Toward Better Hugo Award Winners

As I have hinted in a couple recent posts (here and here) the Hugo Awards for fiction presented a month ago at Anticipation in Montreal, were a bit of a disappointment, and it’s far from the first year this has been true. In the four fiction categories only one Hugo went to a story that got my top vote (Best Short Story: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang). None of the weakest nominees won, which perhaps is some consolation.

The final less-than-best result is foreordained by a nomination process that year-after-year places too many mediocre stories on the ballot. The process: whoever purchases a supporting or attending membership in the annual World Science Fiction Convention is eligible to vote twice, both nominations and final ballot, provided they bought their membership early. Why doesn’t it work? What would work better? I am open to suggestions. Hopefully the science fiction community is open to suggestions.

The problem has been expounded by Adam Roberts (Dear Science Fiction Fandom: Your shortlists aren’t very good) and Abigail Nussbaum (The 2009 Hugo Awards: The Best Novel Shortlist, Part 1 and Part 2).

Night Shade Books

A pretty good haul in today’s mail. These are all titles from the excellent small publisher Night Shade Books. The surprise of the bunch? Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel, The Windup Girl, which isn’t officially due out until September 15. Bacigalupi is a new writer to watch. His short fiction has been nominated for numerous awards in recent years. (“The Gambler” was my choice to win the best novelette Hugo a few weeks ago at Anticipation in Montreal.) His first collection of short fiction, Pump Six and Other Stories from Night Shade Books, was one of the must-have books of 2008.

I can’t pretend these are review copies, since this blog is new and traffic is low. I bought them and they are free, sort of. A few years back I bought a lifetime subscription to Night Shade Books, which I figure has paid for itself. So they are almost free. And, since I will be reviewing some of them on this blog, Night Shade Books gets a little extra mileage, too.

Anathem

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow, 2008)

This was my top choice among the nominees for best novel at the recent Hugo awards, announced at Anticipation in Montreal. According to the voting breakdown, Anathem finished third.

Anathem is not principally about story or ideas, although it contains plenty of both. The brilliant laser-focus is on process: how to reason, how to argue, how to integrate ideas, and when thought should lead to action.

Stephenson posits an alternate Earth, similar in many ways to our own. His mind-boggling achievement in science-fictional world-building is that he has recapitulated, in large part, Western philosophy and thought in a skewed alternate presentation that allows the reader to see it fresh. This is a hugely ambitious novel (and huge physically: the hardback is over 900 pages).

The story, for most of its duration, is set in a “math,” which is a hybrid of a college and a monastery. The book is mostly static, devoted to talking-heads. But what conversation! The characters discuss what they’ve learned, and integrate new events and concepts, covering great swaths of philosophy, math, and science.

Shaking up their understanding of the universe, and how they think their thoughts about the universe, is that great recurring theme of science fiction: first contact with aliens. The action, when it arrives two-thirds through the book, is involving and satisfying.

Realistically, there are some barriers to enjoyment of this novel: it’s huge, it’s people talking about abstract ideas, it’s not character driven, and for two-thirds of its length it’s not plot driven. For me, the only one of these that actually proves to be a drawback is that some of the characters are a little flat and various relationships move in directions that should have more emotional resonance than they do. There are some memorable characters, particularly Orolo and Jad. Another possible barrier is Stephenson's propensity for using invented terms, many of which are interesting and clever, and some of which are merely placeholders for equivalent terms. I fell head-over-heels for his term for someone who believes in Heaven and God: Deolater.

Despite these drawbacks, which are significant, this book is an amazing accomplishment. The strengths and weaknesses recall Isaac Asimov, who filled many novels with talking heads, and gave little consideration to depth of characterization. Stephenson seems well-prepared to take up the Asimovian mantle of the great explainer of concepts and ideas.

The Graveyard Book

The Hugo Award for best novel was given out this past weekend to The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008). I should say up front that it wasn’t my top choice. I was a voting member, even though I didn’t attend Anticipation in Montreal, and my top vote went to another novel. Still, The Graveyard Book is a fine book, and already the winner of the Newbery Medal.

It’s a variation on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), in which a boy, Mowgli, is raised by the animals of the jungle. In Gaiman’s book, a boy, Nobody Owens, is raised by the undead denizens of a graveyard.

Gaiman hits all the notes you might expect: the threat of death from both earthly and supernatural causes, an amusingly off-kilter education, a touch of childhood romance, an array of charming characters, growth and change, and a nudge out the door toward adulthood. It’s well done throughout.

For me it was spoiled a bit by Gaiman himself. The anthology Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkley Books, 2007), led off with “The Witch’s Headstone” by Gaiman, which would later become a chapter in the novel. This was one of the strongest novelettes of the year and it won the Locus Award. It drops the reader immediately into the setting of The Graveyard Book and offers most of the pleasures of that novel in a more compact and intense experience. Next to “The Witch’s Headstone,” the novel’s many digressions and side-trips seem flabby and a bit hollow. The Graveyard Book is a short novel, but after “The Witch’s Headstone” it seems overlong.

The Graveyard Book is the sort of book that lends itself to visual interpretation. The edition in front of me has a generous number of excellent illustrations by Dave McKean. I am not surprised to learn that it’s been picked up for a film. In the fantasy and science fiction genre, Gaiman is on a pace to rival Philip K. Dick for the most film adaptations of his work.

I’ll discuss the novel I did vote for in another post (follow here).

2009 Hugo Awards

The 2009 Hugo Award Winners were announced last night in Montreal. Here are the fiction winners:

Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Best Novella: “The Erdmann Nexus,” Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
Best Novelette: “Shoggoths in Bloom,” Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s March 2008)
Best Short Story: “Exhalation,” Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)

A pretty respectable result. I'll save my critique for another post. Here is the complete list of winners.

The Next Best Thing to Being There

Perhaps like me, you weren’t able to go the 2009 World Science Fiction Convention, Anticipation, now underway in Montreal. You can stay in touch.

Convention Reporter is doing an excellent job of aggregating links to people reporting from the convention, with interesting photos, interviews, etc.

Tor.com has video of the History of Tor panel.

The popular new technology of the convention appears to be Twitter. Useful search terms are #worldcon, #worldcon09, or #anticipationsf. Or you can search all three at once with this link. I expect to hear of a panel moderator who reviews and accepts questions via Twitter for discussion in real-time.