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Hugo Nominees 2015: Short Story
Jun. 14th, 2015 12:14 amRecognizing that people have different interpretations and relationships with fiction, and also that shorter fiction just doesn't hit my buttons the way a fat novel will, I usually try not to just say, "wow, I hated this story." However, I suspect that exposure to this year's Hugo short story nominees actually killed some of my brain cells. I almost certainly will be marking No Award for this category.
Comments are in alphabetical order by surname.
"On A Spiritual Plain", Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014): Chaplain makes journey to release the spiritual remains at a physical site, for Reasons.
Meh. Just... meh.
"A Single Samurai", Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books): Sword-wielder in Japan-flavored setting strives to kill a monster the size of a mountain.
It's an unpolished story, which suffered by comparison to "Pacific Rim" every time the author wrote "kaiju", but good try!
"Totaled", Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, 07-2014): Woman dies in car accident, becomes a component of her own research study.
This gets points for actual speculation on technology and its impact on the human condition! The execution is not awesome, but it's competent. I would read something else by this writer.
"Turncoat", Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House): AI-powered warship votes "no" on killing fleeing civilians, opts to defect to the enemy.
"Turncoat" is so cute! It's like reading a David Weber short story, only with even less grounding in science and also even clunkier prose! Take a look:
In this story, suspicion is not an emotion, but fear is, okay. Cybernetic death is bad, and also that conclusion is delivered in a bizarrely convoluted sentence, okay. But the cumulative effects don't add up to a coherent vision. Weak, but I give it a few points for being oddball enough I kept reading to figure out the worldbuilding, even if the entire story was telegraphed by the title.
"The Parliament of Beasts and Birds", John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House): Animals meet, discuss humanity's departure from the mortal plain, are elevated to Manhood.
It's like C.S. Lewis, minus Lewis' mastery of the tools of writing. The style choices are all over the place, slip-sliding between parable, pulp, and contemporary irony. Look at this quote, emphasis mine:
Whoa. Total tone-break right at the end of the last sentence. Also, minus one million points for working in a reference to "harlots" in a story with no women.
The erratic capitalization adds on to the style issues. First there is When Raven and Wolf came to where Hound and Horse and the slow and solemn Bull were all exchanging whispered eulogies and reminiscences, and put their question to him, the Hound shrugged philosophically. The animals' names are proper nouns! A paragraph later it's The wolf said... and The hound shook his shaggy head. Whoops, proper nouns dropped. Why? What is going on here?
It's hard to screw up pacing at this length, but the story really tries to. And the science is wrong. There aren't black lions. You can't have the waning moon rise at sunset, it doesn't work like that. If these are supposed to be a signpost of the End Days, or that we're in a fantasy story, well, the slip-sliding prose does not make that evident.
Comments are in alphabetical order by surname.
"On A Spiritual Plain", Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014): Chaplain makes journey to release the spiritual remains at a physical site, for Reasons.
Meh. Just... meh.
"A Single Samurai", Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books): Sword-wielder in Japan-flavored setting strives to kill a monster the size of a mountain.
It's an unpolished story, which suffered by comparison to "Pacific Rim" every time the author wrote "kaiju", but good try!
"Totaled", Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, 07-2014): Woman dies in car accident, becomes a component of her own research study.
This gets points for actual speculation on technology and its impact on the human condition! The execution is not awesome, but it's competent. I would read something else by this writer.
"Turncoat", Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House): AI-powered warship votes "no" on killing fleeing civilians, opts to defect to the enemy.
"Turncoat" is so cute! It's like reading a David Weber short story, only with even less grounding in science and also even clunkier prose! Take a look:
If I were a superannuated Homo sapiens sapiens, I suspect fear would have taken hold of me at that moment. Instead, I run a rapid analysis of the pros versus the cons of having my entire operating system rebooted and my memory banks wiped. The outcome is decidedly in favor of the cons.
In this story, suspicion is not an emotion, but fear is, okay. Cybernetic death is bad, and also that conclusion is delivered in a bizarrely convoluted sentence, okay. But the cumulative effects don't add up to a coherent vision. Weak, but I give it a few points for being oddball enough I kept reading to figure out the worldbuilding, even if the entire story was telegraphed by the title.
"The Parliament of Beasts and Birds", John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House): Animals meet, discuss humanity's departure from the mortal plain, are elevated to Manhood.
It's like C.S. Lewis, minus Lewis' mastery of the tools of writing. The style choices are all over the place, slip-sliding between parable, pulp, and contemporary irony. Look at this quote, emphasis mine:
And there were pleasure houses where harlots plied their trade, and houses of healing where physicians explained which venereal diseases had no cures and arranged for painless suicides, and houses of morticians where disease-raddled bodies were burnt in private, without any ceremony that might attract attention and be bad for business.
Whoa. Total tone-break right at the end of the last sentence. Also, minus one million points for working in a reference to "harlots" in a story with no women.
The erratic capitalization adds on to the style issues. First there is When Raven and Wolf came to where Hound and Horse and the slow and solemn Bull were all exchanging whispered eulogies and reminiscences, and put their question to him, the Hound shrugged philosophically. The animals' names are proper nouns! A paragraph later it's The wolf said... and The hound shook his shaggy head. Whoops, proper nouns dropped. Why? What is going on here?
It's hard to screw up pacing at this length, but the story really tries to. And the science is wrong. There aren't black lions. You can't have the waning moon rise at sunset, it doesn't work like that. If these are supposed to be a signpost of the End Days, or that we're in a fantasy story, well, the slip-sliding prose does not make that evident.