Hugos 2019: Novellas
May. 28th, 2019 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseThe Tea Master and the Detective (Aliette de Bodard): Consulting detective solicits the skills of a maker of blends that have psychotropic properties, allowing people to survive "deep space" (FTL?) unscathed. Deep space and bad experiences there shape the narrative.
Unlike Peach (see below), I figured out how to read this: close enough to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to start there. Notably, most of the characters are women; it's as if Bodard has taken to heart "why make Third Spear-Carrier on the Left a man when they could be a woman?" and carried that through to, "why not make everyone a woman?"
As a nominee... it's rock solid writing, would not be sad if this took a rocket home.
The Black God's Drums (P. Djèlí Clark) (2018): Steampunk (?) historical AU in the free city of New Orleans. The orisha-touched protagonist overhears a deal involving the Confederate States and a Haitian scientist who aided in the construction of a doomsday weapon, and enmeshes herself in a counter-plan.
Drums is perfectly acceptable writing. It doesn't do anything new, but it does a competent take on existing memes. Would be a safe choice compared to the wildly variable creativity and skill in the novellas this year.
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Seanan McGuire) (2018):Third of the Wayward Children novellas.
Let's state the obvious: I am never going to agree with the writing in this series. I will always read installments of the Wayward Children novellas and question the performative social progressivism. I will repeatedly ask why the second-order worldbuilding doesn't fix a laundry list of items. I'm going to side-eye the pining and the random infodumps about worlds the displaced teens pine for.cahn pointed out that the Queen of Cakes is presented as one of those teens, who somehow has gotten as ethically upside-down as Jill in the first novella. The Queen of Cakes might be presented as a character worthy of sympathy in another narrative, but in this one is trussed up and left with a "well, maybe someone will find her, or maybe they won't" shrug from our protagonists. She's a Mr. Jenkins character, but presented without the subtlety or compassion L'Engle brings to A Wind in the Door. It says a lot about the protagonists and the embedded worldview that her character is presented with such a lack of finesse. The specific example is in line with fairytale logic, where stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into glass slippers and young men finally learn what it is to shiver, but the story doesn't really go to the next level and question how the story and logic change in a modern context. The more I think about the moral underpinnings and worldbuilding assumptions of the Wayward Children series, the less I like the implications.
Binti: The Night Masquerade (Nnedi Okorafor) (2018): Binti confronts personal tragedy and a crisis in Meduse-Khoush relationships as she asserts her Hausa identity, even while she continues to change.
It's like that episode of Community where Troy comes back with the pizza and the apartment is on fire. "I thought I left everyone... mostly okay? And now it's death and madness?"
After Binti went into the desert in Binti: Homecoming, some anti-alien humans came looking for Okwu, couldn't find him, and burned down Binti's house instead! With all of her family in the basement! So we open with Binti's family dead and she has uncontrolled alien tech - different from the alien bio-hybrid thing with Okwu - she is trying to master. While her family is dead. All of them.
She tries to make the elder council make the anti-alien humans, the Khoush, and Okwu's people, the Meduse, sign a peace contract. The elders say, "...okay..." and then they no-show for negotiations. So Binti makes the Khoush and Meduse make peace. The cease-fire lasts about 30 seconds, someone does the "killing the snake at Camlann" thing, and Binti is slain in the crossfire. After her death, it's discovered Binti's family isn't dead after all. Binti's body is prepared for its final rest, which for Reasons will be around Saturn. The offspring of the living ship from the initial novella - and maybe Homecoming? - conveys her to Saturn. Guess what, it's a three-day trip and Binti does not stay dead. However, she's now bonded to baby not-Talyn (for our Farscape namecheck of the day!). So she goes back to university to get a checkup and start the new academic year. THE END.
There's some other stuff going on, but I sort of got stuck at the "human with alien tech and two different alien biologies interacting." Binti's power-up pile-on distracted me from the actual story. Not to mention the deaths, which stuck about as long as an X-Men funeral. Notable markdowns there. Not my favorite of Okorafor's work, and for me, not a strong contender in this year's field.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Kelly Robson) (2018): Okay, what just happened there? There's postapocalyptic female cross-gen relationship between Minh and Kiki. I see time travel shenanigans with Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia, Shugi and Susa are having some kind of mutual antipathy and power struggle deal; Susa also gets the "inexplicable activities because Highly Advanced Technology" thread. There's postapocalyptic economics with Minh, Hamid, Kiki, and Fabian.
What I'm missing is how any of these fit together. If you start pruning the novella, you get one story if you chop away part of it, and a different story if you prune a different part; but I haven't figured out the whole story that is trying to happen with all the words in this sequence. The structure is technically really awesome; what Bodard does with Shulgi PoV give useful infodumps on Mesopotamia early on, and is doing something interesting with time-flow and sequencing of reader information. But I can't figure out what is the point.
Anyone who understood what this novella was trying to do, please explain it in comments. Anyone as baffled as me, let's be mutually puzzled in comments!
Artificial Condition (Martha Wells) (2018): Previously read. Interstitial, which is a minus, but includes ART, who is currently my favorite minor character in the Murderbot series.
Prelim rankings: Artificial Condition, Tea Master, Drums, Night Masquerade, Peach, Sugar Sky, No Award. I have no idea what Peach was trying to do, but it was failed in interesting ways. I may shuffle rankings before voting closes, but mostly in the middle and bottom of the range.
Unlike Peach (see below), I figured out how to read this: close enough to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to start there. Notably, most of the characters are women; it's as if Bodard has taken to heart "why make Third Spear-Carrier on the Left a man when they could be a woman?" and carried that through to, "why not make everyone a woman?"
As a nominee... it's rock solid writing, would not be sad if this took a rocket home.
The Black God's Drums (P. Djèlí Clark) (2018): Steampunk (?) historical AU in the free city of New Orleans. The orisha-touched protagonist overhears a deal involving the Confederate States and a Haitian scientist who aided in the construction of a doomsday weapon, and enmeshes herself in a counter-plan.
Drums is perfectly acceptable writing. It doesn't do anything new, but it does a competent take on existing memes. Would be a safe choice compared to the wildly variable creativity and skill in the novellas this year.
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Seanan McGuire) (2018):Third of the Wayward Children novellas.
Let's state the obvious: I am never going to agree with the writing in this series. I will always read installments of the Wayward Children novellas and question the performative social progressivism. I will repeatedly ask why the second-order worldbuilding doesn't fix a laundry list of items. I'm going to side-eye the pining and the random infodumps about worlds the displaced teens pine for.
cahn pointed out that the Queen of Cakes is presented as one of those teens, who somehow has gotten as ethically upside-down as Jill in the first novella. The Queen of Cakes might be presented as a character worthy of sympathy in another narrative, but in this one is trussed up and left with a "well, maybe someone will find her, or maybe they won't" shrug from our protagonists. She's a Mr. Jenkins character, but presented without the subtlety or compassion L'Engle brings to A Wind in the Door. It says a lot about the protagonists and the embedded worldview that her character is presented with such a lack of finesse. The specific example is in line with fairytale logic, where stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into glass slippers and young men finally learn what it is to shiver, but the story doesn't really go to the next level and question how the story and logic change in a modern context. The more I think about the moral underpinnings and worldbuilding assumptions of the Wayward Children series, the less I like the implications. Binti: The Night Masquerade (Nnedi Okorafor) (2018): Binti confronts personal tragedy and a crisis in Meduse-Khoush relationships as she asserts her Hausa identity, even while she continues to change.
It's like that episode of Community where Troy comes back with the pizza and the apartment is on fire. "I thought I left everyone... mostly okay? And now it's death and madness?"
After Binti went into the desert in Binti: Homecoming, some anti-alien humans came looking for Okwu, couldn't find him, and burned down Binti's house instead! With all of her family in the basement! So we open with Binti's family dead and she has uncontrolled alien tech - different from the alien bio-hybrid thing with Okwu - she is trying to master. While her family is dead. All of them.
She tries to make the elder council make the anti-alien humans, the Khoush, and Okwu's people, the Meduse, sign a peace contract. The elders say, "...okay..." and then they no-show for negotiations. So Binti makes the Khoush and Meduse make peace. The cease-fire lasts about 30 seconds, someone does the "killing the snake at Camlann" thing, and Binti is slain in the crossfire. After her death, it's discovered Binti's family isn't dead after all. Binti's body is prepared for its final rest, which for Reasons will be around Saturn. The offspring of the living ship from the initial novella - and maybe Homecoming? - conveys her to Saturn. Guess what, it's a three-day trip and Binti does not stay dead. However, she's now bonded to baby not-Talyn (for our Farscape namecheck of the day!). So she goes back to university to get a checkup and start the new academic year. THE END.
There's some other stuff going on, but I sort of got stuck at the "human with alien tech and two different alien biologies interacting." Binti's power-up pile-on distracted me from the actual story. Not to mention the deaths, which stuck about as long as an X-Men funeral. Notable markdowns there. Not my favorite of Okorafor's work, and for me, not a strong contender in this year's field.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Kelly Robson) (2018): Okay, what just happened there? There's postapocalyptic female cross-gen relationship between Minh and Kiki. I see time travel shenanigans with Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia, Shugi and Susa are having some kind of mutual antipathy and power struggle deal; Susa also gets the "inexplicable activities because Highly Advanced Technology" thread. There's postapocalyptic economics with Minh, Hamid, Kiki, and Fabian.
What I'm missing is how any of these fit together. If you start pruning the novella, you get one story if you chop away part of it, and a different story if you prune a different part; but I haven't figured out the whole story that is trying to happen with all the words in this sequence. The structure is technically really awesome; what Bodard does with Shulgi PoV give useful infodumps on Mesopotamia early on, and is doing something interesting with time-flow and sequencing of reader information. But I can't figure out what is the point.
Anyone who understood what this novella was trying to do, please explain it in comments. Anyone as baffled as me, let's be mutually puzzled in comments!
Artificial Condition (Martha Wells) (2018): Previously read. Interstitial, which is a minus, but includes ART, who is currently my favorite minor character in the Murderbot series.
Prelim rankings: Artificial Condition, Tea Master, Drums, Night Masquerade, Peach, Sugar Sky, No Award. I have no idea what Peach was trying to do, but it was failed in interesting ways. I may shuffle rankings before voting closes, but mostly in the middle and bottom of the range.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-30 12:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-30 04:08 am (UTC)The top three are all pretty solid fiction. The bottom three have flaws to my eye. Still not sure what is going on at the end of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach... but I'd be willing to read more by Robson!