I had intended to write a single post covering all of the novellas on the Hugo shortlist but, well, a novella is pretty much a short novel. So I’m going to split it into a post on each.
I quite like that branch of science fiction which uses the quotidian to explore the extraordinary. But it has to be done right. Sf operates using an open mechanism: the workings of its plot are visible to the reader. Unlike in a crime novel, which must hide those workings so that the final reveal is satisfying to the reader. So for sf, the explanation for the extraordinary has to be presented up front, and then the story should show – or ramp up – the consequences.
In ‘The Erdmann Nexus’, a group of residents at an old folks’ home have been experiencing odd “events”, moments of what seems to be merged consciousness. The story hops between those involved, one of the helpers, a neurological researcher working on a project at the home, and a pair of detectives investigating the mysterious death of the helper’s legally-separated husband. The search for an explanation is led by Henry Erdmann, one of residents, a brilliant physicist who now teaches at a nearby university. It is not until the end of the novella that the reader learns what the events were and what caused them.
Unfortunately, hiding the extraordinary’s explanation, and only revealing it at the end, doesn’t work because it makes for an uninvolving narrative. And, for all its many viewpoints, ‘The Erdmann Nexus’ is pretty dull. (For an example on how to do it properly, see Ted Kosmatka’s ‘Divining Light’.)
Kress throws in a framing narrative, describing a sentient spaceship approaching Earth, but it seems entirely gratuitous. The plot certainly doesn’t require it. And the mentions of split photons, quantum entanglement and emergent complexity just obfuscate. When an author holds the explanation close to their chest, it has to be a damned impressive explanation to redeem the story. Kress’s isn’t. We’ve seen it before, in both science fiction and fantasy. In that respect, it’s not very different, truth be told, to Mike Resnick’s terrible ‘Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders’ on the novelette shortlist (see here); and not just because both feature OAP characters.
The single-note characterisation in ‘The Erdmann Nexus’ doesn’t help either – gossipy granny, bible-basher, ex-ballerina who pines for her past, blue-collar retiree out of his depth…. And detective Geraci – Kress might as well have named him Goren since he’s plainly based on Vince D’Onofrio’s character in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Kress has appeared on Hugo ballots an impressive number of times – 11 nominations and one win, according to the Locus Index to SF Awards. This should not have been one of them. I have to wonder if it was another choice driven by nostalgia….
I think I’m going to start doing this sort of thing regularly – a fortnightly run-down on the books I’ve read and the films I’ve watched. It’s sort of the blog equivalent of reality television, without having to resort to pimpage or thieving content from elsewhere.
Books: Stickleback, Ian Edginton & D’Israeli (2007), first appeared in the comic 2000AD. The title character is a Victorian crime lord, initially presented as a mystery to be investigated by half-Turkish Scotland Yard detective Inspector Valentine Bey. But it’s all a plot because Stickleback is trying to defeat the City Fathers, a druidic brotherhood which has secretly controlled London since the Dark Ages. In the second story in this volume, Stickleback is the hero – well, antihero – as he prevents some eldritch horrors from taking over the earth after they’ve stolen the last dragon’s egg. Some mysteries are left unexplained – Stickleback’s real identity, for example. Excellent stuff.
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004), I liked less than I had expected to. It was shortlisted for the Booker, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke Awards, and won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award, so I had high hopes of it. Unfortunately, I thought the sf elements were clumsily done – a post-apocalypse story written in debased English… yawn. And the transcript of an interview with an uplifted clone in a corporate near-future Korea – hardly a ground-breaking idea – which is spoiled because the clone actually speaks in purple prose. Having said that, the book’s structure of six nested stories was a neat idea, and the writing was generally very good. Unfortunately, the whole didn’t quite add up to the sum of the parts, and the links between the stories often came across as forced. A noble failure, I think.
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (2007), I was unsure about reading. I hadn’t really enjoyed his previous book, Saturday, so I wasn’t going to shell out money for his latest. But I managed to blag a copy of On Chesil Beach for nothing on bookmoch.com. And I’m glad I got it for nothing. It’s typical McEwan – well-written (and excellent in parts) – but his formula has long since lost its shine: ie, a leisurely build-up to a decision, the wrong choice is made, and the rest of the book shows the consequences of that choice. A new plot would be nice.
The Levant Trilogy, Olivia Manning (1977 – 1980), is, I think, better than The Balkan Trilogy. Admittedly, I’m interested in the period it covers – World War II in Egypt – because of the Salamander and Personal Landscape groups, two groups of poets and writers active during that time, which included Manning herself, Lawrence Durrell, Terence Tiller, Bernard Spencer, John Jarmain and Keith Douglas, among others. In this book, Guy Pringle remains mostly unsympathetic and Harriet Pringle still incapable of recognising what the people around her are really like. Sadly, the television adaptation Fortunes Of War didn’t handle this half of the story as well as it did The Balkan Trilogy – too much was missed out. The fact that the books are better should come as no real surprise. And this might well be one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865), is a book I’d never actually read as a child, although I’d picked up the story through cultural osmosis. Unfortunately, it seems to be a book you should read as a child. As an adult, I found it patronising and simplistic. Ah well. At least I can cross it off the Guardian’s 1000 Must-Read books list.
The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury (1975), is another of the books on the Guardian’s 1000 Must-Read books. Which is why I mooched a copy and read it. It took me two goes to start, and the second time I was on a coach heading for London, so I couldn’t really put it down and pick up another book… And I’m glad I forced myself to read it. It takes a while to get going, but once you’ve clicked into the narrative, it’s an excellent read. The committee meeting alone is worth the price of admission. Now I want to see the 1980 BBC television adaptation…
The Custodians, Richard Cowper (1976), is a collection of four short stories by the author of the excellent White Bird of Kinship trilogy. In fact, The Custodians includes the prequel short story, ‘Pipers at the Gates of Dawn’, for that trilogy. The other three stories are very much of their time and place – very considered British science fiction of the 1970s, with some good writing, some creaky ideas, and a mostly slow narrative pace.
Films: Show Me Love, Together, Lilja 4-Ever and A Hole in my Heart, dir. Lukas Moodysson (1998 – 2004), are all in the Lukas Moodysson Presents DVD boxed set which I bought when it was on sale. Show Me Love, a sort of Swedish Skins – misbehaving teenagers – in which the most popular girl in the year first victimises the class lesbian then falls in love with her, is good. Together – battered wife takes her kids to join her brother in his leftie peacenik vegetarian commune – is less gripping, although a more gently affectionate film. Lilja 4-Ever is the best of the four – fifteen year-old Lilja is left behind in Russia when her mother emigrates to the US. Abandoned and in desperate need of cash, she becomes a prostitute… and finds herself a new boyfriend who promises to take her to live in Sweden. When she gets there, she’s kept locked up in a flat, and escorted by a brutal minder to have sex with other men. Oksana Akinshina is superb as Lilja, and Artyom Bogucharsky is very good as her friend Volodya. A hard film to watch. A Hole in my Heart is also difficult to watch, but for different reasons. It takes place entirely in a single apartment, in which a man is making amateur porn films while his teenage son hides in his bedroom and listens to music. It’s one of those films where the director’s intentions are clear, but he’s not been entirely successful in presenting them.
City Lights, dir, Charlie Chaplin (1931), should be familiar to everyone. Chaplin’s cheeky tramp saves the life of a rich businessman, who rewards him by showing him the high life. But he does so when he’s drunk. When he sobers up, he forgets who Chaplin is. It might be eighty years old, but it’s still very funny.
Walk On Water, dir. Eytan Fox (2004), proved a surprise. A Mossad agent returns to Israel after assassinating a Hamas leader to discover his wife has committed suicide. His boss gives him an “easy” assignment while he comes to terms with his loss: he is to act as guide to a German who is visiting his kibbutzim sister. Their grandfather is a Nazi war criminal who was in South America but has recently disappeared. The Mossad agent is tasked with discovering if they know the grandfather’s location. The story doesn’t quite progress the way it seems as though it might, but never mind. A good film. And apparently inspired by a true story.
Serenity, dir. Joss Whedon (2005), was a rewatch. I was never in to Buffy, and I thought Firefly was too much “Cowboys in space” – not to mention ripping off the Traveller role-playing game – to really appeal. Even on re-watch, Serenity seems too dependent on Firefly, and while its story does explain some things about Firefly‘s universe, it still feels too much like a sequence of set scenes. Oh, and the bit where River kills all the Reavers is just silly.
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, dir, Bille August (1997), was another rewatch. One of these days I’ll have to reread the novel by Peter Høeg on which it was based. Julia Ormond manages to make the prickly Smilla a sympathetic protagonist, but the opening mystery surrounding the young boy’s fatal fall from the roof of the apartment block feels mishandled – as if something else were driving the plot, and it was just being carried along for the ride. I still like the film, though.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – the only thing I can say about this is, “Oh dear”. George Lucas must have decided that since his fanbase is greying, he needs to drag in the kiddies. Which explains some of the gloriously ill-considered mis-steps in this mess of a film. Anakin Skywalker is given a wise-cracking teenage girl as a sidekick, who manages to spend the entire film irritating the audience. The plot doesn’t make sense – rescue the (disgustingly cute) baby son of Jabba the Hutt, because the Republic needs access to the Hutt’s trade routes. Eh? A minor gangster on a backwater world suddenly controls half the galaxy? And so the Republic decides to send a single Jedi, plus teenage girl, to effect a rescue? It’s not so much that Lucas jumps the shark in this, as if he’s running the 400 metres hurdles over sharks. Definitely a film to avoid.
So that was LX, the 60th British science fiction Eastercon. It took place over the Easter weekend in Bradford. I enjoyed it a great deal more than the previous year’s Eastercon.
I arrived in Bradford around three p.m., and checked into my hotel, the Hilton. The actual con hotel was the Cedar Court Hotel, but this had very few rooms, so most of us attending LX were scattered in other hotels about the city. This proved less than ideal. The Bradford Hilton is a nice hotel, although I spent the entire weekend having to call down to reception for someone to come and open my door since my keycard would never work. By the end of the con, housekeeping knew me quite well, and even the maintenance engineer was greeting me by name when we met in the corridor.
LX laid on a free coach to carry attendees between the hotels. It was supposed to run every thirty minutes, but failed to maintain the schedule. It also didn’t run during the afternoon. So most people ended up using taxis if they needed to return to the hotel in which they were staying. Since the last coach left at midnight, I usually caught it, rather than stay in the bar until the small hours and get a taxi back. I don’t think I missed much, since a lot of others did the same.
As usual I didn’t attend many programme items. I’d intended to, but could never quite work up the enthusiasm. One I did attend was “Classics That Aren’t” on the Friday night. I had to – I was moderating it. On the panel were Rog Peyton, Kev McVeigh and Chris Hill. It went better than I expected. The room was surprisingly full, and afterwards I was told it had been “entertaining”. Rog Peyton wanted to bin the entire oeuvre of Philip K Dick, Kev McVeigh picked Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and Chris Hill went for ER Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros. Also mentioned were Isaac Asimov, alternate history, Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Dune, and Tolkien.
I also went to the NewCon Press launch for Eric Brown’s Starship Fall, a sequel to his Starship Summer; The Beloved of My Beloved by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia; and The Gift of Joy, a collection by Ian Whates. I bought signed copies of each of the books.
The BSFA Awards Ceremony on the Saturday evening was entertainingly emceed by Paul J McAuley and Kim Newman. McAuley’s Arthur C Clarke impression probably has to be heard to be believed. Somewhat embarrassingly, Guest of Honour Tim Powers mispronounced Ken MacLeod’s name when announcing the winner of the best novel award.
For the record, the winners were:
Best artwork: Andy Bigwood, for the cover of Subterfuge
I’d sooner McAuley had won the short story award, but The Night Sessions was my first choice for best novel. Congrats all round.
After the awards ceremony, Eric Brown led a group of some fifteen of us to the Kashmir. He claimed this was the best curry house in Bradford. It was certainly the cheapest. Getting back to the Cedar Court Hotel, however, proved easier said than done, and we walked a fair distance before finding a taxi company. One of the perils of hosting cons in hotels outside city centres….
Sunday was a repeat of Saturday – bimbling about the dealers’ room, and sitting in the bar and chatting to friends. It was a quieter day as some had only attended the con on the Saturday. I sat through half of the programme item on Iron Sky, a Finnish film about Nazis on the Moon. But the room was very warm, and after twenty minutes of reading subtitles, I was nodding off. The film-makers are raising capital by selling “War Bonds” for €50, which includes a DVD containing two documentaries on the making of the film. It was these documentaries which were shown at LX.
That evening was the launch party for Ricardo Pinto’s The Third God, the long-awaited final book in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy. Ricardo had said beforehand he was nervous and didn’t know what to say – it was the first time he’d done this sort of thing. In the event, he gave a very honest and informative talk for thirty or so minutes on what writing the trilogy had meant to him. I bought a copy and got it signed. (Incidentally, why is The Third God not available from Amazon? Have Transworld pissed them off or something?)
The Cedar Court Hotel was a good venue, although one of the bars tended to clog up with people and make access to the dealers’ room difficult. And the dealers’ room itself wasn’t that large. But the beer was cheap, and the hotel laid on cheap food for much of the day. It’s the first con I can recall where finding something to eat – other than nasty bar sandwiches – was easy.
Cons, of course, are about the people. It was good to catch up with friends, and meet some online friends in the flesh for the first time. And meet new people too, of course. Several people I only saw in passing and never quite caught up with again. Sorry. There were many conversations – some serious, some not so serious. Highlights included Roy Gray and his “disco shower”, Tony Ballantyne and his “step numbers”, Eric Brown telling us about forgotten sf writer Herb Sage, discussing story ideas with Mike Cobley….
In the coach heading for the Cedar Court one morning, I overheard someone mention that they’d been attending Eastercons for twenty years. And it struck me that I wasn’t far off doing the same. My first con was Mexicon 3 in Nottingham in 1989, and my first Eastercon was the following year: Eastcon in Liverpool in 1990. Which is a bit scary. But I certainly plan to keep on going to them.
Back in January of this year, the Guardian published a list of “1000 Must-Read Novels“, split over seven categories. The Science Fiction & Fantasy list went around the blogosphere, with bloggers marking off those books they’d read and those books they owned but had yet to read. I decided at the time that there were several books mentioned – in all of the categories – that I wouldn’t mind reading.
So I’ve been picking them up and reading in amongst my normal reading. And tracking my progress. As below.
“tbr” is those books I own but have not read. The figures are from the beginning of each quarter – Q1 on publication of the list, Q2 1 April, Q3 1 July, and Q4 1 October. If I restricted my reading to books on the list, I’m sure I’d have made more of a dent – but I didn’t want to do that.
Asimov’s have finally put their Hugo nominated story and novellas on their web site. So here’s my thoughts on:
‘From Babel’s Fallen Glory We Fled’, Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008) An interesting story. I can’t decide if it’s taking the piss or a little bit lazy. The meta-fictional framing feels like an afterthought, and the typographical tricks for the alien’s speech feel like Swanwick is having a sly laugh at his readers. There are some nice ideas in the story, but it feels too thin a treatment, as if it should have been longer and more detailed. It’s a great deal better than Resnick’s story, and not as inconsequential as the Kowal, but the Chiang and Johnson still have it beat.
As four of the five novellas are now available, I’ll work my way through those. It might take a while – they’re the longest of the “short” lengths, as long as an old-style novel in fact. Sadly, the missing novella is the one I really wanted to read. For the record, the shortlist is as follows:
Incidentally, a point of order. Mike Resnick’s ‘Article of Faith’ was first published in Postscripts #15 in September 2008. According to the Hugo shortlist, it was published in Jim Baen’s Universe in October 2008. But that would be a reprint. At the very least, the Hugo committee should correctly attribute the magazine in which the story was first published.
The Tar-Aiym Krang is hardly classic sf by anyone’s definition. But I vaguely recall enjoying it and its three sequels when I read them back in my late teens. And it was unlikely I’d ever get around to trying them again unless I bunged the first book on a reading challenge list. The same, of course, was also true for Vance’s Star King… and that pretty much cured me of wanting to reread the rest of the series (see here).
So, The Tar-Aiym Krang. First published in 1972, this was Foster’s first novel as well as the first book in his popular Flinx & Pip series of, at present, fourteen novels. Flinx is an orphaned young man of (mostly) good character, but dubious morals and profession, in the city of Drallar on the world of Moth; Pip is his minidrag, a flying poisonous reptile. Flinx is also a little bit telepathic, and Pip is empathic.
Flinx stumbles across a mugging and is forced to intervene when Pip attacks one of the muggers. Both the victim and the two muggers end up dead, and Flinx finds a map clutched in the victim’s fist. He takes it. Shortly afterwards he agrees to guide a human and a thranx, Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex, around Drallar, and is present when they visit the home of wealthy merchant, Malaika. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex want Malaika to finance an expedition to recover a legendary alien artefact. The Tar-Aiym had once ruled part of the galaxy some 500,000 years earlier. And then abruptly disappeared. Legend had it they’d met a race who blocked their expansion, and the biological weapon they developed to destroy this race backfired and wiped out themselves as well. However, the Tar-Aiym were also working on another project, the Krang, which is either a weapon or a musical instrument. No one knows. It could be both, like a bagpipe….
The Tar-Aiym Krang is a straightforward quest. Flinx joins Tse-Mallory, Truzenzuzex, Malaika and assorted spear-carriers on their hunt for the Krang. They have adventures. Unfortunately, it’s crude stuff. The writing tries for flavour but fails. The characters in Draller talk in some sort of cod-historical accent which just looks silly. When Flinx is onboard Malaika’s ship, he helpfully asks questions on everything from space travel to galactic history, resulting in great info-dumps of background. The characterisation relies on stereotype – Flinx is every artful dodger who has ever appeared in fiction, and a little bit too good to be plausible. The other characters are… roles. To be fair, this was a first novel and it’s thirty-seven years old, but it certainly compares unfavourably with first sf novels of the twenty-first century.
I said earlier that I had vague memories of enjoying The Tar-Aiym Krang and its three sequels – Orphan Star, The End of the Matter and Bloodhype. I also have on my book-shelves Flinx in Flux, a later sequel written when Foster returned to Flinx & Pip eleven years after The End of the Matter. (Bloodhype was actually written second, although its story is chronologically last of the four.) I seem to recall not being very impressed with it. Certainly I never bothered trying the nine other books in the series….
Ah well, another book I fondly remember proves not to be not very good without the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia. Looks like I’ll be taking The Tar-Aiym Krang and its sequels off my books-shelves.
I was planning to read and write about the novellas on this year’s Hugo shortlist. But only two of the five are currently available online, so there isn’t much point at this time. Asimov’s are being a bit crap for some reason – the Swanwick is still unavailable, as are two of the novellas. Of the novelettes which were originally published in Asimov’s, one has been posted online because it’s on the Nebula shortlist, another is on the author’s web site, and the third only appears to be up as a sample of the magazine’s 2009 contents….
I suppose I could have a go at the other Hugo categories. But I’ve not read any of the Best Related Books, nor the Best Graphic Story.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form…. I have seen The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Iron Man and WALL-E, but not listened to METAtropolis. I’d sooner the Hugo went to something that was, well, you know, science fiction or fantasy. Not a superhero film. So that means WALL-E, I suppose; which I thought quite good, if a little inconsequential. Were there no good genre films in 2008? Apparently yes – see Jonathan McAlmont’s “Alternative Hugos for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form” on Blasphemous Geometries.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form…. Don’t watch Lost, not seen season 4 of Battlestar Galactica (I’ll wait for the DVD), not much of a Whedon fan so I gave the Dr Horrible thingymabob a miss… and then there are the two Dr Who episodes. I remember the two-parter ‘Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead’ having some good bits but being somewhat over-egged. ‘Turn Left’ was, I thought, better. Both were probably the best stories of series 4.
; The Beloved of My Beloved by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia; and The Gift of Joy, a collection by Ian Whates. I bought signed copies of each of the books.
, the long-awaited final book in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy. Ricardo had said beforehand he was nervous and didn’t know what to say – it was the first time he’d done this sort of thing. In the event, he gave a very honest and informative talk for thirty or so minutes on what writing the trilogy had meant to him. I bought a copy and got it signed. (Incidentally, why is 
is hardly classic sf by anyone’s definition. But I vaguely recall enjoying it and its three sequels when I read them back in my late teens. And it was unlikely I’d ever get around to trying them again unless I bunged the first book on a reading challenge list. The same, of course, was also true for Vance’s 
… and that pretty much cured me of wanting to reread the rest of the series (see 
, 
and 
. I also have on my book-shelves 
, a later sequel written when Foster returned to Flinx & Pip eleven years after 
, 
, 
and 
, but not listened to 
thingymabob a miss… and then there are the two 
It Doesn't Have To Be Right... 