2015 Hugo Winner: THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM by Liu Cixin

Over sixty awards in, and the Hugos still have some new ground to break. With this work from Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin, 2015 gave us the first translated winner ever. This was, of course, in the midst of "sad puppy" reactionary slate voting. Again, the actual winner has everything you'd want in a classic science fiction novel - mystery, problem-solving, and big ideas - which undermines the only puppy complaints that are anywhere in the neighborhood of valid. This novel's win was part of a strong anti-sad puppy final result that included "no award" winning many categories that the slate had dominated (though the book had some support from puppy voters, which may have skewed the results).

The Three-Body Problem begins during China's Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, in which activist students fought viciously over Communist ideology in an effort to renew the principles of China's Revolution. This included widespread persecution of intellectuals, and acts of humiliation and violence against anyone believed to have committed ideological crimes. Not only is this an interesting place to start a novel set in China, it gives Liu a couple of thematic points that will recur in the novel: the sense among some of the characters that humanity is too depraved to continue to exist as it is, and also a belief that empirical science should transcend political ideology.

Ye Wenjie witnesses the brutal beating of her father, a theoretical physicist, during the cultural revolution before being sent off to Red Coast, a Chinese SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life) program, for political rehabilitation. Her story is told in flashback at various points in the book, though once an author introduces a SETI project in a science fiction book, you probably have some hint about the plot. In the present (well, near future), we follow nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao. Wang is contacted by the Chinese police, including the book's most colorful character Investigator Da Shi, along with the CIA. They're investigating the recent deaths of several scientists around the world. After having his own surreal experiences (some of the best parts of the book), Wang ends up exploring a virtual reality video game called The Three-Body Problem. In the game, Wang has to figure out the seasonal cycles on a planet that has irregular periods of intense heat and cold.

My description of the plot may sound rather scattered, but all of this comes together really brilliantly in the last third of the novel, and there are some really fantastic ideas that I haven't even delved into yet. I think I can say this without spoiling anything (because it will sound like nonsense until you get to it) - the building of the sophon is one of the best science fiction sequences I've read in a long time.

I really came to enjoy this book a lot. In fact, it has just about everything I want out of science fiction - big ideas that don't ignore human societies and historical thinking and context. I will say the prose was a little plain. In a translated work, it's hard to say where the blame lies, but I've read a fair number of Ken Liu's stories, and I think he's a fine writer, so I'd wager that Liu Cixin's prose is probably fairly unadorned (though very clear) in the original Mandarin. A bigger problem is with the characters. There is attention paid to their motivations, but beyond that they're all pretty flat. Ye Wenjie is the most well-rounded, detective Da Shi is a fun archetype, the main character is kinda dull, though that maybe helps him as a point-of-view character - he is easy to project onto. Actually, I have to say that adding together the stock characters and unadorned prose alongside the great ideas and logical storytelling, I was reminded a lot of Isaac Asimov (who gets name-checked at one point). Asimov was very influential in my early sf reading, so it was a pleasant association, even though not all of those characteristics would be considered virtues in most novelists.

Grade: A-

2011 – READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline

Yes, this review requires an '80s soundtrack.

Ernest Cline's first novel takes place in a dystopian future of economic and environmental collapse. Or, at least, that's somewhere in the background. Most of the novel takes place in a shared virtual environment called OASIS, which is basically an internet-encompassing MMORPG (or, to go to the sf roots, like Stephenson's Metaverse from Snow Crash). The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, became the richest man in the world, and, in his will, he left his vast fortune to whomever could solve a vast OASIS-spanning puzzle based on Halliday's own childhood obsessions. Since Morrow grew up in the '80s, what we get is a massive nostalgia trip that relies on '80s video games, tv, movies, music, and table-top RPGs.

Most of the book is a straightforward adventure revolving around the young orphan Wade Owen Watts and some of his friends as they try to beat an evil corporation to the prize. There is an interesting speculative idea here though - as millions of people obsessively consumed Halliday's favorite media, '80s pop culture has come to dominate the cultural landscape of 2044. People trade allusions to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, D&D, Pac-Man, Zork, and Ladyhawke (of all things) like past generations of classically-trained intellectuals bandied about Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Shakespeare. It's a really promising idea, but Cline doesn't do much with it. There's no real sense of how these pop fossils have been reinterpreted in a very different future world, except for a few imaginative uses of the virtual OASIS environment. Instead of investigating this idea, Cline seems more interested in going to great lengths to create a world where his favorite stuff is put on a pedestal by the rest of the world. Cline is most famous for his geek movie Fanboys, and it's very clear that there's a lot of him in Halliday and young Wade. With some of his other ideas (trailer park skyscrapers, the megalopolis of Columbus, Ohio) it's hard to figure out exactly what tone the author is shooting for.

That said, if you share a lot of Cline's taste (I'm a few years younger, but if you've been following the blog, you'll know that most of this is in my wheelhouse), you can get a lot of joy out of the steady stream of references. And, the book is fun. Not only does Cline relentlessly talk about '80s adventure films and games in this book, he also does a pretty good job of re-creating their feel. They were full of plucky underdogs - kids (Goonies and others), rebels (Star Wars), nerds (John Hughes and others), losers (Ghostbusters and others), etc - who took on adult criminals or their social betters or interstellar empires or supernatural monstrosities and somehow managed to win. This didn't quite come out in my own '80s review, but the films of that decade really were optimistic. Maybe it's a Reagan thing? I love the '80s adventure film formula, and so part of me really loved this book.

On the other hand, those '80s films could be kind of shallow. Subtext is not one of George Lucas's great strengths. Or Robert Zemckis's. Or Richard Donner's. Or even John Hughes's. I wouldn't mind seeing a few more fun '80s-style adventure movies (hello, Super 8!), but I wouldn't want every film to follow that formula. And it's not really a formula I look for in award-winning novel's. On top of that, Cline is a first time novelist, and I wouldn't say that his prose really shines here. Most of the time, it's...adequate. There are probably more awkward turns of phrase than sublime ones, but there aren't many examples of either. The writing is just there.

So, while this was a nice nostalgia trip, there's not much else to this book. If you're not a fan of '80s media, you might find it downright terrible. Me? I had fun, but I can't blame Hugo nominators for passing this one by.

Grade: B

2011 Hugo Nominee: Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, directed by Edgar Wright (Universal)

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a Canadian slacker who plays in a garage band named Sex Bob-omb (it's a Super Mario Bros. joke). He’s unemployed, and he has to share a mattress with his gay roommate in a one-room apartment across the street from his parents’ house. He’s recovering from a devastating break-up with a girl named Envy who has gone on to date a super-powered Vegan. He’s dating a high school girl for a simpler relationship, but then he falls in love with a delivery girl with brightly-colored hair named Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who literally stepped out of his dreams (she uses a sub-space passage that goes through his dreams as a short-cut for her deliveries. It’s an American thing.) If Scott wants to date Ramona, however, he must defeat her seven evil exes. It’s a big ol’ metaphor for modern life in your twenties – everyone has to figure out who they are, what they want to do, and they have to learn how to have mature relationships and deal with the baggage that people have started to accumulate through middle school, high school, and thereafter.

I’m not really sure how to rate this film. I love the source material, a series of six graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley that begin as rather typical slacker-romantic-comedy material (which is not uncommon on the comics scene), but then reveal a world that works according to the rules of various 8-bit Nintendo games. Disagreements lead to explosive physical combat, and when enemies are defeated, they leave behind coins. The whole series plays a lot like the manga of Rumiko Takahashi which tend to mix romantic comedy with heavy genre content (UFOs in Urusei Yatsura and martial arts in Ranma ½), but with greater emotional depth. They’re immensely charming, hilarious, and the relationship story does manage to resonate with me (and lots of other people) despite the over-the-top characters.

I also love director Edgar Wright’s approach to the material. It’s incredibly faithful to the comic series, and Wright fills the film with comic visuals. Little sound effects pop up at times, and there are manga action lines all over the place. The action-movie parody Hot Fuzz suggested that Wright could be one of the greatest action movie directors of all time if he’d played it straight, and this film is every bit as expertly made, energy-filled, and visually lush as that one.

So, it’s a great-looking, incredibly faithful adaptation of material I love. And yet…I’m not sure this works as a movie. I think the central problem is pacing. The movie packs six graphic novels worth of material into two hours of film. That means that a lot of the quieter moments that build the characters get lost. Scott and Ramona’s relationship unfolds over a year in the books; here, everything takes place in about three days, and it’s hard to buy the emotional weight that’s supposed to be behind the fights. I’m also not sure that the casting entirely works. I loved Arrested Development, so I’ll always have a soft spot for George Michael…I mean, Michael Cera, but I don’t really buy him as Scott. The supporting cast is pretty solid though, with superheroes Chris Evans and Brandon Routh especially stealing scenes as ex-boyfriends.

I’m afraid that this is one of the weaker nominees this year. We get lots of funny lines and moments from the comic, great visuals from Edgar Wright, but I’d really recommend reading the graphic novels first (and I would've preferred a Graphic Story nom).

Grade: B