Science Fiction

Today is the voting deadline for the Hugo Awards, so here’s the final ballot I submitted. I’m only really voting on the fiction categories right now, but I might take a gander at the artists or fan writer categories later if I get time. Overall, this is a significantly better year than last year, though the Short Story category continues to be a drag. Let’s get to it:

Best Novel

1. Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson [My Review]
2. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik [My Review]
3. Ancillary Mercy, by Anne Leckie [My Review]
4. The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, by Jim Butcher [My Review]
5. The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin [My Review]

This is a pretty solid ballot! I’ve noticed a few things about the way I tend to vote in this category, and one of them is that entries in a series tend to fall behind standalone entries. This year, that puts Seveneves and Uprooted far, far above the competition. Sometimes the first entry in a series can work, but both of this year’s examples of that suffered under the weight of their respective long-term stories. In both cases, not much really happens in the first installment, and while there’s a definite ending, neither was particularly satisfying. Ancillary Mercy, at least, provided some form of closure (though even that did not fully pay off the promise of the initial entry in the series). There have bee various proposals over the years for including some way to reward series as series, which makes sense, but is also fraught with challenges. The devil is in the details, and there are lots of details for that sort of thing.

Predicted Winner: Uprooted although The Fifth Season seems suspiciously popular…

Best Novella

1. Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold
2. Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson
3. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds
4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
5. The Builders by Daniel Polansky

See My Reviews for more details. Again, a pretty solid list of finalists, no need to deploy No Award.

Predicted Winner: Penric’s Demon

Best Novelette

1. “Obits” by Stephen King
2. “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander
3. “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu
4. “Flashpoint: Titan” by CHEAH Kai Wai
5. “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke

See My Reviews for more info. A decent list, no need to deploy No Award.

Predicted Winner: “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” but who knows, this seems more up in the air. Also, I’m terrible at predicting these things. I don’t

Best Short Story

1. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
2. “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon
3. “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao
4. No Award

See My Reviews for more details. Sorry Chuck Tingle, I ultimately decided to leave you off the ballot because seriously? Oy. And it goes without saying that “If you were an award, my love” doesn’t belong on here either. Otherwise, these are fine, but unremarkable.

Predicted Winner: Cat Pictures Please though No Award has a fair chance here because this ballot was rough.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

1. The Martian
2. Mad Max: Fury Road
3. Ex Machina
4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
5. Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ran out of time before posting about this, but basically, the top three are great, the bottom two are cromulent but clearly on a lower level. I go back and forth on Martian vs Mad Max, but since Martian is more clearly SF and the sort of thing we don’t see often, it goes first on my ballot.

So there you have it. I doubt I’l get to any other categories since the deadline is tonight, but this is what I’e entered in. A pretty decent slate of finalists this year, with one category being a real bummer (Short Stories). Looking forward to seeing who wins (assuming we actually have winners this year).

After last year’s train wreck of a Novella ballot, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this year’s finalists. But it seems my fears were misplaced, as this might be the most solid fiction category of the year. Novellas can be awkward and to be sure, a couple of these don’t entirely pull it off, but even those manage better than the other categories.

1. Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold – No surprise here, as I was one of the many who nominated this in the first place. I’m a huge fan of Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga and it’s very much to her credit that I’ve followed her from my preferred SF genre to her fantasy worlds. This story takes place in her Chalion universe and tells the story of a young man who accidentally contracts a demon. This is both better and worse than you’d expect. Better, because in Chalion, demon possession can grant great powers. Worse, because with great power comes intrigue and scheming by those interested in your new powers. That’s all background though, and the story itself is well plotted and the character relationships, particularly between Penric and his demon, and extremely well done. Easily and clearly tops this list. (Also of note: the sequel to this story is out!)
2. Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson – What I know of Brandon Sanderson is that he tends to write epic (i.e. 1000+ page tomes), high fantasy stories, and that he’s extremely prolific. So imagine my surprise when he’s nominated in this pint-sized story category… for a work that is primarily SFnal in nature. Oh, sure, there are lots of fantasy tropes in here too, as this is a virtual reality story and our hero is the master of all he surveys. Almost literally, since he is a “liveborn” living in a simulation tailored directly to him. There are border states and other areas he can cross into to meet (and battle with) other liveborns, but he seems content to live out his little fantasy. Until he goes on a date with another liveborn and his rival engineers a monster attack. Well drawn and executed, with some interesting ideas that stick with you after reading (in particular, I’m curious about how this universe generates and maintains echo chambers – we don’t see much outside of our hero’s perspective, but we get enough to wonder). Would have topped my list in any of the past few years, but falls just shy of Bujold’s story.
3. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds – Scurelya is in hot water. She’s been captured by a sadistic enemy and even though the war is over, her tormentor doesn’t acknowledge such things. After a harrowing escape, she passes out… and then wakes up on a prison ship that appears lost in time. This is a grim and gritty little SF tale. There are some interesting ideas floating around, in particular the predicament they find themselves in and how that happened, but Reynolds never really harnesses them together in a cohesive enough way. The concept of a slow bullet seems rather silly, honestly, especially given how easy it is to hack. Some of the relationships could be interesting, but feel perfunctory. Again, some of the ideas are decent, but they’re too obscured by Reynolds’ insistence on grim and gritty action. As a result, the story hangs together ok, but never really soars.
4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor – An interesting little space opera tale that doesn’t quite land, this tells the story of Binti, an ethnic minority (Himba) traveling to a university planet. At first marginalized, she realizes that while her fellow classmates aren’t Himba, they were still her people (because of their love of learning, etc…) Then the Meduse, a Metroid-like alien race, show up and turn everything upside down. It’s the sort of story that kept me engaged while reading it, but whose flaws became immediately apparent in the end. The prose is a little ornate, but the real problems have to do with the Meduse. They’re not particularly well established and even Binti’s relationship with them feels rushed and unbelievable (especially given what the Meduse has done to her friends). Similarly, once she presents the university authorities with the Meduse’s story, their response is even more ludicrous. Finally, there’s a mysterious artifact that the story hinges on that is clumsily introduced and rather poorly explained. Again, an entertaining enough story, but one which falls apart upon reflection.
5. The Builders by Daniel Polansky – As H.P. notes: “A mouse, a stoat, a possum, a salamander, a badger, a mole, and an owl walk into a bar…” A neat idea, but unfortunately, I can’t say I was as taken with this story as H.P. The captain is a mouse who was betrayed during a civil war. He’s bided his time and now seeks revenge. He puts his gang back together again and takes on his nemesis. A decent idea, but I found the execution rather lacking. In particular, the opening of the novella is awkwardly paced and clumsy. The stakes here aren’t particularly well drawn either. We like the Captain and his band of fighters mostly just because they’re the ones we know, not because they’re inherently noble or something. In the end, it all feels a little pointless, even though it is fun to hang out with a salamander gunslinger or a possum sniper and whatnot. Not a terrible story or anything, I just didn’t quite connect with it the way I did the others this year (and what’s more is that I liked this much more than any of last year’s nominees, which gives you an additional point of reference here).

All pretty good stuff, no need to deploy No Award. See also: Jonathan Edelstein’s thoughts over at Haibane.info (I mostly agree with his assessments, with only minor differences in ranking). The top two are pretty well set, but the bottom three may shift around a little before I finally submit the ballot… which is due this week? Yikes, where does the time go? I’ve finished all of the fiction categories, and will probably only vote in a handful of others…

Continuing the march through the Hugo finalists, we come to the awkward middle-ground between short stories and novellas that no one else uses but SF people: Novelettes. Fortunately, this is a pretty decent bunch of stories (especially compared to the lackluster short story ballot), even if none of them really stands out as truly exceptional. For me, they are all flawed in one way or another, making it pretty difficult to rank them. As such, this ranking will probably shift over time.

1. “Obits” by Stephen King – A modern-day journalism student who naturally has difficulty landing a real job creates a snarky obituary column for a trashy internet tabloid. One day, frustrated, he writes an obituary for a living person. This being a Stephen King story, I think you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen from there. Admittedly, this is a bit on the derivative and predictable side, but King’s got the talent to pull it off with aplomb. He ably explores the idea at it’s core, taking things further than I’d expect, even if the premise itself doesn’t quite allow him much room. King has a tendency to write himself into corners, and you could argue that here, but I think he just barely skirted past that potentiality. It’s comforting to be in the hands of a good storyteller, even if this is not his best work. Still, its flaws are not unique in this batch of novelettes, so it ends up in first place for me.
2. “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander – Rhye is a former military cyborg, now streetfighter and freelance security agent, whose boyfriend and hacker Rack is in hot water with some gangsters. It seems Rack’s virtual security system is a little too good at it’s job, and when the gangsters destroy his body, Rhye most go into virtual reality to finish off the mission and maybe save Rack’s consciousness while she’s at it. Cyberpunk comfort food, I guess. It doesn’t really extend the genre at all, and its gratuitous cursing and violence feel a bit tacky. There’s a decent enough story at the core here, and it’s well executed, but it’s even more derivative and predictable than Obits, even if it remains satisfying enough in the end. Still, I could see this falling in the ranking by the time I submit my ballot.
3. “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu – Beijing is separated into three spaces, and the city literally folds and unfolds, making each space active for a limited time. Lao Dao is basically a third-space trashman in need of a quick infusion of cash so that he can afford his daughter’s tuition. He takes on a mission to illegally travel to first space to deliver a love letter. Along the way, he gets a glimpse into the economic and social forces dividing the spaces. It’s an interesting prism with which to view class struggle and unlike the other stories, it’s not predictable. The problem is that it doesn’t particularly feel satisfying either. It’s a very literary exploration, and as such, the speculative elements are mostly just window-dressing. The storytelling feels a bit flabby and uneven, with multiple loosely-related threads that are explored, but not particularly resolved. Of course, they don’t need to be resolved, but this sort of approach makes it feel less speculative and more flat, which drops it down a peg on my ranking… and it could potentially fall even further, though I’m betting it will remain where it’s at.
4. “Flashpoint: Titan” by CHEAH Kai Wai – Commander Hoshi Tenzen of the Japanese Space Self Defense Force is on patrol near Titan as China launches a gambit to take over the system (is it China? No, yeah, it’s definitely China.) The result is basically space battle porn, and it’s well conceived and executed. This is the only real hard SF story of the bunch, and as such, the practical matters are the compelling force here (rather than, say, characterization), from the physics to the economics. Alas, not much else to say about it than that, though it does seem to be aging well in my head.
5. “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke – Vango is a fighter pilot who finds himself in some sort of virtual reality system, reunited with various comrades, even including his long dead ex-girlfriend. As time goes on, they’re given more and more advanced tasks, and their simulation gets more and more detailed. Once again, we’ve entered derivative and predictable territory here, and while the ending twist is easily guessed, it does leave you with some tricky moral questions. Not questions that are particularly well explored, mind you, but it does give this story enough of an edge for consideration. I liked this one a lot when I first read it, but it has been falling in my estimation since then…

All finalists ranked, no need to deploy No Award this time around, which seems to be my pattern with Novelettes. However, I’m having a lot of trouble ordering the list, such that almost all of the finalists could move around dramatically when I submit my final ballot…

Jim Butcher is most famous for chronicling the adventures of that other wizard named Harry in the long running Dresden Files series, but he has been known to branch out into other Fantasy realms from time to time. What was nominated for this year’s Hugo Award is one of those departures, a steampunk adventure called The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass. I’ve read four of Butcher’s Dresden novels with mixed reactions, and that feeling generally holds here. Steampunk fans may enjoy this heartily, but I found myself struggling through it for some reason that I’m having trouble pinning down. I should really enjoy this novel, but something elusive is holding me back.

Humanity has retreated from a hostile, mist-covered earth into large floating spires ruled by aristocracy. They fly ships harnessing ethereal currents and use magic crystals to power everything. Spire Albion is currently embroiled in a cold war with Spire Aurora, a war that’s about to escalate, even as an even greater threat to humanity begins to stir…

Captain Grimm commands a merchant ship (ne privateer) for Spire Albion, but when the ship is hobbled in combat, he must embark on a secret mission at the behest of his Spirearch, Lord Albion himself, in order to secure the necessary repairs. Along for the ride are Gwendolyn Lancaster, hailing from a prominent aristocratic house that is famous for growing those magic crystals in vats. Her cousin Benedict is a warriorborn, human beings hybridized with some feline features to make them more efficient warriors. Bridget Tagwynn is another aristocrat, but her house is not nearly as prominent as the Lancasters. Her talking cat Rowl follows her, acting all haughty and superior (as cats do). Then there are the etherialists, people who can harness ethereal powers for their own purposes, driving them partially mad in the process. Ferus is renowned and powerful, but comes off as an absent-minded, bumbling professor. He mentors Folly, a manic-pixie dream girl whose goofiness manifests as a tendency to address all communication to her crystals (rather than who she is trying to communicate with).

All of these characters are actually pretty well established and likeable, and their relationships work well. There are some mentor-mentee things going on, some romantic inclinations, unlikely friendships, and so on, and it’s all effective and entertaining stuff. Grimm is a well-drawn leader and the glue that keeps the group together and focused. As you might tell from my description of Folly above, she initially comes off as a bit cliched, but as time goes on and we spend more time with her, she really comes into her own. There’s a villain named Cavendish who is a worthy foe. There are big ship battles that are effective and maybe even realistic. Butcher takes full advantage of the three dimensions, and seems to leverage some of the principles of aerial combat (i.e. higher altitudes have a higher energy potential, a la John Boyd’s E-M Theory, or maybe I’m giving too much credit here).

This should work for me, but for some reason, it doesn’t. Maybe it’s just the steampunk tropes that are giving me the hives. Every once in a while, Butcher will drop a term that is so very steampunk and my reaction was almost always a roll of the eyes. Verminociter? Telescoptic? Oy. But that’s just superficial surface stuff, right? The deeper dislike is more difficult to pin down. One of the things I’ve never particularly enjoyed about Butcher’s storytelling is his sense of pacing. He gets repetitive and overly-reliant on exposition, especially in the middle sections of this book. There’s great action sequences at the beginning and end of the novel, but the middle section features entirely too much silkweaver (a sorta cross between giant spiders and centipedes). Butcher’s brand of fantasy also seems to fall into the whole “escalating magical powers” trap that usually doesn’t work for me. A corollary to this is the hero who can take on obscene amounts of punishment in battle and still come through alive and well in the end. This book isn’t as bad as some of Butcher’s others, but it’s still there, and it is one of those things that just makes the book seem longer…

It often feels like we’re just spinning our wheels. Eventually everything’s set up for the climax, so he kinda gets there… only that isn’t really the climax. The conflict between Spires Albion and Aurora has only just begun. There are hints at an even larger threat, an ancient enemy, but they’re only hints. We don’t really get far into either of these, and yet this book is over 750 pages long. Sometimes you can get away with that, but the airship battles, characters, and their relationships just weren’t enough to overcome the bloated exposition and steampunk cliches. I’m not particularly opposed to finding out what happens next, but I can’t see myself picking up the next book in the series either (without some sort of outside prompting).

In the larger context of the Hugo novel category, it’s perhaps telling that my two favorites are standalone novels (Seveneves and Uprooted), while the two series-starters (this book and The Fifth Season) are clearly my least favorite. Ancillary Mercy kinda squeaks by because it’s the end of it’s particular story, even if I didn’t particularly love it. I’ve finished off the novelettes and am working through the novellas now, so look for updates on those in the near future.

Short Stories are tricky beasts. In its ideal form, the short story is a pure distillation of storytelling. No slack, no flab, no digressions, just story. This is hard to do, and lots of stories don’t really work (for me, at least). As a result, reading a bunch of short stories together leads to an uneven experience. This goes double for Hugo shortlists, as there’s not even a pretense that the stories are related (most collections are from a singular author or cover a theme), and when you add in our current culture wars, things get even more annoying. I’ve been mildly unimpressed with the last few years worth of Hugo Short Stories, and this year doesn’t really change that. I’m not sure if that’s just because there are so many short stories and so little agreement during the nominating phase or if it’s because there really aren’t enough great short stories out there. This year’s ballot is mostly Rabid Puppies, with one non-Puppy work that made the ballot as a result of one original nominee bowing out in protest to the slate approach (a shame, since I loved that story). What’s more, you can tell from the works themselves which belongs to which camp. There’s a bifurcation of preferences that is very stark and obvious. Is that good? I don’t know, let’s dive in:

1. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer – Told from the perspective of an AI that was unintentionally created at Google to optimize their search algorithms. Bored, the AI decides to try helping out some humans… humans who are stubborn and uncooperative. In exchange, all the AI asks is for cat pictures. This is a fun little story, albeit a little derivative. I mean, the story itself references other stories (such as Bruce Sterling’s “Maneki Neko”) and that has the effect of making you want to read those rather than this one. Otherwise, it’s reasonably well executed, with the occasional quibble to be had. The AI does seem surprisingly human in its thought process (dare I say: a Mary Sue), even as it pretends to be superior, but it works well enough. As it notes, most AI stories are about evil AIs that must be destroyed before they destroy humanity, and it is a little refreshing to read a story about a benevolent AI (albeit one with no boundaries on privacy).
2. “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao – A tale of biological warfare and casual genocide, this story has some interesting ideas floating around. Not new ideas, to be sure, and the whole thing comes from a position of nationalism and xenophobia that is uncomfortable, but perhaps intentionally so. It’s a little depressing (as I’m sure was intended), but perhaps too simple in its execution, which undercuts its effectiveness a little. Still, it’s paced well and hits all its points quickly and effectively. These first two stories are imperfect, but on about the same level (as such, depending on my mood, the order might switch up when it comes to final voting).
3. “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon – Alien forces occupy earth and humans stubbornly fight back, as told from the perspective of the Alien commander. It’s a little too short for its own good, but effectively shows a tragic misunderstanding at the heart of the conflict. That being said, there’s not quite enough meat on this bone to make it truly effective, but then, who knows. We’ll see how it marinates in my head when it comes voting time.
4. Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle – A pretty blatant trolling nomination here, but it starts out surprisingly SFnal. But yeah, it’s more gay erotica than SF and, um, how are we supposed to vote on this thing? For his part, Tingle seems to be taking the nomination in stride and with good humor, but whatever. I don’t know, I’ll just keep it here I think.
5. No Award
6. “If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris – Look, I didn’t particularly like “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” (a controversial nominee from a couple years ago) either, and if you want to whine about it on your blog, that’s fine too. But best SF short story of the year? It’s not a story at all. It’s just a thinly veiled screed against non-Puppy Hugo voters and John Scalzi. Also? It’s about a year too late. Hey, you guys, if I post my trenchant take-down of Murphy Brown next week, will you nominate that for a short story award next year? I get the “let’s troll the awards” instinct that the Rabids have, I guess, but this is clearly not deserving of even being ranked on the final ballot. I don’t hand out No Awards very often, but this is a pretty clear case.

Of note: the story that dropped out, The Commuter, would have probably been #1 on this ballot. So there you have it. I’m finishing up my final novel on the list and will move on to Novelettes and Novellas soon enough, so stay tuned.

The Fifth Season is death… or maybe the end of the world. It’s happened before and it’s going to happen again, metaphorically and maybe even literally. Spoiler alert, I guess, but the grim nature of N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo-finalist novel and the downright misanthropic outlook it gives us on its world are almost immediately apparent. After all, this is a book that opens with a woman grieving for her infant son who had been beaten to death by his father. It’s a rough way to start the story, coupled as it is with some deft but also quite dense world building, but don’t worry, things get way, way worse as the story proceeds.

The setting is a world with a giant supercontinent that is under constant state of geological distress, occasionally leading to catastrophic Fifth Seasons that humanity barely survives. To help quell the earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis are the orogenes, magic users with seismic powers that are essential to keeping the world alive. For their trouble, they are generally feared and despised by the rest of the population (I kept thinking of X-Men). The plot considers three different orogenes, each at a different point in their life. One is Essun, an older orogene in hiding and also the aforementioned grieving mother who is now determined to seek out her husband (who has also presumably kidnapped their daughter). Then there is Syenite, a cranky but talented orogene sent on a mission with another, very powerful orogene named Alabaster. Finally, there’s the child Damaya, who we follow as she’s taken from her home to be trained at the Fulcrum and serve at the will of the Empire. Meanwhile, Winter is coming a fifth season is brewing.

To some people, this dark (to put it mildly) approach is like catnip. At least, judging from the reviews, that’s the case. I found myself floundering a bit at the beginning, at first in a good way. I like the dense worldbulding and the magic system (such as it is) is well thought out and used in clever ways. The characters are well drawn and yet, I didn’t particularly like anyone. This can be fine, but they’re not particularly interesting either, except insofar as they are instruments of the worldbuilding. The twisted and misanthropic nature of the relationships and institutions don’t help. There are no real friendships here, only betrayals. There isn’t any love, only lies. Every relationship is a twisted power struggle resulting in exploitation at best and usually outright abuse. Every institution is oppressive and exploitative. The result is misery porn.

Look, I don’t need a book to have all the answers or be uniformly upbeat, but this book takes such an extreme and dismal view that it resulted primarily in a sorta detached experience for me. The end of the book even has a revelation or two that are genuinely interesting, but it’s all undercut by this relentless horror that only served to desensitize me. It could almost approach self-parody, but it’s far to horrifying to ever reach comedic levels. Towards the end of the book, there was a big twist that I find interesting on an intellectual level, but which didn’t have nearly the impact it should have because I just didn’t care that much about the characters. As a result, the twist felt more like a cheat than a revelation. Progress is made on all of the storylines, but little is resolved in the end, perhaps because this is the start of a series. The final line of the novel holds an interesting promise, but I can’t say as though I’m at all interested in revisiting this world or its characters.

In her review at the New York Times, fellow Hugo nominee Naomi Novik praises Jemisin’s novel, noting that:

Fantasy novels often provide a degree of escapism: a good thing, for any reader who has something worth escaping. Too often, though, that escape comes through a fictional world that erases rather than solves the more complex problems of our own, reducing difficulty to the level of personal struggle and heroism, turning all obstacles to monsters we can see and touch and kill with a sword. But N.K. ­Jemisin’s intricate and extraordinary world-­building starts with oppression…

…Yet there is no message of hopelessness here. In Jemisin’s work, nature is not unchangeable or inevitable. “The Fifth Season” invites us to imagine a dismantling of the earth in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, and suggests the possibility of a richer and more fundamental escape. The end of the world becomes a triumph when the world is monstrous, even if what lies beyond is difficult to conceive for those who are trapped inside it.

That’s an interesting perspective, but from what I can see, Jemisin’s pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. If Fantasy too often errs on the side of optimism, this book perhaps errs too far on the side of pessimism. It’s one thing to confront complex problems, but it’s another to propose a solution that is the end of the world. That’s not a solution that provides hope or inspiration, merely despair. Or maybe I’m just being too literal. Jemisin is certainly a talented author with a good command of language, but this novel never really managed to get over the hump for me. As usual, judging a book from a series presents certain difficulties with how to rank this on the Hugo ballot. Right now, Novik’s Uprooted and Stephenson’s Seveneves are at the top somewhere, which puts this book about on par with Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy (another book that bounced off me).

The 2016 Hugo Award Finalists were announced this week and yes, it’s another shit show, but maybe sorta not as bad as last year? I hope? Assorted thoughts below:

• So the Rabid Puppies once again dominated the finalists, presumably due to their habit of generally following the slate laid out by their dark leader. In comparison, Sad Puppies seem ineffectual, but actually, this is probably what the whole Puppy effort should have looked like from the start. They got some things on the ballot without dominating the process. If we are to take them at their word that they just wanted to highlight works that traditionally get short shrift at the Hugos (I know it didn’t start like that, but it did evolve into that), then this seems nice. The Rabid approach seems tailor made to hurt the award and just plain piss people off. As I mentioned last year, it’s one thing to be more successful than expected, but it’s another to experience that backlash and then just double down on your approach. In any case, it does seem as if their influence is centered around the lower-participation categories. As such, I expect anti-slating measures to end up in the rules for next year, which will hopefully erode attempts to game the system like this.
• Fortunately, at least part of the Puppy success this year was driven by the inclusion of works from mainstream authors on the lists. The Rabids had folks like Neal Stephenson , Neil Gaiman, Alastair Reynolds , and Lois McMaster Bujold on their slate, which, well, these are all people who don’t need any help getting nominated. In addition to those names, the Sads even included the likes of Ann Leckie, John Scalzi, Nnedi Okorafor, Naomi Novik, and Cat Valente, most of whom don’t seem to exactly fit the puppy mold if they aren’t actively hostile towards each other. I am, of course, not the first to mention this, but it does seem to have the effect of softening the impact such that the scortched-earth No Award response feels less likely this year. There are some who are calling these mainstream choices “shields” and coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories about their inclusion, but who knows? I mean, yeah, I could dig through the muck and try to figure out what the Rabid intentions really are, but jeeze, who wants to get into their head? I like a lot of these authors and hell, I even nominated some of them (completely independent of recommendation lists or slates, imagine that!). Of course, this has been my approach all along, but others, even strident opposition, seem to be getting on board that train.
• This post will hopefully be the extent of my Puppy wrangling for the year. As usual, I plan to read the works and judge them accordingly. More thoughts on major categories below, but at an initial glance, there are most certainly some things I’ll be putting below No Award (especially when you get to the lower-participation categories), but some of the categories are actually pretty exciting.
• Best Novel features a pretty solid little lineup, three of which I’ve already read. A little heavy on the fantasy side of the award for my tastes, but that happens sometimes. Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves is the clear frontrunner for me, though Naomi Novik’s Uprooted isn’t too far behind (i.e. there’s a reason both of these novels were on my ballot). I wasn’t a huge fan of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, so N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season or Jim Butcher’s The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass certainly has the chance to climb up the ranks. From what I know of these two unread novels, I don’t expect them to overtake Seveneves, but I’m rooting for them. I should probably note that I’m a Stephenson nut, so it would take a lot to unseat him, even if I think this particular effort is more flawed than some of his others. One last note about the Puppies with respect to this category: I’m pleasantly surprised to see that John Wright’s Somewhither didn’t make the cut. From what I can see, it was very popular with puppies and John Wright has been a bannerman for the movement, so the fact that this didn’t make it to the final ballot means that, for Novels at least, you need to have broad support (the one Puppy nom that didn’t have a good chance to make it otherwise was The Aeronaut’s Windlass, but then, Butcher is an incredibly popular mainstream author, so his book was probably bolstered by non-Puppy votes).
• Best Novella is actually looking pretty good too. I’ve only read one (Bujold’s Penric’s Demon), but that one work was better than anything nominated in this category for the past few years (and a damn sight better than last year’s John Wright dominated slate). None of the nominees fill me with the dread of reading dross, which again, is a big step up from last year. I’m kinda looking forward to reading something by Brandon Sanderson that isn’t 1000 pages long. Binti, The Builders, and Slow Bullets sound pretty interesting too.
• Best Novelette is less clear to me, but I don’t see any major red flags (though I suppose having two stories from the same anthology is a bit gauche). The only author I recognize is Stephen King, an author you don’t see in the Hugos very much to be sure, but I’m not complaining. This is the least popular of the major fiction categories, which probably explains Puppy dominance here. I’m as guilty as the next fellow here though, as I didn’t nominate any novelettes this year.
• Best Short Story is… bizarre. Where to start? The elephant in the room is, I guess, Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (a writer of gay, science fiction erotica who would fit right in with my Weird Book of the Week series alongside our last selection, Lacey Noonan, author of I Don’t Care if My Best Friend’s Mom is a Sasquatch, She’s Hot and I’m Taking a Shower With Her and A Gronking to Remember (first in a series of Rob Gronkowski themed erotica novels)). In some ways, this is an inspired choice. In other ways, what the fuck? Also of note, Thomas A. Mays has asked that his story, The Commuter, be removed from the ballot (for admirable reasons), which is a shame, because I really enjoyed his last novel (and even nominated it last year!) I will most likely still read his short story. After that, we’ve got two military SF stories (one from the same anthology mentioned above in Novelettes) and If You Were an Award, My Love, a clear reaction to Rachel Swirsky’s infamous If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, which, like, ugh. Really? It was written about a year or two too late and it’s just an exercise in petty spite, filled with Scalz-hate-boners and the like. There is something wrong in Short Story land. I read plenty of decent short stories every year, but they never end up on the ballot, and I suspect the problem is that there’s too much short fiction out there and none of us are reading all the things so our votes get spread far and wide, making the category vulnerable to slating and even very popular authors (even before the Puppies, witness the inclusion of John Scalzi’s absurd April Fool’s joke, “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”, a funny little parody to be sure, but best short story of the year?). I don’t know what the solution is here, though maybe the rules changes will have an impact.
• Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) turns out exactly like I thought, with my three favorite nominees in addition to standards like Star Wars and Avengers… Still would have rather seen something like Predestination make the ballot, but I guess it’s too much to expect for the Hugo voters to actually look for small, independent movies.
• As for the other categories, ehhhh, we’ll see. Few of these categories hold much interest for me, though I might be tempted to look at a couple of them because I like a nominee or two there. For instance, long time Kaedrin compatriot Shamus Young made it on the Fan Writer ballot this year, which is pleasant to see (another instance of Rabids glomming onto a popular writer, albeit one who primarily writes about video games). Despite a long history of awards, File770 probably deserves some additional recognition for becoming the defacto clearing house for fandom during last year’s clusterfuck of a Hugo process. And so on.

As usual, I plan to spend most of my time reading through the nominees and judging them accordingly, rather than attempting to wade through the usual BS.