Science Fiction

The nominations for the 2013 Hugo Awards were announced last week. The Hugos, while probably the most recognizable and representative award for science fiction and fantasy fandom, are also still, you know, awards. Like all awards everywhere and for everything, there is an inevitable and usually entertaining backlash consisting of usually pretty high profile folks railing against what they perceive as mediocrity. For a superb example of this sort of thing, see Christopher Priest’s takedown of last year’s Clarke Award nominees (the Clarke is a British SF&F award, and Priest’s polemic hit especially hard since, you know, he’s an upstanding author who has won the award in the past). Filled with just the right amount of invective and hyperbole that it’s entertaining and funny without seeming like he’s just some old crank. Will this year’s Hugo backlash fare as well? It’s still early in Hugo season, but things have certainly started off with a bang, as Justin from Staffer’s Book Reviews asserts that the Hugos are “utter twaddle”:

…the Hugo voter has a certain style it looks for in its fiction. Hugo-style, if you will, is like Gangnam-style only without the distracting Korean guy riding a horse, replaced with Charles Stross and Connie Willis on a podium holding a… rocket ship. I admit Gangnam-style doesn’t have nearly as much sex appeal. In other words, Hugo nominated books tend to be recognizable. On the one hand because they are mostly written by Stross, Willis, John Scalzi, China Mieville, Robert Charles Wilson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ian MacDonald, and active members of the Live Journal community, but also because they fit a certain motif that’s difficult to pin down. I’ll fall back on the old pornography argument, “I know it when I see it.”

None of this accusation of style is a criticism of the award, quite the contrary. I believe the populist nature of an award like the Hugo is vitally important. It captures the kinds of novels that more elitist awards fail to – books people love to read. I’ve tried several times to read John Crowley’s Little, Big (which was, ironically enough, nominated for a Hugo in 1982) and it just isn’t any fun. Like Little, Big though, the best novel category almost always has a wild card – something that doesn’t quite fit in to the Hugo mold – and sometimes they win. These winning standouts usually represent something that can’t be ignored for societal (Windup Girl), cultural (Among Others), or inferiority inferiority complexacle (The Yiddish Policeman’s Union) reasons.

So far, so good, and not too critical, though you can see the beginnings of his ultimate problem with the Hugos up there in that first paragraph. After giving two examples of worthy novels that weren’t nominated (Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts, and NK Jemisin’s The Killing Moon), he starts to get to the heart of the matter.

Books like Bear’s and Jemisin’s are missing not because they aren’t good enough or even because they aren’t the kinds of books Hugo voters support, but because of an impenetrable culture of voting habits that precludes them from being part of the discussion. Those habits involve Lois McMaster Bujold, John Scalzi, and (of late) Seanan McGuire who are as likely to be nominated for a Hugo as Barrack Obama is to be heckled at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo.

In essence, anyone who follows the Hugos, even just in the Best Novel category, is bound to notice the same 6-7 names popping up year after year. The aforementioned Stross, Willis, Scalzi, Mieville, Wilson, Bujold, MacDonald, etc… It looks like we can add Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant) to the list, as she’s made the shortlist for the past three years due to her Newsflesh trilogy of zombie books. And there are plenty of others who don’t publish often enough to achieve that sort of repetition. The question that is being raised is not whether or not these are good authors, but whether or not every single work each of these authors produce needs to be nominated. The argument becomes a little more pronounced in some of the other categories, like the Dramatic Presentation, Short Form (i.e. TV shows):

….best dramatic short form can be summarized in one sentence: why does an award exist when 60% of the nominees year in and year out are from one creative enterprise?

He’s talking about Doctor Who, which has garnered at least 2 and usually 3 nominations per year since it was rebooted in 2006 (and has won the award every year except for one, when the Hugo went to another frequent nominee, Joss Whedon, for his admittedly worthy Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog). In fairness, as someone pointed out in the comments, this could very well be due to the way in which television is distributed. The Hugos are, technically, a worldwide award, and Doctor Who is actually distributed pretty well around the world, often airing at the same time or only a week or two later. Other shows air seasons in different years, etc… which makes it hard for some of them to gain traction. Anyway, similar arguments can be made for some of the other categories, some of which don’t really change at all from year to year (particularly the “fan” categories, though I get the impression that that is a bit too insular for even me to care about).

It’s a fair point. I mean, I know that Neil Gaiman is a good author, do we need to nominate everything the dude does? The post takes a pretty critical eye on recent Kaedrin favorite Lois McMaster Bujold, perhaps unfairly comparing her to Heinlein, but on the other hand, Justin is dead on when he wondered why Cryoburn needed to be nominated. I like the book just fine, but it’s pretty clear why it was nominated: it was the first entry in a beloved series in 10 years. People were just so happy to spend some more time with (the admittedly great character of) Miles Vorkosigan that they just went and nominated the book, almost automatically. Again, I enjoyed the book, but I’d put it somewhere towards the middle of the pack of Bujold’s work, nowhere close to that amazing late 90s run starting with the Hugo winning Mirror Dance and finishing with the Hugo nominated A Civil Campaign (which had quite stiff competition that year). I think you could make the same argument against this year’s nominee, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, though I think that one is a step above Cryoburn.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that there is no real solution. Sometimes an author legitimately goes on a tear of great writing. Justin seems to think highly of Heinlein, who went on his own tear of frequent nominations/wins in the late 50s and early/mid 60s. Will Bujold or Mieville prove to be as influential or long-lasting as Heinlein? Well, that’s sorta missing the point, isn’t it? I’m sure someone in the 60s was all “Heinlein is a good author, but what about all that weird polyamorous sex crap? Do we need to nominate him every year?”

To be perfectly honest, I don’t read enough newly published SF/F to really say that this year’s slate is good or bad. I’ve read two of the nominees: Redshirts and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. I liked both of these books, and managed to read through them really quickly, but I would not have been surprised at all if they weren’t nominated. It’s not that they’re bad – they’re both good – but it’s hard not to take Justin’s point to heart. Are people nominating these books because they’re really the best books, or because Scalzi and Bujold are super popular? Of the other three nominees, the one I’m most likely to read is 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson (incidentally, this is his 5th nomination), and from what I’ve seen, I’d probably be better off reading Robinson’s Mars trilogy. I’m not going to read Blackout because I’m fucking sick of zombies and it’s the third book in a series, and Throne of the Crescent Moon is a fantasy, which is fine, but I’d rather spend my time catching up on other fantasy stuff.

So this post contains a lot of whinging and not a whole lot of real, genuine insight. I’m not really in a position to refute Justin’s position, and I can certainly see that he’s correct, but on the other hand, I don’t know that it’s the worst thing evar either. A lot of this seems like shouting at gravity to me. Yeah, you see a lot of the same authors from year to year. This is going to happen on a populist award list, and the authors do change over time. The grand majority of the frequent nominees mentioned in this post emerged in this century, with a few having started in the 1990s. Some (Seanan McGuire) have emerged in the past few years. I would certainly welcome fresh and interesting nominees, but it doesn’t really bother me to see the likes of Scalzi and Bujold either. Ultimately, it’s all a subjective enterprise, so while it’s fun to read cranky responses to the ballot, we should probably keep in mind that just because something you don’t like was nominated doesn’t mean the whole enterprise is doomed.

And, just for fun, some miscellaneous thoughts on the Hugos:

• There is a lot of angst around the dearth of short story nominees (two of which are available online for free), due to a Hugo rule that in order to be nominated, an entry must receive at least 5% of the vote (and there’s a minimum of 3 nominees, so it’s possible, though probably unlikely, that no short story received 5% of the vote this year). This is apparently not unheard of, especially in the short story category, which is more varied and less talked about than other categories. Cheryl Morgan has the details on the 5% rule and a cautionary tale too.
• Morgan also notes that this year’s Hugo ballot “has been submerged in a terrifying flood of girl cooties.” Women took 11 of 18 nominations in the fiction categories, with the aforementioned Seanan McGuire nominated for 4 fiction awards (she’s also nominated for the podcast award).
• In other awards news, the 2012 BSFA Award Winners were recently announced, including Jack Glass for Best Novel (been in the queue a while, but only because it wasn’t available in the states!) and the self-published Adrift on the Sea of Rains, by Ian Sales (which I did not particularly love, but which was well done for sure).

And that’s all for now. I should probably get back to reading some SF instead of wanking about it on the internet.

Back in November, Locus Online conducted a poll for the best science fiction and fantasy of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The results, based on 625 ballots, were tallied and posted just last week. Like all such lists, it’s merits are debatable, but I always find them fun and we all know that Americans love lists, so let’s get down to brass tacks here.

As I did with NPR’s top SF/F list, I’ll list them out, bold the ones I’ve read and maybe throw in some annotations, because I’m a dork like that. I’m focusing on Novels here, but Locus also has novellas, novelettes (why is SF the only one that has these?), and short stories. Also, they broke out SF and Fantasy, so I’m only really focusing on the SF side of things. Ok, enough disclaimers, here’s the 20th Century List:

1. Herbert, Frank : Dune (1965) – Certainly nothing to argue with here, and I like that the Locus poll doesn’t include all the sequels (which, I admit, I never read).
2. Card, Orson Scott : Ender’s Game (1985) – I’m still surprised that Card’s real life shenanigans have not impacted this novel, but on the other hand, it’s a great book, deserving of the praise it gets.
3. Asimov, Isaac : The Foundation Trilogy (1953) – I have a soft spot for Asimov, but I think I always preferred his Robot books. Still, I get why Foundation always comes out on top.
4. Simmons, Dan : Hyperion (1989) – In the queue for this year!
5. Le Guin, Ursula K. : The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) – Great novel, one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years.
6. Adams, Douglas : The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) – I never connected with this as much as others, but given that this shows up near the top of all of these type lists, I guess everyone else does!
7. Orwell, George : Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) – A classic.
8. Gibson, William : Neuromancer (1984) – Not a favorite, but certainly a good book and an important one too, in that it represents the whole Cyberpunk thing.
9. Bester, Alfred : The Stars My Destination (1957) – I am literally going to pick up this book when I finish this post.
10. Bradbury, Ray : Fahrenheit 451 (1953) – Finally caught up with this last year and enjoyed it.
11. Heinlein, Robert A. : Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) – Not my favorite Heinlein, but I get that it’s a cultural touchstone and thus always rates highly on these lists.
12. Heinlein, Robert A. : The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) – This one is my favorite Heinlein, and while perhaps not as high as I would rank it, it’s still pretty well represented here.
13. Haldeman, Joe : The Forever War (1974) – Interesting that this one ranks higher than Starship Troopers, though I think you could make the case either way. Heck, they’re so connected that you almost never hear about one without the other being referenced.
14. Clarke, Arthur C. : Childhood’s End (1953) – I like this book and it’s a solid choice, but I like other Clarke novels better than this one…
15. Niven, Larry : Ringworld (1970) – On the bubble for this year’s queue, but I’ll get to it at some point, I’m sure.
16. Le Guin, Ursula K. : The Dispossessed (1974) – I’m really not a big fan of this novel and greatly prefer Left Hand of Darkness, but it does usually show up on lists like this, so it must strike a nerve with everyone else…
17. Bradbury, Ray : The Martian Chronicles (1950) – On the bubble for this year’s queue, but I’ll get to it at some point, I’m sure.
18. Stephenson, Neal : Snow Crash (1992) – I love that Stephenson made the list, and this is an important novel in a lot of ways (puts the nail in the coffin of Cyberpunk, popularized/presaged a lot of internet conventions). I really can’t complain, even if I prefer Cryptonomicon…
19. Miller, Walter M. , Jr. : A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) – Another one I caught up with last year, largely prompted by lists like this one. It was certainly very good and I can see why it’s on a list like this, even if it’s not really my thing.
20. Pohl, Frederik : Gateway (1977) – On the bubble for this year’s queue, but I’ll get to it at some point, I’m sure.
21. Heinlein, Robert A. : Starship Troopers (1959) – For a book consisting mostly of lectures, it’s pretty darn good. As a thought experiment, I love it even if I don’t wholly agree with it. There’s also not much of a story and I can see it chafing some readers. Still, it basically codified the modern Military SF sub-genre, so it’s certainly an important book…
22. Dick, Philip K. : The Man in the High Castle (1962) – A novel I found much more fascinating in it’s conception (an alternate history in which a fictional character is writing his own alternate history) than it’s execution, it is definitely a good read, but perhaps not something I’d have put on the list.
23. Zelazny, Roger : Lord of Light (1967) – One of those books that made me wish I paid more attention to Siddhartha when I read it for school. A really interesting novel though, with a sorta literary tone I don’t feel like we get much of these days.
24. Wolfe, Gene : The Book of the New Sun (1983) – Another one that’s on the bubble for this year’s queue.
25. Lem, Stanislaw : Solaris (1970) – I saw the movie, does that count? I am curious to see how the novel stacks up, though I don’t know that I’ll get to it this year.
26. Dick, Philip K. : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) – I suppose I should really break down and read this sucker, the story Blade Runner was based on… but I picked up a bunch of Philip K. Dick books in a sale last year, so I’ll probably settle for those this year.
27. Vinge, Vernor : A Fire Upon The Deep (1992) – A great book featuring one of the most original alien species in all of SF. The ending is a little odd, but the novel is overall well deserving of this sort of recognition.
28. Clarke, Arthur C. : Rendezvous with Rama (1973) – I have not read this in a long time, but it was one of the formative SF novels I read when I was younger, and I definitely like it better than the aforementioned Childhood’s End.
29. Huxley, Aldous : Brave New World (1932) – I should really get on this one at some point, but I’ve just never psyched myself up for this dystopic experience. Someday, perhaps.
30. Clarke, Arthur C. : 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Another Clarke book I like better than Childhood’s End, and I like the relationship between the book and movie (both of which I think are great).
31. Vonnegut, Kurt : Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) – Another one on the bubble for this year’s queue.
32. Strugatsky, Arkady & Boris : Roadside Picnic (1972) – This is the first book on the list that I’d never even heard of! Sounds interesting and now that I look into it, i see that this is another Soviet novel adapted to film by Andrei Tarkovsky (like Solaris), though I have not seen that…
33. Card, Orson Scott : Speaker for the Dead (1986) – While I loved the aforementioned Ender’s Game, for some reason, I’ve never visited any of the sequels. Perhaps that should change this year…
34. Brunner, John : Stand on Zanzibar (1968) – Another new wave dystopia? Maybe. It doesn’t seem as relentlessly annoying as others of its ilk, but again, sometimes I find it hard to muster enthusiasm for such works.
35. Robinson, Kim Stanley : Red Mars (1992) – I’d like to check this novel out this year, along with its two sequels. They seem to be pretty well regarded…
36. Niven, Larry (& Pournelle, Jerry) : The Mote in God’s Eye (1974) – This one pops up on a lot of lists. It’s in the queue.
37. Willis, Connie : Doomsday Book (1992) – A really good book, not sure I’d have ranked it this high.
38. Atwood, Margaret : The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) – Another dystopia that doesn’t really rev my engine, but it’s something I should probably check out at some point.
39. Sturgeon, Theodore : More Than Human (1953) – It’s nice that Sturgeon made the list, and this novel is certainly a worthy inclusion.
40. Simak, Clifford D. : City (1952) – Another book I’m unfamiliar with, though it does sound interesting…
41. Brin, David : Startide Rising (1983) – This is the second book in Brin’s “Uplift Saga”, a series I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. On the bubble for this year!
42. Asimov, Isaac : Foundation (1950) – Not sure why this is separated out from the Trilogy listed above at #3?
43. Farmer, Philip Jose : To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) – Another book I’m not particularly familiar with, though I’ve seen Farmer’s name bandied about often enough.
44. Dick, Philip K. : Ubik (1969) – A book I caught up with last year and really enjoyed, moreso than I thought I would.
45. Vonnegut, Kurt : Cat’s Cradle (1963) – Yeah, I need to read more Vonnegut, I get it.
46. Vinge, Vernor : A Deepness in the Sky (1999) – I really enjoyed this book, though I find that it shares a lot in common with A Fire Upon the Deep. I can’t really fault anyone for including this book, but if I were making a list, I wouldn’t include both.
47. Simak, Clifford D. : Way Station (1963) – Another interesting sounding book… Probably won’t get to it this year, but you never know…
48. Wyndham, John : The Day of the Triffids (1951) – I’ve seen this book on so many of these type lists that I figure I should check it out at some point. Killer plant story, I think I may have seen bits and pieces of a movie adaptation or something…
49. Keyes, Daniel : Flowers for Algernon (1966) – One of the novels I caught up with last year, and it’s a fantastic, heartbreaking novel.
50. Delany, Samuel R. : Dhalgren (1975) – This gets thrown out a lot in such lists, but I’ve never quite brought myself to attempt such a large, forbidding tome. Or maybe my preconceptions about it are completely off. Only one way to find out, I guess, but I’ve got enough stuff I want to read in the short term…

Phew, that took longer than expected. It’s an interesting list, and I faired pretty well, though it’s perhaps not an ideal list. If I were to put together a favorite SF list, I’d probably feature a lot of books that weren’t on there, but then, that’s the way of such lists based on polls. Here’s the 21st century list:

1. Scalzi, John : Old Man’s War (2005) – I’m a little surprised at how well regarded this novel is, though I do really love it, so I guess there is that…
2. Stephenson, Neal : Anathem (2008) – Stephenson is my favorite author, so this obviously makes me happy. I would probably put it ahead of Old Man’s War, but these make an interesting top 2 either way.
3. Bacigalupi, Paolo : The Windup Girl (2009) – I don’t know about this one. There’s a lot about this that just doesn’t ring my bells, if you know what I mean. No? Well, whatever. I might give this a shot sometime, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.
4. Wilson, Robert Charles : Spin (2005) – This has been in the queue for a while, I’ve just never really gotten to it.
5. Watts, Peter : Blindsight (2006) – I go back and forth on whether I want to read this, but I’ll probably get to it at some point.
6. Morgan, Richard : Altered Carbon (2002) – If I ever get in the mood for a Cyberpunk marathon, this would be on the list. But I’m not a big Cyberpunk fan, so there’s that.
7. Collins, Suzanne : The Hunger Games (2008) – I didn’t particularly care for the worldbuilding here, but the meat of the story is solid, thrilling stuff.
8. Gibson, William : Pattern Recognition (2003) – Gibson’s post-Cyberpunk stuff does seem interesting to me, but I’ve never been so enthused about this one. May need to look a little deeper.
9. Mieville, China : The City & the City (2009) – I read my first Mieville a little while ago, and would be curious to check out more from him. This one seems as good a place as any.
10. Stross, Charles : Accelerando (2005) – I didn’t really care for this novel. I just never really got into it.
11. Mitchell, David : Cloud Atlas (2004) – The movie makes me curious to see if the book reads better than it plays on screen…
12. McDonald, Ian : River of Gods (2004) – McDonald is an author that I need to check out.
13. McCarthy, Cormac The Road (2006) – If I can muster enthusiasm, I might check it out. I wouldn’t hold my breath though…
14. Harrison, M. John : Light (2002) – I’d not heard of this one, but it sounds really interesting.
15. Chabon, Michael : The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007) – I really enjoyed this one, an alternate history novel that reads more like a hard boiled neo-noir.
16. Willis, Connie : Black Out/All Clear (2010) – I like Willis as an author and would like to read more of her stuff, so this is in the running.
17. Niffenegger, Audrey : The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) – I’ve been told that this wouldn’t really be my thing. Fine by me!
18. Simmons, Dan : Ilium (2003) – More excited for Hyperion than for this one, but if I’m super-taken with Hyperion, maybe I’ll eventually make my way here…
19. Doctorow, Cory : Little Brother (2008) – This one has been on my radar for a while, I’ve just never gotten to it…
20. Ishiguro, Kazuo : Never Let Me Go (2005) – Something about this has never really interested me. I should look into it more, but…

Hrm, well I didn’t do quite so well on the 21st century list, which is interesting. Every year, I’d be curious to see what it would be like to read, say, all of the Hugo nominated novels/stories, but I never really get around to it… maybe this will be the year.

Some assorted comments about the above lists: Female authors not particularly well represented on either list. Kaedrin favorite Lois McMaster Bujold shows up in the voting a lot, but it appears that her Vorkosigan series books caused a lot of split votes, though she did really well on the Fantasy lists (not discussed above). I’m really surprised that Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow only got one paltry vote.

There’s a ton of overlap with similar such lists, though there were definitely a few interesting choices that didn’t appear on, say, the NPR list. I’d be really curious to see how the 21st century list evolves over time. The 20th century list definitely has a lot of old standbys, but I could see the 21st century list changing a lot as time goes on…

I’ve fallen way behind on the SF Book Review train. I’ve done a few individual reviews, but I’ve been reading at a pretty fast pace this year. Perhaps part of the reason I haven’t done a SF Book Review lately is that… I’m reading less science fiction. For various reasons, I’ve hit up a bunch of Fantasy, Horror, Crime, and Non-Fiction this year. SF remains my favorite genre, but others keep creeping in the queue, and even this roundup contains stuff that would likely be classified Fantasy. But whatever, here’s some quick thoughts on some books I’ve read recently.

• Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales – A short novella, the first in a series called the Apollo Quartet. The premise is fantastic. Nine Apollo-era astronauts establish a base on the Moon, only to see the Earth succumb to nuclear war. Stranded, they turn to their experimental “torsion field generator”, a mysterious device stolen from the Nazis after WWII. Also referred to as the “Bell”, it seems that it’s able to transport the Moon base across alternate universes. They’ve got limited supplies, and so far, all attempts at ringing the Bell have only brought them to an alternate universe in which the Earth has still succumbed to nuclear war. Great setup, right? Unfortunately, while Sales does deliver on a lot of that potential, his characters aren’t really too involving. Now, they’ve all been cooped up with each other on a tiny Moon base and their planet has just blown up, so you would expect some irritability from them… It makes sense that these characters would be annoying and short tempered and whatnot, but at the same time, that doesn’t exactly do much to endear them to me either. I just didn’t enjoy spending time with them. Stylistically, Sales knows what he’s doing, though he makes some odd choices. For instance, his dialog does not use quotes or italics or anything that distinguishes dialog from prose. At first, I thought this was just a mistake, something got lost in the translation to ebook format or something, but it’s apparently a deliberate choice on Sales’ part. I’m also not quite sure what to make of the ending. It’s got a bit of an ironic twist, one of those things where the character has no idea what he’s done, but we the reader know things he doesn’t… It’s cleverly constructed, but I don’t really like it. Strangely, I don’t think I’m supposed to like it. So we’ve got some fantastic ideas here, but a narrative that isn’t particularly satisfying. It is very short, so that makes it more palatable, and the ideas are interesting enough that I’m curious to see how the next novella in the series turns out, but I’m hoping for more approachable characters.
• The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel by Stephen King – When all is said and done, I think my favorite of the Dark Tower novels might be the fourth book, Wizard and Glass, which is funny in that it’s also the story that is the least connected to everything else. It’s mostly a flashback to an episode in Roland’s past, a story that informs his character, but which is also pretty much a standalone. This is probably why I like it so much – it’s able to tell a story in an interesting universe without being dependent on the narrative thrust of the series.

  Recently, King has revisited this universe and put together this book, which takes place between the 4th and 5th books in the series. It’s basically another flashback, again mostly independent of the rest of the series. Actually, it’s a really strangely structured book. The bookends are from the series proper, as Roland and his band of Gunslingers make their way across the desert, but as they hunker down in preparation for a big storm that’s been a brewing, Roland tells his crew another story from his youth. However, this story isn’t all that complicated in itself. Basically young Roland and one of his compatriots are sent out to a small town to deal with a little werewolf problem (it’s not referred to directly as such, but that’s what it is), and while he’s there, he tells the titular story, The Wind Through the Keyhole, to a young boy. So it’s a story wrapped in a flashback, bookended by some narrative glue that fits this into the rest of the Dark Tower story. Are all these framing narratives necessary? Probably not, but once you get to the meat of the story, it’s quite good (and the bookends/flashbacks aren’t bad either, just weird that King felt the need to go through all of it). I won’t go into too much detail about the story, but it’s got that strange blend of SF and Fantasy, a mythic bedtime-story quality that has always served the series well. It concerns a young boy and his quest to help his mother. It’s exactly the sort of thing that King excels at, and it’s populated with interesting characters (I particularly liked the tax collector guy, who is played as a sorta villain, but who could probably have his own series where he visits towns to collect taxes while also solving mysteries, or more likely, playing the trickster like he does here). In the end, it’s a welcome addition to the Dark Tower series, if not particularly necessary. It adds some background to the series without really changing much, which I actually rather liked. The Dark Tower universe is an interesting place, so stories like this still work well.

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. – I read this pretty shortly after Fahrenheit 451, which made for an interesting experience in that both books seemingly fear for the destruction of books and knowledge in general. In this case, though, we’ve got a post-apocalyptic setting where most of the books were destroyed immediately after the war. The book is essentially divided up into three sections, each told from the perspective of Catholic priests in a particular Monastery in the desert. The story actually spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself after nuclear war, with the priests being the early guardians of scientific knowledge. This is generally considered to be a classic novel, popular with SF fans but also the general literary community (a rare crossover), and I can see why (even if it hasn’t quite joined the ranks of my favorite SF novels). It has an interesting treatment of religion and one of the themes of the book is about how the Church interacts with the State (especially in the final segment), though in a more general sense, there’s a notion of recurrence and history repeating itself that’s also highlighted. It’s a deliberately paced novel, tackling big themes from small stories, and I’m not entirely sure how happy I am about the ending, but I’m still glad I finally read this. As a Neal Stephenson fan, it’s an interesting read because you can see a lot of this book’s DNA in Stephenson’s Anathem (though that book is much longer and more action packed than this one). In the end, I’m really glad I read this, its very well written, and it has a lot of meaty themes to chew on.
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes – Another SF classic that has achieved crossover success with mainstream audiences, this is a story of a mentally disabled man named Charlie Gordon who submits to an experimental procedure intended to increase intelligence. The book is comprised entirely of “Progress Reports” written by Charlie, and you can see said progress very quickly as his intelligence improves. I suppose it’s a bit of a spoiler, so read on at your own risk, but the story also contains a downward swing in intelligence, and it’s a real heartbreaker when you start to see his grammar deteriorate to earlier levels. It’s a thematically rich story, with much to say about intelligence and relationships, and it’s the most emotionally involving of the books in this post. There’s a sadness to the story that somehow doesn’t lead to despair, which is a neat trick. There’s sadness, but it doesn’t wallow in it, and it’s a great book. This novel is apparently an expanded version of an earlier short story, both winners of Hugo awards and both experiencing crossover success with mainsteeam audiences. Really happy I finally caught up with this one…
• The Mongoliad: Book One (The Foreworld Saga) – The Mongoliad began its life as a serialized story delivered via custom apps on various mobile phones and tablets. I downloaded the app on my phone and played around with it a bit, but I ultimately waited until they started publishing these books before I really read anything significant. It turns out that the story they’re telling is a rather long one, though it’s actually more involving and approachable than I expected from the initial descriptions. Written by a variety of authors, including Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, E.D. deBirmingham, Cooper Moo, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, the story is set in 1241 as the Mongol Horde was sweeping across Europe. I was expecting this to be something akin to Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle novels, but this wound up being more of an adventurous tale, with more focus on action and intrigue than historical minutiae. It’s actually a lot of fun, though it’s only the first book in the series and it ends at a rather arbitrary place. I was a little disappointed by that, but it seems like the other editions are coming quickly, so I’ll probably pick them up next year. I was surprised at how cohesive the book was considering how many different authors worked on it. A couple of the storylines bog down a bit at times though, which I wonder about. Would a single author have made some of those choices? Probably not. Still, entertaining and fun. I’m curious to see what the next book will hold.

So there you have it. I’ve still got a few books to cover before I’m totally caught up, but this gets me pretty close. I’ve got some extra reading to do here in the last few weeks of the year if I want to hit my goal of 50 books, but if all goes well, I’ll have a end-of-year wrapup coming…

The latest entry in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga actually focuses on one of the colorful side characters of Bujold’s Vor universe: Ivan Vorpatril. Variously referred to as “That idiot Ivan” (or directly addressed as “Ivan, you idiot!”) among other variations, Ivan is often played as a foil for Miles (the central character for this 15 book or so series, though Miles takes a minimal role in this particular installment). In early novels, Ivan is generally portrayed as a lazy but handsome womanizer type, completely harmless and lacking in ambition. One wouldn’t think that this would make for a particularly compelling or even sympathetic protagonist, but as the series progresses, you get a better feel for the character and his motivations (or rather, the environment which caused such). Indeed, his laziness is carefully constructed, and probably more work than it would be to actually apply himself.

You see, both Miles and Ivan are technically in line for succession to the Emperor’s throne. This sounds fine and dandy, but on Barrayar (the planet these stories revolve around), being a serious contender for the throne makes one a target for assassination plots, conspiracy theorists, political muck-raking, and general misery. Miles, by virtue of his mutated appearance (among other qualities that would take way too long to go into here), is mostly exempted from this pressure, to the point where he has a sorta opposite problem. But Ivan is the tall, dark, and handsome type, the perfect vision of a leader. And in terms of succession, he’s basically next in line. If he even hinted at applying himself, he’d probably be portrayed as a potential usurper to the throne by political enemies (of both Ivan’s family and the Emperor, or whoever thought they could benefit from some additional instability in the ruling class). If this seems paranoid, well, sure, but we’ve seen such happenings throughout the series (whether that be actual military coups, or political enemies portraying someone as a potential revolutionary). To forestall such political wrangling (not to mention the aforementioned assassination attempts and whatnot), Ivan has carefully cultivated an air of lazy incompetence so that he could never be taken seriously by any political operatives or revolutionaries or what have you.

As the series progresses and Emperor Gregor ascends to the throne and actually manages to stabilize and grow Barrayar, not to mention take a wife and start popping out kids, the pressure on Ivan is released somewhat. As such, we start to see that he’s not as dumb as he appears. I particularly enjoyed his role in A Civil Campaign. At the start of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Ivan is living as a comfortable Bachelor, but a certain restlessness has crept in. Enter a friend and Barrayaran intelligence operative with a strange request to look after an attractive young woman who may be in danger, appealing to Ivan’s Barrayaran sense of chivalry.

I actually don’t want to get into too much detail about the plot. The first act basically plays out like a spy thriller with a dash of romance, while the second act turns into more of a comedy of errors kinda thing (akin to A Civil Campaign), and the third act morphs into a sorta heist story. The first half of the book is great and funny and I found myself wearing a stupid grin and laughing a lot. Things slow down just a bit in the middle as Bujold maneuvers for the final act, which is also quite good. I’d put this somewhere towards the top of the Vor series in terms of enjoyability, certainly better than the last two installments (which were no slouches, to be sure), though not quite reaching the peaks of my favorite novels.

Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but Ivan’s romantic interest is Tej Arqua, and while their introduction may have been harried and rushed in convenience, they actually do match together rather well. Tej is from a house of Jackson’s Hole, which is the Vor universe’s sorta free-for-all capitalist planet, with no real rule of law. Her house has just been attacked and split up, with members of her family hiding in exile… which is when Ivan runs into her. Eventually she begins to get a feel for the man and his planet. In line with the above discussion, Tej has Ivan pegged as “…a middling Vor officer of middling responsibilities and middling rank. Just middling along.” To which someone replies that such a sentiment is a “charming understatement,” while explaining Ivan’s family and potential of succession…

Bujold has mentioned that she intends the book to work as a stand-alone to first-time readers, but so much of what I enjoyed about the book came from the fact that I’ve read all the previous novels. I’m positive that it would work for new readers, but I don’t know that you’d get that stupid grin and engage in laugh-out-loud moments like I was if you don’t get the background. That being said, I do appreciate that Bujold tends to make her novels stand-alone stories, rather than relying on cliffhangers and multi-book stories (even if there are character arcs that go across multiple books, each book generally tells a self-contained story). I would still recommend that you start the series with Shards of Honor or The Warrior’s Apprentice, but all things considered, this one is pretty darn good.

I recently finished Ray Bradbury’s short novel Fahrenheit 451. The title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites, and it tells the story of Guy Montag, a fireman in a world where books and reading are illegal. Ironically, in this book, firemen don’t fight fires, they start them. Whenever a stash of books is found, the firemen are called in to burn them. In one memorable and vivid incident, a woman refuses to leave when the firemen show up, preferring to burn with her books. This seems to represent a crisis point for Montag, the point at which he begins to wonder why books must be burned.

There’s nothing particularly special about the characters or the plotting of the story, but Bradbury’s ideas and style seem to carry the book. Bradbury’s delirious prose evokes a lot of emotion and imagery. There’s the aforementioned woman burning with her books, but also the sensory overload of the “parlors” (basically a room rigged up with multiple televisions), the snake-like stomach pump, the mechanical hound, and the fire itself, burning through everything. It’s not an easy read, perhaps even overly poetic, but in this case it works. The novel is short enough and the ideas behind it are crazy enough that Bradbury’s style fits.

It’s a dystopia, and like a lot of such stories, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Again, Bradbury’s stylistic flourishes are what make it work here. There’s a lot of talk about how the book is critical of state-sponsored censorship, and I suppose there’s an element of that, but where Bradbury differs from his contemporaries is where the censorship began: as a populist movement. As Montag’s (surprisingly well-read) boss Beatty explains:

There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time…

It’s an intriguing notion. Mass media and conformity extrapolated out to its logical extreme. The dystopia aspect is unrealistic, and yet, the steps it would take to get there are things we see all the time. For a later edition of the book, Bradbury wrote a Coda where he expanded upon some of these ideas:

About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.

But, she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?

A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I “do them over”?

Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped.

…

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever.

It’s a weird blend that Bradbury conjures with this novel. It’s the tyranny of the minority versus the tyranny of the majority, only they’re somehow set together into a negative feedback loop until you end up with a book-burning society. Some see the book as a condemnation of communism; railing against conformity in favor of individuality. And that’s certainly there, but what Bradbury wrote also condemns democracy and technology as a conduit towards conformity. I don’t think he’s entirely correct about it. 60 years later, we struggle with different problems… but that sorta misses the point.

Like Orwell’s 1984, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a document of its era. I don’t find it a realistic portrayal of the world, but that doesn’t mean that Bradbury failed. Indeed, it means he succeeded. His tale portrays the nightmares of 1953, a time when radio and television and movies must have had the book on the run. Despite the frequent lament that people today don’t read enough, I think we’ve avoided Bradbury’s nightmare, and instead live with our own, perhaps stranger, problems.

In geek parlance, “red shirt” is a reference to red-uniformed Star Trek officers who frequently die during episodes¹. They basically represent the writer’s ploy to allow Kirk and McCoy to display grandstanding emotions (and Spock to show a lack thereof). I don’t know who coined the notion or where (or if the the show intentionally employed this strategy), but 5 minutes of comprehensive research on the internets reveals a 1985 Star Trek novel called Killing Time, in which a character opines “you don’t want to wear a red shirt on landing-party duty” (so sez Wikipedia²). That’s the earliest reference I could find, but I’m sure this is something that the show’s obsessive fanbase has been remarking on since the 1970s. It’s a meme that has been frequently referenced and parodied throughout the years. The most obvious is in the movie Galaxy Quest, where the character of Guy Fleegman, “Crewman Number Six”, fears for his life due to his character’s expendable nature (fortunately, this parody inverts the meme, allowing him to survive). There is even a grand tradition amongst some SF authors to “reward” fans of their work by naming a character after them, then killing them (for example: David Weber).

All of which is to say that the concept behind John Scalzi’s latest novel Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas isn’t exactly a new one. It is, perhaps, the most thorough deconstruction of the trope – most others are mere references, homages, or simple skits on the matter – but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. Fortunately, Scalzi is a talented author who knows how to turn the page. Indeed, I finished the book in a mere two sittings. Not quite a record, but close. And it’s a solid story, filled with typical Scalzian characters and their snappy dialogue, with a some clever ideas thrown in for good measure. It didn’t take me long to become attached to the characters, at which point my over-analysis of the title faded away and I devoured the rest of the book.

The general premise of the novel is that a bunch of characters on a Star-Trek-like ship recognize that people who get roped into away-missions with high profile members of the crew tend to end up dead. Essentially, the redshirts recognize their role in the show, and try to fight back. This stuff manifests itself in a number of ways. One of my favorites being “the box”, a magical device used whenever the characters run into an impossible problem. They simply feed the problem into the box, and then when it’s dramatically appropriate, it spits out an answer. It’s a pretty funny take on Star Trek writers’ tendency to tech the tech.

It’s a fun book, perhaps more comedy than SF, though fans of Star Trek will probably enjoy it. I’m not entirely sure how well executed some of the mechanics of this whole premise is… For instance, it’s not entirely clear when the characters are “on screen” as it were. One of our redshirts speculates that there’s a “narrative”, you see, and that if you can avoid the narrative, you can avoid an untimely death. There’s even a funny sequences meant to illustrate how ridiculous commercial breaks are, but again, the mechanics of this aren’t entirely clear. Of course, in an exercise that is so self-aware and meta, that’s sorta the point. The TV show these characters are stuck in is clearly pretty bad, so of course a lot of this stuff doesn’t make sense… and that’s part of the fun of it all… but you could also argue that it’s a bit of a cop out. Personally, I feel like such things are worthwhile if they’re done well, and for the most part, everything here works even if it doesn’t precisely fit.

The story proper is quite entertaining and fun, but it should be noted that it pretty much ends about 2/3 of the way through the novel. The remaining 100 pages or so consist of the sub-titular Three Codas. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this at first. It wasn’t really surprising to see the story end when it did, except insofar as I already knew there was still 100 pages or so left. Scalzi even manages to extend the self-referential meta elements beyond the simple redshirt notion, though it’s exactly what you’d think when you think about the premise. Anyway, the three short stories are all related to the main narrative, touching on side characters or concepts here and there. The first coda comes off as a little slight, but it ends up being pretty effective. The second coda is actually pretty meaningful and interesting, adding a depth and seriousness the rest of the novel was missing. The third coda builds on that heft while still managing to end on a clever but positive note. There’s something a little gimmicky about the codas – they’re written in first, second, and third person, for instance – and I can see how some folks wouldn’t appreciate them in general, but I thought they were well done and meaningful.

It’s strange. I find that the things I don’t like about this book, like the title and the structure, are superficial. These meta aspects (not to be confused with the meta nature of the story itself) trouble me more than the actual contents of the book. I don’t quite know what to make of this. The title “Redshirts” does perfectly encapsulate what you’re in for, but there’s something corny about using a decades-old meme as the title for your book³. Fortunately, the actual contents of the book don’t strike me that way, so I ultimately enjoyed the book heartily. I don’t know that I would entirely agree with Justin’s (very funny and entertaining in itself) review that this is “Spoof Trekkie Fiction: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There is” (an oblique reference to Scalzi’s recent controversial and ill-fitting metaphor for life as a video game), but there is a distinct Saturday Night Live skit feeling to the premise of the book. But it’s a really well done skit, if that’s the case, and I’m generally of the mind that such exercises can be fun if executed well, which this is. In the end, I really enjoyed the book, despite any reservations I may have about the title and structure, and would recommend it to just about anyone.

¹ – This appears to impact mostly the original Star Trek series and it should be noted that plenty of blue or gold shirted crewmen die on the series as well. Star Trek: The Next Generation (and later shows) tried to invert the meme by placing its main characters mostly into red shirts themselves. Deaths seem less frequent as well, though there is still the occasional unfortunate mishap, and the poor character is sometimes wearing a red shirt. Star Trek is definitely a show in which The Main Characters Do Everything, so when you see some random dude on the away team, chances are that he’s in trouble.

² – Scalzi actually makes a pretty funny, but obvious, dig at Wikipedia in the book. I don’t know why I needed to put this in a footnote, but I always find references to Wikipedia and the internet interesting in works of art.

³ – There appears to be a rash⁴ of this sort of title. Consider another example: Rule 34 by Charlie Stross (Rule 34 of the internet is: If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions. Its awesome, but kinda lame when you name your book after it).

⁴ – I have recently established that only two examples are needed in order to qualify as a “rash”. Which, since I’ve identified two different rashes in the past week, means that I’m experiencing a rash of rashes. Gross.