Hugo Nomination Thoughts, 2019: Summary Post

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, 2019

Here’s my summary of my thoughts about potential Hugo nominees. This year I’ll be a lot briefer than the past couple of years, primarily because I haven’t read as many novels as in past years. Indeed, these are mostly looks at the short fiction. I make a few remarks about other categories, but for the most part (Fan Writer, Short Form Editor, and Campbell perhaps excepted), I don't have terribly strong opinions on most of them.

First, my obligatory “Philosophy” disclaimer – 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. And one more thing – I claim no special authority of my own. I have my own tastes, and indeed my own prejudices. So too does everyone else. I have blind spots, and I have things that affect me more profoundly than they might affect others. I’ve also read a lot of SF – and that changes my reactions to stories as well – and not in a way that need be considered privileged.

Anway, as ever, in the lists below, I’ll suggest somewhere between 3 and 8 or so items 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.

I've alread made posts about Novella, Novelette, and Short Story -- below are links to those posts.

Novella

Novella Recommendations

Novelette

Novelette Recommendations

Short Story

Short Story Recommendations

Other Categories:

Best Novel

Every year I mention that I haven’t read a lot of novels. I’m going to mention these novels as reasonable candidates, and then admit that I really truly haven’t read enough novels to make a strong recommendation. Two of these are first novels that I really like – but while certainly strong indicators of the talents of their writers, may not be quite Hugo material.

Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee

Pride and Prometheus, by John Kessel

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewomen, by Theodora Goss

The Calculating Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Robots of Gotham, by Todd McAulty

The Quantum Magician, by Derek Künsken

The Nebula nomination list includes Kowal’s novel and several I haven’t gotten to: The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang, Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, Blackfish City, by Sam Miller, Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse; and Witchmark, by C. L. Polk. The Novik and Miller novels at least have been on my TBR list for some time – the Kuang novel also seems impressive. I have to admit I haven’t even heard of the Polk novel (my bad, I suppose, but there are so many …), and reviews of Roanhorse’s novel seemed to suggest “Promising first novel, but not really award material”, but obviously, not having read it, I can’t say more.

Best Series

Here’s JJ’s list of eligible series posted at File 770: http://file770.com/best-series-hugo-eligible-series-from-2018/. Much props to JJ for the tireless work of maintain this list, but … I think the list itself speaks to problems with the whole concept of this award.

I was skeptical about this award from the start, and I don’t think its history helps it. I’m really bothered by the way adding one short story to a very old series, for example, makes it again eligible (as with Earthsea, objectively by far the most worthy and influential eligible series, but does “Firelight”, beautiful as it absolutely is, really mean we should give it an award now?) Also, the endless parsing of “series” vs. “sub-series”. The way an award can be for, really, semi-random assemblages of related works. I could go on and on.

Best YA Novel

This is the first official year for this new award, I believe. (Wasn’t last year a trial run, that is to say, a Special Convention Award, not part of the official process? [Martin informs me in the comments that in fact last year was the first year for the official award, but that it now has a name, the Lodestar.) It is not a Hugo, but it will be administered and awarded by the World Science Fiction Society using essentially the same process as for the Hugos (and the Campbell). I can only suggest a look at the YA category in the Locus Recommended Reading list: https://locusmag.com/2019/02/2018-locus-recommended-reading-list/. I do think this award is worthwhile, but I quite honestly have read no YA work from 2018.

Best Graphic Story

I don't read much in this category, but I thought I should mention a shorter piece I liked a great deal, "Resolution", by Clifford V. Johnson, from the MIT Press anthology Twelve Tomorrows.

Dramatic Presentation

Long Form

I don’t think there’s much suspense about what will win the Hugo this year, and I think Black Panther is a fine film that might very well be the right choice. Beyond that, I saw Annihilation, which was impressive but didn’t quite hold together for me. I’d say it’s worthy of a nomination. I saw Solo, which I enjoyed, but which I can’t call all that great. Perhaps Black Mirror: Bandersnatch? I haven’t seen enough of its permutations yet. And that’s about all I saw this year.

Short Form

As for Short Form, I watch relatively little TV. And that that I did watch was either non-SF, or not from 2018 (such as Black Mirror Season 4, which came out December 29, 2017).

Fan Categories

In the remaining categories (as, really, with all the categories except short fiction) I do want to emphasize what may be obvious – these are people and things that I personally enjoyed, but I know there’s a lot of excellent work I’ve missed. I’ll be nominating things that impressed me, but I’ll be glad to check out the stuff other people nominate.

Best Fan Writer

I’ll reiterate my admiration for John Boston and John O’Neill. John Boston’s most publicly available recent stuff is at Galactic Journey, where he reviews issues of Amazing from 55 years ago, month by month. (It will be noted, perhaps, that I also review issues of Amazing from the same period, at Black Gate.) John’s work there is linked by this tag: http://galacticjourney.org/tag/john-boston/.

As for John O’Neill, of course his central contribution is as editor of Black Gate, for which he writes a great deal of the content, often about, “vintage” books he’s found on Ebay or at conventions, and also about upcoming fantasy books.

Another Black Gate writer, and fan writer in general, who did great work last year was Steven Silver, particularly his “Birthday Reviews”.

I should also mention Charles Payseur, a very worthy Fan Writer nominee last year, whose Quick Sip reviews of short fiction should not be missed.

And as for myself, I too am a fan writer (at least my blog writing and my stuff for Black Gate qualifies, if perhaps not my work for Locus, which I guess is now officially professional). I was pretty proud of my writing last year. I would note in particular my reviews of old magazines at Black Gate, particularly Amazing and Fantastic in the Cele Goldsmith Lalli era, and my various reviews of Ace Doubles (and other SF) at my blog Strange at Ecbatan (rrhorton.blogspot.com) (and often linked from Black Gate.) The other thing I did this year at my blog was a set of “Birthday Reviews” of my own, inspired by Steven’s series, in which I tried to honor SF writers on their birthdays, either with reviews of their novels, or, particularly, with reviews of their short fiction.

Best Fanzine

As I did last year, I plan to nominate Black Gate, Galactic Journey, and Rocket Stack Rank for the Best Fanzine Hugo. I’m particularly partial in this context to Black Gate, primarily of course because I have been a contributor since the print days (issue #2 and most of the subsequent issues). Black Gate is notable for publishing a lot of content on a very wide variety of topics, from promoting new book releases to publishing occasional original and reprinted fiction to reviewing old issues of Galaxy (Matthew Wuertz) and Amazing/Fantastic/etc. (me) to intriguing posts about travel and architecture by Sean MacLachlan. Rocket Stack Rank and Galactic Journey are a bit more tightly focused: the former primarily reviews and rates short fiction, as well as assembling statistics about other reviewers (myself included) and their reactions to the stories; while the latter, as I mentioned above, is reviewing old SF magazines from 55 years past.

(Incidentally, Black Gate failed to get a Hugo nomination last year because of the new EPH algorithm for ranking nomination votes. I would suggest that possibly this was not an example of the algorithm really doing what it was designed for.)

Finally, I’ll mention the other SF-oriented site I read and enjoy regularly – File 770 (http://file770.com/ ), which is (deservedly) very well known, having been nominated for the Best Fanzine Hugo numerous times and having won some as well. 2018 was their 40^th Anniversary! 

Best Editor

For this year, I’d mainly like to suggest that Jonathan Strahan really deserves a Hugo. His work has been consistently excellent for years, and this year in particular is a significant year, as the last book in his “Infinity” series of original anthologies came out: Infinity’s End. And this book was particularly impressive, a really remarkable original anthology. He also does some editing for Tor.com, and among his many impressive acquisitions, Ian McDonald’s outstanding novella Time Was stands out. (This should not be taken as denying the excellent work of many others, such as John Joseph Adams, Neil Clarke, Sheila Williams, and C. C. Finlay, who will probably fill out the rest of my ballot – there are several more. (I am giving some precedence to editors whose magazines don’t have their own category, such as Adams, Williams, Clarke, and Finlay, or who do a lot of work in anthologies or other places (like Tor.com) which also don’t have categories. Semiprozine editors, excellent as many of them are, kind of get two bites at the apple.)

Best Related Work

I have two books to recommend. Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding is a really remarkable work, detailing the intersecting lives and careers of John W. Campbell, Jr., L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein. Exceptionally well researched, very well written – a tremendous contribution to the field. The other book is one I have a personal stake in – but I think it’s a very worthy nominee anyway. This is Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugos, which covers the history of the Hugos from 1953 through the end of the 20^th Century. Jo writes intelligently and charmingly about all the awards, particularly novel, and goes into detail about a number of the novels. She also included extended comments from the original online posts, with many contributors – but the main contributors, I say immodestly, were the late great Gardner Dozois and myself – both of us mostly discussing the short fiction. I was inordinately proud and thrilled to be a co-dedicatee with Gardner and with Kevin Standlee.

Campbell

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, also “Not a Hugo”. This is given to the best writer whose first professional publication in the SF or Fantasy field appeared in the past two years (2017 or 2018). Writertopia has a page, not guaranteed to be complete, with a list of eligible authors: http://www.writertopia.com/awards/campbell .

I went through that list and came up with the following writers who have done something that impressed me:

L. X. Beckett

R. S. Benedict

J. R. Dawson

Giovanni di Feo

Tonya Liburd

Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Cadwell Turnbull

D. A. Xiaolin Spires

Many of these were on my list last year – only Beckett and Turnbull are new to my list. Both published very impressive stories this year, as did Dawson and Benedict and Liburd. Prasad was my top choice last year, and while I thought her one story in 2018 not quite as strong as her 2017 stuff, her body of work is absolutely Campbell-worthy. As usual, I haven’t read novels by any of these – I know there are other writers with strong novels that I just haven’t read (Katherine Arden and Rivers Solomon, most obviously).

Hugo recommendations, 2019: Novella

Novella

I thought this was a strong year for novellas, but not, perhaps, quite as good as last year. I need to caution, however, that I have not yet read some significant novellas. These include Seanan McGuire’s Beneath the Sugar Sky, P. Djeli Clark’s The Black God’s Drums, and Greg Egan’s Phoresis. (Also, a couple of Nebula nominees that were not on my radar: Jonathan Brazee’s Fire Ant, and Kate Heartsfield’s Alice Payne Arrives.) I should also add one other option that I listed last year, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Prime Meridian, which may be officially eligible this year, not last year.

So, here’s my current list of candidates, which, as noted, might expand:

L. X. Beckett, “Freezing Rain, A Chance of Falling” (F&SF, 7-8/18)

Aliette de Bodard, The Tea Master and the Detective (Subterranean)

Greg Egan, “3-adica” (Asimov’s, 9-10/18)

David Gerrold and Ctein, “Bubble and Squeak” (Asimov’s, 5-6/18)             

Carolyn Ives Gilman, “Umbernight” (Clarkesworld, 2/18)

Ian McDonald, Time Was (Tor.com Publishing)

Kelly Robson, Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Tor.Com Publishing)

Juliette Wade, “The Persistence of Blood” (Clarkesworld, 3/18)  

Peter Watts, The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Tachyon)

Martha Wells, Artificial Condition (Tor.Com Publishing)

Of these stories – none of which would disappoint me if they won the Hugo – my four favorites, in no particular order, are:

1.       Ian McDonald, Time Was – A lovely timeslip piece, about a man who discovers an interesting letter inside an obscure books of poems, and in his research finds evidence of the poet and his lover turning up again and again at different sites of conflict. The frame is important – the story is effectively not just about the time-slipped lovers but about the way the man who tells the story becomes involved himself. Beautifully written.

2.       David Gerrold and Ctein, “Bubble and Squeak” – About a gay couple, hoping to get married, who have their plans interrupted by a tsunami heading to Los Angeles, and who have to find a way to get to higher ground – and, as it turns out, help a bunch of others as well. It’s simply terrifically exciting, involving a plausible mix of heroism, foolishness, brutality, luck, and intelligence, on their part and others, as they struggle to find a way to a safe place, and as various options are closed off over time.

3.       Carolyn Ives Gilman, “Umbernight” – Set within a struggling colony on a world subject to periodic bursts of radiation for its primary’s UV-emitting companion. Michiko is perhaps the only colony member interested in exploring their world, so she is forced into leading a dangerous expedition to recover the latest cargo drop from Earth, which will arrive just before the next predicted “umbernight”, when their planet will be awash in dangerous radiation. The expedition is predictably a disaster, especially when umbernight comes a bit early … and the members learn, the hardest way, that their planet changes in quite amazing ways in true umbernight. It’s pretty neat stuff really, set against its protagonist’s justly cynical attitude.

4.       Juliette Wade, “The Persistence of Blood” – This is set in a caste-driven society living in underground cities. The Lady Selemei is the wife of an influential member of the governing caste, whose women have tremendous difficulty in childbearing, and also are societally expected to bear many children, as their Race is seen to be in decline. Her loving husband has agreed to that they must abstain from sex, and has even proposed a law to make it legal for women with health issues to “retire” from childbearing (and even, perhaps to use contraceptives!)  The story turns on her husband’s sudden death, and her shocking step of assuming her husband’s seat in the Council. It comes to a powerful and moving conclusion.

The current leader for the fifth position on my is Martha Wells’ Artificial Condition, sort of as a proxy for all three Murderbot novellas that came out in 2018 – all fun and thought-provoking, certainly worth reading. Either the Beckett or Robson novellas could be chosen as well. But I have a few more stories to read before the nomination deadline, as I’ve noted.

Hugo Recommendations, 2019: Novelette

Novelette

This is my long list of novelettes I’ve considered for nomination, largely the list of those I put in the Recommended Reading section of my Locus reviews (with a few additions).

Dale Bailey, "The Donner Party", (F&SF, 1-2/18)

Bo Balder, “A Cigarette Burn in Your Memory”, (Clarkesworld, 1/18)

Gregory Benford, "A Waltz in Eternity", (Galaxy's Edge, 11/18)

Michael Cassutt, “Unter”, (Asimov’s, 7-8/18)

Tina Connolly, “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections”, (Tor.com, 7/18)

John Crowley, “Flint and Mirror”, (The Book of Magic)

Andy Duncan, “Joe Diabo’s Farewell”, (An Agent of Utopia)

Theodora Goss, “Queen Lily”, (Lightspeed, 11/18)

Daryl Gregory, “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth”, (Tor.com, 9/18)

Kameron Hurley, “Sister Solveig and Mister Denial”, (Amazing, Fall/18)

James Patrick Kelly, "Grace’s Family", (Tor.com, 5/18)

Alex Jeffers, "The Tale of the Ive-Ojan-Akhar’s Death", (Giganotosaurus, 4/18)

Samantha Murray, “Singles’ Day”, (Interzone, 9-10/18)

Alec Nevala-Lee, "The Spires", (Analog, 3-4/18)

Julia Novakova, "The Gift", (Asimov's, 11-12/18)

Justina Robson, "Foxy and Tiggs", (Infinity's End)

Kelly Robson, "Intervention", (Infinity's End)       

Karen Russell, "Orange World", (The New Yorker, 6/4/18)

James Sallis, "Dayenu", (LCRW, Spring/18)

Jack Skillingstead, “Straconia”, (Asimov’s, 7-8/18)

Brian Trent, "Crash-Site", (F&SF, 5-6/18)

Carrie Vaughn, “The Hunstman and the Beast”, (Asimov’s, 9-10/18)

The top candidates for my ballot are:

1.       Dale Bailey, “The Donner Party” (F&SF, 1-2/18) – a savage look at an alternate version of Victorian England in which the upper classes eat the children of the lower classes. The insecure new wife of an upper class man is put to the test, as it were.

2.       James Patrick Kelly, “Grace’s Family” (Tor.com, 5/18) – Grace is a starship, and it’s her job to maintain her family – the humans – and robots – who live on board, while they grow up, and age, and explore. This is fascinating original SF, deeply concerned with the purpose of intelligence in the universe.

3.       Alex Jeffers, “The Tale of the Ive-Ojan-Akhar’s Death” (Giganotosaurus, 4/18) – A leisurely and lovely look at the career and life of a diplomat who has largely gone native at his post, the Chinese-flavored Haisn. But, with glosses hinted at by the title entertainment, he gets caught up in political turmoil, and must make a new life. It’s hard for me to describe the continual pleasures of the tale, bound up in the narrator’s self-involved (but generally pleasant) character, the sideways revelations of the nature of Haisn’s culture, the gentle realization of the fate of the narrator (and his faithful servant) after their ejection from Haisn

4.       Kelly Robson, “Intervention” (Infinity’s End) -- A very intelligent story about child rearing in a heavily inhabited future Solar System. The narrator is from Luna, where creche work is socially frowned upon, so she leaves to work on an asteroid-based creche – and then later gets a chance to work on a bid to reform Luna’s failing creche system. This is just really interesting social speculation; and the characters are also very solidly portrayed, very honest.

5.       Karen Russell, “Orange World” (The New Yorker, 6/4/18) – An older first time mother is driven to make a deal with a literal devil to save the life of her child, and only the intervention of her support group allows her to cope … Really well written, really convincing.

6.       James Sallis, “Dayenu” (LCRW, Spring/18) – Perhaps the story of the year, though I have the notion that I might be the only person saying that. Opens with the narrator doing an unspecified but apparently criminal job: so, like a crime story – and Sallis is, after all, primarily a crime novelist. But details of unfamiliarity mount, from the pervasive surveillance to a changed geography, then to the realization that the rehab stint the narrator mentioned right at the start was a rather more extensive rehab than we might have thought. Memories of wartime service are detailed. Page by page the story seems odder, and the destination less expected. The prose is a pleasure too – with desolate rhythms and striking images.

It was hard to leave out stories like Justina Robson’s “Foxy and Tiggs”, Alec Nevala-Lee’s “The Spires”, Tina Connolly’s “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections”, Daryl Gregory’s “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth”, and Andy Duncan’s “Joe Diabo’s Farewell” – and, really, all the rest. Another great year for SF/F novelettes.

Birthday Review: Stories of David D. Levine

Today is David D. Levine's birthday. Here's a selection of my reviews for his work from Locus -- alas, there are fewer such in recent years, as David has been seduced by the lure of the novel -- and quite successfully so, with his popular series beginning with Arabella of Mars.

Locus, April 2002

The slow boat from Brighton finally brought me the final 2001 issue of Interzone.  It is an outstanding issue, too, without a single poor story.  David D. Levine's "Nucleon" is the winner of the 2001 James White Award, and it's a fine, sweet, story of an unusual junkyard – a nice variation on the traditional "curiosity shop" tale.

Locus, January 2003

Beyond the Last Star, edited by Sherwood Smith, concerns what might lie "beyond" the end of the universe. ... My other favorite was David D. Levine's "Written on the Wind", about an alien linguist working on translating a mysterious message discovered in the cosmic background radiation. The nature of this message is predictable enough, but Levine manages to make the revelation moving and sense-of-wonder inspiring even though we know what's coming.

Locus, June 2003

Best of all in the June F&SF is promising new writer David D. Levine's "The Tale of the Golden Eagle", about a brain encased in a spaceship which becomes a derelict, and the man who discovers and frees this brain far in the future.

Locus, September 2003

Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction is an anthology of stories written around art by Alan Clark. The fine new writer David Levine offers "Legacy", an affecting (if slightly contrived) story of sacrifice on a scientific mission to a supernova.

Locus, November 2003

Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown is a collection of stories by generally new writers. Regarded as a showcase of new writers, it's impressive, and I'll certainly look to see more work from these folks. I enjoyed most of it ... I particularly liked "Ukaliq and the Great Hunt", by David D. Levine, which cleverly recasts American Indian-style legends to tell a story that turns out to be straight SF.

Locus, June 2004

Tops in the June Realms of Fantasy is David D. Levine's "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely", a story set inside a comic strip, in which the title character becomes convinced he is fictional. There are plenty of cute touches, but the story turns oddly and effectively darker as no other character believes Charlie.

Locus, October 2004

The Summer Talebones, a generally good issue, closes strongly with David D. Levine's "Where is the Line", in which a somewhat bitter unemployed man encounters a mysterious neighbor and learns something from her via massage. It's involving and subtly erotic, and the main character rings true, though the resolution may be just a bit pat and moralistic in some ways.

Locus, April 2007

David D. Levine’s “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” (F&SF, April) tells of the history of a Paul Bunyan like space-based tall tale character, backwards through a few generations to the story’s origin. It’s perhaps a bit hokey – but successfully so.

Locus, February 2009

Realms of Fantasy’s February issue has a nice humorous story by David D. Levine, “Joy is the Serious Business of Heaven”, in which Umiel, an angel and a desk jockey (against her will) deals with such frustrations as a clueless boss,  the implementation of ISO 999, and the fact that her ideas for counteracting the Competition seem to be ignored.

Locus, April 2010

The May Analog includes a nice David Levine story, “Teaching the Pig to Sing”, told from the point of view of a future royal – genetically enhanced to be a natural ruler. He has been kidnapped by revolutionaries – a group who wants a return to democracy – and over a couple of days he finds himself unable to convincingly argue against their views. But neither do they convince him. And his people are still looking – what will happen when they find him? Levine’s resolution is a bit unexpected, and adds an edge and some poignancy to the story.

Locus, August 2011

The 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy, for June, is an extra long one, with some pretty good stuff. I particularly liked David D. Levine’s “The Tides of the Heart” – pure Urban Fantasy, in which a plumber with a specialty in magical problems runs into a special one: an undine trapped in the pipes of an historical old house marked for demolition. The plumber’s solution to the problem is personal as well as magical, and the intermixing of the two works perfectly.

Locus, January 2013

The November 15 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies includes a very nice David D. Levine story, “Liaisons Galantes: A Scientific Romance”. The conceit behind the story is that people who are truly in love manifest doglike creatures called “galanteries”. It's set in Paris, among a group of artists. Zephine is a struggling young writer, hopelessly obsessed with the group's charismatic leader, Darius. Then she meets another man, and they hit it off and become lovers – but to their concern, no galanteries appear. Are they really in love? And what does it mean that Zephine is suddenly inspired, and writing a promising play that attracts Darius' interest? The resolution becomes what we expect – not tritely, but such that we are led in the right direction so that everything seems just right. A quite enjoyable piece.

Locus, January 2014

There is a steampunkish cast to some of the better stories in Old Mars. For example, David D. Levine's “The Wreck of the Martian Adventure” features Captain Kidd recruited by the King to sail a ship to Mars – I have to admit I something of a sucker for space sailing stories. The concept is pretty much the story here, but withal it's very well done.

Birthday Review: Stories of Nick Mamatas

Today is Nick Mamatas' birthday. He's one of the most interesting, and most politically-engaged, writers working these days. Here's a collection of my reviews of his short fiction, plus a very brief capsule of his first novel, Move Under Ground, from 2004, that I wrote for my SFF Net newsgroup.

Locus, December 2005

Next a brand new electronic publication, planned to appear quarterly, available either as an e-book or (in delayed fashion) on the web: Son and Foe. The first issue, November 2005, contains a generous mix of reprints and originals. The best of the originals are surprisingly good, frankly better than I expected for a new online publication. My favorite is by Nick Mamatas, “Real People Slash”, written as if a memoir of a few years in the life of “Nick Mamatas” – and frankly pretty convincing and involving purely as memoir (true or not). But the story takes a strange, and effective, turn into Lovecraftian paranoia.

Review of Polyphony 6 (Locus, November 2006)

Also very weird is Nick Mamatas’s “The Uncanny Valley”, in which a psychiatrist tries to deal with – I think! – the dangerous unconscious of uploaded post-human intelligences, which appear to be destroying the world.

Locus, August 2007

Flytrap #7 includes, stealthily, a shocking and effective story by Nick Mamatas, “Solidarity Forever”, about a vain couple who decide that the best expression of their progressive pieties is to have sex with (i.e. rape) the most oppressed person they can find: a prisoner in Africa dying of AIDS.

Locus, November 2008

Weird Tales for July/August has a couple of striking pieces. Nick Mamatas is mordantly funny in “Mainevermontnewhampshiremass” in telling of a horror writer returning to his home town somewhere in the Northeast to battle a terrible menace – as it turns out in company with many other horror writers, and as it turns out … well, read the story.

Locus, April 2011

Nick Mamatas, in “North Shore Friday” (Asimov's, April-May), mixes a secret history of a government project to read minds with attempts in the 1960s to smuggle Greek refugees into the US and get them safely married off. The narrator, from decades in the future, remembers one sad incident, when one such operation went a bit wrong. The story nicely mixes the slightly mad idea of the mind reading operation with the interesting story of the refugees with an effective, subtly told, story of the narrator’s crush on a girl involved in the immigration activities.

Locus, September 2012

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace, includes five original stories (and a large selection of good recent work). All the originals are worthy of attention. The best is “Arbeitskraft”, by Nick Mamatas, set in alternate Victorian London, and told by Friedrich Engels, who is using Difference Engine technology – advanced, in his factory, to a “Dialectical Engine” – to recreate his late friend Karl Marx. Engels dreams of using this technology to liberate the workers, with the help of the Dialectical Engine version of Marx. At the same time he encounters terribly oppressed girls from a match factory, and sees how the steampunk tech of this alternate history has affected their lives. The story is, obviously, politically engaged, and also full of interesting steampunkish notions, and some action as well.

Locus, January 2013

Bloody Fabulous is an anthology, about even mixed between new stories and reprints, on the subject of fashion. It's entertaining throughout. My favorite original piece came from Nick Mamatas: “Avant-n00b”, about a young fashion blogger who stumbles across a very strange “vintage” piece of clothing that turns out to have links to Vichy France.

Capsule Review of Move Under Ground (from my blog)

Another small press book is Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground, the first novel by a writer who has done some pretty good shorter stuff in recent years, mostly what we used to call slipstream [though as I recall Nick rejected that term], often with a horror tinge. (In fact, Mamatas too can be linked with the New Weirdos. [grin]) Move Under Ground is from Night Shade Books.

It's got a high concept premise -- Jack Kerouac meets Lovecraft. That is, the novel is set in the early 60s, and Jack Kerouac is mysteriously enlisted to wage a battle against the denizens of R'lyeh, which has risen in the Pacific. People are turning into beetlemen, horrible cults are forming, mysterious things happening. Kerouac tracks down Neal Cassady and starts to head cross country from Big Sur and then San Francisco, destination New York. Along the way he picks up William S. Burroughs, and spends a little time in Burroughs's home town -- my place of residence, St. Louis. (I think he muffed the local geography a bit, but perhaps in 1962 or so he was right.)

I found much of the book interesting, but about as much kind of slow. Perhaps it would have helped if I was more knowledgeable about either the Beats or Lovecraft -- as it happens, I've read very little in either area. The writing is  quite nice, with plenty of exotic and original images.

Birthday Review: Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem

Today is Jonathan Lethem's birthday. And this gives me an opportunity to repost a review that is fairly important to me, not because it's a great piece of writing or anything, but because it's the first thing I wrote with some hope of professional publication. I wrote it in response to a note in, I think, Book Pages, asking for a Science Fiction reviewer. The date, according to my records, was 16 November 1995. They sent my a nice note back saying they liked it, but they weren't quite sure ... so they must have gone with someone else.

It's pretty short, which is because I was writing to their expected length.

Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem

Cassell, 1994 (TP: Tor, 1995)
$19.95 (TP: $10.95)
ISBN 0151364583 (TP: 0312858787)

Jonathan Lethem is a rather new writer whose stories have been appearing in Asimov's, Pulphouse and elsewhere over the past few years. His short fiction has shown outstanding range, and a quirky imagination. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, amply demonstrates both these qualities.The novel concerns Conrad Metcalf, a down-at-heels Private Inquisitor in mid-21sty century Oakland. He is drawn into investigating the murder of an affluent doctor with gangster ties, and becomes involved with shady cops, gangland figures, and beautiful women with questionable pasts. Thus, at the surface, this is a straight-forward pastiche of the standard hard-boiled detective novel, transposed into the next century. At this level, the novel works fine: the mystery is sufficiently absorbing and has enough twists to carry the plot, and Lethem has the first-person narrative down very well, with the "typical" hard-boiled attitude.

However, this is more than a standard SF take on Chandler. The SF elements themselves, though not terribly plausible, are interesting and thought-provoking, and well-integrated with the structure and themes of the novel. These include universal drug use for (fairly precise) control of emotional states, wildly extrapolated privacy laws, babyheads (children with vastly accelerated mental growth but normal physical growth), and intelligent, self-aware animals (the result of "evolution therapy"). Some of these tropes are use to generate jokes, but for the most part they support and reinforce the central story and the themes in which Lethem is interested. Ultimately, this is a serious, funny-sad novel, and at the heart of it are big questions about memory and the nature of personality. (These questions, and other elements of the novel such as the drug use, are very reminiscent of the work of Philip K. Dick.) Lethem handles the mixture of moods excellently, and the resolution to his story is perfect and satisfying. This is a very exciting first novel from one of the most promising new SF writers of the past few years.

Belated Birthday Review: Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

Iain Menzies Banks would have turned 65 last Saturday (16 February 2019) -- he was only some 5 years older than me, but alas he died far too young at about my current age. He was a wonderful writer of SF, and SF-adjacent "mainstream" fiction. In his memory, here's my review of my favorite among his SF novels, posted exactly as I wrote it in 1997:

Review Date: 05 March 1997

Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

MacDonald, 1990 (UK), 12.95 pounds
US Paperback Edition, Bantam Spectra 1992, $4.99 (ISBN: 0553292242)

Iain M. Banks is a Scottish writer, of several "mainstream" novels (albeit often with "slipstream" elements), published as by Iain Banks, and several SF novels (published with the middle initial). Banks has quite a reputation in the UK, stemming from the success of his first novel, The Wasp Factory (1984). He seems less well-known in the US, but at least his SF books eventually make it across the pond, and I have been reading the SF novels over the past year or so. (Reviews of two of those novels appear elsewhere on this site [or will, when I repost them].) Half by accident, half on purpose, I evolved a reading strategy which has led to me end up my reading of all the Banks SF novels available in the US as of last year with Use of Weapons, probably the consensus choice among Banks' readers as his best SF novel. (A new SF novel, Excession, was published last summer in the UK and is just now available in the States.)

(Cover by Paul Youll)

As implied above, I approached Use of Weapons with high expectations, not always a good attitude. However, in this case my expectations were met. Use of Weapons is one of Banks' "Culture" novels: set within our Galaxy at approximately (to within plus or minus a millennium) the present time, and concerning the interactions of the Culture, an interstellar society composed mostly of humanoids and of a variety of AI machines, the latter often "drones" of (very roughly) human size and intelligence, or ship minds: of ambiguous size and enormous intelligence. Like all the Culture novels I've read, this one takes place mostly outside the Culture proper: because that is where the stories are. (The Culture is a utopia, so at least to a first approximation, everyone is happy, and there isn't much in the way of story-generating conflict.)

Use of Weapons is the story of Cheradenine Zakalwe, a non-citizen of the Culture, who has been employed by the Special Circumstances branch of the Culture's Contact section as a mercenary, trying to influence conflicts on a variety of planets to be resolved in the direction the Culture prefers. As the main action of the story opens, Zakalwe has "retired" from SC. Diziet Sma, a Culture citizen who has been Zakalwe's "control" in the past, is rudely summoned from her latest (quite pleasurable) assignment in order to find Zakalwe and recruit him for one more emergency mission (involving a situation with which Zakalwe was previously involved).

From this point, the novel progresses in two main directions. The main branch of the story follows Sma forward in time, as she pursues and eventually finds Zakalwe, and as Sma and Zakalwe accomplish, in general terms, the mission on which the SC branch has sent them. This involves convincing a retired politician who supports the "right" side (anti-terraforming, pro-Machine Intelligence) of a conflict in an unstable star cluster to return to the arena and forestall a coming war, and then also involves some intervention in a "brushfire" which has broken out as a precursor to the war. This story is exciting and enjoyable, with plenty of Banksian action, Banksian scenery, and Banksian humor, the last as usual particularly embodied in the character of Sma's drone assistant, Skaffen-Amtiskaw. (Banks' machine characters are inveterate scene-stealers.)

The second plot thread moves steadily backward in time (complicated by a couple of even-farther backward flashbacks), following Zakalwe's career as an agent for SC, back to his recruitment by SC and his war experiences prior to that, and finally back to his formative years as an aristocrat of sorts on a planet with roughly 19th-20th century Earth technology and social structure. This thread allows us to slowly learn more of Zakalwe's character, and of the traumatic events which have made him the rather tortured individual he is at the time of the main action. Thus, the novel's structure is at first blush mildly experimental (there are actually four separate "threads" if one separates out the flashbacks as a thread, and if one considers the prologue and epilogue). However, this structure is really logical, and essential to the reader's experience. Essentially, the main action is illuminated by our growing understanding of Zakalwe's past. And the use of Sma as a viewpoint character (despite her somewhat non-centrality to most of the action sequences) is a vital strategy: in a sense, she becomes a stand-in for the reader: and part of our understanding of the novel is trying to understand Sma's feelings for Zakalwe (which are not romantic at all, by the way), and to measure her Use of the Weapon that is Cheradenine Zakalwe in the context of Zakalwe's humanness, and in a sort of parallel or contrast to Zakalwe's expert use of a variety of weapons.

The climax of the novel is a shocker (though I think it is guessable (I guessed it, anyway, though Banks kept me doubting)). However, it's not just a "surprise ending for the sake of the surprise". It's crucial to our understanding of the book: and it gives the book meaning far beyond the (very good) adventure story it has been up to that point. The climax seemed to reverberate back through the entire book, giving new meaning to almost every incident. This is a book which almost demands immediate rereading.

Ob-nitpicks: there are a couple of points where I don't think Banks plays quite fair with the reader in setting up the surprise (though this could be the result of insufficiently subtle reading on my part), also, I'm not sure I'm fully convinced by some of the changes in Zakalwe's character. These are very minor points indeed, however, and I recommend this book highly.