We are running out of weddings! But we are at one now, so that’s alright. Congrats, Vanessa and Minh-Loc!
Here’s a thing to remember when you go to wedding out of town… Your shoes… Doh
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Getting to the big ones! As a warning, I’ll probably post my novel choices last, as I haven’t gotten close to finishing any of them, coupled with the fact that Connie Willis’ story is 1100 pages long over two books. Yikes! But I digress, and I ought to talk about the novellas. This was a mixed bag, covering many ideas. In my opinion, other than “Bellerophon”, any of them could be number one.
While both my personal favourites, “Software Objects”, and “Troika” deal with near future issues, each setting is completely removed form the other. Chiang’s story of how our attachments manifest themselves really moved me, and I felt the pain and worry of the main characters over their digients.
Troika’s mystery, wrapped with psychological elements, pulled me through right to the end. I could see the ship they used: cobbled together, slightly tatty, probes limping along and the metaphor of the ship as the state of the “Second Soviet”. The ending surprised, but satisfied me.
I enjoyed “Sultan” mainly because it featured me, or at least I could see myself in the main character. I got to go to Venus, suckers!
I found “Lady” curious, as it isn’t the type of thing I read, normally. I liked it, and the ending was very satisfying. I think it showed me that I need to branch out a bit with my reading.
“Bellerophon” annoyed me. Unless I missed something in my reading, it committed an act that throws me out of stories every time. The viewpoint character has no real connection with the rest of the people in the story, other than having worked with them for a summer forty years before the story. Plus he’s a bit thick. He gets used constantly as a “Oh let’s tell the reader what’s going on by explaining to thicko here everything that he missed by not being our friend”. Sigh.
Anyhoo, here are my choices. It’s a real shame that “Troika” isn’t linked here, as it is really worth reading.
- “Troika” by Alastair Reynolds (Godlike Machines,Science Fiction Book Club)
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean) – Read Online
- “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2010) – Read Online
- “The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s, September 2010) – Read Online (PDF)
- “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” by Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow) – Read Online
Which just goes to show: I won’t vote you higher just because you put me in your story… 😉
I’m going to BlackHat in a few weeks, and I intend to blog from there too, because it is extremely interesting, and I do not follow the tenet of things staying in Vegas…
To that end, I’ve installed a WordPress front end on my iDevice, in order to see if it’ll do all the yummy lovely goodness of my regular dashboard, or if I’ll have to use the usual interface ( which isn’t so hot on a small keyboard-hogged screen).
We’ll know after the “publish!”
Well, that worked… Good! Go technology!
This was an easy one to do, as I’d seen all but one of these by the time they announced the nominees. Easy, since three were Doctor Who episodes. I almost hadn’t though. I had The End of Time and the entire 1st Matt Smith season on my PVR, unwatched, until early April. I couldn’t let go of David Tennant, I guess. I worried that Matt Smith couldn’t possibly live up to him. OK, so he can. I ended up watching all 16 episodes (EoT + series 5 + A Christmas Carol) over the space of 3, maybe 4 days. Not a lot of sleep that week. I enjoyed all the episodes, and truly any of them could be up on this list. I’m interested to see how the voting pans out on this one. That being said, I will be putting “Fuck Me” on top, because, well, hey, that was fun to write… ;). Also, the first time I watched it, I got the song stuck in my head for about two weeks. Not good with the rug-rats running about. When I watched it again (and you can too using the link below!), it banged around up there for another couple of weeks. It’s there now, just because I’m looking at the title. Ear Worm! The Lost Thing, BTW, was my unseen short. It’s good too, but not Doctor Who good. Sorry Shaun.
- Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury, written by Rachel Bloom; directed by Paul Briganti – Watch Online
- Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,” written by Steven Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales
- Doctor Who: “A Christmas Carol,” written by Steven Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)
- Doctor Who: “Vincent and the Doctor,” written by Richard Curtis; directed by Jonny Campbell (BBC Wales)
- The Lost Thing, written by Shaun Tan; directed by Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan (Passion Pictures)
obNote: If you want to watch the others, find them yourself. I’m sure Doctor Who Season 5 is out on DVD now. I found the Lost Thing on YouTube.
The novelettes on offer this year seem to cover the trends in sci-fi lately. Understandable, since these get nominated by readers in the first place. I had read one of these before (I have a long-standing subscription to Analog) and I think it stands favorably with its competition. Leviathan won the Nebula in this category already, so I’m interested to see how it fares in the Hugos. So, here is my ranking again:
- “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)
- “Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s, December 2010)
- “The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)
- “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s, July 2010)
- “Eight Miles” by Sean McMullen (Analog, September 2010)
- Eight Miles was interesting, but I found it flawed and, more damning, it was in the same issue as Leviathan, and I have no recollection of reading it.
- Jaguar just didn’t do anything for me.
- I think if I was writing this two weeks ago when I first read (or re-read) the five stories, Emperor would be higher on the list, as it is poignant, and reminisces on golden age Martian sci-fi, but the spell didn’t last.
- Plus or Minus was taut and tense for the last half of the story, but I found the buildup overly long. If it was 2000 words shorter, I would have probably given this the number one spot.
- Which leaves me with Leviathan, which left me asking more questions when I finished it than I usual do (especially with an Analog story (no offense, Analog! As I said above, I’ve been a subscriber (on and off, I’ll admit) for the last 25 years!)). The setting was interesting, the problem was interesting, the resolution was interesting. I’ll not discuss the nuts and bolts, but as before, it’s linked above so you can read it yourself and compare your thoughts.