2014 Nebula Winner: ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is the kind of active and well-liked leader in the science fiction community to whom the SFWA often seems to award Nebulas. I've hinted in the past that this seeming emphasis on the writer over the work hasn't always led to the strongest winners, in my opinion, but things worked out well with this choice. Annihilation is a strong and intriguing work of speculative fiction with literary ambitions - in other words, just what I'm looking for in these winners.

The novel is written as a journal of an expedition into a mysterious place called Area X that has a strange ecology and dramatic effects on the minds of any humans who enter it. The biologist of the twelfth expedition narrates, and we never learn her name or the names of the other expedition members (a psychologist, a surveyor, and an anthropologist). Things, of course, go wrong immediately, The results are pretty trippy with a heavy focus on how perception shapes behavior. VanderMeer can accomplish a lot, for instance, with the simple fact that expedition members can't agree on whether to call an artifact they find a "tunnel" or a "tower." I haven't always been a fan of very surrealist sf, but it works well here, as the images offer some great surprises and puzzles that stimulated my imagination, Interspersed with these events are flashbacks to the biologists pre-expedition life that build a very convincing character - she is surprisingly well-rounded despite remaining unnamed.

It's short and fast-paced, and I actually thought the length perfect. For a book that is abstract in many ways and doesn't seem interested in explaining many of its mysteries, spending any longer in this world might have gotten a little tiring. But, it ends on a very strong note. However, this is the first volume in The Southern Reach trilogy (all published in 2014 in an interesting strategy), so I guess there is more to be said about Area X and the efforts to explore it. I'm reluctant to dive into the other books not despite my enjoyment of this one but because that enjoyment was so predicated on its length and mystery. If anyone out there is reading and wants to recommend books two and three, I'd love to hear from them though.

Grade: A-

1968 Nebula – RITE OF PASSAGE by Alexei Panshin

I’d like to position Alexei Panshin as the vanguard of a new generation of sf writers. So far, every writer to win a Hugo or Nebula was born before the Great Depression began in 1929, except for Roger Zelazny. Alexei Panshin was born in 1940. Zelazny was born in 1937, but he seemed bent on taking his stories in a different direction, whereas Panshin is quite vocal about his devotion to the likes of Robert Heinlein and is known as much for his non-fiction works about science fiction as for his fictional works. As Panshin explains here, this novel is, to some extent, a response to the work of his idol, Robert Heinlein.

Rite of Passage is narrated by a pubescent girl named Mia, who lives on a massive colony spaceship built out of an asteroid in the late 22^nd century. Earth has been destroyed, and the generational colony ships are the last refuges of civilization among several frontier planets with harsh living conditions and rough-hewn colonists (aka Colons, aka “Mudeaters”). Resources on the colony ship are scarce, so the number of births per family is more tightly controlled than in today’s China, and every person must prove themselves in a “rite of passage” at about the age of 14. Each teen is left on a colony planet for thirty days, and many don’t survive the experience. The novel tracks Mia’s training for the rite, followed by the rite itself, as Mia struggles with her survival skills, her career path, and a host of ethical questions, all while receiving advice from her wise father, an influential politician on the ship.

Panshin explains here that he was inspired to write this novel by two sources: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and his opposition to the right-wing rhetoric of his idol, Robert Heinlein. The result is something like Farmer in the Sky as narrated by Scout. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite novels, and it’s hard for me not to see Rite of Passage as a pale imitation. The novel is nicely written, and Mia’s narrative voice is compelling, but it comes nowhere close to the wonderful lyricism of Harper Lee’s narrative. Furthermore, the speculative politics of Panshin’s work seem a bit confused – for someone who’s disappointed in Heinlein’s nationalistic and jingoistic extremism, there’s a lot of eugenic nonsense here, especially in the rite of passage itself – do wilderness survivalist skills really indicate who is best suited to live on a starship? And, the ending, which I think is a critique of Cold War culture and mutually assured destruction is more an ambiguous question mark than a stirring moral statement. Overall, I didn’t find the colony ship, or Mia’s father’s politics, particularly appealing. The humanistic wisdom of Atticus Finch is nowhere to be found in this novel, and Mia's opposition is weak and poorly articulated, though perhaps that's the point.

This novel doesn’t come close to measuring up to the lofty levels of its inspirations. In some ways, it’s too ambitious, and that’s not the worst crime a novel can commit. Still, it's eminently readable, there are some very good ideas, and Mia is certainly the most compelling female character I’ve seen in a Hugo or Nebula winner so far.

Grade: B