2012 Hugo nominee, novel: EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville

Mieville has obviously made plenty of waves in the past decade, and I have to admit that his books are consistently very good, even if only one has really clicked with me.  As much as the Hugos have turned towards fantasy over that same time period, I still think there’s a slight preference for science fiction among WorldCon voters…or at least a reserve of feeling that science fiction should be competing better against fantasy. So, when a hot author like Mieville turns toward space opera for the first time,* and gets some great reviews in the process, I think you have a very strong contender not only for a Hugo nomination, but for a win.

The novel takes place on the planet Arieka, a distant outpost of Bremen, a human (or “Terre”)-dominated stellar empire. The Ariekei are non-humanoid aliens with very different physiognomies that breathe a different atmospheric composition, and, most importantly, they have a very literal language that makes their cognition entirely different from other species. In other words, it’s a more likely portrayal of aliens than your typical Star Trek races, and one that takes us back to the linguistic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that we saw back in Babel-17. The Bremen colony on Arieka is a smallish outpost called Embassytown, whose residents see the Ariekei as strange, somewhat frightening, Hosts.

Avice Benner Cho grows up in Embassytown, but learns that she has a talent for the “immer” that makes interstellar travel possible. She leaves Arieka and gets to see the universe, but she is eventually drawn back home with her linguist husband Scile, who wants to learn more about the Ariekei. We also learn a great deal about the Ambassadors, the only people really capable of communicating with the Ariekei. This requires a pair of twins linked through surgery and training. Avice is friends with Ambassadors named CalVin, but she also witnesses the arrival of a new Ambassador named EzRa, who inadvertently rocks Embassytown to its core.

The ideas are fantastic, as you’d expect with Mieville, but I also had some of my other typical Mieville complaints. The characters are all pretty flat, serving either to forward the plot or convey exposition and/or ideology. Mieville’s plots also all seem to follow the same trajectory: he sets up a society, shows its precariousness, and then tests it with a revolution (I wonder if Mieville is stuck in this revolutionary rut because he’s a Marxist).  I would like to see something different from him. The structure of the novel also seems needlessly flashy with a non-linear narrative that serves little purpose (and accordingly gets dropped after about a hundred pages).

So, my verdict seems to follow what I say about most Mieville novels (other than maybe The City & The City). It’s a well-written work with incredible ideas that could have worked better with more character and plot development. Honestly, this might have grabbed me more as a novella that simply established the world – I think such a work could have been a true classic. But, it’s a rare thing in this day and age to see a space opera this original and well-written that captivates mainstream literary circles and makes bestseller lists all over the place. As such, I expect it to do very well in the voting this year.

Grade: B


*I’d argue that The City & The City is actually a science fiction novel rather than a fantasy novel, which makes the 2010 Locus awards look rather silly (The City & The City won Fantasy, while magic-steampunk-Old-West-zombie-gas novel Boneshaker won as “SF”)

1966 Nebula Winner (tie) – BABEL-17 by Samuel Delany

Samuel Delany is the first African-American and the first openly gay author to win one of these novel awards. It's the 1960s, alright, and it's certainly nice to watch the increasing inclusiveness of the science fiction community. Delany is also at the forefront of what is usually called the "new wave" of speculative fiction writers who wanted to explore more social and philosophical themes in the genre.

Babel-17 starts out strong. It begins on a future Earth that is under siege by a mysterious group called the Invaders who mount terrorist attacks against human outposts. Every attack is accompanied by strange, indecipherable transmissions. The military has decided to turn to the uncannily adept super-linguist Rydra Wong to decode the transmissions. Wong can learn almost any language and can also decipher a great deal about how a culture (or individual, for that matter) thinks from how they speak. She can even mimic telepathy with a precise and incisive analysis of the subtlest of body language. Wong deciphers Babel-17, learns the site of the next terrorist attack, and pledges to hire a ship and investigate herself.

This is a fantastic premise – it involves a strong central idea that looks to be thought-provoking and full of intrigue, and it also has a very solid hook for the plot. However, this set-up all takes place in the first two chapters, and from there, the novel goes off the rails. It turns out that hiring pilots for her trip involves Wong chatting up strange surgically-altered people with preternatural senses and polygamous tripartite sexual relationships. Some of them are dead; their corpses are in cold storage for revival when a good job comes along. This is all fascinating stuff, but it’s related in a breathless, obtuse, and dialect-heavy fashion that grinds the proceedings to a halt. It’s not unlike Leiber’s The Big Time, where the reader is never really given a clear explanation of the setting. I understand the artistic reasons why an author would thrust a reader into an unknown and wildly different future setting, but , at the same time, it’s not very satisfying.

The prose and plotting may be self-consciously and intentionally unwelcoming, but there are a lot of great ideas. The novel is about language, and Delany makes great use of the format to play with the concepts. He even includes an experimental bit where we get sidebars that translate the novel’s language into the more literalist language of Babel-17. There’s also a particularly nice exchange with a character who has no concept of the first-person singular, “I.” I also like Delany’s idea that humans will never even begin to understand alien species until they’re somehow able to think in alien languages – a concept that seems self-evident but that’s ignored in most sci-fi.

I have to admit that I knew nothing about Delany before I saw his name on the Nebula winner list (twice). Several of his novels were reissued by the literary imprint Vintage Books in the 1990s, along with works by Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester. I can certainly see how Delany fits in next to those two – he takes risk, pushes the envelope of both social mores and believability, and he has a dark sensibility. I look forward to reading more of his work, but this novel just didn’t quite hold together for me, despite the strong ideas.

Grade: B+