Best Related Work 2018

It strikes us that the shortlisted entries for the Best Related Work Hugo Award over the past decade could be roughly divided into two categories: works of community building essays and long-form works based on more academic interests.

It’s easy to find recent and meritorious examples of works from both of our categories: Kameron Hurley’s collection of essays, The Geek Feminist Revolution, is one of our favourites and Paul Kincaid’s Iain M. Banks biography is close to the platonic ideal of the second. 

High-profile exemplars from these two categories may go head-to-head on the 2019 Best Related

Robert Silverberg, Forrest J. Ackerman
and James White at the 1957 Hugo
Awards. Walton examines every
Hugo Award up to the year 2000.
(Image via Fanac.org) 

Work ballot, as we are likely to be faced with a choice between Alec Nevada-Lee’s biographical work Astounding, and Jo Walton’s Informal History of the Hugo Awards. 

Both books are deserving and both authors are well-familiar to Hugo voters. As frequent and approachable Worldcon attendees, they have reputations for being knowledgeable and supportive of the genre. 

Five Decades Of Hugos

Jo Walton, who has a long relationship with the Tor.com website, previously adapted a loose collection of blog posts into her tome What Makes This Book So Great, which was released in 2014. Her Informal History of The Hugos follows in much the same mold, collecting a series of Tor.com blog posts on every Hugo award shortlist up until the year 2000. 

An active fan, and celebrated author,
Jo Walton's knowledge of the genre
makes her Informal History of the
Hugos a joy to read.
(Image via inverse.com)

These posts are tied together with additional essays and commentary from the blog’s comments section. Luminaries of the field — such as the Nielsen-Haydens and the late, great Gardner Dozois — are in conversation with Walton as she explores what the Hugos have meant over the years. 

Walton is an unslakable bibliovore who has read deeply and widely in the genre, and her knowledge of these works is obvious. She shares a personal perspective and doesn’t shy away from value judgements. Regardless of whether or not you agree with her, her positions are presented fairly and well-argued. 

While this personal approach helps build community, it leads to curious blibliometrics. For example, the absence or presence of a book in her local library may help explain her relationship to it but does little to educate the reader about its impact outsider Walton’s home town. 

Who Goes There? 

In contrast, Harvard-educated science fiction historian and author Alec Nevala-Lee’s research offers a more academic approach to his subject matter. His comprehensive and revelatory volume Astounding seems to include references to every significant work of scholarship ever produced on the Golden Age of pulp magazines. 

The book builds a narrative about the dawn of mass-market science fiction by braiding together the

John W. Campbell at the 1968
World Science Fiction Convention
in Berkley, California.
(Image via calisphere.org)

stories of editor John W. Campbell and three of the authors he worked with: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard. 

Following them through their collaborations, their periods of prolific output and their oversized legacies, Nevala-Lee grapples with their place in the science fiction canon. 

Did I say ‘grapples?’ I meant ‘mud wrestles.’ 

Because despite the weighty research, and the complicated four-piece narrative, Nevala-Lee does a pretty good Kitty Kelly impersonation. Surprisingly approachable and enjoyable, this is the ultimate work of retro celebrity gossip for the Worldcon crowd. 

Alec Nevala-Lee weaves a
symphony in four parts out
of the intertwined stories
of Campbell, Hubbard,
Asimov and Heinlein.
(Image nevalalee.wordpress.com)

Unsurprisingly, this tempo is difficult to maintain in a biography and, by the time that Hubbard begins founding Scientology, the narrative structure of the book breaks down. It becomes more difficult for the four stories to connect, since in the late '50s and '60s, Campbell’s relationships with these three protegees was on the wane. 

We anticipate that voting for Best Related Work will be difficult this year. Both Walton and Navala-Lee offer excellent choices — choices that are difficult to compare in both purpose and style. 

Walton may be better-known (and many fans are likely still smarting over her absence from the 2015 ballot in the same category), but we suspect that some voters will dismiss a collection that has already been published as a series of blog entries. 

Nevala-Lee’s work will have ardent supporters amongst fans who have waited a long time to see someone tackle Campbell as a subject, flaws and all. However the book may not connect with the younger generation of Hugo voters who may be less aware of his impact on the genre. 

Either one of these works would be a spectacularly deserving winner of the Hugo for Best Related Work. 

New York 2140 is the book that people need to read, and that is why it deserves to win.

In what may be his crowning achievement as an author of environmental science fiction, Kim Stanley

New York is going to have to deal
with rising sea levels — Robinson
manages to make this future real
and make it hopeful.
(Image via LeftForum.Org) 

Robinson imagines a New York City submerged beneath 50 feet of ocean.

There's a scene in New York 2140 in which Franklin Garr, an investment banker at the fictional firm WaterPrice, explains his system for the valuation of intertidal real estate.

"Intertidal Property Pricing Index. ... The name itself asserted something that before had been questionable. It was still questionable, but all over this world property had already become somewhat liquefied; property now is just a claim on the yield."

This quote is at the heart of what makes New York 2140 not only the most worthy work on this year's Hugo shortlist, but possibly the most important novel published last year: It forces us to ponder questions that humanity will have to — and is starting to — grapple with, in our post-climate-change future.

In New York 2140, Robinson delves
into the social, economic and engineering
challenges that people will face in the
wake of climate change.
(Image via Inhabitat.com) 

These questions range from logistical architectural and engineering quandaries to sociopolitical tensions including the fate of climate migrants and evolving forms of communal governance. Most of all, though, author Kim Stanley Robinson tackles economic questions.

In doing so, Robinson avoids the trap of despair that pervades many other novels about climate change. He offers a vision of the future in which there are catastrophes and significant problems, but a future in which there is also hope.

The central economic question of the novel is how climate change will affect real estate. There is a looming tension between the intertidal zone -- protected from ownership by international convention -- and the places which humans have already claimed as property. If people refuse to move as the intertidal zone encroaches, how will our economic tools resolve this tension?

These questions, and the implications of Robinson’s answers, are explored in the novel through the

The Met Life building in Manhattan
acts as the narrative focus of New
York 2140.
(Image via Wikipedia)

viewpoints of eight different narrators whose lives are tied together by the Met Life building.

Each of these eight viewpoints offer differing perspectives on a New York that is emblematic of how humans might adapt to climate change. In addition to the aforementioned Garr, there’s the building superintendent Vlade, who offers insight into the engineering of post-flood buildings. Social worker Charlotte Armstrong shows how civil society organizations adapt to the changing needs of the population. And orphans Stephan and Roberto’s story explores how the poor and the downtrodden survive. Tying all these narratives together are non-diagetic inserts offering the perspective of an antediluvian New Yorker, through historical notes and assorted philosophical musings.

Informed and leavened by a variety of intellectual traditions, and liberally referencing a variety of sources such as Le Corbusier, Samuel Beckett, and Thomas Piketty, New York 2140 does what the best Hugo winners do: offer a compelling blueprint of the future.

It’s not a novel without flaws. Not all narrators appealed to all of our book club members — for some, it was the comedic moments involving Amelia, while others found Franklin Garr to be a pompous jerk. Some members found the musings about property and economics to be a little on the dry side and found the book overly long — even going so far as to suggest that these inserts are superfluous or self-indulgent.

But these flaws are largely overshadowed by Robinson’s fully-realized vision of coping with climate change. This is a future that is believable, terrifying and hopeful.

At 624 pages, New York 2140 is the longest of this year's shortlist; a weighty novel filled with weighty ideas. The Stone Sky may be the most poetic. The Collapsing Empire may be the most fun. Raven Stratagem may be the most adrenaline-fuelled. Provenance may have been the most upbeat.

But New York 2140 is the book that people need to read, and that is why it deserves to win.

(This blog post is one of two in which different members of our book club make the case for the book they think should win. The second one on The Stone Sky is at this link.) 

Beyond The Standard Palette

More than any other long-standing Hugo category, the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist has

In North America, Jean Giraud
(A.K.A. Moebius) may be
most famous for the
movie Valerian. But his work
has enormous range.
BBC aired a documentary on
his extraordinary work.
Image via Lambiek.net

often been dominated by a few big names. Just three artists account for almost half of all the Best Pro Artist Hugos awarded – Michael Whelan with 13, Frank Kelly Freas with 11 and Bob Eggleton with 8. Meanwhile, legendary science fiction artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud (1938-2012) never even received a nomination.

The most recent winner, Julie Dillon, has won three of the last four awards presented. Four of the six shortlisted artists in 2017 had previously appeared on the ballot.

This is not to diminish the work of any of those artists – Dillon was high on our ballots last year. But it does indicate that when it comes to art, our voters and nominators have tended to look at a fairly narrow pool of artists.

Jay Shaw's poster for Get Out
is one of his more high-profile
works from 2017.
(Image via Mondo.com) 

Thanks to the Internet, digital print-on-demand services, small-press
art books, alternate art posters, the availability of new artistic tools, and the fact that science fiction has gone mainstream, we are in the middle of a boom in science fiction art. Over the past decade, there have likely been more artists making science fiction art than there have ever been before. Some of the work that is flying under the radar of Hugo voters is breathtakingly imaginative, technically accomplished, and worthy of consideration.

The name Jay Shaw is probably not one that many World Science Fiction Society members will

Apparently, Predestination
directors Peter & Michael
Sperig preferred Jay Shaw's
poster for their movie over
the one that was used more
widely.
(Image via Mondo.com) 

know, but some of his work will be familiar to them. Last year’s Hugo-nominated concept album “Splendor and Misery” by Clipping featured his artwork on the cover, and the Hugo-nominated Heinlein adaptation “Predestination” had a modernist alternate poster designed by Shaw which was exhibited by the Heinlein society at Worldcon 73.

This year, Shaw upped his game with a poster for “Get Out,” an evocative and minimalist piece that created a connection between two motifs of Jordan Peele’s horror masterpiece, while his use of black and white in the design reinforces the racial commentary. He is an in-house designer at Mondo, but freelances for other organizations. This year, Shaw also designed the artwork for the board game “The Thing: Infection At Outpost 31,” based on John Carpenter’s classic 1982 movie, which is a beautifully detailed piece (despite not being a particularly great board game.) We recommend that you check out his portfolio website KingdomOfNonsense.com to view a wide range of his work and techniques, including both genre and mainstream works.

One of the 2017 alternate Potter
covers by Olly Moss parallels the
lightning bolt on Harry's forehead
to the skyline of diagonally.
(Image via Ollymoss.com)

Shaw’s colleague at Mondo, Olly Moss, is probably a bigger name in the mainstream art world. He made headlines in the New York Times in spring 2017 when his designs were selected for the poster of Disney’s “Frozen: The Broadway Musical.” Moss has focused most of his career on genre work, from depictions of Robocop riding a unicorn to well-loved alternate versions of Star Wars posters. In 2016, he was selected to do the covers for a digital re-release of all seven Harry Potter novels, each using a visual pun that encapsulated the ideas of the series. A follow up of his Harry Potter work was a 2017 series of posters based on his rejected designs. For an artist who has just turned 30, Moss has compiled a surprisingly diverse and impressive portfolio. His website Ollymoss.com showcases a variety of his iconic works, though few of his recent ones.

A more unusual artist whose work is evidently science fictional is
Vancouver sculptor Brendan Tang. As far as we are aware, no artist whose work is primarily sculptural has ever been nominated for a Hugo Award, but a good argument could be made that Tang should be the first. His recent exhibition,

Brendan Tang's mixed media sculptures
play with the tension between traditional
forms and new technologies in a clearly
science fictional way.
(Image via designtodesign.com)

which toured through the Western United States features more than 80 ceramic works that meld traditional Chinese styles with fantastic mechanical devices reminiscent of Neon Genesis Evangelion. In these works, the mechanical seems to deform the traditional, while ceramic overflows steel. They’re impressively detailed pieces that have an interesting balance to them, while playing with science fictional themes of modernity in battle with the past. Tang’s previous exhibitions have focused on video games, body modification, and the technological redefinition of identity. A fair selection of Tang’s work can be found on his website brendantang.com.

Another artist whose work marries the traditional with the contemporary is Comox First Nation artist Andy Everson.

Comox artist Andy Everson
explores contemporary indigenous
identity through pop culture.
(Image via infocusmagazine.com)

By combining traditional motifs with the characters and iconography of Star Wars, Everson explores how indigenous cultures are appropriated. The resulting work comments on the tension between cultures, and about a search for identity. His work has received national attention in Canada. His web site AndyEverson.com hasn’t been updated with his most recent work, so voters will have to seek out media coverage of his shows to be able to judge his output from 2017.

The appreciation of visual art is one of the most subjective experiences we have and, like all art forms, it is at its best when it challenges us. Art is iterative and emergent and therefore strengthened by diversity. Here’s hoping this year’s nominations for Best Professional Artist expand our horizons.

The Stone Sky is the echo of a great book

Some reviews of N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky offer ebullient praise and predict an unprecedented

The Fifth Season is a great
novel. We're less convinced
that its sequel deserves
another Hugo Award.
(Image via Goodreads)

third back-to-back Hugo win for Jemisin. While this is a fine book, it is much harder to say it is the most deserving science fiction or fantasy novel of 2017.

The first book in the series, The Fifth Season, was innovative and unique. It offered a refreshing take on science fiction and fantasy that unquestionably deserved the Hugo Award. But The Stone Sky does not stand on its own. It is good, but mostly because it is an echo of a truly great book. 

It might be more appropriate to honour N.K. Jemisin with a Best Series Hugo this year, rather than another Best Novel, because that would recognize how The Stone Sky works as part of a larger whole.

If there hadn’t been so much astonishingly good science fiction and fantasy published in 2017, we might have been rooting for N.K. Jemisin to complete her Hugo Award hat trick. But there are numerous novels at least as good.

The third book in the series picks up immediately on the conclusion of the second, and despite the brief recap those of us who hadn’t looked at The Obelisk Gate since last summer had difficulty picking up the narrative threads.

This volume is the story of a mother doing whatever it takes to save her daughter, willing to sacrifice herself and the entire planet if necessary. Over the course of the novel, we learn the origin of orogeny, roggas, stone eaters, and Guardians. Jemisin reveals the history and mystery of the world in a way entirely believable for the all-too-human motivations. This background and world building is what was most enjoyable about the book, but also what made it so dependent on the previous works.

That being said, Jemisin is in fine form as a wordsmith. This novel may be her most quotable, with

The quality of NK Jemisin's
prose is outstanding.
(Image via Wired.com)  

lines such as “For a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress,” and “If you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”

As the final book in a trilogy, The Stone Sky ramps up the tension and the stakes, and serves as a fitting conclusion to the story. It’s a good book that satisfyingly concludes the story of Essun, Nassun, and an alternate Earth.

As a trilogy, The Broken Earth’s environmental metaphors, cautionary tales of hubris, and racial allegories are powerful. And while this book reveals the history of the broken Earth and nicely wraps up the various plot lines, it retreads and develops the ideas introduced in the first two books without presenting anything groundbreaking. The metaphors are made more obvious, but not more incisive.

It seems inevitable that Hugo voters will nominate The Stone Sky, but with so many other strong novels written in 2017 it will likely not make it to the top our ballot.

Autonomous is a rich text

Despite being a debut novel, Autonomous is already enjoying a lot of Hugo buzz, helped along by the

Autonomous is jam-packed with ideas.
(Image via Den Of Geek)

prominence of its author, former io9 editor Annalee Newitz.

Set in a corporatist dystopia, the book offers twin narratives of a pharmaceutical pirate named Jack, and Paladin the robotic intellectual property police tasked with catching her. These intersecting stories allow the characters to explore various facets of a post-national libertarian North America where citizenship is commoditized, and human rights only exist for those who can afford them.

The book’s plot takes the characters to cities, provinces and territories throughout Western Canada – communities that members of our book club have called home. Newitz’s understanding of these places, their geography, and cultures is evident.

This is a rich text written with a deep understanding of the genre. Newitz’s academic background is evident in both the plausible science and the narrative construction.

There are more interesting science fictional ideas in this book than many authors choose to explore in an entire career. This is both impressive and overwhelming. It often feels like Newitz is trying to pack in more than the base plot can handle.

Saskatchwanian readers had no problem
believing that Newitz has visited
Moose Jaw and Saskatoon
(Image via TourismSaskatchewan.ca)

The productivity enhancing drug that is the core of the conflict in the book is both a plausible corporate misdeed and a logical extension of the science fictional concept of “emergent focus” Vernor Vinge introduced in A Deepness In The Sky.

The ontological malaise underpinning the character arc of Paladin is reminiscent of Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream, while also raising questions about consent. Paladin’s feelings are an invasive program that forces her to love her human handler. Some of our readers interpreted this as a metaphor for the patriarchy.

Newitz’s book almost makes some interesting arguments about intellectual property issues, and about the ways in which the rights of patent-holders are abused. Unfortunately, the basis for these ideas is not provided nor fully explored, and no alternative to the status quo is proposed.

True to the title, a main conceptual focus of the novel is to explore the ways in which sentient beings gain or lose autonomy, and to show why this matters. Newitz links the erosion of human rights to legislative negligence that unevenly granted rights to sentient robots. The result is a society that is unjust to many humans who have the same legal standing — and lack of autonomy — as most robots.

Some of our group found several relationships within the book to be problematic. The power

Corporations pushing productivity
enhancing drugs is another way in
which human autonomy is undermined
in Newitz' debut novel.

(Image by GladisAbril via Pixabay.com)

dynamic between Jack and an escaped slave was questioned, as was the age gap between Paladin (an 18 month old android) and her amorous corporate handler (an adult human). Anytime one person in a sexual relationship had less than full autonomy, we had significant qualms.

And in this way, the book prompted an exceptional amount of discussion amongst our book club. For every engaging idea the reader had to chew on, there seemed to be some flaw to dissect.

The plot structure, which alternates between Jack’s and Paladin’s points of view, may be the most fundamental challenge of the book. Most chapters seem to undermine the narrative tension of the subsequent chapter: Jack isn’t in Vancouver, so we know Paladin won’t find her there. Paladin isn’t in Saskatoon, so we know Jack’s not in danger.

Taken on their own, each of these stories are well-written, tightly plotted, and interesting. There is depth in the writing and in some of the explorations of identity, but we felt like these parallel narratives undermined each other often enough to distract the reader from the story.

Autonomous is an extraordinarily promising debut. Any book that provokes such intense — and interesting — discussions should be a strong contender for the Hugo Awards. We are looking forward to her next work.

Consider nominating The Good Place

If the arguments on Twitter are any indication, the race for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic

The Good Place has a distinctive visual
style that reinforces both the comedy
and the morality of the series.
(Image via Netflix.com) 

Presentation Short Form may be shaping up as a battle of Orville versus Star Trek: Discovery.

We suspect that these two shows will garner most of the attention in this category during both nominating and voting. Which is a shame, because 2017 has been a spectacular year for science fiction and fantasy on the small screen, and some of it might be overlooked.

The Handmaid’s Tale should garner a nomination for its eighth episode “Jezebels,” American Gods fifth episode “Lemon Scented You” is excellent, and the sixth episode of Preacher’s second season “Sokosha” deserves strong consideration.

But most of all, we hope Hugo Award voters take the time to consider The Good Place, NBC’s sleeper hit about ethics and mortality. The show deserves at least a nomination for the first season finale “Michael’s Gambit” (which is already on Netflix, if you haven’t seen it yet).

When the show premiered in late 2016, it introduced viewers to a simple non-denominational afterlife

Lava monsters, angels, demons, and the
afterlife all make The Good Place
clearly eligible for Hugo consideration.
(Image via Netflix.com)

in which there is a ‘good place’ where good people go, and a ‘bad place’ where the not-good people go. In the pilot, the protagonist Eleanor (Kristin Bell) arrives in the good place and quickly realizes that she’s only there because of a clerical mistake.

The Good Place does not fit the traditional mold for a Hugo Award show. For one thing, no half-hour sitcom has ever won — and only a couple have been nominated — for a Hugo Award. In addition, the stories are not typical fantasy adventures. The show also uses few genre conventions, although the afterlife the protagonists inhabit is clearly a fantasy setting that would qualify for nomination, even if you never saw a lava monster.

Over the course of two very short seasons, The Good Place has managed to balance fleshed-out

Is there another show on television that
can make Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian
philosophy so interesting and funny?
(Image via Critical-Theory.com)

character arcs, absurdist humour, and explorations of philosophy. In most mainstream network shows, the exploration of philosophy would probably have been limited to name-dropping Jean Paul Sartre, or Jeremy Bentham. The Good Place manages to delve into some of these thinkers’ ideas — and it never seems forced or condescending towards the viewer.

The Season 1 finale “Michael’s Gambit” aired on January 19 of this year, and it is one of the finest half-hours of television in recent memory. Ted Danson deserves to win the Emmy for best supporting actor just on the strength of his performance in that episode.

Danson shines, in part, because of the excellent casting throughout the show. In addition to Kristen Bell, who plays a foul-mouthed party girl, William Jackson Howard’s role as straight-laced ethics professor Chidi, Manny Jacinto’s portrayal of enigmatic monk Jin-Yang, and Jameela Jamil as bubbly socialite Tahani are all perfectly cast.

Over the course of just 21 episodes (to date), the show has re-invented itself, completely changed

The cast of The Good Place.
(Image via Metro.co.uk)

courses, and on multiple occasions we have thought that the show was about to jump the shark. But it sticks the landing every time.

It’s also worth noting that not only is The Good Place good (as in of high quality), The Good Place is good (as in possessed of a certain positive moral tenor). This is not a grim-and-gritty show, but one that has a genuine positivity about it, and that’s refreshing.

Given its bizarre premise, overly cerebral aspirations, and moralistic underpinnings, The Good Place could have been a hot mess. But somehow, its writers have managed to craft one of the best fantasy shows on television.

Review: The Space Between The Stars

It is a pleasure to read The Space Between The Stars, a book that manages to evoke both Earth Abides

Image via Goodreads

and Firefly.

On a simple sentence-by-sentence level, Anne Corlett’s debut is one of the best-written — and most quotable — science fiction novels in several years.

For readers with an affinity for England and Englishness, Corlett’s language will be a treat. Other might find the prose affected and the references to nineteenth and early twentieth century British values off-putting. What cannot be denied is the skill with which she writes. The author’s degrees in law and in creative writing are evidenced by the precision of her language.

The future of plagues

The story takes place across a multitude of worlds that until recently were part of an interstellar federation. This federation was prosperous but struggling to respond to the effects of overpopulation with extremely conservative and disruptive immigration policies, enabled by a strict class-based social stratification. As the narrative starts, a plague has swept across every inhabited planet, leaving few survivors. Of what were once billions, perhaps five thousand people remain.

The main protagonist Jamie, an upper class, recently divorced woman who appears to be the sole

It does seem excessively British to be
shipping fine china and a grand piano
from one side of the galaxy to the other.
(Image via CakeStandHeaven.com)

survivor on a remote world, sets out on a quest to return to Earth in the hopes of reuniting with her ex-husband. A loner by nature, Jamie struggles to balance her need for independence with the desire for community.

The story neatly marries the intellectual traditions of the British disaster novel (I.E. The Death Of Grass and The Wind From Nowhere), and the modern space opera (I.E. Long Way To A Small Angry Planet and Firefly).

Disaster novels often repudiate the comforts of modern living and laud the hardy souls who have the mettle to survive. Corlett, however, manages to magnify what has been lost by setting this novel in a materialistic utopia, with characters that feel dissipating emotional attachments to non-essential goods and instead learn to prioritize social cohesion with survivors from diverse social classes and life experiences. There is no celebration of the destruction, nor any great hero riding in to provide order and forge a new beginning.

Written with compassion

Those in our book club who have assisted people with intellectual disabilities noted that Corlett

The author, Anne Corlett has
degrees in both law and creative
writing. (Image via AnneCorlett.com)

showed some knowledge and compassion while writing about Finn, the book’s character with autism. Disaster stories’ tendency to have a token neuro-atypical character is overdone, but Corlett does it well.

This character with autism is a key part of the story, both showing Jamie slowly coming out of her shell as she begins to help Finn, and highlighting several of the book’s subtle metaphors, such as the ocean-polished shards of glass that no longer fit together as they once did.

Some readers felt the book drags in the last third, once the protagonist and the rag-tag crew of companions she’s accumulated arrive on Earth. It is unfortunate that the plot begins to strain credulity as the reader learns that one after another of Jamie’s acquaintances and family have survived the plague.

Especially dull are the sequences involving a group of historical role players intent on recreating Georgian Era fashion and mores. Annoyance with the characters tends to overshadow the obvious

The Northumberland coastline calls
to Jamie as a place of refuge.
(Image via Northumberland.com)

and important lesson of this sub-plot: a reliance on materialism and social expectations as a proxy for the pursuit of a meaningful life is a depressing reality of the human experience when basic needs are met.

Abandoning the genre

Oddly, if you were to read only the the last 100 pages, you might not notice that they are part of a science fiction novel. Corbett seem to abandon the genre entirely, as the character grapples with family history and the location in which she grew up.

Despite some excessive plot conveniences, The Space Between The Stars should receive serious awards consideration for the richness of its language, the deftness of character development, and the complexity of its metaphors.

Review: The Collapsing Empire

Given John Scalzi’s track record, high profile, and vocal fan base, it seems likely that

The awesome cover art
for the North American
edition should garner
award consideration
for Nicholas Bouvier.
(Image via Tor.com)

The Collapsing Empire will be given a fair amount of consideration on many 2018 Hugo nominators’ lists.

Based on how fun this book is at times, that consideration is probably warranted.

The novel is set in an interstellar empire tied together by limited faster-than-light traderoutes known as ‘the Flow.’ This empire — The Interdependency — has lasted for millennia because of the economic dependence of its member worlds to each other.

The key protagonists are the new Empress of the Interdependency, and the son of a scientist on a distant world whose father has spent decades discovering that the flow is going to collapse.

The overaching plot — which has some parallels to Asimov’s Foundation— is expertly constructed and well-paced. Although the characters all seemed to speak with a similar voice, their motivations were clear, and the conflicts felt natural.

Dangerous knowledge

We are certainly not the first readers to note the parallels between the problems facing The Interdependency in The Collapsing Empire and global climate change in our own world. And, similarly, it is clear that incomplete knowledge can be more dangerous than no knowledge.

In addition, one of the major plot points — that one of the rival factions in the political structure of the Interdependency has misunderstood important scientific research — is a nice reminder about the value of the peer review process.

There are wonderful ideas that leaven the story — the Emperor’s ability to speak to computer simulations of previous emperors and to learn from their experiences is a brilliant bit of imagining that allows the author to delve into the history of the Interdependency.

The problems of keeping a diverse empire together despite delays in communication are well thought through.

However, The Collapsing Empire has significant flaws. For example, there is a lack of described detail in how these ideas are communicated — palaces are ‘baroque,’ but we are offered nothing beyond that. This leads to some very spare and sparse writing which moves at a fairly fast pace, but the dearth of imagery was actually distracting at times.

Who is telling the story?

This lack of detail brings us to a major tonal issue with the storytelling in the novel. Specifically, there is dissonance between the world Scalzi has built and the voice of the narration. This is an epic imperial tale that reads like it is being shared by a high-achieving millennial.

The third-person omniscient narrator has a lot of personality — which seems very odd. The narrator sounds a lot like Scalzi’s blogging persona, speaking with breezy pop-cultural grammatical constructions. We wondered if this was a deliberate style choice.

Although The Collapsing Empire is clearly written with possible sequels in mind, there is enough of a conclusion to the narrative that it could stand on its own. That being said, we’re leery of nominating a work that is bound to receive a number of follow-ups; perhaps it is now better to wait a few years so the overall work might be considered for the new Best Series category.

While we aren’t going to complain if The Collapsing Empire makes it onto the Hugo shortlist next year, we have already read stronger works that will be placed higher on our ballots.

Company Town — The best 2016 SF novel not on the Hugo shortlist

The 2017 best novel shortlist was filled with worthwhile nominees representing diverse strains of

Our favourite SF novel
of 2016 did not get
a Hugo nomination.
(Image via Amazon.ca)

modern science fiction. From populist space adventures with hidden depths like A Closed And Common Orbit to ambitious and challenging far-future tales like Too Like The Lightning. 

It is interesting to note that the slate did not include much in the way of near-future works or grounded hard science fiction. And that’s a bit of a shame because 2016 saw the publication of one of the finest such works in recent memory. 

Madeline Ashby’s book Company Town may have escaped Hugo nomination because of its Canadian provenance, and primarily Canadian distribution. But it is a well-thought-out, nuanced thriller that should have appeal to a much wider audience. 

Set in a city built on a series of converted oil rigs off the coast of Newfoundland, Company Town is the story of Go Jung-hwa (AKA Hwa), a Korean-Canadian security worker and bodyguard who becomes caught up in a web of corporate intrigue when she is hired to protect the scion of a powerful business family. 

But that capsule plot summary does not do the author’s breadth of imagination justice. The city of New Arcadia is a character in and of itself, whose social strata, economy, citizens and culture are integral to the story. It has personality based on history and memory without leaning on nationalism or pride. 

This history of New Arcadia and the personal histories of its denizens never arrive in awkward infodumps, but are baked into the story in a natural and subtle ways. This is deft worldbuilding; enough detail to be relevant to the reader without distracting from the narrative or plot. 

As has been observed often, when the future arrives, it is unevenly distributed. In Company Town,

Given the size and growth of offshore oil rigs, its not
inconceivable that one day, they will be the size of cities.
(Image via The Motley Fool.com) 

Ashby introduces us to a world in which low-level genetic and technological augmentation has become normalized — but is class-based. We learn that some implants are cheaper and flawed, that others can be hacked.

For reasons of class and income, Hwa remains one of the few baseline humans around, having not even been cured of a serious neurological condition she was born with. 

As the book begins, Hwa is employed by the (completely legal) United Sex Workers of Canada, providing protective services to the union members. Although she quits that job fairly early in the story, her relationship to the union, and to the union members she protected provide both an anchor for her character, and a view into life in New Arcadia. This was written with evident knowledge of organized labour. 

After New Arcadia is bought out by a major corporation, Hwa goes to work for the CEO’s family. The various class strata that Hwa interacts with, and the characters that inhabit this world are well thought out, and believable. This is a book where we cared about what happened to just about everyone, and wondered what the future held for their city. 

Although this is not a cyberpunk work, Company Town is clearly part of the same intellectual tradition as Neuromancer and Snow Crash. The focus on inequality, the street-level perspectives, the body augments, and the class struggles all point to the earlier works’ influences. This is post-cyberpunk at its finest. 

No book is without its flaws, and in the case of Company Town those flaws are most evident in the conclusion. In the last 70 pages, there is an odd tonal shift and an unnecessary romantic subplot. The book seems to get less grounded and more fantastical. But even these issues are overshadowed by strong writing, engaging characters and inspired conceptual work.

If Company Town had been nominated for the Hugo Award, it would have been at the top of most of our ballots. As Canadians, we are left wondering why this book didn’t have stronger uptake. Although it failed to secure a nomination, this is a book that we suspect will have enduring value, and will be remembered as an exemplar of Canadian science fiction.

Too Many Sequels

It's worth noting that the majority of this year's Best Novel Hugo Award shortlist is comprised of books that are either the first part in a series, or the sequel to another work.

In fact, only one of the six novels on this year's shortlist (All The Birds In The Sky) is a standalone work.

This is not the first time in recent memory that the shortlist has been dominated by sequels, prequels, or works in a shared universe. But it is part of a larger trend, and it's one that worries us. 

In the 1960s, 88 per cent of the Hugo shortlist was comprised of standalone novels. From 2001 to 2010, 56 per cent of Hugo shortlisted novels were standalone works. In the first seven years of this decade, the statistic has fallen to 27 per cent (ten of the 36 novels shortlisted).

The problem with sequels

There's a place for sequels: perhaps a story has too large a scope to be contained in one volume, or perhaps the author has created a universe in which multiple ideas can be explored. Some fine

Some sequels tackle new
ideas and new conflicts.
(Image via Amazon.ca)

examples of this are Vernor Vinge's Deepness In The Sky and Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead. 

But it could be suggested that the idea of a series of templated sequels is philosophically antithetical to what Science Fiction is about, and therefore what we think the Hugos should celebrate: new ideas. 

With few exceptions, sequels are not about new ideas. By the time Lois McMaster Bujold wrote Captain Vorpatril's Alliance in 2012, was there ground left to cover in the Vorkosigan Saga that hadn't been explored in the previous dozen books?

More troubling is the fact that sequels, prequels and series make works less accessible to new readers. Anyone can pick up and read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man without feeling that they've missed something important. The same cannot be said for Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars, which is an excellent novel, but one that we have qualms about having been honoured with a Hugo because it is not accessible to new readers.

Without pointing fingers at anyone in particular, sometimes, for some authors, producing endless populist sequels can be a crutch. And these sequels will get nominations because of a small, dedicated, fervent group of fans. 

Books written as the first part in a trilogy, or a series, are more defensible as Hugo nominees, but can still have their issues - how can we judge a story that is left incomplete? If the first book in a trilogy does not stand on its own, can it still be Hugo worthy?

All awards systems have biases

One of the things that gives the Hugos legitimacy, prompts so much great discussion, and engages so many fans is how democratically the awards are run and juried. But the open and democratic system we have for the Hugos should not blind us to the structural biases of the awards, including this

In retrospect, should
Becky Chambers' self-
published debut have
made the shortlist?
(Image via Amazon.ca)

increasing bias towards sequels.

We suspect this bias exists through no ill intent, but mostly because it can take a while for readers to hear about a standalone work, or something from a new author, or a book that becomes a word-of-mouth phenomenon. So these types of works are sometimes overlooked. A good example of this is Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, which Becky Chambers self-published in 2014. We would argue that it missed the shortlist in part because it didn't reach a wide audience of Hugo Award voters until it was republished the subsequent year. 

These biases are understandable — the books we're likeliest to nominate are the ones we've read prior to the nomination deadline, and that is in turn driven by which ones we're likeliest to have run out and bought on the day they hit the shelves. 

We already know that we want the sequel to a book we've already read, and we know we're going to enjoy the latest book by our favourite author. And so the same Hugo voters will reward books by the authors they already know. This probably contributes to the fact that there hasn't been a Hugo shortlist of all first-time nominees since 1963. 

As with all biases, we're better off when we acknowledge their existence, try to mitigate their effects, and act with intentionality.

Trends in publishing

Clearly, these biases have existed since the dawn of the Hugo awards. But I suspect that trends in publishing are exacerbating the issue. 

Fewer novels are being published in mass-market paperback than in previous decades, as publishing

In my opinion, the first
book of Mission Earth
would have been a less
offensive nomination.

houses focus on the pricier (higher profit margin) trade paperbacks instead. The gap in time between hardback publication and either format of paperback has grown from an average of 12 months in the 1990s to approximately 18 months today (for those works that ever even see a paperback publication). This makes newer works purchased in book stores less accessible than in previous decades. 

And of course, publishers *like* sequels because they're easily marketable. I would wager that there are significantly more serialized and sequelized books that are hitting the shelves today than there were in previous decades. 

Compounding this trend is the rise of electronic publishing, which might have reduced costs for consumers looking to buy a new volume, but doesn't provide the same opportunity to browse bookshelves to discover new authors and new works. Although we don't have any data to back this up, we suspect that one is less likely to try out a work from a new author on a Kindle than while browsing at the local book store. It is easy, however, to choose and download a sequel. 

It's easier to be a passive consumer than it is to seek out new works. 

Where do we go from here? 

Lets be honest about it, Hugos 2018 starts right now with the books that people are reading this summer. 

If you are someone who has a ConJose membership, or if you are likely to get one in time to

Does the Fifth Season
trilogy need another
Hugo nomination?
(Image via Amazon.com)

nominate works, we would encourage you start figuring out your ballot. 

Give some thought to accessibility, to sequelitis, and to which worthy authors have *never* gotten a Hugo nod. And maybe pick up a standalone novel you might not otherwise give a chance to — try Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion or Omar El Akkad's American War. 

N.K. Jemisin's Fifth Season was a worthwhile winner last year, and most of our book club voted for it. But does the trilogy deserve getting a third book nominated for essentially a continued exploration of the same ideas? We'd suggest that the space on the 2018 Hugo ballot might be better served with an author who has yet to receive this kind of recognition.