The last of the best professional artists nominees is picture book illustrator Shaun Tan:
Once again in a category there is one nominee that is unavailable to me. Ian McDonald's "The Tear" has only been published in an Science Fiction Book Club anthology. I'm not a member so I haven't read it. It also has not been made available online like the other nominees have (though one other of them is currently unavailable). As for the rest:
“The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay - The phrase that comes to mind about this story is "average". An intelligence officer is swept up in a coup and finds himself locked away in a prison camp by his own side. There he's treated badly and left to die. Finlay takes this basic story of survival (which you can find plenty of real world parallels easily enough) and tells it well. He captures the feeling of a gulag well. The downside of doing this kind of story is that I was wondering why I was reading it as science fiction; I'd rather read a non-fiction account which would have the same themes and carry more weight. I never connected with Finlay's spy that is at the center of the story and without that it's mainly an account of life in a prison camp. It's not a bad effort; if "The Political Prisoner" was truly bad the real-world resonances wouldn't have bothered me as much.
“Truth” by Robert Reed - I didn't care for Robert Reed's story but I do have to give him credit for one thing: rather than simply giving the reader a "treating prisoners wrong is bad" message he builds a scenario where the more extreme techniques are hard to ignore. A man is found just across the US border with several pounds of uranium. In interrogation it comes out that the terrorist is a time traveler who came back with dozens of infiltrators who are waiting for the right moment. The story is about a replacement interrogator who takes up the job after the previous one committed suicide. I think from those details you can conclude where the story goes. The battle of wills between prisoner and interrogator is a powerful theme that could have overcome that but Reed just isn't able to portray it well. The prisoner is a cipher, the interrogator isn't really that interesting and the bulk of the interaction occurs away from the reader. Instead Reed fills the time in his story by telling the reader how terrible the world is. It's makes for an uninteresting story.
“The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress - Something strange is happening to elderly people around the world. In one retirement home in particular a physicist finds himself having strange attacks and flashes of other people's memories. Eventually he finds that their idle thoughts are changing the world. Kress doesn't bother playing with "What's happening?" to build up tension; she reveals that through an omniscient space intelligence early on. Instead she presents it as a situation where things will get worse and the human characters need to work it out before it is too late. I enjoyed the characters she created to populate the retirement home since none of them were precisely what one would expect.
“True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow - This is the one story out of the novella category that I thought was genuinely terrific. It's the tale of three colonies of self-replicating quantum computer based nanomachines that each have their own design for the universe. One is a fragmented social intelligence that wants to replace all matter with colonies of itself and since those fragments might be considdered personalities they act as the protagonist. Then there is their direct adversary who acts as an solitary mind by only allowing one path of reasoning and how it wants to limit the consumption of the universe to just one percent of its mass. Finally there are a voratious swarm who consume all matter in its path and exist only for that purpose. The high concepts in the story are a lot of fun. The biggest problem with "True Names" for me was that it comes across as two stories jammed together. The climax to the first plot line is a strange deus ex machina that involves not only the reader not being provided fundamental information about the logic systems but for the logic systems themselves to not be aware of this fundamental aspect to their society. Since the story continues on past that point and the rest of it is completely engrossing I can forgive that but it was a stumbling block.
So my ballot for the novella category would be:
"True Names"
"The Erdmann Nexus"
"The Political Prisoner"
No award
"Truth"
"The Tear"
Naturally "The Tear" is only at the bottom since I haven't read it. I happen to like Ian McDonald's work and I want to read it though I suspect it will be a while before I get that chance.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Review - "Abandon in Place", "The Flowers of Aulit Prison", and "Sister Emily's Lightship"
This time around all three of the stories awarded the Nebula had something distinctive about them that made them all interesting to read.
"Abandon in Place"
by Jerry Oltion
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novella
NASA is being haunted by the ghost of the dead space program. Ghostly Saturn V rockets are appearing at abandoned launch pads and firing themselves to the moon where they vanish. To end this public embarrassment NASA has an astronaut commandeer the rocket before it launches so that it can be disabled in orbit. Once there the astronaut changes his mind and decides to fly it to the moon.
Oltion has made a "scientific ghost story" for lack of a better term. A lot of this story's emphasis is on the technical challenges of flying an Apollo era craft. Along with that is a lot of explanation on the nature of ghosts. This ghost in particular provides a unique challenge to the travelers on board. It gives the story a strange tension that helps elevate it above its common roots. The ghost's nature (which is a plot point from about half way through so I can't go into too many details) also shifts focus from the mission to the characters.
The hook of the space program's ghost plays very well nearly fifteen years after the story was written. We're still dealing with the same problems and there's no change in sight. "Abandon in Place" is a pretty good story as it stands but that resonence helps make it even more interesting.
"The Flowers of Aulit Prison"
by Nancy Kress
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novelette
In an alien culture where belonging to society is the most important thing to them they punish people by declairing them "dead" and ignoring them. They don't let the most violent offenders wander the streets; they stick them in Aulit Prison and let them rot. A woman who murdered her sister in a fit of jealousy has been given a rare chance at recovering her life by acting as a spy and informant for the government. She is sent into the prison to convince a human locked away to tell her about who from her people were assisting the human with experiments on children's brains.
What made this story particularly effective is how well Kress uses an alien culture. Rather than bogging the reader down with explanations about the culture she mentions things in passing and implies details. Kress doesn't drop in a lot of made up words where English would work fine. The way that the culture is used is not alien they just different.
I wasn't really impressed with the plot twist in the middle of the story. It seemed unnecessary to me and added themes that were not as well developed as the punishment and redemption one. It's not that Kress does a bad job with that new direction; it's that it feels like there's a disjointed break in the story when it shifts.
Still that's the worst thing I can say about "The Flowers of Aulit Prison". The protagonist's journey in search of redemption in a society that thinks of her as dead is terrific. It's well worth your effort to seek out this story.
"Sister Emily's Lightship"
by Jane Yolen
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Short Story
Emily Dickenson was having a quiet life as a recluise and poet when she starts spotting a strange light in the sky after midnight. She watches for that light and eventually meets a visitor who has been using it.
This story is a wonderful example of how to use a historical setting well. There are no infodumps where Dickenson explains details of her life to people who should already know them. Yolen smoothly integrates her into the story as a character.
The biggest problem with this story is nothing really happens. Dickenson avoids company, feels unwell, and sees the light but there isn't really much of a dramatic arc. If you changed the title to "Emily Dickenson Sees a Spaceship" you could sum up the story right there. I liked how well Yolen presented Dickenson as a character but at the same time wished that she had found something more interesting for Dickenson to do. In the end the story is a bit of fun fluff for those who like Dickenson and anyone else is going to have the story just bounce off of them.
"Abandon in Place"
by Jerry Oltion
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novella
NASA is being haunted by the ghost of the dead space program. Ghostly Saturn V rockets are appearing at abandoned launch pads and firing themselves to the moon where they vanish. To end this public embarrassment NASA has an astronaut commandeer the rocket before it launches so that it can be disabled in orbit. Once there the astronaut changes his mind and decides to fly it to the moon.
Oltion has made a "scientific ghost story" for lack of a better term. A lot of this story's emphasis is on the technical challenges of flying an Apollo era craft. Along with that is a lot of explanation on the nature of ghosts. This ghost in particular provides a unique challenge to the travelers on board. It gives the story a strange tension that helps elevate it above its common roots. The ghost's nature (which is a plot point from about half way through so I can't go into too many details) also shifts focus from the mission to the characters.
The hook of the space program's ghost plays very well nearly fifteen years after the story was written. We're still dealing with the same problems and there's no change in sight. "Abandon in Place" is a pretty good story as it stands but that resonence helps make it even more interesting.
"The Flowers of Aulit Prison"
by Nancy Kress
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novelette
In an alien culture where belonging to society is the most important thing to them they punish people by declairing them "dead" and ignoring them. They don't let the most violent offenders wander the streets; they stick them in Aulit Prison and let them rot. A woman who murdered her sister in a fit of jealousy has been given a rare chance at recovering her life by acting as a spy and informant for the government. She is sent into the prison to convince a human locked away to tell her about who from her people were assisting the human with experiments on children's brains.
What made this story particularly effective is how well Kress uses an alien culture. Rather than bogging the reader down with explanations about the culture she mentions things in passing and implies details. Kress doesn't drop in a lot of made up words where English would work fine. The way that the culture is used is not alien they just different.
I wasn't really impressed with the plot twist in the middle of the story. It seemed unnecessary to me and added themes that were not as well developed as the punishment and redemption one. It's not that Kress does a bad job with that new direction; it's that it feels like there's a disjointed break in the story when it shifts.
Still that's the worst thing I can say about "The Flowers of Aulit Prison". The protagonist's journey in search of redemption in a society that thinks of her as dead is terrific. It's well worth your effort to seek out this story.
"Sister Emily's Lightship"
by Jane Yolen
1997 Nebula Award Winner for Best Short Story
Emily Dickenson was having a quiet life as a recluise and poet when she starts spotting a strange light in the sky after midnight. She watches for that light and eventually meets a visitor who has been using it.
This story is a wonderful example of how to use a historical setting well. There are no infodumps where Dickenson explains details of her life to people who should already know them. Yolen smoothly integrates her into the story as a character.
The biggest problem with this story is nothing really happens. Dickenson avoids company, feels unwell, and sees the light but there isn't really much of a dramatic arc. If you changed the title to "Emily Dickenson Sees a Spaceship" you could sum up the story right there. I liked how well Yolen presented Dickenson as a character but at the same time wished that she had found something more interesting for Dickenson to do. In the end the story is a bit of fun fluff for those who like Dickenson and anyone else is going to have the story just bounce off of them.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
2009 Hugo Nominees - Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
It's John Picacio's turn to be showcased as a nominee for best professional artist:
In this case that's a scan from my copy of the magazine; unlike the other artists I've shown so far his website hasn't been updated since 2005.
So getting to the dramatic presentation nominees:
METAtropolis; written by Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder; edited by John Scalzi - I'm getting this one out of the way first because it's the one that I haven't heard. In this case it's an anthology that was designed for being an audiobook. There is a printed version available but the audiobook is what has been nominated so I have not read it. On top of that it is only available as a download; a CD release is scheduled for just after the awards have been handed out. I don't buy media if I can't have a physical copy it so I won't be listening to METAtropolis for a while.
WALL-E; story by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter; screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon; directed by Andrew Stanton - I just reviewed this as a Nebula winner and my thoughts have not changed. It's brilliant. A richer story more subtly told than you'd be able to guess just from the premise.
Iron Man; screenplay by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway; based on characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby; directed by Jon Favreau - I also kind of reviewed Iron Man already, though that wasn't much of a review since it was about how flawed the structure of the film was. I did not like this movie about an weapons manufacturer who turns altruistic after recieving a near-fatal injury and so builds a suit of power armor to bully third world nations. The action set peices were far too few and weren't interesting; when I'm watching an action movie I'll forgive flaws in all other areas than this since they're the reason the movie exists. I also found the main character to be completely unlikable.
The Dark Knight; story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer; screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; based on characters "created" by Bob Kane; directed by Christopher Nolan - I didn't review The Dark Knight because for two weeks after it was open you couldn't look at a website run by a nerd without being told how brilliant it is. I didn't need to add my voice to that. In this sequel (for the three of you who don't know about it) the Batman is still fighting crime in Gotham City and providing an inspiration but now the Joker has turned up intent on spreading chaos and tearing humanity down. This film is very effective mainly due to how Nolan split the hero and villain between morality and amorality instead of just immorality. Giving the villain equal time built him into an equal and the action set pieces were many and varied. It was the ideal superhero movie.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army; story by Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola; screenplay by Guillermo del Toro; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; directed by Guillermo del Toro - I found the first Hellboy movie to be a good effort but critically flawed in the pacing. A close but no cigar situation. This time around the pacing has improved, the art design has been pushed from "interesting" to "spectacular", but the story (which was never great to begin with) leaks out. The film is about a group of unusual beings who work for the US government to deal with supernatural threats. This time the threat is a group of elves who are seeking out an indestructable clockwork army so they can wipe out humanity. I enjoyed watching the film; the goofy characters are a lot of fun and the supernatural elements are terrific. I just something with a better plot.
So my ballot for this category would be:
WALL-E
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II
No Award
Iron Man
METAtropolis
Deciding between WALL-E and The Dark Knight was hard but I felt that WALL-E was the better production. METAtropolis is at the bottom solely because I have not listened to it and I won't be able to revise that opinion until after the award has already been handed out.
In this case that's a scan from my copy of the magazine; unlike the other artists I've shown so far his website hasn't been updated since 2005.So getting to the dramatic presentation nominees:
METAtropolis; written by Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder; edited by John Scalzi - I'm getting this one out of the way first because it's the one that I haven't heard. In this case it's an anthology that was designed for being an audiobook. There is a printed version available but the audiobook is what has been nominated so I have not read it. On top of that it is only available as a download; a CD release is scheduled for just after the awards have been handed out. I don't buy media if I can't have a physical copy it so I won't be listening to METAtropolis for a while.
WALL-E; story by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter; screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon; directed by Andrew Stanton - I just reviewed this as a Nebula winner and my thoughts have not changed. It's brilliant. A richer story more subtly told than you'd be able to guess just from the premise.
Iron Man; screenplay by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway; based on characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby; directed by Jon Favreau - I also kind of reviewed Iron Man already, though that wasn't much of a review since it was about how flawed the structure of the film was. I did not like this movie about an weapons manufacturer who turns altruistic after recieving a near-fatal injury and so builds a suit of power armor to bully third world nations. The action set peices were far too few and weren't interesting; when I'm watching an action movie I'll forgive flaws in all other areas than this since they're the reason the movie exists. I also found the main character to be completely unlikable.
The Dark Knight; story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer; screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; based on characters "created" by Bob Kane; directed by Christopher Nolan - I didn't review The Dark Knight because for two weeks after it was open you couldn't look at a website run by a nerd without being told how brilliant it is. I didn't need to add my voice to that. In this sequel (for the three of you who don't know about it) the Batman is still fighting crime in Gotham City and providing an inspiration but now the Joker has turned up intent on spreading chaos and tearing humanity down. This film is very effective mainly due to how Nolan split the hero and villain between morality and amorality instead of just immorality. Giving the villain equal time built him into an equal and the action set pieces were many and varied. It was the ideal superhero movie.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army; story by Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola; screenplay by Guillermo del Toro; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; directed by Guillermo del Toro - I found the first Hellboy movie to be a good effort but critically flawed in the pacing. A close but no cigar situation. This time around the pacing has improved, the art design has been pushed from "interesting" to "spectacular", but the story (which was never great to begin with) leaks out. The film is about a group of unusual beings who work for the US government to deal with supernatural threats. This time the threat is a group of elves who are seeking out an indestructable clockwork army so they can wipe out humanity. I enjoyed watching the film; the goofy characters are a lot of fun and the supernatural elements are terrific. I just something with a better plot.
So my ballot for this category would be:
WALL-E
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II
No Award
Iron Man
METAtropolis
Deciding between WALL-E and The Dark Knight was hard but I felt that WALL-E was the better production. METAtropolis is at the bottom solely because I have not listened to it and I won't be able to revise that opinion until after the award has already been handed out.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Review - "Da Vinci Rising", "Lifeboat on a Burning Sea", and "A Birthday"
Before I say anything else I need to point out that my absence for the past few days did not have anything to do with the fact that one of the Nebula winning stories being reviewed has a tragic connection to an event recently in the news. That's just one of those coincidences that color life.
"Da Vinci Rising"
by Jack Dann
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Novella
Instead of remaining on the drawing board Leonardo with the assistance of a young Niccolo Machiavelli build a glider to impress the rulers of their city. After a nearly disastrous first test where Leonardo finds out that it's easier to go up than to land safely the artist and engineer becomes obsessed with making it safe while Machiavelli and the Medicis push for other applications.
I've got to get this out of the way first. In my copy there is an introduction by Dann where he mentions the vast research that he did on Leonardo da Vinci's life. Somehow he managed to miss one of the big things that drive historians nuts: "da Vinci" was not Leonardo's last name. Vinci was the town he was from so "Leonardo da Vinci" means "Leonardo from Vinci". It's not a family name or title. If you ever want a ten minute diatribe out of a historian just call him "da Vinci" and stand back.
So despite Dann missing that detail this is an interesting historical story. There's still a lot of name dropping and throwing out irrelevant factoids but it never becomes overwhelming. Once you're past the opening where all the major historical figures in Florence at the time were thrown into the mix things improve dramatically. Dann focuses in on the development of a flying machine given renaissance technology and a distractable genius and that was an effective story.
On the other hand I didn't really get a feeling for the characters beyond their broad historical roles. Leonardo is brilliant but prone to flights of fancy. Machiavelli is a conniving social climber (not entirely fair to Machiavelli, of course, but that is most people's perceptions). Relying on the weight of history for characterization is not effective.
Consequently I'm left with a slightly negative impression of "Da Vinci Rising". If you're interested in the period or Leonardo then you'll probably find more in this story to enjoy. Without that connection there isn't anything in it to draw a reader in.
"Lifeboat on a Burning Sea"
by Bruce Holland Rogers
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette
A pair of researchers are looking into developing machine intelligence to the point where it can replicate human intelligence. One is desperately seeking a means for immortality while the other is seeking knowledge. Despite the fact that they play off each other for research their spiritual beliefs bring them into conflict. When the knowledge seeker dies the other is pushed into creating a computer simulation of him and finds some anomalies.
Rogers does a great job of establishing the tension in the philosophies of the main characters: one who feels he is racing death itself in order to find a way to transfer his mind to a computer and the other who believes in an immortal soul that cannot be contained in this way. Its a classic scenario and it plays out very well because there are not even hints of something beyond the philosophical arguments. There are no ghosts or indications that the computerized copy is more or less than what it is presented as since those would disrupt the theme.
I did have a problem with some of the characterization in the last portion of the story. It felt to me that Rogers wanted (to continue this theme) a philosophical ending and consequently some of the motivations get muddied. This isn't really a problem with the story since it is one of those messy situations that life can get into, it's just that I think that the concepts could have been presented more clearly.
What Rogers does really well with his story is bring those arguments about minds and souls into simulations. It's not unique but he told it very well and for that reason I think "Lifeboat on a Burning Sea" is worth reading.
"A Birthday"
by Esther M. Friesner
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story
In the not too distant future the conflict between pro-choice and pro-life with abortion is effectively over. A law was passed that made abortion available to women who wanted it but when they had an abortion a recording of the genetic code of the fetus was made. Once that was done for the next seven years the women would be confronted by images of the child they never had on any digital screen they used. One woman is on the last day of this sentence and she spends it helping at a women's center where she encounters many facets of the consequences to this.
The idea that the two sides of the abortion debate could come to an accord is a huge stretch. Setting aside religion for the moment (which is difficult to do given how it entrenched it is on one side) you have the question of when a fetus transitions into a human being weighed against the question of when is it acceptable to restrict self-determination and it is impossible to resolve those two cleanly (I expect that the abortion debate will be with us for a long time to come). Still I'll accept it as the premise of the story and Friesner does a great job of making that the only major assumption. Human beings are still human beings; twisted up and conflicted despite the accord.
The story obviously exists to explore the details of this world though in this case Friesner emphasizes the personal story of the woman seeing the child who has haunted her for the last time over the talking with all of the people who have been impacted by abortions. Friesner keeps it personal and that's the best way to deal with a story that is really about the setting.
This isn't a perfect story; it might still be a bit too exposition heavy for some. I think that Friesner managed to overcome that problem and write a story that manages to show the qualities and flaws in both sides of the argument. I've read far too many stories along these lines that can only demonize the side that the author disagrees with and while I think I've felt out Friesner's actual opinion I wouldn't bet money on it. That makes "A Birthday" a mix that could anger any reader and that makes it a bit more interesting.
"Da Vinci Rising"
by Jack Dann
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Novella
Instead of remaining on the drawing board Leonardo with the assistance of a young Niccolo Machiavelli build a glider to impress the rulers of their city. After a nearly disastrous first test where Leonardo finds out that it's easier to go up than to land safely the artist and engineer becomes obsessed with making it safe while Machiavelli and the Medicis push for other applications.
I've got to get this out of the way first. In my copy there is an introduction by Dann where he mentions the vast research that he did on Leonardo da Vinci's life. Somehow he managed to miss one of the big things that drive historians nuts: "da Vinci" was not Leonardo's last name. Vinci was the town he was from so "Leonardo da Vinci" means "Leonardo from Vinci". It's not a family name or title. If you ever want a ten minute diatribe out of a historian just call him "da Vinci" and stand back.
So despite Dann missing that detail this is an interesting historical story. There's still a lot of name dropping and throwing out irrelevant factoids but it never becomes overwhelming. Once you're past the opening where all the major historical figures in Florence at the time were thrown into the mix things improve dramatically. Dann focuses in on the development of a flying machine given renaissance technology and a distractable genius and that was an effective story.
On the other hand I didn't really get a feeling for the characters beyond their broad historical roles. Leonardo is brilliant but prone to flights of fancy. Machiavelli is a conniving social climber (not entirely fair to Machiavelli, of course, but that is most people's perceptions). Relying on the weight of history for characterization is not effective.
Consequently I'm left with a slightly negative impression of "Da Vinci Rising". If you're interested in the period or Leonardo then you'll probably find more in this story to enjoy. Without that connection there isn't anything in it to draw a reader in.
"Lifeboat on a Burning Sea"
by Bruce Holland Rogers
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette
A pair of researchers are looking into developing machine intelligence to the point where it can replicate human intelligence. One is desperately seeking a means for immortality while the other is seeking knowledge. Despite the fact that they play off each other for research their spiritual beliefs bring them into conflict. When the knowledge seeker dies the other is pushed into creating a computer simulation of him and finds some anomalies.
Rogers does a great job of establishing the tension in the philosophies of the main characters: one who feels he is racing death itself in order to find a way to transfer his mind to a computer and the other who believes in an immortal soul that cannot be contained in this way. Its a classic scenario and it plays out very well because there are not even hints of something beyond the philosophical arguments. There are no ghosts or indications that the computerized copy is more or less than what it is presented as since those would disrupt the theme.
I did have a problem with some of the characterization in the last portion of the story. It felt to me that Rogers wanted (to continue this theme) a philosophical ending and consequently some of the motivations get muddied. This isn't really a problem with the story since it is one of those messy situations that life can get into, it's just that I think that the concepts could have been presented more clearly.
What Rogers does really well with his story is bring those arguments about minds and souls into simulations. It's not unique but he told it very well and for that reason I think "Lifeboat on a Burning Sea" is worth reading.
"A Birthday"
by Esther M. Friesner
1996 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story
In the not too distant future the conflict between pro-choice and pro-life with abortion is effectively over. A law was passed that made abortion available to women who wanted it but when they had an abortion a recording of the genetic code of the fetus was made. Once that was done for the next seven years the women would be confronted by images of the child they never had on any digital screen they used. One woman is on the last day of this sentence and she spends it helping at a women's center where she encounters many facets of the consequences to this.
The idea that the two sides of the abortion debate could come to an accord is a huge stretch. Setting aside religion for the moment (which is difficult to do given how it entrenched it is on one side) you have the question of when a fetus transitions into a human being weighed against the question of when is it acceptable to restrict self-determination and it is impossible to resolve those two cleanly (I expect that the abortion debate will be with us for a long time to come). Still I'll accept it as the premise of the story and Friesner does a great job of making that the only major assumption. Human beings are still human beings; twisted up and conflicted despite the accord.
The story obviously exists to explore the details of this world though in this case Friesner emphasizes the personal story of the woman seeing the child who has haunted her for the last time over the talking with all of the people who have been impacted by abortions. Friesner keeps it personal and that's the best way to deal with a story that is really about the setting.
This isn't a perfect story; it might still be a bit too exposition heavy for some. I think that Friesner managed to overcome that problem and write a story that manages to show the qualities and flaws in both sides of the argument. I've read far too many stories along these lines that can only demonize the side that the author disagrees with and while I think I've felt out Friesner's actual opinion I wouldn't bet money on it. That makes "A Birthday" a mix that could anger any reader and that makes it a bit more interesting.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
2009 Hugo Nominees - Best Graphic Story
First, here's another nominee for best professional artist, Donato Giancola:
The nominees for the new best graphic story category are interesting since they can be easily broken into three blocks of two books. We have two licensed comics based on already popular SF properties, two climaxes to long running Vertigo series, and two webcomics. I don't usually read licensed comics since they usually disappoint so those were the two I had not read before. The two webcomic nominees are one third of all the webcomics I follow and of the remaining webcomics there's only one that might even be considdered for the award. So I'm going to break it down by those blocks.
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle; written by Jim Butcher; art by Ardian Syaf - Though I'm aware of Butcher's novel series about a hard boiled wizard detective in modern Chicago I haven't read any of them. The books have been recommended to me a few times but I'm always hesitant to pick up any book that's described as part of a "series". After reading this comic series I think I will try one of the novels. This comic had the advantage of being written by Butcher and unlike some writers from other mediums Butcher used the comic format well; his dialog is tight and complements the images. In this story the wizard/detective is called in to consult on a murder at a zoo that is being blamed on a gorrilla. Naturally there's evil magic involved and the detective gets in over his head. I don't want to discount Syaf's contribution to this work; most memorably he drew the title character in an overshadowed hard-boiled rough style while his unwilling sidekick is much lighter. The whole thing made for a charming book that made me smile.
Serenity: Better Days; written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews; art by Will Conrad; color by Michelle Madsen; cover by Jo Chen - In contrast with the previous book this is exactly why I don't read licensed comic books. While all of the common beats from the Firefly television series are here this comic is like a faded photocopy. The scruffy rogue characters are there but they're a bit off. It's a plot that you might see in the show (the crew makes a large pile of money while they're being hunted by someone looking for veterans of the war) but it doesn't come across well. There are moments that are effective and they are fleeting. The main storyline is disjointed and jumps from big moment to big moment. Given how the dialog just falls flat I strongly suspect that Whedon's involvement with this comic was just to say "Hey, let's make a Firefly comic!" and putting his name on it to increase sales. Conrad's art isn't bad but is nowhere near smooth enough to make up for that story.
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores; written by Brian K. Vaughan; pencilled by Pia Guerra; inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. - I never thought I would enjoy a series about all the male mammels on earth dying except one man and his monkey. Instead of taking the obvious route Vaughan turned it into a journey into a post-apocalyptic world as the last man wandered the face of the earth looking for the girlfriend he was about to propose to over the phone when the deaths struck. In this last volume he finally catches up with her after years of wandering and has to decide what he really wants. Simultaniously his enemies are catching up with him for one last confrontation. That storyline is incredibly effective as Vaughn and Guerra capture the growth that all the characters have undergone. The final issue is a bit more controversial since it jumps forward several decades and is filled with a lot of clumsy dialog telling the readers what happened to everyone. On the other hand the conclusion of that final issue is absolutely perfect. Still this is a very good story that only suffers because the reader needs to have read the rest of the series to appreciate it.
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 - I'm a bit confused on this nominee: there's a three issue storyline titled "War and Pieces" that's part of the Fables series and there's a six issue trade paperback War and Pieces. Given the context of the nominees I believe that they mean the trade paperback but I can't be certain. The series itself is about all stories being true (especially fairy tales) on other planes of existence. Before the series began one of the characters, known only as the Adversary now, has conquored all of the other worlds forcing the characters in those fairy tales to flee to the real world. In this volume those refugees take the lessons of the real world back to make war on the Adversary. So there is a spy story as one gathers vital information which is followed by the story of the very brief and very brutal war. This volume does have the advantage of standing well on its own though again as the climax of a seventy-five issue long storyline it's more effective if the reader doesn't start at the end. Willingham clearly planned out the war carefully which makes the plan something simple and direct that the reader can both understand and believe. Buckingham always does a great job and for the final issue in the storyline does everything in spectacular verticle layouts.
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones; written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright - The premise of this webcomic is a psuedo-Victorian world where some people possess the ability to create steampunk inventions that break the laws of physics. Agatha Heterodyne is the heir to the greatest family of mad scientists and has been in hiding her whole life from the forces that tore her family apart. In this section of the story she has returned to her ancestral home, an intelligent castle that has gone insane in her absense. People who want to seize that power for themselves or destroy it before it can be used have also arrived and Agatha must attempt to gain control over the castle before their plans can be activated. I've enjoyed the Foglio's work since I saw it in Dragon magazine and the webcomic is up to their standards. Unfortunately this particular storyline feels more like a bridge between larger events than a contained story of its own. We have a lot of characters moving to get into position to react but very little of them actually taking action.
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic; by Howard Tayler - In contrast this storyline is almost completely self-contained. The mercenary crew that stars in this strip sold one of their enemies to some revolutionaries in a desperate situation as a "military aide". That enemy managed to win the revolution and install himself as king of the planet though his reign is measured in hours. Now the mercenaries find themselves in a classic dilema: they have two people who hire them to steal the body and the government of the planet hires them to guard the body. The dilema, of course, is how can they get paid three times for the same work. Tayler's art isn't up to the quality of the other nominees (he's grown from a doodler in his first few strips to a decent cartoonist over the ten years he's been working on the strip); still the actual story is among the best thanks to it's snappy pacing as a daily comic strip. Tayler keeps things moving from gag to gag and also recognizing that any given strip could be someone's first and that makes it very accessable.
My ballot for Best Graphic Story would be:
The Dresden Files
Schlock Mercenary
Fables
Y: The Last Man
Girl Genius
No Award
Serenity
The nominees for the new best graphic story category are interesting since they can be easily broken into three blocks of two books. We have two licensed comics based on already popular SF properties, two climaxes to long running Vertigo series, and two webcomics. I don't usually read licensed comics since they usually disappoint so those were the two I had not read before. The two webcomic nominees are one third of all the webcomics I follow and of the remaining webcomics there's only one that might even be considdered for the award. So I'm going to break it down by those blocks.
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle; written by Jim Butcher; art by Ardian Syaf - Though I'm aware of Butcher's novel series about a hard boiled wizard detective in modern Chicago I haven't read any of them. The books have been recommended to me a few times but I'm always hesitant to pick up any book that's described as part of a "series". After reading this comic series I think I will try one of the novels. This comic had the advantage of being written by Butcher and unlike some writers from other mediums Butcher used the comic format well; his dialog is tight and complements the images. In this story the wizard/detective is called in to consult on a murder at a zoo that is being blamed on a gorrilla. Naturally there's evil magic involved and the detective gets in over his head. I don't want to discount Syaf's contribution to this work; most memorably he drew the title character in an overshadowed hard-boiled rough style while his unwilling sidekick is much lighter. The whole thing made for a charming book that made me smile.
Serenity: Better Days; written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews; art by Will Conrad; color by Michelle Madsen; cover by Jo Chen - In contrast with the previous book this is exactly why I don't read licensed comic books. While all of the common beats from the Firefly television series are here this comic is like a faded photocopy. The scruffy rogue characters are there but they're a bit off. It's a plot that you might see in the show (the crew makes a large pile of money while they're being hunted by someone looking for veterans of the war) but it doesn't come across well. There are moments that are effective and they are fleeting. The main storyline is disjointed and jumps from big moment to big moment. Given how the dialog just falls flat I strongly suspect that Whedon's involvement with this comic was just to say "Hey, let's make a Firefly comic!" and putting his name on it to increase sales. Conrad's art isn't bad but is nowhere near smooth enough to make up for that story.
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores; written by Brian K. Vaughan; pencilled by Pia Guerra; inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. - I never thought I would enjoy a series about all the male mammels on earth dying except one man and his monkey. Instead of taking the obvious route Vaughan turned it into a journey into a post-apocalyptic world as the last man wandered the face of the earth looking for the girlfriend he was about to propose to over the phone when the deaths struck. In this last volume he finally catches up with her after years of wandering and has to decide what he really wants. Simultaniously his enemies are catching up with him for one last confrontation. That storyline is incredibly effective as Vaughn and Guerra capture the growth that all the characters have undergone. The final issue is a bit more controversial since it jumps forward several decades and is filled with a lot of clumsy dialog telling the readers what happened to everyone. On the other hand the conclusion of that final issue is absolutely perfect. Still this is a very good story that only suffers because the reader needs to have read the rest of the series to appreciate it.
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 - I'm a bit confused on this nominee: there's a three issue storyline titled "War and Pieces" that's part of the Fables series and there's a six issue trade paperback War and Pieces. Given the context of the nominees I believe that they mean the trade paperback but I can't be certain. The series itself is about all stories being true (especially fairy tales) on other planes of existence. Before the series began one of the characters, known only as the Adversary now, has conquored all of the other worlds forcing the characters in those fairy tales to flee to the real world. In this volume those refugees take the lessons of the real world back to make war on the Adversary. So there is a spy story as one gathers vital information which is followed by the story of the very brief and very brutal war. This volume does have the advantage of standing well on its own though again as the climax of a seventy-five issue long storyline it's more effective if the reader doesn't start at the end. Willingham clearly planned out the war carefully which makes the plan something simple and direct that the reader can both understand and believe. Buckingham always does a great job and for the final issue in the storyline does everything in spectacular verticle layouts.
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones; written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright - The premise of this webcomic is a psuedo-Victorian world where some people possess the ability to create steampunk inventions that break the laws of physics. Agatha Heterodyne is the heir to the greatest family of mad scientists and has been in hiding her whole life from the forces that tore her family apart. In this section of the story she has returned to her ancestral home, an intelligent castle that has gone insane in her absense. People who want to seize that power for themselves or destroy it before it can be used have also arrived and Agatha must attempt to gain control over the castle before their plans can be activated. I've enjoyed the Foglio's work since I saw it in Dragon magazine and the webcomic is up to their standards. Unfortunately this particular storyline feels more like a bridge between larger events than a contained story of its own. We have a lot of characters moving to get into position to react but very little of them actually taking action.
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic; by Howard Tayler - In contrast this storyline is almost completely self-contained. The mercenary crew that stars in this strip sold one of their enemies to some revolutionaries in a desperate situation as a "military aide". That enemy managed to win the revolution and install himself as king of the planet though his reign is measured in hours. Now the mercenaries find themselves in a classic dilema: they have two people who hire them to steal the body and the government of the planet hires them to guard the body. The dilema, of course, is how can they get paid three times for the same work. Tayler's art isn't up to the quality of the other nominees (he's grown from a doodler in his first few strips to a decent cartoonist over the ten years he's been working on the strip); still the actual story is among the best thanks to it's snappy pacing as a daily comic strip. Tayler keeps things moving from gag to gag and also recognizing that any given strip could be someone's first and that makes it very accessable.My ballot for Best Graphic Story would be:
The Dresden Files
Schlock Mercenary
Fables
Y: The Last Man
Girl Genius
No Award
Serenity
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
2009 Hugo Nominees - The Novelettes
Before going on to the novelettes I wanted to include the Hugo nominated professional artists in my look at the nominees. As I did when I went through the past winners I won't review the art; I don't have an eye for it. All of the pictures were created in 2008 since that is the period that they're nominated for. Finally all of the images are taken from the artists' own websites so you'll notice their watermarks on most of the images. Since I'm behind by one nominee there's two paintings today. First, from Dan Dos Santos:
And from Bob Eggleton:
If the theme of the short story category was "monkeys" the theme here is "old horror pastiche". As before the links will take you to the text of the story. This is also the first time in looking at nominees where I didn't actively dislike any of the nominees in the category. A couple of the stories approach the borderline and none cross it.
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel - I've already reviewed this story as the 2008 Nebula winner. For those who d0n't want to look back: I enjoyed it as a cute mash-up of Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice. I can't call it brilliant work though if you like that kind of literary game then you'll enjoy it.
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner - The first thing that any reader is going to notice about this novelette is the quirky voice. It's all short, declaritive sentences with almost no description. Once you get into the story about a boy who finds a ray-gun and learns about love and responsibility from that voice helps keep things from being too personal. Gardner takes the story in a few directions I didn't expect right up to the ending which has its own strange twist. One thing I appreciated was just how naturally the story progresses; it might have a ray-gun as the driving factor but all of the reactions are reasonable. Gardner does a wonderful job in capturing the changing attitudes of the boy as he matures and that carries the story well.
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi - In the newsroom of the near future a Laotian reporter concentrates on important stories that don't attract interest. He is threatened with being fired if he cannot get more readers and one of his coworkers helps him hook up with a starlet that can raise his profile. The newsroom of tomorrow is an interesting theme to work with and I felt that Bacigalupi just didn't quite get the concepts down. Reading the story it felt like he knew the buzzwords and problems facing media organizations but not how everything connects together. Consequently he has a news cycle and reactions that are measured in seconds; the media is certainly going to be cycling faster in the future but there is a limit of human response. Getting beyond that it becomes just another story of a crusading journalist versus the people who just want fluff. Personally I would have rather read the story about the people working to fill those incredibly fast news cycles.
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear - I was expecting more of a Lovecraft pastiche from this story than what it is. Instead Bear's story feels more like a response to Lovecraft's attitudes regarding race (those attitudes were solidly planted in the mid-nineteenth century despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote in the early-twentieth). In "Shoggoths in Bloom" the threat of a second world war is in the air as an African-American college professor attempts the first significant examination of the shoggoths in the wild. The giant, acidic, tentacle-sprouting monstrocities ooze onto shore in the late autumn where they flower for a brief time before returning to the ocean depths. While examining them the professor deals with the casual racism of New England, his own automatic responses to innocent remarks, and concerns for what is happening in Nazi Germany. The first two thirds of the story are interesting but the last portion where all of the answers are handed over on a deus ex machina left a bitter taste in my mouth. The ethical delema that replaced the questions wasn't interesting enough to make up for the shift.
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick - Resnick has done it to me again; he wrote a story where I'm not sure what to make of the ending. If the man wrote endings that were any more ambiguous they'd trail off into random text. This time around two very old men reminisce about a a magic shop where they first met as children nearly eighty years before. On a lark the two of them look for the shop and find it with the same proprietor who introduced them still running it. The proprietor now agrees to show them some new things. Unfortunately for this story the ending comes down to a confrontation between some weak homilies and vaguely sinister supernatural forces. That made it much less involving for me than some of Resnick's other stories. Still it's a solid piece of work despite the fact that strange shops of wonders and reclaimed youth have been overused.
My ballot for the novelette category would look like:
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi
No Award
And from Bob Eggleton:
If the theme of the short story category was "monkeys" the theme here is "old horror pastiche". As before the links will take you to the text of the story. This is also the first time in looking at nominees where I didn't actively dislike any of the nominees in the category. A couple of the stories approach the borderline and none cross it.
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel - I've already reviewed this story as the 2008 Nebula winner. For those who d0n't want to look back: I enjoyed it as a cute mash-up of Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice. I can't call it brilliant work though if you like that kind of literary game then you'll enjoy it.
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner - The first thing that any reader is going to notice about this novelette is the quirky voice. It's all short, declaritive sentences with almost no description. Once you get into the story about a boy who finds a ray-gun and learns about love and responsibility from that voice helps keep things from being too personal. Gardner takes the story in a few directions I didn't expect right up to the ending which has its own strange twist. One thing I appreciated was just how naturally the story progresses; it might have a ray-gun as the driving factor but all of the reactions are reasonable. Gardner does a wonderful job in capturing the changing attitudes of the boy as he matures and that carries the story well.
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi - In the newsroom of the near future a Laotian reporter concentrates on important stories that don't attract interest. He is threatened with being fired if he cannot get more readers and one of his coworkers helps him hook up with a starlet that can raise his profile. The newsroom of tomorrow is an interesting theme to work with and I felt that Bacigalupi just didn't quite get the concepts down. Reading the story it felt like he knew the buzzwords and problems facing media organizations but not how everything connects together. Consequently he has a news cycle and reactions that are measured in seconds; the media is certainly going to be cycling faster in the future but there is a limit of human response. Getting beyond that it becomes just another story of a crusading journalist versus the people who just want fluff. Personally I would have rather read the story about the people working to fill those incredibly fast news cycles.
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear - I was expecting more of a Lovecraft pastiche from this story than what it is. Instead Bear's story feels more like a response to Lovecraft's attitudes regarding race (those attitudes were solidly planted in the mid-nineteenth century despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote in the early-twentieth). In "Shoggoths in Bloom" the threat of a second world war is in the air as an African-American college professor attempts the first significant examination of the shoggoths in the wild. The giant, acidic, tentacle-sprouting monstrocities ooze onto shore in the late autumn where they flower for a brief time before returning to the ocean depths. While examining them the professor deals with the casual racism of New England, his own automatic responses to innocent remarks, and concerns for what is happening in Nazi Germany. The first two thirds of the story are interesting but the last portion where all of the answers are handed over on a deus ex machina left a bitter taste in my mouth. The ethical delema that replaced the questions wasn't interesting enough to make up for the shift.
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick - Resnick has done it to me again; he wrote a story where I'm not sure what to make of the ending. If the man wrote endings that were any more ambiguous they'd trail off into random text. This time around two very old men reminisce about a a magic shop where they first met as children nearly eighty years before. On a lark the two of them look for the shop and find it with the same proprietor who introduced them still running it. The proprietor now agrees to show them some new things. Unfortunately for this story the ending comes down to a confrontation between some weak homilies and vaguely sinister supernatural forces. That made it much less involving for me than some of Resnick's other stories. Still it's a solid piece of work despite the fact that strange shops of wonders and reclaimed youth have been overused.
My ballot for the novelette category would look like:
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi
No Award
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Review - "Last Summer at Mars Hill", "Solitude", and "Death and the Librarian"
"Last Summer at Mars Hill"
by Elizabeth Hand
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Novella
There's a psychic colony in Maine where would be psychics go and spend a summer along the coast. Two of them bring their children along with them and these two are a woman dying of advanced breast cancer and a gay man dying of AIDS. Most people go for a good time but a few people who go can see beings of flickering light who appear briefly and vanish.
I can say some nice things about Hand's story. It's reasonably well plotted, the characters avoid the obvious cliches even when they touch on them, and she understands how to pace her central mystery. For some reason that I can't put my finger on her prose bored me. It wasn't anything that I could point to and say, "That's the problem!"; no long descriptive passages, no clunky grammar, no tin earred dialog. It's just that reading this story made my eyes glaze over. I am prepared to say that my inability to get into this story is completely my own problem.
Perhaps part of the issue I had was the viewpoint. The story is told mainly from the perspective of the children one of whom is angry with her dying mother and the other is accepting of his dying father. That's almost the entire sum of their characterization. I couldn't connect with them at all and the impact of that may have been masked by the rapidly shifting viewpoints.
The plot does move in a predictable fashion though in this case I think it's more fair to call it inevitable. The peices are all there and obvious to anyone who has read a bit of SF and the story is more about the characters dealing with death.
Despite my own problems with reading "Last Summer at Mars Hill" I can't say it was a bad story. It someone was looking for a bit of light modern fantasy then they might enjoy it.
"Solitude"
by Ursula K. Le Guin
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette
I've got some mixed feelings about "Solitude". On one hand it's a perfect example of why Le Guin is considered to be a good writer. On the other I suspect this is an attempt to lull me into a false sense of security and the next Le Guin story I read is going to be so terrible that it makes my eyes bleed.
In "Solitude" an anthropologist wants to study a lost colony of humanity that has developed a culture of isolation. As an adult this anthropologist cannot get anyone from the colony to communicate with her but she has a clever plan. She brings her two children along since any culture must pass on its values to children.
Le Guin draws on personal experience for this story since her parents were anthropologists who took her along into the field. I'm not sure how much of the story is drawn from her life but the whole thing feels very natural. In general I've found that when Le Guin sticks to anthropology she does a much better job of telling stories and that's the case here.
The real core of the story is a mother and daughter growing apart as the daughter is absorbed into another culture (I'm not spoiling anything there since it's clear what has happened from the start). This conflict is exceptionally well handled with the mother being unable to handle the social isolation and her daughter being grown into it. These are some characters who will inevitably hurt each other and the collision is fascinating to read about.
One problem with the story is that several plot points depend on the reader being familiar with the settings of her Hainish stories. Especially how they lack faster than light travel but have faster than light communications though there are other aspects where it helps to know the setting. As a result I could not recommend this as a story for someone completely new to Le Guin despite the fact that it touches on several of her major reoccurring themes. If you've read The Left Hand of Darkness or other books in the setting then this is a prime example of Le Guin doing what she does best.
"Death and the Librarian"
by Esther M. Friesner
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story
Wrapping up the common themes of the week this is a story about a dying woman having a final conversation with the personification of death. Friesner doesn't really explore new ground with this theme though she does use it well.
The librarian in this case is a woman who made a few troubling choices (I can't really call them bad) early on in life and has spent decades trapped by them. Death this time is a constantly shifting form who wants to politely whisk people off to their final reward with as little fuss as possible.
The story is a slight bit of fluff; a tiny thing where not a lot happens beyond the librarian explaining her life to death and a revelation toward the end. As characters go they're okay but not really memorable. With such a common plot I needed something more special to make it stand out for me and for that reason I can't recommend hunting it down. Though if you find it someday as you're reading an anthology then you won't be disappointed if you read it.
by Elizabeth Hand
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Novella
There's a psychic colony in Maine where would be psychics go and spend a summer along the coast. Two of them bring their children along with them and these two are a woman dying of advanced breast cancer and a gay man dying of AIDS. Most people go for a good time but a few people who go can see beings of flickering light who appear briefly and vanish.
I can say some nice things about Hand's story. It's reasonably well plotted, the characters avoid the obvious cliches even when they touch on them, and she understands how to pace her central mystery. For some reason that I can't put my finger on her prose bored me. It wasn't anything that I could point to and say, "That's the problem!"; no long descriptive passages, no clunky grammar, no tin earred dialog. It's just that reading this story made my eyes glaze over. I am prepared to say that my inability to get into this story is completely my own problem.
Perhaps part of the issue I had was the viewpoint. The story is told mainly from the perspective of the children one of whom is angry with her dying mother and the other is accepting of his dying father. That's almost the entire sum of their characterization. I couldn't connect with them at all and the impact of that may have been masked by the rapidly shifting viewpoints.
The plot does move in a predictable fashion though in this case I think it's more fair to call it inevitable. The peices are all there and obvious to anyone who has read a bit of SF and the story is more about the characters dealing with death.
Despite my own problems with reading "Last Summer at Mars Hill" I can't say it was a bad story. It someone was looking for a bit of light modern fantasy then they might enjoy it.
"Solitude"
by Ursula K. Le Guin
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette
I've got some mixed feelings about "Solitude". On one hand it's a perfect example of why Le Guin is considered to be a good writer. On the other I suspect this is an attempt to lull me into a false sense of security and the next Le Guin story I read is going to be so terrible that it makes my eyes bleed.
In "Solitude" an anthropologist wants to study a lost colony of humanity that has developed a culture of isolation. As an adult this anthropologist cannot get anyone from the colony to communicate with her but she has a clever plan. She brings her two children along since any culture must pass on its values to children.
Le Guin draws on personal experience for this story since her parents were anthropologists who took her along into the field. I'm not sure how much of the story is drawn from her life but the whole thing feels very natural. In general I've found that when Le Guin sticks to anthropology she does a much better job of telling stories and that's the case here.
The real core of the story is a mother and daughter growing apart as the daughter is absorbed into another culture (I'm not spoiling anything there since it's clear what has happened from the start). This conflict is exceptionally well handled with the mother being unable to handle the social isolation and her daughter being grown into it. These are some characters who will inevitably hurt each other and the collision is fascinating to read about.
One problem with the story is that several plot points depend on the reader being familiar with the settings of her Hainish stories. Especially how they lack faster than light travel but have faster than light communications though there are other aspects where it helps to know the setting. As a result I could not recommend this as a story for someone completely new to Le Guin despite the fact that it touches on several of her major reoccurring themes. If you've read The Left Hand of Darkness or other books in the setting then this is a prime example of Le Guin doing what she does best.
"Death and the Librarian"
by Esther M. Friesner
1995 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story
Wrapping up the common themes of the week this is a story about a dying woman having a final conversation with the personification of death. Friesner doesn't really explore new ground with this theme though she does use it well.
The librarian in this case is a woman who made a few troubling choices (I can't really call them bad) early on in life and has spent decades trapped by them. Death this time is a constantly shifting form who wants to politely whisk people off to their final reward with as little fuss as possible.
The story is a slight bit of fluff; a tiny thing where not a lot happens beyond the librarian explaining her life to death and a revelation toward the end. As characters go they're okay but not really memorable. With such a common plot I needed something more special to make it stand out for me and for that reason I can't recommend hunting it down. Though if you find it someday as you're reading an anthology then you won't be disappointed if you read it.
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