Author: mountainwashere

Nothing to see, move along.

2015 Arthur C. Clarke Shortlist and 2014 BSFA Winners

Hey, look, two British SF awards, both remarkably drama free. Congratulations to everyone!

–2015 Arthur C. Clarke Shortlist

  • The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey (Orbit)
  • The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (Canongate)
  • Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
  • Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (HarperVoyager)
  • The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Orbit)
  • Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (Picador)

-BSFA Awards 2014 Winners

Best Novel

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit)

Best Short Fiction

“The Honey Trap” by Ruth E. J. Booth, La Femme (Newcon Press)

Best Non-Fiction

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and the First World War by Edward James

Best Art

“The Wasp Factory” after Iain Banks by Tessa Farmer

Weekly Reading List 3/29/15-4/4/15

Hey, a non- Hugo related post!

Earnest Cline’s Ready Player One-

Audiobook, science fiction

This audiobook thing is getting to be problematic for me. I listened to all of Ready Player One in a few days- that’s twenty hours that would normally be dedicated towards reading for me, instead applied towards an audiobook. I really like audiobooks, but this is taking my total reading done to unusually low levels of books. Other than this, I only finished a short story and a graphic novel, though I did do close to a whole additional book’s worth of reading between a Borges collection and two nonfiction books. (I’m being all fancy.)

Anyhow, as far as Ready Player One goes: it was, simply speaking, one of the best novels I’ve read/listened to in quite a while. Definitely blows most of the YA out there out of the water. Wil Wheaton’s narration was also excellent. I’d assumed he’d been chosen to fit the theme of the book, especially since he was actually a very minor character in it, but his narration was excellent.

Brandon Sanderson’s Perfect State-

Short story, science fiction

One of Sanderson’s rare excursions into science fiction. It was reasonably enjoyable, and definitely a bit more risque in some ways than many Sanderson works. (Which seldom tend to be risque in the slightest.) It was fairly good, but ultimately felt entirely too short. As far as his science fiction goes, I’d say I prefer the Legion novellas.

Warren Ellis’ Trees Volume 1-

I always forget exactly how much I love Warren Ellis’ writing. For some reason he just tends to slip to the back of my mind when I’m not actually near something he’s written, yet he’s one of the best comics writers out there. Trees, despite nominally being about the invasion of massive alien structures that have been planted on Earth, then proceeded to sit there, completely unmoving, is really more about the people around them. Despite comics’ love of ensemble casts, they seldom actually flesh out the characters to the degree necessary to really earn a reader’s involvement with the cast. I blame the Justice League and the Avengers- when there is a massive super hero teamup book, the majority of the characters will already have had their own series, have visited other series, etcetera. People already have that attachment to the characters. So many comics writers, however, just think they can replicate that from the get go, and so few actually accomplish it. Warren Ellis does that here, partially thanks to the cast being split up into different locations from the get go, and partially because he’s just that good at what he does. This one is going straight in my pull.

Sad Puppy Hugo Drama- We hear from some of the nominees

At this point, I imagine nearly every Hugo nominee has something to say about the awards. By my not very scientific calculations, I’m pretty sure that far more people have rejected a Hugo nomination than is the norm. Many of the nominees were completely unaware of the Sad Puppy nomination, and are moving to distance themselves from it. Following are a selection of various statements regarding the nominations, including some from some of the lesser known categories. (Best Semiprozine and best Fanzine).

As far as the Best Novel nominees go, they’re generally avoiding the controversy-

-Jim Butcher, unsurprisingly, chose to avoid the controversy, merely posting a basic announcement. Can’t say I blame him in the slightest.

-Marko Kloos still hasn’t done much commenting beyond a retweet of a John Scalzi blog post. That being said, he does seem to have just had a family pet die, so we should probably be respectful and leave him out of our internet flame war for a bit.

-Kevin J. Anderson hasn’t commented beyond a simple tweet about the nomination.

-Ann Leckie merely thanked her fans, noted that she does not generally discuss who she votes for, and provided a link for Hugo voter registrations.

-Katherine Addison/ Sarah Monette merely noted her nomination and her excitement about it. (Her Goblin Emperor was my personal favorite this year, though I still need to read the Marko Kloos and the Kevin J. Anderson.)

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Hugo Nominees announcement and commentary (with associated Sad Puppies drama).

Edit: Someone associated with Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (awesome name) has contacted me to let me know that they weren’t even aware of the existence of Sad Puppy until AFTER their nomination, and are less than pleased about it. More on that later.

In many categories, I actually had to list off the rare selections that weren’t from the Sad Puppy slate, the Hugo Award’s first ever official political party. I should note that they’re unlikely to win many of them, since they don’t actually possess a majority- they instead exploited the fact that nominees seldom get more than a relatively small number of the votes, since there are a huge number of nominees to start with- people have different tastes, so it isn’t uncommon for there to be dozens of nominated best novels, for instance. It didn’t take that many votes for them to sweep the nominations. They claim that they’re doing it entirely on artistic merit, but since they also claim they’re doing it to fight supposed SJW conspiracies even more frequently, have a clearly organized structure, and are dedicated to voting as a bloc, I can confidently say that yes, it is political. The Hugos have always been political- it’s an award ceremony. They’re ALWAYS political. Sad Puppy, however, is the first of its kind. Frankly, I think it’s a terrible thing. I’ve tried to give them a fair shake, and I’m going to continue to do my best to do so, but I’m going to be very up front about the fact that I consider them to be both violating the spirit of the Hugos and associating with some frankly terrible people. (Well, mostly just Vox Day/Theodore Beale, professional racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/internet troll/pickup artist/Gamergate spokesman/ writer, and the only person ever kicked out of the SFWA. He highjacked their official Twitter feed to relay racist comments directed at another author.) My roommate remarked that this whole situation is very reminiscent of much of the current American political scene- his exact description was that it was a microcosm of the macrocosm, which I found rather apt. This piece outlines a course of action that I agree with pretty strongly- simply vote No Award above any piece on a political slate.

BEST NOVEL (1827 ballots)

  • Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
  • The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
  • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
  • Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos (47North)
  • Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

There are three Sad Puppies entries here- only Ancillary Sword and The Goblin Emperor are not on the list. I’m personally rooting for The Goblin Emperor- I’d be okay with Ancillary Sword winning, even though I thought that it wasn’t quite as good as Ancillary Justice (still great, though.) Skin Game was good, too- it’s a Dresden Files novel, though, and I’m a bit of a fanboy for Jim Butcher. I will, of course, read Lines of Departure and The Dark Before the Stars before making any firm decision. None of the nominated best novel authors listed on the Sad Puppy slate are a part of it, or have even provided any public commentary. Marko Kloos, however, retweeted a link to a blog post by John Scalzi that is distinctly and pointedly critical of Sad Puppies. That being said, none of the three appear to have repudiated Sad Puppies, either. In addition, Larry Correia reports to have declined a slot as a Hugo nominee, for the stated purpose of not having it be about him, and not distracting from the actual issues. Whether you think it is a classy move or a politically savvy one, it is certainly an intelligent move.

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Another year, another batch of Hugo Drama

By all accounts, this year’s Sad Puppy slate is set to sweep the Hugo Nominations, with the exception of Best Novel. We’ll find out tomorrow for sure, but it seems pretty likely. (Before we get started I should note, though it’s likely obvious, that my political leanings tie in closer to the opponents of the Sad Puppy slate. I will, however, try to minimize my jingoism here, and attempt to acknowledge and point out my biases wherever possible. This is editorial content, however, not journalistic, so keep that in mind.)

How exactly did they sweep the slates? Well, it’s a little weird, thanks to the way that Hugo Nominations and Hugo voting work, but put simply, no single work tends to get many nominations, since there are so many of them, and depending on the category, it can only take a few dozen nominations to lock something in. The Sad Puppy slate is the best organized Hugo voting bloc in existence. Actually, to be honest, they are the only formal voting bloc/ political party/ whatever you want to call it in existence, despite allegations of a monolithic SJW* voting bloc. You can find detailed explanations for how the voting system works readily enough, I’m not going to go into it in too great detail.

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