Arts & Letters

SF Book Review – Part 39: 2022 Hugo Awards SF Finalists

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Since I’m playing along with the 2022 Hugo Awards process and I’ve made good progress on the novels, I figured I’d split out the SF finalists in one post (look for another post covering the fantasy finalists coming soon).

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir has already been reviewed and remains at the top of my ballot. I’m not particularly sanguine about its chances, given the current Hugo voter’s obsession with social issues and character, as opposed to the science or ideas that drive Weir’s book. I suspect they’d see it as a bit of a throwback, but then, it did make the ballot in the first place, so who knows? I only have one book left, but I don’t see it budging this one from the top of my ranking.

A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine – The sequel to the 2020 Hugo Best Novel, A Memory Called Empire, this one is essentially more of the same. Which is to say, it’s competent space opera fodder that I enjoyed quite a bit! Is it good enough to be the best SF of the year? That’s the rub.

One of my complaints about A Memory Called Empire was that while it hinted at an alien threat throughout the story, it mostly covered a predictable thread of court intrigue and political power struggle right up to its completely expected conclusion. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that and there’s something to be said for a well executed take on standard tropes.

This sequel shifts focus to that alien threat, and once again, it feels like Martine is playing with the standard playbook – this time for first contact stories. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that and it’s reasonably well executed, but Martine seems far more interested in exploring the galactic empire she’s set up, and all the baggage that goes along with imperialism and colonialism, especially as it relates to the relationship between our two main protagonists. Which is well drawn and I enjoy spending time with those characters, even if it feels like we’ve been down this road before. In general, this focus on character over action does muck with the pacing, and the more military SF aspects of the story get shorter shrift. There’s also a thread involving the emperor-to-be and imperial communications that feels a bit tacked on, though it is eventually tied back into the overall narrative well enough.

It’s ultimately a worthy sequel to the first novel, better in some ways, but ultimately there’s not much new here. It’s a totally cromulent experience for sure, but if you’ve read a bunch of first contact stories before, you won’t be particularly surprised, and if you have been following along with the Hugos for the past few years, similar social issues and character beats have been hit pretty hard by other nominees. Again, nothing inherently wrong with that and there’s something to be said about well executed versions of standard tropes, but I don’t know that this rises to the level of best SF of the year.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers – At this point, I’ve read all of the books in Chambers’ popular Wayfarers series and have come away with somewhat mixed impressions. As I summarized on Chambers’ most recent Hugo-nominated entry in the series:

I’ve generally enjoyed the books in this series, a space opera that focuses on nice people, rather than grim despair or dystopia (as a lot of modern takes go). The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was a character-driven, episodic narrative about the crew of a hyperspace tunneling ship that had seen better days. Most of the events covered in the book were well done but underwhelming, though it ended on a relatively strong note and the characters were enjoyable. The next book, A Closed and Common Orbit, focused much closer on two of the characters from the first book, and was significantly better for it. Like the first book, the stakes and tension weren’t particularly high, but the two characters at the heart of the story were endearing and interesting and once again, the ending was strong.

Alas, the third entry in the series, Record of a Spaceborn Few, was my least favorite so far. A set of day-in-the-life character sketches almost completely devoid of tension or drama, it really didn’t work for me at all. At first glance, this most recent entry in the series has a similar tone.

The Galaxy and the Ground Within book cover

The story takes place at the Five-Hop One-Stop, a sort of truck-stop in space, as three visitors and the proprietor get stuck together due to a freak accident in orbit around them that prevents any traffic from coming or going. All the characters are from different alien races, and none are human. As you might guess from Chambers’ generally positive attitude and optimistic vibes, this isn’t going to be a pressure-cooker situation where inter-species conflict threatens to explode, but there’s actually lots of interesting exploration going on here. Sure, most of it just comes down to various characters talking and attempting to understand one another’s cultures and perspectives, or even other races not present in the book, but it works a lot better than the previous book. Naturally these conversations hit on a lot of topics of interest to human readers, even if the characters aren’t human, and given the general politics of the Hugos the past few years, I think you know what you’re in for – though it’s nowhere near as ham-fisted or preachy as some other nominees have a tendency to be…

This lends itself to some mild tension and conflict, though it never really boils over into anything even remotely threatening. Perhaps the most memorable discussion involves us humans and our weird obsession with cheese and how it’s made, and how disgusting it is to the aliens, which is very funny. There’s one genuine argument between two of the characters, but that’s understandable enough, even to the characters themselves. One character has a bit of separation anxiety with their sibling stuck in orbit, but that’s not played up too hard. And there’s an incident involving a child in danger, but we all know it will work out fine in the end, and of course it does. I guess that’s a spoiler, but not really.

All in all, it’s another enjoyable entry into an enjoyable series, with likable characters and a nice positive attitude. I can see why it’s popular, especially with Hugo voters, and while I enjoyed it well enough, I don’t think it rises to the level of best SF of the year. Indeed, I’d put it about on par with A Desolation Called Peace with a similar notion of being a generally well executed version of something we’ve seen before. If Chambers is ever able to harness her storytelling powers to generate something more compelling, and populate it with these likable characters she’s so good at creating, that would be a true winner. These slice-of-life sketches are all well and good, but they don’t tend to stay with me…

So that covers the 2022 Hugo Awards SF finalists. Stay tuned for a look at the fantasy-oriented finalists. I only have one book left to go there, but it may be a few weeks. In the meantime, maybe I’ll give the Short Stories a whirl…

Hugo Awards 2022: Initial Thoughts

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The 2022 Hugo Awards finalists were announced last week, so it’s time for the requisite congratulations and/or bitter recriminations. I fell off the Hugo bandwagon last year, but got back in this year and submitted some nominations, so let’s take a look at the finalists and see how I did:

Best Novel

I’ve only read one of the finalists for Best Novel, but it was one of the books I nominated. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir was probably my favorite SF of the past couple of years and it was naturally one of my nominations, so it’s clearly the book to beat on my ballot.

A Desolation Called Peace

A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine, is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire, which won Best Novel in 2020 and which I enjoyed quite a bit. I’ve already started this one, and it seems to be stepping up a bit from the first, which is a good sign.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers, was on my radar and Chambers has been frequently nominated (this book is part of a series that won Best Series a couple years ago), but I never got around to it. I’m somewhat mixed on her Wayfarer’s books. I really loved one of them, thought another was solid, and didn’t particularly care for the last one. This sounds interesting enough, so we’ll see how it compares…

Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki, is completely new to me. The title makes it sound like SF, but the blurb is pretty definitively fantasy: featuring cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Those are some interesting ingredients, but it also sounds like the sort of thing that might not cohere for me.

A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark, sounds like a fun little fantasy mystery set in Egypt. Apparently part of a series that Clark established via novellas the past few years, he’s been a mainstay of the Hugos for a while now, though this is his first novel.

She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan, sounds an awful lot like a more serious take on Mulan. It seems to be a solid story, but honestly, I’m not seeing much in the way of SF or fantasy elements, though I guess there could be some alternate history tropes going on here… I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

Overall, it’s an interesting ballot. In terms of genre, we’ve got 3 SF and 3 Fantasy. Interestingly, the three Fantasy novels are all debuts, while the SF are from established authors. Three finalists appear to be part of a series, though only one of those seems to require you to have read a previous book. A male author (2 male authors) shows up on the best novel ballot for the first time since 2018. As of right now, I’m still assuming that Project Hail Mary will top my ballot, but you never know.

Short Fiction

A lot of common names show up on the Novella ballot, and actually all the shorter fiction categories have authors that are popular with Hugo voters. I’ll probably take a swing at Short Stories again this year, even though I’m inevitably disappointed by the category (though they are easy to read, since they’re so short)…

Best Dramatic Presentation

The big surprise here is that Hugo voters actually put some more thought into this ballot than usual. Oh sure, you’ve still got Marvel and Disney entries, and Dune was pretty much a lock, but the big surprise is that The Green Knight garnered a spot. Space Sweepers is also nominally interesting here as well, as Hugo voters don’t typically go for foreign flicks. I suspect Dune will still win it, but it’s a more varied ballot than usual. In terms of the Short Form award, it’s nice to see 5 nominees from shows that haven’t been nominated before. This is a far cry from when this category was generally referred to as “Which Dr Who episode should we give an award to?” (which, granted, has been a while, but still.)

Other Categories and Assorted Thoughts

Congrats to all the nominees, it seems like a fine set of finalists.

  • Best Series continues to be something of a popularity contest, but then, that’s generally what the Hugos are… At least none of these series are also nominated in the Best Novel category this year. I’m guessing it’s Seanan McGuire’s year, but you never know.
  • Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book has one novel I actually read in preparation of the Hugos this year, but didn’t particularly love. Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer, probably makes more sense as a YA book. Some interesting ideas about AI and the way apps/games/algorithms can impact privacy and security, but it felt a bit messy to me…

So there you have it, the 2022 Hugo Awards in a nutshell. I’ll definitely be reading the novels, and maybe some of the short stories too, so keep an eye out for reviews…

Termination Shock

4 Comments / Neal Stephenson, Science Fiction / /

When the premise for Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Termination Shock, was announced, I admitted to a little trepidation. It’s essentially a near-future climate change thriller, so there are plenty of landmines an author needs to avoid in order to produce something that won’t clash with readers’ probably complicated thoughts on the subject. Fortunately, Stephenson is up to the task. His stylistic mainstays of digressions and fascination with unexpected consequences all fit with the story being told here.

Termination Shock book cover

Any worries that the novel would devolve into indulgent, self-important lectures were allayed relatively early on in the novel. Once Stephenson started talking about feral hogs and their intersection with meth gators, well, I knew he wouldn’t let the seriousness of the themes overwhelm the need to tell an entertaining story. That sort of approach is much more likely to have an impact than a lot of climate-based science fiction, which has a didactic tendency to preach to the choir.

Of course, Stephenson’s idea of an entertaining story might not mesh with a lot of readers, and indeed, it features plenty of info-dumping and digressions on topics that you may or may not find interesting. Most of these explorations are driven by unexpected consequences of climate change or the idiosyncratic and varied adaptations humans have made to deal with it. I’ve already mentioned the feral hogs and meth gators, but there’s also fire ants, which are attracted to the ozone produced by air conditioner relays, which aren’t easily replaced due to globalized supply chain issues, so people start abandoning their homes in favor of RVs, campers, etc… Naturally, that gave rise to sprawling truck stop/gas station complexes that are almost like miniature cities.

The owner of those complexes is a cantankerous billionaire who has noticed that climate-based issues are driving down real estate values, and so he decides to engage in a bit of geoengineering. He hoards sulfur, then builds a giant subterranean cannon that will shoot the sulfur up into the atmosphere. The sulfur will reflect a sizeable portion of sunlight back out into space, thus lowering temperatures on earth (and apparently providing spectacularly beautiful sunsets). This is not a new idea, nor is it something that we have not observed in nature before. Some volcano eruptions, such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991, have resulted in exactly this sort of thing. Of course, the effects of such a strategy are inconsistent. We’re talking about global climate here, so models can only tell you so much. Yes, global average temperature will go down, but what sorts of local effects are you likely to see? What impact will this have on sea-levels in the Netherlands? What about the monsoon season in India?

The book is filled with these sorts of speculations and adaptations to climate change. Most are not good long-term solution, but it gets at the decentralized way people respond to these sorts of issues, and they do provide mitigating effects while longer-term strategies like carbon capture are being set up. As I’ve often observed, human beings don’t so much solve problems as they exchange one set of problems for another in the hopes that the new set is more favorable than the old. Such tradeoffs are covered in depth throughout the novel.

The big sulfur gun geoengineering scheme is often cited as the big idea of this book, but the real theme here is that the problem of climate change will be broken down into a series of smaller, more focused challenges and solutions. The big sulfur gun isn’t actually that big. At best, it’s a delaying action. But it is something! And we’ll need to do a lot of somethings, big and small, if we’re going to tackle climate change. The problem is too big, too complex, involving too many people, too many governments, and too many agendas to solve it any other way. This book illustrates the distributed way that this sort of thing will happen. Sure, maybe all the governments of the world will come together in peace and harmony and completely rework globalized energy networks, our financial system, and so on, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for that one.

At first glance, the story threads in the book are a bit scattered, but it’s not an uncommon approach from Stephenson. You’ve got a thread about Dutch royalty, a partial Native American on a Moby Dick-like quest to kill a specific feral hog, the aforementioned Texas billionaire, and a Canadian man of Indian descent who gets involved in a strange border conflict with China. The usual Stephensonian distractions and digressions are out in full force, touching on all manner of seemingly disconnected subjects from falconry to drone-assisted hunting to obscure martial arts to deepfakes to large scale engineering. It feels like Stephenson is just obsessing over things he finds neat, but something about the way he lays these things out and integrates them into the larger story works for me. It does all come together in the end, and I think Stephenson fans will find plenty to chew on. I’m a big fan of Stephenson though, so your mileage may vary. Some of the things I’m praising in this novel are things that I often don’t like in other books. In any case, I liked this enough to nominate it for a Hugo award, and I hope it does find a large audience.

Hugo Awards Season 2022

1 Comment / Hugo Awards, Science Fiction / /

The nomination period for the 2022 Hugo Awards ends in a few weeks, so it’s worth thinking about the year in SF. After taking a year off from the awards, I decided to jump back into the fray this year due to a couple of really strong nominees (that will, hopefully, become finalists) that I wanted to support. As per usual, I didn’t actually read that much eligible stuff, so I’m scrambling a bit at this point to catch up with some things. Assorted thoughts below.

Best Novel

I’ve read 6 books that would be eligible for the best novel award, and these two are the best SF I’ve read in a while:

Both books are exceptional and highly recommended. My experience nominating novels is somewhat mixed, but I estimate that both of these have a good chance of garnering a finalist spot on the Hugo ballot, and they’re probably my favorite I’ve gotten to nominate in the approximately one decade in which I’ve been playing along.

I quite enjoyed Artifact Space by Miles Cameron, a fun little space opera that I’d probably nominate in a normal year, but pales in comparison to the above two. Similarly, I had a lot of fun with Master of the Revels by Nicole Galland, but I don’t think it necessarily stacks up. I might just plop these two on my nominating ballot if I have space, but I doubt either will garner a finalist slot. I want to catch up with Machinehood by S.B. Divya and Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky before the nomination period ends, but time is tight, so who knows if I’ll get to both?

Short Fiction

I’m not particularly great at keeping up with short fiction, but I did read two of the best and yet most boring choices for nominees released last year:

Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells

I say these are boring choices because, well, the Murderbot stories that Wells writes have already won several Hugos, including Best Novel and Best Series just last year. Bujold might be the most awarded author in the history of the Hugos, and the above work is the tenth novella in a series that has been nominated before (and part of another Best Series). That being said? They’re both fantastic. What can I say, I’ll try to mix things up next year. I’ll try to catch up with some short stories before the nomination period ends, but I don’t really have much on my radar at the moment.

Best Series

I still have reservations about this award from both a logistical (who can read all these series in time to vote?) and purpose (winners tend to have already won Hugos for the novels in the same series, sometimes in the same year) perspective. That being said, it is an award, and I think the spirit of the award is meant for something like this:

One good thing about this award is that a lot of the obvious choices are now ineligible this year (because they’ve already won or been nominated too much), but there’s still quite a large number of possibilities. I like the Bobiverse books a lot, even if an individual entry doesn’t quite rise to the level of a Hugo Best Novel. This is kinda what the award is all about though, so I’ll throw this a nom.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

The Hugo Voters tend to have strangely generic taste in movies, often nominating high budget superhero fare over smaller, more thoughtful independent stuff. I always try to nominate stuff that’s off the beaten path (with a nod towards some of the mainstream stuff, if it’s great), but they rarely make the cut with Hugo voters. A decent crop this year though:

I really wanted to throw some love to Malignant, but there’s an approximately 0% chance of it getting other votes. Horror tends to do poorly when it comes to the Hugos, and I’m already pushing it with Werewolves Within. Anyway, I fully expect the finalists to consist of things like Spider-Man and The Matrix, but I hold out hope that something like I’m Your Man could sneak onto the list.

Other Categories

Some assorted nominations in more obscure categories:

That about covers it for what I’m nominating for the 2022 Hugo Awards (for now). I have a busy few weeks coming up, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get to ahead of the nominations deadline, but this is a good start, I think.

Vintage Science Fiction Month: Belated Double Feature

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Vintage Science Fiction Month is the brainchild of the Little Red Reviewer. The objective: Read and discuss “older than I am” Science Fiction in the month of January. Eagle eyed readers may recognize that it is now February, so yes, I’m playing a bit of catch up here. That said, I read both of the below during January and better late than never.

Vintage Science Fiction Month

Judgement Night by C.L. Moore – Moore is one of those early female SF authors that are often glossed over in genre discussions. She was one half of the foremost husband-and-wife team in SF history (the other half was her husband, Henry Kuttner), and they were quite prolific together, publishing under numerous pen names (most famously Lewis Padgett), but also wrote solo stories. The standard take is that Kuttner was faster and more prolific, but Moore was more original and more highly regarded as a writer. There’s also complicating factors because some of Moore’s stories were published under Kuttner’s name, owing to the fact that he had a higher word rate than she did. Still, the notion that their strengths and weaknesses offset each other is the prevailing narrative, and it does make a certain sort of sense.

This 1952 novel is one of Moore’s later solo efforts, and I think I can see some of the dynamics here. The story is about Juille, headstrong daughter of the emperor, an amazon warrior who wants to take a hard line against the barbarian hordes that threaten the empire. It’s a story about an empire, so naturally it all hinges on an attempt to overthrow the emperor. Both sides are developing frightening weapons of great power, and seem hellbent on destruction. Egide is a leader of the barbarian faction, and he develops a rather strange relationship with Juille. There’s a simultaneous attraction and repulsion between the two that is consistently revisited throughout the story, and represents the emotional core. There are other factions and the requisite schemes and betrayals, as befits this sort of tale.

The proportion of exposition is perhaps a bit too high given the simple adventure story, leading to some inconsistent pacing. However, Moore is great at evocative atmosphere, and she pulls from all sorts of elements that we’d be familiar with. There’s definitely a Western vibe to a lot of the setting, though instead of horses and swords you get spaceships and fire swords (perhaps one of many precursors to the light saber?) For some reason everyone still walks around with spurs on their boots too, which I found kinda funny. The star-crossed lovers trope is certainly common, but it’s common for a reason, and it’s well done here. Moore’s prose is colorful and creative, especially when it comes to Cyrille, a sorta pleasure planet (moon?) that features tons of artificial environments. I kinda thought of it like Risa from Star Trek, and we see it a couple of times throughout this novel.

The ending is surprisingly downbeat for a golden age work, but it absolutely fits with Moore’s common themes (and actually, her husband’s as well). She described the fundamental theme she revisited in her work often as “The most treacherous thing in life is love,” and she summarized her husband’s too: “Hank’s basic statement was something like, ‘Authority is dangerous and I will never submit to it.'” The ending of Judgement night is certainly fitting with both of these; a powerful statement on the folly of war, if not particularly satisfying. As Moore herself comments towards the end “The human mind is not constructed to accept defeat even in the face of finality.” I think she pulled it off and this represents an interesting deviation from the genre at the time, but it’s probably not an entry point or must-read.

The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance – Another story about a power struggle in a monarchy, this one with considerably more idea content that reaches for that fabled SF sense of wonder. Young Beran Panasper’s father and Panarch of the planet Pao has just been murdered. Beran must flee his home to survive, and is aided by a man named Palafox from the planet Breakness. Growing up in this foreign planet, Beran learns their ways while struggling to maintain his Paonese culture and mindset. Meanwhile, Palafox works with the current leader of Pao, who is unpopular with his people and vulnerable to an outside threat. But Palafox is basically setting up Pao to meet his own needs, and Beran will need to find a way to navigate back to Pao, save it from its current leader (thus avenging his father’s death), fend off other attackers, and eventually defeat Palafox himself.

This is one of the earlier works of SF exploring linguistics and in particular, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The idea is that the structure of a language affects its speakers’ worldview to a large degree. Vance rather directly presents these ideas in the text:

“Think of a language as the contour of a watershed, stopping flow in certain directions, channeling it into others. Language controls the mechanism of your mind. When people speak different languages, their minds work differently and they act differently…”

The Languages of Pao, Page 41

This idea has been a powerful influence on the field. For instance, it’s the driving principle behind Ted Chiang’s 1998 “Story of Your Life” (which was adapted into the film Arrival in 2016). In The Languages of Pao it is perhaps more contrived, but no less interesting. To make it work, Vance creates two very different societies. Different from each other, and different from our own. Pao is a very passive, accepting society, almost communal in nature. Breakness is extremely individualistic. Pao’s indifference makes them vulnerable to outside attack, and in order to defend against it, they develop several new languages in order to generate a warrior class (as well as a technology class and a merchant class). Eventually these new classes are successful, but at what cost? If language changes your outlook away from traditional Pao society, are you still Paonese?

This is a short book, and despite the rather bald way some of these ideas are presented, the pacing is still quite brisk. It actually represents an interesting contrast to Moore’s Judgement Night, which definitely gets bogged down in its atmospheric prose. Vance is perhaps not as much of a stylist, but he’s clear and concise, and while the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is debatable, it does still make an intriguing basis for a story. As I understand it, this early Vance work is not one of his best, though it is something of a turning point for him. After reading this, I’m definitely curious to seek out more from him, which is usually a pretty good sign. I enjoyed this well enough and it has all the right elements, but the balance feels a bit off. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the genre’s usage of linguistics…

Vintage Science Fiction Month: Slan

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Vintage Science Fiction Month is the brainchild of the Little Red Reviewer. The objective: Read and discuss “older than I am” Science Fiction in the month of January.

Not long after Superman made his debut in the pages of Action Comics in 1938, A.E. van Vogt was pitching a more scientific version of the idea to John Campbell, the infamous editor of Astounding magazine (the resultant novel Slan would be serialized in that magazine in 1940). van Vogt had already been exploring the idea that humans would need to transcend themselves in order to better explore the universe. He proposed a novel wherein a new species of Homo Superior emerges out of humans as we presently know them. Because van Vogt proposed that the story be told from the perspective of the new, higher order being, Campbell initially rejected the idea. His main point was that you couldn’t tell a superman story from the superman’s viewpoint… unless you were a superman yourself!

In what Campbell would later describe as a “beautiful trick”, van Vogt’s solution to this conundrum was to tell the story from the point of view of an isolated, immature superman who had not yet come into his full powers. As Slan begins, nine-year old Jommy Cross has just seen his mother captured and killed. Young, vulnerable, and on the run, he spends the rest of the novel seeking to learn more about himself and his kind.

Slans are the next phase in human evolution, named after their creator, one Samuel Lann. They are stronger, faster, and more intelligent than their human counterparts, and even exhibit fantastic psychic powers, including the ability to read minds. Humans, lead by the dictator Kier Gray, are fearful of slans and plotting ways to exterminate the entire population.

I won’t get into more specific plot points because part of the joy of this novel is the way in which van Vogt continually recontextualizes information that has been laid out earlier in the story. He accomplishes this through a tightly connected series of episodic conversations. Sure, there are the occasional action setpieces involving daring escapes, spaceships, and secret passages, but the real fireworks are in the scheming battles of wits between various characters. Whether it be young Jommy Cross guardedly interrogating a suspected fellow slan or dictator Kier Gray fending off political foes, these conversations constitute the bulk of the novel.

I certainly wouldn’t characterize van Vogt as a tremendous prose stylist, but he does have a tendency to employ a dreamlike vagueness in the way he constructs his sentences. This sometimes comes off as a clumsy turn of phrase, but it can also provoke a creative response if you get on its wavelength. So the story initially appears to have a lot of open questions or silly elements, but there is an almost mystical method to this madness, such that the nitpicking parts of my brain tended to be overcome by the more imaginative impulses that a good story can induce. A steady stream of twists and turns coming at a rather fast pace also doesn’t hurt… Not everything works perfectly (I’m thinking of a particularly abrupt death that, while certainly surprising, also felt a bit cheap – especially at the very end when you get those final couple twists that call back to this moment), but it puts on a good show.

One recurring motif that occurs several times throughout the novel is the scene of mutual recognition. When Jommy finally meets a fellow Slan and they both experience a simultaneous rush of discovery, it’s quite well done (there are several similar sequences throughout the book). This apparently struck a nerve with early fandom, with people jokingly referring to their communal living spaces as “slan shacks” and developing the slogan that “fans are slans!” Again, this was more of a joke than anything else, but it does bely early fandom’s comradery, pleasure at discovering a fellow fan of SF, and willingness to aspire to something more (i.e. slanhood!)

Reading this novel 80 years later, I’d say that it’s a fairly representative example of what made Golden Age science fiction so popular. Lots of ideas and twists, awkward prose that nevertheless possesses a deceptively clever underpinning, short and sweet. It is not a perfect novel, but it is interesting that as a novel about the the next stage of evolution amongst humans, it’s also a clear step forward for the science fiction genre. I enjoyed catching up with it…

2021 in Books

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As time marches inevitably on, it’s usually a good idea to take a look back at the year that was, and while it’s arbitrary and something of a cliché to do this at the end of the calendar year, it is the natural time to do so. After another year of pandemic fun and other political and cultural strife, it’s actually somewhat of a relief to take a closer look at something as mundane as the books I’ve read over the year.

I keep track of my reading at Goodreads (we should be friends there), and they have a bunch of rudimentary statistical visualization tools that give a nice overview of my reading habits over time, especially now that I’ve been logging books there for over a decade.

Graphs

I read 63 books in 2021, slightly off the pandemic fueled record pace set last year (69 books, nice), but there are always complicating factors that we’ll get to.

Graph of Number of Books Read

You can see the full list on Goodreads. This falls short of last year, but is otherwise still far above previous years. While pandemic restrictions eased a bit this year, things are still not back in full swing, so that still drives plenty of reading time. Or listening time, as audio books still comprise a pretty significant proportion of the list.

Average page length clocks in at a measly 312, far below last year’s robust 343 and the previous year’s 345, not to mention my personal record of 356. This was mostly driven by the inclusion of a serialized series of short stories and novelettes that pumped up the overall count of books while dropping the average page numbers (the count of books would probably still be above pre-pandemic numbers, but this certainly had an impact).

Graph of Number of Pages Read

Of course, we must acknowledge the inherent variability in page numbers, but this still feels about right. Still better than pre-pandemic numbers, but not as overwhelmingly so.

The Extremes

The Shortest and Longest Books of the year
The Most Popular and Least Popular books of the year

The obvious clarification needed here is that the “Least Popular” book is Pain Don’t Hurt, by Sean T. Collins, a non-fiction book where a film critic decided to write about the Patrick Swayze film Road House every day for a year. It gets a bit repetitive and it could use more pictures (especially when discussing the minor side characters and mostly unnamed trustees of modern chemistry), but it’s an amazing book worth reading for any fan of that film. I suspect it would be more popular if Collins actually released this book through more traditional means (it’s not really available at major retailers – you can find it online, but it is pricey, even though it’s a signed edition). For the record, Pain Don’t Hurt is also the highest rated book I read all year, though that’s most likely due to the low number of ratings.

Anywho, I’m glad to see that Project Hail Mary was so popular. It’s probably my favorite Science Fiction novel of the year and if I were participating in the Hugos this year, I would definitely be nominating it.

Assorted Observations and Thoughts

At this point, I’d normally show the graph of books read by publication date, but ever since I read Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare, the chart’s Y axis got so large that the graph is essentially ruined. I’ll try to make up for that with some observations below.

  • Slan by A.E. van Vogt was the oldest book I read in 2021. Published in 1940, I was actually trying to get ahead of Vintage Science Fiction Month and just finished it a couple days ago.
  • 20 non-fiction books in 2021, a minor increase over last year but given the lower count of overall books, it’s proportionally higher too. A little less than 1/3 non-fiction feels alright, but I suspect we’ll continue to see this number go up over time.
  • 18 science fiction books in 2021, a significant decrease over the past few years. The difference this year was mostly due to an increase in thrillers, horror, and crime fiction. I suspect not formally participating in the Hugos also has something to do with it.
  • Only 8 books written by women in 2021, which is a significant decrease over the last few years. Of course, this was not intentional at all, but maybe I should pay some attention to that in 2022.
  • Without doing any formal analysis, despite a few vintage reads, this year was mostly above 1990 in terms of age, and recent releases were a higher proportion than usual I think. Nothing wrong with that and again, nothing intentional here, but maybe worth looking into older reads in 2022.

So it’s been a pretty good year in books. While I’m a massive introvert and greatly enjoy reading books, I’m still happy to see that the pandemic appears to be easing a bit, though who knows what Omicron will bring (I suspect the next month or two will be ruff, but after that…). Still, while I love staying home and reading or listening to audio books on long walks, it would be nice to get out into the world again in 2022. Unless we see a significant worsening of the pandemic, I’m guessing the reading numbers will decrease a bit again in 2022… (and as much as I love books, that will still be a good thing!)

Hugo Awards 2021: The Results

Leave a Comment / Hugo Awards, Science Fiction / /

The Results of the 2021 Hugo Awards were announced last night, so it’s time for the requisite joyful celebrations and/or bitter recriminations. At this point, I’ve fallen off of the Hugo bandwagon from a formal participation standpoint, but still like to keep an eye on things. Populist awards like this go in waves, so they tend to get repetitive, as we’ll see. In any case, congratulations are due to all the winners! For those who want to geek out and see instant-runoff voting in action, the detailed voting stats for the 2021 Hugo Awards are also available (.pdf).

Best Novel

Network Effect, by Martha Wells wins! It’s the one novel of the nominees that I actually read last year and I’ve very much enjoyed the whole Murderbot series to date. For the uninitiated, you’ll want to start with the original novellas (beginning with All Systems Red) before getting to this novel, but it’s a fun, action packed series with a compelling protagonist, some interesting ideas, and a nice cast of regular side characters.

Network Effect

Of course, this is part of a long running series that has won before (although this is the first novel), which speaks to the repetition I was speaking of above. The other nominees didn’t hold much interest for me, seeing as though I’d either read previous novels in the series or enough work from the author that I wasn’t especially excited to read more of. The one exception might be Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, but I’m not in a rush there either.

Short Fiction

I didn’t even dip my toes into the shorter fiction categories this year, but I do see a lot of familiar names here, even among the winners. However, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo did win the novella category and that’s a new name, so there is that. Sarah Pinsker and Ursula Vernon took home the other two fiction awards, and they’ve been mainstays of the past few years. Despite (or because of?) the controversy around Isabella Fall’s Helicopter Story, it did not do so well in the voting.

Best Series

The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells wins here as well, proving once again that the original intentions of the series award aren’t really being served here. Don’t get me wrong, as previously mentioned, I love the Murderbot series and it’s eminently deserving of praise… but it’s already won multiple Hugo awards. This is just an also-ran for that series, while other series languish in obscurity (or, er, lack of recognition? They all seem pretty popular.)

I always thought the point was to recognize series that didn’t already get recognition in the other awards. The idea being that hey, maybe we can include more one-offs in the best novel ballot because entries in a series can be recognized here. Or series that people love that nonetheless don’t have standout individual entries can still be recognized. But in general, the award has gone to hugely popular series that had already been recognized, sometimes in the same ballot (like this year, with the novel and its series winning).

As I understand it, this award narrowly passed a vote considering its future, so it will continue to show up in future years. I remain a little skeptical of this one, not least of which because I don’t think it’s likely that most voters have read all the series nominated (not to mention the logistics of reading that many stories in the time allotted).

Best Dramatic Presentation

Always a weird award, and this year is no different. The long form award goes to… The Old Guard? A little surprising, as I didn’t realize that movie was particularly loved. I mean, I enjoyed it plenty and it was great pandemic watching, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly original or great SF. Of course, the other nominees aren’t especially accomplished either. I’m still quite baffled that Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga even made the ballot in the first place. It’s not especially surprising that Tenet didn’t do very well, though it would probably be my favorite of the nominees (at least, as SF it would – I think Tenet does have its flaws). For whatever reason, Hugo voters tend to go lower-brow when it comes to movies. Anyway, pour one out for The Invisible Man, Possessor, The Vast of Night, Color Out of Space, Archive, and The Wolf of Snow Hollow. There are always great works left off of a given awards ballot, but this year seems particularly egregious (I mean, come on, Eurovision?).

Short form goes to The Good Place. Again. I really enjoyed The Good Place, but it has won the award four times in a row, which seems silly. I would have probably gone more Mandalorian on this ballot, though perhaps the vote got split because there were two different episodes nominated (but then, the whole instant-runoff thing kinda mitigates some of that and looking at the actual numbers, The Good Place had a really strong win here – it wasn’t even close.) The Expanse ended up taking a distant second place. Now that The Good Place is over, it’ll be interesting to see where things fall next year. I suspect we’ll see a strong showing for Marvel TV shows…

Other Thoughts on the 2021 Hugo Awards

It wouldn’t be Hugos without some sort of controversy, and this year had no shortage of questionable events. Personally, this stuff gives me the hives, but near as I can tell much of the controversy surrounded China’s bid to host Worldcon in 2023. Naturally, there were some concerns there because of, you know, the genocide, censorship, and high profile disappearings. But then a competing bid from Winnipeg pulled out a big ol bag of dirty tricks to try and win, which wasn’t great either. I mean, not genocide-level bad, but not great. Then of course you get the whataboutisms and how the US sucks (and I guess so does Canada?) and Raytheon sponsored a part of this year’s Hugos (which I can kinda see why someone would want to sideye and all, but still) and the whole thing is just a garbage fire at this point. I don’t really want to delve more into it.

Next year’s awards could be interesting though. I’m already curious to see if my two favorite novels from this year make next year’s ballot, and I actually think there’s a fair chance that both will. It might be enough to get me to dive in again. (Of course, one of these books comes from a popular author that’s been nominated several times and even won before, so there is that, but still.) I suppose time will tell. Anywho, congrats again to all the winners of the 2021 Hugo Awards!

Halloween Reading Roundup

Leave a Comment / 6 Weeks of Halloween, Horror / /

We watch a lot of movies during the Six Weeks of Halloween, but there’s also a fair amount of spooky season’s readings to cover as well. As with this year’s movie watching, our Halloween reading pace has also slackened somewhat from the pandemic-fueled record set last year. I still ended up getting through eight books, which actually isn’t that far off the record, though a couple were shorter and I was still chiseling away at one even after the big day. I used to interweave some book posts throughout the marathon, but we’ll just have to do this one big roundup at the end of the season. We’ve got a lot to get through, so not all will be particularly in-depth analyses, but let’s take a looksee:

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Reading Roundup

Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King – At this point, it’s almost a cliché to read Stephen King during the Halloween Season, but after reading Night Shift last year, I resolved to explore more of King’s short fiction. As it turns out this was the first book I started and the last book I finished during the season. Short Story collections tend to be, by their very nature, uneven affairs. But when you’ve got a stack of seasonal reads, a book like this makes for the perfect transition between larger works. As such, I was continually dipping into this collection throughout the entire marathon, only finishing it off yesterday (almost a week after Halloween). Clocking in at around 700 pages, that’s not too surprising, I guess, but it was an overall enjoyable read.

“Dolan’s Cadillac” kicks off the collection with a bang and it’s one of the best in the entire collection. More of a horror inflected crime/revenge story than anything else, I appreciated the procedural attention to detail and care with which King constructed the story. “The Night Flier” is a neat little modern (er, for the 80s) spin on vampires, and I very distinctly remember enjoying the movie adaptation that probably won’t live up to my memory (but it’s conspicuously absent from streaming and I’m not willing to spend $65 for a used VHS or DVD to test that theory out). “Home Delivery” is my kinda zombie story. “The Ten O’Clock People” is great, reminiscent of Carpenter’s They Live, but to my mind, better and more horrific (perhaps less pointed or angry in political terms, but creepier in execution for sure). “Crouch End” features the obligatory Lovecraft homage, and is pretty well done iteration of those tropes.

As expected, some stories didn’t really strike a nerve with me (like “The Moving Finger” or “My Pretty Pony”) and one thing I noticed in comparison to Night Shift is that these newer stories all seem longer and more verbose than the earlier ones. When it comes to the good stories mentioned above, that’s not really a problem, but there are a fair amount of stories that I thought were decent but dragged a bit (like “Sneakers” or “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”). Finally, there are some things that don’t especially fit at all, notably “Head Down”, which is non-fiction about King’s son’s little league baseball team (which, oddly, is also the longest story of the bunch). All in all, though, it’s a pretty solid collection, and while it sags at times, it feels like it got stronger as it went. I will probably continue this trend of a Stephen King short story collection next year, as I kinda enjoy having something to slip in and out of throughout the season.

Winter Moon by Dean Koontz – I know Koontz takes a lot of heat, especially from Stephen King fans, but he’s always been a favorite. That said, he’s extremely repetitive and I’ve never quite managed to rekindle that initial burst of enthusiasm I got from his stuff when I discovered his books in high school. Part of that may be because I’m older and wiser now (haha, right – ed), part of it may be that I’ve already read his best stuff, but most likely it’s that Koontz is very prolific and tends to repeat certain tropes over and over again. That said, there was a period in the 80s and early 90s in which he was really on fire. I’ve actually had some luck earlier this year reading Mr. Murder and The Bad Place, both of which were quite fun (especially the latter, which I found surprisingly entertaining and weird).

Winter Moon was apparently a rewrite of one of Koontz’s earlier works, published under a pseudonym. Supposedly the rewrite used very little of the original text, so it was kinda considered a new novel at the time. Anyway, it’s a fun little alien invasion flick, with the usual sprinkling of Koontzian tropes. Great opening shootout with our police officer protagonist, after which his wife becomes a little paranoid (but not without reason), and the precocious child does his best, etc… Then there’s a parallel story in set in Montana that’s a little more unusual, but you eventually see how the two stories will dovetail. There’s some time spent just kinda waiting for the pieces to fall into place, but it’s easy-going page-turner stuff. Certainly not one of Koontz’s best and not something I’d recommend starting with, but it was entertaining enough.

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole – The premise of this nonfiction book is that the devastating violence and bloodshed of World War I planted the seeds of all modern horror. Poole is a historian, so it’s not surprising that a fair proportion of this book is spent chronicling various factual aspects of WWI. He’s good at capturing the outrage and senselessness of the war and even if you’re more interested in the artistic side of this premise, the historical details are still engaging and interesting.

These details are then applied to the emergence of various horror trends of the era, particularly given the prominence and influence of German filmmakers on the genre. He briefly sketches out the lives of several prominent authors and directors, including the likes of F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, James Whale, H.P. Lovecraft, Franz Kafka, and several others. Biographical information is relayed in addition to the prominent works of horror they produced.

Unfortunately, it does feel a bit like he’s stretching to make the details fit his thesis, rather than truly developing it. As a result, the book feels narrowly focused, like Poole was only concerned with a small part of what makes a lot of these works great. There’s also not much in the way of tracing this influence far beyond the war. It seems obvious that art produced during the 20s and 30s would be influenced by the war, but how does that influence expand beyond those works through the subsequent decades (even up until today).

None of which is to belittle what the book is doing here. If you’re already interested in the horror stories of the era, it’s a pretty good overview (if you’re not, then it might not hold interest – as mentioned, it doesn’t do much connecting those works to contemporary horror, so there’s not even an in there). I suppose if you were a history buff who never had much interest in the horror genre, it might be eye opening. I liked it well enough, though again, I do feel it was stretching to fit the thesis.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix – I feel like I should like Hendrix’s work more than I do. I really enjoyed the nonfiction Paperbacks from Hell, and We Sold Our Souls was a nice spin on some specific tropes that I found diverting enough (if not amazing or anything). This book, chronicling the travails of real-life final girls as a killer starts picking them off one by one, should really be up my alley.

To be sure, there are a lot of interesting elements here. In the world of this book, all the slasher franchises we know and love from the eighties were based on real stories with real final girls. They have slightly modified names (i.e. our main protagonist is the basis for the Slay Bells series of movies, which are very obviously styled after Silent Night, Deadly Night), but they’re all there. Of course, this sort of exposure comes with its own challenges. There’s a whole seedy and exploitative side to the situation that Hendrix covers aptly. Some of the girls handle it well, others do not. Twenty years later, they’re mostly a group of basket cases. This is perhaps not unrealistic, but it’s also no fun at all. Which I get. The trauma of such events should not be minimized. But you have to make up for that somehow, and Hendrix seems to think having a main protagonist be utterly and completely incompetent is compelling, and it’s not.

I really, really disliked our protagonist. It’s excusable that she did dumb stuff as a teen that wasn’t expecting to be hunted buy a Santa killer. Twenty years later, being paranoid and supposedly prepared, it turns out that she still constantly makes dumb decisions. Perhaps this is more of a “me” thing than the book’s fault, but I really had a hard time rooting for her. The reason we like final girls in horror movies is that they aren’t generally dumb and are capable of fighting back and even defeating the killer. I get that this story is supposed to be more based in realism, but the precept holds: competent protagonists are much more likeable than stupid ones. She even admits, late in the story when she did something tremendously stupid and underestimates a suspect: “I am stupid. I am dumb.” Right, but self-awareness does not inoculate the author from having a stupid protagonist. The worst thing is that she doesn’t need to be incompetent for this story to work. You could make a commentary on how paranoia and preparedness are sometimes not enough and maybe even the price of such precautions is too much… without having to make the character a total dunce.

There’s arguably too much weight on realism in this story, but otherwise, there’s a skeleton of a good plot here. Even some of the realistic stuff represents interesting extrapolations on a world where final girls were real things, and the various explorations of each final girl’s story and the franchises they spawned are great. As mentioned above, though, Hendrix chose perhaps the least likeable of the bunch as his main protagonist – the others all seem much more interesting and active. I listened to the audiobook for this, which probably didn’t help. It’s read by Adrienne King, who was the final girl in the original Friday the 13th. She’s not the worst reader I’ve heard, but it still comes off as more of a stunt than a great choice. I found a lot of things grating about the book, so maybe it’s hard to separate that from the performance, but whatever. I really did not enjoy this book, which is a shame, because it should have been up my alley. One of these days I’ll find a slasher novel that works for me…

Last Days by Brian Evenson – Evenson is my favorite discovery of the year. There’s something of a cult status being built up around him, and after having read a couple books during this Halloween season, I can easily see why. He’s got a simplistic, straightforward style that is deceptively cerebral in nature, and deeply unsettling.

Last Days by Brian Evenson book cover

This story of this novel concerns an amputation-obsessed cult that hires a detective (who had his hand chopped off during his last case – and thus is considered trustworthy by the cult) to solve a murder. Naturally, all is not what it seems. What starts as a detective procedural with a Kafka-esque bent, eventually turns (or perhaps curdles) into something more odd and violent than you might expect.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t spend much more time on it, though I guess that implies the story has more surprises and gotcha twists than it really does. I mean, our detective certainly makes deductions I wasn’t expecting and there are twists, but they’re hard to describe and unlike your usual mysteries. I really enjoyed the weirdness though, and while it’s subtly stylish stuff, it’s still page turning material. Worth seeking out if you’re not scared of strange stuff off the beaten path…

Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson – This collection of short stories might be a better place to start than Last Days, but they’re both pretty short books. I found it interesting reading this in contrast to King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Where I found King’s stories to be relatively long (approximately 30 pages with small type/spacing) and verbose, Evenson’s are generally very short (approximately 10 pages, not as densely printed), stripped down, and simple… but no less disturbing.

Stories range from the straightforward horror type, to more adventurous blends of genres, even including a few science fiction tales. You’ve got the obligatory Lovecraft homage (one of the aforementioned SF stories), and there are multiple stories about filmmakers that delve into the horrific.

I liked the initial entries in the book, but either the stories got better as it it went or I simply got on Evenson’s wavelength, because my opinion of this book kept rising as I read (an unusual experience with a short story collection, which is typically more of a wave of ups and downs – I suppose that’s also true here, but the stories are short enough that the amplitude of said waves isn’t that high). If Evenson’s brand of weird and disquieting horror sounds like your thing, check it out. I will most certainly be revisiting his work next year.

Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar – A serial killer story with a metafictional twist, this novel is essentially a fictional true crime novel. As such, you don’t get the bombastic serial killer tropes here, only the difficult to reconstruct details of each murder scene and a little about the victim’s life. It’s a fascinating exercise and a premise that mostly delivers what it promises, though I will say that I’m not exactly an expert on true crime.

It did feel more like a memoir than true crime at times, but again, I’m not sure how much of this is a departure from true crime or not (i.e. are a lot of true crime novels also sorta memoirs about the author’s life too?) Either way, the story works well enough for what it is. Again, don’t expect the exciting, pulse-pounding tropes of more trashy serial killer narratives. But it’s not a hollow, overheated stylistic exercise either. It’s a sorta sober examination of a series of murders in the author’s hometown. Unlike a lot of true crime, this one is eventually solved, and the book takes the form of a second edition, with some additional chapters at the end (because the fictional crimes were solved long after the fictional true crime book was fictionally published, so the fictional author was approached by the fictional publisher to revise the fictional book for a fictional second edition – everyone got that?) It works as a story, but also as a metatextual narrative, which is pretty interesting.

Danse Macabre by Stephen King – And so we return to Stephen King, this time working in non-fiction mode as he examines what makes the horror genre tick. Writing in the early 80s, he’s mostly covering older works from his childhood, though he does spend some time on contemporary (i.e. late 70s) horror as well. That part represents an interesting time capsule to see what horror movies resonated at the time, versus the ones that have survived the test of time and are still well known today.

He covers literature and movies, with some time spent on radio and the pulps and whatnot. There’s good overviews of a lot of what makes the genre tick, and he traces things back to originators like Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (the latter of which King posits as the origin of modern werewolf stories, which I’m not sure I’d ever heard before).

It’s always interesting to get some perspective on an author like King and how he understands his own work, but I’m guessing there’s a lot to quibble with too. If you’ve ever read King’s column in Entertainment magazine back in the day, well, it’s perhaps not quite that lightweight, but sometimes he strikes off in a direction that seems a bit more flimsy than you might expect. Still, if you’re interested in horror’s evolution through the 50s and 60s, with a little of the 70s, this book will be most interesting for you. Personally, it feels like he might have written it a few years too early – the 80s were an interesting time for horror, and most of that is elided here simply because of when he wrote the book. Hard to blame him for that, so this is definitely another me problem, but the horror heart wants what it wants. I’d recommend King’s On Writing much more than Danse Macabre, but they’re also very different takes on non-fiction, so make of that what you will. King’s always interesting though…

Another Season’s Readings in the books. I’m allready thinking of things I’m going to watch and read for next year’s Six Weeks of Halloween marathon, which is always a good sign…

SF Book Review – Part 38: The Long Winter and Moar

Leave a Comment / Science Fiction / /

I’m still catching up with recent SF reading and I figure it’s best to get this out before the Six Weeks of Halloween revs up. This post covers stuff I read from June right up until last week, so we’re pretty much caught up. Naturally, we’ll cover some horror books during the 6WH, so it may be a while before returning to SF proper. Anywho, let’s get to it:

First up is the Long Winter Trilogy:

Winter World, by A.G. Riddle – A new, inexplicable ice age has descended upon earth. Desperate for answers, scientists send probes out into the solar system and discover mysterious objects disrupting solar energy. James Sinclair is a disgraced roboticist serving time in prison, but is nonetheless tapped to be on the team that will confront the forces disrupting earth. Will this team be able to figure out what’s happening and find a countermeasure? A sorta light space opera/first contact tale in the vein of Blake Crouch or Peter Clines (to name two folks I’ve read recently that operate in a similar way).

Winter World book cover

Old SF hands might not find a ton of new ideas here, but it’s well executed and entertaining. Some of the twists and turns are foreshadowed hard, so hard that maybe they’re not supposed to be twists? I mean, some things that are blindingly obvious to readers somehow surprise some characters in strange ways. As an opening shot in a trilogy, it’s just fine. Won’t blow your mind, but it’s a well told story and it’s achieving what it sets out to do…

I’ve avoided spoilers thus far, but talking about the next two books will necessarily mean a little bit of spoilers (overall, an entertaining light SF trilogy that manages to hint at some actually fascinating stuff towards the end). Alright, Spoilers aho:

The Solar War, by A.G. Riddle – This picks up where the first book led off, with earth and humanity enjoying a brief respite from the winter. They’re using this time to prepare for the return of the Grid, who will no doubt be focusing more energy on getting rid of humanity this time around. That’s not just meant as a metaphorical turn of phrase: the Grid is almost entirely motivated by the collection and conservation of energy. Their original plan was to harvest our Sun’s energy in such a way that humanity would be quickly destroyed in the process. In the first book, humanity managed a small victory, but now the Grid has returned. They’ve flung asteroids at earth, but will humanity’s defenses hold up? Eh, sorta.

Like a lot of middle stories in a trilogy, there’s a lot of water treading here, and setup for the next book. I’m of two minds as to how this all goes down. On the one hand, humanity did seem awfully outmatched and only managed success in the first book because the invaders weren’t really trying that hard. On the other, it’s not especially entertaining seeing the humans get nearly obliterated, and Riddle spends an awful lot of time on the nuts and bolts survival aspects of the story. All well and good, but the overarching narrative isn’t advanced much. Also, the deal that the Grid offers doesn’t make a ton of sense, even if the humans in the story are appropriately suspicious. In any case, the tone and pacing are pretty much par for the course here, and this is a similar experience to the first book. Nothing really new here, but well executed and entertaining enough that I wanted to see what would happen next.

The Lost Colony, by A.G. Riddle – The remnants of humanity now number in the thousands, and have settled on an eyeball planet around a low power star that the Grid doesn’t find interesting enough to harvest. This plays out like two novellas smushed into a novel. The first story is all about survival in the new wilderness, which contains deadly predators (along the lines of a T-Rex), vicious storms caused by celestial mechanics, and smaller scorpion-like threats. Like in the second book, this feels a lot like water-treading… but the second phase of this novel recontextualizes in an interesting way.

In fact, the entire series thus far is recontextualized. Riddle really swings for the fences in the second act of this book, devising an origin for the Grid that is novel and fascinating. I’ve described the previous two books as a sorta light SF that you’ve seen before (if well executed), but this second half of the third book does offer something new. Does it entirely work? Did we really need to march through two and a half books to get here? Do the physics actually work out? Does the Grid’s plan hinge on too much chance? Are the ethical implications of what’s really going on justified? Maybe not? But I can appreciate the ambition and effort. Perhaps it’s just the notion of being lulled into that feeling of a familiar, derivative story being shattered by something kinda out-there that did the trick, but I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. Overall, I enjoyed the series and I liked how bonkers the ending got, but I wish there was less water-treading throughout the series and more of that sense of wonder stuff interspersed throughout.

The Engines of God, by Jack McDevitt – Humans have expanded beyond their solar system and they’ve begun to find mysterious alien artifacts. They’ve dubbed the aliens Monument-Makers, but have been unable to discern anything about them. Each artifact is different and beautiful, but they defy explanation. Then a team of scientists discover an artifact that appears to have played a role in a lost civilization. Previously discovered artifacts can also be tied to lost civilizations, making them somewhat more ominous. Earth itself is facing ecological disaster – do the Monument-Makers have something in mind for us?

It’s an interesting spin on the big dumb object sub-genre. Instead of a giant unknowable artifact, we get lots of smaller ones. McDevitt does a good job setting all this up, perhaps somewhat less so of establishing characters and plot mechanics. Like the Long Winter books above, there’s a significant portion of this book that’s focused on episodic tales of survival or races against the clock. All well and good, but spending a bunch of time fending off throngs of crab-like monsters doesn’t really advance the narrative much. Progress is made in the end though, and the explanation makes sense. I’ll cut this a little more slack because it’s all completed in a single novel, though there are apparently additional stories set in this universe. I will probably make my way to those sequels at some point, which says something, I think. Not exactly top tier stuff, but well executed and interesting enough.

Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson – One night when they were ten years old, Tyler Dupree and his neighbors Jason and Diane Lawton were playing in the yard when the stars went out. There was a brief, bright flash, then the sky just went black. Scientists eventually discover that earth has been placed within some sort of “spin membrane”. Outside the membrane time is moving at a hugely accelerated pace – about 3 years outside per second inside, or 100 million years on the outside per year inside. How will this development affect humanity? How will we respond? What about the Hypotheticals – the aliens who put the membrane in place? What’s their endgame?

It’s a great setup, and to be sure, Wilson puts the premise to good use and develops some great, extra-crunchy SF ideas throughout. For example, the time passing outside the spin membrane is terrifying, but it also opens up some avenues that wouldn’t otherwise be available. Because time is moving so fast, the notion of terraforming Mars becomes much more feasible. That’s a neat extrapolation from the base idea, and there are others throughout the book. However, the bulk of the story is comprised of character-based drama surrounding the three kids as they group up during the spin. Jason becomes a scientist working to understand the spin and develop various strategies to work around it, but he’s also struggling under the grip of an overbearing father not to mention his own medical problems. Diane retreats from society, basically joining a cult. Tyler just sorta meanders about, eventually coming to work for Jason but still struggling to find a way to reach Diane (who he’s clearly in love with). They’re all well drawn and fleshed out, even if I sometimes had a difficult time connecting.

This is a book for those folks who like to define SF as “all about the human condition” or some such. Those of us who are in it more for the sense of wonder and idea content will have plenty to chew on, but the proportion is far more focused on character than it is on ideas. So I’m a bit torn here. I really love the SF ideas , but I didn’t quite connect with the characters enough to love all the time spent on their foibles. Your mileage may vary…

Murder by Other Means, by John Scalzi – The second novella in this series about “dispatchers”, people who are legally empowered to take a life (except in this world, anyone who is murdered survives – they just wake up in their home after being murdered. Natural deaths still occur, only murders are affected). It’s a silly premise, to be sure, but both novellas are fun mystery thriller type stories suffused with Scalzi’s usual tight plotting, snappy dialog, and light humor. For whatever reason, these were conceived as Audible originals and initially released only on audiobook. It’s read by Zachary Quinto, who does an admirable job. This particular installment involves shady business deals, a dispatching gone wrong, and a frame job on our hero. All quite entertaining and fun. I know Scalzi can rub some folks the wrong way outside of his books, but the stories themselves are almost always fun and worth checking out.

And we’re all caught up. Stay tuned for Week 1 of the Six Weeks of Halloween!