Open Discussion — What's worth considering for the ballot in 2020?

The following list will be updated over the next few months as we read, watch, and listen to Hugo-eligible works for 2020. These are not necessarily what we plan to nominate, but rather works that at least one member of the Edmonton Hugo Book Club has enjoyed and believes to be worth consideration. We appreciate any additional suggestions in the comments.

Items that are controversial amongst our club are marked with an asterisk (*)

(List last updated on February 28, 2020). 

Novel
The Light Brigade — Kameron Hurley
Future Of Another Timeline — Annalee Newitz

The Ruin Of Kings* — Jenn Lyons

Lent — Jo Walton*
Famous Men Who Never Lived — K Chess
Stealing Worlds — Karl Schroeder*
Magic For Liars — Sarah Gailey*

Novella
Unauthorized Bread — Cory Doctorow
Waterlines — Suzanne Palmer
At The Fall — Alec Nevala-Lee
This Is How You Lose The Time War — Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Vigilance — Robert Jackson Bennett
The Work Of Wolves — Tegan Moore

Novelette
Emergency Skin — N.K. Jemisin

Short Story
Articulated Restraint — Mary Robinette Kowal
Any Way The Wind Blows — Seanan McGuire
Miles and Miles and Miles — Andrew Romine
A Place to Stand On — Marie Vibbert
Shucked — Sam J. Miller

Series
Wormwood Trilogy — Tade Thompson

John W. Campbell Jr.  Astounding Award For Best New Writer
Sean Grigsby

Best Related Work
Op-Eds From The Future — Susan Fowler
The Pleasant Profession Of Robert A. Heinlein — Farrah Mendelson
The Dark Fantastic — Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Becoming Superman — J. Michael Straczynski
The Worlds of Ursula K. le Guin — Arwen Curry

Best Professional Artist

Will Staehle 

Dramatic Presentation - Long Form

Captive State — Written and directed by Rupert Wyatt
Fast Color — Written and directed by Julia Hart
Years & Years — Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Simon Cellan Jones and Lisa Mulcahy
Prospect — Written and directed by Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell [Eligible in 2020 due to WSFS motion]
The Colour Out Of Space — Directed by Richard Stanley

Dramatic Presentation - Short Form

Counterpart Season 2, Episode 6, "Twin Cities" — Written and directed by Justin Marks
The Magicians Season 4, Episode 13, "The Seam"  

Good Omens, Season 1, Episode 3, Written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, directed by Douglas Mackinnon
Watchmen Season 1, Episode 1 "It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice," Written by Damon Lindelof, directed by Nicole Kassell

Graphic Story
Invisible Kingdom — G. Willow Wilson & Christian Ward
Coda — Simon Spurrier & Matias Bergara
The Archangels of Vinea — Roger LeLoup
Wasted Space — Michael Moreci & Hayden Sherman
Outer Darkness — Afu Chan & John Layman
Beasts of Burden: The Presence Of Others — Evan Dorkin &

Semiprozine
Black Nerd Problems
Galactic Journey

Fanzine
Nerds Of A Feather

Fancast

Androids & Assets

New Books In Science Fiction
Skiffy & Fanty

Fan Artist

Richard Man
Iain J. Clark

Fan Writer

Paul Weimer
Paul Fraser
Cora Buhlert

Adri Joy
Jim Harris
Alasdair Stuart
Olav Rokne & Amanda Wakaruk (co-authors of Labour Unions In SF blog posts)
Charles Payseur
Chris Barclay

Will Staehle and the joy of minimalism

While the Law of Parsimony (aka Occam’s razor aka “the simplest solution is often best”) isn’t a

Will Staehle designs
minimalist covers that
convey a lot with clean
lines and balanced art.

(Image via Amazon.com)

perfect analogy for the joy that can found from a simple, elegant piece of artwork, it’s what got us thinking about the highly technical and complex nature of visual arts that are admired by most science fiction fans.

At least, that’s what a review of the past 30 years of works by Hugo-shortlisted artists indicates. For example, it would be hard to describe the efforts of Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, Julie Dillon, Donato Giancola or Michael Whelan (to name a few) as simple or lacking in detail.

This is not to throw shade on any of these artists (whose work we admire), but rather to note that pretty much universally, the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist category has a bias towards complexity. This unfortunately seems to crowd out certain other styles of art, particularly the work of artists who deftly convey meaning with minimalist constructions.

A prime example is the fact that Will Staehle has yet to receive so much as a nomination, despite more than a dozen years creating lucid book covers for an impressive list of of high-profile science fiction authors including Annalee Newitz, Michael Crichton, Sarah Gailey, Terry Goodkind, Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen King, Sam J. Miller, Ernest
Cline, and more. Both Robert Jackson Bennett and Adam Christopher have called Staehle’s work ‘genius.’ Cory Doctorow has praised him as ‘brilliant.’

Staehle has become the
go-to guy for several
big-name authors.
(Image via Amazon.com)

But unlike those working in more ornate – and occasionally rococo – styles that seem to dominate the Hugo Awards, Staehle hews towards the minimalist. He often works in high-contrast blocks of colour that all fall within a select palette – sometimes employing as few as two or three hues. Communicating effectively through art is a high skill, regardless of the piece’s complexity.

Consider the cover for Cory Doctorow’s new four-story collection Radicalized, which takes Staehle’s iconographic approach to its current apotheosis. Creating an iconic representation of themes in each of the stories, he creates a memorable image unassailable in its simplicity and refinement. Staehle’s produced new covers for all of Doctorow’s novels, including an ingenious die-cut dust-jacket for the hardcover of Walkaway (a design which works best if you are looking at a physical copy of the book).

Possibly Staehle’s most iconic cover in recent years was his illustration for V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade Of Magic, which he has written about. Again working with a very small palette, Staehle conveys the dynamism and panache of the story in a balanced and evocative image that easily communicates both the character of the book’s protagonist Kell, and the world-hopping premise of the narrative. They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but in this case Staehle’s art is a large part of why we read it (and we’re glad we did.)

In terms of eligibility for the Hugo Awards to be presented in Dublin this summer, Staehle designed the covers to 2018 releases such as Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Boneless Mercies

(Image via Amazon.com)

by April Genevieve Tucholke, The Outsider by Stephen King, the U.S. edition of Circe by Madeline Miller, the cover of State Tectonics by Malka Older, and the cover of The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander.

Only one quarter of the way into 2019, and this year he’s already crafted covers for Radicalized by Cory Doctorow, The Institute by Stephen King, and Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey. We are almost certainly going to have him on our nominating ballots again next year.

Like all of the creative arts, interpretation and appreciation of visual art is subjective. However, it would be very difficult to deny the talent and inventiveness that Staehle brings to the elements of line, colour, space, light, and shape. We would suggest that he should receive serious consideration for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist.

A Requiem To Counterpart

Three weeks ago with very little fanfare, the finest television show you weren’t watching went off the

J.K. Simmons absolutely crushes it
playing double roles in Counterpart.
(Image via theringer.com)

air for good.

Beautifully filmed, perfectly acted, and tightly written, Counterpart was a weird alternate history spy show that never found its audience — possibly in part because it was hidden away on a channel known more for historical dramas and classic movies. One hopes that like previous gone-too-soon shows like Firefly and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Counterpart will find an afterlife as a cult classic. 

There Are Two Of Everything

The set-up for Counterpart is deceptively simple: 35 years ago, German scientists accidentally opened a doorway to a parallel universe. When they discovered this alternate world, it was exactly the same as our own, but over the subsequent decades the histories of these two worlds have diverged in unexpected and chaotic ways. 

Today, there is a bureaucratic government organization that guards the doorway and regulates the transfer of information and people between the two worlds. Our protagonist, Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) exists as a low-level, mild-mannered functionary for the organization in our universe, while his mirror universe counterpart is a deadly spy. 

Mirror universes are a frequently visited trope in science fiction television, from Star Trek to Doctor Who to Futurama. What is often lacking in these alternates is nuance — Star Trek’s mirror universe is Manichean with evil bad guys and good heroes. Counterpart revels in the grey. 

The wall between worlds allows the show runners to tell a modern-day version of the classic Berlin Wall spy story. And on its surface, this is a first-rate spy thriller that would be comparable to some of Robert Ludlum’s best work. You’ve got secret agents, double-crossings, mole hunts, and moral quandaries, all delivered with a satisfying panache. 

But Counterpart also works in other ways. Beneath the spy surface, it’s a Philip K. Dick-style science fiction story about how fragile our socially constructed understandings of self actually are. Narrative framework is employed to explore how the decisions we make don’t just affect what happens to us, they fundamentally affect who we are. 

Berlin Reflections

Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons gives what may be the finest performance of his career as the twin versions of Howard Silk, making both characters believable, relatable, and distinct from one another. Given no other clues but how Simmons is acting, it’s possible to discern Silk Prime from his mirror universe counterpart. More interestingly, one can discern how the inner workings of these two people serve different motivations. 

Beyond Simmons as Howard Silk, there’s a deep bench of acting talent. Harry Lloyd (Viserys

Emily Silk (Olivia Williams) meets
Emily Howard (Olivia Williams).
(Image via TVLine.Com)

Targaryen on Game of Thrones) plays his conflicted boss, and sells the character’s growing sense of dread. Olivia Williams is impeccable as both Silk’s wife in the regular universe, and his ex-wife in the mirror universe. In the second season, Academy Award-winner James Cromwell joins the cast.

It is also worth noting that the show has a unique — and well executed — sense of visual style. First-episode director and co-producer Morten Tyldum (who was Academy Award-nominated for The Imitation Game) uses the looming brutalist architecture of the city to create the intended sense of place (either claustrophobia or intimacy, depending on scene) while numerous symmetrical shots suggest balance.

Unlike many shows that were cancelled too soon, Counterpart was given the chance to end things properly with a series two finale that wraps up every narrative thread nicely, and to sum up the primary themes and the thesis of the series. While some viewers might find the pay-off episodes slow to materialize, the conclusion is satisfying enough to be worthy of the journey.

Having aired on February 28, 2018, Season 1 Episode 6 "Act Like You've Been Here Before" will be at the top of our Hugo Nominations Ballots this year. It is also almost certain that next year, we will be using our nominating ballots on Season 2 Episode 6, "Twin Cities.”

Having lasted only two seasons of ten episodes each, Counterpart does not take an enormous burden of time, and provides far more intellectual grist than most shows that last ten times as long.

Fleet of Knives: Pacifism Gets Its Due

Overt pacifism is often given short shrift in science fiction, so it is refreshing to see it represented by

(Image Via Amazon.com)

the House of Reclamation that is the central focus of Gareth Powell’s novel Embers of War and its recently released sequel Fleet of Knives.

The House of Reclamation, which operates like a benevolent version of the French Foreign Legion, accepts all those who wish to leave their pasts behind them in order to serve the greater good. The organization operates a network of rescue ships, and dispatches them to various crises with a humanitarian mission to save lives and provide medical support.

This mission and set-up provide an excellent framework in which to tell engaging and personal stories about characters who are atoning for past crimes. One could imagine Powell continuing to mine this premise for numerous novels, much as James White did with his superb Sector General novels.

Much like the Sector General novels, this series seems to be building and strengthening over time.

One of the aspects of the first book that we enjoyed was the way that the universe bled off the edge of the pages. Only those portions of the world that were directly important to the story were fully explained, but there was clearly enough thought given to the setting that there was room in this universe for many stories.

Many have praised Embers of War and its sequel by comparing them to Firefly. However, we think it’s more apt to compare these novels to a different cult television classic: Babylon 5, Much like J. Michael Straczynski’s masterpiece, these novels are set in the wake of a galaxy wide conflict, explore

"Some time ago, Keffer saw or
thought he saw something in hyperspace,
 a ship of some kind." — Lt. Ivanova
(Image via Babylon5.fandom.com) 

how peace is achieved, and feature elder races and ancient interstellar mysteries. In Fleet of Knives, Powell invites this comparison by directly quoting Babylon 5’s tagline “The Last Best Chance For Peace.”

If the first novel was comparable to the first season of B5, then Fleet of Knives offers the narrative bridge of the second and third seasons in which the premise is reinvented, and true dangers are revealed.

There are shadows in hyperspace, and tensions between more established and newer Human settlements. There’s also the question of who created the Marble Armada and what happened to them. Several of those tantalizing hints receive more focus in Fleet of Knives — though to say too much about this would spoil half of the fun.

The character of Trouble Dog — a sentient warship that resigned from the military — continues to be one of the real highlights of the series. Designed and bred to be efficient and task-focused, Trouble Dog’s personality does not correspond to what we would describe as a neurotypical human, and in this she reminds us somewhat of another recent popular SF creation: Murderbot.

Powell clearly knows the genre inside and out, and this deep knowledge helps the work become more than a sum of its parts.

More problematic is the narrative arc of war criminal turned poet Ona Sudak, which almost serves to undermine her character development in the previous novel. The inconsistency of Sudak’s reform and lack of self-awareness did not sit well with us. She might have better served readers if her story had ended.

That being said, the strong narrative arc, the pacing and engaging prose all add up to one heck of an adventure novel. Given our strong penchant for avoiding sequels on our Hugo ballots, we likely won’t have this work on our 2020 nominations list. However, it is almost guaranteed that we’ll be advocating strongly for this to be recognized in the series category in 2021.

Imagining the future of organized labour (part two of three)

This is the second of a three-part blog post about the historical invisibility of organized labour in science fiction, as well as recent works that address this absence. In the first part, we examined prose works published up to 1980, in this blog post we examine prose works from 1980 up to the present. A third blog post examines  science fiction television and cinema that depicts labour unions.

In December of last year, Wired magazine invited eight prominent science fiction authors to tackle an

As workplaces are changing, how workers
organize to assert rights will change also.
(Image via Bloomberg.)

interesting question: “What is the future of work?”

While many of the resulting stories explore important challenges that are likely to shape our work lives, and are well worth reading, it is interesting that none of the authors even touched on how workers organize themselves to assert their rights. There is not one mention of “unions,” nor of “solidarity” or “collective bargaining.”

But while unions and the struggle for labour rights are still significantly underrepresented within the genre, the past three decades have seen the blossoming of a small but significant school of labour-aware science fiction that is worthy of discussion.

We have been compiling a list of labour representation in science fiction, and it is obvious to us that there is a growing interest in projecting a future of organized labour. As examples, we would encourage you to read some recent works by Cory Doctorow, Alex Wells, Allen Steele, Madeline Ashby, Adam Rakunas, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Ken MacLeod.

Depictions of labour unions that appear in science fiction published over the past two decades show a significantly greater understanding of how unions operate than is evident in stories from previous decades.

We would suggest that labour awareness within science fiction is in no small part generational. The authors who wrote science fiction during the first ascendency of the genre in the 1940s and 1950s had come of age in an era of strong union power, when New Deal policies were creating an expanding middle class and mass prosperity.

During those years, it was easy to assume that broadly shared prosperity would continue into the

The University of Trantor's faculty
association almost certainly provided
good health and dental benefits.
(image via Goodreads)

future; most of the characters in the high-tech Galactic Empire of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation are middle-class, and it is only once barbarism returns to the galaxy that wealth inequality appears to rise.

But children growing up in the 1970s would learn a different set of assumptions. During those years, for America’s middle class, the future seemed to be atrophying. America was embroiled in an ugly war. The moon landings were over, income inequality had begun to increase, and the labour union movement was being systematically undermined.

This precariousness of the existence of the middle class would be reflected in the despair of cyberpunk, as well as in the activism of the Scottish socialist wave of science fiction.

As the people who read science fiction in the 1970s began writing their own science fiction in the 1980s and 1990s, labour’s reappraisal in science fiction starts to appear.

Allen Steele’s 1989 debut novel Orbital Decay is notable as being one of the earliest works in this (labour-aware) era of science fiction. It offers a depiction of construction labourers building an orbital station under hazardous conditions. While Steele’s work doesn’t delve into the political framework that has enabled this union to exist, or under what legal jurisdiction space construction might fall, his novel does explore how union protection can help ensure safer workplaces by giving workers the right to refuse unsafe work.

Slightly later, the 1996 novel Night Sky Mine by Melissa Scott is a cyberpunk work that subverts the sub-genre by showing that corporate power is not inescapable, and featuring a labour union that helps ensure fairer wages.

If stories like these were a significant departure from almost any science fiction featuring labour unions in the 1950s or 1960s, then it might also be noted that the labour movement of the 1990s and 2000s was one that had been radically transformed.

In the wake of several setbacks for labour unions — the destruction of the PATCO union in 1981, the

The air traffic controllers' strike of 1981,
and the subsequent disbanding of the
union is one of the most significant
moments in labour history. 

creation of NAFTA, the UK miners strike in 1984-85 — it became more difficult to imagine the labour movement as menacing.

At the same time, numerous labour unions were tackling internal governance and structural issues that had marginalized segments of their membership. Many labour unions found common cause with equity-seeking groups such as the women’s movement, anti-Apartheid activists, and the gay rights movement.

It is easier to write positive portrayals of labour unions when labour movements are doing more good for more people.

Cory Doctorow has been one of the leading lights of the genre’s reappraisal of the role of employment in society and the relationship between workers and employers. Tackling such subjects as employment precarity, labour mobility, and income inequality, Doctorow’s work consistently shows a strong understanding of the labour union world.

Of particular note is his 2010 novel For The Win which depicts a unionization drive amongst workers

Union organizing in the
future is a subject that
provides narrative tension.
(Image via Goodreads)

who are paid to gather resources in a World Of Warcraft-style online game. This depiction shows the necessity of worker organization in the face of capital overreach, and is informed by knowledge of the systemic flaws in traditional labour organizing.

Madeline Ashby’s novel Company Town may be better-known outside of the science fiction community than within, as it was a Canada Reads selection in 2017. Telling the story of a character who works as a labour union staff member is rare, and it provides an opportunity for Ashby to examine aspects of the labour movement that are almost never talked about — like the quotidien work of helping ensure the safety of individual members and providing employment services. Because the protagonist works for a union of sex workers, her story helps illustrate an important purpose for labour organizing in the first place: protection of the most vulnerable workers.

Such protections show up repeatedly in recent works that focus on unionization drives. Alex Wells’ 2017 debut novel Hunger Makes the Wolf and its sequel focus on mining workers on a remote world. Their attempt to tackle the corporation’s exploitative practices through union organizing builds on a depiction of management’s divide-and-conquer tactics and deftly illustrates the difficulty of dealing with corporate loyalist employees. Although the goal of empowering workers is portrayed as being difficult, Wells makes it clear that working as a collective is worthwhile and achievable.

Former Republican congressional candidate and author Lou Antonelli devoted a significant section of his 2016 novel Another Girl, Another Planet to the depiction of an labour board appeal on a Martian colony. At issue in the hearing are scope-of-work issues between a highly skilled and technically competent unionized workforce, and an employer who has used robot labour in violation of the union contract. It is shown that the union is not only in the right on legal grounds, but that there were important safety-related reasons for the scope-of-work clauses in the contract.

This depiction is particularly noteworthy because of Antonelli’s nuanced understanding of the work done by labour union representatives. Scope-of-work negotiations and labour board hearings are not as high-profile as organizing drives or work stoppages such as strikes, but they are a vital part of how union representation can promote workers’ rights.

When asked on Twitter about this subplot, Antonelli explained the positive depiction of the union, “even on a space colony, there will be practical labor issues to be addressed. A space colony isn't built by magic.”

Science fiction’s ability to imagine new social orders is one of the genre’s great strengths. But as Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek once noted, it sometimes seems easier for authors to imagine the end of the world, than it does for them to imagine alternatives to unfettered neoliberal capitalism.

Žižek’s observation may still hold some truth. But the genre is experiencing a wave of labour-aware science fiction authors that are challenging dominant ideas surrounding the nature of employment and the relationship between capital and worker. This gives us hope for the future of employment.

Retro Hugo – Best Graphic Story 1944

Last year, there were insufficient nominating ballots for the Retro Hugo – Best Graphic Story, which meant that no awards were presented. This is a shame, as there were certainly more than enough qualifying works published in 1942 that merited recognition.

In the hopes of preventing a repeat this year, we are urging you to seriously consider reading — and hopefully nominating — several first-rate graphic stories that were published in 1943.

Recommended reading:

1. Nelvana of the Northern Lights and the Ice-Beam
2. Plastic Man and The Game Of Death 
3. Tintin and the Secret Of The Unicorn
4. Wonder Woman #5 

Jack Cole’s work on Plastic Man (appearing both in Police Comics and his own comic for the first

It is impossible to overstate
Jack Cole's inventiveness.
(Image via Digital
Comic Book Museum)

time) holds up well and served as an inspiration for others. Even though there have been many comic book characters with the ability to stretch themselves, Cole embraced the artistic possibilities offered by this body shaping with a glee and creativity that has yet to be equalled.

This was a year in which Cole – possibly emboldened by getting his own dedicated Plastic Man title – started playing with text and composition in new ways. In the Game Of Death, a book dedicated to plastic adventures, Cole pushes his character’s form to new limits. His writing is also at its most quotable in this work: “If you should see a man standing on the street and reaching into the top window of a sky-scraper…that’s not astigmatism—it’s Plastic Man!…If you happen upon a gent all bent up like a pretzel…don’t dunk him…it’s Plastic Man! All this and bouncing too, you’ll see when the rubber man and his pal Woozy Winks gamble their lives in—The Game of Death.”

Plastic Man is far and away our top pick for recognition in the 1943 Retro Hugo for best Graphic Story.

Canadian black-and-white classic Nelvana of the Northern Lights continues be first-rate, despite the

Alex Raymond's final year on
Flash Gordon is one of his best.
(Image via ComicArtFans.com)

fact that the stories told that year were more standard superhero fare, rather than the more interesting Inuit-inspired tales of the preceding years. This is a book that modern readers should take a look at not only for its sharp-edged illustrations and its inventive storytelling, but also because it offers readers both the first super-powered female character and the first Indigenous superhero comic book.

The issues published in 1943 find Nelvana assuming a secret identity as an agent of the Canadian Government so that she can fight Nazis. Although more predictable than the previous stories had been, the dynamic art and solid writing makes this series worthy of consideration on your Retro Hugo ballots.

Coming off the publication of the regrettable The Shooting Star, Herge bounced back in 1943 with the publication of The Secret Of The Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure, two graphic novels that are often described as a high point of the series. Although there’s only marginal science fictional or fantastic elements (the submarines in particular), these works might be worthy of recognition.

Still written by the original creative team of William Marsden and Harry G. Peter, Wonder Woman continued to enjoy strong writing and interesting subversions of orthodoxy in 1943. The debut of Wonder Woman's arch-nemesis Doctor Psycho in Wonder Woman #5 is particularly notable as the psychic dwarf is a misogynist whose ambition is to force women out of participation in wartime employment.

Given the wartime employment of women in jobs traditionally held by men, Marston and Peter’s work captured some of the underlying tensions of this social change. This could be one of the reasons Dr. Psycho would prove to be a long-running adversary for Wonder Woman, representing toxic masculinity as a force in opposition to her feminine strength.

There are a couple of high profile contenders for recognition in the early years of comic book history

Doctor Psycho has decided
to boycott Gilette razors.
(Image via comicbookinvest.com)

that you might be surprised we haven’t mentioned yet.

With Wil Eisner in the army in 1943, The Spirit’s adventures were written and illustrated primarily by Lou Fine. These stories are unfortunately not up to the calibre that the series is known for.

And in our opinion, Captain Marvel – the most prominent superhero series of the era – had an off year. Not only was the writing less effervescent than it was in previous years, but after the appalling (but popular) “World’s Mightiest Mistake” story the previous year, the writers seemed to use the exceptionally reactionary sentiment of the age as a racism licence. Stories like “The Voodoo Show Boat,” feature broad and ugly characterizations of African Americans and other visible minorities. “The Battle At The China Wall” depicts Japanese civilians as literal monsters with pointed teeth.

Even when one accounts for American socio-political angst of 1943, with the US’s late and forced entry into the Second World War (Dec 1941) and resulting social upheaval, Captain Marvel Adventures stands out. In previous years – and in subsequent ones – these troubling elements were not as pervasive. The one highlight of the year was issue 28 of Captain Marvel Adventures, in which arch-enemy Doctor Sivana becomes governor of New York.

The Retro Hugo for Best Graphic Story is a category that has suffered neglect in past years due to the difficulty of obtaining relevant works. Thankfully, online archives such as the Digital Comic Book Museum, Comic Book Plus, and Open Culture have made many texts accessible to modern readers. It is our hope that this will lead to an informed and robust debate about these awards.

Interstelar Pastoral

Chambers’ novels have great titles.
There is a poetry to phrases like
“A Closed And Common Orbit.”
The title Record Of A Spaceborn
Few is both an evocative and
elegant label for this work.
(Image via Amazon.com)

There are few authors writing SFF today who reliably offer as many well-developed and interesting characters as Becky Chambers does.

After bursting onto the scene in 2014 with her self-published debut A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, the more focused 2017 follow-up A Closed And Common Orbit earned her a completely justifiable Hugo nod. It would not be surprising to see Record Of A Spaceborn Few receive another.

Chambers’ first two books were notable for likable, nuanced characters with the ability to provoke empathy. Her characters tend to face human-scale problems, and to have human-scale goals. In a genre that all too often loses a sense of proportion, Chambers’ work can be a breath of fresh air. 

With her latest novel, Record Of A Spaceborn Few, Chambers focuses even more closely on the quotidien, telling a series of interwoven stories about life aboard a series of spaceships that were built to house refugees from a dying Earth. 

While this “exodan fleet” had been referenced in her previous two novels, here it is more fully realized as a society and as a setting. In fact, it is so fully developed that it could be described as a main character within the story. 

The fleet is explored through several primary point-of-view characters, though it’s hard to think of any of them as ‘protagonists.’ Tessa the archivist who shows an alien visitor the ins and outs of the fleet. Sawyer the immigrant who’s trying to reconnect with his heritage and find his place. Kyp the teenager who wants to get away. 

Through slice-of-life vignettes, Chambers shows the reader how the culture of the fleet works. How food is provided. How they maintain their environment. How families are structured. How order is maintained. How people’s bodies are disposed of. 

This last provides one of the most beautiful and elegant sections of the book, as what could have been a distressing subject is shown to be part of the cycle of life aboard a closed-system space fleet that’s been adrift for centuries. 

Work, culture, social responsibility and community are the focal points of this story. What it means to grow up in this alternative society, how populations adapt to limited resources, and how we adapt to those outside our social bubble are all explored. 

This novel will not appeal to those who are seeking fast-paced action, for those looking for big super-science, or for those who seek a puzzle to be solved. One complaint that was leveled at the book was that ‘nothing happens,’ but one suspects that this may not be at odds with what Chambers was attempting to achieve. 

This book is an exploration of how people might live, and fits into a grand — but of late neglected — utopian tradition in social science fiction. 

There is intellectual grist, though little adrenaline in Record Of A Spaceborn Few … and that’s actually just fine.