2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella Wrap

If you look back on my grades, you’ll see that this is a pretty easy category for me. I enjoyed all of the stories, as I have most of what I’ve read this year (I’d say the main dividing line between a B- and C+ is whether I enjoyed a story more than I disliked it), but most of this category is pretty flat. I’d say that the common theme of all of my B/B- stories is that they’re rather sketchy. All four either need more character development or more plot structure. Despite the extra wordcount, I think the novelettes were, on average, richer.

Of course, none of this holds true for the standout, Rachel Swirsky’s “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window.” I loved it more than any other nominee I’ve read/watched. I’d rank the others, but I think Swirsky will be the only thing I put on my ballot. Any of the other stories are better than “no award,” but if “Lady” doesn’t win, I don’t really care which one does.

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella - "Troika" by Alastair Reynolds

Speaking of old-fashioned, Reynolds’ novella takes us to one of the most classic of sf tropes: the Big Dumb Object. In this case, we have a mission of later-twenty-first-century neo-Soviets going to examine a massive satellite complex they call the Matroyshka (named after the nesting dolls because it’s composed of a series of shells). Most of the story is told in flashbacks by an escapee from a mental institution as we learn that the members of the expedition have not fared well upon their return to Earth. There are a few interesting twists along the way, including a nice one that serves as the source of the title. The biggest twist, however, doesn’t really seem to serve any narrative purpose other than to give the story something shocking for its last ten pages.

Alastair Reynolds is at the vanguard of space opera and hard sf today, and I have a review of one of his works coming up when we resume our march through awards history in the fall (did I just use the royal we?). I’m not sure if this is the best introduction to his work though. Whereas many of our stories this year have done new ideas in a clean, retro-style; this feels like an old cliché dressed up in a more contemporary, Big Ideas style. I find that combination less appealing myself. It’s not that there was anything I actively disliked about this story; it’s quite decent. It just didn’t really capture my imagination (and it didn’t come close to drawing an emotional reaction from me) like a good sf story should.

Grade: B-

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella - "The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov's, September 2010)

We’re back to our theme from the novelette nominees. This is a rather old-fashioned story with a simple plot and plenty of exposition to help us get our bearings. A few centuries in the future, humans have colonized much of the solar system, and a group of oligarchs control much of the colonized territory. Our narrator, David Tinkerman, is the assistant of a specialist on the terraforming of Mars named Leah Hamakawa. He’s also helplessly in love with her. Leah is invited by the young sultan of Venus for a visit, and we spend most of the story in floating cities that bob on the immense air pressure of the second planet in a temperate layer of the upper atmosphere.

It’s a cool concept for a world, and Landis makes sure to lay out the workings and history clearly (he even sets up an info dump as the narrator reading a history text on his trip to Venus). It’s a very simple story though, especially for its length. We get the physical world building and a little cultural world building with Venus’s marital practices, we get to see the sultan and a plot he’s hatched, and then there are some sky pirates. The end. We spend enough time with the narrator that this should be something of a character piece, but Tinkerman is pretty generic and Hamakawa is basically a non-entity. We’re told she’s something of a mystery, and we never really get past that. What exactly is Tinkerman’s attraction?

Some science fiction devolves into a delivery mechanism for ideas, and that’s definitely what’s happened here. Reading about Landis’s Venus is really thrilling, the rest is unnecessary trimming.

Grade: B-

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella - "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow)

Emery, Leonard, and Robbie became friends working at the Smithsonian aviation wing under a scholar named Maggie Blevin thirty years ago. Now, Maggie is dying of cancer, and Leonard comes up with a plan to give her the gift of re-creating lost footage of a strange experiment in early flight that she had been obsessed with. The re-creation involves a trip to a small, semi-abandoned island in North Carolina, and hints of mysterious alien forces…but most of the focus is on these characters and their fairly humble lives.

This novella reminded me a lot of that ‘80s Spielberg-produced anthology show Amazing Stories, a show that I’m kind of ambivalent about. It told some good, character-oriented stories, like this one, but it was also so steeped in a sense of nostalgia and over-reaching attempts to capture that Spielbergian sense of mystery and wonder that it sometimes overlooked more basic principles of storytelling. That pretty much sums up my feelings here. Hand creates some nice moments, and evokes some nice emotions (again, especially nostalgia), but the sum total only did so much for me.

Grade: B

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella - The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

Does anyone remember Tamagotchis? I guess they still make them, in Japan at least. They were digital pets that you had to feed and take care of, and they would grow and change, and their behavior would vary based on how well they were cared for. Yeah, that’s what this story is about. These tamagotchis are called “digients,” and they are quite a bit more sophisticated in the AI department. They can talk, though they’re apparently limited to cutesy baby talk (this seems to be Chiang’s way of comparing them to communicating apes, but I’d think AIs would learn differently – grammar really shouldn’t be such a problem).

The digients are developed as a high tech toy/AI experiment, but they tend to be, like lots of living things, unpredictable. Well-raised digients can end up just as neurotic as poorly-raised versions. The project fails, leaving a small group of dedicated fans to try to see to the creations’ futures. There are really three main tracks here- 1). developments in AI and social technologies, including their dark sides. 2). Ethical questions about how fast and freely digients should be allowed to grow. 3) and, the relationship between two digient developers turned “parents” Ana Alvarado and Derek Brooks. The overall metaphor of child-raising is pretty clear, and it gets more obvious as the story goes along.

Ted Chiang isn’t the most prolific writer out there, but the handful of stories he’s written over the past couple of decades are more likely than not to win one or more major awards. I mentioned in the Swirsky review that I like his work, which tends to be thoughtful and emotionally powerful. I’m especially fond of his prose, which is clear and doesn’t shy away from exposition when necessary. I’ve read a few reviewers who seem to equate simple prose with bad prose, but I loved the straightforward style in most of this year’s novelette nominees (other reviewers not so much). Chiang’s previous stories are good examples of why this is a mistake. There can be elegance in simplicity and virtue in clarity. However, this story is a little too simple and clear. Chiang explains everything. We always know what the characters are thinking, and all the ethical issues are beaten into the ground. It all amounts to a lot more telling than showing, and a premise that gets over-stretched.

We spend a lot of time getting to what feels like the beginning of the story. I know that’s the point, as the digients reach a potential turning point in their maturity, but it takes a little too long to get there.

Grade: B

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novella - "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window" by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2010)

Swirsky wrote one of my favorite things that I read for the last Hugos, and I think she's outdone herself this year.

The titular “Lady” lives in a brutal fantasy world. Her own Land of Flowered Hills is matriarchal with an underclass of women, the "brood," who serve as surrogates so that the female leaders aren’t exposed to the vulnerabilities of pregnancy. The Lady herself is a powerful sorceress and lover to the Queen, but she is felled by betrayal early in the story. This in itself would make an intriguing little short, but the story only picks up from there. The Lady becomes one of the "Sleepless Ones," powerful spirits that can be summoned for consultation through deadly magics. We see several summonings from her perspective over millenia, and we witness the evolution and changes in The Land of Flowered Hills and the kingdoms, increasingly patriarchal, that succeed it. There’s a very nice vignette along the way about a man who shares his body with the Lady in a summoning as he tries to save his people from a volcano, and a great extended portion where we see a more civilized and "modern" magical kingdom, before we get a fittingly epic ending to the millennia long story.

Each of these timeframes and the characters within them are wonderfully evoked by Swirsky, and each left me wanting more without feeling unfinished. There are lots of great little details, including the later society misrepresenting "sleepless ones" as "Insomniacs," that sparkle and add to the richness. And, there is a strong emotional core. The Lady is from a hard world, and she can be cruel, but she is also sympathetic, as are many of the people she helps and/or betrays. Swirsky is a true humanist, and she melds world-building, character, and emotion (all with simple, elegant prose) in a way that is everything I look for in short fiction. She reminds me a lot of Ted Chiang, who I think she outshined this year.

Grade: A

2011 Hugo Nominees: Dram. Pres., Short Form Wrap

Based on the grades I handed out, this is a pretty strong category, yet it somehow didn’t feel that way. The Doctor Who domination is getting a bit old…Then again, I nominated two episodes, so I’m a horrible person. I also nominated some Caprica, and the excellent pilot to the Walking Dead (short review: the pilot is damn near perfect, then the first season goes dramatically downhill; I hope the second season is better). "The Lost Thing" was a welcome nominee that I would recommend to people, “Ray Bradbury” feels more like a novelty.

In the end, I think my vote will go to “A Christmas Carol.” Yeah, some of its plot points are familiar, both from the ridiculously over-adapted Dickens’ source material and some of Moffat’s pet DW plots, but it had the best performances, some of the best visuals, it was the most fun, and it really captured that sense of wonder that I look for in my SF&F.

In summation: 1) Down with Doctor Who! 2) Hooray Doctor Who!