2014 Hugo and Clarke, 2013 Nebula and BSFA Winner: ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie

A side benefit of my extended hiatus is that I've managed to mostly avoid the Hugos' "sad puppy" stupidity, in which a group of Hugo voters stuffed the nomination ballot boxes with a slate of books that were supposed to celebrate sci-fi adventure over politically-correct messaging.  Look, if you have to game the voting process to get your nominees through, you're an undemocratic movement. Also, bigotry doesn't really make for good democracy either, and the idea that this was a move to eschew contemporary politics is either ignorant or dishonest (as, obviously, an anti-"message" movement sends its own kind of message). If I'd actually had time to read all the nominees, I would have quit doing so when these guys steamrolled through their slate. So, I guess I'm lucky I didn't have time.

One of the ironies of the movement that I think is worth mentioning is that the last couple of years have been exceptionally good for books that resemble an older style of Hugo winner. As I mentioned in my round up of the '00s, traditional forms of science fiction, like space opera, have been in a very rough spot since around the turn of the century, leading to many unconventional Hugo winners, including several fantasy books. If you squint hard and ignore 90% of what people in the movement say (and 100% for the rabid ones), you can almost see a half-decent point that the vast majority of the books from the previous few years didn't fit traditional definitions of mainstream science fiction (hell, I sort of obliquely complained about this is my only posts of 2014).

The problem is, here we have a winner that is absolutely what the Hugos have been missing for the previous decade or so. Ancillary Justice would be right at home in the 1980s, and it draws heavily upon the types of sf (like the works of Ursula K. LeGuin) that did well in 60s and 70s. The fact that a book that represents the best of classic sf won in 2014 really demonstrates the hollowness and sexism of the whole sad puppy "we just miss classic sf" movement.

Breq is an ancillary - a human body that is controlled by the AI of a massive starship of the Radch Empire. Most ships have many ancillaries, which are used as enforcers of colonial rule as the Radchai take over new planets, and these ancillaries share the consciousness of the ship AI. But Breq has lost her ship - she is a lone sliver of that AI consciousness now trapped in human form. She's also on a quest, the nature of which is unveiled over the course of the novel. It has brought her to an icy planet, where she meets one of her former captains, now strung out on drugs, named Seivarden. Much of the novel follows her attempts to fulfill her goals while dealing with her washed-up former commander. Meanwhile, alternating chapters flashback to the Radch conquest of a planet called Shis'urna and reveal Breq's backstory.

It's fairly straightforward, accessible space opera, recalling in world and tone Iain Banks' Culture series and the aforementioned LeGuin's Ekumen books. It doesn't necessarily equal the best works of either of those series, but it's a first novel, and a strong one. And, as a fan of space opera as the quintessential SF sub-genre, I'm happy to see this book gets lots of attention.

It's not perfect. There are plenty of ideas floating around, and not all of them get proper development and attention. The one that seems to interest people the most is the fact that the Radch don't distinguish by gender, meaning that you don't actually know the gender of most of the book's characters (everyone is referred to as a "she"). This is a fun little wrinkle to the world, and Leckie doesn't belabor the point. I think this is mostly for the best, but I did expect a bit more from it. Leckie is more interested in the theme of identity, and what it means to have these distributed consciousnesses. This makes for some crucial plot points, but you rarely get a sense of Breq's personal struggles with identity. Which leads me to my biggest problem with the novel: the prose. Ancillary Justice is written with first person narration, and it is very dry. This does make a certain amount of sense, as the the narrator is an AI fragment, but I think there could have been a more clever and poetic way of conveying this, and I suspect it is as much the result of this being a first novel as it is intentional. I don't want to suggest the prose is bad; it's probably above average for its genre, and it's certainly readable, but I hope for a bit more from Hugo winners (and have gotten it more recently with the likes of Walton and Chabon).

Overall, it's a nice return for space opera to the Hugo novel winners, and I look forward to reading Ancillary Sword (on my to read list thanks to the Locus voters).

Grade: B+

2012 Nebula Winner: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Alright, I want to try to catch up a little bit this year, including posting my review of this book that I read...um....two years ago. Don't expect regular posts or anything, but I do want to keep my streaks in the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus SF novel awards going.

So, 2312 is pretty typical work from Kim Stanley Robinson, who is a favorite of mine. There's very strong world-building, as we once again get the Accelerando and its colonized solar system with lots of inventive terraforming (see Galileo's Dream and Blue Mars for other examples). There are some interesting ideas about social and political developments, clearly based on Robinson's clear understanding of history and social science. And your mileage with plot and character and prose may vary.

I found this novel especially uneven on the latter three counts. Robinson is a hard sf writer who really seems to put some energy into his style, and here he tries a little experimentation. It's appreciated but not entirely successful, and it stands out awkwardly next to some rather lengthy passages of technical writing focusing on the aforementioned world-building. Similarly, the characters can feel a little flat. Robinson's usual trick is to give his characters universal traits like love and ambition while also placing them in very specific historical and cultural contexts, and I think he's generally better at the latter than most of his peers. Here, the characters have immense longevity and the ability to change aspects of their appearance and identity fairly freely. At times, this is all realized wonderfully, and the best portion of the novel involves a gender fluid romantic arc with the main character Swan. Often, however, the characters just feel distant and cold - there's a lot of telling but not much showing, for instance, about how much Swan was inspired by a deceased character named Alex, whose death drives much of the plot.

Speaking of the plot, this is where the novel fails to realize its potential. It's basically a mystery, as Swan wanders the solar system investigating a series of dramatic terrorist attacks, but the investigations mostly feel engineered to show off the various exotic settlements, including a massive train city that circles Mercury between its light and dark sides - a device Robinson has used before, but he really goes into depth here. The setting is driving the story, not the characters.

2312 was more ambitious and literary than most of its competitors in 2012 (what I would have called a very off year, looking at the nominees), and I liked it quite a bit, but its flaws are evident enough that I'm not particularly bothered that it got beat by the fairly silly Redshirts for the Hugo and Locus.

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-

1990 Nebula and 1991 Locus Fantasy – TEHANU by Ursula K Leguin

Between 1968 and 1972, Ursula K. LeGuin published her Earthsea trilogy. These novels (which I had not read before, so I read them in preparation for Tehanu) are among the great classics of the fantasy genre; I’d say Earthsea ranks just below Narnia and Middle-Earth in the fantasy pantheon, though it’s not as well known among the general public as those two series. The series follows a young boy named Ged on a world of islands and ancient magic as he learns the depths of his own power, becomes the arch-mage, and battles ancient evils. It’s influence has been dramatic – Riddlemaster feels very derivative of Earthsea, and Ged’s time in wizard school is very reminiscent of a more recent fantasy phenomenon.

The original trilogy suffers from a few of the fantasy tropes that I personally dislike, especially the stilted, myth-inspired prose that I’ve complained about in the past, but I think its reputation is well-deserved. Even when she’s using a voice that I don’t particularly care for, LeGuin is an amazing writer. She captures the wonder of dragons and ancient tombs, and she describes the workings of magic better than anyone before (and maybe since).

The trilogy feels fairly complete, as the final volume threatens the whole world of magic while exploring the relationship between life and death and effectively ends the arc of the main character. However, LeGuin decided to return to Earthsea in 1990 to explore the issue of gender in Tehanu. In the original trilogy she meant to subvert fantasy literature by making her central characters non-white. I’d say that this concern seems somewhat dated (I barely noticed), but, then again, the casting of the recent SyFy channel movie suggests that this is still an issue. So, race subverted, but the fact that the world of wizards is completely male went by without much notice. The second book of the trilogy does focus on a girl named Tenar, who becomes a priestess and has to overcome the restrictions of her religion and sex to help Ged, but LeGuin clearly felt there was more to be said.

So, in this book, we return to Tenar, decades after her previous appearance in The Tombs of Atuan. We check in on Ged’s old mentor, the now-dying Ogion, and we learn that there are actual restrictions on women’s use of magic. Eventually, Ged shows up, exhausted and powerless from his confrontation in the third book, and Ged and Tenar must work together to help an abused young girl named Therru and to avoid conflict with the sexist wizard Aspen.

The tone and language is completely different from the previous Earthsea novels, and reading all four books together really highlighted the clash. The first three books are epic quests, narrated as legendary tales. This novel is far more grounded, quiet, even pastoral, and it moves slowly, without much plot development. It’s interesting to step into this world and get a more intimate look at it, but it turned out there wasn’t much to see.

The book continually returns to the question of how women’s power differs from men, and comes up with the answer that women are more...earthy...and stuff. I found this trite and unsatisfying. With an entire world at her fingertips, I just expected LeGuin to do more than rehash old arguments and give us examples of victimization and repression that could have come from almost any era of real history.

I like the idea behind this novel: let’s look at why this great world she created seems to be implicitly sexist and use that to explore gender roles in a fantasy setting. I think the problem here is that LeGuin has set out to write a dogmatic novel rather than letting the questions arise organically. She forces the issue at every turn, and plot, character, and world-building all suffer as a result.

Grade: C-

2010 Hugo (and Nebula) nominee, short story: "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)

I've taken a few opportunities on this blog to declare my dislike for the short story as a literary format. I will eventually cover short stories in greater depth - they're too important to the history of the genre to ignore - and I've decided to cover the short fiction Hugo nominees here as well. I enjoyed this first entry quite a bit, though it still demonstrates why the format bothers me.

Mira was cryogenically frozen after dying in a horrible accident. Decades later, the technology exists to revive frozen corpses like Mira, but the procedure is expensive, so many bodies simply sit in cold storage. Mira awakes, however, to learn that some company has taken an ingenious approach to the situation by creating a dating service. Wealthy men looking for brides can shop the cryogenic storage facility and pay to revive any women they like. For decades, Mira awakes only briefly and only in the context of awkward dates with prowling men. The fact that Mira was a lesbian only makes the situation more complicated.

It's a rich and inventive set-up, and McIntosh portrays Mira quite well as a desperate and sympathetic character. It's also a plot that, by itself, probably would not carry a novel. And yet there's so much implicit drama here that McIntosh doesn't have space to develop. There are questions of coercion and sexuality, and a clear metaphor for mail-order brides, and, perhaps, other more common non-romantic reasons for marriage. There are big questions about the future of gender relationships - why do only men shop for women? Why, hundreds of years in the future, would everyone assume Mira is straight? There's even a whole subplot about transferred consciences - called "hitchers" - that has further implications, but we really only see an over-the-top nagging mother portrayed. In other words, I wanted more. Maybe not a full novel, but more than the evocative sketch we get here.

By the way, I started with this story because it was conveniently available in audio format thanks to the StarShipSofa podcast. It's a very nice weekly collection of short stories by great authors and a few editorials on the sf world - highly recommended for fans of science fiction. It's also the first podcast to be nominated for a Hugo (Best Fanzine category).

Grade: B+

1977 Hugo and 1976 Nebula for Novella “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”, 1974 Hugo for Novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree, Jr.

I’ve never had a separate entry for short story (or novella) awards before, but these two stories and their author were so fascinating (and not really represented in any other categories) that I had to take a moment to talk about them.

What’s fascinating about the “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” is that it’s straight-up cyberpunk, almost a decade ahead of schedule. After an unattractive and miserable girl named Philadelphia Burke survives a suicide attempt, she is hired by the Global Transmission Corporation (GTX) to inhabit a “remote” body of a mega-celebrity or “god” named Delphi for product placement (since explicit advertisements have been banned). Soon, she discovers just how much corporations like GTX are manipulating and misleading people around the world. This story is so cyberpunk that it even annoyed me for the same reasons as cyberpunk – there’s an overuse of jargon and slang and an in-your-face attitude that grates, as well as a tendency to exaggerate the dangers of technology to help establish the dystopian future du jour. There’s no question that this story is hugely influential though.

In “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” three (male) astronauts are kicked into the future by a solar flare and rescued by an all female crew. I won’t reveal the story’s twist (though it’s fairly obvious), but most of what follows is a commentary on gender politics. I do feel like Tiptree stacks the deck a bit by making the crew a group of frat-boys, but it is a fascinating story idea even if I disagree with some of the conclusions.

James Tiptree, by the way, was a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon, a psychology Ph.D., World War II veteran and former CIA employee. No one in the science fiction community knew her gender until after these stories were published (which led to some embarrassing discussions of her works in anthologies). I was a bit surprised to see a woman writer hiding her gender in the 1970s; after all, Ursula LeGuin did quite well in the decade. But, considering that Joanne Rowling was still worried about her gender affecting the response to her work in the late 1990s, maybe it’s not so surprising. Sheldon is one of the most unique and challenging voices I’ve read for this project, especially on gender, and, unfortunately, I can see how her work might have been dismissed more easily by her male contemporaries if she had published it as Alice Sheldon. Shedlon also had a very dark point of view that pervades her work, and she (with her husband) committed suicide in 1987.

"Houston" Grade: B+

"Plugged In" Grade: B-

1970 Hugo and 1969 Nebula - THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin

After twenty-six different Hugo and Nebula winning awards over the course of seventeen years, we finally get a work by a female author. And, it is, well, rather different, which is appropriate considering that this novel is all about the role of sex and gender in society.

Ursula K. LeGuin is the daughter of a rather famous California anthropologist, Arthur Kroeber, and she brings a lot of social science into her science fiction (which, as a result, generally gets labeled “soft science fiction” in opposition to the “hard science fiction” that dwells on the physical sciences).

The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of Genly Ai, an envoy from the Ekumen (a benevolent federation made up of the various related human species descended from the ancient Hainish civilization – this includes Ai’s homeworld of Earth). Ai resides on the ice age planet Gethen (also known as Winter), as he tries to convince the planet’s hermaphroditic population to trade with Ekumen. He begins in a monarchy called Karhide, but palace intrigues drive him to a neighboring bureaucratic prison-state. These two nations share a lot of characteristics with the US and USSR, respectively, and there is a Cold War analogy at work here, though neither side comes off well. Ai narrates much of the novel, and the center of the novel is really his observations of gender in a society where people are sexless most of the time and can assume either partner's role at various times in their lives. We also get the insiders’ view, as an important politician and sometimes ally of Ai’s named Estrevan narrates other portions of the novel. And there are a handful of nicely-rendered folktales from Gethen recorded in the book that further illustrate the society’s workings.

It’s a rich text, and LeGuin’s prose is as good as anyone I’ve discussed so far (it most reminds me of Frank Herbert’s weighty, mythological style in Dune, but it's far less stilted). She creates several compelling societies within the framework of the frigid and sexually fluid Gethen, and we see a wide variety of sub-cultures, from courts to mystical oracles. I didn’t always agree with Ai’s characterization of gender on Earth, but LeGuin is writing from a male perspective in these observations, and they do change subtly over the course of the novel. In the end, the book poses more questions than it answers about how gender shapes individual identities and societies as a whole, which is probably for the best.

It takes some time for the plot to get rolling, but once it does, it’s page-turning stuff, and includes rich character development including an intriguing and moving relationship. This is a great novel that I highly recommend. We’re going to see a lot more of LeGuin over the next forty years of awards, and I’m very much looking forward to it now.

Grade: A