Going Back To The Same Well

The Best Dramatic Presentation (short form) ballot seems to indicate that Hugo nominators are a group that like to go back to the same well, year after year. This year’s shortlist, in fact, may represent the nadir of this trend.

The final episode of She-Ra and the Princess of
Power earned the show its first Hugo nomination.
(Image via she-raandtheprincessesofpower.fandom.com)

Consider that between the six finalists there are representative entries from the three of the screen franchises most-often represented on Hugo ballots: Doctor Who (six wins out of 35 nominations) Star Wars (three wins out of ten nominations) and The Good Place (three wins out of six nominations). Of the entire ballot, only the She-Ra and the Princess of Power episode “Heart” represents a franchise that has never won a Hugo Award.

To be fair, many of the entries on this shortlist are excellent representatives of their respective fictional universes. “Gaugamela” from The Expanse plays with tension without descending into melodrama; an extraordinary hour of science fiction television. “The Jedi” from Mandalorian tells a mostly self-contained story exceedingly well, all while teeing up the narrative arc for the rest of the season. While not as carefully structured as the other nominated episode from Mandalorian, “The Rescue” provides the payoff that longtime fans likely want. And the funny, charming, and genuinely surprising “Fugitive of the Judoon” might be the finest episode of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who.

As has been widely noted across the Anglosphere, there has been an increasing reliance among media corporations to lean on their franchises instead of developing new content. It is simply a safer bet for movie and television executives to invest in iterations of existing intellectual property instead of trying something new. To some degree, it’s disheartening to see that at least the majority of those nominating for the short-form dramatic Hugo are reinforcing this corporate risk aversion. It might be noted that only once in the past decade has there been a Dramatic Presentation Short Form shortlist on which a majority of nominees were from franchises that had not previously won the award.

Last year there were several excellent science fiction and fantasy television shows that might have benefited from the attention offered by a Hugo nod.

The Robbie Amell post-cyberpunk comedy Upload, the oddly compelling Japanese series Alice in Borderland, Alex Garland's meticulously planned out Silicon Valley fable DEVS, and the intricate and beautiful German time travel epic Dark come to mind.

Critically acclaimed SF horror Lovecraft County
creator Misha Green was blindsided by the decision
to cancel the program. It deserved a Hugo nod, 
as well as a second season.
(Image via NBCNews.com)

The abrupt cancellations of Lovecraft County, I Am Not Okay With This, Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist and Tales From The Loop (among others) seem to indicate that even the best-reviewed original (non-franchise) content is now in constant jeopardy. If we want to enjoy a mass-media landscape that continues to produce diverse, nuanced, and engaging stories, it will take concerted collective effort to ensure that such stories thrive. Hugo nods (and Emmy nods) may not be enough to secure a place for such works, but we’d argue they are at least a part of the solution.

It is interesting to note that in the prose fiction categories, Hugo nominators have long shown an aversion to recognizing licensed franchise works. It seems that the voting public is averse to recognizing such works — even critically acclaimed, fan beloved, and bestselling works such as Diane Duane’s Star Trek novel My Enemy, My Ally, and Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars novel Heir To The Empire. This is not a complaint on our part; we are entirely supportive of this unwritten rule to avoid franchize fiction in the prose categories, but it seems odd that other Hugo categories now embrace this sort of profit-chasing multimedia universe.

This year’s short-form dramatic Hugo ballot is one of the better ones in recent memory, with works that are at least mostly enjoyable delves into established (and perhaps somewhat tired) universes. If the nominees were all we watched this year, we’d be left wishing for new worlds to explore.

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.

The Future Refusing To Be Born

There will always be a place that our unevenly distributed future reaches last.

(Image via Goodreads)

In Neil Sharpson’s excellent debut novel When The Sparrow Falls, that place is The Caspian Republic: a country founded by expatriate American and Russian bioconservative activists, whose boundaries are roughly those of present-day Azerbaijan.

While the rest of the world has embraced an almost-singularitarian future of AI-guided mass prosperity, near immortality, and widespread expansive human rights, this Caspian Republic has hewed to a quasi-religious “Humanity First” doctrine and polices the use of technology.

The reader’s guide to this setting is Agent Nikolai South, an aging detective with StaSec, one of the country’s various rival agencies devoted to maintaining ideological purity, and punishing those who try to use illegal technologies.

In a police state where ambition is often met with tragedy, South’s proclivity for keeping his head down has kept him safe. But when the agency needs someone politically reliable, yet expendable, he gets swept up into a protection detail and investigations that have implications for the entire country.

Sharpson’s prose is sparse, clear, and engaging. He ably paints a picture of a deeply flawed society, and one that is the all-too-believable result of nostalgia-driven politics and identity-driven ideology. Because the Caspian Republic’s technology is pretty much limited to what was common in North America in the 1980s, readers will be reminded of late-era Cold War spy stories.

Welsh statesman 
Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960)
once described Fascism as
"The future refusing to be born."
(Image via Wikipedia)

But while the setting may seem familiar to readers over 40, many readers will engage with it viscerally because of quotable passages like “Nominally, the currency of the Caspian Republic is the moneta, but in truth the coin of the nation was fear. Whoever could inspire fear was rich, whoever lived in fear was poor.”

One of the highlights of the book is the way in which cultural mores come into conflict between the protagonist and influences from the world outside the boundaries of the Caspian Republic, and the questions that are interrogated. Who or what deserves to have legal rights? What limits should be placed on individual action for the good of the community? To what extent should we allow technology to dictate the future of the species and the planet?

There are coincidences scattered throughout the book that do strain credulity. It is suggested at one point that this may be due to an iteration of Roko's Basilisk — a thought experiment about a future artificial intelligence so advanced it can manipulate events in our present to ensure it comes into being — but for us this thread of the novel fell flat.

Author Neil Sharpson provides
interesting insight into his novel
on an episode of Androids and Assets.
(Image via Amazon)

Likewise, it was at times difficult to believe South’s emotional journey from apathetic true believer in the national cause, to someone who sees the country’s problems and is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Not because this journey can’t happen, people can change beliefs, but because of the speed with which it happens in the novel. Over the course of two days, South becomes comfortable betraying all he has stood for his entire life.

While many reviewers have made comparisons between When The Sparrow Falls and Orwell’s 1984, we feel that those comparisons, while useful, are perhaps superficial. Although both authors begin by examining repressive government autocracies, Sharpson is far more hopeful and seems to suggest that all such regimes are unstable and will collapse under their own internal contradictions. We feel that When The Sparrow Falls is just as much in conversation with a lesser-known midcentury science fiction novel: the infamous Hugo winner They’d Rather Be Right, as it tackles similar questions of governance by algorithm.

Because the novel takes place almost entirely within the borders of the Caspian Republic, the AI-embracing rest of the world is largely ignored. The few glimpses of the mind-uploading, technocratic, utopian society are somewhat facile (though it has to be admitted that such scenes are difficult to write well). We were left with questions about whether the rest of the world is that much better than the Caspian Republic. If nothing can be done without approval of the Artificial Intelligences that guide humanity, in what way is it not a totalitarian state?

The strength of Sharpson’s prose, the fast-paced and engaging plot, and the extraordinarily interesting political dynamics of the setting make for one of the best debut novels of the year, despite some minor flaws.

Ignoring Foreign Films in 1964

This blog post is the seventh in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

There was no Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1964.

Godzilla vs. King Kong remains
one of the most successful Japanese
movies of all time. Still didn't 
earn a Hugo Award nomination.
(Image via DenOfGeek)

As had happened in the previous several years, fans had been solicited for nominations in a variety of categories including Best Dramatic Presentation. But of the 165 people who sent in nominating ballots, fewer than a dozen people offered suggestions for what should be considered in this category.

In response to the extraordinarily low number of ballots cast in the Best Dramatic Presentation category in 1961, a paragraph was added to the WSFS constitution as Section 2.1: “At the discretion of an individual convention committee, if the lack of nominations or the final votes in a specific category shows a marked lack of interest in that category on the part of the voters, the Award in that category shall be cancelled for that year.”

And for the first time in 1964, this clause was invoked by the Worldcon Committee, who called the disappointing ballot count evidence of a “total lack of interest in the category.”

But we would suggest that this ‘lack of interest’ in 1964 reflects both that it was an exceedingly mediocre year for celluloid science fiction in North America, and that the Hugo Awards remained a largely parochial award that rarely recognized works made outside of the United States or the United Kingdom.

During a 40-year stretch from 1964-2003, no foreign films were shortlisted for the Hugo Award: no nominations for Stalker, Akira, Fantastic Planet, City of the Lost Children, Solaris, Planet Of The Vampires, or for Alphaville.

In terms of the 1964 Hugo Awards, it seems a travesty that the Chechoslovakian epic Ikarie XB-1

Ikarie XB-1 is among the best science fiction movies
ever made, and far ahead of its time on many fronts
including depiction of competent women astronauts.
(Image via JanusFilms.com)

didn’t get any recognition. Loosely based on Stanisław Lem’s The Magellanic Cloud, the movie chronicles the multi-year voyage of humanity’s first expedition to Alpha Centauri. The production design by Karel Lukás is among the most influential in the history of science fiction cinema, inspiring everyone from director Stanley Kubrik to designer Matt Jeffreys to architect Eero Aarnio.

The sets built by Lukás help bring to life one of the most mature and human-focused science fiction stories on screen that had been filmed to date. Although the story starts slowly, the filmmaker builds viewer’s emotional investment in the crew and their relationships, and the payoff is excellent because it makes later moments connect.

There are numerous details that we loved about Ikarie XB-1: The non-military international crew, the belief in science, the reaching out to new civilizations in peace and friendship, the fact that the crew has women in positions of authority, the moments of philosophical musing. Combined with the high production value and the technical expertise of the editing and filmmaking, this is a stone-cold classic of science fiction.

Another notable omission from Hugo contention in 1964 was The Mouse On The Moon, an odd

One of the many shots from Ikarie XB-1 that gets
compared to Kubrik's 2001.
(Image via JanusFilms.com)

science-fictional sequel to Peter Sellers’ surprise 1959 hit The Mouse That Roared. This was a great-looking movie despite being made on a shoestring budget with only one member of the original cast returning for a second movie. Notably, the recasting included future Doctor Who companion Bernard Cribbins, Terry Thomas who received a Golden Globe nomination for the movie, and Margaret Rutherford who would go on to win an Academy Award a few months later for her performance in The V.I.P.s.

This little-remembered sequel, which depicts the fictional European micronation Grand Fenwick using their terrible wine-making skills to develop a space program to rival the Soviets and Americans, is charming.

Given its then-unknown director, lack of resources, and insane plot, the movie has all the ingredients of a flop. But inventive reuse of props and sets from other productions, breakout performances from some then C-list actors, and first-rate cinematography made this one of the most surprisingly winsome science fiction movies of the year.

The Mouse On The Moon helped propel director
Richard Lester to a longstanding collaboration 
with The Beatles, directing multiple movies
with the various members of the band.
(Image via ParkCircusFilm.com)

The movie (along with his short film The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film) helped Director Richard Lester earn the opportunity to direct The Beatles’ first movie A Hard Day’s Night.

Several more mainstream movies might also have merited some attention from the Worldcon voting membership: Roger Corman’s X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes is a well-done mad-science gone wrong parable whose narrative arc is not dissimilar from that of The Invisible Man. It’s among the best movies Corman has ever directed.

Likewise the 1963 cinematic adaptation of John Wyndam’s The Triffids is a competent and visually interesting film, though it excises the novel’s most interesting themes surrounding labour and colonialism. The result is mostly similar to a decent zombie movie.

On television, and in retrospect, the obvious major contender for a Hugo Award casts a very long shadow: the first season of Doctor Who. Revisiting these episodes with 50 years of hindsight is an eye-opening experience because within the first two serials (those that aired in 1963) you can see almost everything that made the show such an enduring classic: the sense of wonder, the dynamic between the Doctor and companions, and the engaging plots.

If we had been nominating in 1964, the serial we would have put on our ballots would be the second one The Daleks. Although that series introduced Doctor Who’s most enduring foes, the story has more in common with the 1960 movie The Time Machine than it does with later Dalek stories; the bifurcation of a race into a hideous violent species (Morlocks/Daleks) and a peaceful beautiful race (Eloi/Thals), the moralizing over the effects of global warfare. Made on less than a pittance of a budget, with barely two sets, the actors make extraordinary use of what little space they have to act.

In 1963, the best science fiction on screen was not coming from America: It was coming from Czechoslovakia, from Japan, and from England. If Hugo voters had been able to cast their nets a little more widely, they would have found some dramatic presentations worthy of a Hugo Award in 1964.

The End Of History & The Last Question

A novella that could be interpreted as a direct rebuttal to the work of Francis Fukuyama, Light Chaser

Light Chaser hits
shelves Aug. 24, 2021.
(Image via Goodreads)

is a deftly written space opera whose slender size belies the big ideas its authors are tackling.

Collaborations are tricky businesses, but Gareth Powell and Peter F. Hamilton’s work here shows that the results can produce a unique and engaging chemistry. Both of these authors are best known for tackling space opera, but Powell has usually provided more action-heavy fare while Hamilton has gone for vast sweeping epics. Light Chaser is an interesting balance of both of their strengths.

Set in a distant future where a human diaspora has populated millions of planets across the universe, the novella follows a near immortal traveler Amahle whose task is to document, collate, and share the memories and experiences of those living in these worlds. After working on this task for millennia, Amahle’s memory of her own experiences has faded, providing an interesting point of reflection on the role of the cultural archivist.

The worlds she visits are disparate but stable. Some could be described as high-tech civilizations, while others are immiserated medieval monarchies. What all these societies have in common, however, is that they are stable and unchanging. Humanity has hit a steady state; this is the ‘End of History.’

One of the nicely used tools for worldbuilding employed by the authors is Amahle’s collection of work experiences. By allowing her to vicariously live the memories of a few inhabitants of civilizations she visits, the reader is provided an ethnographic glimpse of the civilization instead of a summative infodump.

As her travels progress, Amahle starts to receive coded messages from a mysterious sender in her past… and starts piecing together the fact that her AI companion on these voyages may have ulterior motives. At moments, this may remind readers of the 2010 Hugo-winning movie Moon.

Capitalist eschatology
reached its apex in 1992.
(Image via Amazon)

Be forewarned: the ending that may be undermined by the narrative structure of the novella. For example, the book starts at the end of the plot and even five pages in, the reader already knows that the protagonist will sacrifice herself and her partner in order to kill an ancient and evil force. So it doesn’t come as much surprise when the reader learns that this ancient evil force is behind the stagnation of the human race, nor does it surprise when they start preparing to sacrifice themselves.

That being said, the novella is very welcome for its implicit criticism of complacent feel-good neoliberal end-of-history ideology that leaves major portions of the human race trapped as part of low-wage low-rights pools of exploitable labour. The metaphor was both incisive and perfectly woven into the story.

Light Chaser is an absolutely essential text for fans of either author, offering the punchy dialogue and sprightly pacing of Powell’s best work and the quirky-big-space-idea think pieces of Hamilton’s. It will likely find a place on several of our nominating ballots next year.

The Day That No Award Caught Fire (1963)

This blog post is the sixth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

The Hugo Awards had already been in existence for a full decade, but until the night of Sunday

A movie about human activity causing the Earth
to slowly grow warmer? Must be science fiction!
(Image via Wikipedia)

September 1, 1963, they had remained an ad-hoc affair. On that evening, in the Congressional Room of the Statler Hilton in Washington, D.C., the World Science Fiction Society constitution was born.

In that first decade of the Hugo Awards, categories varied wildly. Only Best Novel, Best Short Story, Best Fanzine, Best Artist, and Best Prozine had been awarded more often than Best Dramatic Presentation. But still, the category remained the one that attracted the least interest. As far as we can tell from looking over the membership lists of the Worldcon, none of the nominees in this category attended the ceremony.

One major change in the rules that year was to make the Dramatic Presentation category format agnostic. No longer restricted to film or television, it was made explicitly clear that radio, audio recordings, or even stage productions might be eligible. Interestingly, this was an option that Hugo nominators wouldn’t make use of for another eight years.

There were four eligible Dramatic Presentations that received enough nominating votes to be considered for the Hugo in 1963, but due to an error only three of them appeared on the ballot. Night Of The Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn) was omitted from the ballot by mistake.

It seems unlikely to us, though, that its inclusion on the ballot would have made a difference. Although adapted from Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife, and sharing the broad strokes of the central idea about an academic who struggles with his wife’s witchcraft, screenwriter Richard Matheson took significant liberties, particularly with the ending. In our estimation, the changes were for the worse, as they seem to negate the commentary about gender roles that seem to us to be integral to the story.

The acting and directing is surprisingly good, considering that the movie was helmed by Accapulco

Director Sydney Hayers parlayed
his Hugo shortlist appearance into
a directing gig on Galactica 1980.
(Image via Wikipedia) 

H.E.A.T. director Sydney Hayers. There’s a clever bit of continuity in which a skeptical professor has the words “I don’t believe” written on a chalkboard early in the movie, only to have the word “don’t” erased when he accidentally rubs his shoulder on the chalkboard near the end.

But there were several other — we would argue better — options on the ballot that year. Twilight Zone showed a significant return to form after an off year. Although the fourth season wouldn’t begin airing until January of 1963, the episodes that aired in 1962 went from strength to strength: To Serve Man, based on Damon Knight’s story of the same name, is deservedly one of the most well-remembered in the series, but there are many other hidden gems here. Little Girl Lost, written by Richard Matheson, is an excellent eerie little episode with a fantastic premise about falling between the cracks of the world. One of Rod Serling’s scripts The Little People is a tightly-paced story that seems almost certain to have helped inspire George R.R. Martin’s Hugo-winning The Sand Kings.

Most of the members of our discussion group would likely not have voted for the beguilingly beautiful but frustratingly befuddling Last Year At Marienbad, the French art movie whose opaque narrative structure and lack of linear storytelling have made it a classic amongst film scholars. It’s a movie that’s clearly worthy of respect and admiration, but it’s not particularly engaging for the casual viewer.

The stand-out of all the Hugo shortlisted dramatic presentations in 1963 was The Day The Earth Caught Fire, a British disaster movie that channeled the atomic fears of the day.

The story follows a journalist who slowly pieces together the fact that due to ill-considered government decisions, the world is getting hotter and soon will become uninhabitable. As he breaks the news about this global warming, various policymakers try to deny the facts even as weather patterns shift and catastrophic storms wreak havoc. Despite the implausibility of this scenario, the movie makes this “climate change” seem like a credible threat.

Director Val Guest earned his
only BATFA award for The
Day The Earth Caught Fire.
(Image via Pintrest)

This is one of the few movies that accurately captures the energy of a newsroom, and the bleak humour shared by journalists on the job. This is in part because it was partially filmed on-location in the offices of the Daily Express in London, and the actor cast as the newspaper’s editor had previously been the editor of the Express.

Director Val Guest — best known for his work on Quatermass — turned in his career-best directorial effort here, using location and lens choices to move the narrative between almost claustrophobic personal stories, and sweeping global events. The ending (which we won’t spoil) effectively drives home the urgency of the questions raised, and underscores how the movie remains disturbingly relevant to this day, particularly in light of global warming.

Our viewing group unanimously agreed that it is a legitimate shame that the film was denied the Hugo award. The fact that The Day The Earth Caught Fire did not win is more evidence of the lack of interest Dramatic Presentations garnered among Worldcon attendees.

It is a shame that voters chose not to recognize any of these options with a Hugo Award, but it is both a reflection of the attitude that science fiction fans had towards SF cinema at the time, as well as the lack of interest that Hollywood had in the Hugos.

Not On The Shortlist 2021

Every year there are more worthy works than could fit on any Hugo Awards ballot. There will therefore

(Image via Goodreads)

always be works that are not included, no matter how great they may be. As our book club has done in previous years, some of us have selected the books, movies, and comic books they wish could have made this year's ballot.  

(KB) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 

Set in the 1950s Mexican countryside, college-age Noémi navigates a tense and horrific situation that holds her cousin captive.  

Evoking the same style of romantic gothic and speculative fiction horror in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Moreno-Garcia’s carefully crafted novel ratchets the tension and addresses settler-colonialism, environmental racism, and sexism. Using a unique mechanic to bring the eco-gothic setting into the fantasy and science fiction genre, the novel was full of surprises beyond just the plot. 

As a horror aficionado (and obviously a SFF fan), this book is an outstandingly creative entry for the speculative fiction subgenres. Moreno-Garcia, whose previous book Gods of Jade and Shadow earned her Nebula and Locus nominations, is an author to keep a closer eye on, and it’s a shame that Mexican Gothic didn’t make it onto Hugo readers’ radars.

(AW) Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock — Best Novel

Not sure how this thoughtful, socially speculative and dystopian novel didn’t make it on the ballot. Anne Charnock gives us interesting and relatable characters that must move forward, both literally and figuratively, to survive in a world struggling with deep social and economic divisions.

Caleb and other point of view characters provide distinct interpretations of the same reality, revealing layers of social conditioning to the reader. But you don't need to care about social relations and labour issues to enjoy this book (even if you should). Despite backstories of despair, each character’s choices reveal an inherent and universal drive to survive without doing harm.

This is near-future climate change fiction at its best — gently disclosing the impact of current conditions and choices through sympathetic experiences and hope.

(MB) Repo Virtual by Corey J. White — Best Novel

Repo Virtual is a really great response to anyone that suggests cyberpunk is a finished genre. It takes aim at the giant internet companies dominating the world today and at the precarious labour that allows the world to function.

It’s a great little heist story that has hackers, a predatory pseudo-intellectual cult leader, a massive multiplayer online game all set in a frighteningly realistic near-future smart city.

The story is a smart critique of the world and the trajectory we’re on and White absolutely deserves an

award.

(OR) Jack Kirby: The Epic Life Of The King Of Comics by Tom Scioli — Best Related Work

One of the most visually distinctive artists of the golden age of comics, Jack Kirby helped create a plethora of characters who have gone on to be household names: Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Nick Fury, and The Fantastic Four just to name a few. Elements of his art style echo throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His contributions were often however overshadowed in the popular imagination by his more charismatic colleague Stan Lee. So a volume like “The Epic Life of The King of Comics” provides a welcome insight into who Kirby was, what influenced his genuinely progressive vision for comic books, and what his legacy might be. 

Told as a linear chronological narrative, The Epic Life Of the King Of Comics follows Kirby’s service in World War 2, his confrontations and altercations with home-grown American racists, his ascent to the top of his profession, and his fight to claim ownership of his work. It is a story worth reading and understanding for fans of comics, fans of creator’s rights, and fans of the genre in general.  

Rather than telling this story through a conventional biography, Tom Scioli offers us a beautifully drawn comic book in which the art carefully offers connotations of Kirby’s style. This artwork is notable for how Scioli helps us see Kirby the way that Kirby saw the world, though he avoids slavishly aping the master’s style. 

This is truly one of the great works of comic book history. 

(Image via Goodreads) 

(CF) The Unspoken Name by AK Larkwood

This fantasy novel follows the life of Csorwe from dedicated death god mouthpiece and sacrifice to assassin and spy and beyond.

Inspired by Le Guin’s Tombs of Atuan, AK Larkwood’s debut novel The Unspoken Name follows a young orcish death cultist for whom a vast new world becomes possible when she is saved from being a ritual sacrifice. Set on a quest for an artifact of incalculable power, she learns the world is more nuanced and complicated than she had been raised to believe.

Despite this being a debut novel, which earned Larkwood a spot on the ballot for the Astounding Award, this book has better balance of complex worldbuilding with character development than works by far more established authors. While some might complain that the plot isn’t particularly tight, that gives the characters more space to breathe and to grow.

One of the many facets of the book that made it stand out is how Larkwood engages with and subverts the prejudices baked into standard fantasy tropes. Orcs may have a different culture that doesn’t align with that of the dominant (white) majority, but in this narrative it is made clear that they are just as human.

Another facet that adds brilliance to this little gem are the positive queer representation. Both Csorwe and her friend were queer but it was just part of their characters and not used as tokenism for the plot. And in the wider world, there was no institutionalized homophobia.

It is great to see AK Larkwood on the ballot for the Astounding Award, but all the same I would have liked to have seen The Unspoken Name shortlisted for best novel.