2015 Campbell Award Winner

Claire North

Claire North

Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is the winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2014.

The award was presented at the Campbell Conference in Lawrence, KS on June 12.

23 thoughts on “2015 Campbell Award Winner

  1. Wait, Claire North? Isn’t she Kate Griffin? Wait, isn’t she also Catherine Webb? Anyhow, congratulations.

    The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

    It is not difficult to read. It is mostly linear story telling of Harry August’s life with those occasionally skips back and forth until he acquires his a villain to defeat and the novel rushes to its finale. The description of rape at the beginning is a warning sign for the few occurrences of detailed torture that follow later on the novel. As a character Harry August remains both distant and uninteresting. Hence the book’s primary selling point is the interesting concept, but unfortunately its implementation has not been entirely thought through.

    Thus what you get is Bella Swan from the Twilight series living out her 15 lives as a man, with a chance to play the game of historical events bingo, if you so please.

    Three vampire fangs out five boots.

    (For reference, I found it five times better than Scalzi’s Redshirts, which would get one soiled mop out of five Apollo rockets.)

  2. Thank you for the Puppy and GamerGater perspective, Tuomas Vainio.

  3. Tuomas Vainio: Hence the book’s primary selling point is the interesting concept, but unfortunately its implementation has not been entirely thought through.

    In what way was the implementation not entirely thought through?

  4. Oh hi Tuomas! Whose review is that by the way – would love to read the full one instead of just your excerpt of someone else’s work.

    Bye Tuomas.

  5. Congrats! I found it very enjoyable with some clever uses of new ideas for people reliving their lives.

    On the other hand I find Tuomas’s review poorly defined, stretches far to try and make a Twilight reference and makes an unrelated Scalzi jab at the end because why not. Two stars.

  6. I’ve heard great things about this one! My copy just arrived yesterday, looking forward to it. I’m quite a fan of the work she’s done under the Kate Griffin nom-de-plume.

  7. I didn’t know she was Kate Griffin: I’ve been meaning to try her work under that name as I heard good things about it but hadn’t got around too. If she writes as well as she does as Claire North I have some good reading to look forward to.

    I liked The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August though it was relentlessly plot focused. I think Kurt Busiek mentioned, either here or on Twitter, that he thought the protagonist was a bit uncurious about making the best of his lives, but that might be the difference between Americans and the English…

  8. Congratulations to Claire North! I have heard good things about this book, many of them right here on File 770, and I look forward to reading it.

  9. @JJ: It really bottles down to the implementation of butterfly effect.

    @Snowcrash: If you are unsatisfied with my review, I recommend seeking a second opinion. It is free, and there are plenty of other reviews to choose from.

    @Matt Y: Have you read Twilight series? Even if you have not, you can google for lengthy explanations why Bella Swan is not the most well written character in literature. Those same complaints an be easily placed on Harry August’s shoulders. As for Scalzi ‘jab,’ it is important to give context for the review.

  10. Tuomas Vainio: It really bottles down to the implementation of butterfly effect.

    In other words, you haven’t actually read the book (just as you haven’t actually read Redshirts), you’ve just paraphrased someone else’s review, so you are unable to elaborate what the reviewer meant.

    Thanks for clarifying that.

  11. Congratulations to Claire! This book keeps climbing up my to-read pile. 🙂

  12. Bruce Baugh on June 14, 2015 at 1:43 pm said:

    Congratulations to Claire! This book keeps climbing up my to-read pile. 🙂

    Me too. Great-sounding fiction like this gets me all excited about reading.

  13. @JJ: Hey, you can believe whatever you want. After all, there is a some degree of freedom of religion in most Western societies.

    But let us face some facts, no one is exactly paying me to write essays here. So when it comes to addressing your usual comments, I am not sure why I even bother write down any. After all, it is evident how you have dug your little hole and nothing is going to make you raise your head. You have not before, you will not do it in the future.

    The butterfly effect; everything is connected. Perhaps you just cannot imagine the sheer volume of different possible event chains that each individual action could generate, and how these changes accrue. Now if you have read the book, and possess at least roundabout avarage human intelligence, it should not be too difficult to grasp what exactly I found wrong with the novel. You might not find it problematic for yourself, which is perfectly fine, but you should be able to figure out what I disliked.

    And quite frankly, I doubt you would believe I have read the novel even if I were to ‘livetweet’ every page of it.

    As for Redshirts. I stopped reading after the second or third chapter. There were just too many sentences ending with the word: said. Even third graders know how write better. And if you do not think, I have a valid point, I challenge you to drinking game. Whenever a sentence ends with the word: ‘said’ – you drink a shot. Just have someone sober around to call an abulance to have your stomach flushed at a hospital in order to avoid alcohol poisoning.

  14. The butterfly effect; everything is connected.

    That is not what the Butterfly Effect means.

    As for Scalzi ‘jab,’ it is important to give context for the review.

    No, it isn’t. In fact, throwing it in shows that you don’t really have much of anything to say about the book you are reviewing.

  15. Tuomas, it’s just that you never say anything useful here.

    Asking you to bother to read the myriad of books you come here trying to review is not, as you seem to think, some kind of litmus or purity test.

    It’s a simple, basic prerequisite that demonstrates you at least have a grounding for your many, many opinions.

    If you never read the books — which you admit you don’t– then your opinions on them are not useful, any more than restaurant reviews by someone who never visits a restaurant are useful.

  16. Tuomas Vainio: But let us face some facts, no one is exactly paying me to write essays here.

    Exactly. So, as Peace says, why you feel compelled to keep coming here and posting uninformed, secondhand opinions culled from other peoples’ reviews is a mystery to me (and clearly to others as well).

    Tuomas Vainio: I doubt you would believe I have read the novel even if I were to ‘livetweet’ every page of it.

    I would believe that you had read a novel if the opinion you posted of it was actually a sound, well-thought analysis of it, rather than consisting solely of sound bites taken from other peoples’ reviews mixed with irrelevant and inapplicable comments which make it clear that you haven’t actually read the book.

    People here actually read these books. This is how they know what you are posting is made-up and plagiarized bullshit.

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