(1) CLARION ZOOMS THROUGH THE SUMMER. Join the Clarion Conversations, a series of Zoom-based conversations about writing speculative fiction “with a just tiny fraction of the amazingly talented Clarion alumni, instructor, and broader community.” RSVP each conversation via the links below:
Editing Speculative Fiction and Poetry – July 22, 5pm PT / 8pm ET (register here)
This week, our guests are John Joseph Adams, Ruoxi Chen, and Brandon O’Brien, moderated by Theodore McCombs. We’ll be discussing the state of publishing speculative fiction and poetry and how these three editors approach their work.
Holly Black and Kelly Link in Conversation – July 29, 5pm PT / 8pm ET (register here)
For our final week, we’re thrilled to have the incredible Holly Black and Kelly Link in conversation about craft, community, surviving as a writer, and what Clarion has meant to them.
(2) GIBSON Q&A. CNET has questions: “Future shocks past and present: William Gibson on fiction’s fear of tech”.
…”In my early teens, I assumed science fiction was about the future,” Gibson says of his days reading writers like Robert Heinlein. “But it was about how the future looked to Robert Heinlein in 1942, which was very different to how the future looked to him in 1960. By the time I began to write science fiction, I took it for granted that what I was doing was writing about the present.”
(3) FROG FLAVORED CANDY? “A ‘Mandalorian’ PEZ Dispenser Gift Set Is Coming And It Will Be An Instant Collectable” – Delish heralds the news.
…The Baby Yoda dispenser comes in a set along with a Mandalorian dispenser and grape, lemon, and strawberry PEZ candy. The new Harry Potter dispensers are already available on the PEZ site, but the Mandalorian candy set is not, so it’s unclear when exactly these will be available online or if they’ll be available in stores as well.
(4) MUSLIM SFF WRITERS PROFILED. Aysha Kahn of the Religion News Service has a piece about the rising number of Muslims writing sf and fantasy, citing the works of G. Willow Wilson, Saladin Ahmed, and S.A. Chakraborty. “Through sci-fi and fantasy, Muslim women authors are building new worlds”.
In the past few years, Muslim women have quietly taken the speculative fiction publishing industry by storm, earning rave reviews with fantasy and science fiction narratives that upend both the genre’s historic lack of diversity and popular depictions of women and Islam.
Last year alone, mainstream publishing houses released at least 13 fantasy and sci-fi books written by Muslim women in English, from Farah Naz Rishi’s debut “I Hope You Get This Message” to Karuna Riazi’s middle-grade novel “The Gauntlet.”
At least another dozen, including sequels to Hafsah Faizal’s instant New York Times bestseller “We Hunt the Flame” and Somaiya Daud’s award-winning “Mirage,” are in the works….
(5) LEADING WITH A TRAILER. Yahoo! Entertainment says a new series scored a two-fer: “The New Mutants gets a new trailer and a virtual Comic-Con panel”.
(6) LEWIS OBIT. Civil Rights legend Rep. John Lewis died died July 17 of cancer.
…His passion for equal rights was backed by a long record of action that included dozens of arrests during protests against racial and social injustice.
A follower and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., he participated in lunch counter sit-ins, joined the Freedom Riders in challenging segregated buses and — at the age of 23 — was a keynote speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington.
When Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin wrote a graphic novel trilogy March about the Civil Rights Movement, Lewis went to Comic-Con to promote it.
All three March books were Eisner Award nominees — the second and third volumes won the award (2016, 2017). Lewis received San Diego Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award in 2017.
(7) SUSAN SHAW OBIT. The Guardian profiled technology preservationist Susan Shaw, who died June 13 at age 88.
Founder of the Type Archive dedicated to rescuing the remains of the letterpress printing industry
In 1970 the price of lead went through the roof, and the art, craft and industry of letterpress printing, essentially unchanged for five centuries, became suddenly vulnerable. Property speculators, rival technologies and alternative media all threatened a world dependent on precision engineering and subtle manual skill. To Susan Shaw, who has died aged 87, this was a challenge to which she devoted the rest of her life, and in 1992 she founded the Type Museum (now the Type Archive) in Stockwell, south London, to rescue the remains of the dying industry.
In that year, the Monotype Corporation, pioneers of the leading type-composition system, went into liquidation. Susan went to Salfords, near Redhill, Surrey, where the Monotype factory was, saw the size of the plant, and planned to take it over. She chatted up the owners of a 1900 industrial complex near her home in Stockwell, and persuaded them to sell it to a trust set up for the purpose, borrowing the money.
The main building had been a veterinary hospital, with floors solid enough to support circus elephants, and now heavier stuff. She next organised the transport of plant, keyboards, casting machines and associated equipment, together with all the records of the corporation worldwide, altogether several hundred tons. She called its transport and reinstallation Operation Hannibal, and an elephant became her trademark.
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
- July 18, 2006 — Eureka premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel. In syndication, it was renamed A Town Called Eureka. It was created by Andrew Cosby who was responsible for the rebooted Hellboy film and Jaime Paglia who’s executive producer of the current Flash series. No, it doesn’t tie into the CW continuity but it did tie-in to the Warehouse 13 reality. It would last six seasons and seventy episodes with an additional eight web episodes forming the “Hide and Seek” story as well. The large ensemble cast included Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Debrah Farentino, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Erica Cerra, Neil Grayston, Niall Matter, Matt Frewer, Tembi Locke and James Callis.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
- Born July 18, 1896 – Otto Gail (rhymes with “pile”). Science journalist and author; among the most popular German 1920s SF authors. Member of the German Interplanetary Society, knew Oberth and Valier. Five technologically realistic novels for us including juveniles, five nonfiction including a 20-booklet series. (Died 1956) [JH]
- Born July 18, 1913 — Red Skelton. Comedian of the first order. The Red Skelton Hour ran for three hundred and thirty-eight episodes. He’s here because ISFDB says he wrote A Red Skelton in Your Closet which was also called Red Skelton’s Favorite Ghost Stories. He also has cameos in Around the World in Eighty Days and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, both of which I consider genre adjacent. (Died 1997.) (CE)
- Born July 18, 1913 — Marvin Miller. He is remembered for being the voice of Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet. He would reprise that role myriad times in the next few decades in such films and series as The Invisible Boy, the Lost in Space series and Gremlins. (Died 1985.) (CE)
- Born July 18, 1921 – John Glenn. In fact he never liked science fiction, or what he knew of it, perhaps thinking, in a reverse of James Bond, “It lives better than it reads”. First-rate US Marines pilot (6 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 18 Air Medals); first supersonic flight across the US; only person to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs; six terms as US Senator (Democrat – Ohio); flew on the Discovery at age 77 to help study Space and human age. NASA Distinguished Service Medal, US Astronaut Hall of Fame, Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom. Memoir, John Glenn. (Died 2016) [JH]
- Born July 18, 1938 — Paul Verhoeven, 82. Responsible for Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Hollow Man and Robocop. He’s made the short list for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation three times (Starship Troopers, Total Recall and Robocop) but was not won it. (CE)
- Born July 18, 1943 — Charles G. Waugh, 77. Anthologist who is amazingly prolific. I count over two hundred anthologies, most done with co-anthologists, and many done with Martin Greenberg. Oft times a third anthologist would be listed, i.e. Poul Anderson for Terrorists of Tomorrow, or Isaac Asimov for Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series. (CE)
- Born July 18, 1950 – Jay Kinney, 70. Bijou Funnies with R. Crumb, Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson. Hasn’t published his fanzine in a while, but here is a cover for Chunga (L to R, Hooper, Byers, juarez); here is a wise comment; here is his Clinic of Cultural Collison (noting Vaughan Bodé, who died on this day, 1975; name shared by Tex Jarman’s Uncle Bodie); here is “Welcome to the Late Show” for the Eagles. Letters in Banana Wings, Raucous Caucus (Relapse has, alas, relapsed). [JH]
- Born July 18, 1963 – Sue Mason, 57. Standing for TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) she called herself “gamer, filker, costumer, dealer, apahack” modestly omitting she’s among our best fanartists. She won; we must’ve forgiven her. Ten covers, two hundred interiors, for Attitude, Banana Wings, Bento, Challenger, Idea, QuasiQuote, Twink. Eight Nova Awards as Best Fanartist, two Hugos. Part of the PLOKTA Cabal (PLOKTA = Press Lots Of Keys To Abort, the Journal of Superfluous Technology). Guest of Honor at Eastercon 55 (British nat’l convention), Minicon 38. MC’d the Masquerade costume competition at Intersection the 53rd Worldcon. Artwork for Aussiecon 4 the 68th Worldcon. Doc Weir service award. Rotsler Award, later judge. [JH]
- Born July 18, 1966 — Paul Cornell, 54. Author of both the Shadow Police series and the Witches of Lychford novella series which are quite excellent as well as writing a lot of television scripts for Doctor Who, Primeval and Robin Hood. He was part of the regular panel of the SF Squeecast podcast which won two Hugo Awards for Best Fancast. And he scripted quite a bit of the Captain Britain and MI: 13 comic series as well — very good stuff indeed. (CE)
- Born July 18, 1972 – Eve Marie Mont, 48. Time-travel tales send highschooler Emma Townsend into worlds she met in fiction, A Breath of Eyre, A Touch of Scarlet, A Phantom Enchantment. “I shouldn’t love Rochester [in Jane Eyre]… dark, arrogant, moody, mistakes in his life that are seriously hard to overlook…. I teach high school, and the teens I know are a far cry from the ones portrayed in the media…. It’s that sense of wonder and possibility in YA literature that really excites me.” Sponsors her school’s literary magazine. [JH]
- Born July 18, 1982 — Priyanka Chopra, 38. As Alex Parrish in Quantico, she became the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Is it genre? Maybe, maybe not, though it could fit into a Strossian Dark State. Some of her work in her native India such as The Legend of Drona and Love Story 2050 is genre as Krrish 3, an Indian SF film she was in. She’s got a major role in the forthcoming Matrix 4 film. (CE)
- Born July 18, 1990 – Kyle Muntz, 30. Five novels, poetry (is poetry fiction?), two shorter stories, dark-fantasy game The Pale City (also the name of his Website). Sparks Prize. Interviewed in Lightspeed. Has read two translations of Tu Fu (or, if you prefer, Du Fu), ranks them well above Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. By turns impish and sinister. [JH]
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- I deny posing for today’s Half Full.
(11) SUMMERTIME. Six critics lavish affection on “My Favorite Summer Blockbuster” in the New York Times. Lots of genre – you’re not surprised, are you? And it’s not all Marvel – though I was less impressed to see someone reach back in time for this film once I saw the call-out for its availability on the new Disney+ service.
Monica Castillo: ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’
Little was conventional about Robert Zemeckis’s 1988 film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which helped make it the highest-grossing film that summer and the year’s second top box office draw (behind “Rain Man”). This seedy drawing of Tinseltown took inspiration from film noir, and its story was set in the golden age of Hollywood studios, many of which were then in decline….
(12) COMPLAINT DEPT. But meanwhile, back in the U.K. — “‘Joker’ Tops U.K. List of Most Complained About Films in 2019, but Can’t Beat ‘The Dark Knight’”.
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has confirmed Todd Phillips’ R-rated comic book drama “Joker” was the most complained about movie in the United Kingdom last year. The BBFC’s annual report has “Joker” topping the list of most complained about films with 20 complaints filed in regards to the movie’s age 15 classification.
The majority of complaints against “Joker” argued the film should’ve received an age 18 rating due to “violence and tone,” while a select few said the BBFC should’ve banned the movie altogether. The BBFC defended the age 15 rating for “Joker” because the film “doesn’t dwell on the infliction of pain or injury in a manner that requires an 18.”…
(13) SPEAK, MEMORY. In “Sleeping Next To An Elephant”, The Hugo Book Club Blog weighs in on a Best Novel finalist.
It’s often said in Canada that living next to the United States is like sleeping with an elephant: affected by every twitch and grunt. It’s a phrase that came to mind when reading Arkady Martine’s debut A Memory Called Empire, a sprawling and richly imagined novel about hegemony and loss of culture.
Set in the capital city of the vast Teixcalaanli interstellar empire, A Memory Called Empire follows Mahit Dzmare the new ambassador from the much smaller Lsel Stationer Republic as she investigates the murder of her predecessor and navigates a political crisis that could spell disaster for both nations.
Martine has delivered one of the most Asimovian science fiction novels we’ve read in recent memory, while making the narrative uniquely her own.
(14) VIRTUAL STAGE PLAY. Otherworld Theatre, Chicago’s premier science fiction and fantasy theatre will present Of Dice And Men – A Play about Dungeons and Dragons on their YouTube page on July 31 and will remain available for free until August 14, at which point it will move to Otherworld’s Patreon page. Tickets are FREE and can be obtained from Eventbrite or by subscribing to Otherworld’s YouTube page here.
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Let’s Work Together” on YouTube is a new collaboration between William Shatner and Canned Heat, which will be one track on a new blues album Shatner will release this fall.
[Thanks to JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Olav Rokne, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]
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(13) SPEAK, MEMORY. Asimovian?!? I’ve read a lot Asimov’s fiction down the decades and I’ll be damned if I see anything in A Memory Called Empire that even vaguely reminds me of his writing style.
First?
Cat Eldridge: Asimovian?!? I’ve read a lot Asimov’s fiction down the decades and I’ll be damned if I see anything in A Memory Called Empire that even vaguely reminds me of his writing style.
Yeah, if anything I would say that A Memory Called Empire is Cherryhvian.
@ JJ –
Yeah, if anything I would say that A Memory Called Empire is Cherryhvian.
Agreed.
JJ says sagely Yeah, if anything I would say that A Memory Called Empire is Cherryhvian.
That makes a lot of sense. I did make it my choice as Best Novel when I did my Hugo voting.
“Asimovian” means “Has an empire in it”?
Andrew: “Asimovian” means “Has an empire in it”?
Ah, so it’s like Paulk’s Tavern. 😀
Cat Eldridge: I did make [A Memory Called Empire] my choice as Best Novel when I did my Hugo voting.
Same here, of the ~60 2019-published novels I’ve read, it was far and away my favorite.
Andrew says “Asimovian” means “Has an empire in it”?
Huh. That’d mean that Aliette de Bodard‘s Xuya Universe stories were Asimovian. I think not.
It’s not even 10pm yet!
Usually I’m curled up in bed with my tablet before I actually see the Pixel Scroll. If not in fact waking up the next morning.
Note that this has nothing to do with when the scroll is posted.
JJ says Same here, of the ~60 2019-published novels I’ve read, it was far and away my favorite.
The only work that came close to it for me was Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night which is why I’m looking forward to the follow-up volumes in both series.
I didn’t know Chicago has a sf and fantasy theatre but OF DICE AND MEN seems agreeably silly from the trailer.
[9] Skelton’s “Guzzler’s Gin” commercial in the 1948 film Ziegfield Follies is also the font and origin of the drinking routine which was appropriated by our own Wilson “Bob” Tucker as his famous “Smooooooooootthhh!” which was a rite of initiation for generations of us mere mortal fen.
http://fancyclopedia.org/Smooth
For me it was a tie between Gamechanger and A memory called empire for favorite for 2019. Overall, this was a year with a lot of good books.
@6: that’s some cosplay….
@Cat Eldridge: a novel is much more than its writing style. Several of Asimov’s pre-hiatus stories involve the small-towner going up against the overblown big city; what matters is not just the empire but its stage, and the contrast between it and the neighboring polities.
@JJ: as a long-time Cherryh fan, I see very little of her focus in aMCE; ISTM that she mostly does the civilization-on-the-rise, with occasional doses of long-ago-crashed (e.g., the worlds Morgaine visits), but doesn’t redo Gibbons (with an outsider for contrast) as Asimov did ~first and Martine does.
I’d definitely put Martine’s work first — of the 3 I’ve read; I’m vaguely glad not to be voting, because I’ve seen so much bad about the Anders and I’d have to read it (or at least skim) to vote on the category.
Chip says to me: a novel is much more than its writing style. Several of Asimov’s pre-hiatus stories involve the small-towner going up against the overblown big city; what matters is not just the empire but its stage, and the contrast between it and the neighboring polities.
That I know. Still doesn’t make me see anything in A Memory called Empire that is reflective of the Good Doctor. A great deal of what I enjoyed about the novel was the sheer originality of both the setting and the characters.
It’s rare to encounter those in any novel these days. I mean I like Bear’s Ancestral Night which is the other memorable novel for me as of late, But it was in many ways a clever playing off of existing tropes. A Memory called Empire on the other tentacle feels fresh, not beholden to existing tropes.
It narrowly edged out Light Brigade for the top spot on my ballot. It was superb, and for once I’m eagerly awaiting a sequel.
No.
Of the people working on that blog post, I was the guy who really pushed that interpretation. And it was mostly because of how closely the book parallels Caves of Steel, and how Martine uses many of the same expository techniques Asimov does (though her sentence-by-sentence prose is far more refined/modern).
Think about Caves of Steel; it’s a book about a technologically advanced outsider (Mahit) partnering with a local to solve a murder in a sprawling futuristic city. There’s very similar scenes of protest in which the reader learns about the political tensions within that city.
One of the things that Asimov does very well (as does Martine) is the use of leading questions and suppositions to paint a broader picture of the world that the characters are exploring.
The same parallels could be found to Prelude To Foundation; a series of misfortunes compel characters to visit various parts of an enormous imperial city. I can’t be the only one who was reminded of Billibottom during Mahit’s visit to the lower-class segment of Teixcalaan? Again, Asimov used the structure of an outsider partnering with a local, and using their divergent perspectives to show how a society sees itself, and how that does not necessarily correspond with the truth. Sure, they’re both set in an Empire and that’s a pretty tenuous parallel, but it gets more pronounced when you look at the decaying nature of the empire in question; the efforts of Cleon II (and Eto Demerzel) to put down the Joranumite rebellion in Forward The Foundation are not dissimilar to Emperor Six Direction’s efforts to maintain the stability of Teixcalaan.
IMHO, A Memory Called Empire is a book whose value will endure in the same way that several of Asimov’s stories have.
I agree! It is very fresh!
I didn’t mean to imply anything else!
Gamechanger was on my nominating ballot. It is fantastic.
But I gotta say, I didn’t know that it was written by a Canadian when I bought it off Audible. And I started listening to it while I was at West Edmonton Mall … so those opening scenes in the ruins of West Edmonton were weirdly vivid to listen to.
Thanks for the title credit!
I guess I could sort of see describing Memory as Cherryh tackling an Asimovian subject; The Caves of Steel is not not apt but I might have picked a hypothetical novel contemporary to Pebble in the Sky or thereabouts, or maybe The Naked Sun with a very different local culture. (About all that I remember of Prelude is that I read it.)
Was just able to see the comet with Mk.I Eyeball tonight; where I live there’s not much light pollution coming from that direction, but there is a streetlight right under where the comet was – in any other year I would have driven out to one of the dark sky spots I used to shlep telescopes to. Immensely more impressive through 10×50 binoculars.
I have A Memory called Empire only at second place. The Light Brigade is my number 1, but it is a great book. I would be happy if A Memory called Empire wins.
I picked Light Brigade above Empire but the latter really made me rethink my original opinion that Light Brigade was the obvious Hugo winner.
I think it is fair to point at Asimov when talking about A Memory Called Empire — it works differently but Asimov could point at broad sweeps of history by using personal protagonists and while the style is different, it is an apt comparison just like referencing Philip K Dick is apt when talking about Light Brigade. History is a narrative with individual heroes is Asimovian and history is a lie and you are its victim is Dickian but that doesn’t mean they owned or originated those ideas or that current writers exploring similar spaces are copying them.
One thing I really liked about A Memory called Empire is that it keeps flirting with that Dickian aspect as well. What the hell is history if your own personal history is something that you have literally borrowed from somebody else? I’m still amazed it is her first novel – if it wins I’ll be delighted but I hope the mindf_ck*ng paranoia of Light Brigade wins.
I am ending my voting for the Hugo today. My last catagories either fall into nope 3 day is not enough or retro-categories I am not that interesting in.
Next year again, probably.
That’s the first time I’ve seen “Cherryhvian” in print. Granted, I don’t get around much.
Meredith Moment: The ebook version of The Mask of Circe by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore is available for $1.99 at the Usual Suspects.
@OlavRokne: Thank you for going into detail on this (and I’m sorry for my flip comment). Memory Called Empire is top of my ballot (I need to get back to my ballot for final adjustments soon, but McE won’t change its level).
I’ll be the contrarian (heh) voice here — I ended up putting Middlegame at the top of my ballot, A Memory Called Empire second. Just because when I reread (re-listened-to) both, Middlegame was the one that made me smile gleefully while I was reading it. I expect Martine to win the award, though, and it’s a book that the Hugo community can be proud of awarding.
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1) I have a really trivial question about the second photo: Does anyone know what the tattooed word “skin” signifies to whoever it is wearing it? I ask because one of my copies (I have two) of “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature” is literally at my elbow as I write and…let me check..yeah, this is the signed one. And I’ll be damned if I don’t see–now that I’ve started thinking about it, which is always a mistake, this thinking stuff–a resemblance between the photo here and the photo of Dorothy Allison on the book. So now this has turned from a trivial question to a trivial, borderline weird question. But I’m still curious.
@Patrick Morris Miller: I guess I could sort of see describing Memory as Cherryh tackling an Asimovian subject; That sounds plausible; I don’t remember any of the Asimovs I’ve read (I skipped a lot of the later fill-ins) having Cherryh’s standard intensity. There are plenty of Asimov stories that involve digging out the truth (even beyond the explicitly detective stories), but none that have the focal character routinely riding on the thin edge of disaster (personal or wider). And @Olav Rokne’s description of the cultural outsider also strikes me as more Asimov than Cherryh — who has plenty of culture clashes (but most with more balance, e.g. Hani vs. Kif) and plenty of outsiders (but in cultures they know and just can’t get a toehold in, e.g. Yeager in Rimrunners, Sandor Kreja in Merchanter’s Luck, Tom Hawkins in Tripoint). (The “Foreigner” series seems to me an interesting bridge in this regard; there have been previous paidhi but of varying competence and willingness to make — let alone be — a bridge, while Cameron is clearly something like Kipling’s armadillo even if the atevi aren’t adjusting as radically.)
Have you seen Seanan McGuire complaining on Twitter about how there’s “A Narrative” that the winner has already been determined by “some news sources”? She’s brought it up repeatedly.
Gotta admit that as much as I like Seanan McGuire in general, the bellyaching doesn’t sit well with me.
OlavRokne: There will be a tweet about your comment in 5…4…3…
OlavRokne say Have you seen Seanan McGuire complaining on Twitter about how there’s “A Narrative” that the winner has already been determined by “some news sources”? She’s brought it up repeatedly.
Gotta admit that as much as I like Seanan McGuire in general, the bellyaching doesn’t sit well with me.
She really, really should know better than think anything knows how the vote went when the voting is still ongoing and won’t be completed for some days yet. And yes she’s being whiny.
I’m voted for The Expanse for Best Series Hugo as I’ve find her InCryptid series to be frustratingly uneven with the major weakness being the sheer number of narrators.
@Olav —
I haven’t seen that. Except for things like cute cat videos, I mostly stay far away from the Twitterverse.
Some authors have thinner skins than other authors. But usually there isn’t much of anything actively evil about having a thin skin — it’s merely a part of the human condition — so I try to not let it influence my reading or voting choices. In McGuire’s case, if I like something she wrote, I’m happy to say so — and to vote for it. And if I don’t like something she wrote, I’m happy to say that too.
As for A Memory Called Empire, it’s likely to win because it has been widely admired (deservedly so) and well publicized, and it fits the mold of a Hugo winner (as these comparisons to past winners demonstrates). In contrast, I don’t think Middlegame has been as widely publicized in Hugo circles (though I see it has more ratings on GR than Empire does), and one of the things I like about it is that it’s hard to compare it to other books — it seems much more original to me. But that’s just me — to each their own, and all that.
You can’t have any idea how the votes are going to come out without seeing the actual ballots, and then the voting has to be extremely lopsided. Which is why that information is hidden.
I say this as someone who was on a Hugo committee and wrote the program that counted the votes that year. I didn’t know who won until it was announced at the convention.
Seanan McGuire is full of it, on this subject.
I liked Memory a lot, but (you knew there was a “but” coming), I am sick to death of “The X Empire…IN SPACE!!!!1!” I grant that starting with the Precolumbian Americas was a refreshing variation—huge improvement over the usual Rome or Britain—but even so, I had a hard time mustering up more than a meh for the worldbuilding. (Fortunately, the writing and story easily made up for that.)
Honestly, I think this year’s candidates are all good (which is rare), but lacks any serious standouts (which is also rare). At the moment, I think I am actually leaning towards Middlegame, but just a few days ago, it was City, and, well, TBH, they’ve all had a least a moment at the top of my mental listing.
@Xtifr: Yeah, my ordering is fluid – Middlegame is a book I enjoyed thoroughly and will be quite high on my ballot if not first. I’m also delighted to hear that there will be a sequel and a related book.
As we all remember from the tension before Sasquan – no one knows what the results will be until they happen.
I wonder what genre news sources she was thinking of? Surely not File 770.
On the other hand, I’d not be surprised if the site selection vote has been predicted at this point.
JJ said “Yeah, if anything I would say that A Memory Called Empire is Cherryhvian.”
That quote moves it to next on the TBR for this Cherryh fanboy
David Shallcross ponders I wonder what genre news sources she was thinking of? Surely not File 770.
Pinky, are you ponderIng what I’m pondering?
I really can’t imagine anyone stating that they know who won this Hugo, or any other Hugo for that matter. Locus certainly wouldn’t this, so it’d have be a blog of some sort I’d think.
Disclosure: Haven’t had a Worldcon membership since 1984, so feel free to ignore any Hugo Award musings from me.
My perception of the Best Novel buzz makes me think that Gideon the Ninth will lead on the first count. The love and enthusiasm from people who’ve read it has actually been so incandescent that, even though I have a copy, I’ve been a little afraid to read the book, for fear that I won’t love it enough.
But if Gideon doesn’t win on the first count, I feel pretty strongly that Middlegame will lead strongly on the second count, and probably win. (I read Middlegame, and my comment was “Seanan McGuire’s default mode is Damn She’s Good, but Middlegame is Holy Fucking Shit territory.”)
@John A Arkansawyer — I don’t have an answer as to why Kelly Link has that “skin” tattoo. It looks like it’s part of Shelley Jackson’s story “Skin,” which is published on the skin of volunteers, one word each. But I just checked the website for the story; there are two people listed who got the word “skin” and neither of them is Kelly. One had it tattooed on their wrist, and the other gave contact info. The website may not be up-to-date, so it’s possible that Kelly is a third person to get that word.
The reason it looks like part of the story is that the words have to be black and in a standard book typeface, as Kelly’s is.
Volunteers had (or have, if the project is still ongoing) no choice as to word, so if you got “of” or “the”, oh well. I suppose having such a prosaic tattoo can be interesting in itself. (Me? Not a volunteer.)
@Jeff Smith: Oh, cool! That’s much better than any coincidence could be. Thanks for the information–I agree that sounds very likely.
I don’t care for the Asimov comparison. One might as well call Memory “LeGuinian”, as the technologically advanced outsider pairing up with a local to deal with a crisis, and in the process revealing the intricacies of the local culture and politics” was done in “Left Hand of Darkness”
In general I really think these exercises in pattern-matching really do an injustice to the books they’re compared to, since people no longer consider the book in its own terms, but in how many matches can be made with the other book.
Rose Embolism says sagely I don’t care for the Asimov comparison. One might as well call Memory “LeGuinian”, as the technologically advanced outsider pairing up with a local to deal with a crisis, and in the process revealing the intricacies of the local culture and politics” was done in “Left Hand of Darkness”
In general I really think these exercises in pattern-matching really do an injustice to the books they’re compared to, since people no longer consider the book in its own terms, but in how many matches can be made with the other book.
I don’t read novels that way. Never have, never will. A novel fir me is always a unique story that exists in its own reality. A Memory Called Empire I cherish as a reading experience the same I cherish Ailette De Bodard’s Xuya stories as each is set in a unique universe. I’m not a scholar, I’m a reader.
Middlegame and The City in the Middle of the Night just won the Locus (for fantasy and Sf respectively). I’m sure that has an influence on some Hugo voters–there’s a fair amount of overlap between the two populations. And, of course, this year’s Nebula winner isn’t even on the Hugo ballot, so that’s unlikely to affect things. On the other hand, Memory (and Gideon the Ninth) were on the Nebula ballot, and none of the other Hugo finalists were, so that probably bumps their chances. But honestly, I don’t have a strong feeling for what will (let alone, what should) win this year. Unlike a lot of previous years.
@Xtifr —
And Gideon won for best first novel. Don’t forget that one!
David Shallcross: I wonder what genre news sources she was thinking of? Surely not File 770.
Since she frequently complains about File 770 any time a member of the community here comments on one of her books with anything less than gushing praise (and I have seen her talk about dreading that File 770 will report [X], when [X] is something Mike would never in a million years report), I suspect that’s exactly what she means.
Sure, a lot of the community members here have expressed a Hugo prefererence for other novels on the ballot. That’s a far cry from “there’s too much of a clear narrative (not from readers, but from certain genre news sources) of the winner being inevitable (and not me).”. The community members here ARE fucking readers — prolific ones — and trying to diminish their opinions as less than genuine is really a cheap shot.
And yes, it really comes off as trying to get people to feel sorry for her so they will buy memberships and vote for her book.
I like a lot of her work very much, but the frequent whining has really gotten old. She has already gotten a lot more Hugo accolades than most writers ever will, and this characterization of her as an “underdog” of some sort is just ridiculous.
BGrandrath: [Cherryhvian] moves it to next on the TBR for this Cherryh fanboy.
It’s very much the Lone Emissary In A Vastly Different Culture trying to navigate their way and gain respect with the members of that culture, in the same vein as the Foreigner series.
Am I the only one who didn’t like The City In the Middle of the Night? At ALL? Orgjrra gur Rvtug Qrnqyl jbeqf naq n uryy bs n ybg bs unaqjnivat bs culfvpf naq zrgrbebybtl va n obbx gung cerfragrq vgfrys nf n uneq FS abiry, V unq gb sbepr zlfrys gb trg gb gur raq va ubcrf gung vg vzcebirq… naq gura V sbhaq bhg gung vg qbrfa’g rira unir na raqvat.
This book is going below No Award on my ballot. The other five books are amazing and will be very, very hard to rank. Currently Middlegame is on top, but the order has changed at least twice so far….
@Cassy B —
It’s last on my ballot, but I didn’t hate it. I would never try to call it hard sf myself — as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t tend to focus on the physical sciences, but I rolled my eyes at the characters eating the aliens’ food and vafgnagyl tnvavat gryrcnguvp enccbeg jvgu gurz, and things like that.
Cassy B.: Am I the only one who didn’t like The City In the Middle of the Night? At ALL?
Nope. I hated it. It’s not the only novel on my ballot that’s under No Award, but it’s the last on my ballot under No Award. And that’s really saying something, because I thought Gideon the Ninth was a novel-length teenage tantrum which used sarcasm as a substitute for character development.
I thought that the worldbuilding (however implausible) and the aliens in The City In the Middle of the Night are really interesting. Unfortunately, they merely serve as a background for the interminable soap opera of the characters’ stupidity and self-destructiveness. Almost every character in this book is, persistently to the very end, Too Stupid To Live.
And the author repeatedly misrepresents “immature infatuation with an imaginary person who bears very little resemblance to the actual person” as “love” — which would not be so bad if the character learned better by the end, but they don’t. When coupled with a cast of characters who absolutely wallow in egregious stupidity and self-destructiveness , it turned The Eight Deadly Words “I Don’t Care What Happens To These People” into “I Am Ready To Shoot These People Myself”.