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

[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.