Hugo Nomination Thoughts: Long Fiction (and some notes on Dramatic Presentation)

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, Long Fiction (and Dramatic Presentation)

In past years, “Long Fiction” just meant “Novel”, but this year there is one new category to  consider, a Hugo for Best Series Perhaps we should also start thinking about another new award, likely to come along next year (if ratified in Helsinki), for Best Young Adult Fiction (which would not officially be a Hugo Award, but would be voted on by the same population using the same rules (as with the Campbell Award for Best New Writer). It does not yet have a name, the best option (Andre Norton Award) already being taken for the similar award given by SFWA. (And thanks to Andrew M., commenting at File 770, for reminding me that the YA Award will not be given this year.)

So this is the point where I confess that I read so much short fiction that I’m not qualified to rule on Best Novel. I’ve said this every year for the past few years. I always end up reading my favorite novels a bit too late – so, for instance, I think the best SF novels of 2014 were Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and William Gibson’s The Peripheral, but I didn’t read them until 2016. Likewise, for 2015, I didn’t read Jo Walton’s The Just City until after the Hugos were awarded, and I didn’t finish my favorite 2015 novel, The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, until early 2017. There are, thus, plenty of 2017 novels I think might be excellent that I haven’t yet read, including The Gradual, by Christopher Priest; Everfair, by Nisi Shawl; Necessity, by Jo Walton; The Winged Histories, by Sofia Samatar; Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar; and Crosstalk, by Connie Willis are six that I already have on hand, and definitely will read, perhaps very soon. I am sure there are many more. And all that said I can only recommend two novels from 2017 that I liked a lot, both, as it happens, first novels. (I suppose technically there are two more pretty good novels that I read and marked as novellas, but both are eligible as novels: Penric’s Mission, by Lois McMaster Bujold; and The Last Days of New Paris, by China Miéville. One more pretty good novel, also pretty short but longer than novella length, I think, is Walter Jon Williams’ Impersonations, his latest Praxis story, though as I note below, I don't consider it quite Hugo-worthy.)

The two first novels I mentioned are All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders; and Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. Both are fairly seamless mixtures of SF and Fantasy (though Palmer’s novel reads like pure SF with a difficult to explain fantastical intrusion, while Anders’ novel reads like Fantasy set in a pretty SFnal near future.) All the Birds in the Sky is the story of Patricia, who can talk to birds, and Lawrence, who has invented a two-second time machine, as they grow up, both somewhat dysfunctionally, and end up friends and sometime lovers in a near future facing imminent collapse due to global warming. Both promote solutions – Patricia’s fantastical, Lawrence’s science-fictional, and both make terrible mistakes, before a literally earth-shaking conclusion. It’s funny – Anders is always funny – and serious as well (Anders is usually serious too). I really liked it. Too Like the Lightning is set several centuries in the future, in a world divided into “Hives”, cooperative family-like organizations with different strengths. The narrator is Mycroft Canner, who, we slowly learn, is a criminal (and the nature of his crime, only late revealed, is pretty appalling), but who is also quite engaging, and an important mentor to an amazing child who can bring inanimate things to life. This novel introduces a conflict – a threat to the world’s balance of power – and also intricately sketches the complex background of this future, and introduces a ton of neat characters. Then it stops, which is its main weakness – it is but half a novel. The sequel (Seven Surrenders) is due in March 2017. In the end I was impressed but unsatisfied – leaving a novel perhaps not quite Hugo-worthy (though the author is surely Campbell-worthy!), but a novel which will compel me to read its sequel, which, if it sticks the dismount, might be Hugo-worthy itself.

Speaking of first novels, one that I haven't read but definitely need to get to is Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. Lee has been doing really outstanding work for a long time -- I've used a few of his stories in my anthologies, and in a way it's a surprise that his first novel is only coming out now. But it looks very interesting indeed.

Best Series

Considering this brand new category reminds me of one novel that I have just read, Impersonations, by Walter Jon Williams, a new pendant to his Praxis (or Dread Empire’s Fall) series. It’s a fun story, and I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think it’s Hugo-worthy by itself. I am strongly considering nominating the entire series for a Hugo, however.

And, indeed, that hints at one of my misgivings about the Hugo for Best Series. The most recent entry in a series may not be particularly representative of the series as a whole, nor as good as the rest of the series. The same comment, obviously, applies to Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, represented in 2016 by the rather pedestrian Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. I would say personally that both Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and Williams’ Praxis book are worthy, over all, of a Best Series Hugo, but that the best time to award them that Hugo has passed. (Which, to be sure, is primarily a function of this being a brand new award.)

At any rate, I was wondering what the possible candidates for Best Series, eligible in 2016, might be, and I was delighted to find that JJ, over at File 770, had done the heavy lifting, producing this page with a good long list of potential eligible series: http://file770.com/?p=30940.

Of those my personal favorites are:

Dread Empire’s Fall, by Walter Jon Williams (note that JJ lists Impersonations, the 2016 entry, as a novella, though it seems more of a short novel to me, and Jonathan Strahan tells me it's about 55,000 words long)

The Vorkosigan Series, by Lois McMaster Bujold

The World of Five Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Expanse, by James S. A. Corey

The Fairyland Books, by Catherynne S. Valente

The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross

The Liaden Universe, by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee

The RCN Books (Leary/Mundy), by David Drake

Riverside, by Ellen Kushner

Temeraire, by Naomi Novik

Thessaly, by Jo Walton

And immediately I see a problem – common to series, I think. While I’ve read and enjoyed many books in each of these series, I’ve fallen behind in many of them. I didn’t even know there were new entries in Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series or David Drake’s RCN books. (And, hey, speaking of problems with the Best Series Hugo, does Delia Sherman get a Hugo too if the Riverside series wins, as she co-wrote one of the major novels in that series, The Fall of the Kings?) Which, by the way, isn’t a bad thing from my point of view – I’ll be glad to grab the new books in both of those series.

There’s also a big difference in the types of these series. Some comprise several books with a fairly coherent story arc: certainly Jo Walton’s Thessaly books are a pretty tight trilogy; and the Temeraire and Expanse series, a bit more loosely, are still pretty coherent. Some represent mostly just a universe in which to set stories, with perhaps some sub-arcs: the Liaden books, the RCN books, the Vorkosigan books, for example. Dread Empire’s Fall is an original closely unified trilogy, followed by two much shorter pendants (one about each of the two main characters of the original trilogy). I suppose this isn't really a fatal problem – the voters can judge for themselves how to evaluate each of these types of series.

To be honest, I’m not sure what, or even if, I’ll nominate. I will see if I can catch up in a couple of the series I like but am behind in. There’s a good chance I’ll nominate Kushner’s series, because I think it deserves the attention. Beyond that, I just don’t know. I have enjoyed books in each of the series I listed – I wouldn’t be bothered by any of them winning a Hugo (though many of them – not that this is a bad thing, mind you – represent lighter entertainment than we often think of for the Hugos – possibly this is partly the nature of long series.)

Best YA Novel

This potential new award, as I mentioned, would not be a Hugo, but would be administered and awarded by the World Science Fiction Society. For this year, I have little to say – I really haven’t read enough books in this category to make any ruling or recommendations. I can recommend a look at the Locus Recommendation list, which includes a section on YA novels: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2017/01/2016-locus-recommended-reading-list/. I will say that I’m intrigued by the presence of Alastair Reynolds’ Revenger, which I didn’t know was YA. And I’m sure that many of these books are very good work indeed – but I haven’t read them, so further deponent sayeth not.

Dramatic Presentation

To my mind, this is one of those years in which the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, should be awarded by acclamation, to Arrival, an excellent film based on one of the very best SF stories of all time, Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”. Of course, being based on a good story doesn’t guarantee a good film (as those who have seen the movie version of Nightfall can testify, or so I am given to understand) – but Arrival is a very good film (if not, to my mind, quite as good as the original story, which is hardly a complaint, as the original story is so great).

Beyond that, I will say that I enjoyed Rogue One, but didn’t love it – it will probably get a nomination, and deservedly enough I suppose, but it would be a disgrace if it won. I have seen suggestions that Hidden Figures could be nominated – that seems silly to me, but I suppose it would get the Apollo 13 exception. (If so, can I nominate Michael Chabon’s Moonglow for Best Novel?) I don’t really have any other obvious candidates.

As for Short Form, I don’t watch Doctor Who so I’m not allowed to nominate. (Joke!) Actually, I don’t watch that much TV – I just started on The Magicians, which I am enjoying so far, and I suspect I would like The Expanse, and I know there’s lots of other cool stuff out there. But I haven’t seen enough to judge.

Hugo Nomination Thoughts: Best Novella (Revised)

[This post is a revised version of my previous post on potential novella nominees, reflecting questions about the eligibility of a couple of my suggestions, as well as reflecting my reading three more highly recommended novellas.]

Novella

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, by Kij Johnson (Tor.com Books)

“The Vanishing Kind”, by Lavie Tidhar (F&SF, July/August)

“Lazy Dog Out”, by Suzanne Palmer (Asimov’s, April/May)

“Maggots”, by Nina Allan (Five Stories High)

The Iron Tactician, by Alastair Reynolds (NewCon Press)

The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle (Tor.com Books)

The Last Days of New Paris, by China Mieville (Del Rey)

Penric’s Mission, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum Literary Agency) [technically just slightly too long to be eligible in the Novella category]

Technologies of the Self, by Haris A. Durani (Brain Mill Books)

The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde (Tor.com Books) [technically a novelette at some 16,900 words, though also eligible in Novella]

In this category, there are only two stories included in my book – that’s always the way, with novellas – they take up so much space that I can only fit a couple per year. The top five stories listed will almost certainly be on my Hugo nomination ballot. That said, there are a few significant novellas I have not yet read, so there is some room for change.  But to quickly cover my putative nominees:

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a truly lovely story, taking its inspiration and setting from H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, but more importantly, written as well as the work of the writer Lovecraft was under the influence of when he wrote his story: Lord Dunsany. The title character is a professor at a women’s college who must chase after a student who has foolishly run away with a man from our world.

“The Vanishing Kind” is dark noir set in an alternate England, under the sway of a Nazi government, having lost World War II. A German screenwriter comes to London partly in pursuit of an actress who had briefly been his lover, only to find her involved in some very scary things – drugs, sex-trafficking, murder – not to mention hidden Jews.

“Lazy Dog Out” is traditional SF adventure, and lots of fun, about a space tug pilot on a moon of a colony planet, who gets stuck in the middle of a nasty plot involving framing some unfortunates for the murder of some visiting aliens.

“Maggots” is a long story about a young man from the North of England who becomes convinced that his Aunt, after a mysterious disappearance and reappearance, has been replaced by something alien. This ends up messing up his relationship with his girlfriend, and he ends up in London, tracking down hints of other people who’ve had similar experiences as his – which leads him to a spooky house where he encounters something really scary, as well as learning a lot about his Aunt that he hadn’t known.

The Iron Tactician is the latest Merlin story from Alastair Reynolds, set in a far future in which humanity is threatened with destruction by Berserker-like robots called Huskers. This story, set more or less to the side of the main action, has Merlin encountering a ship destroyed by the Huskers, with one survivor, who leads him to a system riven by war, which may have a syrinx to replace Merlin’s decaying one. The story truly turns on the nature of the AI which one side of the war has used to plan their campaigns, the Iron Tactician, and on its real nature and motivations. The story starts a bit slow but is resolved really effectively.

I’m not a horror fan, not a Lovecraft fan, which is one reason I resisted Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom. And it is Lovecraftian horror, though with a distinct twist. Still – not my favorite stuff – but I have to say this is a pretty strong story regardless. It’s set in New York in the ‘20s, about a black man, a bit of a con man, who becomes involved with a rich white man who believes he can summon the Old Ones from the depths – and so perhaps he can, but if he calls them will they do what he wants? And will Black Tom care? Solid work, and really well written in spots, but in spots written a bit carelessly, as if it needed one more draft.

The Last Days of New Paris is subtitled “A Novella”, so I list it here. Its main part is perhaps 39,000 words, which qualifies it as a novella, but there is a long section of endnotes, which brings it to well over 45,000 words, so I’ll leave the question of its eligibility for the Best Novella Hugo to others. But it’s very interesting, set in an alternate Paris during and after World War II. In this Paris a curious weapon has brought Surrealist art to life, with ambiguous effects, and Thibaut, the main character, along with an American spy named Sam, negotiates the city and the Nazis’ efforts to use their art as weapons in an attempt at, perhaps, escape – or, perhaps, an encounter with some arguably more threatening than the Nazis. As I said, it’s pretty interesting, but I thought it perhaps a bit too much a really neat idea looking for a story and not really finding one. (To be fair, there really is a story here, just not one I was entranced by. But, the central idea is very cool indeed.)

I ought to say something as well about the other two novellas I mention. Technologies of the Self is about Joe (real name Jihad), a Dominican-Pakistani-American growing up in New York, and a faithful Muslim in post-9/11 New York, also an engineering student, a young man a bit shy around woman, proud of his Dominican heritage and his family’s long history of exile. The SFnal part concerns his Uncle Tomas, particularly his repeated encounters with a creature he thinks is a demon called Santiago (but who might be a strange time traveler, or a person from a parallel world, or all of the above). Cool and involving work about the main character’s identity (or identities). And The Jewel and Her Lapidary also has a cool central fantastical idea: a valley protected from outsiders by powerful jewels that are wielded by the ruling family (“Jewels”) but controlled by Lapidaries who each bond to a single Jewel. This story concerns the betrayal and fall of the valley, leaving one surviving Jewel and her Lapidary, both fairly insignificant young women. They must find a way to resist the invaders, and at least to prevent them using the valley’s mines to supply jewels to allow them to cement and extend their conquest.

[I had previously mentioned Penric’s Mission as a potential Novella nominee, and my favorite so far of Bujold’s three self-published novellas set in her World of the Five Gods. Penric is a young man who in the first story became the host to a demon (that he calls “Desdemona”), which makes him a sorcerer. In this story he travels to another country to try to recruit a popular General for the Duke he’s working for, and ends up enmeshed in local politics, with the General blinded, and Penric trying to help, and falling for the General’s widowed sister in the process. Fun stuff, with some interesting magic. However, I am told that this story is 300 words too long to be eligible for Best Novella.]

Hugo Nomination Thoughts: Short Fiction: Short Story

Short Story

“Empty Planets”, by Rahul Kanakia (Interzone, January/February)

“Red in Tooth and Cog”, by Cat Rambo (F&SF, March/April)

“Red King”, by Craig de Lancey (Lightspeed, March)

“That Game We Played During the War”, by Carrie Vaughn (Tor.com, March)

“All That Robot Shit”, by Rich Larson (Asimov’s, September)

“Openness”, by Alexander Weinstein (Beloit Fiction Journal, Spring)

“Between Nine and Eleven”, by Adam Roberts (Crises and Conflicts)

“Gorse Daughter, Sparrow Son”, by Alena Indigo Anne Sullivan (Strange Horizons, August 1^st and 8^th)

“In Skander, for a Boy”, by Chaz Brenchley (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 16)

“Laws of Night and Silk”, by Seth Dickinson (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 26)

“Ozymandias”, by Karin Lowachee (Bridging Infinity)

“A Fine Balance”, by Charlotte Ashley (F&SF, November/December)

“Rager in Space”, by Charlie Jane Anders (Bridging Infinity)

“Innumerable Glittering Lights”, by Rich Larson (Clockwork Phoenix 5)

“Dress Rehearsal”, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Now We Are Ten)

“Something Happened Here, but We’re Not Quite Sure What it Was”, by Paul McAuley (Tor.com, July)

“I’ve Come to Marry the Princess”, by Helena Bell (Lightspeed, November)

“A Non-Hero’s Guide to the Road of Monsters”, by A. T. Greenblatt (Mothership Zeta, July)

“Things With Beards”, by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld, June)

“The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory”, by Carlos Hernandez (The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria)

Lots of stories listed there, and they are all good stuff. Noticeable is, of course, Rich Larson, who really had an excellent year. I think there’s a nice mix, too, af fantasy and SF, some funny stories, some quite dark, hard SF, far future SF, action, philosophy. I’m leaning towards the top five listed stories (though, really, as with the other categories, all these stories are worthy) for my nomination ballot. To consider those a bit further:

“Empty Planets” is an achingly beautiful and rather melancholy story set in the very far future, with a diminishing human race realizing it is alone in the universe. The story focuses on two people from the younger generation, one of who, a “recontactee” from a generation ship, looks for evidence of intelligence among distant gas clouds.

“Red in Tooth and Cog” is a sometimes whimsical, clever, and also quite affecting, story about abandoned robots in a city park who have created their own ecology. The combination of sweetness and sharp imagination really grabbed me.

“RedKing” tells of the title computer game, that causes its users to become killers, and a “code monkey” whose job is to analyze the software, both to understand what makes is dangerous, and to find evidence against the maker – but that job is by its nature dangerous. It’s a slick, exciting, and scary story.

“That Game We Played During the War” is a moving piece set in the aftermath of a war between a telepathic race and non-telepaths, and two people who met during the war, and played chess together, working out how to play even while one is a telepath, and how they try to come to terms with peace.

“All That Robot Shit” is (I believe) Rich Larson’s preferred title for the story published in Asimov’s as “All That Robot …”. It’s about a robot and a human after an apocalypse of some sort which means there probably aren’t many more humans – and about the robot’s cooperation with the human – but more importantly his love for another robot. 

Old Bestseller: Champion's Choice, by John R. Tunis

Old Bestseller: Champion's Choice, by John R. Tunis

a review by Rich Horton

Until quite recently, books for children (and "juveniles") were not considered for bestseller lists, so I don't know where John R. Tunis' books might have ranked. But he was a very popular writer of sports stories for young readers, and indeed my mother (whose Master's degree was in what she called "kidlit") recommended his work to me when I was a kid. I remember reading his baseball novel Highpockets with enjoyment. In this context I can mention that a subthread of this blog's look at "Old Bestsellers" is occasional consideration of popular fiction for young readers -- in the past I've looked at a "Roy Rockwood" book, at a Tom Corbett: Space Cadet book, at a house-written book called Alice Blythe Somewhere in England (a WWI book), at a Horatio Alger book, and at YA SF by Sonya Dorman and by Richard Elam.

John R. Tunis (1889-1975) came from a wealthy background, somewhat diminished when his father's family disowned him for marrying a waiter's daughter, and indeed refused to come to his funeral, when John was only 7. John was still able to attend Harvard, though he later wrote an article critical of the Harvard education. After WWI, Tunis moved to Europe and became a sportswriter. He was also a very accomplished tennis player, once playing a doubles match against Suzanne Lenglen, one of the all time great woman players. Back in the US, he freelanced for a wide variety of major magazines, such as Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote a regular column on sports for the New Yorker. He was also a sports announcer on radio, particularly for tennis, and was part of the first TransAtlantic tennis broadcast.

His first novel was American Girl (1929 or 1930, sources differ), described as a thinly-disguised and somewhat unsympathetic portrayal of the great tennis player Helen Wills Moody. This became a movie in 1951, called Hard, Fast, and Beautiful, directed by Ida Lupino. This was his only novel marketed for adults, though Tunis apparently objected when Harcourt Brace wanted to publish his next novel, Iron Duke (1938) as a juvenile. This was a new category (Tunis is sometimes credited with popularizing it). Be that as it may, his remaining 23 novels were all marketed for children. The bulk of them were about baseball, though a few concerned football, basketball, tennis, or track, and there were even a couple not really about sports. Tunis' books were noticeable for promoting equal participation for minorities (particular African Americans and Jews), and more generally for promoting sportsmanship, and for a skepticism about the professionalism of sports.

(I'll add that though I didn't read a ton of sports novels as a kid, I do remember a few -- besides Tunis' Highpockets, there was at least one of the Chip Hilton novels by Clair Bee, and Jack Laflin's football novel Throw the Long Bomb! Are sports novels for the YA market still a thing?)

Given that tennis was Tunis' main sport as a participant, and apparently the sport he was best known for announcing, it's a bit surprising that only two of his books were about tennis, both about the women's game. One of course was his first, adult, novel, American Girl, and the other was the book at hand, Champion's Choice (1940). Interestingly, though I haven't read American Girl, it's easy to see, based on descriptions of that book and of the movie loosely based on it, that Champion's Choice has a lot of similarity to that book (and some important differences as well, to be sure). (Indeed, some sources incorrectly cite Champion's Choice as the basis for the movie Hard, Fast, and Beautiful.) It can be argued that it is a reworking of the earlier novel for a younger audience.

Champion's Choice opens in Millville, MA, with young Janet Johnson and her slightly older friend Rodney Davis happening across a tennis exhibition. Janet becomes intrigued with the sport, and as her family can't affort membership at a tennis club, her father paints their garage door with targets so that she can practice hitting a tennis ball. She becomes a very accurate hitter, and something of a prodigy, and gets sponsored by a wealthier family to become a tennis club member. Soon she is competing at the US Junior Championships, and though she loses (in the final) to an older and better coached girl, she attracts the attention of a coach.

Her game improves rapidly (i.e., she learns to hit a backhand) and before long she's competing in the US Championships, and, surprisingly, at Wimbledon. Again she loses only in the final, and some advice from her old friend Rodney Davis, now a young businessman based in London, helps her over the psychological hump. Things progress rapidly, and in no time she's the best tennis player in the world, winning both the US Championships and Wimbledon several times in succession. (These details are in some ways consistent with the career of Helen Wills.) There are a few bumps in her road -- her father dies, and her mother suffers a severe illness, which causes Janet to make a dramatic flight in a private plane to the hospital in Millville, in between the semifinals and final of the US Championships. 

Rodney, who has suffered business reversals, moves to the Far East, but not before warning Janet that the way she has learned to act to be a "champion", and to maintain her image and superiority, is harming her character. She is not too receptive to this criticism, and in the final sequence we see her in London, once again defending her Wimbledon title, and dating a dull but eligible Baronet. Then Rodney returns, and Janet is faced with a wrenching choice ...

What does she choose? Well, I think you know. That's the sort of resolution we expect from a 1940 novel, and it is kind of jarring. Indeed, the novel has a series of shortcuts -- Janet's path to the top is implausibly easy, stopped only by initial losses in finals -- as if she is never less than second best. Other things are overly coincidental -- her mother's illness, Rodney's schedule, etc. The final crisis, timed right at the Wimbledon final, seems really contrived. But it must also be said that the book is continually readable. The tennis scenes are generally plausible and well-described, And Janet's character holds together well. It is easy to believe in her, and in her reactions to celebrity. In the end, this is a pretty good YA sports book, not a great one. But maybe as good as we might have hoped.

Hugo Nomination Thoughts: Short Fiction: Novelette

Novelette

“Everybody From Themis Sends Letters Home”, by Genevieve Valentine (Clarkesworld, October)

“Project Empathy”, by Dominica Phetteplace (Asimov’s, March)

“The Visitor From Taured”, by Ian R. MacLeod (Asimov’s, September)

“The Bridge of Dreams”, by Gregory Feeley (Clarkesworld, March)

“Told by an Idiot”, by K. J. Parker (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 4)

“Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshipers of Yul-Katan”, by Maggie Clark (Analog, April)

“Blood Grains Speak Through Memories”, by Jason Sanford (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, July 31)

“Fifty Shades of Grays”, by Steven Barnes (Lightspeed, June)

“The Plague Givers”, by Kameron Hurley (Patreon; Uncanny, May)

“Alone, on the Wind”, by Karla Schmidt (Clarkesworld, August)

The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde (Tor.com Books)

Again, the top five listed here will likely make up my ballot, though any of the others I list would be wholly worthy nominees.

Quick word count note to begin – according to my word counts a few short stories on my (upcoming) list are also eligible in novelette, and a couple of them are right at 7500 words – the boundary between short story and novelette. So those stories may well be listed as novelettes in other’s lists. (Actually, I’m planning a post on the whole notion of word count boundaries for award categories, and on the history of designating stories as “short story” vs. “novelette” vs. “novella” vs. “short novel” etc.)

Apropos to some extent of that, I’ll note that two of the novellas I had listed in my previous post on potential novella nominees technically fit in other categories, and I thank Greg Hullender (and others) for bringing this to my attention. Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric’s Mission is just barely too long for the category (300 words – such a small margin that I bet a Hugo Administrator could get away with letting the nomination stand if that were to happen, not that I’m advocating that – just note that in the pre-digital era voters would very likely not know the word count to such precision), and The Jewel and Her Lapidary is technically novelette length (though close enough (16900 words) to novella that it could be listed in that category). I have also been reminded (as I had already acknowledged) that there are some pretty worthwhile novellas I hadn’t yet read – so I’m reading some more novellas, and I’ll make a revised post sometime soon.

Anyway, to the novelettes:

“Everybody From Themis Sends Letters Home” is a really moving story about a group of “beta-testers” for a new virtual reality game who think they are the first colonists on a planet of Proxima Centauri. The braids of the story encompass their experiences on this fictional planet, their experiences “back home” (especially as they have been recruited from the prison population), and the corporate ethical missteps (to put it mildly) surrounding the whole project – and, too, behind it all, is a sort of paean (or so I read it) to the love of story. (I really love Genevieve Valentine’s work, which I find consistently as emotionally engaging as that of any writer.)

Dominica Phetteplace is a fairly new writer, who has been impressive from the getgo, but “Project Empathy” is the first story from her that really wowed me. It’s the first of a series of stories (all so far in Asimov’s, all with titles beginning “Project”) that are going to be a “braided novel”. This story concerns a high school age woman from the economically depressed suburbs of San Francisco who gets a sort of commercial scholarship to a school in the city, in the process agreeing to host an AI that will make her a better worker at the coffee shop/restaurant sponsoring her scholarship. The AI, we soon learn, has its own agenda … and the agendas of various AIs turn out to be a significant narrative impetus in the larger novel.

“The Visitor From Taured” is about a man who is obsessed with proving the existence of parallel

worlds. The story is told by his college friend, a woman who becomes an expert in 20^th Century books (books not being a thing anymore in this future), enough so that (fortuitously) she ends up being able to help him finance the necessary experiment. The story is told beautifully, and resolves to a certain bittersweet melancholy but not at all despairing mood that (to me, anyway) seems characteristic of MacLeod. It’s in a way another story about the SF dream, and its failure. But that might be me imposing my personal obsessions on it. Anyway, it’s really fine work.

“The Bridge of Dreams” is very far future exotic hard SF story, intriguingly Norse-flavored, with a pair of posthumans summoned from the outer planets to the “Sunlit Realms” (the Inner Solar System, particularly Venus) to intervene in a political struggle between “kobolds” and latter day Earth people. This is SF at its weirdest, legitimately strange and convincingly not just contemporary people in funny suits.

“Told By an Idiot” is set in a perhaps slightly alternate Elizabethan England, and is stuffed with neatly turned Shakespearean allusions, in telling of a lucky man (owner of a playhouse), who happens to acquire a bottle that just might have a demon inside it. As clever and knowing as we expect from Parker, and of course as cynically funny, and bitterly logical.

I mentioned the useful weirdness of Greg Feeley’s “The Bridge of Dreams”, and in that context I ought to mention some other stories on this list that are really weird – “Blood Grains Speak Through Memories”, “The Plague Givers”, and “Alone, on the Wind”, particularly. All, to some degree or another, might be called “Science Fantasy”, in that they use both SFnal and Fantastical imagery. (Mind you, “The Bridge of Dreams” is most definitely SF, while “The Plague Givers”, I would say, falls on the Fantasy side of the divide, with the other two stories perhaps straddling the border.) I think there’s something there – perhaps a Clarke’s Law derivation – a really useful way of depicting the far future is to acknowledge that to us in its distant past the far future will probably really seem like fantasy.

A Forgotten SF Novel: The Time-Lockers, by Wallace West

A Forgotten SF Novel: The Time-Lockers, by Wallace West

a review by Rich Horton

Back to a very obscure SF novel by a pretty obscure SF writer. Wallace West (1900-1980) was a lawyer, public relations man, and apparently an expert on pollution. He wrote SF beginning in the late '20s, with his last story appearing in Fantastic in 1978 (so I surely read it, though I don't recall it). Really, West had more or less stopped writing by the late '60s. He only published a few novels, mostly expansions or fixups of earlier shorter pieces. I had seen a couple of stories from early '50s magazines, and thought them surprisingly decent work. So I picked up this book, The Time-Lockers, hoping for the fairly unpretentious entertainment West has given me in other stories. (The title, by the way, is given without the hyphen on the cover of my edition, but that's surely incorrect, as the title page and the original short story, as well as references in the text, all include the hyphen).

(cover by Ed Emshwiller)

My copy is an ex-library edition, probably a first (I doubt there was a second), from the very low-end imprint Avalon, in 1964. The cover is by Ed Emshwiller, and it's two color, no doubt one of the ways Avalon cut costs. The novel is based on a novelette that appeared in Science Fiction Quarterly for August 1956. (Emshwiller also did the cover for this version, and it's gorgeous, much better than the book!)

The novel was a grave disappointment to me, despite a promising central idea. The following review will be full of spoilers -- apologies for that, but I don't think this is a book many people will encounter. By all means skip the rest of the review if you are spoiler-phobic and think you might want to read the book. Short, spoiler-free version: it's about a lobbyist working for the government of the parallel world Tempora, which operates the "time-lockers" by which Americans can trade boring time on Earth for time in Tempora. What Tempora wants from this is one  mystery of the novel: others concern the other aliens interfering with Earth, and the Mob's nefarious plans for the USA. Add in a wacky hypnosis project, and a love affair with an unconventional woman who might just be a Temporan spy -- lots of actually somewhat promising ideas that just never really make a whole lot of sense.

SPOILERS follow.

The book opens with Arnie Davis, a public relations man (and lobbyist), heading home from work one day on the train. He passes the time on the long commute by depositing it in a "time-locker" -- what's meant by this is unclear (partly because it's a mystery to be resolved later), but at first it seems that you give up your unwanted time on Earth in exchange for time spent later on a planet called Tempora, which seems to be an alternate version of Earth, slightly out of phase with our time. What the Temporans get out of this deal is, as I mentioned above, quite unclear.

Arnie is going home to his wife Muriel, who is beautiful but frigid. He is dreading a dinner party with their new neighbors, Dr. Northrup, a clergyman, and his wife Priscilla. But things pick up when Arnie meets Priscilla: she's beautiful, a bit exotic, very intelligent, and unconventional. There seems an immediate mutual attraction, though while it's easy to see what Arnie sees in Priscilla it's hard to see what she sees in him: an overweight middle-aged man in a drone-like job.

We soon realize that one of Arnie's main accounts is with the Temporan government, to support their interest in keeping the Portals between Tempora and Earth open. Soon he is off to Washington D. C. to lobby Senator LeFevre to push for the Department of State to take over administration of the Time-Lockers from the Department of Commerce. Arnie has to act delicately -- it seems that the whole Portal system is under threat from people like Dr. Northrup, who are convinced that the Temporans are immoral, and from the Mob, who are angling to take over the U. S. government and fear Temporan technology. Another angle is from Arnie's mysterious friend Eddie, a cook at a hamburger joint in D. C., who talks as if he is a long-lived alien manipulating humanity for its own good, and who feeds Arnie (a frustrated writer) ideas for SF stories.

This is all weird and unconvincing enough, and a bit all over the map. Then Arnie, after a threat from the Mob, sets up a visit to Tempora, with himself and Muriel, the Senator and his wife, and Priscilla (Dr. Northrup is refused an entry visa by Tempora). Once on Tempora, things start happening. Arnie and Priscilla get together for good, which is fine with Muriel, who has found her repressed artist side, as well as a mysterious faux-Spanish tourist to keep her sexually satisfied. They encounter a brilliant scientist as well, and then there are the strange dreams they have, which eventually reveal the real reason the Temporans have for maintaining the Portal to Earth

There follows the expected Mob takeover, which is facilitated by an animated character nameed Wiley Pan who hypnotizes movie audiences. The Portals are closed, but the Senator manages to find a way back to Earth. Meanwhile Arnie has figured out that much of the time Earthmen spend on Tempora is spent doing hard labor to restore the Temporan society, devastated by a nuclear war. But this is good, really, because Earth people have been ruined by automation -- the honest work is good for them. Also, the hard work has helped Arnie lose a lot of weight, which makes him a better match for Priscilla.

The resolution involves some derring-do when Arnie gets back to Earth, to undo the hypnosis, and to return human society to something better. Meanwhile, Tempora needs improvement as well -- they've been stealing tech from Earth for so long they've lost their way, as well. And then there's the question of Eddie's people, and their meddling. And the question of Priscilla's real identity -- which is an implausible last second pasted-in addition.

There's really too much going on here. Some of the ideas are cute (I liked the time-locker concept, in particular), and some are just too silly. The romance between Arnie and Priscilla is almost interesting, except at the beginning it's undermotivated and implausible. Arnie's character changes as the plot needs. I thought the book showed every sign of slapdash inflation of a tighter original novelette -- so I decided to get a copy of the original magazine in which it appeared, and compare ...

(cover by Ed Emshwiller, courtesy of Galactic
Central and Phil Stephenson-Payne)

So, "The Time-Lockers" appeared in the August 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. It's about 11000 words long. And it's much tighter and more sensible than the novel. It opens much as the novel does, with Arnie on his way home to Muriel, dreading the meeting with the Northrups, only to be enchanted by Priscilla. The crisis at the office is limited to the Temporans complaining about forged time-locker receipts, and also about the lack of women coming to Tempora. Arnie's idea (also in the novel) is to open up lockers in the suburbs, and by way of introduction he arranges for Muriel and Priscilla to accompany him to Tempora. (There is no Senator LeFevre, nor any "Eddie" the alien fry cook.) On Tempora, as in the novel, Muriel takes up with a mobster pretending to be a foreigner, while Arnie and Priscilla get together, and Arnie figures out the secret of the time-lockers -- much as in the novel, they are really a way for Tempora to get labor from Earth people to help rebuild their nuclear-ravaged society. There is no Mob plot to take over the government, and no hypnotizing Wiley Pen. Instead, Arnie decides to stay on Tempora, doing honest work, with Priscilla -- who is (as seemed obvious in the novel until a pasted-in alternate history for her was added) a Temporan agent. It isn't great work, but it's clever and holds together OK.

It turns out that the Wiley Pen stuff (about taking over the government by hypnosis) is folded in from a much earlier story, "The Phantom Dictator" (Astounding, August 1935), while Eddie the alien fry cook seems to be from a story called "BEMA" (Science Fiction Quarterly, February 1957). I don't think West intended any connection between the three stories until it came time to come up with 50,000 words or so that Avalon Books would publish as a novel. A pretty clear example of the sort of mess careless "fixups" could be.

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, Short Fiction: Novellas

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, Short Fiction

It’s that time again, right?

Here’s my thoughts on my Hugo ballot for short fiction. In another post I’ll discuss – less comprehensively – the other categories. As usual, I’m better informed about short fiction than anything else.

I should mention going in that there have been some significant changes to the Hugos. There is a new Hugo Category, for Best Series. (I don’t like the idea much, but I’ll play along.) There is a new non-Hugo, for Best Young Adult Book. There are changes to the voting process: now there will be 6 nominees instead of 5 (though each nominator still just votes for 5), and the 5% rule (that each story on the final ballot must appear on 5% of the nominating ballots) has been eliminated. And the EPH process for counting the final votes has been approved. I won’t try to explain that – there are much clearer explanations than I could offer readily available.

One more note to begin with – though I participate with a lot of enjoyment in Hugo nomination and voting every year, I am philosophically convinced that there is no such thing as the “best” story – “best” piece of art, period. This doesn’t mean I don’t think some art is better than other art – I absolutely do think that. But I think that at the top, there is no way to draw fine distinctions, to insist on rankings. Different stories do different things, all worthwhile. I can readily change my own mind about which stories I prefer – it might depend on how important to me that “thing” they do is (and of course most stories do multiple different things!) – it might depend on my mood that day – it might depend on something new I’ve read that makes me think differently about a certain subject. Bottom line is, in the lists below, I’ll suggest somewhere between 5 and 8 or so stories that might be on my final ballot. Those will be in no particular order. And the other stories I list will all really be about as good – and I might change my mind before my ballot goes in.

The other obvious point to make is that the great bulk of these stories are those that I included in my yearly anthology. There are a few that didn’t make it, for reasons of length, contractual situation, balance, or even that I might have missed a story by the deadline for the book.

Novella

“The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe”, by Kij Johnson (Tor.com Books)

“The Vanishing Kind”, by Lavie Tidhar (F&SF, July/August)

“Lazy Dog Out”, by Suzanne Palmer (Asimov’s, April/May)

“Maggots”, by Nina Allan (Five Stories High)

Penric’s Mission, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum Literary Agency)

Technologies of the Self, by Haris A. Durani (Brain Mill Books)

The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde (Tor.com Books)

In this category, there are only two stories included in my book – that’s always the way, with novellas – they take up so much space that I can only fit a couple per year. The top five stories listed will almost certainly be on my Hugo nomination ballot. That said, there are a few significant novellas I have not yet read, so there is some room for change.  But to quickly cover my putative nominees:

“The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe” is a truly lovely story, taking its inspiration and setting from H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, but more importantly, written as well as the work of the writer Lovecraft was under the influence of when he wrote his story: Lord Dunsany. The title character is a professor at a women’s college who must chase after a student who has foolishly run away with a man from our world.

“The Vanishing Kind” is dark noir set in an alternate England, under the sway of a Nazi government, having lost World War II. A German screenwriter comes to London partly in pursuit of an actress who had briefly been his lover, only to find her involved in some very scary things – drugs, sex-trafficking, murder – not to mention hidden Jews.

“Lazy Dog Out” is traditional SF adventure, and lots of fun, about a space tug pilot on a moon of a colony planet, who gets stuck in the middle of a nasty plot involving framing some unfortunates for the murder of some visiting aliens.

“Maggots” is a long story about a young man from the North of England who becomes convinced that his Aunt, after a mysterious disappearance and reappearance, has been replaced by something alien. This ends up messing up his relationship with his girlfriend, and he ends up in London, tracking down hints of other people who’ve had similar experiences as his – which leads him to a spooky house where he encounters something really scary, as well as learning a lot about his Aunt that he hadn’t known.

And finally, Penric’s Mission is my favorite so far of Bujold’s three self-published novellas set in her World of the Five Gods. Penric is a young man who in the first story became the host to a demon (that he calls “Desdemona”), which makes him a sorcerer. In this story he travels to another country to try to recruit a popular General for the Duke he’s working for, and ends up enmeshed in local politics, with the General blinded, and Penric trying to help, and falling for the General’s widowed sister in the process. Fun stuff, with some interesting magic.