I (plan to) nominate...

As part of my Worldcon membership last year, I'm entitled to nominate for the 2012 Hugo Awards. In past years I haven't bothered, mostly because I didn't really feel qualified. This year, though, I actually read a few books that were published in 2011, and are therefore eligible for 2012 Hugo Awards:

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi*
Mechanique, by Genevieve Valentine
Planesrunner, by Ian McDonald
Grail, by Elizabeth Bear

What's more, I've got some sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read:

Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh

The Highest Frontier, by Joan Slonczewski
Among Others, by Jo Walton

Embassytown, by China Mieville
The Islanders, by Christopher Priest

The deadline for nominating is Sunday March 11 -- I'm going to try to get through as many of the 2011 books as I can before then, to see if I think any of them are deserving of nomination. 

I'm going to be strategic about the order in which I read them. The Islanders will be last because, honestly, I don't think it has a hope of making the final ballot. My vote won't make much of a difference there. Neither will it make much of a difference for Among Others or Embassytown, both of which I expect to see on the final ballot. That makes Soft Apocalypse and The Highest Frontier the most interesting ones, and so I'll tackle them first.

The Quantum Thief (my favourite science fiction book of 2010) and Mechanique (my favourite fantasy book of 2011) are already on my nominations list. I may yet nominate Grail, which I enjoyed very much. I don't think I'm ever going to be truly comfortable nominating the third book in a series, though. I'm just not sure how well it stands on its own. Besides, I'm only allowed to nominate five books.

I'll let you know how I go!

* This one is in on a technicality -- it was first published in 2010, but it was first published in the US in 2011.

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...

Navigating NPR's Top 100

Just a really quick one today, in which I steal content from elsewhere. I posted a little over a month ago about NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books. The folks over at SF Signal have quite rightly pointed out that the list is long, consists of books that vary greatly in style and content, and doesn't come with a handy guide.

So, T. N. Tobias has prepared a nifty flowchart to help you find the sort of book you're looking for. Shrunk down really small, it looks like this:

Useful, no? Even if you've read most of the books on the list, it's always interesting to see how someone else chooses to sub-divide books. For example, I'm not sure I would have defined Iain M. Banks' Culture series by its humour.  My favourite book in that series, Use of Weapons, was actually pretty grim.

Also: people seem to like their Military SF!

The history, it's crushing me

Brace yourselves: this post contains footnotes and a graph!

I may be a little bit slow, but I'd like to talk today about NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books, which was announced on August 11. This was a popularity contest: first, they asked readers to nominate their favourite science fiction and fantasy books. Then, with the help of a panel of three experts, they narrowed the list of nominees to a few hundred books. Finally, they asked people to vote.

I'm just going to get this out of the way before I go any further: there are a lot of really great books on that list. You could do worse than use that list to guide your science fiction and fantasy reading. Of course, I think you could do a lot better, but that basically just means it's a list on the internet, right?

Here are four things I could complain about, but which I'm going to (mostly) skip. 1: The gender balance isn't good -- by my count, only 15 of the 100 entries were written by women. 2: Is Jules Verne really the only non-English, non-American writer on the list? 3: Why do we always group science fiction and fantasy together on lists like this? 4: The decision to allow series to count as one entry, while perhaps practical, has produced some bizarre results. Do all 14 books of The Vorkosigan Saga deserve to sit at #58? What about the 33 books of The Xanth Series at #99?

Instead of talking about all that stuff, I'd like to focus on the thing that I first noticed: the science fiction portion of the list seems to be dominated by older books, whereas the fantasy portion is full of newer stuff. I checked my gut feeling by finding the year of first publication for each of the entries in the list. I tried to include every book in a series written by the original author (1), and I split them up into fantasy and science fiction as best I could (2).

I ended up with 276 books, 177 of them fantasy and the remaining 99 science fiction. Here's a graph (I know! A graph!) showing the number of books published per decade since the 1920s (3) in each category:

See what I mean? Only 10 of the science fiction novels on the list were written in the last decade (that's roughly 10%), whereas 74 of the fantasy novels (that's 42%) were written since 2000. The most popular decade for science fiction novels in this list was the 1990s, although it's interesting to note that if you exclude sequels, the most popular decade for science fiction becomes the 1960s. Even excluding sequels, the 2000s remain the most popular decade for fantasy in this list.

I suppose this probably isn't surprising, although it does make a little sad. We do seem to be in a bit of a heyday for fantasy (4), and we do seem to constantly hear about science fiction sales being in decline. I could spend a while speculating on the reasons why older science fiction books dominated this survey -- aging readership? A decline in visibility on bookstore shelves? A more demanding audience? -- but I'm not sure how useful that would be. 

It is interesting to ponder, though, whether this is a result of a decline in the accessibility of science fiction to the average reader. That's certainly something I worry about, and it's perhaps suggestive that two of the five original (non-sequel) science fiction novels in the list that were written post-2000 are quite mainstream (The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger).

Instead of teeth-gnashing, though, I want to try making a suggestion: next time you're nominating or voting for a list like this, when you're reminding yourself to think of female writers and writers from places other than England and America, give a bit of though to novels that were written in the last decade. And if you're planning to collate a list like this, why not restrict it to novels written after 1990? Because we all know that Fahrenheit 451 and Stranger in a Strange Land are worth reading by now, right?

What would you put in your post-1990 Top 10?

I'm pretty sure I'll be back here soon -- by my reckoning, the 2011 Hugo Award winners are due to be announced in about 7 hours!
 
(1) That means none of the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson Dune books, no Brandon Sanderson Wheel of Time, no Eoin Colfer Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and none of the various Foundation spin-offs.

(2) We could probably argue the toss on a few of these. Where I didn't know, or wasn't sure, I tried to use the Wikipedia entry for a book (or series) as a guide.

(3) There were five books in the list published prior to 1920, all of the science fiction. The first was Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in 1818.

(4) It's worth nothing here that young adult books -- Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, His Dark Materials -- were specifically excluded from this survey. It's just a guess, and maybe a pessimistic one, but if they'd been included I suspect they would have been more likely to nudge SF books out of the top hundred, rather than fantasy ones.

That thing I read once on the internet

I'm a citizen of the networked world. Or something. I read stuff on the internet all the time, think 'man, I really must remember that', and then immediately forget it. Sometimes I send myself an email, or save a text file somewhere, or star an article in my RSS reader, but those things never work. So I'm going to try something new: I'm going to make a list of internet-writings I want to remember here on the blog.

Really, this post is for me. I'll come back to it (probably) and update it in the future, but I'm unlikely to call out the fact that I'm updating it. Maybe you'll find something that interests you here too, but I'm just going to call that a bonus. You cool with that?

So here's the list:

• Jeremiah Tolbert, conflicted about whether what he writes matters.
• Janice Hardy with practical notes on showing-not-telling.
• Janice Hardy on making your descriptions help your story.
• Janice Hardy on the rule of three. 
• Warren Ellis on the links between crime fiction and science fiction.
• Erica Holt with basic tips on standing out in the slush pile.
• The Intern with ten reasons why a scene should be rewritten.
• Janice Hardy on scenes needing three reasons to exist.
• China Mieville (and M John Harrison) get punchy about world-building. In a good way.
• Janice Hardy again! On raising tension!
• Rick Spilman on anthropomorphisatoring ships. 
• Courtney Schafer's ode to joy. 
• Stina Leicht with some simple, just-enjoy-it comments. 
• Sherwood Smith, on the connections between space opera and epic fantasy.
• Janice Hardy, on interesting people, problems and solutions.
• Dave Trowbridge on a connection between space opera and the Siege of Vienna.
• I should just bookmark Janice Hardy (on fleshing out plots).
• Paul Guthrie on a new look at magic as science. Less for the content than the idea.
• Teresa Frohock on writing children, Guillermo del Toro style.
• Bradley P. Beaulieu with ten bits of advice for writers. 
• T. N. Tobias talks about writing action (which I suck at).
• Standard manuscript format.
• It's that Janice Hardy again, with advice on protagonists and choices.
• Oh look, more Janice Hardy! She's internalising.
• Chuck Wendig, with a "25 Things..." entry on plot.
• Some (possibly useful?) advice on avoiding viewpoint mistakes. 
• James Sutter, via Inkpunks, arguing that it's okay to be a hack.
• Chuck Wendig, with 25 bits of advice on dialogue. 
• Terry Bisson's 60 (slightly distressing) rules for short SF. 
• Nayad Monroe, with five possibly useful things she learnt from reading slush. 
• Wendy Wagner on balancing scope. Interesting because I love the large-scale stuff.
• Juliette Wade gives some advice on endings.
• Aliette de Bodard on simplicity and SF. 
• Chuck Wendig on messing with your characters (I should really just link to Chuck Wendig's blog and Janice Hardy's blog and be done with it.)
• Jaym Gates and assorted editors on avoiding self-rejection. 
• T. N. Tobias with lists of ways to come up with character names.
• Janice Hardy, on conflicts that don't involve throwing punches.
• Juliette Wade on layering plots. 
• Janice Hardy with 10 tips on revising.
• Hal Duncan on how to write a sentence.
• io9 (Charlie Jane Anders) on creating interesting supporting characters.
• Jeff Vandermeer on story openings teaching you how to read what follows. 
• Cory Doctorow on why sci-fi movies drive him crazy (portrayal of science and scientists, mostly).
• The Intern on keeping conflict interesting. 
• Jeff Ford on being profound (basically: don't. Or, at least, don't force it.)
• How not to open a short story by Philip Athans.
• Seven craft lessons every writer should learn. Apparently.

Adding to the Hugo noise

Here I go again, complaining about lists on the internet...

So you may or may not have heard that this year's Hugo nominees have been announced. A couple of years back, I decided to read all of the nominated novels, to see if I agreed with the eventual winner (short answer: I did). Last year, I was lucky enough to attend Worldcon, so I made a point of reading all of the nominated fiction so I could make an informed vote on the Hugos. This year, I'm intending to do the same.

I can't really comment yet about the nominees in the Best Novella, Novelette or Short Story categories. To the best of my knowledge, I have only read one of them: Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects. I liked it well enough, but I don't think it was his best work. There are five nominees in various categories from Asimov's, so I'll have to go digging through my pile of (sadly) unread back-issues to find those ones.

I do want to say a few words about the Best Novel category, despite also having read none of them. First, it's pleasing to see that four of the five nominated books were written by women. The gender balance typically isn't great in that category. Only fifteen of sixty-two Best Novel nominees in the last decade were written by women (and a bit of foreshadowing here: four of them were Lois McMaster Bujold novels, and two Connie Willis novels). A nominee list dominated by women can only mean good things for the genre.

I have to admit, though, that the list isn't particularly exciting me. I'm unsurprised to see The Dervish House by Ian McDonald there, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I had also planned to read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, so I'm happy to see it on the list. I haven't heard anything about Feed by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire), but I'm very willing to approach it with an open mind.

The last two nominations are the ones that leave me a little dismayed. Blackout/All Clear is actually two books by Connie Willis, adding up to a combined total of something like 1200 pages in the US hardcover editions. The books are set in the same universe as her earlier Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both of which also won Best Novel Hugos. I'm a little confused how two books got nominated as one entry. Maybe they're both very worthy, but even given how much I enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog, the thought of reading a further 1200 pages in the same setting doesn't fill me with excitement.

And then there is Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold. A quick skim of her Wikipedia page suggests this is the thirteenth Miles Vorkosigan novel. I think it is the eighth in the series to be nominated for a Hugo (four of them won). Perhaps it's just my own ugly prejudices in action again, but I find it hard to believe that the thirteenth book (or nineteenth, or twenty-fifth, depending how you count it) in a series can really be that good.

I guess it feels like the last two entries -- Blackout/All Clear and Cryoburn -- are obvious nominations, given to beloved authors because they put out another book. Of course, I shouldn't judge before I've actually read them, so here is my promise to you: I'll report back as I work my way through each of the novels. Except possibly Blackout/All Clear. I just don't know if I can hack it.

The problem with lists is...

A few posts ago I mentioned a new column by John DeNardo over on the Kirkus blog: How to Start Reading Science Fiction. This is a topic that interests me, since I sometimes worry that modern SF is essentially impenetrable to a new reader. Part two of the column has been posted, and it is a list of 10 Accessible Science Fiction Books.

I'm a little reluctant to dive in and start criticising. Obviously I was never going to agree with everything on the list. That's the nature of lists, and it seems to be the nature of the internet that an awful lot of it is full of people arguing about lists. 

But I am a little disappointed by DeNardo's choices. Unfortunately, it's because I've only read two of them. I was kind of hoping that I'd be familiar with more of the list, so I could try to judge whether or not I thought it was indeed full of genuinely accessible SF books (and, honestly, what exactly that means).

The two books that I have read are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Ender's Game absolutely deserves to be on that list, in my opinion. Not only is it a great book, but I think it's very accessible. Particularly to young readers. It's one of the few Hugo Award-winning novels I can name where I know a bunch of non-SF readers who have read it, and enjoyed it.

I'm somewhat more sceptical of The Road appearing on that list. Not because it isn't a great book -- it is a great book, and you should all rush out and read it right now. I also think that it absolutely qualifies as a science fiction novel, although that's not where you'll find it in the book store. My concern is that I'm not sure it is representative. If I gave a new SF reader The Road and they loved it, I have no idea what I would recommend next. Would they ever read another SF novel like it?

I'm not sure if this is just me being down on the quality of most SF writing. Maybe I am. Or maybe I'm guilty of elevating The Road above genre fiction just because it comes from the literary fiction section of the book store. But that is almost certainly a topic for another blog post. One I may never write.

On the plus side, at least now I've got a few more books to add to my reading list!

Best books I read this year

It really is tough finding time to do anything productive in December, isn't it? The SSWriMo debrief that I promised is coming -- I have re-read two of the three stories I wrote during November, and the good news is they're not as bad as I feared they might be. I'm plugging away at some edits to the first one, "Beacons". I don't think it will be long before I'm ready to unleash it on anyone who will promise to read it and give me feedback.

For now, I thought I'd give you my picks for best books that I read this year. It was a good year all round -- I read lots of stuff, and lots of it was good.

Science Fiction: The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

I've already spoken at length about this one, so I won't go on about it too much again. I'm not sure if it was actually the best SF book I read this year, but it was certainly the one I had the most fun reading. It was full of the sorts of things I like in my science fiction. I'm excited for more novels from Rajaniemi.

Honourable mentions: The City & the City, by China Mieville, and The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. Both deserving Hugo Award winners this year.

Fantasy: Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer 

This one is about a detective called Finch, living in the conquered city of Ambergris. The city is falling apart, infested by the fungal technology of its conquerors, the equally-fungal gray caps. Finch, who is technically a gray cap collaborator, is called in to investigate the unusual murders of one of the invaders and a human man. Things spin wildly out of control from there.

This book just drips with atmosphere. It is beautifully written, almost post-apocalyptic. Grim, but really compelling. It reminded me a little of Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. If the New Weird exists as a genre, Finch certainly sits well within it.

Honourable mentions: Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder, and Kraken, by China Mieville. I expect to see Kraken do very well at next year's Hugo Awards.

Literary Fiction: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer 

Typically I steer well clear of 9/11 fiction. I only read this one because I joined a book club, and I'm glad that I did. It's about a young Jewish kid called Oskar trying to deal with the death of his father in the World Trade Center attacks. Oskar finds a key in his dad's stuff, and sets about trying to methodically work out which lock in New York it opens. Scattered throughout Oskar's story is the story of his grandparents, both Holocaust survivors.

I doubt I can really explain how lovely this book is. It's sad, and charming, and hopeful, and I think you should read it right now.

Honourable mention: Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. One of those few cases where the film adaptation actually does the book justice.

What did you read this year that you really enjoyed?