So, science fiction books.
Jan. 27th, 2009 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fivemackI'm running for TAFF, and I really ought to have mentioned this here already since this is my main point of contact with the world. TAFF is a tradition dating back to a time when the Atlantic was much wider, in which the collected science-fiction fandoms of Europe and America vote for a representative of one to be sent to the other; the voting is at Easter, and the winner is being sent to Canada for the Worldcon this summer. There are two candidates, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stevegreen and myself.
Now, science fiction books. For it is Hugo-nominating season, when everyone planning to go to the Worldcon ought to figure out what the five best SF novels published this year that they've read have been, and the three people* who read new short fiction also get to nominate short fiction at three different lengths. Doing this with any competence as all is a habit costly in both coin and bookcase space, since the 'published' is overwhelmingly 'published in US hardback'.
The pair of books which absolutely jumped out at me this year, and which I've been proselytising enthusastically, is Catherynne Valente's In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice. It's absolutely marvellous in its post-modern tangling and intertwining of beautifully-written plot, stories of monsters told by story-telling monsters, a travelogue to beat all travelogues, a work of imagination comparable to (if obviously strongly inspired by) the Arabian Nights, everyone should read it as soon as they can, and it's published in 2006 so irrelevant for this year's Hugo.
SF is a literature of series; it's a lot of work to invent a world, you might as well set several books there, and for a literature read significantly by people capable of reading at ridiculous pace, eighteen-month publication gaps may be the only way to assure pacing. Which means there are a lot of excellent novels which it doesn't make great sense to nominate as a 'best novel'.
There's also the ubiquitous problem that a book prize should award a book rather than an author. When I look at books that are eligible, I find an annoying number of perfectly competent works by authors with vast reputations to trade on. Iain Banks deserves a prize for Use of Weapons, but he didn't even make the Hugo ballot that year; Ken Macleod deserves a prize for his amazing Fall Revolution quartet, but that's eight years old now. Matter and The Night Sessions are Banks' and Macleod's offerings for this year, and neither really sticks in my brain.
Terry Pratchett's Nation clearly gets a vote - the standard must be 'would get a vote even if by an unknown author', though likely I'd not have read it were it by an unknown author. It's a beautifully humane story; it made me cry, which very little does.
Brandon Sanderson completed his Mistborn trilogy this year. It's beautifully extruded fantasy product, pushed with a golden ram by a master craftsman through dies of polished diamond, the second and third books managing to be complete in themselves and to extend a complicated story and an equally complicated magic system in new and exciting directions; The Hero of Ages probably deserves a vote even as the third in a series.
There's Anathem, of course. Nine hundred pages of Platonic philosophy with monks, space aliens and ruminations on the nature of causality, but given an unquantifiable boost by that 'by the author of Snow Crash'.
Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains does good things with the grimness of warriors, and has a single paragraph that clinches a nomination by reminding the reader how lucky he is to live in a world where swords are to be found in cases in museums rather than kept from finding scabbards in his vitals.
I've got a month to get hold of and read books that I've missed and that ought to be nominated: any recommendations? Jo Walton's Half a Crown and Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children came out this year though I read them while they were being written, and so have strong and carefully considered two-year-old opinions of a version that isn't the one published; I'm not sure I can read the published versions of books I've read in beta in a way that means I could sensibly nominate.
* I know there are more than three people who read new short SF fiction reading this post. Shush.
stevegreen and myself.Now, science fiction books. For it is Hugo-nominating season, when everyone planning to go to the Worldcon ought to figure out what the five best SF novels published this year that they've read have been, and the three people* who read new short fiction also get to nominate short fiction at three different lengths. Doing this with any competence as all is a habit costly in both coin and bookcase space, since the 'published' is overwhelmingly 'published in US hardback'.
The pair of books which absolutely jumped out at me this year, and which I've been proselytising enthusastically, is Catherynne Valente's In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice. It's absolutely marvellous in its post-modern tangling and intertwining of beautifully-written plot, stories of monsters told by story-telling monsters, a travelogue to beat all travelogues, a work of imagination comparable to (if obviously strongly inspired by) the Arabian Nights, everyone should read it as soon as they can, and it's published in 2006 so irrelevant for this year's Hugo.
SF is a literature of series; it's a lot of work to invent a world, you might as well set several books there, and for a literature read significantly by people capable of reading at ridiculous pace, eighteen-month publication gaps may be the only way to assure pacing. Which means there are a lot of excellent novels which it doesn't make great sense to nominate as a 'best novel'.
There's also the ubiquitous problem that a book prize should award a book rather than an author. When I look at books that are eligible, I find an annoying number of perfectly competent works by authors with vast reputations to trade on. Iain Banks deserves a prize for Use of Weapons, but he didn't even make the Hugo ballot that year; Ken Macleod deserves a prize for his amazing Fall Revolution quartet, but that's eight years old now. Matter and The Night Sessions are Banks' and Macleod's offerings for this year, and neither really sticks in my brain.
Terry Pratchett's Nation clearly gets a vote - the standard must be 'would get a vote even if by an unknown author', though likely I'd not have read it were it by an unknown author. It's a beautifully humane story; it made me cry, which very little does.
Brandon Sanderson completed his Mistborn trilogy this year. It's beautifully extruded fantasy product, pushed with a golden ram by a master craftsman through dies of polished diamond, the second and third books managing to be complete in themselves and to extend a complicated story and an equally complicated magic system in new and exciting directions; The Hero of Ages probably deserves a vote even as the third in a series.
There's Anathem, of course. Nine hundred pages of Platonic philosophy with monks, space aliens and ruminations on the nature of causality, but given an unquantifiable boost by that 'by the author of Snow Crash'.
Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains does good things with the grimness of warriors, and has a single paragraph that clinches a nomination by reminding the reader how lucky he is to live in a world where swords are to be found in cases in museums rather than kept from finding scabbards in his vitals.
I've got a month to get hold of and read books that I've missed and that ought to be nominated: any recommendations? Jo Walton's Half a Crown and Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children came out this year though I read them while they were being written, and so have strong and carefully considered two-year-old opinions of a version that isn't the one published; I'm not sure I can read the published versions of books I've read in beta in a way that means I could sensibly nominate.
* I know there are more than three people who read new short SF fiction reading this post. Shush.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 08:50 pm (UTC)Don't forget Best Related. Please nominate some critical works? The BSFA long list will be out shortly and has about twenty listed.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 07:28 am (UTC)Nomination lists are about saying to others: this is worth reading. If you have read something you think worth reading, nominate it.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 12:30 pm (UTC)I'm concerned that I'm not doing anything very useful if I am recommended books by someone like you who's vastly competent in the field, and read them with no knowledge of what else is around; if I thought they were worth reading, it would be because I'd discovered that SF criticism in general was worth reading, rather than because I had any idea of whether they were good examples of the kind. I can see that it would be personally interesting to discover whether SF criticism interested me, but I'm not sure my opinion would be useful for an award shortlist.
This seems the kind of problem which would be much assisted by an afternoon in a good library but, absurdly, I don't have access to a decent library in Cambridge - the main library building has been closed for renovation for years and I don't think I've access to the UL. I suppose CUSFS might be able to help.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 09:52 pm (UTC)books!
Date: 2009-01-28 09:52 am (UTC)Saturn's Children was fun and is definitely worth a read btw but not sure if it stands out enough compared to the others.
There is another book I am thinking of that you should read but I can't remember what it is right now annoyingly!
--
Angharadxxx
Re: books!
Date: 2009-01-28 12:20 pm (UTC)Re: books!
Date: 2009-01-28 09:35 pm (UTC)Are you going to Eastercon? I think it would be a good place to talk to people about TAFF.
Re: books!
Date: 2009-01-28 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 09:58 pm (UTC)