Hugo Nominees 2015: Novel
Jul. 30th, 2015 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseTwo nominees got punted on Did Not Finish grounds, but the other three - Addison's The Goblin Emperor, Leckie's Ancillary Sword, and Liu's The Three-Body Problem - have had me dithering.
3BP is good but flawed. If I can tell the physics is silly and inaccurate, the physics is really silly. AS is very much a middle novel; it's a competent middle novel, but my evaluation of its quality will be greatly influenced by Ancillary Mercy, out this October. And TGE is operating in such a different register from the other two novels, to the point where I ask whether you could strip out the genre aspects and have the exact same story.
In a good year, the Hugos are an embarrassment of riches, a diverse slate of competing innovative well-written ideas. I'm pleased these three novels give me a taste of that. I say with all my heart there is merit in stories where writers are figuring out their craft, or roughing out new things, or getting the bills paid in a competent but not brilliant fashion. But there's a difference between a story that demonstrates promise or developing talent and a story that merits Hugo recognition. That's why there's a lot of No Award going around this year.
My novel rankings right now are:
1 The Three-Body Problem
2 The Goblin Emperor
3 Ancillary Sword
4 No Award
But yesterday I had AS up top, and I still have a day to change my mind.
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie: already read, and reread it too. In case you were wondering whether I liked it, ah, yes, I did.
The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson: There are so many problems, and I'm only 100 pages in. You know what? I'm 100 pages in, there have been 13 PoV characters in 16 chapters, it's exactly like reading Exile's Song only I'm not 14. The terrible prose, the illusion of depth that would likely be shattered by reading the rest of the series, the failures at basic mechanics of storytelling, the gratuitous Indiana Jones bad archaeology... I can stop now! There's been enough exposure that I know how I plan to rank this when I cast my ballot!
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison / Sarah Monette: already read it. And I reread it while considering rankings. It's sweet and cute and at the end of it I asked, "does this have to be genre?" The story of TGE works equally well as a Ruritanian epic: substitute trains for airships and the goblins for a European power, and you've got something not entirely unlike, say, Philip Pullman's The Tin Princess.
My litmus test for "does it have to be genre" is, does the core story change when you yank the genre elements out? TGE's core story is Maia's development as a person, when he is uncomfortable with the power and responsibility handed to him. This is brilliantly captured on the cover art of the hardcover, which shows Maia (presumably Maia) wearing a massive Court-shaped crown, flanked by arched construction that could be aqueducts, or a bridge. The art centers the city-crown, and shoves Maia deep into the bottom third of the design, away from any point the viewer's eye first lands on. It's a great cover that nails the feel of the book really well. But... none of these elements are particularly speculative; the biggest clues this is genre are the title, the airship off to one corner, and Maia's non-human-shaped ears. But take away the airship, and tweak the goblin-elf thing into a different racial or ethnic conflict, and... it's pretty much the same story.
Its engagement with the tropes and tools of the genre seems to be heavily mediated through recent social justice meta-discussion. Ironically, it's grappling with one of my favorite things, the human condition, but I am asking "how are the spec fic elements of this novel necessary to telling this story?" Its genre-ness might be there, but in a very different way than something with sorcery or nanobots or spaceships or psychic powers. (Imperial powers and responsibilities in SF/F: Elric of Melniboné, Paul Atreides, all those fat fantasy epics of the '90s and '00s I have been skipping over... and there there is Maia.) I would be willing to be argued around on this one, especially if the conversation could be heavily salted with examples. I feel the New Wave may be once again relevant to a discussion.
Skin Game, Jim Butcher: The prose is slick, though the protagonist is ridiculous. The story opens with Harry Dresden hanging out on an island with certain eldritch properties, mostly playing parkour and waiting to... die from a magical brain tumor... or... something. Clearly I am coming into the middle of this series!
I only read the sample chapters of Skin Game, which were enough to convince me of Butcher's qualities as a writer without generating sufficient interest for me to check the full novel from the library. Beach reading; competent but not award winning.
(Parkour in the eldritch catacombs. Oh, Harry.)
The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu; Ken Liu translator: Now this is unquestionably science fiction. A Chinsese nanotech researcher is sucked into a mystery that is killing theoretical physicists. There are aliens, there is abuse of high-energy physics, there is characterization motivated by plot. For example, the protagonist, Wang Miao, has a wife and son who presumably are an important part of his life, but who he never mentions in the back half of the novel. He is entirely adsorbed in the plot (and its infodumps). Ye Wenjie's perspective on the worth of humanity is forever lowered by the Cultural Revolution, and her actions waver between belief that humanity is worth reforming, by alien intervention, and that it's only fit for destruction, by alien intervention. It's somewhere between compelling (character wrestles with What Is The Right Thing To Do, finding different answers at different points in her life), and baffling (character realizes stuff's out of her control, doesn't, you know, enlist allies to fix that). In the best traditions of the Golden Age, the science is a smokescreen for the philosophical questions: blah blah blah high energy physics, blah di blah nanotech - and let's not talk about the weird dynamics of the MMORPG - but really what matters is that Aliens Are Coming, How Do We React.
This is so very rooted in genre conventions. The aliens are hostile; the most critical science is cutting edge physics; a classic physics problem is a key aspect of the backstory. I'm fascinated that the author's note included with the English translation tells us that Chinese science fiction usually writes aliens as benevolent, since that's not my experience of the American approach to life in the skies.
I'm also surprised 3BP didn't show up on the Puppy slates, being the sort of gosh-wow SF they claim to support, but then I found Cixin Liu's Big Idea on Scalzi's blog, and for those of you who have been blissfully ignorant, the people behind the puppy slates are not rational on the topic of John Scalzi and anyone associated with him. Also, dare I suggest that a group that has consistently behaved as through straight white men of a certain socioecomic classes are the only group that counts might have, ah, not welcomed the contributions of a non-white non-American? Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems like such an oversight not to include 3BP, when writers like KJA, Marko Kloos, and Larry Correira made it on the puppy slate in the novel category.
3BP is good but flawed. If I can tell the physics is silly and inaccurate, the physics is really silly. AS is very much a middle novel; it's a competent middle novel, but my evaluation of its quality will be greatly influenced by Ancillary Mercy, out this October. And TGE is operating in such a different register from the other two novels, to the point where I ask whether you could strip out the genre aspects and have the exact same story.
In a good year, the Hugos are an embarrassment of riches, a diverse slate of competing innovative well-written ideas. I'm pleased these three novels give me a taste of that. I say with all my heart there is merit in stories where writers are figuring out their craft, or roughing out new things, or getting the bills paid in a competent but not brilliant fashion. But there's a difference between a story that demonstrates promise or developing talent and a story that merits Hugo recognition. That's why there's a lot of No Award going around this year.
My novel rankings right now are:
1 The Three-Body Problem
2 The Goblin Emperor
3 Ancillary Sword
4 No Award
But yesterday I had AS up top, and I still have a day to change my mind.
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie: already read, and reread it too. In case you were wondering whether I liked it, ah, yes, I did.
The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson: There are so many problems, and I'm only 100 pages in. You know what? I'm 100 pages in, there have been 13 PoV characters in 16 chapters, it's exactly like reading Exile's Song only I'm not 14. The terrible prose, the illusion of depth that would likely be shattered by reading the rest of the series, the failures at basic mechanics of storytelling, the gratuitous Indiana Jones bad archaeology... I can stop now! There's been enough exposure that I know how I plan to rank this when I cast my ballot!
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison / Sarah Monette: already read it. And I reread it while considering rankings. It's sweet and cute and at the end of it I asked, "does this have to be genre?" The story of TGE works equally well as a Ruritanian epic: substitute trains for airships and the goblins for a European power, and you've got something not entirely unlike, say, Philip Pullman's The Tin Princess.
My litmus test for "does it have to be genre" is, does the core story change when you yank the genre elements out? TGE's core story is Maia's development as a person, when he is uncomfortable with the power and responsibility handed to him. This is brilliantly captured on the cover art of the hardcover, which shows Maia (presumably Maia) wearing a massive Court-shaped crown, flanked by arched construction that could be aqueducts, or a bridge. The art centers the city-crown, and shoves Maia deep into the bottom third of the design, away from any point the viewer's eye first lands on. It's a great cover that nails the feel of the book really well. But... none of these elements are particularly speculative; the biggest clues this is genre are the title, the airship off to one corner, and Maia's non-human-shaped ears. But take away the airship, and tweak the goblin-elf thing into a different racial or ethnic conflict, and... it's pretty much the same story.
Its engagement with the tropes and tools of the genre seems to be heavily mediated through recent social justice meta-discussion. Ironically, it's grappling with one of my favorite things, the human condition, but I am asking "how are the spec fic elements of this novel necessary to telling this story?" Its genre-ness might be there, but in a very different way than something with sorcery or nanobots or spaceships or psychic powers. (Imperial powers and responsibilities in SF/F: Elric of Melniboné, Paul Atreides, all those fat fantasy epics of the '90s and '00s I have been skipping over... and there there is Maia.) I would be willing to be argued around on this one, especially if the conversation could be heavily salted with examples. I feel the New Wave may be once again relevant to a discussion.
Skin Game, Jim Butcher: The prose is slick, though the protagonist is ridiculous. The story opens with Harry Dresden hanging out on an island with certain eldritch properties, mostly playing parkour and waiting to... die from a magical brain tumor... or... something. Clearly I am coming into the middle of this series!
I only read the sample chapters of Skin Game, which were enough to convince me of Butcher's qualities as a writer without generating sufficient interest for me to check the full novel from the library. Beach reading; competent but not award winning.
(Parkour in the eldritch catacombs. Oh, Harry.)
The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu; Ken Liu translator: Now this is unquestionably science fiction. A Chinsese nanotech researcher is sucked into a mystery that is killing theoretical physicists. There are aliens, there is abuse of high-energy physics, there is characterization motivated by plot. For example, the protagonist, Wang Miao, has a wife and son who presumably are an important part of his life, but who he never mentions in the back half of the novel. He is entirely adsorbed in the plot (and its infodumps). Ye Wenjie's perspective on the worth of humanity is forever lowered by the Cultural Revolution, and her actions waver between belief that humanity is worth reforming, by alien intervention, and that it's only fit for destruction, by alien intervention. It's somewhere between compelling (character wrestles with What Is The Right Thing To Do, finding different answers at different points in her life), and baffling (character realizes stuff's out of her control, doesn't, you know, enlist allies to fix that). In the best traditions of the Golden Age, the science is a smokescreen for the philosophical questions: blah blah blah high energy physics, blah di blah nanotech - and let's not talk about the weird dynamics of the MMORPG - but really what matters is that Aliens Are Coming, How Do We React.
This is so very rooted in genre conventions. The aliens are hostile; the most critical science is cutting edge physics; a classic physics problem is a key aspect of the backstory. I'm fascinated that the author's note included with the English translation tells us that Chinese science fiction usually writes aliens as benevolent, since that's not my experience of the American approach to life in the skies.
I'm also surprised 3BP didn't show up on the Puppy slates, being the sort of gosh-wow SF they claim to support, but then I found Cixin Liu's Big Idea on Scalzi's blog, and for those of you who have been blissfully ignorant, the people behind the puppy slates are not rational on the topic of John Scalzi and anyone associated with him. Also, dare I suggest that a group that has consistently behaved as through straight white men of a certain socioecomic classes are the only group that counts might have, ah, not welcomed the contributions of a non-white non-American? Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems like such an oversight not to include 3BP, when writers like KJA, Marko Kloos, and Larry Correira made it on the puppy slate in the novel category.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-31 02:34 pm (UTC)So why not go with straight up historical fantasy?
Because no actual historical culture is the same as Maia's culture. It's a from-scratch culture that bears some similarities with various real ones, but it isn't a real one.
Augh, I wasn't terrifically clear there: some reviewers tag GGK's novels as "historical fantasy". Why throw in magic at all?
To me, creating a culture is a completely valid work of storytelling. It's also a recognized, if small, subgenre of sff.
Yes, I totally agree that culture creation is a valid and valuable component of storytelling. I'm balking a bit at whether culture creation without other tropes is SF/F... but if the creator considers it SF/F, I'm willing to go with the creator's definition for maximum inclusiveness.
So yes, if TGE could be considered SF/F with or without the magic and elves and goblins, why write it with those elements?
This may be a case of The Point The Reader Is Missing It.
"Why not write a similar-but-different book? What does her setting add that is better than some other setting?" is a question that can be asked of almost any book.
Yes. Sometimes there's really obvious reasons something is not the similar-but-different book. "Why isn't Ancillary Justice a fantasy novel?" "Because then the ancillary tech that is a major part of the worldbuilding must be completely rewritten. And the FTL tech would be moot, so the isolated-in-FTL plot point would need tweaking too. It also changes the stories AJ is in conversation with, so there is not the resonance with space operas and military SF tropes." "Why isn't TGE a science fiction novel?" "Because..."
Well, if resonance with other novels is important, yes it has to keep the fantasy elements. That seems like a meta-reason to me. I'd also really like a reason the genre (or subgenre) is intrinsic or at least difficult to disentangle from the plot.
That might answer the Why Is TGE Fantasy question.
For the Hugos, if I can sketch something that strips out a lot of genre elements without trying too hard, a story may be entertaining, well written, and immediately elevated to my comfort reading shelf next to Bujold's ACC and all of Doris Egan's novels and The Perilous Gard and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and Cryptonomicon, but I still have reservations about holding it up as an example of the best work done in SF/F in the year it was published. That may be why I am wrestling so hard with TGE as genre: I want it to be something else, so I feel more comfortable with my Hugo rankings.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-01 04:12 am (UTC)"Why elves and goblins" is probably because it's in conversation with all the other fantasy novels about a young man raised in humble circumstances who ascends the throne. Typically in fantasy, that's the end of the story. TGE explores what happens afterward. I suspect a second conversation with a slightly different sub genre of fantasy, the ones in which there's lots of court intrigue and kind people are stupid and meet terrible fates. I don't know Monette's actual intention, but to me, elves and goblins and the minimal but present existence of magic functioned as a reminder of all those other books, that TGE not just in conversation with real history but also with the literature of fantasy.
That being said, I'm not sure that it was the best book in sff this year. I haven't read the others on the ballot, but I'm getting the impression that it wasn't a particularly strong year. The books I'v seen get the most press as artistically best, Station Eleven and The Girl With All The Gifts, were not on the ballot.