Cixin Liu

Hugo Awards and such.

Alright, copy/pasted winners list, with a little commentary from me. Long story short: The Sad and Rabid Puppy movements got their asses kicked hard in the voting (they got zero awards), but are now insisting that it’s a victory for them.

I spent the weekend of the Hugos camping in central Washington for five days on a geology trip. Gotta admit, I didn’t really worry about any of this stuff during the trip. Fun fact, folks: Real life is better than internet drama! Following this, I’ll be avoiding blogging about the Sad Puppies and all that drama- in fact, about internet drama at all.

BEST NOVEL (1827 ballots)

  • Winner: The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books)
  • 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)
  • Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

The Three Body Problem totally deserved this one. One of the best science fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. I reviewed it a while back. Props to Marko Kloos for pulling out of the race so Three Body Problem could get in- that had to be a tough decision. (Larry Correia also withdrew from the race, along with numerous other authors. Correia was the only Puppy to do so, to my knowledge.)  As for the other two Sad Puppy nominees still on the ballot, I’d be shocked if Anderson or Butcher paid much attention to the drama at all- by all accounts they both seem to be really nice, really busy guys with no time for internet drama. I feel kind of bad for them, getting caught up in something entirely out of their control.

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The 2014 Nebula Nominees have been announced!

Best Novel
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

-We’ve got a nice array of publishers here, compared to last year’s heavily dominated Tor/Orbit slate. The ones I’ve read so far are The Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Sword, and The Three-Body Problem. Perhaps not coincidentally, they’re also the ones I’m betting on as front-runners, but we’ll see after I’ve read them all. The Goblin Emperor especially is fighting an uphill battle, given how sci-fi dominated the Nebula (and Hugo) tends to be, but it’s good enough that it stands a serious chance. The Three-Body Problem is one of those rare translated books popping up on the list, and is actually the first Chinese science fiction novel translated into English. (I did a review, though due to changing financial circumstances, I’m missing out on Worldcon this year like I’d planned.) The weird thing this year, though? There is exactly one stand alone novel, and that’s The Goblin Emperor. Literally everything else is part of a series. Weird.

Best Novella

We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
“The Regular,” Ken Liu (Upgraded)
“The Mothers of Voorhisville,” Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)
Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen (NobleFusion)
“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap),” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer ’14)

– I totally read novellas last year. Totally.

Best Novelette

“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes (Tor.com 7/9/14)
“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)
“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)
“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado (Granta #129)
“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed 9/14)
“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 4/2/14)

– I think I’ve heard of one or two of these.

Best Short Story

“The Breath of War,” Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/6/14)
“When It Ends, He Catches Her,” Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction 9/26/14)
“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide,” Sarah Pinsker (F&SF 3-4/14)
“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14)
“The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5/14)

-Yeah, I don’t really read much short fiction, gotta be honest.

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Edge of Tomorrow, Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Interstellar, Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures)
The Lego Movie, Screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures)

-This one is really Birdman’s to lose. Who knows, though, this one has gone weird directions before, and will again.

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan (Random House)
Salvage, Alexandra Duncan (Greenwillow)
Love Is the Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, A.S. King (Little, Brown)
Dirty Wings, Sarah McCarry (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Greenglass House, Kate Milford (Clarion)
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, Leslye Walton (Candlewick)

-Haven’t read any of these, but then, I tend to be notably terrible at picking YA winners.

Book Review: Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu, and published by Tor, is the first Chinese science fiction novel translated into English. It is wildly popular in China, and with good reason.

The Three Body Problem bears strong resemblance to American Golden Age science fiction, especially Arthur C. Clarke, but it is a refinement of it in a completely different direction than those taken by English speaking authors. It isn’t just because it’s the product of a wholly different culture and history (though that helps), it’s that it possesses a profound sense of cynicism and pessimism regarding the universe that is wholly alien to the mentality of Golden Age science fiction, and yet somehow makes the book refreshing and new, and massively magnifies the importance of hope and optimism.

Minor spoilers ahead:

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