(1) If you are fan who drinks, the newly reopened Clifton’s Cafeteria would like to tempt you with these two science fictional libations –
(2) “Another Word: Chinese Science Fiction and Chinese Reality” by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu, in Clarkesworld, talks about the themes of other Chinese writers after these introductory comments about the domestic reception for his own work.
China is a society undergoing rapid development and transformation, where crises are present along with hopes, and opportunities coexist with challenges. This is a reality reflected in the science fiction produced there.
Chinese readers often interpret science fiction in unexpected ways. Take my Three Body series as an example. The alien-invasion story takes as its premise a “worst-case” scenario for relationships among members of the cosmic society of civilizations, which is called the “Dark Forest” state. In this state, different starfaring civilizations have no choice but to attempt to annihilate each other at the first opportunity.
After publication, the novels became surprisingly popular among those working in China’s Internet industry. They saw the “Dark Forest” state portrayed in the novels as an accurate reflection of the state of brutal competition among China’s Internet companies….
Authors (myself included) are often befuddled by such interpretations.
(3) From “’Star Wars’: Their First Time” in the New York Times.
Ridley Scott: I had done a film called “The Duellists” and was in Los Angeles to shoot at Paramount, and I honestly think Paramount had forgotten. I remember saying, I’m Ridley Scott, and they said who? So David Puttnam, one of the greatest producers I’ve ever worked with and the most fun, said, “Screw them, let’s go see [“Star Wars”] at the Chinese [theater].” It was the first week. I’ve never known audience participation like it, absolutely rocking. I felt my “Duellist” was this big [holds thumb and forefinger an inch apart], and George had done that [stretches arms out wide]. I was so inspired I wanted to shoot myself. My biggest compliment can be [to get] green with envy and really bad-tempered. That damn George, son of a bitch. I’m very competitive.
(4) Andrew Porter was interviewed, complete with photo, for “Longtime Brooklynites Reflect on a Changing Brooklyn” on Brownstoner.com:
Now you can put a face to me and my non SFnal opinions about recent changes in Brooklyn Heights, where I’ve lived for 47 years.
I’m sure you’ll also appreciate the comments, one of which accuses me of hating Brits!
(Daveinbedstuy accuses – “Andrew Porter sounds cranky; as he usually does on BHB. I wonder what he has against ‘Brits.’ And bringing up ‘granite countertops’ Really????????”)
(5) Jim C. Hines on Facebook:
I HAVE WRITTEN THE FIRST 22 WORDS OF MY NANOWRIMO NOVEL!
The NaNo word counter says at this rate, I’ll finish by January 20, 2022.
I suppose I should probably keep writing, eh?
(6) “Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910” is on exhibit through February 26, 2017 in the newly renovated Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition Gallery of the National Museum of American History.
Travel with us to the surface of the moon, the center of the earth, and the depths of the ocean – to the fantastic worlds of fiction inspired by 19th century discovery and invention.
New frontiers of science were emerging. We took to the air, charted remote corners of the earth, and harnessed the power of steam and electricity. We began unlocking the secrets of the natural world. The growing literate middle class gave science a new and avid public audience. Writers explored the farther reaches of the new scientific landscape to craft hoaxes, satires and fictional tales.
Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910 is accompanied by an online exhibit.
(7) Francis Hamit, a novelist and film producer who is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, has published A Perfect Spy, a memoir about his first two years at the University of Iowa when he was a dual major in Drama and Business. While he narrates the ongoing dramatic social changes that were transforming society and the university in 1965 and 1966, he also covers the impact of the sexual revolution, the sudden rise of a drug culture, and the beginnings of the anti-war movement at the University of Iowa, from a first-person perspective.
“I saw the first draft card burnt,” Hamit says; “And I would see the last anti-war riot there several years later. I was also very disturbed by the rise of all kinds of drug use in and around Iowa City. Unlike almost everyone else I knew, I did not think this ‘cool’. I saw people ruining thier lives by refusing to tell the police who’d sold them the drugs: facing years in prison. I offered to help them find the dealers if they would leave my friends alone. How I did this is narrated in A Perfect Spy, which is a 118-page excerpt from my forthcoming book Out of Step: A Memoir of the Vietnam War Years.
“I was already in place,” Hamit added; “A perfect spy who made no pretenses of approving of recreational drugs. I didn’t do anything with them, but simply watched and listened so I could collect some useful intelligence for the police. At the same time, I became involved with some very interesting women who were part of the Sexual Revolution. That was part of a larger social revolt. None of what happened then can be viewed in isolation, so I’ve just tried to be as truthful as possible while changing a lot of the names of the people to prevent embarrassment.”
A Perfect Spy will be available exclusively at first from November 12, 2015 on Amazon Kindle for $5.00 and can be pre-ordered now. A print edition will be available in March, 2016 with a suggested retail price of $12.00 from most bookstores.
(8) “The artist who visited ‘Dune’ and ‘the most important science fiction art ever created’” – a gallery of Schoenherr at Dangerous Minds.
Frank Herbert said John Schoenherr was “the only man who has ever visited Dune.” Schoenherr (1935-2010) was the artist responsible for visualising and illustrating Herbert’s Dune—firstly in the pages of Analog magazine, then in the fully illustrated edition of the classic science fiction tale. But Herbert didn’t stop there, he later added:
I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations.
High praise indeed, but truly deserved, for as Jeff Love pointed out in Omni Reboot, Schoenherr’s illustrations are “the most important science fiction art ever created.”
(9) Jason Sanford posted a collection of tweets under the heading “The fossilization of science fiction and fantasy literature”. Here are some excerpts.
https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660782118356783104
https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660783781654233088
https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660789856075948034
Although I have friends that do exactly what Sanford complains about, he doesn’t hang with them, read their fanzines, or (I’d wager) even know their names, so I’m kind of curious whose comments sparked off this rant.
Personally, I’m prone to recommend Connie Willis or Lois McMaster Bujold if I’m trying to interest someone in sf – though both have been around over 25 years and aren’t spring chickens anymore either.
People recommend what they know and esteem. It’s perfectly fine to argue whether recommendations will win fans to the genre, but it seems petty to act as if pushing “classic” choices is a war crime.
(10) John Scalzi was more or less content with Sanford’s line of thought, and responded with “No, the Kids Aren’t Reading the Classics and Why Would They”.
Writer Jason Sanford kicked a small hornet’s nest earlier today when he discussed “the fossilization of science fiction,” as he called it, and noted that today’s kids who are getting into science fiction are doing it without “Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.” This is apparently causing a moderate bit of angina in some quarters.
I think Sanford is almost entirely correct (the small quibble being that I suspect Tolkien is still common currency, thanks to recent films and video games), nor does this personally come as any particular shock. I wrote last year about the fact my daughter was notably resistant to Heinlein’s charms, not to mention the charms of other writers who I enjoyed when I was her age… thirty years ago. She has her own set of writers she loves and follows, as she should. As do all the kids her age who read.
The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this.
(11) “The kids” who don’t read the classics are one case, would-be sf writers are another, explains Fynbospress in “Slogging forward, looking back” at Mad Genius Club.
Kris Rusch has also noted how many young writers she’s run into who are completely ignorant of the many, many female authors who’ve been in science fiction and fantasy since the start. Among other reasons, many of their works have gone out of print, and the new writers coming in may not have read the old magazines, or picked up the older, dated-artwork books at the used bookstores. So they really, truly, may not know that their groundbreaking new take has been done to death thirty years before they came on the scene, or that they’re trying to reinvent a wheel that has not only been invented, it’s evolved to all-wheel drive with traction control.
(12) I can’t say that Vivienne Raper is going where no one has gone before in responding to the latest Wired article about the Hugos — “Five reasons why the ‘Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul’ isn’t about ‘white men’”.
[First three of five points.]
There are many reasons why I might be “angered” by previous Hugo winners. And none of them are anything to do with ‘the increasingly multicultural makeup’ of the awards:
ONE
Science fiction’s most prestigious award‘ for Best Novel was decided in 2014 by fewer than 4,000 voters.
TWO
The Best Short Story for 2014 got onto the ballot with fewer than 43 nominations.
THREE
Popular blogger John Scalzi has won more Hugo Awards (inc. best fan writer) than Isaac Asimov – author of I, Robot – or Arthur C. Clarke. He also has 90K+ Twitter followers.
(13) Jeb Kinnison at Substrate Wars is more analytical and lands more punches in “The Death of ‘Wired’: Hugo Awards Edition”. Here are his closing paragraphs.
The various flavors of Puppies differ, but one thing they’re not is anti-diverse — there are women, people of various colors, gays (like me), religious, atheists, and on and on. The one thing they have in common is that they oppose elevating political correctness above quality of writing, originality, and story in science fiction. Many of the award winners in recent years have been lesser works elevated only because they satisfied a group of progressives who want their science fiction to reflect their desired future of group identity and victim-based politics. For them, it is part of their battle to tear down bad old patriarchy, to bury the old and bring themselves to the forefront of culture (and incidentally make a living being activists in fiction.) These people are often called “Social Justice Warriors” – they shore up their own fragile identities by thinking of themselves as noble warriors for social justice. Amy Wallace places herself with them by portraying the issues as a battle between racist, sexist white men and everyone else.
She then goes on to give some space to Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, and Vox Day (Ted Beale). While her reporting about them is reasonably truthful, they report that she promised to interview Sarah Hoyt (who ruins the narrative as a female Puppy) but did not do so, and left out material from other interviews that did not support her slant. Tsk!
The piece is very long, but written from a position of assumed moral superiority and elite groupthink, a long fall from classic Wired‘s iconoclastic reporting. It’s sad when a quality brand goes downhill — as a longtime subscriber, I’ve noticed the magazine has grown thinner in the last year as ad revenues declined and competition from upstarts like Fast Company ate into their market. Now they are me-tooing major controversies for clicks. Once you see this dishonesty in reporting, you should never view such sources as reliable again.
(14) Sometimes I suspect AI stands for “artificial ignorance.”
File770 insiders insist Portuguese == Latino. Yo, mental midgets: take that up with the US Government.
— finger chomper (@sadrbtpuppies) November 2, 2015
If the programmer of this tweet-generating robot was literate, they could easily discover that the words Portugal and Portuguese are not even mentioned in this U.S. Census definition of “Hispanic or Latino.”
(15) “The Original Star Wars Trilogy Gets An Awesome Force Awakens-Style Trailer” via Geek Tyrant.
I’d warn that there are too many spoilers, except you’ve already seen the original trilogy how many times?
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Mark-kitteh, Will R., JJ, Trey Palmer, Francis Hamit, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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I guess you might think that I’m dissing the Goodreads Choice Awards, but I’m not. Their mission is emphatically NOT to identify the Best Novel of the year. It is, and I quote, “to reflect what you and your friends are really reading.”
regardless of what has sailed where, if you can’t name which other works getting a single nomination are better and explain why, you don’t have a point.
You know, I didn’t think it was possible for your comments to get any stupider than they were, and then you went and proved me wrong. Is there no bottom to your idiocy?
The point is not this book or that book got a lot of nominations, the point is that different awards are different, which is the point that has gone sailing over your head through this entire thread.
Not only that, you didn’t even do enough research to realize that your numbers are wrong. Lock In, for example, was on the Campbell long list and was on the Locus Award short list. If we are excluding only those things that didn’t get nominated elsewhere, how do you eliminate it? The Mirror Empire was on the Locus Award short list. On what basis do you exclude it? Even using your own stated metric, you’re a failure.
Echopraxia was only on the Campbell long list, should we exclude it as clearly not being one of the best science fiction novels of the year because it was only nominated for one award?
More stupidity. The voting was called out like this:
Okay, so there was no ‘there’ there. At least I know for sure now, but damn, that’s disappointing.
I obviously said the metric I just jury-rigged from combining two Chaos Horizons data sets a little while ago wasn’t perfect, and I specifically cited the fact that it missed Echopraxia, which I’ve discussed in the past. If you want to argue that Lock In and/or The Mirror Empire are better, please do. Then we’d be having a conversation.
Hampus, the “massively popular, fan-voted book awards”? So you agree with the puppies? It’s a popularity contest?
Brian Z:
Always the same with you. When caught out in the wrong, you try to change the subject.
If you want to argue that Lock In and/or The Mirror Empire are better, please do
They are far, far better. After all, they got on the Hugo long list and appeared on the Locus short list, and Echopraxia did neither. Just using your metric here.
Given that we’ve conclusively established that Echopraxia was a lousy book based on the fact that it only got on a single long list, you can stop mentioning it forever.
Hampus, go read all the rest of the marketing crap on that Amazon-owned website. Decide if you honestly think all that canned cheerleading about “the best books” and “agonize and pick your favorite” and “what your friends are really reading” and “how are you supposed to pick just one” and “tear your hair out trying to choose” is remotely equivalent to what the six-decades-and-running fan-owned-and-operated award of the unincorporated literary society means when it says “best novel.” If you do that and you honestly still think you are right, come back and tell me, and I promise to think about your perspective carefully. OK?
So Aaron, what you are saying is you can’t think of a single reason why either Lock In or The Mirror Empire should be considered among the best novels of the year.
Reminder for The Peripheral – I was deliberately framing my comments to go with the assumption that it was a great book, but there were a couple of people here who said they had read it but it didn’t do it for them as a Hugo nominee option. Only the ones who said they didn’t like Gibson enough to prioritise his books seem to be getting referred to now, but if people who did read it were not always that impressed – and I think we’re at three in favour and two not so it’s pretty even if at a very small sample size – that would significantly impact the chances of reaching the longlist. And is also a valid opinion. People are allowed to dislike the book.
Brian Z:
Bl.a, bl.a, bl.a. Again, Lock In came second place for a award. And you think it is obvious that it shouldn’t even be placed on a long list. And you say that an award out to select the BEST book is not out to select the best book.
It think I’ve read enough of your trolling. You are as dishonest as usual. Filter on again.
Hampus, that was a serious offer. It’s still good if you change your mind.
@Lis To one of your points, for me, it’s the Hugos specifically, because I’ve always thought of them as the awards that “caught” the really good stuff even when the establishment didn’t. There’s no shortage of lists out there in the world. There is a growing shortage of good hivemind mechanisms (partly because there’s more stuff than ever to sort through). I’m not looking for perfection, which I recognize is not possible. It just looks like a very big mismatch to me. At the very least, I’m trying to understand how my tastes are so out of step with something that in the past always seemed to match up pretty well for me. I don’t think it’s puppy stuff…because I don’t care at all for most of what seems to matter for them (and the two books I’ve mentioned specifically, Peripheral and Annihilation, weren’t hugely affected by the puppies). So I’m trying to learn about what it is. I’ve read an awful lot here in the past (wow) seven months now, and I’m still kind of in the dark.
I’m not trying to be difficult (I couldn’t beat some of the other players at that game, that’s for sure). I’m actually just trying, doggedly, perhaps, to understand.
On October 20, my latest dayjob anthology (NB: I do not represent my day job here in any fashion) Hanzai Japan was released. It was reviewed in Locus, SF Signal, and several other places. There’s also been some Twitter/Facebook chatter about it.
The two stories that keep coming up are Carrie Vaughn’s “The Girl Who Loved Shonen Knife” and Yumeaki Hirayama “Monologue of a Universal Transverse Mercator Projection.” Vaughn is even very famous and has read her story at conventions and made sure copies of the antho were in the dealer’s room, and Hirayama certainly checks off some “diversity boxes.”
So, they’re gonna be Hugo nominees, right? Longlisted at least? I sure hope so, but likely not. There are other factors in play, and unless every Hugo voter has perfect information about every book and story and related work in the field (and beyond the field—there’s plenty of SF/F of sorts in the mystery and Fic/Lit sections of the bookstore) someone will go away unsatisfied. The reliability of awards cannot be measured by it getting it “right” every time, but by getting it right enough times (and wrong enough times) to remain interesting.
Will R, “The Girl With All The Gifts” had buzz, had enthusiasm, my friends raved about it, and was the best book I read too late to nominate.
It didn’t ping the Hugo radar either. I loved it. I probably would not have loved The Peripheral, because (as stated pages ago in this thread) Gibson bores me.
So both of us had a book we loved, probably without overlap (I don’t know if you liked or read TGWATG. You might hate it! And that’s fine. Your kink is not my kink and that’s okay.) that didn’t show up on the Hugo ballot.
So which one of us is run-of-the-mill-fan-ier? Who got failed by the Hugos more? We both didn’t see a fave on there. I’ll go to the mat that my book was awesome. You likely would for yours, too.
But at the end of the day, a popular vote is a popular vote. There is no breath of conspiracy or logrolling that I’ve ever heard to keep my book from making the long list. I can look unflinchingly at the fact that not enough voters liked or read my book, go “Bah! Philistines!” and then get on with my life.
It seems like there’s some reason you aren’t able to do that, and I’m puzzled by what it is. Is this really the very first time your tastes haven’t fallen in line with the crowd?
@Brian Z
I’ve been following this conversation in the comments (I really wish the File 770 script worked for comments as well) and you are tossing out pure bullshit, Brian. Please stop.
As it happens, I read Echopraxia and liked it, but it simply wasn’t as good as Ancillary Sword and Lock In. Nothing against Peter Watts–I loved Blindsight–but this particular book isn’t his best. Apparently many other people felt this way as well, which is why it made only the one best-of list. Either way, it would be nice if you stopped bitching about it.
I would have classed Gibson as science fiction establishment! (But my partner wouldn’t, so even in the nerdy microcosm that is my household there’s 50/50 disagreement…)
@Nick Mamatas
I’m glad you mentioned the anthology though, because (since I have yet to add Locus to my regular reading list even though I really, really should) I hadn’t heard about it yet and it sounds right up my street.
Wil:
I agree that the Hugos have historically caught really good stuff when other lists haven’t. I disagree with the “the” in your quote, though. The “the” implies that they Hugos catch ALL of the good stuff, and they can’t, really. There will always be, and no doubt always has been, wonderful stuff that the Hugo voters a) didn’t notice, or b) didn’t like.
A work that you loveloveloved didn’t make it onto the longlist this year. That’s understandably very frustrating for you. But there are lots of reasons why that could have happened, all helped along by the fact that the “longlist” was effectively a lot shorter this year than it ever has been before due to Puppy shenanigans.
And sometimes, for whatever reason, even under ideal conditions, books that we thought were the greatest thing since bacon sandwiches simply don’t click with other people, including the people you think should really love it. Look at me and “Bold as Love”, for one recent example.
So there are a lot of reasons your favorite book may not have made it onto the longlist, including but not limited to:
[Note: The word “love” below is shorthand for “thought it was worthy, in their opinion, to be on the Hugo ballot”]
A: People who read it
1) Enough people who read it simply didn’t love it it.
2) People who read it and loved it but forgot to put it on their ballot.
3) People who read it and loved it, but loved 5 or more other books more.
B: People who didn’t read it
1) People who never even heard about it
2) People who heard about it and wanted to read it but simply ran out of time before they read it
3) People who heard about it but had bounced off enough of the author’s older work to make it a low priority on their to-read list
4) People who heard about it and might well have read it but their library didn’t have a copy (at all, or when they came in, whichever)
C) Puppy shenanigans
1) The shortlist and longlist were actually effectively slightly shorter because of books that most of us are pretty sure wouldn’t have made the ballot (*cough*The Dark Between the Stars *cough*) taking up space
2) If Puppy nominators had nominated their own personal taste instead of sacrificing parts or all of their ballots to their Puppy overlords will, we have no actual idea what different works would have made it to the longlist. Or even the shortlist.
If you went by this blog’s readership, you’d think that Hodgell’s God Stalk must have made the Hugo shortlist in 1983. It didn’t. I looked for the longlist on the web, but didn’t find it; it’s possible our own Michael Walsh has a copy somewhere, though. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, or much disappointed, if it had failed to make the longlist. (Of course, I’d be quite pleased if it had, though!) Even though far fewer SFF novels were being published back in 1982 than were published in 2014.
Because, while the Hugos have been historically very good about finding and pointing out excellent work, a) they can’t find everything, and b) they sometimes find duds. Because humans.
I’ve not read the book you’re so disappointed didn’t make the longlist. It might be a truly awe-inspiring work of genius, or it might simply be something that exactly fit the way your own personal brain works; I don’t know. But complaining that the Hugos are broken because they didn’t honor your favorite book, while a time-honored sport, doesn’t actually prove the Hugos as a system are broken.
Nick Mamatas, I have some thirty short stories I’ve been considering for Hugos. (I really need more novelettes and novellas on my list; I pretty much have four or five each, and that’s not enough.) So I feel your pain.
Meredith, thanks! Hope you manage to check it out and like it.
Cassy, indeed. Allow me to make things worse for you: here’s my own novelette We Never Sleep.
A frustration for me, as an occasional anthologist and frequent contributor to anthologies is that these days the stories can feel “trapped” in print. (It’s why I put “We Never Sleep” online after its print publication.) With web-publishing, a URL can be propagated rapidly and for free by writers and fans. It’s harder to get the critical mass of either readers or critics to read a whole book of short fiction, and even then they won’t necessarily converge on recommending a single story as best for awards. Some awards at least have an anthology category, but I always find it peculiar when there is no overlap on the nominee lists between the story and the anthology categories. If the antho is so great, how come the individual stories aren’t good enough to be nominated?
@Nick Mamatas
I’d just come back to the thread because I realised I hadn’t actually said: Thank you for bringing my attention to it. 🙂
That’s well put. And the Hugos can presumably still be salvaged if we put our backs into it.
I’m planning to read Hanzai Japan and hope others do, but the short story category is a far cry from Best Novel and even a Haikasoru novel with some good reviews is just going to be easier to miss – hard to fix that.
The Watts book was an outlier for many reasons – and of course I understand why it didn’t get all the attention it deserved. I’m just saying it was a crying shame, is all.
But why was Lock In a better candidate for Best Novel than Echopraxia? Because it had an entertaining plot and Scalzi’s signature catchy dialogue? No dissing here – Scalzi’s clearly got it in him, it just wasn’t Lock In.
Also, a brief Public Service Announcement in case it might have occurred to you to go and download the Amazon Kindle Sample of the book other than The Martian that got as many votes as Scalzi as the best science fiction and fantasy novel on Goodreads: it was SAND by Hugh Howey and you don’t have to bother.
But so far Red Girls is penciled onto my ballot.
Hugo, especially recently, tends to prefer sentimentality and cleverness over harder SF. Demographic shift?
And of course there is no denying that Scalzi has a well-trained fanbase and Watts does not. Everyone is trained in some way: Haikasoru titles are in every store and are distributed by the same people who distribute Baen, Saga, etc. But people are trained to “sample” foreign SF—read one Japanese novel, and then say “Aha, I am officially well-rounded. Well, back to the Americans forever!”
Glad you like Red Girls. Several people have mentioned it to me as a Hugo fave, but it feels to me more like something that would do well with a juried award.
That explains the Watts disconnect, yes. There was plenty of sentimentality etc. in some of the other books on that alternate universe long list – though with fewer as you put it trained fan bases.
And of course, working against the theory of a demographic shift away from preference for harder SF are the thousand-odd people interested in voting for a bunch of Analog stories – so perhaps it remains to be seen how that will shake out.
Analog and Asimov’s stories were perennial contenders, but now have the print disadvantage.
I tend to be much happier when lots of award long/short/winner lists have entirely different evaluation criteria and produce results with relatively little overlap. Because there is no one best book. There is no one true set of criteria. There are only books that scratch a particular intersection of itches.
I want an award that’s highlighting books with beautiful language. I want an award that’s highlighting books with clever ideas. I want an award that’s highlighting books that expand the reader’s imagination. I want an award that’s highlighting books that are best for re-reading over and over on dark stormy evenings with a cup of cocoa when you need solace for your soul. And I want awards that highlight the “best books” for all the various “me”s that are reading (both all the “me”s in me and all the “me”s that aren’t me) who want so very much to know that they can be protagonists.
The more similar all the award lists are, the more I can be certain that none of them will represent the best books for me.
And I say again, everyone has years like that with the Hugos. Everyone. Some years, you absolutely love something that Hugo voters as a whole didn’t love. Or the Hugo voters as a whole absolutely love something that you think is just embarrassing. It remains a source of wonder and amazement to me that the rather awful Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon made the 1997 Hugo short list, when much better books she’s written didn’t.
The fact that The Peripheral didn’t make the Hugo long list, much less the short list, means exactly nothing except that this year, on this book, your tastes happen to be different from the majority of Hugo voters. Or more to the point, Hugo nominators.
Each and every one of us has experienced this in the past.
You will experience it again, though hopefully not too often.
Bear in mind that the inevitability of some things getting missed is why the movie studios send out dvds of the movies they want noticed to the Oscar nominators during the Oscar nominating season. It’s not practical for publishers to do that with all eligible Hugo nominators for the books they want to be sure aren’t missed. Things will get missed. Other Hugo nominators and voters will display likes and dislikes you find incomprehensible. And will just not have read things you think should have won, some years.
Welcome to life.
That’s what I thought was interesting about the 2015 Analog nominations – there was very little drop off between the number nominating the puppy listed Analog works that were free online and the ones that were print only. Were they ALL cynical cheaters? Have a sizable fraction of the tens of thousands of actual Analog subscribers now turned out to vote?
Having said that, I’ve been reading Analog more carefully this year, and it wasn’t a terrific year.
So Aaron, what you are saying is you can’t think of a single reason why either Lock In or The Mirror Empire should be considered among the best novels of the year.
There are plenty of reasons, the primary ones being that they are both really good books that tell really good genre fiction stories. The fact that they were both Locus short list stories, Hugo long list stories, and Lock In was a Campbell nominee is a reflection of that quality. Using a silly “they only got nominated for this one thing” metric (which was factually incorrect to begin with) is a stupid way to evaluate books.
But then again, stupidity is what we’ve all come to expect from you. That and dishonesty.
What does it mean to tell a good genre fiction story? Don’t dozens if not hundreds of books accomplish that each year? So what sets Lock In and The Mirror Empire apart for you that makes you think they were the best novels published in 2014?
So, I realized that I’d missed a page of this thread, and I looked back, and found this:
Will R:
So let me get this straight. You’re upset at the Hugos and think they’re “broken” because they did exactly what you’d have done as a Hugo nominator? Read it too late to nominate it? I’m sorry, but Hugo nominators are not perfect superhuman reading machines. Unless you are one, and aren’t telling us.
Aaron:
If it helps: I’ll cede Echopraxia, which was too dense and hard and ambitiously crammed full of goodies to appeal to some tastes. OK. You win: it might have been improved with a revision aimed at improving the storytelling, while keeping all the glorious footnotes and the infodumps that double as plot points and the refusal to hold the hand of the reader by assuming you have had some physics, chemistry and biology. So I’ll give you that there is difference of opinion on Echopraxia for those reasons. I won’t budge on the other one.
Brian Z: I’ve not read Mirror Empire (it and its sequel are on my tottering pile), but I can tell you why I might well have nominated Lock In if I’d been a nominator this year. Because it knocked my socks off.
There, that was simple.
I don’t think it was the single best eligible book I read last year, though; that nod goes to Goblin Emperor.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find people for whom Lock In knocked their socks into a higher orbit than Goblin Emperor. And it’s clear that there were quite a few people for whom the sock-orbit of Three Body Problem was higher than both, even though TBP pretty much left my socks sub-orbital. As the brackets (and simple common sense) have shown us, people often don’t agree. And that’s ok. (God Stalk!)
So what sets Lock In and The Mirror Empire apart for you that makes you think they were the best novels published in 2014?
They did it better. The Mirror Empire for example, is an incredibly complex epic fantasy full of intricate politics and detailed worldbuilding that manages to still flow so well that reading it was almost effortless for me.
Brian: I understood the physics, chemistry, and biology of Echopraxia. And I really, really wanted to love it as much as I love Blindsight. But, for me, the pacing just wasn’t there, and the infodumps felt more clumsy than interesting. Also, while I cared a little about the protagonist, it just wasn’t in an o-my-god-what-happens-next sort of way. I still like it a lot, and have in fact recommended it to a few people, but I just didn’t like it enough to have nominated it, had I been a nominator this year.
Progress. Thanks. Having another detailed epic fantasy world that where the political intricacies don’t necessarily bring the story to a standstill is not a high water mark of any sort, though. There must have been some rare qualities that set it apart.
@Cally If everyone did exactly what I’d do, I’d have no reason to talk to anyone. (And it would be a very messy world with a lot of dirty coffee cups in it.)
Cally: sure. The lack of recognition for Echopraxia is a personal peeve, but I see the legitimate difference of opinion. In my view, it was ambitious and successful, but while I didn’t mind all those bursts of insane action followed by people standing around talking to each other for ages followed by more bursts of insane action, I can see why you might have. Not caring about the protagonist though – I can’t see that. My impression is that he made Bruks an old fashioned curmudgeon and perhaps a bit boring as an attempt to make him simple to relate to and throw all the posthuman characters around him into sharper relief. It worked well for me, so it is interesting that it didn’t for you.
Having another detailed epic fantasy world that where the political intricacies don’t necessarily bring the story to a standstill is not a high water mark of any sort, though.
You’re attempting to quantify the unquantifiable, which is why you sound so ridiculous. I found The Mirror Empire to simply be better than other books because when I read it, I enjoyed it more.
Why was Ancillary Sword one of the best books of the year? I also nominated it, so I think it was, but at its core it is “just” a space opera with tea and political intrigue. It was simply better than its competition.
Will R:
Ah. My least favorite part of Justice was when it sped up towards the end, and started to feel more standard-adventure-ish than the lovely, thoughtful, leisurely first long while. Just think of the shortage of porridge, right?
The thing is though, the more diverse the readership(s) and market(s) get, the more consensus tends, not towards lowest common, but average. Towards inoffensive, anyway. Which isn’t at all what I want.
I don’t think so, although kvetching is certainly a thing that communities do, in my experience. I think it also exists to share, which is different from agreeing, but companionable, nonetheless.
Would you agree that the three greatest books of 2014 were The Martian, Lock In, and Sand by Hugh Howey, because 30,000 people, 14,900 people and 14,500 people “enjoyed them more,” respectively? Do you think that Hugo voters broadly share your reactions which cannot be described in qualitative terms beyond “it made me feel good”? You must think I’m not being sincere – but I honestly don’t see what you mean when you say that something making you feel satisfied means it is best. I mean, even Julia Child liked MacDonald’s french fries, but…
Would you agree that the three greatest books of 2014 were The Martian, Lock In, and Sand by Hugh Howey, because 30,000 people, 14,900 people and 14,500 people “enjoyed them more,” respectively?
I’m saying that discounting them because of that is silly, which is what you have been doing. I’ve told you what I liked about The Mirror Empire, but apparently it doesn’t match the metric you set up in your head so you keep prattling inanely on. You sound like an old text based adventure game that expects a single response to a question and gets befuddled when anyone types anything different.
@Lis Fair enough. Thanks.
Aaron, we are so close to having a conversation, let’s try again. You’ve said it is an epic fantasy with political intricacy and the story moves along apace. Those are not bad things. But “Best Novel”? Based solely on that description, it should win “Best Airport Novel.”
Here’s the thing about Hugo nominations: Things will always be missed.
I read a fair amount. I usually read between 100 and 150 things a year between books and genre magazines. So I’ll probably read between twenty and thirty Hugo-eligible novels this year. I also want to be able to knowledgeably nominate in the short fiction categories, so I’ll read all of the issues of Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld, which means I’ll be reading thirty-eight issues, some of which are double issues. I’ll probably read a few other sources of non-fiction too. If I want to nominate in the related work category, I’ll need to read at least some books that qualify there as well. At this point, I’m probably up to somewhere over seventy things read in the year that are Hugo eligible, and I haven’t even considered reading to determine who to nominate for the Campbell or the Graphic Story category.
And I want to read some other things too – older genre fiction books that I haven’t gotten to yet, or books about history, or science, or some other nonfiction subject.
But if I only read twenty to thirty Hugo-eligible novels in the year, I’m certainly going to miss some good ones. There is simply no way any one person can make sure to read every notable genre fiction book in a year. So some books will not be on my nominating ballot, not because I thought they were bad, but because I didn’t get to them. I’m sure this happens to a lot of nominators.
Aaron, we are so close to having a conversation, let’s try again.
Let’s not.
But “Best Novel”? Based solely on that description, it should win “Best Airport Novel.”
Define the difference. Be objective.