2016 Locus SF: ANCILLARY MERCY bu Ann Leckie

I don't remember ever having such a problem with the structure of a trilogy...especially one that I ended up mostly enjoying. There's a moment about midway through Ancillary Sword ***mild spoilers to follow*** where Breq, the narrator, more-or-less proclaims that she's going to assassinate the Empress of the Galaxy (well, the Radch Empire that dominates human settlement of the galaxy). This was an exciting moment that seemed to promise that a somewhat contained story was going to escalate to a great adventure story. The rest of the book involves a trip to a throneworld that seems to cement that idea...and then the second book turned into a comedy of manners on and around out-of-the-way Athoek Station. I assumed that this was a diversion, a sort of mid-trilogy holding pattern while we wait for the big galaxy-shattering events of book 3...

Well, we're not done with Athoek Station by any stretch of the imagination, or the conflict-via-manners storytelling that came with it. In fact, this volume is so strongly tied to the previous one that they would have fit nicely into one volume. That also makes it hard to describe the plot without spoiling the previous book. Breq continues to navigate the Radch Empire's precarious politics, which are confused by the presence of Artificial Intelligence ships and also distributed/networked human intelligence. There is a bit more detail on the aliens around the Radchai, though they remain mostly mysterious. And, there is an action sequence to give the series something of a climax, though the solution once again depends more on Breq's clever diplomacy. And, if the action is slightly increased, the humor is much moreso. It's not too much of a stretch to say that the series, which started as space opera adventure, ends as a comedy.

Maybe it's not fair to speculate, but I get the impression that after her first novel, Leckie settled into a comfort zone telling this kind of softer, funnier character-based drama. It's worth it, however, because comfort and confidence also mean stronger writing. I don't think there's any question that this is the best written book in the series. The characters have really gelled, the humor works (something of a rare thing in serious science fiction), and the world only gets richer and more compelling even as we stay in such a narrow slice of it.

Though it's the best written of the trilogy, I'm not going to say it's the best. Ancillary Sword still benefits from introducing the ideas, the world, and the characters, and Mercy is hurt a bit by some of the false expectations set up by the first book - if we'd had this tone from the first, this would've been a more enjoyable read. Now that Leckie has found her voice, and it's a strong one, I'm interested to see what she'll do next (and she has the sweet bonus of winning all of the awards in the process of finding her voice).

Grade: B

2015 Locus SF and 2014 BSFA Winner: ANCILLARY SWORD by Ann Leckie

If Ancillary Justice plays like a blockbuster science fiction movie that also happens to be very smart and relevant, Ancillary Sword plays like an episode of the Imperial Radch tv show. Said tv show is also pretty smart and relevant, and it does a solid job of extending the themes of Justice, but it doesn't expand on those themes, and it lacks some of the scope of the previous work. I still enjoyed this, but it wasn't Empire Strikes Back to the first book's Star Wars, it was more random "Next Generation" episode to Wrath of Khan.

I don't think I can discuss this plot without mildly spoiling Ancillary Justice, so reader beware.

This book picks up right where the last book left off. Breq has uncovered a deep crisis within the Imperial Radch that threatens to tear the Empire apart, and at the very least could return it to the most vicious form of its colonialism which recent reforms had attempted to moderate. She is able to take command of a ship and proceed to further investigate said crisis. This takes her to Athoek Station, which seems like the jumping off point for a big quest that will delve into the big mysteries of split identities and possible alien infiltration raised by the previous novel...but instead, Sword settles in while Breq meets the locals, tries to do some reforming of corrupt colonial policies and gets involved in some old-fashioned detective work. In other words, it reads a lot like the flashback scenes of the previous work, but it lacks the interspersed bits that contained some more action, nor does it have the big revelations and big galactic-stakes climax of that book.

I'm certainly not saying this is bad, it's just not what I expected. The conflicts and mysteries of Athoek Station are interesting, and Leckie does a good job developing the place and its characters. But the first book introduced three or four really strong concepts that really hooked me in, and this book doesn't add much new to the mix or really advance the overall plot significantly. Breq also began to wear on me a bit - it's interesting that she has a lot of empathy while working on behalf of a largely unempathetic empire, and so she is always fighting for the justice that is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the Radch. In practice, however, this involves a lot of scenes where she lectures people on why their policies are wrong (I came to refer to this, probably unfairly, as Breqsplaining). I was also bummed that the most interesting character from the last book, Seivarden, is mostly sidelined, as is a promising new character with an interesting hook named Tisarwat, who doesn't get enough to do after the early chapters either. And I'm still not entirely taken by the prose, though again, there is a good excuse for its occasional stiffness.

So, a slight disappointment, but it does set the stage for an exciting third entry, which I will be reading, thanks again to Locus SF voters.

Grade: B-

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+

2013 Hugo and Locus SF Winner: REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi

Hey, I'm alive!

I have a good streak of reviews for all of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus SF winning novels going, so I thought I'd peek in to keep those up. So, I'm doing Locus-winner Redshirts today, Nebula-winner 2312 in a couple of weeks, and maybe a general 2013 Hugos post before WorldCon. I rather hope that either Redshirts or 2312 wins the Hugo as well. I wouldn't mind reading a third novel if it were good, but I'm not that excited by the other entries. Throne of the Crescent Moon does look interesting, but the word that seems to pop up the most in reviews is "light," which I feel is a euphemism for "this is a generic fantasy adventure in a slightly unusual setting." I would feel bad about ignoring the two female nominees, but I think I've given Bujold and Grant their fair share of consideration. I really enjoyed Miles Vorkasigan's early adventures, but I feel like it's time - at book fifteen - for that series to either wrap up or grow into something different. And Grant's zomblogging series has never really worked for me. If I'm wrong, and you think any of these three are brilliant, let me know.

I like that I'm pretending I still have an audience after a fourteen-month break. :)

I was extremely skeptical about Redshirts as well. The idea of following some of the expendable ensigns on an Enterprise-like ship has potential, but there seemed to be even larger potentials that this novel would be overly meta, or, worse yet, a cavalcade of Trekkie in-jokes. I can't honestly say that Scalzi avoided either of those pitfalls, and yet, I really enjoyed this novel much more than I expected to.

We follow a new cohort of ensigns, led by a former student of an alien seminary named Andrew Dahl, as they join the Universal Union flagship Intrepid in the 24th century. They soon learn that the Intrepid has an alarmingly high casualty rate among those who go on away missions with a small core or bridge officers. They also learn that people often act irrationally, and the laws of physics even seem to change, in events surrounding these officers. Most of the ship's crew goes to great lengths to avoid any contact with them, for fear of being dragged off on a likely-fatal away team mission, but one crewman in hiding spurs them into action when he tells them his theory that the Intrepid is locked into the narrative of an old tv show, and the lethal bridge crew are the stars.

So, yes, the whole thing is a big in-joke, and an old one at that (I know the "redshirts always die" concept goes back decades in fandom). And yes, it all gets very meta as the characters come to understand they are characters, and Scalzi starts to explore the meaning of death in fiction (especially in the codas). But Scalzi still does a great job selling it all. He tosses off plenty of classic space opera plot ideas, and, though The Chronicles of the Intrepid is supposed to be a bad show, some of them were pretty interesting. For instance, he deals with Dahl's religious background well, and he has the feel of episodic space opera plotting down pat. This novel really made me miss Star Trek on television (especially reading it soon after watching another one of Abrams' dumb blockbuster pseudo-Trek movies). It also made me more interested in reading Scalzi's more straightforward sf; Old Man's War has moved up significantly on my "to read" list.

When the novel turns to the more meta aspects and begins to focus on storytelling more, it does lose some of its charm. But, Scalzi, other than short-cutting through a lot of the disbelief that some characters should have felt, manages to do some solid character work and say a few interesting things about writing along the way. I'm sure it's not the most brilliant novel about writing we've ever seen...but we've seen a lot of works in that category. Scalzi keeps his approach grounded, accessible, and character-oriented. In the process, he doesn't match the brilliance of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, Auster's New York Trilogy, or Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds, but he doesn't end up on that steaming mountain of garbage made up of 99% of postmodern metafiction either. The three codas, where Scalzi really starts to spend more time in the "real world" could have been a good deal shorter (especially the second), but they do have some nice moments.

I'm surprised to say, I'd be perfectly happy to see this win the Hugo - even against a more ambitious book like 2312 (though I'm only halfway through it, maybe it will wow me in the second half).

By the way, I listened to this as an audiobook. I think it was paced well for that mode of presentation. Wil Wheaton reads, and I was worried that would be an uncomfortable gimmick, but he acquitted himself well.

Grade: B+

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”)

2006 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation, Long Form – SERENITY

Firefly ended with a whimper in December 2002 when Fox finally broadcast the pilot.  Yippee.  Just in time.  The last episode produced was a very well-made, tense episode written and directed by Joss Whedon and full of existentialist philosophy.  It’s good, but not much of an ending, especially since a guest star steals most of the scenes from the regular cast.  Luckily, Firefly did well enough on DVD that Universal gave Whedon the chance to make a feature length film that wraps things up quite nicely.

The differences from the regular series are rather dramatic.  The lighting is better, the effects are superior, and the stakes are higher.  Generally, all of these changes are for the better…though there’s now sound in space battles.  The film dives into the central unresolved plotline of the series: what exactly has the Alliance government done to the girl River, and what will be her and her brother’s fates as runaways from the powerful interplanetary government.  The government hires an assassin (the excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor) to track River down, and he draws her out by triggering her to beat up a bar full of people.  Mal and the Serenity crew go on the run, and stumble upon a secret colony and hints about the origins of the brutal, mindless Reavers that plague space.  It’s fast-paced and full of action.  On its own, the fact that character moments tend to be overwhelmed by the fighting and the chasing and the shooting and the stabbing would be a problem.  But, as the pay-off of an entire season of a character-focused show, it’s perfect.

So, it’s a great capstone.  I know a lot of people who have watched the film without the show and enjoyed it find, but I think it comes off best as an over-sized, bigger-than-television series finale for a show that clearly deserved one.  It’s not perfect – there are a few clichéd absurdities (people always live long enough to give a dying speech; an impossible to reach piece of equipment straight out of Galaxy Quest), but I found them pretty easy to overlook.  My only real problem with Serenity is that there’s no more material with these characters (well, except for some comics).

Grade: A

2006 Nebula - SEEKER by Jack McDevitt

It says a lot that I often feel obligated to explore the motives of the SFWA committee that chooses the Nebula winner. In this case, we have a novel that’s about as standard as could be, and I’m tempted to say that the SFWA is rewarding an older author for being a good member of the community…

Seeker is the third novel following the adventures of daring space archaeologist Alex Benedict.  It's narrated by his assistant, interstellar pilot Chase Kopath (I'm not sure if she narrates the other novels or not).  Alex and Chase are space archaeologists and artifact dealers.  They discover a plastic cup that may be a relic of a 9000 year old lost colony, and Chase has to follow a number of leads to track the cup back to its origin - the colony ship Seeker.  If Alex and Chase can find the colony, they'll make a fortune, but along the way they must contend with rival archaeologists, the family of the survey team that found the cup and hid it existence, the brutish robber who last possessed the cup, and the telepathic alien "mutes" who unwittingly have a important clue.

From top to bottom, this novel just screams genre.  There's the simple, propulsive prose with some noir stylings.  There's the formulaic, linear plot, in which each encounter yields a clue that advances the investigation.  There are the required action scenes, that exist for no particular plot reasons.  There are mysterious sub-plots, and even over-the-top villains, whose violent tendencies clash a bit with their staid occupations and idealistic aims.  The setting is simple but rich with possibilities for action and mystery stories; just take an interstellar republic 10,000 years or so in the future, add simple faster-the-light travel, and stir in an alien race and lots of artifacts. It's really right out of the golden age.  And, you've seen all of the plot elements before too.  It's genre fiction through and through.

And, there's nothing wrong with that.  The plot is interesting enough (though maybe a bit too predictable), and who doesn’t enjoy the archaeologist-adventurer character?  And, it’s got a great structure, where each episode in the plot moves the mystery forward and adds a new hook. On the other hand, the characters are dull as bricks.  Alex is a cipher here, Chase is generic, the villains are awful and inexplicable, and the ancillary characters are straight out of the stock genre file. There isn’t much in the way of ideas either.  We get some discussion of Earth’s dicey political fate over the millennia to come, and the utopianism of the lost colony adds a little spice.  Meanwhile, we also get some simplistic demonization of cultural protection movements in the artifact trade…which seems like a big fight to pick in an adventure novel.  

All in all, I was entertained, but I’ve come to expect more from these award winners.  This might have felt newer sometime before Gateway…but that was thirty years earlier.  I had some issues with Spin, but it’s operating on a whole other level.  The Nebula slate this year (which is, unusually, completely different from the Hugo slate) looks pretty thin anyway, so I guess I'm glad McDevitt got the recognition.

Grade: B-

2005 Saturn – STAR WARS III: REVENGE OF THE SITH

Let me start by making three points: 1) I’m glad that the Saturn Awards gave me this opportunity to discuss the Star Wars prequels, and thus round out my Star Wars coverage.  As much as I complain in the following review, I am well aware that I inflicted this upon myself.  2)  Lots of people, including rambling, misanthropic serial killers, have already covered what’s wrong with these movies, in incredible depth, so you might as well skip my thoughts.  3) Before you skip this, however, you should know that I got quite buzzed before rewatching/blogging this movie.  I’ve had four beers, and I’m sipping brandy from here on out (“beer before liquor, you’re in the clear”!  Right?)  I’m not claiming that I’m blogging Sith drunk….but I kind of am.  I’m “semi-live-blogging it buzzed,” at least.  Also, note that I’m too drunk to care about spoilers for once.

These opening space battle shots above Coruscant are pretty darn cool…

So, yes, I think I’ve made it clear that I like the original trilogy (episodes 4-6), a not-so-controversial opinion, at least until the Ewoks show up.  The prequel trilogy, which George Lucas gave us in 1999, 2002, and 2005, on the other hand, is utter crap.  Again, this is not a controversial opinion.  When Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, everyone felt obliged to love it for a couple of months, then collectively realized that it was awful.  To this day, I’d say it still stands as one of the worst science fiction films ever made.  Three things, in particular, made it awful: 1) Comedy slapstick racist-against-Jamaicans cgi alien Jar-Jar Binks, 2) crappy child actor Darth Vader saves the day, and 3) midi-chlorians, a pseudo-sciency explanation for Jedi manipulation of the formerly-New-Age concept of the Force.  There was a really cool light-sabre battle in there, and someone tried to save it with the so-called “Phantom Edit;” my personal “Phantom Edit” would probably be about 15 minutes long and would be all Qui-Gon/Darth Maul/Natalie Portman-looking-pretty.   All three of the original trilogy won Hugos and Saturns; the prequel trilogy received this one Saturn and nary a Hugo nomination.

Ugh, Hayden Christensen acting is really ruining this opening space battle.

2002’s Episode II, the awesomely-named-if-it-had-been-ironic-but-it-wasn’t-so-it’s-terriblly-named Attack of the Clones was a fair sight better, and had some genuinely cool action sequences.  Unfortunately, the whole thing leans rather heavily on the love story between Anakin Skywalker (Christensen) and Padme Amidala (Natalie “super-awesome-Oscar-winning-actress-clearly-slumming-it” Portman).  At least one of these two is an amazing actor, but both of them come off as more wooden than a duck decoy [I’ve lived in Minnesota too long].  I blame George Lucas, who directs actors about as well as he writes dialogue (ie, not very well).  After all of this, we’ve barely started on the path to episode IV.  Anakin still needs to knock up his girl with twins, turn into Darth Vader, fight his teacher Obi-wan, and betray the Jedi order….which leaves a lot of ground for Episode III.

Which brings us to this film, Episode III, released in 2005.  Padme is pregnant, Anakin is nervous about said pregnancy, and is being manipulated by Senator Palpatine, whom we all know to be the main villain of the whole series.  Meanwhile, Anakin and his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor, the one actor able to come out of these movies looking halfway decent) are knee-deep in the clone wars, in which a separatist alliance using slapstick-loving droids fights the Republic’s clone army, which came from some complicated and conspicuously-unresolved plot-point in the second movie.  This film begins with a major battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan and separatist generals Grevious (cgi) and Dooku (Hammer Horror/LoTR alum Christopher Lee).  Then, Anakin worries that his secret wife Natalie Portman will die birthing Mark Hammill and Carrie Fisher, which allows Palpatine to manipulate him.

Which is where I am in the film right now.  Blah blah blah; talkie talkie.  “I wanna be on the Jedi Council, wah!” whines the future Darth Vader.  I guess we know where Luke “I was gonna go to Tashi Station to get some power converters, wah!” Skywalker gets it, at least.

I need more brandy.

At the time, the  commentary on the Bush administration (fear leads to totalitarianism!) felt rather significant.  In hindsight…not so much.  Bush’s approval ratings were already in steep decline in mid-2005, and they never recovered.  The one aspect of this film that made it seem more relevant than the others sort of faded away in hindsight.

 I still think this is the best of the three prequels, but it does have four clear problems.  None is as prevalent as the many crippling issues of Episode One or the one fatal flaw (love story fail) of Episode Two, but they add up to another failure.

There are angry drunks.  There are sad drunks.  Apparently, I’m a list-making drunk.  On a side note, a special thanks to spell-checker for making me seem more sober.

Problem #1: Continuity.  This is the nerdiest complaint, but I think it says a lot about Lucas’s lack of planning and general pandering. Why are R2-D2 and C3PO in these movies?  Why is Chewbacca in this one?  Their presence seems to contradict some of what we see in the original films, so why include them at all?  Hint: it’s not because they further plot or character in any way.

Problem #2: Pacing:  Taken individually, beyond its contribution to the Star Wars mythos, the film’s greatest sin is that it just sort of plods along.  Most of what we get is foreordained by the original trilogy, so a lot of this is just filler, especially Obi-Wan’s entire second-act-dominating battle with Grevious.  And then there’s that really long third-act battle between Yoda and Palpatine, which would’ve been pretty unimaginable in 1982, but looks mostly like cgi-dreck today.

Okay, switching to wine so that I don’t pass out.

Problem #3: Sad, pathetic Vader: Darth Vader is probably the most fascinating character of the original trilogy.  His origin should have been very interesting, but Chistensen gives a very whiny performance that undermines the whole character.  Even the dark moments – the previous movie’s Sand-Person genocide and this movie’s Jedi-child-killing – come off as moments of weakness rather than moments of rage or evil.  And his journey here is all over the place as he bounces aimlessly between Palpatine and Master Samuel L. Jackson.  In no way does this version of the character live up to what we saw in the original trilogy.
Of course, the worst moment has nothing to do with Christensen:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Problem #4: Women are sad, sad, emotional trainwrecks: The original trilogy gave us one of the great female characters in sf in Princess Leia.  When she’s “rescued” by Han and Luke, she immediately grabs a gun, kills a bunch of storm-troopers, and takes control of the situation.  Sure, she ends up in a metal bikini in Jedi, but even then, she gets to kill Jabba and play a key role in the final mission on Endor.  Meanwhile, Padme dies of… heartbreak?!  Over Hayden Christensen’s Anakin???? Pathetic and insulting.  This bothers me most of all.

Let me end on a positive note.  The plots of the prequel trilogy are astonishingly lame, but the world that Lucas creates is pretty rich.  I think it’s unintentional, but the lush, colorful, slapstciky world of the prequels ends up being a rather nice contrast to the stark authoritarian world of the original trilogy (especially if you can manage to get the non-adulterated-special-edition versions).  It used to be a world of silly cgi Jar-Jars, and became a world of dirty space-bars and crappy-spaceships.  In other words, the colorful, silly, kid-friendly world of the prequels can actually make the original trilogy better in contrast.  Also, if you look at Genndy Tartakovsky’s prequel era cartoons, which are actually really great, mostly dialogue-free takes on the era from the creator of Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls, I think you really get an idea of the potential here.  The world Lucas creates is a lot better than the films themselves, and it still adds to a rich mythos.

So tired….

Grades:

Phantom Menace: F

Attack of the Clones: C-

Revenge of the Sith: C-

2005 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation, Short Form – “33,” BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Following a successful SciFi Channel miniseries, this is the first episode of the ongoing remake of an early ‘80s Star Wars rip-off/cult classic.  Most fans think the series went off the rail in the last season, though a vocal minority liked it from start to finish.  I think I represent an even smaller minority that was never entirely smitten with a show that most would consider the decade’s finest sf on television. Whatever side of this debate you’re on, I don’t think there’s any question that “33” is a fantastic hour of television.

The Twelve Colonies (distant relatives of we humans) are recovering from a long war they fought with rebelling robot servants called cylons.  Then, the cylons launch a massive sneak attack, annihilating all of the twelve homeworlds.  Only about 50,000 humans survive in a small fleet of ships huddled around the titular space battleship (er, Battlestar) Galactica.

In this episode, the cylons pursue the fleet of survivors.  Every time the fleet makes a faster-than-light jump, it takes the cylons exactly 33 minutes to catch up.  It takes the fleet about that long to get ready between jumps…which means that everyone is pushed to their absolute limits just to tread water.  Ship crews have to scramble to get the jumps ready, and fighter pilots have to fight regular rear-guard actions to help them get away.  Everyone is pushed to edge of exhaustion (and sanity), which is just where this show likes to have its characters.  In order to buy themselves some breathing room, the characters have to make a terrible choice (as usual).  It’s an excellent introduction to the show’s themes and moods, even moreso than the preceding miniseries.

It’s easy to see why people loved the show.  First of all, it looks amazing, especially considering it has only a basic cable budget.  It borrows a few of the docu-style tricks from Firefly and benefits greatly from advances in computer graphics that make full cgi space battles and cylons look good.  This may be the best-looking sf tv show ever.  The show is full of fast-paced action, but also takes time for character moments.  Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos, and Katee Sackhoff all deliver wonderful performances as major characters President Roslyn, Admiral Adama, and Starbuck (though after that, the cast is a lot more uneven). There are big twists, dramatic character deaths, and compelling mysteries. And, Star Trek TNG and DS9 Ronald Moore veteran brings his signature exploration of social issues (especially religion and war) to the series.

Of course, for most viewers, things went awry in the end.  It’s fairly clear that the writers didn’t know all of the answers to the questions they raised, a problem that has been the downfall of great shows like The X-Files and Lost.*  The big mysteries get more complicated and more bizarre over time, and the writers lean on a massive deus ex machina to not only rescue the characters, but to explain what the hell is going on.  It’s amazing how many questions God and some hand-waiving can answer, but, boy, is it a lame answer.

Why was I down on the show even before it went off the rail?  There’s a lot about the show I did like;  the aforementioned effects, action, and plot twists kept me involved, but sometimes my netflixed DVDs would sit around for a few months unwatched.  I watched the entire series…eventually.  I have two issues with the series.  The first is maybe a little pedantic, but I think the Zodiac mythology is a needless holdover from first series.  This world is so like ours, and yet its prevented from referencing the rich history of our own world.  As a result, it always feels detached, unmoored, and yet overly familiar.  I would’ve preferred either a future setting or more development of this alien setting.  Plus, the “search for Earth” plotline opens up a Pandora’s Box of bs in the final run of episodes.  But, at least we learned that Bob Dylan songs transcend time and space.

A more serious problem with the series is the melodrama.  Oh, the melodrama!  There’s a fine line between high stakes character development and ridiculous highwire soap opera, and BSG dances over the line about once per episode.  Everyone’s a moody raging alcoholic, primed to rebel/go into a rage/have dirty, inappropriate sex/change religions/become suicidal/betray everyone/etc at a moment’s notice.  I enjoy the excitement that all this brings to the table, but there’s something to be said for subtlety.  And, as the overwrought moments piled up, it’s easy to lose track of who the characters really are.  The show was famous for amped up multi-part extravaganzas that CHANGED EVERYTHING a couple of times per season.  These were really fun, and delivered the vast majority of the show’s best moments.  But it became harder and harder to believe the eventual resets to the status quo at their conclusion.  It was all kind of exhausting.

So, it was never a contender for my favorite sf tv show, but I’ll give it credit for being often entertaining, and drawing a broader audience than most space operas.  It’s unfortunate that a golden age of space opera tv from the early ‘90s seemed to come to an end with BSG in 2009.


*I haven’t seen Lost, so I’m not personally attesting to that show’s downfall.  I do get a general sense of dissatisfaction from the fans though.  I don’t think anyone can argue that the overarching plot of The X-Files was in any way satisfying though.

Episode Grade: A

Series Grade: B

2004 Hugo Drama Short Form Do Over – FIREFLY

Hey, it’s my blog, I get to rewrite Hugo history if I want to.

I was, apparently, one of the few people who watched Firefly when it was on Fox for a couple of weeks in 2002.  Since it was on the air, it’s become a cult classic, and it’s in the mix for pretty much any discussion of “best sf tv series of all time.”  It is really good, and it’s innovative in a lot of ways: it uses hand-held doc-style camera work, even for fx shots, it mashes space opera and western genre elements, it presents a dirtier future full of anti-heroes, and it gives us a multicultural future full of Chinese curse words.  Many of these elements have been picked up by subsequent sf tv shows.

If you’re assuming that the show failed because it was too science fictiony and couldn’t find a wider audience…well, you might be correct, but WorldCon’s treatment of the show rather demonstrates that it took sf fans some time to discover it as well.  The only episode nominated from the original broadcast run was the shown-out-of-order pilot, “Serenity,” which was solid, but not the show’s pinnacle.  Three episodes were produced but not broadcast on Fox.  When they came out on DVD, they became eligible and two were nominated, which suggests that the show was gaining momentum. But, then again, they were both beat by 90 seconds of bleeped Gollum profanity on MTV.  In fact, it looks like Gollum beat both nominated episodes combined (though the series finale of Buffy probably shaved some votes off Firefly as well).

Anyway, I think “The Message” should’ve won.  Captain Mal receives a crate in the mail that contains the body of an old war buddy, who got involved in the smuggling of some experimental biotech.  It has the typical sharp, funny dialogue and character drama that made the show great.  Jonathan Woodward plays the deceased war buddy in flashbacks – he was also the vampire in “Conversations with Dead People.”  I’m a bit surprised that he hasn’t been in much non-Whedon stuff.  He’s kind of a poor-man’s Paul Rudd (I consider that a compliment).  The other nominated episode, “Heart of Gold,” is not the show’s finest hour; it’s part Magnificent Seven with a little bit of Unforgiven (the crew defends a brothel from onslaught), but, all together, it’s pretty standard western material (with laser guns!).  I actually would’ve nominated the other eligible episode, “Trash,” instead.  It’s a caper episode, which the show probably overdid in its brief run, but it has the great Christina Hendricks reprising her role as sexy con-artist Saffron.

Grades: “The Message” – A-

“Heart of Gold” – B-

“Trash” – B+

Best episodes from the series as a whole:

“Jaynestown” – it’s odd to put a comedy episode in first place, but the concept, the script, and the actors’ timing are all excellent in this story of a poor colony that reveres the crew’s bad boy. A

“War Stories” – I really hate torture scenes, and this episode has a lot of them, but there are so many classic lines that I can’t help but love it.  It starts out by pairing the show’s two best comic actors and putting them in an awful situation, then it ends with an exciting action sequence. And then there are those great one-liners.  “I’ll be in my bunk.”  A

“The Train Job” – the second pilot created by Whedon and Minear.  I think it was harmed by Fox’s refusal to air the actual pilot…leaving a lot of the show’s premise unclear.  It holds up really well, and introduces the mood and themes of the show, even if it leaves some questions about plot points.  A-

“Out of Gas” – Great use of non-linear storytelling.  In the “present” life support is cut and Mal is wounded.  Throughout the episode we see how things got so bad, and how the crew got together. A-

“Ariel” – A caper story that gives us a different setting (a more urban planet), advances the overall plot, and involves some great character twists. A-

I don’t think the series is without problems.  The setting doesn’t entirely make sense – there’s no faster-than-light travel but they zip around to quite a few different planets.  There is some explanation about a very large solar system with many terraformed planets, but it still seems too crowded for one system.  The whole “freedom” theme with the Browncoats alludes to the Confederacy without really explaining or exploring the history, or the obvious problems with the analogy.  Some of the character beats are repetitive as well (River’s crazy, Jayne’s a little evil, Mal is good-hearted but ruthless, Book is mysterious, etc. I get it).  All that said, the show never really had time to get on its feet.  It was clearly destined for greatness when it ended prematurely, and what we did get was still very entertaining and influential.

Overall grade: A-

2001 BSFA – CHASM CITY by Alastair Reynolds

As I said back in my review for Hyperion, I have a soft spot for space opera. There’s something about vistas on different worlds, big lumbering spaceships, and people running around with blasters or ray-guns that lowers my reader defenses. I’ve readily admitted that I’m unduly hard on high fantasy; well, it’s the opposite for me and space opera. I’m not trying to jump into the “fantasy sucks” arguments that flare up now and then from sf fandom; it’s purely a personal preference thing. The ‘80s were a second golden age for the sub-genre, with several post-Star Wars winners culminating in the inspiring originality of Hyperion. Things fell off a bit in the ‘90s, but Vinge and Bujold kept things going.  Since then, though…well, A Deepness in the Sky was the last space opera to win the Hugo, and even digging into the other awards, this will be one of the last space opera novels I cover. That said, Reynolds is representative of a group of authors, mostly British, carrying the genre forward in the twenty-first century.

This is my first Reynolds novel, so I can’t say a whole lot about the Revelation Space setting in which it, and the majority of his work, takes place. Humans have spread to other planets, they’ve run into signs of other intelligences, but not many living representatives, nano-machines and all sorts of transhuman augmentation exists, but faster-than-light travel doesn’t seem to. It seems that the mood is what most sets Reynolds apart though. Space isn’t a pleasant place, and human beings aren’t particularly pleasant either. Betrayal, violence, war, and societal collapse seem to overshadow humanity among the stars.

That’s certainly true of the two settings in Chasm City. It starts with Tanner Mirabel on the war-torn planet of Journey’s End. He’s a mercenary/veteran who’s involved in some old grudges that lead him to survive a massive, space-elevator-destroying attack in an early action set-piece. Tanner then awakes with partial amnesia near the thriving planet of Yellowstone, still pursuing the old grudge. Tanner thought Yellowstone was thriving, but a machine-infecting virus has laid the planet low. The virus causes machines to go crazy, and it’s killed many people, interfered with the life-extending treatments of many more, destroyed an orbital district around Yellowstone, and turned the capital of Chasm City into an anarchic, dystopian disaster. This doesn’t put Tanner off of his plans to execute his old enemy though, and he continues to Chasm City and gets himself into all sorts of tricky situations, including a most dangerous “Game,” some high-risk surgery, long falls from damaged cable cars, and lots and lots of firefights.

All the while, Tanner has flashbacks to the life of the venerated founder of his faction from Journey’s End, named Sky Hausmann. As these memories pop up through the book, we learn about the planet’s colonization, the origins of its conflicts, the results of mistakes while working with anti-matter fuel, a few facts about alien life, and the truth about Sky Hausmann.

I really wanted to like this rare, award-winning space opera of the last decade, and I thought I very much would early in the book. Reynolds does some pretty solid world-building, quickly establishing his dark take on humanity in space and painting the ruined Chasm City itself with rich, moody details. The novel did lose me at some point in the second half though. It’s a little too long, and a little too obsessed with dramatic twists over solid storytelling. There are just so many odd turns in the end, and some rely on big contrivances (without spoiling things too much: Tanner runs into a galactic rarity TWICE in two very different places). I stopped caring the third time someone was NOT WHO WE THOUGHT THERE WERE, and there were two or three such BIG REVELATIONS left (is this why it’s called “revelation” space?). Reynolds’ love of the grim and gritty didn’t help either - almost all of the surprises reveal that characters are actually terrible. I don’t mind a little darkness; I just got bored with its relentlessness here. The biggest twists have to do with Tanner’s lost memories (you know when a character acquires amnesia that there are some surprises on the way), but I wasn’t particularly interested in them. I wasn’t involved in Tanner, and I didn’t care about his true story.

There’s some solid world-building and fun action here, but I was not impressed overall. More varied character work, less misdirection, and more streamlined storytelling might have kept me in Reynolds’ world a little longer. Also, as with A Deepness in the Sky, I don’t think an sf novice would stand a chance here, and that, in my opinion, goes a long way towards explaining space opera's fade.

Grade: B-

2001 Nebula – THE QUANTUM ROSE by Catherine Asaro

I often try to explain my frame of mind going into a novel.  In  this case, between the Nebula awards’ consistent inconsistency, the fact that this is an entry in a sprawling space opera epic that I’ve never heard of, let alone read, and the harlequin romance cover and cover description…well, I wasn’t looking forward to this one.   But, it kind of surprised me. Emphasis on "kind of."

In Asaro’s Skolian Empire books, ancient humans, with some mysterious alien intervention, colonized large segments of the galaxy.  This empire was ruled over by genetically engineered psychics.  It eventually collapsed, and by the time Earth caught up to it, the whole thing was reeling in the midst of an interstellar war.

I’m sure that background is apparent in the other novels, but in The Quantum Rose we start on the backwards planet of Balumil, where no one is aware of any of this.  Kamoj is the beautiful young ruler of Argali, and she is betrothed to the cruel, older Jax Ironbridge.  However, the strange masked foreigner Vyrl Lionstar makes a better offer and wins her away (brides on Balumil are more or less bought by the highest bidder).  Kamoj is initially horrified, but she soon learns that Vyrl is not merely a rude foreigner, but a heroic exile from another planet.  His clashes with the local culture are misunderstandings, and he is kind, handsome, and wants to treat Kamoj as an equal.  He introduces Kamoj to technologies from computers to advanced medicine to spaceships.  He does have his own troubled background; he’s been caught up in a conflict with the Earth Alliance, and it’s left psychological scars that have driven him to alcoholism and a distrust of his Skolian allies.  Meanwhile, Ironbridge still fights for Kamoj, and she has to balance her sense of duty to her planet with her love of Vyrl and complex interstellar politics.

It does have some of the trappings of romance novels that the cover and description imply; I don’t have any particular problem with a romantic storyline, but the genre does have a set of tropes, some of which I find somewhat offensive, and others are just worn out.  Here we do get the beautiful, damaged man, and the initial fear and roughness in a relationship that quickly turns to abiding love.  There’s all sorts of sexual coercion here, and Kamoj is often a victim.  We’re told that her people have been genetically engineered as compliant slaves, but watching her allow herself to be trampled for duty or love for most of the novel can get annoying.  Also, the characters are a little too perfect in their beauty, heroism, self-sacrifice, and love for each other, not to mention their superhuman abilities.  Hey, Vyrl can even dance like a god among men!  Is their a term for this sort of romance-novel, perfect mate Mary Sueism? 

All of this grated, but there was also plenty to like in the novel.  Contact between advanced and primitive societies is old hat in sf, but Asaro handles it quite well here, slowly unveiling the Skolians to us at the same time she reveals them to Kamoj.  The overall plot has a lot of momentum, and the scale of action gets bigger as the novel goes on, eventually moving to another planet.  Despite their unrealistic perfection, the main characters are solid and interesting, and some of the side characters, especially the crew of the ship that brought Vyrl, are even more intriguing.  Asaro has a PhD in math herself, and she keeps the technology interesting and familiar, while also drawing bigger metaphors from mathematical processes (“couple-channeled quantum-scattering”).  I can’t say that I ever really grasped this aspect of the novel’s structure, but I do appreciate that Asaro tried something different.

All in all, I'd call this a mixed bag. When I wasn't rolling my eyes, annoyed by cliché, I was usually caught up in the book and enjoying myself. It gets a middling grade from me, but I'm rather glad that Nebula went with something different this year.

Grade: B-

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novel - CRYOBURN by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is something like the twelfth or fourteenth Vorkosigan book (depending on how you count it). There have been four or five novellas in there as well. Three of those books (and a novella!) won Hugos in the 90s, but the last win was in 1995, and the last nomination in 2000. It’s a real challenge to keep a series going this long; I can’t say that I’ve ever read a book past the tenth in a series that still engaged me as much as the early volumes (though I can’t name many series I’ve read that far in). So, imagine my surprise when I found that one of my favorite books in the Vorkasigan series came in this later period.

Unfortuantely, that book was not Cryoburn, it was Komarr, which was not nominated for a Hugo when it was eligible in 1999. Yes, I did read the intervening books since Hugo-winner Mirror Dance, and I did get some enjoyment out of the experience. The books move star Miles Vorkosigan from his position as an undercover mercenary and into a position as a powerful diplomat, beginning with the bloated Memory. The plots remain on the pulpy side of the suspension of disbelief continuum (someone should count how many times Miles has escaped capture by his enemies), but the move away from military plotlines was a welcome change. Komarr and A Civil Campaign blend an off-beat love story with some espionage intrigue. Bujold avoids a lot of clichés by making Miles’ love interest Ekatrin a single mother coming out of a disastrous failed marriage, and the relationship feels mature and believable (despite the fact, maybe because of the fact, that Miles frets like a lovesick fifteen-year-old during the courtship). Both books have nice, straightforward plots, though A Civil Campaign has some silly, lame hijinks with Miles’s clone Mark. I can barely tell you what Diplomatic Immunity was about, even though I read it a couple of weeks ago (I do remember that it featured the quaddies from Nebula winner Falling Free), which tells you more-or-less how I felt about that one.

Cryoburn seems to be in the same category as that previous entry, so I better write this out quickly while it’s still fresh. We begin in media res with a confused Miles escaping, as he so often does, from a kidnapping attempt. We soon learn that he’s on the world of Kibou, which is dominated by a small cohort of powerful cryonics corporations with eyes on the Barrayaran colony of Komarr. Miles investigates in typical Miles fashion, throwing his weight around, getting in over his head, breaking some local laws, befriending innocent children, scheming with his clone, and generally overcoming every obstacle in his way with supernatural ease. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before. Bujold usually does a good job of mixing in some biotech ethics questions in with her pulp space opera, and cyronics is an interesting topic, but we don’t get too far into the problems of life-extension, and the main problem seems to be simple corporate greed.

There is an event at the very end (on the very last two or three pages) that keeps the book from being completely forgettable and immaterial to Miles’s life. It’s a bit of a shock, despite some subtle foreshadowing, and Bujold relates it in a very interesting way. I can’t quite decide if Bujold made a mistake by sidelining the main event, or if it’s kind of brilliant, but I think those pages alone kept this book from getting a C+ from me. Either way, this is a weaker entry in a series that probably has more than its fair share of Hugos as it is.

Grade: B-

2011 Hugo Nominee: Novelette - "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)

This is another sort of old-fashioned space opera story. We even get exposition describing simple elements of the world from a first person narrator, which most authors seem to bend over backwards to avoid these days. I’m fine with this; I’ve always found being forced to puzzle out the ground rules more distracting than the illogic of a person describing what should be a familiar environment.

Harry Malan leads a branch of the Church of Latter Day Saints on the sun. Most of his congregation is made up of “swales,” alien beings that live in stars and build star gates between them. Malan has conflicts with local scientists studying the swales, especially Juanita Merced, whom he also happens to have a crush on. He comes into conflict with the swale elders when the mores of the church begin to conflict with swale culture. The story raises some interesting ethical issues, and it presents a simple but fun space opera world, something that I feel has been missing of late.

This is clearly from Malan’s perspective, and Stone is also LDS, but I (decidedly not a Mormon) usually found the presentation balanced. A lot of the reaction from other reviewers whose blogs I follow has been intensely negative. I think you could view this story as a manipulative justification of missionary work. As a historian, I’ve done a great deal of work on the Franciscan missions of California and the Protestant mission in Hawai’i, and both cases are fraught with violence, sexual repression, and appalling death rates. I’d be one of the last people to defend missionary work as a general principle, but I do think the story gets more complex when you bring it up to the present. In the modern world, there are clear points of conflict between universal humanist values and respect for cultural diversity. Religion, of course, complicates these conflicts, and in this story, so does the fact that the other culture is non-human. All of this makes for a fascinating read. What’s really missing here, and what undermines the metaphor to a large extent, are the power dynamics that are usually present in missionary work. Malan is often in danger from powerful alien beings. Historically, missionaries were also often in danger, and many were killed, but missionaries were almost always backed by some sort of imperial power, and disproportionately violent retribution often followed martyrdom. It's almost always been more dangerous to be the object of missionary work than to be a missionary. If Stone really wanted to explore these dynamics, his swales should have been more vulnerable.

Still, I really enjoyed this story. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and it’s not shooting for a PEN/Faulkner award, it just presents an interesting concept in a simple, entertaining way. I see why some people were offended, but I did think it had a lot more nuance and evenhandedness than, say, Speaker for the Dead (which makes me a little bit angrier every time I think about it).

Grade: B+

2011 Hugo Nominees:Graphic- Girl Genius 10: Agatha Heterodyne & the Guardian Muse, by Foglios; Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, by Howard Tayler

Did you know that Phil Foglio has won more Hugo awards than Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke combined? Okay, that’s a lie that I just made up, but if this category keeps going, it has a good shot of coming true. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that something dominate a category if there is annual work that consistently tops the field (Doctor Who has been the best science fiction on tv for most of the past six years, I’d say, and the awards back that up). But “graphic fiction” is so much broader than Hugo nominators seem to recognize, and I don’t think this is the best work done in the field. This is a strong, familiar, and welcoming series, that helped start the whole fad (extremely fun at first, though perhaps a bit tired by now) of the female mad scientist in the steampunk world, and it’s by the Foglios, longtime WorldCon fan favorites and all around super-nice people. That makes it hard to complain about, but, for the third volume in a row, we’re stuck in a castle, and the jokes and plot get increasingly insular. If you haven’t read volumes 1 through 9, don’t bother with this one. I understand why this comic has a rabid fanbase (that happens to have a very strong correlation with Hugo voters), but is it the finest graphic fiction produced last year? No.

I think I need to retire this rant.

Schlock Mercenary is an occasionally funny military sf comic strip that I didn’t like much when it was nominated last go around. More of it was published last year. I didn’t read much of this volume, but I didn’t see anything to sway my opinion from what I did see.

2011 Hugo Nominee: Short Story - "For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov's, September 2010)

Most of this story involves an attempt to repair the damaged AI of a generational starship. The AI is named Cordelia, and one of the passengers named Rava dropped her and damaged her access to her memory. In the process of the repairs, Rava and her brother Ludovico discover that she has developed an emotional connection to another member of the crew and that she’s been covering for his health problems – health problems that would be a death sentence for him, as the ship’s limited resources must be conserved. There’s actually a fair amount going on in this brief and simple story. On top of all I mentioned, there’s the fact that the crew has become dependent on the AI for all of their history-keeping, and there are also reproductive politics (a theme this year?) concerning whether Ludovico can have a child. There’s even some random Victoriana because, hey, that’s pretty popular these days. The story doesn’t quite live up to the epic qualities of its title; there is a chain reaction, but no kingdoms fall in this fairly intimate short. However, it is well-constructed, interesting, and well-written.

Grade: B

2000 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – GALAXY QUEST

Galaxy Quest follows actors from a fictional Star Trek-like show of the same name that aired in the early 80s for three or four seasons. The actors now make their living touring the con circuit and dealing with obsessive fans. These fans include a group of real aliens, Thermians, who think the old episodes are “historical documents.” They need the crew from Galaxy Quest to save their species from the cruel alien overlord Sarris. Tim Allen plays the Shatneresque Captain, full of swagger and always trying to overshadow his crew. Alan Rickman plays his alien first mate, who, like Nimoy in the ‘70s, wants to be taken seriously and is somewhat ashamed of his role. Sigourney Weaver plays the female officer who never had much to do (her job was to repeat everything the computer says). Sam Rockwell gets some of the biggest laughs as a “red shirt” who died early in an episode. All of them are taken by the Thermians to a complete, thorough recreation of their ship.

I’ll be honest; when I first saw this film, I really didn’t like it. A lot of the satire, especially in the first half, is dead on… But, as the film goes on, it becomes more and more like the material it initially mocks. By the end, it’s much more of a love letter than a satire. It’s a full on space adventure with real action, and real stakes. Back in 1999, I was in my heady, pretentious college days. I was both too good for Trek and really sick of it, and I was in no mood for a corny knock-off, as I saw it.

On this review, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Mostly, I’ve just gotten over myself. The thing is, this film works both as a space opera and as a gentle, fun-poking love letter. In hindsight, it’s one of the best space operas between Star Trek: First Contact in ‘96 and Serenity in ’05. The Fifth Element is the only film during that almost-decade span that I can really say might be better. True, the rest of the qualifying films are horrible Star Trek: The Next Generation films, awful Star Wars prequels (none of which even received a nomination from the Hugo voters, amazingly), and failed Vin Diesel vehicles. After all of those trainwrecks, this film looks a lot more successful. It’s funny, fun, and it has a great cast.

That said, this is a spectacular era for films with speculative elements, and I would’ve been happy with any of this crop of nominees. I already talked about Malkovich and The Matrix. The Sixth Sense is a fine supernatural drama, that holds up despite the steep decline of its creator's reputation. The Iron Giant is a wonderful animated film by Brad Bird, who went on to greater fame with Pixar. I’d probably rank Galaxy Quest fourth or fifth out of that set of films, and it certainly doesn'r have the credentials or influence of The Matrix. But, I do have a much greater appreciation of it now.

I guess you could even argue that this movie continues our “what is reality?” theme in the film reviews of late, as it does rest on a misunderstanding about the nature of fiction in a sf tv show. That's kind of a stretch though.

Grade: B+

No post on Monday, but I'll be back Wednesday.

2000 Hugo and Campbell – A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY by Vernor Vinge

It’s a good thing that I’d built and increased the lead time in my reading for this blog, because the whole project came grinding to an awkward halt for about a month when this book came up on the list. For the past few years, I’ve been in a groove where I read a novel or two every week, and that includes some eight-hundred pagers…but this one stopped me cold for some reason.

Some reason? I actually know the exact reason. This novel may look like a svelt 800 page novelette, but there’s about 10,000 pages of story in those 800 pages, and a lot of it, frankly, ain’t that interesting. In fact, between A Fire Upon the Deep and this novel, I can see a clear pattern in how I react to Vinge’s books: Phase 1) initial interest in the Big Ideas presented, along with a little confusion as I get my bearings. Phase 2) a long slog through the middle as everything bogs down in jargon and the characters plot and plot and plot, stop to plot a little, then plot some more. Phase 3) a jumbo exciting climax and generally satisfying dénouement. So, I come out liking about 2/3rds of Vinge’s novels, and in A Fire Upon the Deep it worked out fine. In Deepness, however, that middle third took up a solid 9000 of the aforementioned 10,000 pages. It was a slog.

Deepness takes place 20,000 years before A Fire Upon the Deep in the same “Zones of Thought”-verse, though the Zones don’t actually come up much. Humanity hasn’t met many aliens, and they just chug around in slower-than-light sleeper ships. There’s a large group of freedom-loving space capitalist traders named the Qeng Ho who swashbuckle around space (they’re mentioned often in Fire). They’ve found a crazy star that periodically shuts down, which they call OnOff. That’s mysterious enough, but when they learn that it’s inhabited, they have to check it out. Another group of humans, called Emergents, also hear alien transmissions, and the race is on. The Qeng Ho and Emergents work together for about five pages, but the Emergents ambush the Qeng Ho with a virus called "focus" that turns people into obedient computing machines. Meanwhile, we also begin to learn about the spider-like aliens on OnOff’s planet, who are undergoing their own version of Earth’s twentieth century (these are actually the best scenes in the drudgery of “phase 2”). I’d mention some characters, but they’re all super-brilliant heroic/evil generic plotters, and there’s a minor spoiler about the main character.

I’m actually fairly excited about the summary I just wrote, and I wish I could remember this novel more fondly. There are plenty of interesting Ideas, half of which I haven’t even mentioned, and some intriguing twists at the end. But, that middle portion of the book just killed my brain. From the time the Emergents attack to the final confrontation is so repetitive, hopeless, and dull that I often put the book down for days at a time. I had zero connection with the characters, and there are several large time skips in the novel that really put me off. The whole thing takes place over several decades (I mean MegaSeconds…don’t even get me started on the metric time scale), and we’ll check in on a character after five years and find that NOTHING HAS CHANGED because they’re all SO DAMN BORING. This, of course, only increases the distance I felt from them.

It’s a rich book with wonderful ideas and some memorable moments. I tend to like this sort of ambitious, epic space opera, but I can’t really recommend this one, and I have to admit that I struggled to relate to it. I hope Vinge’s third Hugo-winner is shorter.

Grade: B-

1998 Locus SF – RISE OF ENDYMION by Dan Simmons

Hyperion is one of the best space opera novels of all time, but its resolution, The Fall of Hyperion, is a rushed-feeling mess of a book. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to continue with the final two books of the series after that, but I do have a solid streak going with the Locus awards, and since the final book won I felt obliged to continue.

This second pair of books does manage to recapture some of what made Hyperion so special, though they also manage to repeat some of the messy mistakes of Fall. In the third book, Endymion, we return to Simmons’ universe a quarter-of-a-millenium later and see that much has changed. The Catholic Church has taken over from the old Hegemony and created an empire called the Pax. A young man from the planet of Hyperion named Raul Endymion (enough with the Keats references already!) meets up with some survivors of the first series and becomes the escort for a twelve year old girl with a capital “D” Destiny named Aenea. The novel unfolds as a chase across several worlds as church officials pursue Raul and the girl (and their robot pal). Unlike Fall of Hyperion, the story is simple, the cast limited, and the sum total engaging and fun.

In this volume, Rise of Endymion, we return the epic and manic universe-bending mess of Fall of Hyperion. The fate of the whole universe is on the line, the rules can and will change at any moment, and the power of love will somehow save everyone. Raul continues to hop from planet to planet, and Aenea continues to slide toward her Destiny. Even though only the second novel won the Locus, the pair of novels make a single whole, and I wouldn’t recommend reading either separate from the other.

Actually, I’m not sure I’d recommend that either. On the one hand, Simmons’s prose, character work, world-building and action scenes are all pretty great. Much of the novel moves from world to world, and Simmons uses his extensive knowledge of history and literature and a respect for the genre’s history to build a series of really interesting places for the protagonists to visit. For instance, the planet of T’ien Shan, featured on the cover, features colonists from Buddhist monasteries, who built a new home high in the mountains of a planet with a noxious atmosphere near the surface. These sections come the closest to matching the greatness of Hyperion. But, there is quite a bit of chaff in that wheat. Far too much of the book is taken up with the machinations of the church antagonists, which don’t serve much purpose and really start to drag. And, the rules do go out the window late in Rise, just as they did in Fall. We get a series of infodumps about evolution and theology and Buddhism and love, which allow for Simmons to chat about what are surely some pet interests before employing a series of deus ex machinas to quickly wrap everything up. As I’ve said before, it’s great when a speculative fiction author uses the full scope of his or her imagination to push the boundaries of reality…but, when characters can come back from the dead, teleport across the universe, or collapse an interstellar civilization with a thought, the stakes of the conflict really aren’t clear.

Simmons is a fine writer, and a lot of this is interesting, but none of it reaches the quality of the first book. I’d say, read Hyperion, then go skim or read some synopses of the rest if you just have to know where it all goes.

Grade: C+

1997 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – “Severed Dreams,” BABYLON 5

Back to B5 with its second, and final, Hugo win. I chronicled my B5 watching history last time: there’s no question that the long, intricately planned arcs are ground-breaking and influential. However, horrible production values marred the series’ first season. By season 3, the production values have improved quite a bit. It seems to be in the same range as a show like early Buffy (whose production values I have no problem ignoring). However, even in season 3, at the show’s creative peak, I’m still not entirely won over by the characters and plot.

In the last Hugo-winning episode, Babylon 5’s quest for peace was collapsing as the evil “Shadows” manipulated alien races into attacking each other. These problems continue, but the newest threat is from within. An alliance of Alfred Bester-inspired psi-cops, the Shadows, and an evil President have taken over Earth and declared martial law. Under Commander John Sheridan, Babylon 5 breaks with the new Earth government and becomes a beacon of resistance. A lot of fighting ensues, and the production team really does pull out all the stops to make the battles look relatively decent…and even better.

I’m still not entirely sold on this series though. I wish I knew more about the Shadows. I wish everything wasn’t framed as a titanic struggle between pure good and pure evil. I wish the characters weren’t cookie-cutter clichés. I wish JMS could dial back his love of melodrama and preaching from the soap box. I wish a lot of things. There’s so much to admire about this series, but there continue to be a lot of little things that bother me. I doubt I’ll be a convert in the end, but I really do appreciate the layered, continuity-heavy storytelling that the show represents.

Unlike last time, I don’t think this episode was up against extremely strong competition. DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” was a fun, nostalgic romp, but it was also very gimmicky. First Contact is also fun but flawed – more in the JJ Abrams school of Trek movies than the Nicholas Meyer school. If I were to pick an alternate winner, it might be a previous B5 episode called “Messages from Earth,” wherein we learn that the evil Earth government has found Shadow ships on Mars and Ganymede. It’s got a great archaeological mystery and an action sequence that may not be as elaborate as this episode’s but is more exciting (and less inevitably headed toward dues ex machine).

Grade: B