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+

1999 Saturn Fantasy – BEING JOHN MALKOVICH

This is another example of a film that makes me happy to be covering the Saturn winners. One of the most original concepts out there, Being John Malkovich uses a fantastic plot device to explore issues of identity. The film is the debut feature of director Spike Jonze, who does a great job with some odd visuals, but the real attraction is screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who is yet to write a movie that is not ingenuously cerebral (and they’re usually entertaining as well).

John Cusack plays a struggling puppeteer named Craig who is married to an animal lover named Lotte (played by a surprisingly unattractive, frizzy-haired Cameron Diaz). Both lust after Craig’s coworker, Maxine, played by Catherine Keener. Craig works in a half-sized floor of a New York office building, and, one day he discovers a small door that leads to a tunnel that leads into the mind of actor John Malkovich. Maxine and Craig soon begin to sell tickets, while Craig and Lotte begin to use John Malkovich’s body to sleep with Maxine. Yeah, that old story.

All of the actors deliver career performances, and the film is consistently amusing, even while it raises interesting questions about identity: Craig and Lotte both prefer living in the body of a celebrity – even a lesser-known one – to their own sad lives. Maxine is incredibly comfortable in her skin, but her need for the adoration of others and her callousness show that she is also disturbed. Anything can happen, and the film even lives up to its speculative fiction credentials by developing the nature and rules of the Malkovich tunnel. This is a fantastic film, and one of the clearest representations of the American film Renaissance of the late ‘90s. It’s about as different as can be from The Matrix, but it’s at least as good.

Grade: A

1990 Saturn – TOTAL RECALL

Oh, Paul Verhoeven, why do you make such interesting films when you’re so clearly an awful director? Something about his style really grates on my nerves. I don’t mind sex and violence, but no other director, not even Michael Bay, manages to make it feel so darn gratuitous. People don’t just get shot in Verhoeven films, their thick, gooey blood bursts out in giant clumps. It’s Tarantino violence without the winking, good-natured irony. And yet, he did manage to make a couple of compelling sf movies. Hugo voters may be too classy for them, but Saturn took notice.

Total Recall is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” and it plays Dick’s games with reality better than any mainstream film before it, except maybe Blade Runner. Arnold Schwarzeneggar gives a typically awful performance as Douglas Quaid, a working-class construction worker from late-twentieth century Earth. I’ve always thought Ahnold to be a terrible actor when he’s not playing a robot, and this is no exception. Quaid has wistful and disturbing dreams about Mars, and he decides to get a memory implant of a trip there, since he can’t afford a real vacation. He also pays for the “secret agent adventure story” upgrade. However, the memory implant triggers real memories of his life as a secret agent on Mars, and soon several people are trying to kill or capture him, including his wife (an early Sharon Stone performance).

Quaid escapes to Mars and links up with a group of mutant revolutionaries (Verhoeven and the make-up/effects team come up with some pretty odd-looking characters). However, there are also indications that the whole trip may be the memory implant process itself, which his mind is taking too seriously. The film manages to keep the ambiguity alive for the rest of the film by playing it straight but dropping subtle hints to the contrary.

Overall, the acting is weak and Verhoeven’s directing is typically over-the-top, but the effects are excellent – as good as anything non-Spielberg or Lucas that I’ve covered so far, and the story is surprisingly interesting. It’s not 2001 or Alien, but it’s worth a look.

Grade: B+

1978 BSFA - A SCANNER DARKLY by Philip K. Dick

A Scanner Darkly is a brain-bending, drug-addled quest for identity. In other words, it feels much more typical of Philip K. Dick than The Man in the High Castle.

Bob Arctor lives in a household of addicts to a psychoactive drug called Substance D, but he is also Agent Fred, an undercover cop spying on Bob Arctor's household of bumbling drug addicts. It's basically the old thriller plot - "agent gets lost in deep cover" - with a humorous and satirical twist. Bob and his friends are incredibly paranoid, and Bob/Fred is so far gone that he doesn't even realize that he has very good reasons to feel that way. The two halves of his consciousness work independently against each other for most of the first half of the novel, while his listless household goes through the normal dysfunctions and tribulations of the perennially stoned. The latter parts of the novel are grimmer, as they follow a damaged Bob/Fred through his time in a rehabilitative work camp.

Dick - as anyone who has read a few of his novels is sure to notice - was an addict himself, so he's speaking from experience here. He never glamorizes drug use (in fact, the novel can be quite chilling at the same time it is darkly comic), but the novel works best as a commentary on the drug war (which grew throughout the '70s and came to dominate the American legal system by the '80s). It begins to feel like all of the drug users and dealers are undercover cops, destroying their own and each others lives while doing little to help the real addicts. It's some of Dick's finest work. It's also perhaps his most accessible work, even while it still deals with his core themes of identity and reality. This is probably the best entry point to Dick other than perhaps Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'd also recommend the Richard Linklater movie as the best PKD adaptation (not to say it's better than Blade Runner, just a better adaptation).

Grade: A-