Having finished all of the fiction nominees, I'm now basically ready to submit my votes for the Hugos. Though it occurs to me that I've actually seen two of the five movies up for "Best Dramatic Presentation," so I might Netflix the others, and check off yet another category.
At any rate, I'm sure you're all dying to know how I plan to vote, so here you go:
Best Novel
- Rainbows End Vernonr Vinge
- His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik
- Eifelheim, Michael Flynn
- Blindsight, Peter Watts
- No Award
- Glasshouse, Charles Stross
This ended up being an odd category for me. The Vinge wound up being the clear winner, in terms of both literary quality and my enjoyment of the book, but after that, it got tricky. Novik's book was a lot of fun, but it also strikes me as the sort of lightweight thing I don't like to see win awards (see also Bujold). And yet, I enjoyed it more than either Eifelheim or Blindsight, which were both clearly better books. Eifelheim gets the nod, despite fork-in-the-eye physics, because I ultimately found the fate of Flynn's aliens more affecting than the "Woe, woe!" stuff in Blindsight, which kept knocking me out of the book.
And yes, I hated Glasshouse enough to put it below No Award.
- "A Billion Eves," Robert Reed
- "Julian: A Christmas Story," Robert Charles Wilson
- "The Walls of the Universe," Paul Melko
- "Inclination," William Shunn
- "Lord Weary's Empire," Michael Swanwick
The first three here are pretty close, but I thought the Reed was the most effective of the lot. There's a big step down to the last two, and the Space Amish edge out Swanwick because while it didn't really have much of a point, at least I understood what was going on.
- "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," Geoff Ryman
- "All the Things You Are," Mike Resnick
- "The Djinn's Wife," Ian McDonald
- "Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth," Michale Flynn
- "Yellow Card Man," Paolo Bacigalupi
Ryman's story is sort of slight, but it's the best of a weak lot. The middle three are pretty close together, while "Yellow Card Man" was the least pleasant reading experience of any of the short fiction (Glasshouse was worse overall).
- "Impossible Dreams," Tim Pratt
- "Eight Episodes," Robert Reed
- "Kin," Bruce McAllister
- No Award
- "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," Neil Gaiman
- "The House Beyond Your Sky," Benjamin Rosenbaum
Pratt gets the nod over Reed because I voted for Reed in the Novella category. I'm not entirely happy with the gender politics of the ending of "Impossible Dreams," but other than that, it's kind of sweet, and "Eight Episodes" reads a bit like the explanation of the idea behind a much better story. "Kin" was pretty good, but not as good as the other two, and I kept wondering whether it had a political agenda.
"The House Beyond Your Sky" goes below "No Award" for being a saccharine piece of crap. "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" goes below "No Award" for being a gimmicky Neil Gaiman short that only got nominated because it has his name on it.
In other categories, I'll probably vote Patrick Nielsen Hayden for "Best Professional Editor (Long Form)," though Jim Baen is the clear sentimental choice. I'm tempted to put David Hartwell below "No Award," just because he seems to be personally responsible for splitting so many books in half in a really awkward manner, but that would be petty and unfair.
I've seen The Prestige and Children of Men, both of which were excellent, so I'm tempted to rent or Netflix the other three nominees, and put in a vote for "Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)," but I'm not sure I'll get to it. I have no opinion about tv shows, magazines, artists, or related books, so I'll leave those categories blank. I'll throw John Scalzi a "Best Fan Writer" vote, just because it will piss some people off, but other than that, I have no opinion in that category, either.
Finally, there's the Campbell award for "Best New Writer." This comes down to the three nominees who are in their second year of eligibility, and I've only read two of the three-- Lawrence Schoen has only written short stories. To be fair, I'll look up some of his work, and give it a shot, but at the moment, odds are good that I'll vote for Sarah Monette narrowly over Brandon Sanderson.
And that's how I'm planning to vote at the moment. Feel free to call me an idiot in the comments, or offer me large bribes to vote for your favorite fanzine.
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I read a large portion of Blindsight yesterday, and I thought it wasn't very good. The writing was very annoying (too many dramatic paragraph breaks, for example) and all of the lengthy ruminations about the nature of sentience or whatever just didn't go anywhere interesting.
The actual plot was decent enough, but the author seemed a lot more interested in the less-good parts of his book.
Wow. And here I was thinking that Vinge's mediocre book got nominated solely on name recognition and past achievement.
I'm curious, though: If you wouldn't vote for Novik's book because it's too popcorny, what "seriousness" are you seeing in Vinge? There's the singularity idea, but that's all over Stross, too. Beyond that, it seems to me (as someone who has yet to read Novik) that Novik is clearly more original and better-written.
Is it just that Vinge is writing Manly Hard SF, which is inherently less popcorny than fantasy with dragons?
Well, my attempt at trolling for a fight on the state of sf in the Peter Watts thread seems to have failed, so I'll chime in here agreeing with Kozlowski on the Vinge book. Bleah.
Out of the many things I didn't like about it, the one most relevant to "scienceblogs" was the utter irrelevance of the scientists in the novel. They weren't even accorded the dignity of being props -- as best I can tell, they never even appeared on stage.
On the other hand, I haven't read any of the other best novel nominees. The Watts sounds like it represents everything I find tedious in recent sf. Stross's attempts at cleverness grate immensely. Patrick O'Brian with dragons just tweaks me wrong. Maybe I should try Eifelheim....
I still read a fair number of books, I think, but it seems like whatever passes for "serious literature" among fandom has long passed me by.
(Insert usual disparaging remark about the "new weird" here.)
Mike: I'm curious, though: If you wouldn't vote for Novik's book because it's too popcorny, what "seriousness" are you seeing in Vinge? There's the singularity idea, but that's all over Stross, too.
I'm equally baffled as to what you and Aaron and Novak (IIRC) find so objectionable about Rainbows End. Yeah, the central idea is the Singularity, which isn't all that original even for Vinge, but here's the thing: it's the first Singularity book I've read that hasn't made me want to stab somebody with a fork. It is to Singularity fiction what Gibson's stuff is to "cyberpunk."
Aaron: Out of the many things I didn't like about it, the one most relevant to "scienceblogs" was the utter irrelevance of the scientists in the novel. They weren't even accorded the dignity of being props -- as best I can tell, they never even appeared on stage.
I'm really baffled by this.
The book wasn't about them, which is why they didn't play a bigger role. But there's nothing in the genre fiction contract that says that scientists have to be the heroes.
Returning to the Vinge/Novik comparison, I have the same problem with Novik that I do with Bujold and Dave Duncan-- there was never a second in any of the books when I thought that Laurence and Temeraire wouldn't come out on top in the end. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'll still happily buy and read whatever they write, but it keeps the books from being really great in my opinion.
(Actually, Bujold's recent romance is an exception to the "read whatever she writes" rule, but that's for an entirely different reason...)
The book wasn't about the scientists, but their actions were the engine of the plot. The entire theme of the apotheosis of synthesis completely discounts the fact that synthesizers need something to synthesize. Vinge apparently believes that the entire creative process is subsidiary to an insipid collaborative process run by twelve year olds. (Or an emergent intelligence of the secure hardware envirionment.)
Things just don't work that way. No amount of modular electronics, extreme networking, changed educational systems or whatever is going to change that.