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-

2011 Hugo Nominees: Graphic - Fables: Witches, Bill Willingham/Mark Buckingham; The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man, Mike Carey/Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Unwritten is the one nominee in this category that I was really rooting to get nominated, though I worry that now that nominators have noticed it, it will just become another perennial. Mike Carey’s Vertigo (an imprint of the more famous DC Comics) series has a great hook: A man named William Taylor wrote a series of very successful Harry Potter-like novels starring a fictional version of his real-life son Tommy Taylor. William disappears before the last novel is published, and Tommy is left with the burden of having an obsessed fanbase. Then, one day, elements from the novels begin to interrupt his life as he discovers that magic is real. By this volume (slight **spoilers** here) we know that the real magic is in words and stories, and that there is a conspiracy that has shaped human history through managing narratives, both big and small. William was a part of this conspiracy, and he’s using Tommy as a weapon to unravel it. Most of this volume, “Inside Man,” involves Tommy escaping from prison following the events of the previous volume. A real high point is a chapter about Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who appreciated as much as anyone the magic of controlling narratives. I think this is the weakest of the three volumes released so far (volume three has a “choose your own adventure” issue!), but it’s still a very strong series. Peter Gross’s art is quite good.

Grade: B+

Speaking of Verigo and perennial nominees. Fables again! This is one of the three titles to be nominated for this award all three years of its existence. It is widely beloved though, and probably the strongest of the three.

Everything I said for last year's volume still pertains to this one. The book is lacking a little direction due to the resolution of it's overall story arc around issue 75, but the character work and magical world-building remain strong. Buckingham's a great artist. All that said, I don't find this book as unmissable as most comics aficianados seem to.

I will say I liked this one better than last year's though. We're a bit more focused on a few magic-oriented plotlines, though there are plenty of sub-plots running in the background...maybe a few too many. What really made this volume for me though was the character of Bufkin, a bibliophile flying monkey who has to fight Russian folklore's Baba Yaga mostly with his wits. He's great fun.

Grade: B

2011 Hugo Nominated Short Story Verdict

Maybe this is just me being the short-fiction curmudgeon that I am, but I didn’t think this was a very strong year for this category. There are only the four entries, and they’re not real stand-outs at that. I think I’ll vote for Kowal’s “For Want of a Nail,” but it’s really for lack of much else to choose from. Only “Ponies” feels particularly fresh, but that brief vignette doesn’t quite have as much to connect with.

Errrr, I don’t have much else to say on this one.

2011 Hugo Nominee: Short Story - "The Things" by Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, January 2010)

So, we’re nominating fan-fiction now, huh?

I’m just kidding. Well, mostly. Watts’ “The Things” is a retelling of John Carpenter’s 1984 film The Thing, and it follows the film very closely (it’s on Netflix streaming, and I actually stopped reading and watched it as soon as I realized what Watts was up to). The twist is that Watts is telling the story from the perspective of the creature. It turns out that the titular Thing just wanted to talk, but its method of talking involves splattering Carpenteresque gore all over the place, a process it calls “communion.” It’s an interesting twist, and yet it felt somewhat familiar, even if I can’t pinpoint exactly from where. For most of the story, it felt like the old “the monster is us!” canard. The story does save itself towards the end by questioning the basic nature of life on Earth – what if all the things we take for granted about biology are unique to our planet? What if death and individuality are cosmic aberrations…even errors? I enjoyed those questions, but they came too late to save the story for me. I’ve also decided that I’m not a big fan of Watts’ dense, chewy prose. It’s certainly not bad, and I give him credit for having more of a voice than many sf writers, but it’s not really my cup of tea.

I know this is everyone else's story of the year, but it wasn't mine. I enjoyed the movie a lot though. I don't think I'd ever seen it before (though I had seen the also great Howard Hawkes version).

Grade: B-

2011 Hugo Nominee: Short Story - "Ponies" by Kij Johnson (Tor.com, November 17, 2010)

Like last year, Kij Johnson's story is very short, dark and intriguing. With a story this short, I don't think I can really talk about it without spoiling it. I'll just say that it's a twisted combination of My Little Pony, Mean Girls, and "Harrison Bergeron." In other words, we have a violent depiction of conformity with a special emphasis on the social pressures that girls face to give up unique talents and interests in order to gain acceptance from their peers. It's sharp, stinging satire, and I imagine that most girls would sympathize. But, I think it lacks both the provocative grab and the emotional depth of "Spar."

Grade: B+

2011 Hugo Nominee: Short Story - "For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov's, September 2010)

Most of this story involves an attempt to repair the damaged AI of a generational starship. The AI is named Cordelia, and one of the passengers named Rava dropped her and damaged her access to her memory. In the process of the repairs, Rava and her brother Ludovico discover that she has developed an emotional connection to another member of the crew and that she’s been covering for his health problems – health problems that would be a death sentence for him, as the ship’s limited resources must be conserved. There’s actually a fair amount going on in this brief and simple story. On top of all I mentioned, there’s the fact that the crew has become dependent on the AI for all of their history-keeping, and there are also reproductive politics (a theme this year?) concerning whether Ludovico can have a child. There’s even some random Victoriana because, hey, that’s pretty popular these days. The story doesn’t quite live up to the epic qualities of its title; there is a chain reaction, but no kingdoms fall in this fairly intimate short. However, it is well-constructed, interesting, and well-written.

Grade: B

2011 Hugo Nominee: Short Story - "Amaryllis" by Carrie Vaughn (Lightspeed, June 2010)

I'm still on a work project in Kentucky, but I have an okay wireless connection, so let's see if we can get through some short short story reviews this week.

First up: Carrie Vaughn's story takes us to a world after environmental collapse in which reproduction and resource harvesting are both carefully managed. The narrator, Marie, captains a fishing boat called the Amaryllis and lives communally with her crew. A young member of the crew named Nina would like to have a baby, but the discrimination the crew faces due to Marie's own origins means that they're unlikely to ever get such permission. It's a solid depiction of a future recovering from plausible ecological scarcity, sort of a pricklier Pacific Edge, though it doesn't offer much unique other than the fishing boat setting. That depiction of labor is nicely rendered though, and the character relationships are sweet. There wasn't really much here to grab me though. This story is thoroughly pleasant, and I mean that as a compliment...but "pleasant" isn't necessarily enough to win a Hugo.

Grade: B-