Hugo Awards

One of the longstanding criticisms of the Hugo Awards is that the same names keep showing up on the shortlist every damn year. No name is necessarily permanent (though some have had tenures lasting 20 years or so, especially in the smaller, more obscure categories), but this is the sort of thing you’d expect for what is essentially a popularity contest. This year is no exception. Of the 6 nominees for Best Novel, 4 are written by an author who has already won the award and another that was also nominated last year. Mur Lafferty is the only author on the shortlist that hasn’t had a book nominated before (though she has been nominated in ancillary categories and won the Campbell award a few years back, so not a completely new name). In all honesty, this immediately endears me to the book. Additionally, the book is quite enjoyable and *gasp* not part of a series, also big pluses.

Six Wakes tells the story of six clones who awake a few decades into their mission crewing the starship Dormire. They awake to chaos. Their previous bodies have been gruesomely murdered, the ship is off course, artifical gravity has malfunctioned, and the food printer is only able to make poison. All memory backups and logs have been deleted and the ship’s AI is offline. No one has any memories of their journey so far, so we’re basically left with a locked-room murder mystery.

There are some clear flaws in the story and worldbuilding here, but funnily enough, I found myself making excuses for them and giving a lot of slack while Lafferty eventually works out some of the issues. I often have a sorta reverse reaction (i.e. a bunch of nitpicks sinking an otherwise good story), so this was an interesting experience, and probably belies a deeper positive feeling about the story.

So this crew of six people are all criminals that have taken on the long and boring trek with the hopes of clearing their records. While this clearly raises the stakes and makes them all suspects, it also feels like a bit of a dumb cliche. This is the premise of a million dumber stories and SyFy movie schlock. Fortunately, Lafferty eventually posits a more plausible reason for these six specific people to be on this trip. Is it totally convincing? I was willing to go with it, but I could see it not working for a lot of folks.

The characters themselves are all reasonably well drawn and naturally, they all have something to hide. Sometimes these are important, sometimes not, which is a key component of the whole mystery genre, so this was well done.

The cloning technology is mature and seemingly ubiquitous, and Lafferty does a great job exploring the logical extensions and unexpected consequences of the technology. Some of the fictional laws surrounding the tech seem rather short-sighted or implausible, but since I was apparently being so charitable, I found it had the ring of political compromise (i.e. a process that often produces incredibly stupid laws). I won’t spoil any of the surprises here, but it’s definitely a good exploration of the idea (something a lot of the other nominees didn’t particularly accomplish this year) and this, more than anything else, is what made me enjoy the book.

So it’s a lot of fun and it tackles some interesting philosophical ideas with respect to cloning; flawed but highly enjoyable, I’m find it bubbling up towards the top half of this year’s nominees. I don’t quite think it will reach the top of my ballot, but it certainly has an advantage over several other works in that it’s self-contained, interesting, and enjoyable.

I’m sad to say that until this novel, I had not read any of Kim Stanley Robinson’s previous works. I’ve had Red Mars in my queue for a long time, but since New York 2140 was nominated for this year’s Hugo ballot, I figured it was finally time to bite the bullet. Unfortunately, I don’t think this was a particularly good introduction.

Set in a future where the world has endured two sudden, catastrophic “pulses” of rising sea levels, this novel focuses mostly on New York City, which has managed to adapt and survive as a sorta New Venice, using various high-tech solutions to cope with the water levels. The story, such as it is, follows several residents of the MetLife Tower on Madison Square as they go about their lives. The Met is run as a co-op, generating food and power as well as providing shelter.

At first, it seems like there’s a buildup of plot elements that will all come together in the end, but it ultimately doesn’t go in that direction. At least, not in as satisfying a way as I was expecting from some of the initial chapters. There’s two programmers, Mutt & Jeff, who want to muck with various finance laws/code and get kidnapped. Inspector Gen is a police officer investigating their disappearance, as well as some other mysterious stuff about security contractors. Two young kids, Roberto and Stefan, are engaging in an old-fashioned sunken treasure hunt. The Met is run by social workers like Charlotte, who is trying to fend off a purchase offer for the building. Vlade is the building manager, and he’s finding weird little malfunctions in some of the water-proofing tech of the building as well as being the general glue of all the folks living in the building. Franklin is a hedge fund manager who is anticipating a housing bubble burst and trying to position himself to profit. He’s also trying to get into a woman’s pants (this gets tedious and belies future twists in his story). Amelia is a ditzy social media star and environmental activist that lives in the Met, but spends most of her time in a dirigible helping animal migrations. Like any story with a large ensemble cast, some of these plot threads are more enjoyable than others, but it’s all set up reasonably well and it leads to a sense of anticipation.

Unfortunately, most of these plot threads simply fizzle out in an anti-climactic fashion. Roberto and Stefan find their sunken treasure quickly and easily, enlist Vlade and his ex to actually extract the treasure. During that process, they inadvertently stumble on the location where Mutt & Jeff were being held. Gen is pleased by that discovery, but it doesn’t lead to much for her investigation, which is unglamorous and slow moving. Franklin is enlisted to launder the treasure, but that also goes smoothly. Amelia’s initial efforts to move polar bears to a better climate is literally nuked by environmentalists? But somehow that’s also anti-climactic, with little in the way of fallout (both literally and figuratively). Later, there’s a hurricane that hits New York that has some mildly compelling episodes, but the drama that is derived from that feels half-baked and rushed. It becomes clear that it’s only there to provide a thin excuse for the blatant wish fulfillment of the finale. That finale, which involves a large proportion of the population simply not paying their bills, is probably the most politically partisan part of the story and the most likely to annoy (I was not exactly on board with this plan, which seemed to somehow go off without a hitch and with unconvincing simplicity). It all hinges on a lot of coincidences and unbelievable changes of heart, such as Franklin’s Grinch-like transformation (which did not feel earned). Aside from Vlade and maybe the two kids, I didn’t particularly find the characters very engaging either, but rather more like partisan plot delivery devices.

Mostly the novel is basically about how pissed off Kim Stanley Robinson is about the 2008 economic crisis. And like, that’s not an unsympathetic stance, but this novel doesn’t really provide much in the way of new perspectives on the matter. In fact, the longer the novel goes on, the more clear it becomes that everything he’s set up in the worldbuilding is there to comment on our present-day economic ills (or those of 2008). Again, that isn’t necessarily a problem. Great art can be manipulative, but in bad art, you can see the strings being pulled, and that’s what’s going on here. This can be subjective, to be sure, but it was not successful for me. Plus, we’re already steeped in critiques of capitalism or explanations for 2008. I mean, if you weren’t familiar with this stuff, this book might read much better, but while I’m no expert in the matter, I didn’t find much here to chew on that isn’t better explored in popular non-fiction. The bald, tailor-made way in which Robinson patterns the issues affecting New York in 2140 means that there’s not much new to learn about finance here. Add to that a disjointed narrative that isn’t really interested in being an actual story, and you’re left with a simple screed. A valued one, perhaps, but a screed nonetheless.

This is most obvious in the chapters attributed to a nameless “citizen”, which are basically didactic and condescending history lectures from an angry standin for Robinson. Some of the information imparted in these rants are actually interesting and get at the technical aspects of the worldbuilding, but the tone is generally offputting and weird. At one point, this citizen even urges us to skip these chapters if we’re not interested in them, which feels like a bit of self-awareness on Robinson’s part, but it’s also a confounding notion. Being self-aware of your bad choices does not exactly excuse them (this sort of thing works best in very limited doses). Look, science fiction is infamous for its info-dumps and I’m usually pretty forgiving of such, but this is pretty excessive. (At one point, the citizen is whining about how most of the population didn’t see the whole climate change problem coming, or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it; then he mentions that only some scientists and science fiction writers were ahead of the curve, which just felt kinda smug on Robinson’s part.)

I kept thinking about a couple of other books while reading this one. First, I thought a lot about Cryptonomicon. If you ever pinned me down and forced me to pick a favorite book (an impossible task!), it would probably be Cryptonomicon. And I do see a lot of surface similarities here. There’s no CliFi in that book, but lots of speculations about finance, treasure-hunts, money-laundering, and so on. It’s also a big ensemble piece with multiple viewpoint characters and a sorta disjointed narrative featuring tons of digressions and yes, info-dumps. I love the book, but I have yet to meet a person in real life who has read it and loved it (there are plenty on the internet who do, to be sure, but still). I kept wondering if my experience reading New York 2140 was like my real-life friends’ experience reading Cryptonomicon. As New York 2140 progresses and diverges more clearly from what Cryptonomicon is doing, this feeling lessened, but I thought it an interesting observation. Ultimately, I think Cryptonomicon tightened its various plot threads as it went on, while New York 2140 slowly unraveled. It also speculated on new technology (cryto-currency and data havens), which put a spin on economics that was new and interesting and thus not as well covered by non-fiction of the time.

The other book I kept thinking of was Neptune’s Brood. Charlie Stross is pretty clearly not a fan of things like capitalism and debt (and I’m sure he was just as upset at the 2008 economic crisis), but he still managed to build a fascinating story around finance (!) that gave me that vaunted Sense of Wonder that great SF can generate. And his message was baked into an entertaining space-opera that plays well as a narrative all on its own. As a result, his book is much more successful at making me think about our current day woes than New York 2140, which strikes me as a fictional rehashing of Paul Krugman or Thomas Piketty or whatever. I suppose Robinson was trying to use climate change as the mutator of economic ideas, but that’s not as interesting or effective as Stross’ use of Slow Debt and planetary colonization. Or, you know, non-fiction about climate change and finance today.

Science fiction is often used to comment on present day ills, but the way Robinson constructs his critique doesn’t work. I’m not really sure who this book is for. It won’t convince political opponents, that’s for sure. Moderates might take more from it, but I suspect they’d have my main complaint: If I want to learn more about 2008 (or climate change), there are far better and more accessible non-fictional avenues to pursue, and New York 2140 is nowhere near abstracted enough to be more broadly applicable (a feat that both Cryptonomicon and Neptune’s Brood managed because they abstracted and generalized to an interesting degree). I suspect people who are more aligned with Robinson’s politics would like it, but that means this is just preaching to the choir. I suppose there’s value in that, but perhaps not “Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year” value.

For all my whinging about this book, it wasn’t particularly difficult to read and in fact flowed pretty smoothly. It was certainly overlong, the pacing was inconsistent, and more episodic than I’d want, but there were plenty of interesting ideas and page-turning moments. They just didn’t add up to a cohesive whole for me. I think you can tell that this will be towards the bottom of my Hugo ballot. At this point, I’ve read all the novels (review of Six Wakes is incoming; spoiler alert, I liked that a lot more than this…). I’m not entirely sure what will be at the top, but there’s a pretty clear list of three tiers for me (and New York 2140, sadly, is on that bottom tier).

N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky is the concluding volume of a trilogy of beloved novels… that I’ve never really managed to connect with. I have generally found that these novels’ pessimism and relentless misery have only served to distance me from the narrative rather than suck me in. I like a lot of the worldbuilding choices of the initial book, The Fifth Season, but I the story was full of misery porn which resulted in a detached reading experience for me. The second book, The Obelisk Gate, continued the misery and suffered from middle-book-in-a-trilogy syndrome. This didn’t stop Hugo voters from awarding the Best Novel Hugos for both, and I judge a fair chance of The Stone Sky to bring home the third straight.

The story picks up where we left off. Essun is traveling with her comm, Castrima, in searching for a new place to live, but ultimately seeks to find her daughter Nassun and help save the world by bringing the moon back into proper orbit. Nassun, for her part, has lead a miserable life, is fed up with the world, and wants to destroy it by smashing the moon into the earth. Finally, we get glimpses of the past as Hoa describes Syl Anagist, a civilization that existed thousands of years ago which, we soon learn, created the obelisks and inadvertently shot the moon out of its orbit, thus causing their destruction and leading to the current, miserable situation.

Interestingly, the entire story is narrated by Hoa. He appears to be telling the story to Essun, as her sections of the story are in second person (as they’ve been throughout the series). Hoa’s portions are in first person, and Nassun’s are in third. It’s an interesting choice and I suppose there’s a reason for it, but it ultimately felt a bit distracting at times and my dumbass engineer’s brain kept wondering about irrelevant things: How does Hoa know the inner emotions of closed off people like Essun and Nassun so well? Wait, when is Hoa relating all this to Essun? Why is he relating this to Essun? I can certainly come up with answers to these questions and they’re ultimately nitpicks. The thing is, I find this happens most often when I’m not sucked into a story. I’ve learned to trust that these sorts of nitpicks don’t mean much in and of themselves, but the fact that I’m making them at all means something important and indicates a deeper problem.

While I like a lot of the worldbuilding choices, this isn’t a world I like spending time in, nor do I particularly enjoy hanging out with these characters. I mean, I don’t think we’re even supposed to like them very much. Sure, they’ve endured horrendous hardships and misery, but they’ve also perpetuated that abuse and oppression and some are easily described as mass murderers. That people struggle to deal with abuse or respond in ugly ways that only serve to continue the cycle is certainly relevant (and obviously reflects some of our society’s worst tendencies), but it’s difficult to sustain. This is the point, I guesss, and it does represent rich thematic ground. I just don’t like wallowing in it for three books, especially since all of this was so ably demonstrated in the first book. I didn’t love that one either, but I could see why it was so well regarded. The succeeding volumes feel like a rehashing of the same ideas, over and over again, and they do so using that awkward second person narrative device that tells more than it shows.

The book attempts a hopeful but ambiguous ending, which is something that I would appreciate much more if anything else in the series had indicated a cause for that hope. When your premise is that the end of the world is coming and the world is not worth saving, it’s difficult to care about the actual outcome. I don’t want every story to be fluffy bunnies and rainbows, but these books tend to be so extreme in their portrait of misery that I was immediately detached from the story and never found a way back in.

I feel like I’m being very harsh on the novel here. Perhaps it’s because I never would have read the second or third books in this series, but I did because I wanted to vote in the Hugos (and I don’t think it’s fair to vote when you haven’t read the book). The funny thing is that this is probably the most upbeat of the three books and I probably enjoyed reading it more than the previous installments too. Plus, it actually has an ending and some sense of closure! Some of the characters actually express love in this book, and it’s a love that is genuine. As mentioned above, it’s got a mildly happy ending. However, after all the betrayals, endless rehashings of infanticide and abuse, and inescapable oppression, the hope at the end feels hollow and unearned. Maybe we’re supposed to feel that way and I just don’t like being immersed in despair? Look, these books are very well written and I think I can say that Jemisin achieves exactly what she wanted, which is certainly laudable. It’s just not my bag, and that’s fine.

As far as the Hugo Awards go, this will probably end up on the bottom of my ballot. I’m still reading one novel and I suppose it could fall off a cliff, but I’m doubting that.

Ann Leckie’s Hugo Nominated novel Provenance takes place in the same universe as her Ancillary trilogy, but in a largely independent locale that is only peripherally impacted by the events of those three novels. Ancillary Justice was the first, and to my mind, best of that preceding trilogy, managing a great balance between crunchy hard-SF and social/cultural exploration. In particular, I found the depiction of shared consciousness and hive minds intriguing, and Leckie posited some interesting consequences of such technology. Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy largely jettisoned that idea in favor of the more social and cultural context of a much smaller system (also: tea), a maneuver that was unexpected and bold, but which left me mildly disappointed. At the time, I wondered what it would be like to read a story in the same universe, but with different characters.

Enter Provenance, a story set in the same universe, but not tied to any of the characters from the Ancillary series. Ingray Aughskold is seeking to gain favor with her Mother so that she could be named heir. She’s in competition with her brother Danach, who is considered to have the position locked down. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the book opens with Ingray’s plan to free a notorious thief named Pahlad Budrakim out of “Compassionate Removal” (a wonderful doublespeak euphemism for “brutal prison that is anything but compassionate”) in the hopes of convincing em (not a typo, we’ll get to it) to reveal the location of valuable vestiges that he had stolen. If she could find those vestiges and return them to her family, it would be a big coup for her (vestiges are apparently a big deal on her home planet, wielding enormous cultural and political influence), and potentially get her back in the competition for heir.

Naturally, her plan starts to disintegrate immediately. She’s spent most of her money getting this thief smuggled out of prison, only to find that e’s not who she thought e was. Then it turns out that Tic Uisine (the captain of the ship she’d chartered for her mission) has some undisclosed beef with some authorities. Even once they manage to get their way back to Ingray’s home planet, the trio keeps encountering newer and increasingly more complicated obstacles. There’s an archaeological dig that has implications for Ingray’s family, a murder mystery pops up, a group of children is kidnapped, alien ambassadors hang around causing fun, titular questions around provenance crop up, and so on. There are actually some mentions of the far flung events of the Ancillary books, but they’re exactly that: far flung and not particularly important to the workings of the plot here.

It’s all, well, pretty good. While lacking a bit in that crunchy SF component, it’s got lots of fun elements, a complex plot (something I usually enjoy more than most), and reasonably well done characters. The thematic exploration of how the past shapes the present is well done and fits neatly in with Leckie’s wheelhouse of exploring identity. Speaking of which, while the Ancillary series played with a sorta lack of gender, here Leckie reverses course, reintroducing gendered pronouns and including a third, gender neutral set of pronouns (e, eir, er – this is what Garal/Palad identify as, which is why I used those pronouns above), and allowing characters to choose how they identify. Like the primary use of feminine pronouns in the Ancillary books, it has an effect here, though it doesn’t feel entirely in line with the story.

All well and good, but aside from some interesting uses of mechs, the openly SFnal elements are a bit lacking. I mean, sure, there’s different planets and spaceships and whatnot, but they’re used to establish and illustrate cultural differences more than to cultivate that sense of wonder that SF can do so well. Not that this sort of thing can’t generate sense of wonder, but nothing in the book really twixed me the way that it probably should. There are references to two alien species in this novel, but neither are fully explored and mostly exist on the periphery. The Presger remain enigmatic, but we do find out some stuff about the Geck (in particular, we get some background on Tic, who has a complicated relationship with the aliens). I like that the aliens seem to be actually alien and not the distressingly common “basically a human but with a slightly different appearance” trope that a lot of SF uses… but it would be nice if we’d actually explore these worlds and beings a little more. But then, the plot here really doesn’t need it, and such a digression would probably only serve to kill the pacing.

So we’re left with a generally enjoyable novel. It’s got lots of fun elements, decent characters, and a nice, twisty plot. While I feel like I should like this a lot more than I do, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it or anything. It seems to be sticking with me more after I’ve read it than I thought it would whilst reading. Is it truly Hugo worthy? Maybe, but I suspect it’s here more because of the follow on effect from the popular Ancillary books. Personally, it will probably fall somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of this year’s Hugo nominees, but this is only the third (of six) that I’ve read, so it’s hard to say for sure (I’m midway through two others though, and this seems about right).

Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit was a dense, sometimes gruesome Space Opera. I really enjoyed it, and it was nominated for a Hugo Award last year. Raven Stratagem is the follow up, second in a trilogy, and yes, I enjoyed this one too, despite it succumbing to traditional middle entry in a trilogy syndrome.

I was initially a little hesitant to pick up this sequel. As much as I enjoyed it, I remember the first novel being a bit difficult to follow at parts, and I didn’t entirely remember what had happened (I read it almost two years ago) except in broad strokes. Fortunately, Raven Stratagem presents itself in a much more accessible manner than its predecessor, which allows you to ease back into the universe without too much strain.

We continue to follow the bleshed personalities of Kel Cheris and Shuos Jedao, quasi-successful at retaking the Fortress of Shattered Needles in the first book, as they now set out to defend the Hexarchate from an invading enemy, the Hafn. Cheris is a gifted mathematician and infantry captain for the subservient Kel faction. She’s been possessed by the “ghost” of long-dead military genius, madman, and mass murderer, Jedao, of the Machiavellian Shuos faction. The Hexarchate being an oppressive tyrannical semi-dystopia, the leaders/dictator aren’t sure if they can trust Jedao and his stated intention to simply repel the Hafn. For that matter, neither is the fleet that Jedao has taken over for that purpose. General Kel Khiruev even attempts to assassinate Jedao, but eventually succumbs to Jedao’s, er, charms? That’s not the quite the right word, but it gets the job done, I guess.

So yeah, that brief description kinda captures the density of the worldbuilding, but again, Raven Stratagem is more accessible at laying this out than Ninefox Gambit. This is a best-of-both-worlds situation here. I appreciate dense worldbuilding, and Lee was able to make it more approachable without losing anything. Shuos Jedao, despite frequent reminders of atrocities he’s committed in the past, remains a fascinating character and indeed, things tend to bog down a bit whenever we’re not following him (and I should add her, as Cheris is a woman). I found myself much less interested in the Hexarchate politics side of the story, which comprises a large portion of the second act, though it’s clearly a necessary part of the story.

There are some twists and turns along the way. One of them, which I think is played as a twist, was actually something that I thought I had just misremembered from the first book, but which it turns out, I remembered correctly*. But the final revelation sets up a genuinely interesting premise for the third book to tackle. Unfortunately, that leaves this book in a sorta limbo, as a lot of middle entries in a series feel. This is excellent, but it’s not self-contained, and that always makes Hugo voting a little tricky. Of course, the Hugo context is a bit unfair – as middle entries go, this is a good one, and it moves the story along briskly (which is more than can be said about a lot of middle novels). In any case, Lee’s worldbuilding is solid, but quite dark and sometimes gruesome. Fortunately, he doesn’t wallow in the misery in the way that other books tackling similar themes seem to do.

As Science Fiction, I’m not entirely sure the whole Calendrical Math thing feels grounded enough; it feels more like a metaphorical representation of the way the Hexarchate is controlled than an actual mathematical thing. That not a terrible thing, and it does seem to be played with an internal consistency that I appreciate. Again, Cheris and Jedao are interesting, and their immediate surroundings work, but as mentioned above, once you get beyond that, the story falters a bit.

This is a good book, and Lee’s skill is worth rewarding with a Hugo Award, but I don’t think this is the book to do it. As the second in a series, it feels incomplete (again, not in a way that is bad outside of the Hugo context), which makes it difficult to judge against other books. On the other hand, I expect this will actually do well when it comes time to put in my ballot – I like this work, so I suspect it will come out ahead of several other nominees that I’m unsure about. Fortunately, Lee also has a novelette that’s been nominated, Extracurricular Activities, which is self-contained and excellent. It follows Jedao back when he was a young officer, and bears a sorta Bujold-esque feel to it, which I naturally love (this is high praise, people). I haven’t read any of the other novelette finalists, but I suspect this one will top my ballot. Ultimately, I will most likely pick up the final book in this trilogy, which says a lot, and I greatly look forward to whatever Lee tackles next.

* (Spoilers) I had assumed that Jedao’s ghost had died in the betrayal at the end of Ninefox Gambit, but for most of this book, Cheris is basically just pretending to be Jedao, and since she still has all of his memories implanted in her consciousness, she can pull it off. Lee can get away with this because we mostly see Jedao from the perspective of others, like Khiruev, and Cheris has no reason to let on that she is using Jedao’s reputation for her own purposes (which, to be fair, were also Jedao’s).

The 2018 Hugo Award Finalists were announced yesterday, so it’s time for moaning and whinging about the nominees. Assorted thoughts below:

• The novel ballot looks interesting enough. Only half are part of a series! Arguably. One of the series entries is the first (and reasonably self-contained), but one of the non-series is set in a universe the author had already established. So I guess it evens out.

  John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire is that reasonably self-contained first entry in a series, and it’s a lot of fun, my favorite Scalzi since The Human Division. I don’t expect it to win. New York 2140 seems like a pretty standard Kim Stanley Robinson offering, an extension of many of his usual themes. Again, I don’t expect it to win. Provenance, by Ann Leckie is the aforementioned standalone novel set in Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe. It seems like a heist story, but the writeups emphasize that it’s about “power, theft, privilege and birthright” which is pretty well tread ground for the past few years of nominees (and for which Leckie has already been recognized), but then, this seems to be what current voters like. I don’t see it winning, but what do I know. I really enjoyed Raven Stratagem but Yoon Ha Lee’s second Machineries of Empire novel suffers from middle-novel-in-a-trilogy syndrome, so it did not make my nominating ballot (Yoon Ha Lee has been a mainstay of my nominating ballots for years, and as we’ll see, there’s another option for him that I think works better in an awards context). Then again, Jemison’s Obelisk Gate also suffered from middle novel syndrome and managed to win last year, so once again, I know nothing. Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty represents the only new-to-me author nominated (she won the Campbell a few years back, so not a completely new name), and the novel sounds like a neat closed room mystery… in space! I never managed to catch up with it before the nominating period ended, but it was something I wanted to read. Who knows if it has any chance? The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin is the conclusion to her trilogy, of which the first two entries have already won Hugos. For any other series or author, I’d say that means this one has less of a chance of winning, but despite my hesitations with the previous two books, people seem to really love these novels, so there’s a fair chance it’ll win again this year. Not sure what that augurs for the health of the awards, but I guess nothing is decided yet.

  I’ve only read two of these novels, definitely want to read one more, was curious about another two, and am not particularly looking forward to The Stone Sky (but at this point, I feel like I should probably finish out the trilogy). That’s a reasonable batting average, I guess. Pour one out for The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. though. I suspect that will remain my favorite novel of the year, even after catching up with these other four nominees.

• I’m a little surprised that Lois McMaster Bujold didn’t get a nod in the novella category, but I’m guessing that releasing three Penric novellas in one year managed to split the vote. I was happy to see All Systems Red by Martha Wells get the nod (it was on my ballot and one my favorite reads of last year). A few other recognizable names on the ballot, but nothing that really grabs me. I skipped the category last year, not sure if I’ll manage this year.
• Novelette has another Yoon Ha Lee story, “Extracurricular Activities”, that was what I nominated instead of Raven Strategem. It takes place in the same universe and features a character from his novels, but is entirely standalone (and more accessible than the novels as well).

  My other nominee didn’t make it, and nothing is jumping out at me for the other nominees.

• I haven’t read any of the nominated Short Stories, but in my experience with these awards, this category is almost always the biggest disaster. I almost never enjoy any of the short stories, for whatever reason.
• I remain skeptical of the Best Series category on pragmatic, logistical grounds, but think it funny that Lois McMaster Bujold could win the award again this year (and I judge a fair chance of that).
• The Dramatic Presentation awards look decent enough, considering the venue. Still wish that Colossal and Your Name would have gotten some love, but hey, you can still watch them (go give them a shot – they’re both great). In other news, I’ve actually already seen half the Short Form nominees, which is a rarity.
• The 1943 Retro Hugo finalists were also announced. I actually nominated a couple of things, and they both made it. Rooting for Hal Clement’s short story, “Proof” (a fantastic story, well worth checking out if you can find it – are these included in Hugo Voters Packets? Be on the lookout.) And Asimov’s “Foundation” got a nod too (though it’s only the Novelette, a subset of what most of us read). The only real surprise is that The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis didn’t get a nod. Or maybe not. Current Hugo voters aren’t into Lewis’ religiousity, I guess.

And that covers it. I’ll most likely be reading and reviewing over the next few months (might take a bit to get going, as I just started a large book that will take a bit to finish)…

The nomination period for the 2018 Hugo Awards is open, so it’s time to get out the vote before the requisite whining and bitter recriminations start in earnest. I’ve read a bunch of eligible works, but of course not all will make the cut. Here’s where I’m at right now:

• The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (Novel)
• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (Novel)
• All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Novella)
• The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold (novella)
• Uncanny Valley by Greg Egan (Novelette)
• Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee (Novelette)

A much better list than last year, when I was only really able to muster a couple of nominations. I’m betting at least one or two will make the finalists, but short fiction is always so impossible to predict. I have a few novels on the bubble as well:

• Artemis by Andy Weir – It’s a fun book, but it doesn’t hang together as well as The Martian and the story doesn’t feel entirely baked. Some things about this just didn’t sit so well with me, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a nomination (and indeed, it would probably fair well when compared against the last few years’ finalists).
• The Caledonian Gambit by Dan Moren – I’m about halfway through this one, which seems like a pretty straightforward space opera/spy thriller type of thing. Great start, but it’s bogged down in the midsection. A strong finish could certainly put this on my ballot though.
• Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee – I’m a fan of Yoon Ha Lee’s work (see above referenced novelette), and I liked the first novel in this series quite a bit. I will definitely read this before the nomination period closes, but as the second in a series, I’m not sure how likely it is that I’ll put this on my list, even if I love it.

I haven’t looked at Best Series in detail, but an initial glance reveals that Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos Series is eligible, which would work. I still think the entire concept of the award is flawed due to logistical considerations (for example, Brust has 15 Vlad Taltos novels, with almost as many additional short fiction entries – how does one read enough of that, along with all the other nominees in order to make an informed decision?)

As per usual, I’ll continue to avoid the most mainstream choices for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form (i.e. Star Wars and Marvel don’t need my help here and will most likely make the ballot, but these movies are worthy of consideration):

• Get Out
• Colossal
• The Good Place (Season 1)
• Your Name
• Blade Runner 2049

There’s a fair chance that Your Name would be judged ineligible because it came out n Japan in 2016, but it didn’t really hit the US until 2017. Otherwise, there’s a fair chance that one or two of these movies might sneak onto the ballot. Fingers crossed.

Also of note is that Retro Hugos for works published in 1942 are being held this year, and there are a few classics there, notably Asimov’s initial Foundation story and CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, but the one I really want to nominate is a short story by Hal Clement called “Proof” (it’s not available online, but it’s in tons of collections – the one I read it in was The Ascent of Wonder). It’s an awesome story, and it’s tale of creatures living in the sun has long legs and influence.

Any recommendations or suggestions are welcome! I’m curious to see how the nominations go this time around. Will the novels be dominated by series/sequels to previous nominees? Will the reduced puppy contingent have any impact? Do I really care that much? I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.

The voting deadline for this year’s Hugo Awards approaches, so here’s my ballot as it now stands. It’s mostly fiction categories, with some Dramatic Presentation thrown in for flare and some comments on some of the other categories that I’m actually not going to vote for…

Best Novel

1. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee [My Review]
2. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers [My Review]
3. Death’s End by Cixin Liu [My Review]
4. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders [My Review]
5. Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer [My Review]
6. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin [My Review]

A decent enough lineup this year, not spectacular, but it gets the job done. Five out of the six nominees are part of a series, which is mildly annoying. A Closed and Common Orbit skates by on that count because despite being the second book, it can easily be read as a standalone and comes off as quite different than the first entry in the series (in a way that benefits the sequel greatly). Its generally positive tone is also noteworthy and has elevated it to the #2 slot. All the Birds in the Sky is the only true standalone and has a great whimsical tone to it, but despite overtures towards SF, it doesn’t really stand up on that front. Ninefox Gambit is the first in a series and does a great job with worldbuilding while telling a reasonably satisfying and composed tale. Not completely self-contained, but there’s enough meat on the bone to make me want to pick up the next in the series (something that doesn’t happen too often with me on first novels in a series). Death’s End at least provides some closure to its story and gets its jollies from big ideas, albeit existentially troubling ones. Too Like the Lightning is the first in a series, but doesn’t seem to progress the overall arc very much. I hear the sequels will be better on that front… but that doesn’t make this initial volume better in itself. Finally, The Obelisk Gate doesn’t progress its overall arc much either, which again makes it hard to rank highly. Yeah, that’s typical of second novels in a trilogy, but that doesn’t make it worthy of a Hugo Award… This series conundrum continues to be challenging for me when it comes to ranking these novels. One might think that the introduction of a “Best Series” Hugo Award would help alleviate this, but apparently not. Obviously more detailed thoughts in my reviews linked above.

Predicted Winner: Ninefox Gambit, though A Closed and Common Orbit or All the Birds in the Sky also seem to be faring well. But what do I know. My predictions are always wrong.

Best Novella

I’m skipping this category this year. Relatively long stories combined with an extra finalist this year contributed to this decision, but really, I just wanted to start reading

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and the prospect of spending a couple weeks sifting through a bunch of stories that I have historically not enjoyed very much wasn’t doing much for me. I have read Penric and the Shaman and enjoyed it quite a bit, but even for that, I was a bigger fan of Bujold’s other Penric novella, Penric’s Mission (which, I’m told, was disqualified because it was a hair over the wordcount limit for Novella, but still).

Best Novelette

1. Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman
2. The Tomato Thief by Ursula Vernon
3. You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong
4. The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
5. The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen
6. No Award

See My Reviews for more info. Sorry Stix Hiscock, Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex isn’t making the cut for what I hope are obvious reasons. I rarely deploy No Award, but this is a pretty clear cut case.

Predicted Winner: The Tomato Thief

Best Short Story

1. That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn
2. Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
3. Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies by Brooke Bolander
4. The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin
5. An Unimaginable Light by John C. Wright
6. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong

See My Reviews for more details. I made a slight tweak to the initial rankings. No need to deploy No Award.

Predicted Winner: The City Born Great? I mean, have I ever gotten one of these predictions correct?

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

1. Arrival
2. Stranger Things
3. Rogue One
4. Hidden Figures
5. Deadpool
6. Ghostbusters

I didn’t explicitly post about this category, but I’ve already covered 2016 in movies pretty thoroughly. In general, I love the first two entries in my rankings, but there’s a steep dropoff after that. This isn’t particularly unusual for this category, and there’s always one or two movies that would have been great nominees but didn’t make the cut (this year, I was hoping The Witch would get some love, but it’s not the type of movie Hugo voters tend to go for, I guess. Will be interested to see the nomination stats…)

Predicted Winner: Arrival, though Hidden Figures seems to have a fair amount of buzz…

Best Series

A fascinating category, for sure, but one that has significant logistical hurdles. I’ve read the entire Vorkosigan Saga and am really pulling for it, but is it realistic to expect people will read all of these books before voting? Especially considering that the best entries are pretty deep into the series? I mean, I obviously recommend this, but this has to be difficult if you’ve not already read these series. I’ve never been that into The Expanse but I’ve only read the first novel. Is it fair to judge the series on that one novel? There’s only a couple of weeks left before voting closes and that’s simply not enough time to read more of that plus 4 other series of books (or even the first novel in each). Ultimately, I don’t feel like it’d be fair to vote in this category without giving each of the series a fair shake, which to me means reading more than one novel in each series (at minimum). I gather that this is somewhat unusual and that some voters are more than willing to give up on a book/series after only a tiny sample (or not reading at all). But that’s not really my style.

Predicted Winner: Vorkosigan Saga, please?

So this marks the end of my Hugo journey this year. Look for a recap when the Awards are announced in August, but otherwise, we now return you to our normal wanking about movies (coming soon: a Martial Arts Movie Omnibus post!)

I always feel like the Short Story category should be more fun. It could kinda be like speed-dating authors to find the ones you like. I suppose it does still fulfill that function, only I rarely like any of the stories that are nominated. In the past four years of reading Hugo short story finalists, I’ve really liked approximately two of the stories, and neither of those enough to investigate an author’s work further (some more are certainly well written, but rarely are they my thing). I have no real explanation for this, though I have my suspicions. For instance, this is the category with the lowest barrier to entry in that it doesn’t take a lot of time to read a bunch of short stories, but there are also a lot of stories to choose from, so the votes get spread far and wide, thus yielding niche stories that don’t appeal to a wide audience (or maybe just me). This is merely speculation though (still there is evidence for some of this – in a world before slates, the category rarely filled up because most of the winning nominees couldn’t muster 5% of the overall vote, which used to be a requirement). This year, at least, features one story that I did enjoy, so let’s get to it:

1. That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn – A human woman visits an alien man in a military hospital so that they can play chess. Technically enemies, each has spent time as the other’s prisoner, but the experience brought them closer together rather than drawing them apart. The war is technically over now, and so she can visit her friend. The wrinkle is that his race is telepathic, so when they play chess, she needs to figure out a way to account for his knowing her every move ahead of time. There’s some interesting character work here, the telepathy is explored fairly well for such a short story (though there’s plenty more to explore), and the use of chess offers some thematic heft. A well balanced, interesting, and entertaining read. It’s not a perfect story, but it is my favorite of the past four years of the award, so there is that!
2. Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies by Brooke Bolander – Despite protestations to the contrary, this is a story about a woman who is murdered, but she’s not actually a woman. Rather, she’s some sort of interdimensional birdlike spirit who can take on mortal forms. When she is killed, she simply regenerates and then takes sweet revenge on the man who killed her. A simple tale, one that spends more time whining about how often stories revolve around a man killing a woman (which is definitely true and worth subverting), but one that also seems beholden to that trope and unable to subvert it without resorting to didactic proclamations. Fortunately, there’s lots of cursing, so it doesn’t entirely feel like a lecture. It’s at least got a plot, and the broad strokes of the narrative are attractive too, so it ends up pretty high on the list, though it might stumble down because of:
3. Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar – A sort of retelling, mashup, and subversion of two fairy tales, this one also seems to rely a lot on didactic proclamations to make its point, but again, there’s at least some sense of a narrative and a sort of hope in the end that is usually missing from such stories (and a lot of ye olde storytelling is pretty didactic, so this is true to form). This is one that has grown in my estimation since I have read it, and it may ascend to #2 if this continues…
4. The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin – New York City is alive, and is being reborn with the help of a homeless man chosen for the task and being trained in the ways of city birthing. There’s also an enemy that could prevent the city from evolving. Will our homeless hero defeat the evil? After two novels and this short story, I’m beginning to think that something about Jemisin’s style just doesn’t jive with me. There’s a nugget of an interesting idea here, but it seems lost in a cloud of style. Again, probably just my personal hangup here.
5. An Unimaginable Light by John C. Wright – And Wright is another author I tend to just bounce off of. This one is better than the others I’ve endured, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear and I think a big part of it was that it was at least mercifully short. It’s a story about a man and a robot debating Asimov’s three laws. I mean, not exactly, but anything that is interesting at all in the story is derived from Asimov, not Wright. There’s a twist at the end that is almost laughable and forces scrutiny that the story cannot bear on its own. Damn, I wish I was rereading one of Asimov’s robot stories. Wright is probably a better prose stylist (again, not a high bar to clear, sorry Isaac), but Asimov is a much better storyteller.
6. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong – It’s only been about an hour or maybe two since I finished this story, and yet, I can’t seem to remember any pertinent details. Something about two women. Immolation. Worlds ending. I want to say it’s more like a tone poem than a narrative, but I’m not sure I can say that because I don’t remember anything about it. It sorta just washed over me, but then, it did leave me feeling vaguely annoyed. If only I could remember why.

Oof. I’m almost tempted to nuke everything after That Game We Played During the War with a No Award, but that’s not really fair, so I’ll probably just leave well enough be. At this point, the prospect of reading 5 Novellas isn’t so attractive, especially since I’ve got The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. sitting right here, calling to me.