Review: Flow (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.

“Flow”, Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, 11-2014) (online)

Eligibility: Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novella

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 exploration of an apparently post-apocalyptic world, complete with (also apparently) slightly mutated/evolved humans and a variety of novel societies in the process of rebuilding civilization.  The story leaves some interesting space for speculation on the part of the reader, while at the same time painting an intriguingly interesting picture of this imaginary world.  I found myself stopping to wonder at several points, which is always a good sign.  Sadly, though, the plot seems a little thin, with little to compel the reader beyond interest in what new dimension of society will be revealed next.  It was a quick and easy read, but lacked any real depth.

Ideas

The author briefly toys with the implications of an economy that revolves around resources and scavenged tech, and injects brief messaging regarding religious dictatorship, but otherwise there is little in the way of deep political ideas here: instead, he spends his time on speculative anthropology.  We follow the tale inside the head of a native of icy regions on an exploratory journey “down the river” to discover what happens to the icebergs the ice-bound clans sell for currency.  Along the way, we get to learn quite a lot about how at least 3 different societies operate: the ice-bound tribes, the ice-shippers themselves, who guide the bergs down the river like enormous barges, and the residents of the warmer lands, who live under the thumb of a theocracy.  Mr. Andrews has clearly put a great deal of thought into how these societies would work, and despite occasional clumsiness in exposition he paints the world in a very interesting and vivid manner, helped along by the simple fact of having written in the first person so that we see everything filtered through the protagonist’s eyes.  All this said, the rather casual fashion in which he approaches some of the weightier issues introduced – particularly the protagonist’s religious scepticism, and the tar-soaked brush with which religion of any kind is daubed – is a great loss, and is also a bit jarring: why bother bringing it up if you’re not going to work with it?  The problem, evidently, is space: this is a story about exploration, and if time were taken to explore these issues – with the resulting conflicts of one kind or another – while it would have made the story read more like an adventure and less like a National Geographic special we would have ended up with a novel rather than a novella.

Writing

The writing here is quite good, with strong control of pace and colour.  I found the description rich enough to convey a strong impression of the setting without being overly wordy.  There is rather a lot of encyclopedic exposition, but filtered through the protagonist or through discussions with his “more civilized” counterpart it doesn’t grate as much as it might.  I couldn’t help but think that if the author wanted to depict such a physically and socially rich world, third person might have been a more effective choice as it would have provided more options for exposition.  Dialogue is occasionally a bit rough, particularly where the author has felt obliged to give us colour by way of dialect (things work much better when he just lets the words flow) but frankly isn’t a large part of the story in any case, since it mainly takes the form of the protagonist’s interior monologue.  For all the technical skill at the detail level, however, there’s something missing from this story that I think hobbles it: conflict.  There is some conflict, however it’s very small scale and of no real significance to the story being told.  The protagonist has goals, and at some points there’s some brief complication in his efforts to achieve them, but for the most part the story keep chugging along just like the Mississippi paddle steamer I kept forgetting the ice berg was not.  Towards the end, a crisis climax is introduced seemingly just to provide an excuse to bring things to a close (to be fair, this isn’t actually a random occurrence, and does make sense in context, it just seems to spring on us rather suddenly and be resolved remarkably easily).  On the whole, the richness of the background is fascinating and intriguing, but without any clear, driving force behind the sequence of events it becomes a little difficult to care very much about either the societies in question or the characters themselves. 

Characterization

Embedded as they are in this fantastic world, the characters start life with a certain amount of built-in individuality.  As the story goes on, we learn more and more about the protagonist, who starts to take on the dimensions of a real person, and the author does a creditable job of gradually revealing him, his ideas, his history over the course of the story.  Unfortunately, with the exception of some internal speculation on the protagonist’s part regarding the implications of some of his discoveries there really isn’t much range of development, despite the length of the piece and the extent of the revelations the character receives as a result of his journey.  Likewise, from about half-way through we start to get more familiar with the ice-berg sailor who serves as the protagonist’s guide in the civilization down-river.  The sailor’s function seems to be mainly that of a foil to justify observations and explanations that otherwise would have been awkward done in the form of first person narration, and as such he really doesn’t experience any development either.  I find myself unable to fault the author much for the apparent lack of character development, however, since the story lacks any real drive or conflict of the kind that would produce it. 

Verdict

As a world building exercise I think this piece works very well.  The section of the world painted for us in detail is well done, and leaves enough gaps to encourage the reader to imagine and speculate further.  Likewise, the author demonstrates control of narrative and description, and uses this to good effect to reveal the personality and context of the protagonist in measured doses over the course of the story.  Where the tale falls down is in relying entirely on the spirit of exploration as a vehicle for moving the story forward.  For a piece this long, this is simply inadequate to provide the necessary momentum, let alone sympathy for the protagonist.  While my own inclinations made it easy to read through to the end simply out of anthropological curiosity, there really didn’t seem to be anything compelling about the plot or the protagonist: although the story ends with a tantalising hint of adventures to come, I found it difficult to really care enough to hope for the next installment.  If this were rewritten into something shorter, it would work well as a quick exploration tale about a “country bumpkin” starting from his first entry to the city (eliding the whole journey downriver as being “before the beginning” of the real action).  Alternatively, it could be written longer very easily simply by taking the rather abrupt and shallow crisis point and building it into something more significant that could be used to drive action from beginning to end.  In fact, this is the way I would love Mr. Andrews to go: expand from a novella to something like the classic pulp adventure novels of the past (about 200pp in pocketbook format) with the addition of an ongoing conflict plot line, and then suddenly I would be compelled to buy book two in order to find out what happens next.

Readability: Pass

Hugo quality: Pass

 

-- Smade

The Great Slate Caper

Way over on Mike Glyer’s excellent File 770 blog [1], he has presented evidence that campaigning for bloc support of members’ favourites for awards at what was to become Worldcon started way back in 1953, as shown in this report from the Philcon II committee.

The relevant passage:

“There is still time to (a) do a little campaigning to line up a solid bloc of votes for your favorites, (b) get some members---every membership is a potential vote for your favorites, and (c) get your own votes in before our August 25^th postmark deadline.”

Now, let us not get too excited: things have changed somewhat since 1953, not least in the fact that there was no nomination phase, and they were voting directly for the winners (i.e. NOT instant run-off sorting ballots).  Also interesting is the practice of announcing a running tally, something that’s known to influence decisions of subsequent voters.  Did announcing Bester’s early lead result in more people voting for him later on?  We’ll never know (and it’s not as though The Demolished Man didn’t deserve it).

But this is just the issue: is campaigning for a particular author to win an award for a particular work really a problem?  It doesn’t seem to have raised eyebrows in the past, and for that matter even today prominent people talk-up books and stories they think are worthy on blogs and on other social media.  Clearly campaigning isn’t an issue.

How about suggested slates? [2] Are they really a problem?

I know that the current thinking is that they violate some kind of unwritten rule, but I’m not convinced.  The thing is, it’s not as though anyone can compel others to vote in exactly the way presented in a published slate – yes, there will be those who blindly vote the slate without properly comparing the entries, perhaps even without reading them.  This is a consequence of the cult of personality that is both fandom and the internet. But doesn’t this very same logic apply to any kind of promotion by anyone prominent? Couldn’t we argue that if a well-liked author says “I think this book deserves a Hugo” some of his or her adoring fans may well vote for that book on the recommendation alone?

When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t really matter who is making the recommendation (so long as they’re a prominent member of the community) there are going to be people who follow their lead uncritically just because of who they are.  A suggested slate is really just an unusually well-organized way to make recommendations.

Oh, certainly, there are ways in which the whole recommendation/promotion/slate concept can be abused by people who know they have adoring fans and are willing to abuse that privilege for some end. But that’s always true and there are always ways to game any voting system when you have social pull like that – it's sort of a feature of voting in general. [3]  

So what do you do if someone does this? If they make use of social power to rope in some adoring followers to shore up their opinions in the ballot box?

Well, it seems to me (and I may be wrong) that the one thing you should never do is to turn around and try to make changes to the rules every time the outcome isn’t something you like.  By all means change rules when there’s obviously something wrong with them, but you don’t punish the system for working as designed – and make no mistake that a number of like-minded people choosing like-minded options is exactly how any kind of voting system is designed to work.  In that case, if it turns out that the number of people voting in a way you don’t much like is more than the number voting in ways you like odds are good you’re not going to like the outcome much.  Obvious, right?

Well, the responding strategy is equally obvious: you try to get more people who think like you to vote, and to vote like you.

So what does this mean for the Hugos (or any other literary award for that matter)?

Simple: odds are good that if there aren’t lots of people voting for whatever book you thought was the best thing since sliced bread, it’s not because you’re an idiot. [4]  The answer is almost certainly much simpler: you haven’t read the same books.

That’s right, it’s probably that simple.

So, here’s the thing, there are two kinds of people who haven’t read the same books as you: like-minded folks and not-like-minded folks.

People who are not like-minded to you will probably not much enjoy the same books you do.  They might, of course, but it’s pointless and annoying for you to hound them to read something they know from experience they’re not likely to like. 

On the other hand, people who are like-minded to you probably do enjoy the same sorts of books. So if you’ve chosen different books, it’s almost certain that you haven’t read each other’s selection.

So here’s my solution:

Take a break from pestering people who just don’t want to buy what you’re selling and instead head off to the swap meet of like-minded folks.  Talk  about what you’ve read and what you think is great.  More importantly, when someone else (someone who you know likes similar things) says they think something is great stop a moment and think whether you’ve read it.  No? Then read it! Yes? Then persuade your like-minded fellow to read your pick.

Wait, wait, wait.

I hear you scratching your head: “What do we do if we still don’t agree?” you ask.

Well, you argue.

No name calling, no spitting or swearing – you talk books. [5]

You talk about why you prefer A over B, your friend talks about why B is better than A.  You invite other people to listen to the two of you go at it.  Some of them will agree with A, some with B – and who knows, maybe in the end lots who preferred B at the beginning will stroke their chins and say “hmm – y’know, A really is good!” and next thing you know they’re voting A as well.

This is a process you can rinse and repeat over and over until – surprise! – you have a list of work that lots of people think is great.

Why not share that list?

Why not invite comment and disagreement?

Why not argue it over again, and maybe discover yet another option that’s even better than what you put at number one?

No human being can possibly read everything that gets published in SFF in a given year [6] but human societies can, and if we crowd-source this task we all win: nominating and voting gets easier, we discover great new reads, and we get to have enormous fun achieving these lofty goals.

So how about it: is anyone game for an argument? [7]

--Smade

---

1. Seriously – I assume that anyone reading this is probably already reading Mike and just happens to have a few spare moments to kill, but if by chance you found me first I urge you to take a look.  The archives are fascinating!

2. Yes, I’m aware that there’s a specific case causing the current kerfuffle – but let’s speak in the abstract, hmm?

3. There are particular issues I have with the way the Hugos work, but without a major overhaul that’s the system we’ve got to work with.

4. I offer odds, but no warranty.

5. Kind of what fandom is about, yes?

6. Finagle knows we try!

7. Abuse is next door.

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

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1. Perhaps apropos for the 2015 Hugo slate…