Review - Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog
Written and Directed by Joss Whedon
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Dramatic Presentation

This review has been delayed a long time. Though I've had my copy of the DVD release for a long time I lent it to a friend shortly before the Hugo awards were announced and I only got it back last week. They kept showing it more people who hadn't seen it which shows you how much affection they had for the movie. Assuming you can call a internet video a "movie" of course.

Dr. Horrible is a socially awkward nerd who is documenting his efforts to become a supervillain in a video blog. He has a crush on a woman who he sees at the laundromat and he plans to impress her by building a freeze ray and performing acts of supervillainy. His archenemy Captain Hammer interferes with one of these heists and meets the woman Dr. Horrible has a crush on. And since this is a musical most of this is told through musical numbers.

A major part of what makes Dr. Horrible so effective for nerds is the fact that he is the prototypical nerd. He's smart, thinks he knows better than everyone else, and can't talk to a girl to save his life. He even uses sheeple in song lyrics.

Before going on I want to state for the record that I've never used my freeze ray in an attempt to meet a woman. Or used the word "sheeple".

Getting back to the point the main character is one of the few genuine feeling depictions of a nerd you'll find. He's as socially awkward as any nerd and his clumsy attempts to connect will be familiar to any nerd (albeit on a different scale).

The script is fantastic. It runs from hysterically funny to some brutal pathos and does both well. It's a comedy based on classic dramatic archetypes. The plot that runs through an old story hidden so well behind a mask of comedy that you won't see it coming. The music isn't spectacular (Joss Whedon may be able to pick out notes on a piano but he doesn't have a lot of skill at it) but the lyrics are fun.

The cast are also note perfect. Neil Patrick Harris plays the titular role as a man who puts up the defensive mask of being a supervillain to deal with the world. Nathan Fillion meanwhile takes comedic arrogance to a level rarely seen. I feel bad for Felicia Day as the innocent woman caught between them since she isn't given much to do besides being blind to people's faults.

If you get the DVD instead of watching the show online the bonus material is worth watching on it's own. One of the commentary tracks is a whole new musical on its own with it's own dramatic arc. They spend very little time talking about the movie and instead sing their own parody of DVD commentaries.

Dr. Horrible is a classic story with very modern stylings and rebuilt for nerds. So it's completely unsurprising that it won the Hugo award. The only real problem with it is the low budget styling that grew out of it's origin as a video for the Internet. Anyone who is a self-described nerd should see it but since it has been distributed on the net I doubt there's any self-described nerd who hasn't.

Review - The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of

The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of
by Thomas M. Disch
1999 Hugo Winner for Best Related Book

Here's a sign of a bad book: I honestly cannot tell you what The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of is about. It reads like the old-kilter rants of drunk man that progress down strange, incomprehensible paths and leap from subject to subject with little concern for bridging topics. It's a mashed together mess of the history of science fiction, the affect science fiction has had on culture, an overview of the genre, and critique of all of that. Disch's lack of focus means that his critiques are poorly supported and it contributes to making this book feel pointless.

Let's start with his opening chapter since it establishes a concept that Disch returns to throughout the book while establishing how shaky his reasoning is. It argues that American culture is somehow attuned more than other cultures to revere the liar; that deception is an American virtue. Now as much as that may make some people say, "Of course!" his support for this assertions is the same appreciation of tricksters, conmen, and audacity that has been evident in humanity for as long as there has been a written record. It's not an American thing to enjoy the tweaking of authority's nose by a clever person, it's a human thing.

Similarly he declares that Edgar Allen Poe was the first science fiction writer. Most of you are going to be scratching your head and saying, "Yeah, he grew out of the same gothic traditions that science fiction grew out of but he never wrote anything that could be remotely mistaken for science fiction." Disch's argument is based on Poe's place in pop culture of the time and literary style rather than the context of his stories. It's an argument that makes me wince because it could be used to justify the absorption of nearly any popular author since the nineteenth century into science fiction.

And so it goes through this book. His arguments are so ridiculous that I half suspect that Disch was making them spuriously so that people would react to them. Whether it's "The Cold Equations" as an example of how misogynistic science fiction authors were or using a self-help book based on Star Trek as the strawman for Star Trek's ideals so much of the book comes across as just wackiness. And with that first chapter dedicated to lying I have to ask if the book is a bit of a prank. Of course in the end I don't believe that; I've read enough off-the-wall literary criticism presented as reality that I can accept Disch's as genuine.

Things aren't all bad in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. When Disch gets personal the book is much more interesting. His take on the political extremes in science fiction authors is tightly focused on a few individuals that he could be addressing directly. There are times when he's discussing the context of an author or movement without getting into theorizing that kept me going. Unfortunately these only lasted a few pages before things switched up again and I never knew what I was going to get next.

I can't recommend The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of for many reasons. Top of the list is the rambling of the Disch who comes across as the Andy Rooney of science fiction. There's better histories and examinations of science fiction out there; the only reason to read this one is if you're interested in Disch's personal take on authors.

Review - Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones

Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones
by Kaja and Phil Foglio
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Graphic Story

At this moment there are five webcomics that I follow regularly and Girl Genius is one of those. Besides entertaining me one of the big attractions of the series is that is created by the Foglios who have been doing nerd humor far longer than is healthy for any human being. Phil won a pair Hugos for best fan artist in 1977 and 1978 but then he moved into the area of professional artist where a cartoonist can't compete with someone who paints rockets. So in some ways it is appropriate that they have received some recognition by winning the first Hugo for best graphic story. I just wish that it had been for a better portion of that story than Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones.

The webcomic Girl Genius features a steampunk world of mad scientists whose inventions run rampant. In the past the greatest of these mad scientists were the Heterodyne family. Twenty years ago they attempted to bring order to the madness but vanished shortly after an attack destroyed their castle. Their friend stepped into the vacuum and set himself up as a tyrant ruling all of Europe for the sake of ending the non-stop wars. Now the lost heir to the Heterodyne family has resurfaced and become entangled in the plots of both the ruler of Europe and the mysterious "other" who drove the chaos before.

That brings us roughly to volume eight in which our titular heroine has returned to her ancestral home; an intelligent castle filled with deathtraps that is badly in need of repair. Agatha needs the castle in order to stand against all those who would use her. And as she progresses alone into the castle her would be lover, and heir to the European throne, tries to follow her in. Complicating things is a woman claiming to be the Heterodyne heir who entered the castle first and has a scheme of her own that doesn't involve getting the castle functional again.

My biggest problem with Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones is pacing. There's two core plots in the book: Agatha getting to the center of the castle in order to repair it and her not-willing-to-admit-it boyfriend trying to get into the castle. The first should be a madcap adventure given that it takes place in a castle full of deathtraps and features the only direct villain in the book. The second should be effectively an afterthought. And yet the first is cut short while the second is dragged out. Agatha enters the castle, bumps into the villain, and runs for her life. Then it jumps to her boyfriend who spends a lot of time talking with the supporting cast about helping her and making some false starts before finally getting on with it. When the story cuts back to Agatha she's already at her goal and the villain has vanished from the book.

It comes down to this particular set of strips are a bridge. They connect the dramatic confrontations of the previous book with what promises to be an action packed climax to the castle storyline in the next. But a bridge doesn't stand very well on its own. The characters are isolated in this book and the plot is thin. It's a book that only works in the context of the entire webcomic.

On the other hand Phil's artwork is always a delight. His character designs are so distinctive that you would never mistake a Foglio drawing for anyone else. Their sketchy, swirled figures are lively and make them almost leap from the page. Phil's comic timing is a lot of fun as well and that ties into his impressive ability at page design. He has a classic sense of storytelling in his artwork that prevents Girl Genius from descending into just a set of fan pandering glory shots.

In general the story reads better in a book format than one page every few days. There's an inherent break when you read the story on the web that vanishes in the published format. Also the oversized artwork in the printed books looks better. The volume is oversized even for comic collections and it makes the artwork even more enjoyable.

While I may not recommend Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones specifically since it is a terrible starting point and does not work as a book on its own I do recommend reading Girl Genius. Kaja and Phil Foglio have put together a series that is a lot of fun even if this particular volume isn't their best. And I recommend getting the printed collections because they look even better than the pages on the web. Just start at the beginning rather than with this book.

Review - The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Novel

I've said in the past that despite my appreciation for Neil Gaiman he recent output has been a bit repetitive. He tends to go back to the same broad concepts repeatedly and so while he may do a great job of telling the story I can't help but say, "You've already told us that one!" As a result I wasn't expecting much going into The Graveyard Book. As a YA novel there's practically a license to reuse old material and YA usually translates to "watered down for the kids". I was half right on that. The Graveyard Book isn't the equal of Gaiman's books created for adults; still, it is very good at what it set out to be.

Nobody was a toddler when his entire family was murdered and he wandered into the graveyard to be adopted by ghosts who live there. He grows up under their protection and has adventures in the magical world that this old graveyard contains.

It might be easier to think of this book as an anthology. Each chapter is its own effectively self contained story as Nobody and a new friend explore a Celtic burial mound or Nobody attempts to find a headstone for a witch who was buried without one. It's an episodic format common to children's books and while I won't complain about that format I will say that there's far too few episodes.

The YA market calls for shorter books for shorter attention spans. That's where the one adventure per chapter format comes from. The problem is that The Graveyard Book is just eight chapters long and that last chapter is a denouement for the entire coming-of-age story. That makes the book far too short (there's a phrase you won't find me saying often). As an adult reader it took me a bit more than two hours to read the entire thing.

If Gaiman was a terrible writer than this length wouldn't have bothered me. Gaiman is a good storyteller and I kept getting glimmers of it in The Graveyard Book that are constantly cut off before they can fully develop. You can see the threads where there's obvious places to insert further stories into the book. It's very common for characters to be given a grand introduction and then completely abandoned. Nobody's adopted ghostly parents adopt him and then effectively vanish for the rest of the novel. So much is left undeveloped that it makes The Graveyard Book feel half-finished.

Then there's the plot thread that runs through the book regarding the killer of Nobody's family. About three-quarters of the way through the book it takes a sharp left into weirdness and concludes so poorly that I was shocked. It was as though Gaiman said to himself, "I need a big villain for this book!" and so threw in a bland action scene for a climax. It's completely different in tone from the rest of the book. Even with occasional dropping of hints the conclusion still felt like it came out of left field. The entire climax could have been skipped with the only real downside being making an already too short book even shorter.

The Graveyard Book is one of those instances where I have to acknowledge that I'm not the audience for it. While I may have found it to be a bit flat I would have loved the novel if I had read it when I was ten. My ten year old self isn't writing this review (you can tell because it isn't a stream of consciousness rambling that compares the book to cartoons I just watched) so I have to conclude by saying The Graveyard Book left me lukewarm; what there was of it was decent but it was so shallow that it felt more like an outline than a novel. On the other hand I may give a copy or two out at Christmas because I know some ten year olds who will love it.

Review - "The Erdmann Nexus", "Shoggoths in Bloom", and "Exhalation"

Well, I'm back. I had a terrific vacation, got to see some family, and experience a whole host of new things. I didn't get to some of the nerdy sites I had planned for my trip since wildfires made other members of my group want to keep out of the area but I can't complain.

And it's time to get started on these long dormant Hugo winners. First up is the short fiction category. You may recall that I liked all of the winners even if none of them were my first pick.

Donato Giancola
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

"The Erdmann Nexus"
by Nancy Kress
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

At a retirement home populated by quirky individuals the retirees have started to occasionally black out and have visions. When these visions appear to come true a physics professor who is at the center of the phenomenon tries to get to the bottom of it.

I appreciated that Kress didn't try to be coy about what was happening; the collective minds are reshaping reality and have drawn the attention of a distant spacecraft who helpfully explains for the reader's benefit what's going on. It grates on my nerves badly when an author tells a completely transparent story and tries to write around certain aspects of it in order to create a "mystery". By cutting straight to the chase Kress turns "The Erdmann Nexus" into something of a procedural with a distinctive cast. The story becomes how they work out what is happening and what they do about it rather than it being about ineffectively hiding from the reader what is happening to them.

I tend to run hot and cold when it comes to the quirky cast. With "The Erdmann Nexus" Kress seems less focused on emphasizing how "zany" they are and instead fills them in as elderly people who have grown into the eccentricities.

It's funny but the longest story to win in 2009 is the one that I have the least to talk about. That's because I found most of "The Erdmann Nexus" to be run of the mill. It wasn't bad but it wasn't terrific. I can't work up any enthusiasm either way on it. It's a decently crafted science fiction story and that's enough reason to give it a look but at the same time it's not really special.

"Shoggoths in Bloom"
by Elizabeth Bear
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

I love the works of H.P. Lovecraft but I'm under no illusion about the man himself. Even by the standards of the 1930's where casual racism was so ingrained that it would pass without notice Lovecraft was a bigot. Personally I think his irrational xenophobia is an inseparable part of his stories; he channeled his loathing of anyone who wasn't Caucasian into unfathomable horrors. Which brings me to "Shoggoths in Bloom" which is all about racism in the 1930's and horrors that we cannot fathom.

Unlike the monsters in Lovecraft the Shoggoths in this story are relatively peaceful. Or as peaceful as freakish, acid secreting, gelatonous monstrocities the size of houses that emerge from the blackest depths of the ocean and occasionally crush small towns can be. In the late autumn they beach themselves on the rocky shore of New England where they bloom for a short period before vanishing into the deepest parts of the ocean again. An African-American scientist travels to a remote fishing village to study them and once there deals with both prejudice against him by the townspeople and his own prejudices.

My original reaction to "Shoggoths in Bloom" was that I liked it but wasn't thrilled and I didn't like the ending at all. I've revised that opinion a bit. I think "Shoggoths in Bloom" is a better story than my original impressions. I think part of my initial response was that I came into it with certain expectations based on the horror genre and while I could recognize what Bear was doing I couldn't reconcile that with my views. With a bit of distance I have come to appreciate her deconstruction of Lovecraft on multiple levels.

Bear places the xenophobia at the heart of Lovecraft on display with human characters, the shoggoths, and international politics. The horrors in Bear's story are comprehendable if a person makes the effort to cross the divide. Evil large enough to swallow mankind whole can be faced and confronted. Answers are out there for those who seek them. "Shoggoths in Bloom" takes the trappings of Lovecraft and turns them all on their ear.

That makes it a good thing that Bear didn't follow the path of far too many authors and did not choose to ape Lovecraft's style. Since Bear is subverting other aspects of his writing it would have been awkward to have to prose be the same.

Getting to the actual story, "Shoggoths in Bloom" is one of the better SF works that I've read about racism. There have been a lot of them and certain cliches seem to dominate them (see District 9 for a good example of one that came out this week) but Bear avoids those cliches. Her scientist is not a virtuous minority figure who does only good in contrast to the wicked and cruel townspeople who hate everyone different from themselves. The scientist has his own prejudices to deal with and the townspeople for the most part don't care a bit about the skin color of their visitor though they'll say some hurtful things not realizing how they'll be taken. It's a more nuanced look at racial problems than the usual simple morality play.

On the surface "Shoggoths in Bloom" is about race relations and our reaction to concepts outside of our worldview. At that level it's a pretty good story that I'd recommend. There's a deeper structure to it as an attack on H.P. Lovecraft and that is a whole extra dimension that I appreciated. Not everyone will come to the story from that same place but it made it work better for me.

"Exhalation"
by Ted Chiang
2009 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

It strikes me that the absolute hardest kind of science fiction to make a good story out of is the scientific principle story. These have fallen out of fashion over the years; they were part of the didactic SF right from the beginning and had their heyday in the early years of Joseph Campbell's editing. When the new wave came along and the full weight of the genre jumped to the other side of the spectrum they nearly completely vanished. These stories are invariably hard SF but they're a subgenre of that subgenre. The basic structure is that the scientist hero discovers some kind of scientific problem (usually involving physics) that is an immediate threat. As they explain the concept to the reader they apply their knowledge of science to the problem and resolve it. The problem with these stories is that they're inevitably more about lecturing the reader than telling a good story. It's phenomenally rare for an author to be able to merge both the high concept of the scientific problem and quality writing. Which is why "Exhalation" stands out.

There is a place populated by machines that are driven by high pressure gas cylinders. One of these intelligent machines is interested in the way that their minds function and so contrives a method to disassemble his own head and watch his mind in operation. However as he examines his own brain he realizes that some recent odd occurrences spell doom for their civilization.

I think it goes without saying that Chiang is master storyteller and he is my favorite author of short SF today. He is exceptional when it comes to devising high concepts for his stories and at the same time he is a verbal chameleon whose style shifts dramatically depending on the demands of the story. "Exhalation" is not his best work. The main character is less interesting than others and the story is almost a lecture. And yet it is still something wonderful to read. This is a story that can easily bring together all SF readers from those who just want big ideas to those (like myself) looking for something more literary. All of this year's winners are good but if you can only read one then this is the one to go for.

The 2009 Hugo Winners!

The winners of the 2009 Hugo awards have been announced:

Novel - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Novella - "The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress
Novelette - “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear
Short Story - “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang
Best Professional Artist - Donato Giancola
Editor (Long Form) - David Hartwell
Editor (Short Form) - Ellen Datlow
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) - WALL-E
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) - Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Best Related Book - Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi
Best Graphic Story - Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones by Kaja and Phil Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright
Best Semiprozine - Weird Tales
Best Fanzine - Electric Velocipede
Best Fan Writer - Cheryl Morgan
Best Fan Artist - Frank Wu

The only winner that I called was WALL-E but at least with everything where I read the nominees it was something I enjoyed. I still haven't gotten around to reading The Graveyard Book yet and I definitely won't be taking it along as vacation reading; it's just too short for that.

Congratulations to all the winners and I'll be covering them all in turn soon enough.

Hey, a Convenient Sale!

I really enjoyed Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller which won the 2006 Hugo award for best related non-fiction. It was both an entertaining writer's guide and history of her time teaching at the Clarion writer's workshop.

Small Beer Press, the publisher of Storyteller is currently selling copies of it for just one dollar to clear out their warehouse. It's a great bargain and they have several other chapbooks and anthologies similarly discounted. You can't beat that price for such a great book so I'd recommend grabbing it while they still have some.

The 2009 Hugo Nominees

I'm leaving for a four hour drive to MidSouthCon in a few minutes but I had to take a few moments to point out the 2009 Hugo nominees:

Best Novel
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

Best Novella
“The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress
“The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay
“The Tear” by Ian McDonald
“True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow
“Truth” by Robert Reed

Best Novelette
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear

Best Short Story
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson
“Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick
“Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang
“From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick

Best Related Book
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds.
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds.
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid
Your Hate Mail Will be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi

Best Graphic Story
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright
Fables: War and Pieces Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic Story and art by Howard Tayler
Serenity: Better Days Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director
METAtropolis by John Scalzi, ed. Written by: Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Lost - “The Constant” Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen , writers; Joss Whedon, director
Battlestar Galactica - “Revelations” Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director
Doctor Who - “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead” Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director
Doctor Who - “Turn Left” Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director

Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form
Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld Magazine edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fanzine
Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

Best Fan Writer
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver

Best Fan Artist
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu

I'll be going over some of the categories across the next few weeks.

I find the number of young adult books nominated in the novel category to be odd. While there is nothing preventing YA books from being good they are intentionally geared for an immature audience. I'm left wondering if the nominations were due to the popularity of the author or the realities of publishing these days where YA is the ascendant market.

I'm pleased that they introduced the graphic novel category a year early but the nominees do not thrill me. Two webcomics (and in fairness two of the very few webcomics that I follow) and two adaptations of an already popular work from another medium are not strong nominees while the remaining two are climaxes of long running Vertigo books. Ah well, there were many worse choices.

Looking Back at the Hugo Winning Short Fiction

What a long and strange journey that was. Even more than the novels reading the Hugo winning short stories really gives on a cross section of science fiction from the 1950's on. From the light pulp stories that began it to the psychedelic New Wave to the refinement of the literary form that followed to the fragmentation of subgenres to the fading of science fiction in favor of fantasy; the award winning stories are SF in microcosm.

Looking back through the list of winners by my count I enjoyed a bit more than 60% of the winners. I don't think that's a particularly bad average given the standards I hold the stories to.

By a few arbitrary categories:

Best Story - There really isn't any other choice than Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon" which won in 1960. Not only a great story, it's acknowledged as one of the most significant short stories of the twentieth century. It's one of the stories that you can point to in order to demonstrate the significance of science fiction.

Worst Story - It's hard to select one but I have to go with "Down in the Bottomlands" by Harry Turtledove which narrowly defeats the moral bludgeoning of Ursala Le Guin's "The Word for Wold is Forst" and the goofy superhuman story of Orson Scott Card's "Eye for Eye". As bad as those other two were they lacked a character named "Evilla" whose defining characteristic was that they were evil.

Author Who I Never Want to Read Again - In my life I have read five stories by Jon Varley and of those five of them present pedophilia as a positive thing that is beneficial for everyone involved. Even in a novella that didn't involve children he managed to work it in as part of the back story. It's enough that I now considder Varley's name a warning to avoid the story.

Author Who I'll Read Whatever They Write - A much harder decision since there are three current authors whose short stories have convinced me that I'll want to read whatever they put down on the page. For quality and consistancy based solely on their Hugo winners I have to go with Ted Chiang who narrowly beats Connie Willis (who is consistantly enjoyable but tents to alternate flippant nothings with more deep stories) and Michael Resnick (who is great at presenting morally ambiguous stories). Chiang beats them because of his ability as a literary chameleon, able to shift form to always given the perfect presentation to his concepts.

Review - "A Billion Eves", "The Djinn's Wife", and "Impossible Dreams"

Donato Giancola
2007 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

And so it draws to a close. This is the last of the Hugo winning short fiction to review. It's taken me about a year to read them all. Fifty-three years worth of winners; one hundred and forty short stories covering the length of breadth of science fiction and fantasy. Even for short fiction that's a lot. I'll post a bit on the highs and lows of the reading but I can't say it is a reading project I'd recommend for all science fiction fans; getting the stories is just too much of a pain.

For my last reading I had to go to Science Fiction: The Best of the Year: 2007 Edition, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection, and the single author anthology Hart & Boot by Tim Pratt. I have to say that I'm always amused by how much the two "Best of" anthologies disagree on exactly what the "best" is. I know that it's two different editors but one chose a story that I despised for his "best" and the other chose a story that I thought was very well done for his "best". I know which of the two editors I'm more likely to trust.

"A Billion Eves"
by Robert Reed
2007 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

There are two things that break my suspension of disbelief past the point of no repair. One is poorly thought out economics. The other is poorly thought out sociology. "A Billion Eves" manages to hit both of those sticking points on a scale I rarely encounter. The general story that Reed tells isn't bad but the world building around it is so atrocious and the fact that the genuinely interesting issues raised are consistently ignored that I was driven to frustration.

There are devices called "rippers" that teleport everything within a certain radius to a random parallel earth where a particle moved a little differently at some point in the universe's history and things turned out very differently. At some point in our near future a person took two semi-trucks full of supplies, parked them next to a sorority house, and then kidnapped one hundred college aged women to use as his personal harem on an empty earth. Now what do you suppose the results of that to be:

A. He enjoyed a full life of decadant pleasures with his one hundred new sex slaves.
B. Despite having a rifle he was immediately torn apart by a mob of college aged women who outnumbered him one hundred to one and didn't care for being kidnapped to be used as sex slaves.
C. Rather than risk the gun they waited eight hours and smothered him in his sleep.
D. The college aged women decide immediately to repopulate the new Earth they find themselves on and use him as their sex slave in order to accomplish this.
E. They immediately decide to repopulate the new Earth and set up a patriarchy where women have no rights.

Now personally I would have gone with B or C since I can't see that continuation of the species being a big factor against the "kidnapped and permantly taken from everyone and everything they knew in order to be used as a sex slave" thing. Reed however assures the reader that the answer is E which is how we know that it's a science fiction story; most people in real life when suddenly abducted and deposited on a new planet wouldn't put the long term continuation of the species on that planet first.

And yet that's what the entire societal structure in "A Billion Eves" hangs upon. The idea is that people will put homo sapiens as a species ahead of society or even their own personal good. On top of that it's a religious patriarchy that's been stable for more than twenty-thousand years. With a premise so fundamentally against humanity it breaks my willingness to read the story.

Continuing on from that Reed toys with things like the problem of carrying species into new environments, though he doesn't consider the fact that an equilibrium will be reached and that a new species introduced will not automatically take over from whatever is already in that ecological niche; an introduced species is just as likely to be immediately cut down by more agressive species already there as it is to cause problems. He also touches on the concept of what manafest destiny means in a truly infinite wilderness but backs off for an ecological message based on turning around the idea that a universe that divides ten to thirty-fifth power times each picosecond is too precious to be contaminated. It's a universe that could not be harmed before it all collapses into entropy but it's apparently precious.

The annoying part is that the story that Reed wants to tell with about half of the novella isn't as bad as the world he spends the other half establishing. It's about a girl trying to break out of the mold that the nonsensical society has created. It's a bit worn as a premise though Reed handles it reasonably well. If he hadn't tied it to such terrible world building then it might have been worth reading.

"The Djinn's Wife"
by Ian McDonald
2007 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

In near future India a dancer falls in love with an AI diplomat. They have a storybook romance until the differences between humanity and computer program raise their ugly head. This is cast in the mold of a woman marrying a spirit of air and fire with strange powers.

McDonald chose a very odd prose style for "The Djinn's Wife" but in this instance where the idea of the story is ancient superstition being blended with a cyberpunk future I think it works. It's a story with many exotic viewpoints and a surplus of data. So when McDonald chooses to blend sentences together or shift tenses or go from a formal distant style to a rapid choppy one I think it conveys the concepts he's working with well.

McDonald also captures the flame of passion and the disolutionment that comes from discovering how seperate the lovers truly are extremely well. While we can never quite get inside the AI's mind the dancer and those around her reacting to the marriage are fascinating and believable characters. Consequently I have to recommend "The Djinn's Wife" as well worth reading.

"Impossible Dreams"
by Tim Pratt
2007 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

The book story or library with books that cannot exist is a common concept in fantasy but "Impossible Dreams" is the first time where I have seen it transposed to a video store. It features a videophile who stumbles one night into a store where shelves contain Hollywood productions that have been lost or never quite came together. It's from a world where things were just different enough that slightly different movies were made. The videophile is frustrated in his attempts to view this new world of cinema and in the short time each day that he can reach the store he begins a relationship with the woman working there.

The result of this is a cute story that I wouldn't call brilliant but it is fun if you know anything about the history of Hollywood. Any film buff will pick up on many references to the productions that might have been. Still the story is more about cinematic name dropping than developing an enduring plot. I enjoyed it and I'd recommend it with those caveats.

Review - "Inside Job", "Two Hearts", and "Tk'Tk'Tk"

Donato Giancola
2006 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

This is one of those times where I was tempted to stretch my rule of selecting an image by the artist from the nomination period since the following year he painted an image of Tristan and Isolde. I don't know if he intended it to be an illustration of the legend or the opera but either way it was an interesting choice of subjects. Instead here is "Boromir in the White Mountains".

The short fiction this year was pulled from three sources: a short hard cover edition from Subterranean Press, Fantasy: Best of 2006 which took more than two weeks to reach me and caused me to forget about them when I listed all of the sources I used for Hugo winning short fiction, and the last is available on the web. Subterranean Press has printed a lot of collector's editions of novellas including Willis's 2008 winner "All Seated on the Ground" though if you prefer to wait the stories are sure to be collected later.

"Inside Job"
by Connie Willis
2006 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

Skepticism is rarely presented positively in fantasy. I can't think of a single film with supernatural elements where a skeptic is not presented as a belligerent jerk who denies reality only to eventually be devoured by the monster "ironically". I attribute this to the fact that such a large portion of their potential of the world uncritically believes in the supernatural that having a character who demands evidence wouldn't be popular. You see it quite a bit in the written word as well but every so often in fiction such a character is confronted by the supernatural and tries to deal with it reasonably.

That's the situation in Willis's "Inside Job". The editor of a skeptics magazine witnesses a channeller who in the middle of her act suddenly changes personality and insults the audience for believing in channelling. Through the choice of phrasing the editor identifies the new voice as possibly belonging to a famous, dead skeptic and the channeller is trying to hide the interruptions into her act. It could be evidence of life after death or it could be a long con to get a skeptic to raise the channeller's profile.

Willis recognizes the inherent dilemma for a skeptic in a situation where any evidence gathered would be at best circumstantial. Similarly she captures the conflict of wanting to believe and needing proof. The character conflicts are what carry the story forward, not the tale of possession by a dead spirit. I wouldn't call this a spectacular novella but it is another fine piece from Willis.

"Two Hearts"
by Peter S. Beagle
2006 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette
2006 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

This is a sequel to Beagle's The Last Unicorn and while it may have been given some higher esteem by some voters for that reason I don't think it was the only reason that it won. In "Two Hearts" a young girl makes a journey from her village to see the king. A griffin is hunting and eating children at her home and she wants his help. The king is old and addled, however, but returns to lucidity when someone reminds him of a unicorn he knew long ago. The girl convinces the king to depart alone on one last quest defeat a monster.

The story does manage to stand very well on its own even if you haven't read The Last Unicorn. The last time I read it was in the 1980's so needless to say I'm very fuzzy on the details of the original but I had no problem following it. I'm sure it will resonate more if you are familiar with the book but this is one time where an author returning to a previous effort after decades did not simply wallow in nostalgia.

My only real problem with the story was that it was told from the perspective of a nine year old child and I found her unconvincing as a narrative voice. It switched between a child's worldview and an adult style narrative quite a bit which threw me out of the story. Still it's a good effort and I can't see anyone who likes the book being unsatisfied with the conclusion.

"Tk'Tk'Tk"
by David D. Levine
2006 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

A salesman on an alien world must deal with the complications of a radically different culture in this story. He barely understands them and they barely understand him but he is determined to make the sale no matter what hardships fall in his path.

Levine tries to make the aliens very alien and I'm not sure that he was entirely successful in that regard. Having their language transliterates into what looks like vowelless keyboard mashing partially broke my suspension of disbelief there (just a note for authors who do that kind of thing: transliteration means to render in a form that could be pronounced in the other language). For another the "alien" property concepts weren't really that distant from some fringe human beliefs. Still for the story of a foreigner dealing with a strange land it was pretty good.

The Scale of Hugo Winning Short Fiction

I was placing my biweekly Amazon order today and it has come time to order the final anthologies containing Hugo winning short fiction. Looking at the results I thought it was worth it to look at scale of this collection.

The complication for anyone who is attempting to read every single Hugo winner is the dividing line between 1994 and 1995.

You can read the entire history of the short fiction awards between 1955 and 1994 in just nine volumes comprising only about eleven inched of shelf space, though if you get paper back editions the scale increases a bit since the Hugo Winner collections that Asimov started editing in the early sixties were subdivided further. The biggest complication for any collector in this is that the Hothouse stories by Brian Aldiss are hard to acquire. The only collection of the original stories I was able to find was a leather bound Easton Press edition. An edited version of the stories is available in The Long Afternoon of Earth and that is likely to be a better solution for most readers.

In my collection these years are covered by:

The Hugo Winners Volumes 1 & 2 (in one omnibus)
Hothouse
The Hugo Winners Volume 3
The Hugo Winners Volume 4
The Hugo Winners Volume 5
The New Hugo Winners Volume 1
The New Hugo Winners Volume 2
The New Hugo Winners Volume 3
The New Hugo Winners Volume 4

There is no hardcover edition of The New Hugo Winners Volume 4 which is annoying but then many of it's descendants are only available as trade paperbacks.

After 1994 things get bad. It took me 23 books to fill out my collection through 2007 (I read the 2008 winners which I read when they were offered through some websites and they'll enter my collection once they've had some time to be anthologized). That's thirty-three inches of shelf space though in this case the anthologies purchased often contained more worth reading than just the one or two stories that won an award. The books that I acquired to complete this collection are (with authors noted for single author anthologies):

The Nebula Winners Volume 30
Stories of your Life by Ted Chiang
The Hard SF Renaissance
Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads by George R. R. Martin
Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon by Kristine Katharyn Rusch
New Dreams for Old by Mike Resnick
The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick
The Winds of Marble Arch by Connie Willis
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Chronospace by Allen Steele
Terraforming Earth by Jack Williamson
Inside Job by Connie Willis
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2003
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007
The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realms
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt

The Science Fiction: Best of the Year anthologies are only available in small paperbacks while Resnick, Swanwick, and Pratt's anthologies are only available as trade paperbacks. Also two stories ("...Where Angels Fear to Tread" and "The Ultimate Earth") are only available expanded into novels.

It's the curse of being a collector I suppose that sometimes it takes a great deal of effort for very little gain but there's something to be said for completing a collection.

Review - "The Concrete Jungle", "The Faery Handbag", and "Travels with My Cats"

Jim Burns
2005 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

The painting I selected is the cover to Nancy Kress's Crucible. Interestingly enough the year after he won Burns did covers for the reissues of many award winning novels and a few of my favorite books that hadn't won awards.

It's also an interesting set of anthologies that I pulled the 2005 winners from. "The Concrete Jungle" was taken from a recently released pairing with it's novel predecessor The Atrocity Archives. Since that book has been on my "Must Read" list for a while I didn't mind picking up a copy of it. "The Faery Handbag" I read in The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm which features illustrations for each story from Charles Vess. Finally "Travels With My Cats" was read in the single author anthology New Dreams for Old.

"The Concrete Jungle"
by Charles Stross
2005 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

This sequel The Atrocity Archive left me with some mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's an interesting mash-up of espionage fiction and dark fantasy; the kind of fantasy where horrible things are done for even more terrible purposes. They play off each other very well and I'm looking forward to digging into The Atrocity Archive for more of that. On the other hand the conclusion story depends on odd leaps of logic and knowledge of British managerial styles which left me out.

There is a British espionage group that deals with all the things that go bump in the night. They're so wrapped up in secrecy, both institutional and magically enforced, that they cannot come out and tell each other anything; only hint at it so that the other person comes to understand. One of their agents specializing in information technology is sent out on an emergency call of the highest priority because an extra stone cow has appeared in an art installation off of a major highway.

To go further than that would be to damage the pacing of the good parts of the story. And for the first three-quarters it is very good. Subtle revelations pile on top of each other and Stross manages to hint at unrevealed dark secrets better than most (the trick of conveying the concept but not the details is one that escapes many writers who try to be mysterious). It falls apart when suddenly the main character has an epiphany regarding the nature of the event that I couldn't follow and wraps it all up with some business terminology that I've never encountered and isn't explained in the story.

That adds up to "The Concrete Jungle" coming across to me as an interesting effort but not quite there. I liked the concept and the characters enough to be willing to stick with it for another story but I can't really recommend this one.

"The Faery Handbag"
by Kelly Link
2005 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

I'm going to be grossly unfair to Kelly Link so I will say this right at the start: there's nothing really wrong with "The Faery Handbag". It is a perfectly serviciable story cut from the modern mold of fairy tale magic occuring in the modern world and it bringing relatives together. The problem for me is that this is a theme that has been beaten into the ground in the past ten years.

A young woman has a mysterious aunt from Europe who tells stories about living in the distant past and having a bag that contains a magical world where one night can last a generation. While laughed off my most people in the family our protagonist comes to be believe the story.

If you like that kind of thing you'll probably enjoy "The Faery Handbag". On the other hand I just found it to be a bland retelling of a story I've heard a dozen times before. I think it is because Link is relying on the mysterious magical handbag to provide color for the tale and I've reached a point where such things fall into the background.

"Travels With My Cats"
by Michael Resnick
2005 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

A young boy buys a travel book titled Travels With My Cats for a few pennies from a garage sale and finds himself falling in love with the story. Thirty years on he's a loser living alone with his books, stuck in a dead end job, and doing nothing with his life. Upon rereading his childhood favorite he falls in love with the descriptions of distant lands again. He then finds himself visited by the spirit of the author and they discuss their lives.

The story itself is fairly interesting but once again I felt let down by the ending. To dance around the details I felt that Resnick was going for optomistic romanticism while I viewed it through a lens of cynicism. However I have had that issue with Resnick in the past where I'm left uncertain at the end where there was a disconnect between how he as the author was intending things and how I as the reader was viewing them. Upon reflection perhaps he intended both points of view to be valid.

Which I guess makes that a recommendation for reading "Travels With My Cats". If I change my mind while I'm organizing my thoughts then it is at the very least a thoughtful story worth the effort of reading.

Review - "The Cookie Monster", "Legions in Time", and "A Study in Emerald"

Bob Eggleton
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

I thought Eggleton's cover for this recent reissue of John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up was an interesting choice since it is part of Brunner's doomsaying series that he wrote in the late sixties and early seventies. Stand On Zanzibar won a Hugo for showing a world dying of overpopulation while The Sheep Look Up features pollution.

All three of the 2004 Hugo winners for the short fiction category are available in Science Fiction: The Best of 2003. Unfortunately it has a foil cover which is completely glared away when scanned though I could post a picture of a silvery blur, I suppose. Swanwick's "Legion in Time" is also available in his single author collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow and it can be found online. As for "A Study in Emerald", it was originally found in the themed anthology Shadows Over Baker Street which features a blend of Sherlock Holmes and H. P. Lovecraft; it has been on my "I need to read that" list for some time.

For the first time in a while I really enjoyed all three short fiction winners. There's one exceptionally good story and two very entertaining pastiches which were right up my ally.

"The Cookie Monster"
by Vernor Vinge
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

In the not too distant future a customer service representative at a software company receives a mocking e-mail on her first day filled with personal details. It also has clues that send her on a journey to find that things are not what they seem with her new employer.

I think it's safe to say that you can count on Vinge to take even old ideas (which the characters in "The Cookie Monster" helpfully point out) and spin them into something very different. From that brief description it could easily spin into about thirty common cliches. Vinge starts setting them up and then spins the results into a very different place. Even when I started to see the shape of what was going on he still managed to twist it into something else.

This is a very plot driven story and while the characters aren't quite at the level of cardboard cut outs they don't have a great deal of depth to them either. That didn't bother me though since at its heart "The Cookie Monster" is a short mystery and the development of that arc is what counted. I found it to be a fascinating story and well worth checking out.

"Legions in Time"
by Michael Swanwick
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

In 1936 a woman takes employment at a barren office where her job is to watch a closet and make sure that nothing comes out of it. After a disturbing run-in with her employer she opens the closet herself to find a gateway to the distant future where a civilization that enslaves others with its mental abilities is creeping backward in time year by year to conquer earlier ages. With the assistance of a woman from 2004 they become tangled in the war and the development of humanity.

Swanwick homages golden age pulp adventures in this story but manages to infuse the camp with some depth in the themes of how time travel would change the development of civilization. So while it features super-telepathic overlords with flying cars fighting space barbarians (and an elf!) it actually adds a touch of clever modern ideas.

In addition I found the viewpoint character to be fairly interesting as someone over their head but also unflappable. It's as though Swanwick expanded the weak characterization of golden age stories to contain something greater.

A golden age homage melded with current storytelling concept is a tricky balancing act and I think Swanwick managed to pull it off well. "Legions in Time" is 1934 SF filtered through 2004 and for someone familiar with those pulp adventures it is a fun time.

"A Study in Emerald"
by Neil Gaiman
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

It has been a few years since I read the Arthur Conan Doyle story "A Study in Scarlet" but even then the parallels between it and Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" are very clear. Gaiman appropriates the bulk of that original Sherlock Holmes story and someone familiar with it will recognize large blocks of the text.

Toward the end of the ninteenth century a British soldier who was wounded in Afganistan becomes roommates with an eccentric consulting detective. They're called to the site of a grusome murder where the room has been painted green with the victim's blood.

Despite the fact that Gaiman liberally borrows from Conan Doyle he manages to throw in his own twists. Not just in the Lovecraftian style which was a given from the anthology it was written for but in what he does with character's histories. Someone unfamiliar with Holmes or Lovecraft would find just an entertaining story, someone who knows both of them will find some interesting twists in the tale.

Review - Coraline, "Slow Time", and "Falling Onto Mars"

Bob Eggleton
2003 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

The image is Eggleton's cover for Nancy Kress's Probability Moon.

Wow, twelve stories away from wrapping up the Hugo winning short fiction and I'm starting to hit the major problems with story availability. "Falling Onto Mars", for example, has never been published anywhere except the issue of Analog that it first appeared in. Fortunately Analog has made it available on their website but if one wants a book collection that has all of the winners that isn't a desirable solution. At least Coraline was published as a Young Adult novel and "Slow Time"

The winners in 2003 struck me as being familiar. All three cover concepts and themes so well worn that ruts have been dug into them. None of them are bad stories by any definition but in all three cases I said to myself, "I've read this before and done better."

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
2003 Hugo Winner for Best Novella
2003 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

Yeah, I have the movie edition since I bought my copy a few weeks ago.

Let me describe the standard Neil Gaiman plot: a mundane person with a notable character quirk encounters something supernatural. At first it's wondrous and populated by convenient archetypes but sinister undercurrents are there and something goes horribly wrong. Fortunately with the help of a magic talisman provided by a wise woman and their own skill the person manages to get the better of their supernatural opponent and life returns to normal.

Gaiman writes in archetypes; you can practically map Joseph Campbell right onto his stories. Fortunately his skill at crafting prose and character carries a lot of weight.

Coraline might be considered the most standard of Neil Gaiman stories. It hits all the beats dead on with little variation. Coraline is the adventurous young girl in a strange house who finds a door to another world where things initially seem better to her but a monster lurks. It goes through all the same motions that Gaiman always does.

Consequently if you're a fan of Neil Gaiman then you'll probably enjoy Coraline but I won't say that you would be thrilled with it. The book is written for children and the prose and wit just isn't as sharp as it is in other Gaiman books. If you're not a Gaiman fan read American Gods instead.

"Slow Time"
by Michael Swanwick
2003 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

The first astronaut to visit a new world that was thought to be devoid of life makes the shocking discovery that there's something there. Unfortunately for the astronaut they get into some technical trouble which may kill them. There's a chance that the new life found is intelligent and by bridging the gap between species the astronaut may survive.

If you just said to yourself, "Hey, that's the exact same plot as the 1999 Hugo winner 'The Very Pulse of the Machine'!" then give yourself half a cookie; you only get a whole one if you recognize that this has been a standard SF plot since the 1950's (a fact I mentioned briefly in my previous review). At this point an author really has to offer something special to make me interested in how they handle it; the author of "The Very Pulse of the Machine", for example, included a threatening atmosphere. Unfortunately the author of "The Very Pulse of the Machine" was none other than Michael Swanwick and repeating oneself a few years later but not as skillfully leaves a bitter taste.

The astronauts this time around just aren't that interesting; they barely react to each other let alone the exploration of Titan. The story is very setting heavy with a lot of clumsy dialog and situations created specifically to pile on setting details for the story. Unfortunately the setting is just as uninteresting as the astronauts. The bright spot is the alien encountered has some interesting reactions to the exploration.

This story is decisively average; it's the bog standard, run of the mill stuff I would expect to find in any given anthology or magazine. Give this a pass and read "The Very Pulse of the Machine" instead; it's just a more interesting take on the exact same subject matter.

"Falling Onto Mars"
by Geoffrey A. Landis
2003 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

After my comments on the last two stories you might thing that "Falling Onto Mars" is nothing more than a weak copy of Landis's other work. If it is then it's a copy of something I'm not familiar with. Landis's story hits familiar concepts but it does so in a distinct manner.

In the future Mars is used as a cheap dumping ground for undesirables. Some of these undesirables band together to survive and others come together to take what they want. The bandits overrun the only science station on Mars and torture, rape, and kill almost all of its staff. It is retaken by those seeking to survive.

This is a very short story; even printed it would only be three or four pages (which might be why it has never been collected). That helps it, I think. "Falling Onto Mars" is told as a family anecdote and because Landis moves quickly through the point it never gets a chance to overstay its welcome. I recommend taking the ten minutes to browse over and read it.

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book
Illustrations by Brian Froud, Text by Terry Jones
1995 Hugo Winner for Best Original Artwork

Usually the author is listed first but since the Hugo was for the artwork I decided to flip things. And that is Terry "Monty Python" Jones as the author of the text.

The book purports to be a reproduction the diary of a young girl who rather than pressing flowers like other Victorian era young ladies pressed fairies. She sneaks up on them as the frolic and slam the book on them to keep them. It's just as strange as one might expect from that description.

But what about the art from it?

Review - "Fast Times at Fairmont High", "Hell is the Absence of God", and "The Dog Said Bow-Wow"

Michael Whelan
2002 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

This is an odd year of winners for one major reason: I do have a single bad thing to say about any of the winners. For those who want a quick review that's it; these are not only stories worth reading but stories that you need to read.

I read "Fast Times at Fairmont High" in The Hard SF Renaissance, a massive anthology of hard SF stories that contains a lot of interesting stories especially if you enjoy SF about big ideas. "Hell is the Absence of God" was in the single author anthology The Stories of Your Life and Others which contained every single published story by Ted Chiang up to that point and for that reason alone needs to be on your bookshelf. Finally "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" can be found in the conveniently titled single author anthology The Dog Said Bow-Wow.

"Fast Times at Fairmont High"
by Vernor Vinge
2002 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

Thanks to a blurb at the front of the novel Rainbows End I had been under the impression that "Fast Times and Fairmont High" was an early version of a few chapters of that novel.

I was wrong.

It definitely is an eary version of some of the things in Rainbows End, but beyond sharing the names of a few characters and featuring a few of the same technologies it is a very different story. At the same time it shares almost all of the strengths of the novel. The book that eventually emerges has more well defined characters but the story is not lacking in quality.

In the not too distant future the ability to process vast amounts of information has radically transformed society. Students commute virtually across country to attend high school. Custom smart drugs are available that can do astounding things but only for the person they're made for. People's view of the world is constantly altered to match what they are looking for. And against this backdrop high school students are working on their exams by seeking to create something of value for their school. A weak student who has been cheating with brain enhancers and a brilliant student join forces for one of the tests where more than one secret may be revealed to the world.

Just like Rainbows End this story hits all of Vinge's strong points. And just like Rainbows End its flaws are so minor that it is not worth mentioning them. And just like Rainbows End I recommend seeking out this story and reading it; if you've enjoyed any of Vinge's work then it is well worth the effort.

"Hell is the Absence of God"
by Ted Chiang
2002 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

Since Chiang is a short story author and since this is the first Hugo he received (though not the first I reviewed) I want to say a few words about him. He is, by percentage, the most honored science fiction author in world. He has published ten stories and won the Hugo and Nebula six times. And that's with declining the nomination one year. That wouldn't mean much if Chiang's work was just popular instead of good but his stories are inevitably brilliant; perfect gems of writing.

The thing that impresses me the most with Chiang is that he is a verbal chameleon. Each story is unique in style, tone, and structure and they never strike false notes. Take "Hell is the Absence of God" since that's why we're here: Chiang writes it in a passive voice that despite breaking all of the traditional rules of good storytelling brings into focus the parable nature of the story. I suspect this is why Chiang only writes one story every two years: it just takes him that long to carefully craft perfection.

"Hell is the Absence of God" postulates a world where the evidence for something along the lines of Judeo-Christian theology is constantly around everyone. Angels manifest regularly leaving disasters and miracles in their wake. Occasionally a glimpse of heaven can be viewed where they pass and its beauty transfigures those who see it and sometimes hell can be viewed below the earth. Souls can be seen departing the dead and moving to their final destination; to heaven if its owner devoutly loves God and to hell to be apart from God for eternity if they don't.

Several people have their lives disrupted by the visitation of an angel: Neil loses his wife whose soul departs for heaven, a preacher whose mission centered on her lack of legs is given the limbs she never had, and a man who has been searching for meaning in life finds nothing has changed despite witnessing an angel. The story focuses on Neil's despair at his wife being taken by God and his necessity to learn to truly love God in order to rejoin her upon his death.

Chiang uses that framework to explore not just the theology of his posited world but modern theology. He also ties it together with an absolute stunner of an ending that is both shocking and inevitable at the same time. I've gushed enough; this is a story that you should read to get the full effect.

"The Dog Said Bow-Wow"
by Michael Swanwick
2002 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

This was the worst of the three short fiction winners in 2002 but that is like noting an opal isn't quite as stunning a diamond or ruby.

In a distant, decadent future technology that is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic is falling into decay. The systems that controlled much of it have turned against humanity and things have regressed to a kind of neo-Victorian style. A dog man joins with a petty thief in a scheme to gain access to the aristocracy and rob them blind.

This is a lively, fast paced adventure story that despite being setting heavy never feels bogged down by it like a lot of SF stories can be. It's the interesting characters who drive the tale and though I worked out the scheme immediately it didn't bother me. I can't call it brilliant but "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" was very enjoyable.

Fan Artists of the 2000's

I'm going to be finishing off a few more categories of Hugo winners in the next week or two so I will start with the two winners for Fan Artist who I have not mentioned yet.

Something I've been struck by as I went through this is how difficult it has been to find samples of most of the fan artists' work on the Internet. Even with the recent ones I have had trouble finding anything beyond a random sampling, the occasional fanzine cover, and a mention as a con attendee.

Sue Mason
2003 and 2005 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist

There are multiple artists by the name of Sue Mason which gave me a bit more trouble than usual in hunting her down. I did find cartoons drawn for different sources but she maintains a website for selling her custom pyrographic, wood burning, art. There's several interesting samples of her work at the site and it is worth taking a look at.

Frank Wu
2004, 2006, and 2007 Hugo Winner for Best Fan Artist



There is a very extensive gallery of Wu's work online. In addition to that there is, unlike the vast majority of fan artist, a book of his art available.

Review - Terraforming Earth, "Millennium Babies", and "Different Kinds of Darkness"

Bob Eggleton
2001 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

If you're curious about my nanowrimo count at the moment it stands at 30026. I'm on the downhill slope now.

In 2001 the actual novella winner was "The Ultimate Earth" which is only available in the novel Terraforming Earth. The novelette "Millennium Babies" was in the single author anthology Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon. Finally "Different Kinds of Darkness" was found in the massive brick anthology The Hard SF Renaissance.

Terraforming Earth
by Jack Williamson
An expansion of the 2001 Hugo Winning and 2001 Nebula Winning Novella "The Ultimate Earth"

Like "...Where Angels Fear to Tread" before the novella "The Ultimate Earth" was printed once in a magazine and has never been collected since. It was, however, integrated into a novel. And once more since I cannot be sure of what changes were made I am briefly reviewing the entire book instead of just the section titled "The Ultimate Earth".

Also this is very much a tribute award. Jack Williamson published his first story in 1928 and remained active with science fiction until his death in 2006. Williamson's only previous award was a Hugo for his memoir Wonder's Child, so this was a Hugo and Nebula more for his body of work and longevity rather than the quality of the story.

Any yet Terraforming Earth wasn't bad. It started with an great premise and up to roughly a third of the way through the book I was impressed. Then the payoff didn't quite come but the book shifted to a pulpy tone that was still entertaining. Finally it concluded weakly but not terribly. The effect as a whole is disappointing but there are some things worth looking at.

In the not too distant future an eccentric billionaire devises a plan to insure the survival of the human race should an extinction event occur. He creates a base on the moon that can function indefinitely and begins storing genetic samples there. Before it is finished, however, an asteroid miles across enters the solar system from interstellar space on a trajectory toward earth that hides it until there is only a few days left. A handful of people escape to the moonbase where they prepare to clone themselves so that a new generation would be born over and over at moments to guide the reconstruction of the Earth.

Terraforming Earth follows nearly a dozen of these generations across millions of years. They're born and witness the earth at transition points, find that the Earth was murdered, and deal with their personal conflicts. The result is a set of linked stories that move quickly from period to period eventually leading to a pulp adventure where the clones face an evil empire of their descendants and a Cambellian story of the apotheosis of humanity.

As I mentioned I was taken with the premise from the beginning. The idea of generations of identical humans being born on the moon and the variations in their behavior through their unique experiences was intriguing to me. Coupling that with a plot of restoring the earth to life across millenia and I was hooked. Williamson follows on this for a little while but eventually things fall into a simple pattern. One person's clone consistently betrays the colony, they never attempt major variations in teaching or cloning multiple copies of the same person (something that always leads to a gender imbalance that affects the clones). No one lives to old age studying the effects and refining their methodology for better or worse. By the time it changes to a more pulpy adventure story it was a welcome change of pace even when it was not as strong as the original concept.

The characters Williamson creates are painted in broad strokes but it was effective for the purposes of displaying the similarities and differences when there were a dozen characters that were genetically identical. It did bother me that female characters were downplayed, there were two female scientists among the clones who do little more than hang off of their chosen lover.

By the time it was over I disappointed that the premise that I was enjoying had been lost for something weaker. If you're interested in the concept of generations of terraforming then you may find something worth reading about in Terraforming Earth.

"Millennium Babies"
by Krsitine Kathryn Rusch
2001 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

Now for another chapter in the "It just bugs me" saga: it just bugs me when authors pander to their audience by creating characters who are Luddites for the period when the story is written. The most common example of this are people in a future where data readers will be a more efficient option going on about how great normal books are. Late twentieth century pop culture lives on through them even though the rest of the world has changed. Occasionally it goes so far that the future culture is presented as something ridiculous so that the Luddite main character that the reader is to identify with is clearly "right". It goes without saying that stories that present science fiction fans as better than other characters fall firmly under this (though that's a sin that "Millennium Babies" didn't commit). It's just pandering to the audience and being pandered to gets on my nerves quickly.

Thousands of people around the world got pregnant in March of 1999 with the intention of trying to have the first child born on January 1, 2000. Thirty years later the daughter of one of those women has come to resent her mother for considering the daughter a failure due to being born at 12:05 am instead of 12:01. A psychology professor interested in the consequence of being a failure from the moment of birth brings hundreds of these children together for a study and (for no conceivable reason) to work out their parental issues.

This story I hated. It's built on the premise that there's hundreds of people who have been wallowing in self-pity due to the time of their birth. Not just how their parents treated but them they've been obsessing over the exact second they left their mother's womb for thirty years. And they're suppose to be sympathetic rather than driving me to want to slap all of them senseless. And for no good reason as part of the psychological experiment the psychologist makes a minimal effort that somehow makes them get over it instantly.

It's trite at best. The story and characters are annoying and there isn't a thing here that was worth reading about. Actively avoid this story.

"Different Kinds of Darkness"
by David Langford
2001 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

Children at a school live with mysterious patches of darkness which no light penetrates. Every unenclosed outdoor area and many sections of their school are filled with this gloom. A group of them find an inkblot like pattern behind the school's photocopier that cause anyone who views it to have muscle spasms and pain. They form a club daring each other to look at the pattern for longer and longer periods.

Langford isn't the first one two write about the concept of certain images being harmful to the human mind but he used it very effectively in "Different Kinds of Darkness". Children not recognizing the danger and using it as a plaything is exactly the kind of reaction I would expect in the situation. While I did not find the conclusion of his plot to be as effective I still enjoyed the story.