up to the final Bingo selections 😊

Here are the new Challenges

Historian
/challenges/...

Graphic Novel
/challenges/...

SF&F Reading Challenge
/challenges/...

Explorer Challenge
/challenges/...

Awards Challenge
/challenges/...

Standalone Challenge
/challenges/...

Minority Challenge
/challenges/...

Sub-Genre Challenge
/challenges/...

Short Story Challenge
/challenges/...

Completist Challenge
/challenges/...

BINGO Challenge
/challenges/...