Hugos: short stories, novelettes

[liv]

I'm really enjoying this thing with the Hugo voting where lots of people are reading the same stuff and talking about it. A lot of the time I'm jealous of people who are fans of TV series, because they have a much better chance than book fans of all their friends consuming the same media as them at the same time and wanting to talk about it. So with Worldcon coming to England, I'm getting a little taste of that.

It's especially fun to see excitement about Ancillary Justice spreading like contagion through my circles. I don't think it's the Greatest Book Evar!!! but it's really innovative and I think it's very well worthy of an award. I particularly enjoyed legionseagle's analysis; yes, it has something to say about gender, but it's really exciting in what it's doing with class and empire and real, solid politics. Also, I found this interview with Leckie immensely endearing.

Anyway, I'm working my way through the Hugo packet, so here I am joining in the conversation with comments on the short story and novellette slates. The short story ballot is absolutely rock solid. Four really good stories, which I might not have read if they hadn't been Hugo nominated, partly because I don't really keep up with SF short stories. But they're all good, all original, and I'm struggling to rank them at all. I also agree quite a lot with rmc28's comments, thank you Rachel.

In the end:

1. John Chu: The water that falls on you from nowhere
   Although I'll be happy to see any of the top three winning, and not horribly disappointed if my fourth pick turns out to be popular with other readers, this one edged out the other two because I found it incredibly endearing. It's a coming out story, it's a meeting-of-cultures story, and I love what it does with its fantasy concept. Also it has Chinese characters speaking in a Chinese language (I don't even know which one) which is not glossed or romanized, which I think is a really interesting choice. It's very pointedly anti-Orientalist, Chinese-American immigrants are, as they say these days "centred", and it's everybody else who's weird. It also contains some quite nasty abusive family dynamics, which are handled delicately. There's a lot packed in to a few thousand words.
   
   
2. Rachel Swirsky: If you were a dinosaur, my love
   This is gorgeously written, almost poetry. It's a tragic love story, and I'm voting it below the Chu because Chu gives us a happily-ever-after gay couple whereas Swirsky handles transphobic violence. I don't mean that I will always vote for stories with happy endings over sad stories, but #weneeddiversebooks and non-heteronormative stories are tragedies too often even when they exist at all.
   
   
3. Sofia Samatar: Selkie stories are for losers
   I feel a bit awful about voting this in third place, because it's really, really good. I am quite tempted to vote for Samatar for the Campbell in any case, though I need to read some of the other candidates' samples. I think the reason I liked Selkie stories a fraction less than the other two is that it's just a bit too literary for me, it's a classic example of a short story as a vehicle for showing the author's writing craft. And there's no doubt that Samatar is a very good writer, I'm just not a good enough reader to quite appreciate the nuances of this.
   
   
4. Thomas Olde Heuvelt: The ink readers of Doi Saket
   I found this story a bit hard to get into; I didn't hate it as much as rmc28 did but I can see her point that it could be read as mocking Thai culture. It is a clever and original story, but when I got to the end my feeling was a bit, what was the point of that? rather than being emotionally engaged.

The novelettes are a much more mixed bunch, I think. There's one stand-out story here, two that are very good but not brilliant, and the sad puppy nominees.

1. Aliette de Bodard: The waiting stars
   This is the kind of writing that makes me want to grab people's clothes and insist they read it Right Now! It's a brilliantly original take on the ship minds idea, really good characterization and world-building, clever twist, emotionally wrenching. When I was discussing this with jack he pointed out that it's a bit inconsistent about whether Ansibles exist or not, so people who are very puritanical about "Hard" SF may not love it as much as I did. And I felt it was a little bit heavy-handed about how colonizers are Evil; this is very much written in response to stereotypical Manifest Destiny style SF tropes. I think that's partly because it was published in Andreadis' The other half of the sky, an anthology which was particularly seeking that kind of response.
   
   
2. Mary Robinette Kowal: The Lady Astronaut of Mars
   I liked this a lot, it's really a character piece with a lot of emotional depth. I liked the alternate history setting where there was a serious manned space programme from early in the 20^th century, although the Wizard of Oz stuff felt a bit too cutesy for my taste. I felt the story slightly stacked Elma's choice of space exploration over her dying husband, by having him express absolutely no doubt that being abandoned is what he truly wants. And I have some quibbles about how Kowal lays on the pathos, because yes, lingering death from progressive disease is probably even more unpleasant than Kowal imagines, but there's a whiff of the idea that being dependent on others for physical needs is the worst possible thing and that makes it "ok" for Elma to choose adventure rather than loyalty. I do like the way that the hero's choice is made by an older woman, not a young man; there's been a few articles recently about how older women are one category that often gets missed when people are diversity auditing media, and between this and the de Bodard this particular short story ballot does very well on that score.
   
   
3. Ted Chiang: The truth of fact, the truth of feeling
   I am a huge fan of Chiang, and pounced on this first when I got the Hugo packet. And it is indeed good, it's well-written and clever and I like the comparison of the paradigm shift to life-logging with the paradigm shift caused by the spread of writing. I'm voting it below The Lady Astronaut because it feels more like a think-piece than a story, partly because that is in fact the frame used. Also the protagonist is kind of an unpleasant person and I'm not entirely convinced by the characterization of the "illiterate tribe".
   
   
4. No award. I skipped Vox Day's Opera Vita Aeterna [sic] because although I'm not much into boycotting authors because I don't like their politics, I draw the line at someone who makes public racist attacks on African-American authors, and speculates about how to commit genocide on undesirable races more efficiently than the Nazis did. However I didn't quite realize that Torgerson was also shoehorned onto the ballot because Correia thought there aren't enough conservatives winning SF awards.
   
   
5. Brad Torgerson: The exchange officers
   I had some hopes that some of the sad puppy slate would be decent stories that just happened to be entirely about straight, binary gendered people. Especially given that Correia's whole shtick is that he wants stories that are fun, readable stories not obscured by a political Message. But The exchange officers is entirely pointless and very much overwhelmed by political message, though in this case the message is that America should maintain military superiority to avoid getting overrun by communist hordes, rather than that not everybody of every imaginable sentient species must follow mid-20^th century suburban American binary gender roles. The fact I generally agree with the second message and disagree with the first is beside the point, there's no story beyond, rah rah America is great, down with furriners. I mean, the writing is technically competent and not even especially offensive apart from being slightly Yellow Peril in the setting. But the story is entirely generic; it feels like the only possible audience is 12-year-old boys who have literally never encountered MilSF before. Telepresence technology means that nerds get to fantasize about being kick-ass space marines. That's it.

Comments

[ephemera]

It looks as though we've ended up with the same voting order for the short stories, but have had fairly different reactions to the novellas - you've persuaded me to give Ancillary Justice another try - I rather slid off the prose of the early pages.

[liv]

The prose is not the strength of AJ, but I think that's at least in part because the narrator isn't exactly human. It's far and away the most original SF I've read in years, but it is a bit slow to get started, I agree.

[ceb]

I am really enjoying the coincident reading too, and must get round to posting my reviews (probably brief, but).

PS come and play games with us! :-)

[liv]

These are very very brief reviews by my standards, I was in danger of writing reviews longer than the stories themselves.

I definitely want to play games, and especially to see you, but I have zeeeero free weekends before Worldcon, oops. How are you situated for the weekend of 19^th when I plan to be in Cambridge for pseudomonas' graduation? Or potentially may be around first weekend in August?

Re:Happy Stories

[forestofglory]

Hugo nominators seem to like tragic stories. I think our culture in generally tends to judge them as more worthy than happy stories. I find this frustrating. (The only story form last year not nominated for the Hugos last year that I have re-read was one with happy gay romance and female friendships.)

Also you should check out Three Partitions by Bogi Takács It SF about Jews and gender.

Re: Happy Stories

[liv]

Yeah, there is this idea that tragic stories are more worthy somehow. Maybe The water that falls on you from nowhere will count because it has an abusive family and some homophobia in it. But I wouldn't mind at all if Swirsky's story won in this category, it is very good indeed.

I am generally impressed with Takács' meta, so I should in fact go and read that story, thank you for the rec.

Re: Happy Stories

[liv]

OK, that's an awesome story, thank you so much for the rec. I'm thinking this is Hugo-eligible for next year, in which case I should certainly nominate it.

Re: Happy Stories

[forestofglory]

Yay! I belive you are correct. According to the author's notes (linked to in the comments) it is a novelette. I'm glad your thinking of nominating, as it is probably my favorite part about Hugo voting.

Re: Happy Stories

[jack]

I don't know if I'm right, but I always subconsciously assumed it was an elitism thing. Like, the natural simplest form of a story is "and then all the good stuff happened to the protagonist", so the only reason to write a horrible story is because it's more interesting in some other way -- hence people start to assume that horrible stories _must_ be interesting, because someone likes this thing no-one else likes, it looks like their taste is superior...

Re: Happy Stories

[forestofglory]

That sounds about right. This might also be related to the popularly of grimdark.

Re: Happy Stories

[jack]

Yeah.

Although now I think about it, I think I might have had it slightly the wrong way round in my first comment: not what's easiest to write, but that happy stories are the easiest to enjoy (hence, people write them) but when people want to explore a greater breadth of ideas, or when they want to FEEL like they want to explore a greater breadth of ideas, they look for non-happy books (hence people write THEM)?

[liv]

That seems to make sense, yes; horribleness could be a way to add interest to a story, and it probably takes more skill to write a good tragic story than a good happy story, so people are confused and think horrible stories are necessarily more interesting. To take an unpleasant example, there's that thing with rape scenes getting a lower film rating than consensual sex, because rape is something horrible happening so it's presumed to add interest to the story, whereas showing something explicit and consensual might just be gratuitous.

[ewx]

In The Waiting Stars, did you manage to figure out why the Outsiders/Galactic Federation ran their strange kidnap-and-reprogram exercise?

[liv]

I think because they had a basically colonialist mindset. They thought it was completely horrible and barbaric to have ship-minds, they were repulsed by the idea of giving birth to machinery or having a human mind instantiated in a non-organic body. Plus, not coincidentally, the ship-minds posed a major military threat to the Federation. So they convinced themselves they were doing those poor Dai Viet people a favour by kidnapping the ship-minds from their home culture and making them into "normal" humans. And then they discovered that the ship-minds were driven to suicide by being confined to bodies, so they reprogrammed them so they wouldn't miss their previous existence as much.

It seemed to me like a very direct parallel with the American adoption industry, the religious Christians who genuinely believe they're doing those poor kids from uncivilized lands a favour by paying agents to literally kidnap them from their parents and market them as orphans, and bringing them over to the US and bringing them up as English-speaking Christians. Denying them any access to their own culture and completely ignoring the fact that their appearance makes them stand out a mile from most of their white, European-descended neighbours. You can imagine if they had access to literal brain-reprogramming technology they'd be all over it, as it is they only have education and behavioural therapy which isn't torture honest.

[legionseagle]

The Torgerson could have come straight out of one of the Out of This World anthologies I read as a kid and have just (thanks to Twitter) rediscovered; science fiction short stories mostly printed in the late 50s and early 60s and repackaged for teens. What sensawunda it gave was purely of the "How the hell did anyone think this was worth publishing in the 21st century?!" sort.

I did actually force myself to read the Vox Day, since it was free. It's dreadful. I think it's perfectly fair to no award someone whose politics are that appalling without putting oneself through the pain of reading their work, especially in a case where their only reason for being put on the slate at all is a political one, but in case you had any lingering doubts about it, I think Vox Day should be No Awarded on any standard.

[liv]

Heh. I did think the Torgerson story seemed startlingly old-fashioned, but I suppose that's conservative in a literal sense, nostalgia for being a rich white guy in an unequal society. It's not just old-fashioned in its political assumptions, it's old-fashioned in how it approaches SF, the having no ideas at all, just whizz-bang, seems to date from the time when a lot of SF was about cheap, pulpy stuff marketed to teenagers and casual readers.

Interesting about the Vox Day story. A lot of people have said it's dreadful, a few have said it's quite thought-provoking in spite of the bad Latin and the purple prose and the general awfulness of VD. But in any case, I gave the Torgerson a fair shake (because it was in the same slate as OVA, I had forgotten it was part of the sad puppy thing), and am quite happy voting it below No Award. I don't feel in the least guilty about pre-judging Vox Day's writing without actually reading it.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this. I have very little time or energy at the moment, and you setting them all out in one place like this made me get around to reading them.

Water: I liked this a lot; it was an emotionally engaging what-if story. The central relationship used the speculative element well and made it more than an intellectual curiosity. I felt the sister was a bit unnecessary to the story; perhaps the author felt it would be too positive without her?

Dinosaur: A beautiful piece of writing, but I'd dispute that it's either SF/F or a story. I agree, it is very poetic. It's also whimsical and slightly surreal in a way that almost annoyed me but managed to stay the right side of the line.

Selkie: It probably didn't help that I had only the vaguest concept of selkie stories, but I thought this was a bit meh.

Ink Readers: Hated the style, couldn't get more than a few paragraphs into it.

So I'd order those the same way you did.

Novelettes:
Waiting Stars: I just didn't find this very engaging, and found myself skimming a lot of it to find out what happens. It was a good plot, and I might have found it more enjoyable in the hands of a different writer.

Lady Astronaut: This was really refreshing in that it was clearly a proper story. It was also beautifully observed and very poignant and sad. The Dorothy thing felt unnecessary and bolted-on, but I didn't find it actively repellent.

Truth of Fact: Very enjoyable and thought-provoking, illuminating parallelism, shocking but scarily believable twist.

I wanted to read the other two (I'm a strong believer in judging a work's merits separately from its author) but I can't find them anywhere free online (your link to Exchange Officers is to a podcast; does it exist as text? I really don't get on well with audio.) Opera Vita is less than £1 on Amazon though so I will probably buy it. So of the three I've succeeded in reading I'd rank them: Truth of Fact; Lady Astronaut; Waiting Stars.

I'd be interested in your longer reviews if you did want to post them.

[liv]

Ooh, really glad to hear your comments. I didn't realize Exchange Officers was a podcast, I copied the links from somewhere else that said, here's the stories free online. Sorry about that.

Interesting that you ranked the shorts the same as me but had completely the opposite view of the novelettes! I think I would rate both Selkie stories and Ink readers a bit more highly than you but I have similar criticisms of them, just more mildly.

Having gushed about The waiting stars I now find it hard to defend exactly why I love it so much when many of my friends see it as flawed. I just felt drawn into the story very deeply from the first scene. I agree very much about Lady Astronaut, though.

[jack]

Before the hugo packet came out, someone collected a page of links to stories which were already published for free, I think here: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/04/finalists-2014-hugo-award-1939-retro-hugos-with-free-fiction-links/. I think that's where Liv got most of the links from.

It includes opera vita. I wouldn't tell someone whether or not to read it, but if you want to read it anyway, you might as well have it for free. I've not seen a non-hugo-packet link to a non-audio version Exchange Officers, but there's one to Torgersen's longer story, which got similar reviews from most people, but better from some.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Thanks; but that includes the podcast-only Exchange Officers, and the link I'd already found for Opera Vita, which goes to a page on Vox Day's blog which links to a free download which 404s. I'm guessing he put it up for free briefly and later took it back down.

[jack]

Doh! I'm sorry, I read it there before the hugo packet came out, but I didn't check the link was still valid. I should have realised you would have already tried that before suggesting it :(

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

No problem, I may well not have done!

[jack]

hopes that some of the sad puppy slate would be decent stories that just happened to be entirely about straight, binary gendered people

Yeah, I think statistically that was to be expected. I was disappointed :( Outside the prose fiction categories, Schlock Mercenary is actively good, and Howard Taylor is a member of LDS but not bigoted (I think). And I think that applies to Dan Wells too (Butcher of Khadov was gruesome, but google says he's been nominated for several other things before).

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I bought Opera Vita Aeterna for 77p on Amazon and read it.

It's a different category of thing from the others. I'd expect people to either love it or hate it. I was very impressed with it. It has a gravitas, a full-bloodedness, a largeness and significance, that makes most of the others seem a bit trivial and ephemeral.

It's pretty theological (involving a fantasy-religion quite closely based on Christianity). I can see how an atheist might find it irrelevant or offputting for that reason, but you might plausibly like it.

I'm not quite sure whether I'd rank it above or below The truth of fact. That one was very interesting and thought-provoking; but they're such different kinds of story it's hard to order them. Also it's a few months since I read that one (it's the only one I'd already seen before your post).

I would quite like to read The exchange officers, but I'm not sure where I can find a non-audio version even for money.

Also, I keep coming back to The water that falls in my mind, and I'm not sure whether that makes it a good story or a bad one. It seems like the central conceit is so far-reaching, it's a bit anticlimactic to just explore its effect on one man and his romantic relationship and his family - and perhaps also unrealistic, as the world would be so different in a way that doesn't seem to be there in that story. The effects on sociology and business and politics would be huge and interesting. I know it's a short story so there's not room to explore all that, but maybe it should have been a novel. Maybe he'll come back and write a novel?

[jack]

Maybe he'll come back and write a novel?

I was thinking that. Except now I think about it, he may not be as good at writing the novel about the changes to society as he was about examining the scientific changes in a family setting. So maybe I hope he writes more awesome books like Water That Falls without needing to touch the wider world, and *someone else* writes a book about the changes in society... (In fact, I think that novel is basically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_Machine that I mentioned in my post :))

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

That does look interesting, thanks!