Best books I read in 2011

Right. Time for me to tell you about the best books that I read in 2011. No point mucking around -- let's get to it, hey?

Science Fiction: The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald

This was an insanely difficult choice, and that makes me happy. Both of my honourable mentions would have made worthy picks -- Anathem by Neal Stephenson is the sort of experience that'll stay with me for a long time, and Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder series (Dust, Chill, and Grail) is some of the best space opera I've ever read.

In the end, though, I'm going with The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (my review here). That's mostly because I think it's more accessible than Anathem. Either you've already read Anathem (or you're planning to), or you'll never consider it; I doubt my recommendation will change that. But I might just be able to convince you to give The Dervish House a look.

Honourable mentions: Anathem by Neal Stephenson, the Jacob's Ladder series by Elizabeth Bear.

Fantasy: Mechanique, by Genevieve Valentine

Calling Mechanique a fantasy novel feels like a gross oversimplification -- it's more like a horror-tinged post-apocalyptic science-fiction-ish fantasy. With a hint of steampunk. Or something. Whatever you want to call it, it's great. 

The Mechanical Circus Tresaulti is a last bit of magic in a world ground down by endless war. But the magic has a sinister edge, and the Circus fights constantly to hold itself together, against the world and against a simmering internal conflict between two of its performers. 

The characters here are rich and complex, but the writing is sparse and sharp-edged. The story is grim, but really compelling. It's Genevieve Valentine's first novel, and I can't really recommend it enough. I'm really hoping it pops up when awards season rolls around in 2012. 

Honourable mentions: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes.

Other Thing: the Eclipse anthologies, edited by Jonathan Strahan

I didn't read enough literary fiction in 2011 to call it out separately, but I did read a bunch of comics and games and short story collections, so I've decided to go with Other Thing as my last category. I want to recommend to you the Eclipse anthologies, edited by Jonathan Strahan -- I read Eclipse One and the better part of Eclipse Three in 2011, and Eclipse Two a few years back.

They are a series of non-themed genre anthologies, and I think they're a really great way to expose yourself to a wide variety of unusual, interesting stuff. I've discovered a number of new favourite authors in the Eclipse anthologies, as well as read some really great stories. The absence of strict genre boundaries is really refreshing -- it makes starting each new story a small adventure. A great way to broaden your reading, I reckon.

Honourable mentions: Ghostopolis, a graphic novel by Doug TenNapel, and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, a storytelling game by Daniel Solis.

So that's it! Time to think about which books I'm going to nominate for the Hugo Awards in 2012...

Hugos 2011: The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald

Only twice in my life have I had any desire to visit Istanbul. The first time was during a Roman history course at University. The second time was just now, as I finished The Dervish House.

The Dervish House is about lots and lots of things. It's about economics, terrorism, religion, nano-technology, Istanbul, revolution, migrant communities, and history. It's about patterns, and choices. And most importantly, it's about a boy imprisoned by his heart condition, an ambitious young commodities trader, a Greek economics professor long since driven from academia, the owner of a gallery of religious artefacts and curios, a lost and broken young man, and a young woman trying to both escape from, and prove herself to, her family. 

Reading this book felt like learning. The good kind of learning, where you're exposed to interesting ideas and places, and pleasantly surprising little stories. The book is full of remembrances and flashbacks, which serve both to drive the plot forward and illuminate the characters. Each one feels like a lovely little story-package, enjoyable both for its role in the novel and as a fragment itself. The re-telling of the creation of the Mellified Man of Iskenderun, for example, is a piece of writing that will stay with me for a very long time. Just thinking about it makes me smile.

I think it is fair to say that this is a book that requires some work from the reader, and that may not be to everyone's taste. There's a lot of ideas to keep straight here. I said before that I think McDonald's writing is very information-dense, and The Dervish House is no different. It's important to add, though, that the book is about how the characters interact with those ideas -- this certainly is not the type of science fiction where ideas are more important than people.

If I had one criticism, it's that the ending felt a little too inevitable. Perhaps it was telegraphed a bit early. I didn't really have that wonderful moment, like in Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, when all the plot threads coalesced into a suddenly brilliant whole. But it's really a minor criticism -- once I got into it, I just wanted to keep reading and reading. It may not all have fit in my head, but I would have read this book in a weekend if I could.

The Dervish House is currently my vote for the Best Novel Hugo, absolutely. When I travel, I love to stay in a place long enough to get a feel for what it's like to live there. The Dervish House felt not only like travelling to Istanbul in 2027, but to the lives of six people quite unlike me. It made me feel smart, and engaged, and it made me happy.

Novel vs novella: who would win in a fight

Last time, I said this:

Next Hugo nominee off the shelf is The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald. I'm a little nervous about starting it, actually. I adore McDonald's novella-length fiction, but I've got a much more fraught relationship with his novels.

Predictably, I suppose, I never really thought about why. Well, one chapter (about a tenth of the page count) into The Dervish House, the reason seems pretty clear: there are a lot more characters to keep track of in his novels.

McDonald's writing is very information dense. As in rich, not crammed full of sciencey content. There's a lot of texture to his words, and he doesn't shy away from using foreign language or invented terms. I like that; even when I don't understand everything, I feel like I'm getting a feel for a place and its people. It is, however, a lot to take in.

McDonald's novellas -- at least, the four that I hope I'm recalling correctly* -- all have a single protagonist. In contrast, the first 45 pages of The Dervish House introduce us to no fewer than six POV characters. That's on top of the science fictional Istanbul, which is basically a character in its own right. While I'm quite content, happy even, to roll with the initial confusion about setting in McDonald's novels, for some reason I get hung up on keeping track of the characters.

I wonder if this hints at how McDonald approaches writing the two different lengths. I can imagine that a character's narrative arc forms a strand; one strand, and you have a novella. Four, five, six strands, written and then twined together, form a novel. Seems to me that way of thinking might make for a useful tool.

 

* "The Days of Solomon Gursky", "The Tear", "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" and "The Dust Assassin", all of which you can find in Year's Bests, edited by either Dozois or Strahan.

Things I like #5: smashing genres together

Aside from both being really good space operas, Elizabeth Bear's novel Dust and Ian McDonald's novella "The Days of Solomon Gursky" don't really have a whole lot in common. There is a connection, though, and with hindsight its so obvious I'm kicking myself for not noticing it sooner: although both are clearly science fiction, they've both got a healthy dose of fantasy mixed in.

I'm not just talking Clarke's Law ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"), although there's certainly some of that in there. I mean that each of them appropriates some of the trappings and stylistic conventions of fantasy. Dust has warring noble houses, a quest, mythical creatures (well, technology dressed up as a mythical creatures). "The Days of Solomon Gursky", in its later chapters, starts to feel as much like mythology as science fiction.

That's the connection it took me a silly amount of time to see: genre-mashing. I think the thing that clarified it for me was reading Greg Bear's Hull Three Zero. It was a much straighter science fiction novel, despite (I feel) plenty of opportunity to throw something else into the mix. And it just didn't capture my imagination like Dust did.

It doesn't just have to be science fiction and fantasy, either. The books that got me back into reading science fiction were Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space and Chasm City, both space operas smooshed with gothic horror. China Mieville seems to specialise in this sort of thing. Karl Schroeder's Virga series of novels, Finch by Jeff Vandermeer, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. A great many of the novels that have left me feeling like I just read something really exciting whacked genres against each other.

I really have no idea how difficult it is to write something like this. I suspect very. But I'm going to have to try. I wonder if it is something that the authors set out to do consciously? I'd guess yes for Lies of Locke Lamora and maybe Dust, but perhaps no for the Alastair Reynolds novels, but those really are guesses.

Yeah, I know, there's not a lot of deep insight in this post. I suppose time will tell whether that's because I'm just starting out at this sort of thing, or because I lack the capacity for insight. I'm hoping for the former!

Let's just pretend this is content

I'm trying to form my thoughts on Elizabeth Bear's Dust into something coherent that I can present here. I could just review it, but I think I'd rather tease out some of the connections I'm seeing with the novellas "The Tear" and "The Days of Solomon Gursky", both by Ian McDonald. I'm just not sure how to do that (or even if the connections are actually there).

So, while I continue to ruminate, I'm going to direct you to the Kirkus blog to keep you entertained. John DeNardo has posted the first of a six-part series entitled How to Start Reading Science Fiction. This is relevant to my interests because, as I've mentioned before, I have friends who find modern science fiction completely impenetrable, or completely uninteresting, and frequently both. I'm intrigued to see how John goes about introducing the genre, and particularly whether he sticks to the classics or talks about modern stuff.

(I should also say that I found out about this from the always useful SF Signal.)