On Our First Decade

This is a particularly special year for the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog, as it marks our tenth anniversary of sharing irreverent, iconoclastic, incendiary and often incorrect opinions about science fiction, fandom, and nerd culture.

The bloggers in question.

So much has changed over the course of 10 years. Back when we started this blog, everyone was wearing skinny jeans and button-front skirts, Taylor Swift was Shaking It Off, and some people still believed that climate change was real. Younger readers may not remember this, but way back then science fiction fandom often named important literary awards after famous racists.

When we started this project in 2015, the Hugo Awards were facing multiple crises: WSFS membership numbers were down, a politically motivated cadre tried to hijack the awards, and worst of all the movie Zardoz was not yet available on Netflix.

There were debates about how to handle the crisis, but prior to the launch of the UHBC Blog, nobody had considered writing reviews of science fiction novels and then posting those reviews to what was then still called the “world wide web.”

And how technology has changed as well! Although today, we’re all reading fanzines in the Mark Zuckerberg-memorial fanzine archive in the metaverse, when this blog was launched, most of us were visiting rough-hewn text-only web sites that could be accessed only via dial-up modems. We can still remember the buzzing noise of our Pravetz IMKO-1 personal computer as it slowly downloaded editions of Journey Planet, the villainous fanzine that quickly became our nemesis.

Early editions of this fanzine were typeset entirely in the font Jokerman, mimeographed onto Zip Discs, and then physically mailed to the server farms from which they’d be accessed. It is unfortunate that so many of these early issues of the UHBC Blog are inaccessible now because we no longer have a Zip Drive.

The past decade has had many ups and downs for the UHBC Blog, from highs such as getting nominated for a Hugo Award and interviewing such iconic figures as Billy Zane, to lows such as repeatedly losing the Hugo Award and getting sued by such iconic figures as Billy Zane for claiming to have interviewed him.

Thank you to all those who have contributed to the blog, read the blog, commented on the blog, or hurled invective at the blog. Without your help and disdain, we could never have become the definitive source for reliable factually accurate barely news and almost information about science fiction.

Here’s to 10 more great years together.

Sincerely,
Olav and Amanda (the latter under duress)

Memory Going Backwards

One of the most interesting questions in A Memory Called Empire is whether or not protagonist Mahit Dzmare will turn her back on her native Lsel Station. Will she embrace and adopt the colonial culture of the Teixcalaanli Empire?

(Image via Goodreads)

One of the elements that elevated Arkady Martine’s debut novel above many others is the depiction of Dzmare’s internal turmoil and the interplanetary politics that force the question.

This isn’t a simple decision for Dzmare; not only had she been fascinated with the colonial superpower in her formative years — she had fallen for Three Seagrass, an Imperial bureaucrat. This exploration of a cultural identity is a tender, heartbreaking, and moving series of decisions that reveal the integrity of Dzmare’s character, and perhaps Martine as an author.

For us, this was why Martine deserved the Hugo Award she received for A Memory Called Empire. But it is a source of confusion when assessing the sequel A Desolation Called Peace.

Martine is a fine writer who crafts characters you want to root for and we think readers who want to spend more time in the company of Dizmar, Seagrass, Yskandr Aghavn, and Nineteen Adze will enjoy the book thoroughly. This is a well-written, engaging space opera adventure novel.

The problem is that bringing these characters together again (and returning Mahit Dzmare to the centre of the action) requires no small degree of contrivance. Whether or not a reader finds this construction believable and satisfying will depend on how they understood the relationships in the preceding novel.

This sequel picks the action up just weeks after the end of the first book, with Mahit having returned to her home station to find that she is no longer welcome there. Meanwhile the Empire has become embroiled in a war against an unknowable and mysterious alien race. Three Seagrass strategizes to reunite with Dzmare and drag her into the front-lines of the intergalactic conflict.

Some readers might find the first 150 pages of A Desolation Called Peace serves to undo the resolution of the first book. For example, the will-they-won’t-they romance is restored to uncertainty as if the characters were in a sitcom that needed to return everything to the status quo at the end of every episode. When looking at A Desolation Called Peace through this lens, if feels as though the nuance and meaningfulness of the previous book has been diluted. The final decision that Mahit made at the end of A Memory Called Empire seemed retconned to be not so final. The heartbreaking ending of her romance with Three Seagrass is suddenly not so heartbreaking.

In the novel’s defense, some readers might find the sequel to be a deft examination of the nature of

Colonialism is toxic and has a corrosive effect on
human relationships such as the one between 
Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass. Even if there's
real affection, one cannot help but question the
dynamics of power and appropriation of culture.
(Image via History.com

freedom within the context of colonization. There continue to be strong themes about marginalization of non-mainstream cultures, the erasure of history, and the belittling of an individual’s background or past. When these themes come into conflict with the ideologies of the dominant class, the novel becomes far more interesting. This quote of Dzmare contemplating why she is angry with Three Seagrass makes this tension explicit: “She'd meant, When you understand that there's no room for me to say yes, even if I want to. She'd meant, You don't understand that there's no such thing as being free. Free to choose, or free otherwise.” Ultimately the empire doesn’t change and Dzmare’s story ends the only way it could. This left some readers wondering how the relationship with the empire and the new aliens will evolve.

It’s worth noting that some of the best parts of A Desolation Called Peace feature characters who were not present or not prominent in the previous novel: Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus and Imperial heir Eight Antidote. In these sections, the world of the Teixcalaanli seems as fresh and vibrant as it did in the first novel. The ways in which Imperial power structures and monoculture are corrosive to even those who are in positions of privilege are explored with nuance, and it is shown how internecine factionalism can tear down even those who excel within the system.

But fundamentally, the events of the second book no longer seem to be Mahit Dizmare’s story; she’s written to be the main character, but the story is no longer her own. Rather it seems like a story that was taking place in one corner of the galaxy far from anywhere that an Ambassador from Lsel Station should be. The continued focus on Dzmare seemed incongruous.

In many ways, A Desolation Called Peace succeeds: It’s engaging, sweet, often interesting, and fun. But it also has trouble connecting with and growing from the original story.

Tomorrow isn't about yesterday

For a genre that’s dedicated to the future, Science Fiction spends an awful lot of time looking in the

Published in 2011,
Ernest Cline's debut
novel isn't very good.
(Image via Goodreads)

rearview.


You can see this trend in Hollywood’s endless remakes and reboots of popular franchises. You can see it in the continuance of the Retro Hugos and from those who evangelize the works of long-dead authors. We are bombarded by it via pastiche re-writes and homages.


Fandom’s focus on the past isn’t always a bad thing – today’s works exist in dialogue with those published in the past, and certainly there’s enduring value in some of the classics. And yes, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.


However, there is a subtle – but significant – difference between genuine appreciation for works from those who wrote before us and an ugly, toxic nostalgia that displaces the creation and appreciation of new works.

Red Elf needs an editor badly.
(Image via VintageArcade)

Which brings us to Ready Player One, a book that has become emblematic of the notion that the works of the past are somehow superior to those of the present or perhaps even the future.


Ernest Cline’s 2011 debut novel tells the story of an online gamer in a dystopian future on a quest to solve the greatest online puzzle of all-time. In the world of the book, a 1980s-obsessed trillionaire has left an incalculable fortune to whoever completes a pop-culture challenge. Against this backdrop, the protagonist finds love and success amidst a cavalcade of references to Star Wars, Goonies, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future, Gremlins, Thundercats, Ghostbusters, Dungeons and Dragons, Jem & The Holograms, Snorks, and the like.


Personally, I found the book loathsome and will be forever grateful that Hugo voters did not include it on the ballot in 2012, despite the massive hype it received when published.




'member The Powers of Matthew Star?
I 'member.
(Image via Southpark.cc.com)

With the movie version of Ready Player One hitting cinemas next Friday, I’d like to explore the book’s most pernicious ideas: that everything great has already been done, that the works of the past are all better than anything new, and that everything has been downhill since some imagined golden age.

Ernest Cline spells this argument out fairly definitively in Ready Player One, as the protagonist yearns for his own imagined golden age wistfully explaining that ‘Everything good came out in the 1980s,’ and ‘Things used to be awesome, but now they're kinda terrifying.’

 As has been previously argued in this blog, all science fiction is political. And likewise, this argument that everything good has already been done is a political one, and it is a corrosive one at that. If everything good has been done, why bother creating anything new?

For people in the 2040s to be obsessed
with Family Ties would be like someone
in 2018 being obsessed with 
The Morey Amsterdam Show.
(Image via Youtube)

When people believe that everything from the past is better than anything in the present, it can lead to

apathy. When they believe that there are no new ideas worth exploring, it can kill the desire to create and contribute culturally. When they start believing that a golden age has been taken from them, they can start looking for a scapegoat.


The British statesman Aneurin Bevan aptly described fascism as the sound of the future refusing to be born, because axis leaders called upon their nations to remember a mythical past and to fight against progress.


I would suggest that there is a direct link between lapsarianism in our appreciation of literature, and this yearning for a version of the past that never really existed.

I would not suggest that Ernest Cline shares any ideology with fascists, rather that his work draws upon a similar intellectual tradition. It is to his credit that he has taken these political ideas in the direction of apathy, rather than regressive political action.


Funny thing about the movie ... I don't
remember Tracer from Overwatch
being popular back in the 1980s.
(Image via Kotaku)

It is interesting to note that the movie adaptation, while trying to offer the same primary thesis, actually negates it. By updating a number of the pop cultural references, the adaptation implicitly admits that everything progresses – even nostalgia.


The fact that nostalgia is itself a moving target also means that works whose appeal is based solely on a cavalcade of pop cultural references are unlikely to have enduring value. Imagine trying to decipher Ready Player One without being steeped in the cultural moment that produced it.


It’s long been said that the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve, this being a common age at which many people discover the genre. But I’d like to make the suggestion that the golden age of science fiction should always be the future golden age that we imagine, and aspire to build.

It's fine to look into the rearview, as long as we keep an eye on the road ahead.

Too Like The Lightning — Book Club Review

No book has divided our book club as much as Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning.



While half the group decided its inventive world building put it at the top of their ballots, the other

One of the most
ambitious novels of
2016 divided our club.
Image via Amazon.com

half ranked it below "No Award."



That being said, there was some common ground: the dense prose and awkward narration were a significant barrier to our enjoyment of the novel, and the speculation about the evolution of social dynamics was engaging and enjoyable.



The book is set in a 25th Century that has abolished all organized religions, abandoned nation states, dispensed with the family unit as we know it, and as far as is possible gotten rid of gender differences. Thus stripped of most of the root causes of conflict, the human race has known peace.



Narrated from the point of view of Mycroft, a convict serving a life sentence of community service, the story involves a theft, religious miracles, and the undermining of the checks and balances that has kept this utopian system stable for most of the previous two centuries.

Unrestrained prose poses problems

The most prominent flaws in the book — that our group almost universally had troubles with — are related to the narrative voice. Mycroft tells his story in the style of Greco-Roman personal histories, complete with interjections, dialogues with an imagined reader, and unnecessary passages in Latin. This dense prose obfuscated the larger ideas that the author was playing with.



It is an ambitious novel, but there was some debate in the group about how fully that ambition was realized.



The claims that the family unit no longer exists are undermined by the familial bonds that govern the protagonist's home life. The statements about the lack of nation states and nationalism are undermined by the geopolitics. And the repeated declarations that gender no longer exists are undermined by the narrator's obsession with gendering each person you meet.

Author Ada Palmer's career as a historian
informs and influences her writing style.
This may present some barriers to readers
who are unused to dense prose.
Photo via AdaPalmer.com

Some of our book club saw these as deliberate authorial choices in order to make a point about the immutability of human nature, but others saw it as the author not being able to follow her philosophical ideas to their logical conclusions.



Too Like The Lightning spends more time on world building than telling a story or character, perhaps because it is the first part in a four-part series. Because of this, the book drags in sections, especially when the narrator is spending full chapters on an infodump about enlightenment philosophy and how it informs 25th Century society.



Her aversion to paragraphs and tendency to overwrite simple scenes will likely feel tedious to many readers. It's clear that Palmer's day job as a historian has found a creative outlet and her fellow travellers will likely enjoy the cadence of the long passages. For many in our group, it felt contrived.

Stylistic Nostalgia

The pseudohistorical style of writing was reminiscent of Theodore Judson's excellent novels Fitzpatrick's War and The Martian General's Daughter, as well as Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo-nominated Julian Comstock. Ada Palmer has taken this style of writing to a more extreme level, but there is debate over whether she has accomplished the style as successfully as those previous works.



Despite these flaws, one member of our book club felt that Too Like The Lightning was not just the best of the Hugo nominees this year, but the best book he had read in several years. Although he stands alone in this assertion, it is clear that this is a book that will have a very strong appeal to some readers.