2011 Hugo Nominee: Graphic Story - Grandville Mon Amour, by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse)

Lots of people have tried to “fix” the Graphic Story category by suggesting nominees, and this graphic novel, the second in a series, was one of the most touted, especially from British quarters. It is the first graphic story nominated that’s not from the “Big Two” (American publishers Marvel and DC, representing multimedia conglomerates Disney and Time Warner, respectively), nor based on a licensed sf property from another medium, nor Girl Genius or Schlock Mercenary. Breakthrough? I guess.

Grandville seems to be from the “kitchen sink” tradition of throwing together a lot of varied tropes and hoping that something original comes out. The setting is alternate history/steampunk: Britain lost the Napoleonic Wars, and is just coming out of a near-two-century French occupation. This has somehow led to a late Victorian/art nouveau aesthetic and lots of clunky steam-powered machiney…and blimps! The story is political thriller/Sherlock Holmes/noir. And, most of the characters are anthropomorphic animals in the style of a nineteenth-century French cartoonist. Sometimes I felt like Bryan Talbot was trying to say something with these odd juxtapositions. Most of the time, I got the feeling that he just thought they were cool.

Scotland Yard Detective and Sherlockian badger Archie LeBrock is on the case when his arch-enemy, a former British resistance fighter and all around psycho, escapes on the way to the gallows. Archie descends into a gritty underworld to discover his whereabouts and how he escaped, and on the way, he uncovers a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top! Don’t they always?

I did find this story rather predictable, and the character designs rather pointless. The art is interesting – there’s a lot of richness in the backgrounds, and the storytelling is fantastic. That said, there was an angularity to the character designs that I found a bit off-putting. And, overall, I think it either needs to be prettier to hammer home the cartoonish quality of the characters, or it needs to be uglier to fit the gritty style of the story. Instead, it sits somewhere awkwardly in between.

This is a fine, but somewhat clichéd story with interesting, but flawed art. I liked it better than some of the perennial nominees, but I don’t think it’s the cure to what ails this category.

Grade: B-

2010 Hugo Winners

• Best Novel: TIE: The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK); The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
• Best Novella: “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace, Orbit)
• Best Novelette: “The Island”, Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)
• Best Short Story: “Bridesicle”, Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
• Best Related Book: This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”), Jack Vance (Subterranean)
• Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the StormWritten by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)
• Best Editor Short Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
• Best Editor Long Form: Ellen Datlow
• Best Professional Artist: Shaun Tan
• Best Semiprozine: Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
• Best Fan Writer: Frederik Pohl
• Best Fanzine: StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith
• Best Fan Artist: Brad W. Foster
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Seanan McGuire

Well, I guess I wasn't the only one who had trouble deciding between Mieville and Bacigalupi - the collective consciousness of Hugo voters had the same issue. This is only the third tie in Hugo history, but I'm pretty happy with the results this time (unlike in 1966).

I called "Waters of Mars," and I'm happy there. I was close on Moon, and I'm not unhappy about that win. I'll stop trying to defend Avatar now (it did already win a Saturn, which is probably more it's speed).

I was off on Graphic Story quite a bit. I know the Foglios are widely beloved, but I do wonder if this is just going to be the Girl Genius category in perpetuity.

I was also way off on my personal preferences for the short fiction categories. "Palimpsest" really surprised me, as did "The Island" to a lesser extent. They both had great ideas though. I'm just a bit sorry that "Eros Philia Agape" didn't win. "Bridesicle" I really did like in a category with three clear stand-outs. Well, I've said before that I've never been that in to short fiction - I guess my taste in that realm is a bit different than most.

I also want to mention that I'm glad StarShipSofa and Clarkesworld won the zine categories. The former is a really nice podcast, and both provided audio readings of several of the short fiction selections, which I mentioned has become my favorite way to consume shorter stories.

Overall, some surprises, but I very nice set of winners overall that does represent the strengths and variety of speculative fiction.

Happy Labor Day weekend for those in the States. The blog will be back to regularly scheduled, Hugo-reviewing activities from Friday onward.

2010 Hugo Nominees - Novel round-up

Finally, the big one. This actually seems like a good time to lay out what I consider to be the qualifications for the Best Novel Hugo. I’ve now read 49 of the previous winners, so I think I have a solid idea of what works (and what does not) for this award. As I see it, there are three things that make a great Hugo winner:

1. Ideas. A Hugo winner should make you think about society, technology, human character, etc.
2. A compelling world. What really defines speculative fiction for me is that it creates a new setting as a way to examine or escape our own. Whether that’s alternate history, a fantasy realm, a city with unusual culture and politics, a future dystopia, or an interstellar spaceship doesn’t matter.
3. Literary quality. A Hugo winner should be solid literature that can stand up next to successful mainstream novels. You shouldn’t have to make excuses for the prose or the plot.

Now, with the disclaimers that these are my personal qualifications and my own opinions of the books, I think only two of this year’s nominees really meet all three of these criteria. Actually, looking back, two is probably a good number, and I'd add that three more are near misses, so I think this was a good year for the category.

In ascending order:

Wake has a lot of good ideas, but they’re just barely connected by anything I’d call a novel, and the world is really just our own (and Sawyer doesn’t even give us a particularly nuanced or interesting take on our world).

I think Julian Comstock comes close on all three points but misses the mark every time. It’s more an attack on the religious right than a book that really made me think. The world is detailed, but too much like the past. And, Wilson successfully evokes boys’ adventure novels, but goes a little too far in aping a style that can by cloying.

Boneshaker also feels like a youthful adventure novel, but is more successful – enough so that I think it could meet the test in point #3. I also really enjoyed the world that Priest created. It wasn’t so much a novel of ideas though, as the world existed more to satisfy aesthetic qualities.

Palimpsest gives us a fascinating world and rich language, but it’s more of a character piece than a novel of ideas, and I’d argue that it’s really more about Valente’s prose than even the characters.

So, that leaves Bacigalupi and Mieville as the two successes. I do think these are the top two contenders, as they’ve deservingly dominated the other sf awards. This was the toughest voting decision I faced.

Both novels have a lot to say about the world we live in, but the issues of globalization and energy are so central to what’s happening to us right now, and Bacigalupi’s prose, characters, and story cut so remarkably to the heart of them, that I had to vote for Nebula-winner Windup Girl in the end.

However, The City & The City is also a great novel, and I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it actually wins the category this weekend.

Anyway, thanks for reading all of this. If you’re out there reading and you have suggestions for how I should cover the Hugos next year, let me know.

I’ll have my thoughts on the actual winners on Sunday or Monday, then we go back to the Monday/Friday schedule and it's all 80s, all the time!

2010 Hugo Nominees - Dramatic Presentations round-up

Short Form

Since its inception in 2003, this category has been pretty thoroughly dominated by Dr. Who and Joss Whedon. That makes sense; those are both things that I like very much. Still, it’d be nice if I could vote for Flashforward, the only nominee not Whedon or Time Lord related. Flashforward’s pilot is a compelling hour of television. It was good enough that it got me to watch an entire season that was often not good at all. Still, so much of what made that pilot good was its promise – its mysteries and possibilities. So, the fact that that promise was unfulfilled is a big strike against the series’ beginning.

We can also throw out the first two Dr. Who specials, which simply weren’t up to the high standards of the new version of the show. That makes this a contest between the post-apocalyptic first season finale of Dollhouse and the third Dr. Who special, “The Waters if Mars.” It’s a really tough choice. “Epitaph One” is the opposite of Flashforward – it takes a show with a deficit of promise and explores what it’s really about while upping the ante dramatically. It’s also a neat little story in itself, with its own mysteries and a great framing device for flashbacks. In the end, I still had to go with "Waters of Mars," which was epic and dark.

1. “Waters of Mars” Doctor Who
2. “Epitaph One” Dollhouse
3. Flashforward
4. No Award
5. “The Next Doctor” Doctor Who
6. “Planet of the Dead” Doctor Who

As for a prediction: you’d think Doctor Who might split the vote, but one of these episodes is so far ahead of the others, that I think "Waters of Mars" should still pull it off.

As for Long Form, I had some problems with Star Trek’s clunky, silly plot and District 9’s confused message and splattering gore. I liked both films, but I have no problem putting them out of the running. Moon keeps growing on me, but it just feels more like a vehicle for Sam Rockwell than a perfect little sf film in its own right. That leaves Up and Avatar. I probably liked Up more as a film, and it elicited emotional responses from me that Avatar didn’t even come close to…but Avatar is such a classic piece of science fiction, warts and all, that I had to give it my vote. It's a very strong year overall though.

1. Avatar
2. Up
3. Moon
4. District 9
5. Star Trek

But, as I said before, I think there is a real backlash against Avatar. I think it’s really a race between the indie alternatives of Moon and District 9. I think District 9 will win in the end.

2010 Hugo Nominees - Novella round-up

This was a very strong category with some excellent entries. The only novella that I’d throw out of contention was Stross’s "Palimpsest," which does a great job of using time travel to push the boundaries of reality, but does so at the expense of character and narrative. I didn’t love it, but it’s still an interesting experiment. The other 5 novellas break down nicely into two camps for me – Kress and Morrow use sf set-ups to explore a few select characters in depth. McDonald does the same, but he also has the advantage of using a world that he’s already established in a longer novel. Baker and Scalzi both establish fascinating worlds, but these works feel mostly like set-up, and they sacrifice character to concept to some extent. Of all of these, the work that came closest to giving me the well-rounded exploration of character and story that I was looking for was Morrow’s. It’s probably not a coincidence that Shambling was also the closest to novel length.

The trend in other awards seems to be towards Nell Gwynne’s (it’s already got a Nebula and a Locus). To some extent, this might be a tribute to Kage Baker, but it’s also a strong enough work that I can’t complain. If it had pushed its concept just a little further in that second half, it could have been something really special, and I have no doubt that Baker is deserving some recognition for a great career (and life) that ended far too early.

My vote did go to Morrow though. He really established the atmosphere of Hollywood’s golden age B-movies while also taking on the big issue of the American use of weapons of mass destruction. The novella was humorous, dark, and moving, and Syms Thorley was a very rich character. It affected me as much as anything I read for these awards, so I had to give it the nod.

2010 Hugo Nominees - Short and Novelette round-up

Short story was a tough decision. The only story I actively disliked was “Bride of Frankenstein,” although “The Moment” didn’t do much for me either. Neither story seemed to be saying anything all that interesting. On the other hand, “Spar” really jumped out at me as something special, but I also really enjoyed “Bridesicle” and “Non-zero Probablities.” For those two latter stories, my only complaint was that I liked them so much I wanted more. “Spar” I didn’t really want more of, which I guess is an accomplishment for a short story. In other words, on an intellectual level, and as an appreciation of the craft of short stories, “Spar” wins hands down. But I actually enjoyed reading the other two stories as much, with the edge probably going to “Non-Zero Probablilities.” I guess I’ll vote with my head rather than my heart.

1. “Spar” Kij Johnson
2. “Non_Zero Probablities” N. K. Jemisin
3. “Bridesicle” Wil McIntosh
4. “The Moment”
5. No Award
6. “Bride of Frankenstein” Resnick

Novelette’s an easy one for me though. I enjoyed all six of these stories, but five of them were mild “likes.” I’ve ranked them below, but 2-6 (and especially 4-6) are virtually tied. “The Island,” “Sinner, Baker, etc. etc.” and “One of Our Bastards” each presented original and exciting worlds, but I often found those worlds needlessly complex, especially in this short format, where you don’t really have time for effective world-building and detailed plot and character development. “It Takes Two” and “Overtime” gave us contemporary stories with speculative fiction twists. They were nice, but they also felt a bit inconsequential – the former focusing on an erotic tryst and the latter edging into slapstick. Swirsky’s story, however, really grabbed me and touched me in a very surprising way. It’s the least cutting edge of the six – it’s basically an Asimov robot story with a touch more emotional and psychological complexity – but maybe that’s a virtue (at least, from this reviewer’s prespective). Swirsky’s story is not only my favorite Hugo-nominated novelette, it’s my favorite short fiction of 2010 that I’ve read.

1. “Eros, Philia, Agape” Rachel Swirsky

2. Sinner Baker

3. “It Takes Two” Griffith

4. “Overtime” Stross

5. “The Island” Peter Watts

6. “One of Our Bastards is Missing” Paul Cornell

2010 Hugo Nominees - Graphic Story round-up

This was a tough one to decide on. Overall, I’d say it’s the weakest set of nominees except maybe “Dramatic Presentation, short form,” and I do get the idea that Hugo nominators as a whole aren’t too widely read in the world of comics. For both its two years, the category has been dominated by two specific webcomics and writers/properties from the wider sf world.

I’m going to contradict myself right off the bat. I’ve said several times that I like that the Hugos give more attention to webcomics than a lot of awards programs…but I’m going to immediately toss the two webcomics out of contention. Schlock Mercenary didn’t do it for me, and Phil Foglio is a sentimental favorite, but Girl Genius felt like it was in a holding pattern last year.

The three other collections are stronger entries, but each has its flaws. Captain Britain suffers from the minutiae of obscure continuity and inconsistencies in the art. Gaiman’s Batman has some beautiful moments, but again, not my favorite art, and not much of an overall story. Fables had beautiful art, but it’s in the awkward position of dealing with the aftermath of a truly epic story. All three are great, none is perfect.

In the end, I voted for Cornell’s Captain Britain, though Willingham and Gaiman were very close behind. I think sentimental reasons were the tie-breaker – I have more of a history with Captain Britain, and I really like Cornell.

Tomorrow, short fiction. Wednesday, novellas, Thursday, drama! Friday, novels.

2010 Hugo nominee, novel: JULIAN COMSTOCK: A STORY OF 22ND-CENTURY AMERICA by Robert Charles Wilson

Last, but not (quite) least for the 2010 Hugo nominees, we have the novel Julian Comstock, by Robert Charles Wilson. I’m inclined the group Wilson in with the likes of Sawyer, Stross, Scalzi as a successful sf author from the period I’d missed out on. This novel covers a lot of the same ground as The Windup Girl, but in very different way.

Like Bacigalupi, Wilson depicts a 22^nd century future in which oil supplies are exhausted with a resulting collapse of technology. There are also rampant plagues and a population collapse that has resulted from the lack of energy, disease, and infertility brought on by chemical pollution. In the wake of this collapse, reactionary political forces have taken over North America: landowners have become aristocrats, while many laborers are slaves (called indentured servants, but it is an inherited class). Christianity has become an official religion that censors scientific knowledge and enforces morality.

The narrator, Adam Hazzard, tells the story of his close friend, the titular Julian Comstock, an aristocrat and the nephew of the evil President of the United States, who killed Julian’s father. When both are young men, they are conscripted in a war against the European Union in Labrador. They are very successful, and Julian especially rises to fame through his military exploits. Meanwhile, Adam works to become a writer of adventure books and falls in love with a rebellious young woman.

Adam is an odd sort of unreliable narrator – we don’t have any reason to suspect that he’s intentionally dishonest, but he’s one of the most naïve characters I’ve ever read. As a lower class country boy from a religious background, he seems completely unaware of much of what’s going on around him. Sometimes this makes for some humorous situations, but usually it was a bit too precious. It’s also difficult to believe that a character who sees as much as Adam, who finds himself (while still very young) in the highest echelons on military, political, and artistic circles, would be so thick. I wasn’t a huge fan of the prose, which was generally very plain with the occasional Victorian affectation, and I’m not sure if this is Wilson’s voice or Hazzard’s – if the latter, it is at least more impressive. The contrivances of the plot, which puts these young men at the top of American society, also feel Victorian, and again, I’m sure this is intentional on some level, but does that make it any less annoying?

Overall, this heavy leaning on American Victoriana is the novel’s biggest fault. It feels like Wilson’s been reading some Twain and some books on the American Civil War, and he wants to tell a futuristic story in this mode. I didn’t buy the turning back that we see here – the society of Windup Girl felt a lot more like our future than Wilson’s arbitrarily resetting culture, technology, and science back to 1900. There are also some cheap political shots here that took me out of the narrative. I think my politics are pretty close to Wilson’s, and I agree with most of his critiques of the contemporary US, but I still winced, for instance, when one character explains that America’s European attackers “hate us for our freedoms.” I’d prefer a bit more subtlety in my political satire.

There is plenty to enjoy here, especially if you're looking for a post-apocalyptic novel that's a little different, and much less grim. It’s a fast-paced and easy read, and the narrator is quite likable, despite his cloying naivete. It really does capture the feeling of a boys’ adventure novel, which is certainly the intention, but I’m not sure it worked for me. Mostly, I think it suffers in comparison to the better written and more compelling work by Bacigalupi.

Next week I'll wrap up my 2010 Hugo coverage by revealing my votes and making some predictions...

Grade: B-

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres., Long Form: Avatar, Screenplay and Directed by James Cameron (Twentieth Century Fox)

Avatar is James Cameron's box-office-record-shattering, 3D special effects extravaganza. A crippled ex-marine named Jake (Sam Worthington) volunteers to work in a sort of virtual reality-controlled alien body to negotiate with the natives of the large moon Pandora. Jake works for an evil Earth corporation that wants to mine a rare mineral with a stupid name, and they have come into conflict with the natives, called Na'vi, as a result. Jake must eventually choose sides in this fight.

I already wrote an apologia of sorts for Avatar back in Oscar season, but it does feel like any positive review of the film these days has to be defensive. Honestly, I don't think the film will win the Hugo; I get the sense that the conventional wisdom on the film has shifted from "it's an awesome game-changer" to "it's an overrated, derivative, and stupid spectacle." I think a backlash was inevitable when a movie with some glaring flaws was that successful ($2.5 billion+ worldwide, and still growing). I, however, still like it quite a bit, and after watching it again for this review, I even think it holds up on the small screen in 2D, though the experience was certainly diminished.

Let me start with those glaring flaws. I've seen the film called everything from anti-American to racist. I don't have a lot of time for these political arguments, though I do think the "the white guy saves the day, yet again" issue does have some traction. I think there are strong narrative reasons to have a POV character, especially in a film about aliens, so I don't mind nearly as much as I mind, say, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, or Glory (I usually call this the "Zwick effect" after the director of the latter two examples). I also think that while the Na'vi are obvious analogues for earthbound indigenous peoples, especially Native Americans, you can't think of them as more than analogues. The Na'vi may comment on the historical treatment of Native Americans, but you shouldn't see them in any way as realistic depictions of Native Americans themselves. You could get into a whole debate about portraying Native Americans as "children of nature," and the implications, both good and bad, of that stereotype. But the Na'vi are literally linked into nature in a way that Native Americans never were. The analogies do break down eventually.

And yes, Avatar is also derivative. It's Dances with Smurfs + Disney's Pocahontas + Ferngully x LeGuin's "The Word for World is Forest." Yes, and Star Trek=Wagon Train + Horatio Hornblower x Forbidden Planet. And Star Wars=The Searchers + Hidden Fortress x Buck Rogers. And so on. Of course, lots of science fiction classics are re-imaginings of historical events or classic stories in a new context. Cameron at least combines his influences in some interesting ways.

And there are more complaints. The plot is predictable? Well, yes, but at least it makes sense, which is apparently asking a lot of a blockbuster film in the age of Michael Bay's Transformer movies. The dialogue is flat? Check. The characters are static archetypes? I'm afraid so; that's the film's greatest weakness as far as I'm concerned...

Okay, it's not perfect!

It is, however, visually stunning and wonderfully imaginative. It's thrilling, and the world-building is meticulous. And, while there are a lot of fantastic elements, there's also a solid grounding in science from richly-conceived ecosystems to astronomical details. There's a blend here of planetary romance, hard sf, and computer age ideas that I think is really fascinating. Plus, it's all in service of a story that does relate (albeit, perhaps too simplistically) to issues of environment, neo-colonialism, and indigenous rights. It builds a new world that illuminates our own, and it uses groundbreaking special effects not just for cheap thrills, but to further engross us in that world. This film is pure, classic science fiction on a scale that I don't think we see that often.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres. Short: Doctor Who: "The Waters of Mars" Writ. by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; Dir. by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)

Just when the silliness of the 2010 Dr. Who specials was starting to overwhelm, Davies delivered what I consider to be his finest Dr. Who story as a writer. This was the one special that I said should receive a nomination, and it is really good.

This serial does two things that Dr. Who doesn’t do often: 1) it takes place in the near future and deals with early efforts at space colonization (Mars, in this case), and 2) it explores the nature of time travel.

The basic story is that the Doctor stops off on Mars in the twenty-first century, takes a walk in his spacesuit, and runs across the first human colony on Mars. The humans are understandably confused by his arrival, but they’re soon caught up in an attack by some strange water-sucking entity. It’s a great change of pace for the series over the usual trips to a few millions of years in the future, and allows for some decent hard-sf moments (in Classic Who, Mars is home to rubber-suit aliens called Ice Warriors and pyramids dedicated to evil Egyptian deities). The colony looks great (though maybe too roomy), the monsters are effectively creepy, the guest actors are fantastic (especially Lindsay Duncan as Captain Adelaide Brooke), and there’s only one embarrassing moment of camp from Russell T. Davies (it involves a rocket-powered robot).

So, it’s a very good horror tale set in a Martian colony. What pushes it into the realm of greatness is that it does take on some of the central themes of the show. In the classic series, the Doctor often mentioned that you couldn’t change history and then proceeded to do so every week. In the new series, they came up with the compromise that only some moments must remain unchanged and only certain situations create paradoxes. This special focuses on one of those unchangeable moments and then asks if the Doctor can stand by and watch people die. The central conflict is not some crazy monster-of-the-week, it’s with the Doctor’s own ego. There’s a device that Davies used so often that it grew tiresome: everything looks bleaker than bleak, many people have died, the odds are overwhelming, there no way the Doctor can win, and yet, he still manages to turn everything around at the last second. This special has that exact moment – one of the best-realized versions, in fact – and yet manages to subvert it completely. It’s wonderfully dark and challenging, and by far the best of the 2009 specials.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee (and Nebula winner), novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Kage Baker’s been one of the most highly regarded sf writers of the past decade, and her Company series has been on my reading list for some time. Unfortunately, she died earlier this year of cancer at the age of 57.

The Women of Nell Gwynne’s was one of her last works. It’s a limited edition illustrated novella, and it’s already won the Nebula. Wikipedia has it as a standalone Company story, but I have no idea how it connects.

Basically, it’s a story of steampunk cyborg superspy Victorian prostitutes. How’s that for a pitch? We begin with the origin story of one of the operatives, the aristocratic Lady Beatrice. After being raped and brutalized in the Afghan War, Beatrice is cast out of her family as a fallen woman. She turns to prostitution to survive, and, since she’s fierce, resourceful, and educated, she’s recruited by the brothel called Nell Gwynne’s, which is really an intelligence gathering operation of the mysterious Gentlemen’s Speculative Society. The Society has a lot of steampunk spying technology, which they share with the girls in a scene straight out of James Bond. The rest of the novella focuses on a single mission concerning more steampunk super-technology.

It’s a very entertaining story, though I’m not sure it quite lives up to its potential. The mission itself is a bit routine – again, it’s straight Bond or Avengers material, despite the unique setting, and the girls don’t get to make that much use of their special equipment and talents. There’s also not as much exploration of sex and class as the beginning seems to promise. The relationship between the Society and Nell Gwynne’s seems rather exploitative, for instance, and I’d like to see more on that dynamic. It’s good, and I’d recommend it to steampunk fans especially, but I can’t help thinking that it could have been more. I look forward to reading more of Baker’s work though.

Since it was issued as a limited edition book, it’s not easy to get hold of at the moment (I’ve becoming a supporting WorldCon member, so I got a .pdf copy as a voter). It will receive a larger print run this fall though.

Grade: B

2010 Hugo nominee, novelette: "The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)

Peter Watts packs a lot into this short piece of fiction, which was part of one of the “New Space Opera” anthologies that are supposed to highlight the new directions the genre has taken away from its traditional Star Trekkish roots.

It is different. The narrator is a woman named Sunday who lives and works on a ship named Eriophora over a billion years in the future. The ship is tasked with building wormholes to facilitate interstellar travel for the various posthumans zipping around the universe. It’s not a job that the crew can quit, and they seem to be immortal. It’s also a fairly thankless job – no one bothers to communicate with them. The crew resents the work, and especially their boss, a computer they call Chimp, but they toil on for eternity. Watts manages to get all of that world-building in, plus a fairly significant plot. The narrator meets a new worker named Dix who claims to be her son but acts a little odd, and the crew encounters a massive alien entity floating through space (the titular “Island.”) So, for all the high-concept post-singularity complexity of the world, it’s really a story about reaching out to other beings and making connections amidst an isolated and hostile situation (the title’s other meaning).

I liked it. It’s well written, and the emotional themes do resonate. At the same time, the world seems needlessly complex to me. The real story is about Sunday and Dix, and we don’t really need the wild setting to get them to the interesting emotional place we see them in. Watts seems to be showing off a bit with the world-building. There’s some interesting material in there, but I worry that these far future post-singularity settings are going to start to feel generic to me by the time I catch up to the present on my Hugo reading.

Grade: B-

2010 Hugo nominee (and Nebula winner), short story: "Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

Now, this is a short story. Rather than give a little hint of a broader world or tell a cute vignette, this novel takes an unusual (and provocative) situation and uses it to briefly explore ideas of alien otherness, sexuality, and psychology.

The story is not for the easily offended. There are graphic (though mostly evocative rather than descriptive) depictions of sex. In fact, that’s pretty much the entire story.

There’s so little plot here, I’m afraid to spoil it. Let’s just say it involves the interactions of a female narrator and a very non-humanoid alien, whose ship she is trapped on after an accident. We get hints of what has happened, and we get a sense of how the narrator mourns and how lost she is. Taken straight, it’s an original depiction of alien interactions and the psychology of a desperate situation, but I think the story also has deeper things to say about sex and relationships. It actually makes some of the same points as Palimpsest, though I things it's sharper for being shorter.

Overall, the story is more than the sum of its small word count, something that’s rare and special in short fiction.

Available at Clarkesworld in both print and audio.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee, graphic fiction: Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

Like Girl Genius, this is another webcomic. Unlike Girl Genius, this is much more of a daily comic strip (there used to be these things called “newspapers” that originated the concept. I hear they still publish a few for nostalgia purposes). This is the one nominee that I really wanted to pass on. Not that I thought I wouldn’t like it, but just because it’s so hard to compare to the other works, and also because I was so far behind. I had to read 365 strips to catch up, some of them quite wordy; I think this took longer than some of the Hugo-nominated novels this year. And, I didn’t even consider reading the nine years worth of previous strips, which means that I didn’t know the characters and world nearly as much as I’d like to.

What I did get out of it is that our main characters are mercenaries led by Captain Kaff Tagon, and including mad scientist Kevyn Andreyasn, a snarky floating AI called Ennesby, and the titular Schlock, a violent and blobby alien (?). In this volume, they escort an aid shipment to Credomar, where the delicacy of the local political situation frustrates the mercenaries to no end. It’s a more cynical and militaristic Star Trek. Much of the humor comes from sci-fi in-jokes. The rest of the humor comes from characters deadpanning in the face of over-the-top action sequences or their own callousness.

The cartooning is very simplistic, and even though some of the other nominees had occasional artistic inconsistencies, they’re all still miles ahead of this. The plot seems pretty thin as well; it feels quite padded. However, my biggest problem is how one-note the characters are. They’re all variations on a theme: no-nonsense, cut-through-the-bs military types who are a bit unstable. It got old fast. I also got the impression that Tayler had much more sympathy for the mercenaries’ violent attitudes than for anyone else. I’m all for black humor, but watching the mercenaries gleefully attack a world of aid-recipients was…a little unpleasant?

It is hard to compare the daily strip to collected volumes, especially when you’re reading it in big bunches rather than daily, but I could name a lot of examples that are funnier, better looking, or even have better sf concepts.

Still, I won’t say that I wouldn’t have enjoyed this more had I been prepared and followed the characters longer. But, I’m pretty confident that it wouldn’t be getting my Hugo vote. The whole series is available for free here, so you can decide for yourself.

2010 Hugo, Campbell, and BSFA, 2009 Nebula Winner: THE WINDUP GIRL by Paulo Bacigalupi

My Hugo votes are in (the deadline is this weekend), and we're in the homestretch of our coverage!

In early 2008, high oil prices led to food riots in more than a dozen countries around the world. Paulo Bacigalupi's first novel, The Windup Girl, focuses on these sorts of connections between food and energy within the framework of globalization. In this future dystopia, the world has suffered a "calorie crisis" in which both fossil fuels and food sources have been exhausted by over-consumption, climate change, and genetically modified organisms gone wild. Electricity is a luxury. So is fruit. The automobile is virtually extinct. People depend on genetically modified animals such as mammoth-like "megadonts" to do much of their work. And, there are myriad new killer diseases that can ravage a population.

Bacigalupi sets the action in Thailand, a nation that has survived the worst destructions of the contraction caused by the calorie crisis with some nationalist and sometimes isolationist policies. Yet, it's still vulnerable to the big agribusiness/bioengineering firms of the West, the Calorie Companies. Bacigalupi writes in third person, but he alternately focuses on four interconnected storylines: Anderson Lake is an American "Calorie man" (or economic hit-man) whose duty is to gain access to Thailand's seed bank. Lake's employee, Hock Seng is an ethnic Chinese refugee from Malaysia who has lost everything and will do anything to regain success as a business man. Jaidee and his assistant Kanya work in the Ministry of Environment and try to protect Thailand from foreign business interests and their own government's corruption. Finally, Emiko is a "windup girl" from Japan. She has been genetically modified to serve as a sex slave, and she is hated and horribly abused for her differences. All of the characters face a series of dramatic crises that eventually explode with major geopolitical implications.

The Windup Girl is the heir to Stand on Zanzibar. Bacigalupi takes a set of contemporary problems and an understanding of global politics and projects forward a worse case scenario for a dystopian future. It's a chilling vision, but also a fairly grounded one. That's not to say it's a likely future (most alternative energy sources are inexplicably missing), but much of it is plausible, and thus it has a lot to say about the world we live in.

The characters are very complex - they all do terrible things, and they're all obsessed with their own success or survival. Yet, they also all got moments of compassion and redemption. There was some talk recently on the social science blog Crooked Timber as to whether Bacigalupi's Asian characters fall into stereotypes, and I'll admit to having a similar reaction early in the novel. Hock Seng, especially, seemed like a duplicitous schemer right out of a yellow peril story from a hundred years ago. As the novel continues, though, I do think that Bacigalupi presents some very complex motives and personalities for the characters that pushed them beyond stereotype. It's the kind of book where I didn't necessarily *like* any of the characters, but I had moments of sympathy and understanding with all of them.

Bacigalupi is also a great writer, though there seemed to be more lyrical moments in the first half than the second. Overall, I likes the beginning of the book more than the end. It's such an unremittingly bleak picture that it did begin to drag me down. It eventually begins to feel like more of an anti-GMO, anti-neocolonialism screed than a novel with rich characters and insight into the human condition - the characters still shine, but they also get ground under heel to the point that they almost fade to the background. But, that's true for most of the great dystopian novels.

Despite the bleakness, I can understand why this novel has received the praise and awards that it has. It's a cautionary tale with rich prose that exposes the moral conundrums of global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, and genetic engineering through fascinating characters. The Windup Girl is a pretty clear contender for the best science fiction novel of 2009.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres., Long Form: District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)

I think most sf fans can agree that the genre is at its best when its about something. We want to see imagination soar and be transplanted to somewhere new and unexpected, but we also want to learn a bit about the society we live in or ourselves. District 9 struck a chord with people because it was an imaginative and original film that was clearly about race, refugees and apartheid. There’s a lot to like about this movie, and it is entertaining. But, when it comes down to the social message, I think it missed the point…and quite badly.

In 1982, an alien ship appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. The haunting images of the hovering ship are by far my favorite part of the movie. The aliens inside, rather than glowing beings bound to save humanity, are dirty, starving and impoverished. The South African government transfers them to camps, where they continue to live, uncomfortably segregated from humans in something akin to the apartheid that segregated the black majority from South African society until the 1990s. The film picks up in the modern day with South African bureaucrats working in one of the alien refugee camps (the titular District 9). One of them, Wikus, is exposed to alien chemicals that make him a wanted man in both the human and alien communities.

The film starts out as a faux documentary. In fact, it plays out a lot like the UK version of The Office, and Wikus owes a lot to David Brent. One of my minor complaints is that the documentary style seems to fade in and out. This inconsistency makes it look like a cheap narrative trick – a way to get out some exposition that’s quickly abandoned whenever it’s inconvenient. It does work much of the time though. There’s a lot to like about the film overall. Sharlto Copley’s performance is great, the effects are fantastic (especially at a tenth the budget of Star Trek or Avatar), and it really is original.

However, I do have some problems with the presentation of the central analogy, and these problems were serious enough that they kept me from enjoying the film. Nicole Stamp caused a bit of a stir with this blog post, but I think she expressed a lot of what I felt about the film. If you’re going to make a comparison between these aliens and African victims of apartheid, it’s problematic to portray the aliens as violent and disgusting. It’s even more problematic if almost all of the few actual Africans in the movie are also violent and disgusting. I’m not saying writer/director Neill Blomkamp is racist – just that he could have been more sensitive in his portrayal of Africans and more nuanced in the presentation of the analogy.

Actually, you could make the point that the white characters don’t come off any better – there are brutal white scientists and bureaucrats throughout. The fact that the characters fit so nicely into stock roles and stereotypes is still an issue. Also, the fact that almost all of the characters are equally despicable highlights a deeper problem here. I don’t think you can convey a message in a movie this unremittingly dark, vicious and gross. The aliens are so violent and disgusting, and the humans are so violent and disgusting, that I didn’t really care all that much if they all just brutally murdered each other. If you want to portray a humanist message, I think you need some sense of human (or alien) worth. The film borders on nihilism, and nihilism isn’t likely to inspire social change.

Grade: B

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres. Short: Doctor Who: "Planet of the Dead" Written by Russell T Davies & Gareth Roberts; Directed by James Strong

The Doctor Who Easter special. I mentioned last time that as a recent convert I have been watching some of the classic Dr. Who, and this special does work harder to evoke some of the feel of the old series than anything else since the revival began in 2005. There’s the winding, meandering plot (very common in the padded serials of the old series), there’s an appearance by the Doctor’s old partners UNIT, and there’s even a crazy zooming shot of a revealed alien.

In other words, it’s camp, which is often the show’s strength, and sometimes its weakness. For instance, the companion this go-round is a thrill-seeking cat burglar named Lady Cristina D’Souza (played by bionic woman Michelle Ryan). I like the idea of a morally ambiguous companion for the Doctor, but the thief idea gives writer Russell T. Davies license to do multiple descent-by-wire caper scenes that are…well…”super-cheesy” is the technical reviewers’ term. Making her an aristocrat doesn’t add to the plausibility.

The Doctor happens to be riding Lady Christina’s getaway bus, gets involved in a police chase, and then the whole bus is transported to a desert planet. As they try to get the bus back through the dimensional gateway, they meet some aliens with giant insect heads and learn that the whole Earth is threatened! The Doctor manages to call in his old friends from the alien-fighting UNIT, but must race against time to get the bus and its passengers back before UNIT closes the gateway.

The episode is probably a little too ambitious for its budget effects-wise, and the cg looks pretty bad (more vintage Who – too bad the sets don’t wobble!) I don’t mind so much, but when you add all of the little contrivances and pulp moments together, it’s just not great. It’s a fun way to spend an hour, especially if you’re a Doctor Who fan, but I’m sure there were hours of television more worthy of this nomination slot **cough**Fringe**cough** **cough**Caprica**cough**, and I’d be scandalized if it actually won. It was kind of hard to get through a second time.

Grade: C+

2010 Hugo, Locus Fantasy, WFA, Clarke, 2009 BSFA Winner: THE CITY & THE CITY by China Miéville

One of the central stories of the twentieth century is the drawing (and redrawing) of borders. As empires rose and fell over the course of the first two world wars (the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the British, the Soviet, etc.) borders kept changing, countries were partitioned, and we got immigration debates, ethnic cleansing, and global terrorism as a result. So, it’s an immensely important issue, but one that sf has not delved into often.

China Miéville’s The City & The City is all about the fictions and realities of borders, which are always arbitrary on some level. The Eastern European (maybe Balkan?) cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma not only border each other, they share the same space and are almost everywhere entagled. Therefore, just walking or driving down the street, citizens must always watch not to violate the border by seeing into the other city or even accidentally stepping into it. The novel is full of rich cultural details that explain how much the border defines the everyday lives of the people in this “divided city;” Miéville highlights the fact that borders are human constructions by creating a situation in which people must constantly construct one. Anyone who does violate this border falls into the grasp of a secret police force that bridges the cities called Breach. I would’ve liked a little more history as to how this came about, but I see why Mieville avoided the question (what would be believable?). Still, it would be nice to hear more about how these cities existed on the contentious borders of the Ottoman Empire or the Warsaw Pact.

The actual plot unfolds as a noir mystery. Tyador Borlú is a police detective in Besźel who is to solve the death of a young woman with ties to Ul Qoma. As the mystery unfolds, it raises all sorts of questions about the border, the cities’ twinned histories, and Breach. These genre conventions keep the novel moving at a brisk pace and they make it imminently readable. They also provide some of the novel’s few problems. It is, by necessity, somewhat formulaic, and parts of this novel will feel very familiar if you know the genre at all (it’s very reminiscent of Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union, either through direct inspiration or the shared inspirations). It’s very well done here, though, and the result makes for an engaging read that still leaves a lot to think about. I also personally prefer this concrete murder mystery approach to the dreamlike version of a similar idea in Valente’s Palimpsest. This was a fantastic novel, and it’s easy to see why it’s won so many sf awards this season.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee, graphic fiction: Girl Genius, Volume 9: "Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm" by Kaja and Phil Foglio

As I mentioned before, the Hugo voters seem to differ somewhat in their views from the voters of the big comics awards like the Eisners. This is only the second year that the graphic fiction category has existed, but based on these two sets of nominees, it looks like the Hugo pool leans heavily on high profile Vertigo series (Fables), properties from creators already well-known in the sf community (Cornell and Gaiman), and webcomics. I think the high profile of the latter category actually speaks in favor of Hugo nominators, as webcomics have huge circulation but often seem to be undervalued by comics tastemakers.

Phil Foglio has a couple of fan-art Hugos under his belt from way back in the ‘70s, and Girl Genius, by he and his wife Kaja, was one of the first self-published comics to embrace the webcomics model with great success. So, it’s not a surprise that Girl Genius is a mainstay in this category (it won the first year). It’s also very easy to see why Girl Genius has a huge following and active sf fanbase from the content itself: the character cartooning is lively and expressive with strong storytelling, the designs are fantastic, and the setting is very interesting. Girl Genius is set in an alternate nineteenth-century Europe where certain people have a “spark” that enables them to become mad scientists and create giant destructive machines. This has turned the Europe of this super-industrial revolution into a shattered war-zone full of giant robots. The titular “girl genius,” Agatha Heterodyne eventually discovers that she has a hidden “spark” and a special destiny. It’s all very steampunk, though the Foglios prefer the much cooler term “Gaslamp fantasy.”

This volume and the previous Hugo-winning volume both take place in a sentient castle that Agatha has inherited. Both volumes involve a lot of traipsing around the huge building while disarming of boobytraps, discovering secrets, and repelling invasions. The innovation of this volume in particular is that it puts both of Agatha’s love interests in the castle with her, which creates lots of comic and character opportunities, and, when a chromatic illness is introduced, adds a race-against-time element with some added drama. For these reasons, I liked this volume better than the previous one.

That said, I don’t think volume 8 should have won last year (I probably would have voted for Fables), and I’m not sure this superior volume should win this year either. The plot has stalled out a bit in the castle, after a series of very fast-paced entries through the first seven volumes. Also, as much as I can see why the series is so beloved, I’ve never been as big a fan. There’s a lot to admire here, and Phil and Kaja Foglio have great ideas and a lot of experience. It’s purely a matter of personal taste, but the mix of comedy and drama has never quite worked for me. I want the series to either be sillier or more serious. Still, I don’t think there’s any question that it’s the best “gaslamp fantasy” comic that America has produced in the past few years, and, in a year when Steampunk reigns supreme, that counts for a lot.