Review: The Triple Sun (2015 Hugo Nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale”, Rajnar Vajra (Analog, 07/08-2014) (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novelette

Status: Nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts

I will confess I came to this slightly biased as I’ve seen some of Rajnar Vajra’s space-operaesque work before and was looking forward to it.  High expectations may have spoiled me for this particular story.  From the perspective of basics, it was light fun with a dash of SF puzzle, which is usually a good formula for a story - however, there are elements that grate and annoy, and even on a first reading I can see a couple of ways in which a major rewrite would significantly improve it. The universe created for background and the basic elements of the plot are deeply reminiscent of classic pulp SF combined with a healthy dash of hard SF's scientific speculation – definitely in a good way. The ideas played with are intriguing, but problems with the plot, the characters and even the writing overshadow them.

Ideas

The author has clearly put a lot of work into thinking out how the universe in which this story plays out works.  The tech speculation itself isn't particularly novel, but the way it's engaged is interesting and in the hoary old tradition of hard SF world-builders like Niven the tech and the science work together as parts of the puzzle the protagonist is faced with.  Likewise, the author speculates as to how things would look in a future where both Venus and Mars are colonized and interstellar exploration possible. How would we handle the unimagined dangers of far worlds? What would an agency devoted just to exploring the galaxy look like? How would human society develop under these conditions? Sadly, while we are given enough snapshots to orient ourselves in the author's universe we don't really get to see much of it. This isn't such a big problem, since the story isn't about these questions, but exploring them just a little further would have added versimitude to a setting that, as it stands, feels rather like it lives in cartoon panels but has been robbed of the accompanying illustration.

Writing

The pacing is good, and the author works hard to provide a consistent tone from start to finish. Sadly, in broader terms the story suffers from some serious issues.  First of all is the strictly formulaic structure of the story - cadets of an elite squad have a run-in with more mundane military types, and the resulting punishment presents them with a puzzle they're uniquely suited to solve, which they do and in the process vindicate themselves. While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this plot, to use it so bluntly and without really infusing it with anything new seems lazy, and contributes to the sense of unreality - I always knew in general terms what was going to happen next and more or less how it would turn out. This is annoying in TV shows, and doubly so when you come across it reading. On top of this, while the author clearly knows where he's going (how could he /not/?) He sometimes seems to lose track and is forced to impose awkward (and unbelievable) course corrections. The opening brawl? (Which was obviously coming the minute "odd couple team of elite cadets looking for a bar" came up) Fine. Dragged in front of the commandant for punishment? The author goes to great lengths to tell us this is odd - this is already skirting the edges of believability, how in the world does he expect us to believe the punishment? And the shipboard arrangements once they get their reward/punishment? Similar twists of fate or fortuitous details he had forgotten to mention previously drag us kicking and screaming down a path that simultaneously adheres to tried and true formula /and/ makes no sense. Make no mistake: each phase of the story is well written and internally consistent, and the way the necessary hints to solve the puzzle are dropped in each phase is a pleasingly old-school style of SF mystery. But the transitions and contortions needed to tie the phases together make for a very rickety structure indeed. The author tries to shore things up with exposition, but the way events have been ordered forces him to use an encyclopedic approach. Not necessarily a serious problem in a story of this type, but it makes a whole section into a series of entries that makes on think it might have been more efficient to just point us to the wiki.

Characterization

To be honest, in a SF mystery tale built on a formula and featuring elite cadets on a reluctant mission I don't expect or really even need much in the way of character development - such stories aren't really about the characters anyway, so you can get away with a few cardboard cutouts of archetypes you think your audience should be able to imagine as themselves - that's the point here, after all, to present a story where the readers can inject themselves to take part in the action. Nevertheless, the author makes an effort to decorate his cut-outs with glitter and macaroni so as to make them a bit more interesting. Unfortunately, most of this personality emerges as wacky banter that would probably have been amusing in smaller doses, but at length is simply not clever enough to entertain. Nearly every other paragraph I found myself thinking "Yes, I get it: genius pranksters. Enough!". I don't at all mind comic relief, and this sort of story practically demands it, but the author deploys it with a heavy hand, and it gets tired very quickly.  The final nail in the coffin is that having established solid (if stereotyped) characters, they occasionally act in strangely uncharacteristic ways. No doubt this is intended to give the characters depth, a way of saying "look! They're not just cookie cutter characters!" But unfortunately the way they're deployed is almost always to provide a plot twist, and as such they come off as curveball deviations from the script rather than additional character depth.

Verdict

I actually like this type of story - I am an inveterate Niven fan, and I always craved story collections with new work in them so that I could match wits with Larry himself and try to figure out the puzzle before his protagonist did. It's obvious that this story is trying to be a part of this tradition, with a healthy dose of Space Patrol tossed in for spice, and as such it's actually a fun read. I certainly found myself eager to read further to see how much I could figure out before it was revealed.  The main issues - banter that would be so much better if diluted a bit, and despite being a completely traditional formula structural issues make the plot seem contrived - but the core idea - the puzzle of why the expedition has failed, and how it can be saved - is a great foundation for this kind of story. While I would like to see the comic elements toned down, even the relatively shallow characters aren't a serious problem. It's just not the kind of story that demands deep philosophical exploration of humanity.  No, the big crack running through this whole piece is structure: the structure makes it impossible for us to really live the intriguing alien world, the structure forces bizarre twists and turns, the structure ironically makes the comic book character of the story into a weakness rather than a strength. (on the other hand, although I rarely read comics myself I think that this tale would translate well into graphic format, largely unchanged). I would love to see this story rewritten in a different way - keep the characters, the idea of the EE, the alien world (complete with its bizarre and wonderfully imagined biology), but put it all together in something tighter and better thought out to support the style of SF mystery that seems to have been the goal.

Readability: Pass

Hugo quality: Fail

Review: Championship B'tok (2015 Hugo Nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“Championship B’tok”, Edward M. Lerner (Analog, 09-2014) (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novelette

Status: Nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First Thoughts

This is a story with potential set in a rich universe with a developed history and clearly going somewhere.  The action itself is obviously set in the middle of larger events, and as a result suffers a bit when read as a stand-alone piece. [1]  Taken for what it is, however, we get to see an interplanetary (interstellar, really – but we don’t see that part here) intrigue unfold.  This all takes place in what appears to be a complex social and political background which is easy to imagine and this lends the action a sense of authenticity.  Linked to the story’s place in the middle of a larger narrative, however, there’s a sense of incompleteness here that I think goes beyond “open ended” style where the reader gets to speculate about what came before and after – rather than feeling open ended, it just feels as though not enough has been resolved to make the story really end – instead, it just seems to die.  Now, as a part of the whole that the author is writing here that’s not necessarily a problem.  However, it has been presented to us as a stand-alone piece for consideration in the Hugos, and I think this is a considerable weakness.

Ideas

The ideas are mainly well realised in this story, and this is actually one of the strengths of its place as a part of something larger.  There is clearly a socio-political background to the action, and the author doesn’t waste our time with lecturing about government structure or the injustice of “alien reservations” – he just presents it to us complete with warts and lets us interpret it as we will.  This is the kind of rich background world building I like.  Part of this is because any exposition needed has probably been done in previous work, and we are being shown a snapshot of the ongoing development of a living universe.  This sort of thing always seems richer than completely stand-alone universes.  Likewise, he explores a few of the implications of technology – e.g. the idea of enhancing human abilities with implanted electronics and the way in which these are realised in the universe he is creating feels good and certainly sparks interest.  Unfortunately, he touches on this only briefly, which would probably be good in a longer work but in something this short feels inadequate to the potential.  Also, this is one of the few areas in which he resorts to clumsy exposition, with a couple of paragraphs lecturing the reader on just who “the Augmented” are – this struck me as particularly odd, since the effort that went into telling us all about the Augmented suggests that they play an important part in the story, but in the end they’re involved only to the degree that one of the people introduced happens to be one – and then not only do we not meet her (she is just discussed) but the author kills her off at the end.  This is one idea that could have been explored further, particularly in the context of the other idea that left me deeply unsatisfied – the alien game.  The eponymous game B’tok is another item that the author takes time to provide a lecture on, and it seems clear that this will be an important theme in the story.  And to be fair, the game is used as a way to frame the relationship between the main protagonist and the alien administrator.  However, the true potential of the game as a background to what initially promises to be an intricate game of spy vs spy is never realised, and the game recedes to be little more than stage dressing.  In fact, with the paragraph of exposition explaining to us what this game is the lack of any meaningful engagement with it makes me wonder if it was injected after the fact to justify an exotic-sounding title.

Writing

The writing here is strong.  For the most part it’s descriptive without being ponderous, clean without being too spare.  The dialogue feels realistic and the way in which the author embeds much of the detail of the universe he is building without belabouring us with encyclopedia entries is good.  As mentioned, there are a few places where he relies on this kind of lecture-style exposition, but in some ways this almost feels as though he might be trying to get new readers up to speed without just saying “read what’s already published” or otherwise struggling to shoehorn a wealth of material into a smaller space.  The story doesn’t really suffer from these intrusions, but I think the story would have been more satisfying if they had been written into the story in the same way he handled everyday implant technology, the alien culture, bits and pieces of history, the politics of the various societies.  Sadly, there are areas in which the writing stumbles, and these are again tied to the fact this is really part of a larger whole rather than a stand-alone piece.  First of all, the author makes the unusual (for a work this short) choice of switching points of view.  He sticks with the main protagonist for most of the story, but in some sections he moves to the point of view of other characters.  I can see why he would do this, and it does work in this case, but it also breaks us out of the mindset he’s put so much work into developing.  This seems like a technique better suited for a longer format.   Another area in which the story could be polished in terms of writing is in the plotting itself.  Make no mistake, the story is well paced and the author builds well toward the climax – there can be no complaint there.  However, there are two aspects of the narrative that struck me as unsatisfying.  First, he builds toward action and intrigue, but somehow fails to deliver them in anything but a cursory fashion.  Why not develop this more?  Action seems to be glossed rather than dealt with in the suspenseful way it deserved, and the intrigue he so tantalisingly introduces with the idea of the game and the alien administrator as an expert player turns out to manifest itself as a mere shadow in the background.  These seemed to be destined to be big parts of the story, so it was unfortunate to discover they didn’t really go anywhere.  Finally, there is the way in which plots and sub-plots seem to just…die.  Many lines of the story we are introduced to while they are in progress (not a problem, and a good technique in short fiction) and in the end have no satisfying conclusion, or indeed any conclusion at all.  I can see the argument for leaving things open for the reader to speculate and imagine on their own, but this seems to be more than that – again a symptom of the fact this is part of a longer project involving multiple stories.  This lack of resolution left me with a strange combination of wanting to read more and just feeling like the story wasn’t finished properly, which I know probably wasn’t what the author was shooting for.

Characterisation

As a social SF (and yet pretty hard as SF goes – an interesting combination!) characters are quite important to the story, and I thought the author did quite well in realising them.  The main protagonist is quite well developed for us, complete with hints that he has a full past that extends beyond the confines of the story.  Likewise, the protagonist’s colleagues seem like they are fully developed, as do his relationships with them.  This is certainly one of the pluses of coming to a story in the middle of a series, as the author has had the time to develop characters more fully in his mind.  Unfortunately, the aliens seem a little shallow, and I would have liked to see more development of them beyond the initial encyclopedia entries and a handful of exchanges among them, but this is probably also a feature of the story being part of a series – perhaps the administrator in particular would seem richer if I had seen her development in previous works.  As for the alien society itself, this is always a difficult thing to get right without seeming to be parodying some real human society, and in any case the aliens actually play a very much secondary role in terms of being on stage, despite being an important dimension of the story.  The tendency to push them into the background a bit and focus on the human actors is understandable, and probably a good idea when you have limited space to work with.

Verdict

Overall, this seemed like a well written section of a larger work.  I was left wanting to know more, and hoping to see that this was an excerpt from a novel or something – and in fact I see that there is a series of stories of various lengths, a couple of anthologies and apparently a novel.  It’s a shame that the story suffers a bit as a stand-alone, because there does seem to be some strong writing here, and all three critical elements – ideas, plot, characters – seem to be developing in interesting ways.  Unfortunately, though, for me the sense of being thrust into the middle of something too complex to get a handle on that never really resolves was an issue, and while I think there’s definitely something to be said for leaving things open I think this particular story could have benefited from more closure on some of the plot lines the author was developing.  No doubt he will work on these in future stories, but as a stand-alone this just seems incomplete.

Readability: Pass

Hugo Quality: Pass

Notes:

 1. This story is one of a series that appear to be somewhere between Larry Niven’s Known Space world building (but seemingly more local and realised in more detail) and a serialised novel like Perry Rhodan (but better written and more coherent) – for those interested in seeing some of the context, other stories, anthologies and novels can be seen at the author’s blog here

A Note on Smade's Reviews

I have had some questions, so I decided to explain a little about how I intend to proceed:

When I review fiction, I do so in two different and distinct ways:

1. Editorial voice: This voice can sound harsh.  It is a strict discussion of things the writer has done well, and things that seem not to work.  This is mainly technical review, though I do try to ground it in what I think makes a story good. 

2. Reader’s voice: This voice might sound harsh, but it’s more likely to talk about what was enjoyable about the writing.  It’s a review of what I loved about a piece, what inspired me, what’s cool about it.  This is where I will put on my fan hat and just enthuse (or not) as appropriate. 

I can usually find something to enthuse about even if I didn’t like the story or book all that much.  But if I really didn’t like it?  Well, to start I probably wouldn’t review it at all unless I thought there was a really good reason to point out why I hated it. 

In editorial voice reviews, I’ll usually grade writing as pass/fail in terms of readability and meeting minimum standards to be considered for nomination for the Hugos (and presumably other awards, though I’m mainly thinking of the Hugos here).  Note that this doesn’t mean I think the work was “an amazing read!” or that I think it should win in its Hugo category, just that I think it isn’t automatically out of the running for not meeting my mental bar for consideration.  

My bar for actually winning is, of course, somewhat higher.

On a related note, I will try to determine whether what I’m reading is eligible for the next round of Hugo nominations, and if so what category it belongs in.  As nomination season approaches, I will pop these titles into a list and begin discussing what I liked and hated about the best of them as I work toward my own nominations.  

--Smade

Review: The Journeyman: In the Stone House (2015 Hugo Nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“The Journeyman: In the Stone House”, Michael F. Flynn (Analog, 06-2014) (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of novelette

Status: nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
This is an engaging read with interesting characters and a setting that keeps he reader trying to figure things out. The main characters are given their own distinctive patois, and this helps to build the flavour of the story but at the same time is sometimes a bit annoying as it occasionally strikes me as being too clever. The story itself appears to be one of a series the author has planned - the first was published in 2012 and this story clearly builds on events that occurred in that tale as well as building toward some continuance. As such, while the story is entertaining as a stand-alone as well it does tend to be a little unsatisfying without the other pieces in hand.

Ideas
The author's big idea is to reimagine what things might be like after a tech collapse (Or so it seems - hard to say without reading the first) and as such is more of a social speculative work than a tech speculative one. The conception of societies is interesting, if not particularly novel. Another dimension here though is the way in which these societies handle concepts like revenge and personal honour, and the story seems to revolve around the tension between various individual and cultural concepts.  In this sense, it’s very much a social SF story, and while the deep ideas aren’t explored in any detail the world building is strong.  In a few places, however, it seems as though he has tried to be too clever for his own good – in particular in the way in which he resolves the revenge plot.  After a fairly skillful build-up, he lets us down by letting the feuding characters get out of the corner they’re painted into with a bit of sophistry – perhaps this theme was deeply examined in the first installment, but in that case its presence in this story is redundant.  If you’re going to use it, why not explore it further?

Writing

The story starts in an interesting way, by echoing the kind of language often used in English translations of Native American mythology – this inevitably sets the tone for the setting, but it seems obvious from the start that this language couldn’t be maintained through the entire story, and of course it isn’t.  For the most part, the writing is good – it’s a bit on the rich side when descriptions are used, but the author balances this out a bit by doing most of the exposition work via dialogue.  And this is where the problems arise.  The author is trying to paint for us a world in which several disparate societies, presumably emerging from some kind of dark age, are encountering each other.  He tries to depict in shorthand form the differences between these people by reflecting their backgrounds in the kind of language they use.  Odd dialects are a common way to depict alien-ness in SFF but typically works better used sparsely, and I have to say that for me the dialects were overused and on top of that the way they were used tended to grate, making it less enjoyable to read.  Plotting seemed good, but again this seems to be the middle of a story, which makes it hard to judge.  As a stand-alone, it does work well, but the pacing and the narrative arc itself relies too heavily on the part that came before and the part that apparently comes after.  While there is a clear thread that sees resolution, it doesn’t strike me as having been the main point of this particular installment in the story, and as a result we end up seeing a lot of unresolved issues.  Likewise, new elements are introduced rather late in the story but then play important parts in the final few pages.  All in all, the tale feels incomplete and unsatisfying – but in a way that makes me think that the story has suffered from being cut into pieces. (interestingly, this is the opposite of how I feel about other tales that were similarly published in parts and then later woven together into a single work – Charles Stross’s Accelerando, for example I loved when it was published as a few interwoven novelettes back in the 90s and early 2000s, but when they came out as a novel I didn’t think it worked nearly as well.).  Exposition is done skilfully, without too much lecturing – we see most of the world through the eyes of the characters, and the rest is inferred by description that hints at just where they are and what things are like.  There are a few places where the author is forced to provide us with capsule explanations of what came in the previous installment, and I think the story suffers from it, but under the circumstances it’s probably unavoidable.

Characterization

The two main characters seem to come as a set, and as such they work together and give the sense of being complete.  They have distinct ways of speaking (albeit marred by the dialects they affect) and the patter between them is generally amusing – though on occasion a bit annoying. Beyond these two, however, the remaining characters feel a bit hollow.  It’s not as though they are cardboard cutouts, but rather that the framework has been completed but the author hasn’t had enough time in the space of the story to develop them fully, and critical elements seem to be missing.  In part, this is again because the story is clearly an installation in a series – a number of characters are introduced, and it’s obvious that several of them are going to be important, but they don’t end up really coming into their own within the space of this novelette.  While the delay in getting into these characters to develop them is understandable, it does leave me unsatisfied.  Beyond this, the main complaint I have is the degree to which the author relies on affected dialects to generate our image of the characters – as a technique, it has a long and illustrious history, but in this case it almost seems a crutch.  As social SFF there is a fair bit of development seen, interactions between the characters are the mainstay of the story after all, but at the same time the dialects – and the fact that it seems almost as if every character has their own – give the impression of walking stereotypes.  Perhaps this is a bias coming directly from unfamiliarity with the other parts of the tale, but it seems as though the characters would have seemed more real and more full if they hadn't all been unique individuals – if there had been more of the wider societies presented to us.  And this is probably the fault of the dialects again: from whose perspective are we expected to be viewing the action?  With everyone speaking in dialect, it almost seems as we’re outside them all, which reduces them all to stereotypes again.

Verdict

The story itself and the two main characters were interesting enough to pull me along through the story despite slight annoyance at the dialects.  I found myself wondering what these societies were like, and from comments and hints in the dialog I became curious about what had happened, so much so that I’m tempted to go out and hunt down the first one just to find out what happened.  The narrative arcs introduced and developed in this story do seem unfinished however, and while leaving things open is probably good business sense to encourage readers to look out for the next installment it does leave me feeling unsatisfied.  The conclusion would probably have felt much better if he had built the story around a stronger central plot that could be started and finished within the confines of this particular work, while retaining the threads that connect it to the preceding and following installments.  It would also help the story immensely if some of the more powerful social issues raised were explored more thoroughly.  The revenge theme in particular seemed to be dismissed with a cop-out, and a few other issues raised were barely discussed.  In part, this is probably simply because the situations are supposed to be seen by us as just how things are in this world, but it still leaves the reader unsatisfied and we’re forced to imagine how things might have been for ourselves.

Readability: Pass

Hugo quality: Pass

Review: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium (2015 Hugo nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show Issue #39, May 2014 (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novelette
Status: Nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
Embedded in a story or interstellar colonization and first contact, this is really more about free will, (political) freedom, and the transition of death.  The story starts in the right place, the middle of the action, and the author doesn’t bog the narrative down with too much exposition on the back story – indeed, he seems to have held back a little too much in places.  He does provide background however, and there are a few points where the need to tell us why things are as they are results in lectures from the mouths of the two main characters.  Despite relatively brief treatment, we get a really clear view of the aliens and their motives as the story progresses, and the link between the story’s twist and the alien culture is an interesting one.

Ideas
The basic idea – a human colony on a far world, first contact, tension between the two species – is an old, well-worn one, but the author gives it a twist by not leaning on the tired themes so common in this sort of story.  Instead of painting one as a technological wonder and the other as some Rouseauean superman the humans and aliens are presented as equals, even equally alien to the world, and the oppression of the humans seems almost accidental, as though it could easily have gone the other way.  The scenario isn’t developed in any detail, but we get the sense that this is not so much about righteous deliverance and stolid defenders of freedom as it is about the stupid injustices that happen when people just don’t understand each other. [1]  But then, the conflict between the aliens and the humans isn’t really the point, and anyway is something that happens before and after the story, but not during.  The main thrust here is actually an exploration of what it means to be free, what happens to people when they are given “all they need” – but the definition of that is decided by outsiders for motives unclear.  There is a subtext here that echoes the type of social SF of the civil rights era, though it doesn’t get the kind of deep treatment it deserves.  But again, this dimension of the story isn’t quite what the author seems to be aiming at either – there is another layer here where the characters explore death and how to approach it with some modicum of dignity even under poor circumstances.  Sadly, a novelette length seems insufficient for the lofty promises of this story, and although each layer does get some development there also seems to be a critical shallowness to it.  Not due to any weakness in the writing, but just because it constantly feels as though much of the story is somehow missing.  This is nowhere more evident than in the author’s treatment of two important ideas he brings up: the philosophical question of how to end one’s life in the extremis of health, and the understanding of what is “human” – the difference between sentient and sapient.  Both of these are explicitly raised and then almost immediately abandoned without any exploration at all, let alone an adequate one.  They seem left to the reader as homework, which is very unsatisfying considering the enormous scope such questions could have.

Writing
The language here is a bit richer than I actually expected from a “space colony” type story, but understandably so: this story doesn’t talk to us about technology and action, it’s a thinking story about society and the individual.  The language isn’t ponderous though, and it doesn’t weigh us down with sonorous philosophising.  The narrative moves on at a steady pace throughout, and pulls us on toward the conclusion.  The exchanges between the humans and the aliens work, with the language chosen helping to remind that these things aren’t human without needless affectation or awkwardness.  Likewise, descriptions of the aliens themselves are added judiciously throughout rather than provided in a single encyclopedia-like paragraph as is so common in this kind of setting.  The overarching plot is coherent and well-paced, but there are some odd choices that are puzzling.  The most striking is the deus ex machina feeling of the aliens’ critical psychological weakness.  It’s certainly adequately supported in bits and pieces scattered through the work, but something about it seems almost as though it were a fragment of something more substantial – certainly, the logic behind it is never adequately explained, and here the author’s habit of using spare and description fails him because rather than making us imagine the world for ourselves (as he successfully does in other aspects of the story) we’re just left feeling it doesn’t make any sense.  The other choice that might leave the reader struggling to suspend disbelief is the conceit that the aliens are gradually paring away human technology.  Why are they doing this? What’s the point? Oh, reasons are readily imaginable to the veteran SF reader, but the options are many and the author provides no guidance as to what he’s thinking of. This is perhaps understandable, since the dearth of technology available turns out to be the hammer he uses to force the story in certain directions that would be impossible if an interstellar colony of humans actually had access to the kinds of technology you might expect – he might have found a more graceful way to do this, however.  The author’s penchant for hammering things into place comes into play in other parts of the story as well, where what seem like implausible turns of events are critical in driving the story forward.  Again, the impression is that everything would make sense if only we knew more about what was going on – this is perhaps a failing of having edited a bit too enthusiastically to get the spare narrative he wanted (or to fit in the space allowed?).

Characterisation
I think that one of the saddest things about this story is that the characters we meet are quite well realised.  There are elements of the superficial about everyone but the two main characters, but on the whole the characters are fine considering the length of this work.  Why is this sad?  Because we are left with the impression that the entire alien-human conflict involves a grand total of 3 aliens and 5 humans (one of whom is dead, and another dies before we’re done).  Somehow, the author completely avoids any mention of the human community beyond the limited spaces in which the characters deliver their lines, and although we get a slightly better view of the aliens we are only ever introduced to three of them, and none for more than a  few moments so only one of them actually seems real.  The story would have benefited greatly from providing more social context to the characters and perhaps depicting them as more than just actors delivering a limited set of lines.  Another dimension of characterisation that is sadly lacking is related to the author’s fleeting treatment of deep questions: without close engagement with the questions and internal struggles the author has carefully crafted into the story the characters really don’t seem to change much over the course of events.  In many shorter stories this wouldn’t be too serious – even the relative “cut out” quality that two of the four living humans have would be no serious problem if the two main characters could be seen to have real depth.  Considering that the story revolves around such weighty issues, this seems to be a real failure, and the story would have benefited greatly from a stronger examination of the two main characters as they struggle, debate, and evolve.

Verdict
On the whole, this was a good story.  It does seem lacking in some areas, but the sense is that the lack comes more from the inability to do the themes and questions justice in the space available.  Perhaps the story should have been longer (maybe a novella, maybe even more) or perhaps the author should have considered being less ambitious with this single piece and stretching the tale he wanted to tell over a number of stories of various lengths.  Certainly, he has made a good start to world building, but despite the skill with which the props have been made there are just too few to convincingly populate the stage, and this strikes me as being caused mainly by the need to juggle several things that all deserved much deeper treatment.  The result is that you come to the end feeling unsatisfied, but the journey there is interesting enough to demonstrate that the problem is not the writing, but the space available, and you can’t help but think that with a bit more elbow room – or with tighter focus – there is potential here for something very interesting indeed.

Readability: Pass
Hugo quality: Pass

--

1. Perhaps apropos for the 2015 Hugo slate…

Will controversy kill the Hugos?

[Sadly, as I was writing this two authors Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos have withdrawn their work from the nominations.  This is a crying shame, as they're both promising young writers and deserved to have their work judged on its merit, not ponied out as pieces in a wargame.  I think there is plenty of blame to go around, and that certain voices howling in the wilderness that is the internet ought to be ashamed of themselves.  In any case, I stand by what I wrote below - I'm just not sure it's relevant to this year any more.]

Bluntly, I don’t think so.

There is no question that the bile being spilled [1] is creating a sour atmosphere for 2015, but at this point it’s not at all clear that the increase in memberships and ballots represents much more than an increased awareness that the Hugos are a fan award, and that anyone who has a membership in Worldcon – wherever it might be that year – is able to participate.  How many are enlisting in response to the calls for action on every side?  How many are just realising "hey, I could have a voice in this - that's pretty cool" and signing up to try it out?  It's hard to say.

Oh, without question there are some who emptied their pockets simply for the right to spit in someone’s eye [2] but how many?  Some will point to the outcome of the nomination ballot as evidence that the answer is “many!” but I’m not so sure that’s the case, and in fact the argument for why I’m not sure seems to have some bearing on why there are those who suspect conspiracy in recent years’ slates and results.

Look, the statistics on Hugo participation are available online at varying levels of resolution right on the Hugo Award website.  Unfortunately, the data available are really only from 2005 on [3] so it’s difficult to get a really deep understanding of how this works, but there is a clear pattern that emerges.  I’ve collated the most recent data available into a graph for convenience – but don’t trust me, go look at the numbers yourself and see what it looks like.

 [4]

Now, looking at the above there are two things that really stand out – First, it’s obvious that there has been a steady increase in both nominations and votes since 2007 [5], discounting the sudden jump last year.  What’s really remarkable though is that up until about 2012 the Hugo slate was nominated by something less than 1,100 people.  This is astounding, considering that nomination ballots can be submitted by supporting or better members of Worldcon not only in the year in which the current Hugos are to be awarded, but in the previous year and the following year as well.  Sadly, attending numbers for Worldcons are hard to come by, but recent years have seen attendance range from about 3,500 to 6,300 people.  On top of this are numbers of supporting members of course, which I suspect would take a great deal of digging to reveal.  What I do know, however, from discussions with those who have been involved in the past is that the number of nomination ballots received is typically around 15% of the total number of eligible members (remember, this includes supporting or better members from 3 years).

So what we have is 15% of eligible voters turning out to nominate works.  This isn’t terribly surprising – the huge volume of SFF being published these days is daunting, and it’s easy to talk yourself out of submitting the nomination ballot by wondering to hard about whether you’ve really read/watched enough to fill out that form.  If you haven’t participated before, it’s hard to look at those blank spaces and shuffle through everything you’ve read this year and choose just 5 of them, let me tell you.   No, it’s not surprising – and neither is the result of having the slate decided by under 1,100 people and voted on by (in an average year) about another 50% of that.[6]

Remember, there’s a huge volume of SFF material being put out right now – this is really the golden age.  With this in mind, and thinking only of print, is it really reasonable to assume that the nominators have read even a majority of it?  One person could probably watch all the SFF movies and see enough of the best SFF TV to have a good idea of what to nominate, but print? You do like eating and sleeping, right? [7]

OK, but the nominating ballots were filled out and sent in, so the people filling them must feel as though they at least know some Hugo worthy work – the problem is the question of overlap: to qualify, nominated work needs to get at least 5% of the vote.  That means that for 1000 ballots at least 50 people need to have voted for a given entry – with so much to read, you might expect nominations to be all over the map.  It’s conceivable that the convergence of text volume and time constraints could result in 1000 ballot forms containing 5,000 unique entries – i.e. that every single nominating ballot carries 5 entries that don’t appear on anyone else’s ballot.

Luckily, human nature being what it is, this is really, really unlikely.

There is a lot to read, but there are certain core venues and publishers that large swathes of fandom read.  Logically, most nominators have probably read many of the same things.  Tastes vary of course, but there are bound to be other people out there who have very similar if not identical ideas as to what the 5 best novels or stories were.  When there’s enough overlap, a nominated work passes the 5% threshold, and of the ones that do it’s the top 5 that make it to the slate.

Now, the issue here is the way in which ballots are counted – Hugo nominations and award voting are both handled with an instant run-off voting system.  That’s to say, voters rank their entries in order of preference – and if an individual voter’s first choice is knocked out of the running for some reason (deemed ineligible, didn’t get enough votes to qualify, etc) the next choice counts as their vote.  This achieves a couple of things: first, it makes it very difficult to deliberately manipulate the process, but second it means that when minority voters’ their second or even third choices go to amplify the position of leaders.  When large numbers of votes are involved, this is a good thing: it helps solidify the choices into a small number of clear leaders rather than an unmanageable scattering of things with marginal followings.  But when the numbers are small, problems creep in.

Remember what I said before – that with 1,000 ballots you need 50 votes to qualify for the slate?  But think: 50 people voting together isn’t that big a stretch, even if they’ve never even met.  And what of all the other people who voted completely differently except for that one entry?  If their other entries all got knocked out, their fifth place ranking can go to amplify the signal even further.

So yes, it’s obvious that this year’s slate campaign has had an effect on the number of votes for certain items [8] but the number of lockstep slate voters needn’t be that large to achieve this.  All it would take is for 50 people to put these items first and for enough of the scattered remainder to rank one or more items at all – and for their higher picks to be knocked out of the running for lack of general support.  Now, I’m sure there were more than 50 slate voters, but it won’t be clear just how many until after the stats are published after the con in August.  Meanwhile, what’s sure is that it’s vanishingly unlikely that the final number will really be a huge proportion of the eligible voters, and many of the new members are joining because until now they didn’t even realise they could vote.  That power is a heady thing, and I expect to see lots of new fans reading diligently and making considered choices.  This year’s slate?  Well, there’s some drek there to be sure, but there are also some not so bad work on there so I’m sure the final verdict will work out in the end, even if I might not completely agree with the winners. [9]

But that brings me to the other side of this – the whole kerfuffle started because of accusations of secret cabals and whisper campaigns.  Not having all the facts, I guess I’m not really in a position to say whether a cabal really existed, but I think I can say with conviction that I don’t believe it.  Not only do I find it difficult to believe it’s even possible to organize enough people to properly subvert an instant run-off system in the way that has been suggested, but the fact of the matter is that no cabal is necessary to explain the things that led to the accusation in the first place.

You see, the same factors that prevent a disasterous fragmentation of the vote work against us when the actual voting population is very small – like in 2007, for example.  Even with everyone voting completely honestly and diligently for the best of the best they have read that year the amplification effect that makes instant run-off so powerful to prevent fragmentation also amplifies any clustering at all.  So you don’t need to be a completely marginal voter to feel completely disenfranchised – all you need is to be up against swathes of other voters who have little in common except some marginal overlap. 

Result?  The points of overlap end up running the show. 

No cabal necessary.

The thing is, looking at the numbers and understanding how this works, it’s completely understandable how some groups might start to feel they have been locked out of the system.  The system is practically designed to do it, because giving them their full voice would make it impossible to get a result out of the vote at such a low level of participation.  The problem isn’t a cabal, it’s not a lack of strong SFF of all kinds, it’s statistics.

What’s needed is a larger pool of nominators and voters – and the good news is that the scandals of the last couple of years might well provide that for the long term.  And in that case, the controversy won’t kill the Hugos, but reinvigorate them.

The problem facing Worldcon right now, of course, is to survive the next couple of years.  The firestorm is fierce, and no matter what you think of past slates or the Sad Puppies campaign's effectiveness it's impossible to deny that they've seriously distorted the results this time around.  People are understandably upset on both sides, and everyone is hampered by the inability to see the whole picture,  We all end up with opinions on what's really happening and why, and none of us really has the truth of it. So yes, there are probably questionable items on the ballot this year (as, from some perspectives, there are in every year when someone, somewhere believes they've been robbed the joy of seeing a work they really liked get nominated and maybe win) and what's there might or might not actually represent the best of what was published in 2014.

Does that matter?  It never has been truly representative because the slate doesn't represent the best of what was published, but the best of what the nominators actually read.

OK, so maybe some of the works were nominated for nefarious reasons not related to the nominators actually having read them and deciding they were good enough.  That doesn't mean the show can't go on - it just means you might have to read and judge work you wouldn't ordinarily have read.  Maybe you won't like it and will be convinced it never passed muster for nomination.  Maybe you won't like it but will grudgingly admit that it was actually pretty well written in spite of that.  Or maybe you'll actually like it, who knows.  I can't tell you what your reaction to the work on the ballot will be like - but more importantly neither can you unless you read it.

It's quite possible you could read everything and conclude that nah, this year there's no one who makes the grade.  Or it could be that you will read and discover something new that you had previously dismissed.  The same goes the other way of course: maybe you'll read something you were told you should like because [reasons] and find it just isn't up to snuff.

But to make these decisions you actually do need to read the work.  And by reading the work and making a good faith judgement as to whether the writing is really Hugo quality or not even if the stories themselves aren't your usual cup of tea you defuse the bomb that has been set for us.  The best thing for the Hugos in my opinion would be for everyone to stop writing and start reading, to explain in glorious, gruesome detail why they don't like things, why those things didn't make the Hugo grade.  There would still be scandal, there would still be controversy, but at least it would be an honest conversation.

So read, judge, and vote in good faith, and we all win.

---

1. Let’s be honest: on both sides.

2. See 1.

3. With fragmentary information available further back, for example in 1998 and 1996

4. These are the raw numbers, which I didn’t think it was worth cluttering the post with:

Note that I have indicated 0 votes for the current year – that’s because no-one has voted yet.  I have also noted several entries in red – this is because the convention for reporting numbers was only formalized recently, and in those years actual information on nominations and ballots was unavailable – I have made the assumption that all the ballots received in those entries included the “Best Novel” category – not strictly true, but the correspondence between “Best Novel” ballots and total ballots received seems strong in other years.  If you have a better idea, I’m happy to hear it.

5. Actually, we could discount 2007 as an outlier, as Nippon 2007 would naturally have had lower attendance, being a primarly English language con held in a non-English speaking country.  Notice how the ratio of nominators to voters doesn't match the pattern either.

6. And there's not really any way of knowing whether this represents all nominating voters - how many nominate but for one reason or another don't end up voting?  This is something that isn't captured in the system.  The profile of those who vote may be drastically different from the profile of those who nominate.

7.Granted, I’m probably not the only one who would give both up if it were possible, just to have more time to read.

8. Let’s be blunt: lots of items.

9. Is there ever a Hugo ceremony that makes everyone happy? [10]

10. Trick question - the answer is always no because everyone always has something to complain about, trust me.

Review: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

In looking for an online version of this novelette I noticed that something by the same name had been published online in 2013, but various information at that time suggested that the work had been expanded and adapted for the anthology so I presumed it was still eligible.  It's since been decided by the Hugo committee that the works are too similar, and thus ineligible for nomination.  My review stands, of course.

“Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright, published in The Book of Feasts & Seasons anthology (Castalia House) 2014 (online)

Eligibility: eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novelette eligible for 2014
Status: Nominated was not nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
The story starts fairly strong, and although the title and the opening scene make it nearly painfully obvious what’s going to happen there still seems to be plenty of room to manoeuvre and deliver an interesting surprise or two.  The author shows good control of language throughout, but his skill is marred by some odd story choices, particularly some jarring editorialising he thrusts into the middle of the tale and the rather heavy handed way the religious message is delivered (because let’s make no mistake that this is an evangelical story).  The religious message itself is not problematic, and the author’s choice to use an icon of Christmas as a sterile festival of commercialisation as his vehicle is actually interesting, but between the awkward attempt at the grandeur of biblical language and the haphazard way he deploys the mythology and history of Saint Nicholas the story never really reaches the potential promised in the first page.

Ideas
Bluntly put, this is an evangelical Christmas story with strong religious themes and thus may not suit everybody.  The ideas deployed are entirely religious in nature, but they’re also solid philosophical questions and the scenario the author starts from is a familiar one from which to explore them.  The author seems to be playing with three perspectives here: the secular mother, for whom the whole thing is a sham, the empty commercial festival that Christmas has become for most people, and the deeply religious Christmas that he clearly feels most sympathy for.  These three concepts come into conflict early on, but the author’s agenda takes over and undermines what might have been a rather interesting conversation among them.  The failure to properly interrogate the opposing ideas feels like a serious loss of what could have been a strong discussion of the value of a religious Christmas.  This doesn’t seem to be what the author had in mind, though, and he moves smoothly into a rather heavy handed exchange between the protagonist and St. Nicholas “the evangelist.”  This kind of “philosophical mouthpiece” isn’t necessarily a problem in fiction, but the author’s approach is clumsy, and it almost seems as though he might have just taken bits and pieces of actual sermons and put quotation marks around them, so direct is the script he’s working from.  In short, the ideas are delivered but not explored or really even justified.  Finally, the author also injects editorial comment on the relative worth of different types of people – essentially, civilians and service-people (whether military or otherwise).  Other aspects of the story made me want to charitably assume the author’s intention here was to address the “acts vs deeds” issues long discussed in Christian theology but ultimately I was forced to conclude that he was just shotgunning bits and pieces of his worldview into the story for good measure, and the ideas are ultimately not only not explored but not apparently relevant to the story.

Writing
On the whole, the writing is good.  The opening scene is quite poignantly put, and immediately evokes sympathy for the protagonist.  It’s a bit of a cheap trick to present us with a mother bereft as a means to engage us, but you have to admit it works.  Symbols heavy with traditional Christian meaning are deployed liberally and effectively, and he does a good job of creating the dichotomy between shallow commercialism and religious experience.  The weighty “vision in distress” style of the scenes he paints is a bit exhausting, but after a bit of thought it does seem to be appropriate to the subject matter.  The allusions to A Christmas Carol work for me as well, particularly as they resonate with “high church” imagery for this sort of scene.  Again, though, we discover the author’s blind spots when it comes to some of the events described, in particular the “wonder working” moments when St. Nicholas evokes visions of certain miracles of the past.  He seems to be uncertain how much familiarity the reader can be assumed to have, providing descriptions that seem to be too much exposition for an audience already on board, and tool little for an audience not already intimately familiar with the stories in question.  Worse, what could have been very moving moments in the story are destroyed by the way in which he tosses them down like the triumphant lawyer in the movies tossing manila envelopes filled with evidence.  How is the reader supposed to take the protagonist’s epiphany seriously when the depth and power of the experience she’s supposedly having is treated in such a cavalier fashion?  Beyond mere word-smithing, Wright’s awkward attempts to give St. Nicholas a suitably profound, biblical manner of speaking actually work against him – the stilted dialogue makes it difficult to really experience the miracle in progress, and rather than sounding like one of God’s elect come down to touch the heart of a doubter he sounds rather more like a half-educated revival tent preacher trying to sound profound – and failing.  This is a shame, because I actually wanted to feel moved by the protagonist’s epiphany, and Wright’s inability to get the tone right sabotaged it for me.

Characterisation
In a story like this, there’s immense scope for character development – after all, the protagonist is just about to have an earth shaking life experience that will change them in profound ways.  Sadly, this promise isn’t really delivered.  The protagonist is quite skilfully sketched early on, and we get a good sense of who she is and what’s she’s like.  We see her right at the moment of her worst loss, and the alternating numbness and rage she expresses seems the right way to go.  I did feel that the development of these emotions was somewhat shallow, however, and this was a serious flaw when it came to her meeting with St. Nicholas: we’re only given sips of her grief and isolation, and this is just not enough to fuel the heavy wonder the religious experience should have had.  She comes to seem a bit like a department store window manikin just there to illustrate a caricature of religion, which I’m sure is not what Wright had in mind.

Verdict
I wanted to like this story, but couldn’t.  It’s not exactly bad – the fundamental skill with words Wright has comes through, and it was fairly easy to read – but it so lacks the depth and profundity the ideas deserve that reading it just left me feeling hollow.  It seems ironic that a story clearly intended to rebuke the hollowing out of Christmas for the sake of commerce itself seems to be a hollow sketch of faith.  Epiphany fiction can be very moving, even for the non-religious, but this fails to touch the right chords and it almost seems as though Wright was just going through the motions.

Readability: Pass
Hugo Quality: Fail

Review - Turncoat (2015 Hugo nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa, published in the Riding the Red Horse anthology (Castalia House) 2014 (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Short Story
Status: Nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
This is unabashed military SF complete with the traditional focus on numbers and technical issues, which can be a bit daunting to someone unfamiliar with the sub-genre.  Inside this framework though is an interesting exploration of some very fundamental SF questions: what it means to be human, and the moral implications of speculative technology.  These ideas are melded with questions on the ethics of war.  The themes themselves aren’t particularly novel, and in fact the basic tech ideas that underlie the story are tried and true.  But the way they’re integrated is interesting, and the author’s solid writing draws the reader in.

Ideas
This story engages with some pretty basic SF themes: the nature of humanity and the implications of technology.  On top of this, it approaches the question of the value of loyalty and the moral questions commanders must ask in war.  These are tried and true basics, but still offer some scope for engagement, particularly given the modern political climate.  The choice of elements for the combination seems good, even if the treatment feels shallow and unsatisfying.  There seems to be a sincere effort to tackle the loyalty question, which the author struggles with because of the need to keep secrets in order to present us with the “surprise” ending – scare quotes purposefully selected, since this sort of fiction is quite formulaic and it would have been unusual in the extreme for the author to have taken any other route…though perhaps that would have made for a more interesting story.  The issue of humanity seems to be a second main interest, but unfortunately doesn’t get anywhere near the depth of treatment it deserves – there’s a real sense that the author regards it as self-evident that the moral quandary and the essence of humanity are facets of the same idea, and while I don’t necessarily disagree it would have been much meatier to have explored this tension more fully.  In part, the weak engagement with ideas seems to be because they get submerged in the tech talk deployed to put the story solidly in the MilSF category, but a lot seems to be linked to the shallow characterisation.

Writing
The use of language here is generally good.  The first person narration is punchy enough, and the balance between story-telling and the crunchy tech talk that is the hallmark of hard MilSF is such that the latter achieves its purpose without overwhelming the former.  There is a bit too much exposition, but it’s hard to see how the author could have given us the necessary information without it.  Perhaps rather than “too much” I should say “clumsily deployed” – the occasional lines that tell us about the politics and history of the author’s universe are useful in understanding other aspects of the story, but the author tells us too much at times and almost seems to have snuck them in after the fact.  It would have been better to embed the information more thoroughly into the protagonist’s monologue (as assumed knowledge rather than declarative sentences) or into exchanges with other characters, particularly as these intrusions detract from the effort to craft a story that relies on action and moral tension to drive it forward.

Characterisation
As a first person narrative we do get to see some of the personality of the narrator, but this seems to be a missed opportunity for robust character development: the tone and nature of the narrator seem not to change much over the course of the story, which is at odds with the deep philosophical questions he (? – perhaps xe would be more apt here) is supposed to be wrestling with.  As the final product, the character is sufficiently interesting to keep the reader wanting to know how he will react, but it feels like cheating to present him as a fait accomplis rather than building him slowly through to his final epiphany.  There was so much more that could have been done here that would have done better justice to both the SF and MilFic themes.  Similarly, while most other characters in this story are throw-away window dressing, the protagonist’s main foil is a tragically missed opportunity for the author to really engage with the fundamental ideas.  The “commander” seems perfectly positioned to serve as the protagonist’s mirror and as a platform from which to present ideas for exploration, and the fact he doesn't really serve this role hobbles the story.  Moreover, as he is presented as a cut-out figure it’s difficult to fully sympathise with the protagonist’s quandary – the answer seems obvious – but deeper characterisation would have solved this by making the reader see both sides as potentially valid (and experience the discomfort that would come with sympathy for the devil).  More effort on interactions and character development could have resulted in a very strong Shakespearean “divided hero” narrative, and it was disappointing when the author didn’t pursue to potential here.

Verdict
The action is good when it works, but sadly shackled to the author’s need to provide exposition for his setting.  And although the fundamental ideas are interesting and worthy of discussion he doesn’t really engage with them deeply enough to do them justice, which makes it difficult to get really excited about the protagonist’s internal struggle and epiphany - it seems like a flat, foregone decision.  As an action tale, though, it’s well readable and it does seem as though the author intended to engage more thoroughly with the ideas but perhaps didn’t give himself enough rope to do the job he set himself in the way he had in mind – it would be interesting to see this story rewritten with a different structure or expanded into a longer piece that would give the author more room to work.  Certainly, the author seems to have been hampered by the choice of first person narrative, though it does seem an obvious one for the issues at hand. A bit formulaic, sure, but with the potential for a Heinleinesque melding of action and philosophy that makes the formula by no means a serious problem.  It’s a true shame that the potential doesn’t get realised despite the author’s obvious intentions.

Readability: Pass
Hugo quality: Pass

Review - Totaled (2015 Hugo nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

“Totaled” by Kary English, published in Galaxy’s Edge, July 2014 (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Short Story
Status: Nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
This is an idea piece, sort of a combination "what if" story and tech extrapolation story. Exposition is a little rough where it comes to the tech, as though the author is a little uncertain about how well the reader will know advancements in the field and struggling with how much to explain. The usual heart strings in tales about fundamental humanity are pulled, but character development is shallow (to be expected in a story mainly about the tech) and the relationships with the most potential for traction are developed only minimally. For all that, the sparse prose and rapid development of plot are compelling and the range of questions raised is impressive for the length, ranging from the nature of humanity to the ethics of experimentation.

Ideas
This is a near future exploration of the implications of the current state of technology, and the author does well in imagining a scenario evolving from state of the art. Several branches of the idea are raised, but only the hard technical issues are really explored, which feels a little disappointing. It might have been more satisfying to explore the human dimension more fully.  The tech side seems solid, but again the author seems uncertain about how far she needs to go with explanation - a standard problem with exploring relatively exotic tech, but not one she seems to handle very gracefully.

Writing
The style is punchy and spare. There are a few points where exposition seems needlessly technical, but this is linked to the apparent uncertainty about what to assume about the audience. On top of this, she manages to evoke emotion almost effortlessly and without needless description by invoking human universals. However, the moments of emotion seem fleeting and superficial in part due to the lack of exploration in the realm of character. The plot flows smoothly though, and the author skilfully deploys language in creative ways to help paint the picture of shifts in the narrator's state of mind. Towards the end, though, the shifts seem to come rather abruptly and seem as though she was bored of the story and hurrying toward a conclusion. This feels unsatisfying, and may leave the reader wanting a more sophisticated  treatment of the death of the narrator's humanity.  Still, she manages to keep a coherent theme (food and related sensory images) throughout, and uses the concept well in illustrating the narrator's degeneration.

Characterisation
There's really only two characters in this story, since the others are entirely filtered through the experience of the main two. Unfortunately, the protagonist develops only minimally over the course of the story, sacrificed to the imperative to engage with the "what if" tech concept that drives the plot. Likewise, the other main character really only exists to justify the protagonist's interactions. This feels very unsatisfying, and it would have been nice to see a more sophisticated treatment of the protagonist, particularly considering some of the human complications hinted at in the story. Likewise, the other characters seem to exist merely as window dressing, and engaging more with them might have given the imagined world more depth. As it is, we're left with a rather superficial view of things. In some senses this is perhaps expected, considering the point of the story, but better development of the protagonist's humanity would have provided perspective to give her challenges and her degeneration more weight. As it is, it's a little hard to sympathise beyond the obvious resonances.

Verdict
This is a compelling modern "what if" story that raises some interesting questions but doesn't really engage with them in the space available. Particularly disappointing is the lack of exploration in the human sphere. Nevertheless, the author hits the right notes when it comes to tone and the evolution of the plot, and it does raise interesting ethical and speculative questions. It will be interesting to watch her future work.

Readability: Pass
Hugo quality: Pass

Review: The Parliament of Beasts and Birds (2015 Hugo nominee)

The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us!  The nominees for this year are listed here and as the deadline for voting approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.

"The Parliament of Beasts and Birds" by John C. Wright, published in the anthology The Book of Feasts and Seasons (Castalia House) 2014 (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Short Story
Status:  nominated

This is the editorial voice review.  The reader's voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)

First thoughts
The tale is turgid but a bit compelling.  It's written in the style of fables, and the tone comes across as suitably biblical – this is a voice the author seems comfortable with – but the result is that quite a bit of the dialogue feels stilted.  There also seem to be some really hard to follow assumptions about the type of biblical mythology the reader will be familiar with.  This strikes me at first reading as like C.S. Lewis but steeped more deeply in the realm of Mother Church.

Ideas
This is tone and message fiction rather than idea fiction.  There is a core idea from which the author builds and which informs the story (the idea that the rapture has come and animals get left behind to work toward their own salvation) but the idea doesn’t so much drive the story as underlie it. In some sense, the story could be seen as assaying an answer to the childhood question “do pets go to heaven?” but it doesn’t really engage with the idea that deeply.

Writing
The writing is, on the whole, good.  Although the prose is weighty and solemn in the style of a sermonized fable this voice seems to fit the subject matter, and the author seems comfortable with it.  In particular, the opening and many of the scene descriptions work well to paint a truly classic picture of the sort you might expect from authentic fables.  The language does seem stilted in places, though, particularly in dialogue: this style really doesn’t lend itself well to actual spoken exchanges. There are also a number of points at which the author clearly had some difficulty driving the narrative forward, which leads to the use of awkward transitions and sudden turns that don’t seem to make much sense in the wider context of the story.  More difficult is the author’s use of archetypes in the form of the animal characters.  Not much thought seems to have been put into these archetypes, which rather than being crystal clear (as they should be) are a bit smeared around the edges.  In particular, the sudden addition of new archetypes strictly for the purpose of delivering religious messages feels clumsy.   The conceit of dividing the animal world into domesticated and wild is an interesting one, but comes across as an afterthought, mainly there to justify certain events, which feels lazy.  Likewise, rather than relying on allegory to get his message across the author resorts to quite blunt religious references.  The setting and narrative as presented are surely sufficient for anyone familiar with Western civilization, so this seems not only unnecessary but clumsy and at odds with the fair amount of skill displayed in other dimensions of the work.

Characterization
This is a fable, and as such we don’t expect much in the way of character development, but the lack of clear deployment of archetypes is a serious failing in such a work.  The animals seem chosen for symbolic purposes, but it's not always clear what the intended symbolism was and very little is done to establish them as archetypical stand-ins for the Platonic ideals being invoked.  On top of this, the choice of voice for this story conflicts with the choice to have much of the action take place in dialogue among the characters – the heavy tone of the prose clearly caused the author difficulty in switching to character speech, such that not only do the characters deliver stilted lines but they seem to have only marginal differences among them.  The opportunity to use character speech to create crystal clear personas for them was missed.

Verdict
Not bad, despite its flaws.  The tale reads like other good examples of “modern day fables” but suffers a bit from what seems to be unclear images in the author’s mind regarding the symbols and archetypes he intended to deploy.  (Note: this seems to have been written as part of a coherent anthology with a consistent theme - perhaps these issues resolve when read in context) Furthermore, there are a few places where explicit religious messages come through in a clumsy way, as though they were added as a kind of afterthought, and this is a bit jarring.  One wonders if the intended message might have been more effectively delivered if the author had trusted the power of allegory a bit more.

Readability: Pass
Hugo quality: Pass