Sequels and awards

A couple of weeks back, I started reading Deadline [2011] by Mira Grant. It's the sequel to Feed [2010], which I read when it was on the Hugo ballot last year, and liked well enough. Deadline is on the Hugo ballot this year; that's why I picked it up.

A quarter of the way through, roughly 130 pages, I made the difficult decision to stop reading. As far as I can remember, this is the first time I've ever given up on a book part way through. I didn't stop because Deadline was bad. I stopped because I felt like I'd read it before, when I read Feed. 

The plot was somewhat different (a logical extension of the first novel, as befits a proper sequel), and the characters had been shuffled around, but for all intents and purposes it was the same thing again: a gritty zombie conspiracy thriller. Which is fine if that sort of thing really excites you, or if you developed a particular attachment to the characters from the first novel. I didn't particularly, and so it ultimately didn't seem worth my while to keep reading.

That got me thinking about sequels in general, and specifically sequels on award ballots. Honestly, sequels on award ballots annoy me. For a start, they're rarely readable in isolation -- you couldn't possibly read A Dance With Dragons [2011] by George R. R. Martin without having read the previous four books in the series. Even if you could you probably wouldn't want to; much of the enjoyment of a sequel is in seeing how the story continues, or what happens to characters you love.

My second issue with sequels on awards ballots is more a matter of personal taste. I think a big part of my enjoyment reading science fiction and fantasy comes from a sense of discovery. I want to be surprised by an author's ideas, and I have lots of fun figuring new things out. I feel like a lot of that creative heavy lifting, with setting and concept and often character, occurs in the first novel in a series.

Which isn't to say that I dislike sequels. This last year I've read two series that I've really enjoyed: Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder series, and N. K. Jemisin's The Inheritance Trilogy. But I think I can honestly say that in each case, the first book in the series was the best.

There's one exception to this rule, and that's the sequel that utilises a familiar setting, but a completely new set of characters and situations. China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels fit the bill (I liked the second, The Scar [2002], best). So do (most of) Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space novels (Chasm City [2001] is my pick, the second in the series). Also Iain M. Banks' Culture novels (I'd probably go with Use of Weapons [1990], the third Culture novel).

I'm not going to go so far as to suggest that no sequel (of the continuing-story kind) should ever be eligible for an award. But I am going to contend that there has to be something really special going on for it to appear on a ballot. For me, sequels have an extra hurdle to overcome before I consider them worthy of award nominations. It's not enough that I love the series, or that I enjoyed the previous novels in it. It has to truly, honestly stand on its own.

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.

Woah, woah, we're half way there

Remember January? Everything was a different shape then. My terribly short career as a geophysicist was just coming to an end, and I lived in a different city to the one I live in now. Crazy times. It's totally fair enough, then, if you've forgotten that I posted in January about wanting to read more novel-length genre fiction written by women. I had noticed, you see, that my bookshelves were completely dominated by men, and I couldn't think of any good reason why that should be the case.

I've no idea what caused that gender imbalance in my reading, which I suppose means that unconscious bias was a very real possibility. So, I figured that maybe if I made an effort to hunt out genre fiction written by women I could train myself out of a bad habit. The year is half over now, and I thought it might be interesting to reflect on how that's all worked out so far.

Here's the short version: great!

The longer version is a bit trickier. In fact, I've been trying for a little while to work out what to say in this post that isn't just a statement of the screamingly obvious. The task (summarise my feelings on the genre fiction written by women that I read this year) sort of invites me to make generalisations ("genre fiction written by women is like this…" or "genre fiction written by women differs from genre fiction written by men in these ways…").

But the books written by women I've read this year include hard SF, sociological SF, a time travel comedy, high fantasy, urban fantasy, space opera, and a zombie thriller. All sorts of stuff. Just about the only generalisation I feel I can make is that the instance of female protagonists is higher than you'd find in a random sampling of genre fiction I've read over the last few years. That's not a particularly insightful observation, though, and anyway I think we can all agree that more female protagonists can only be a good thing.

I feel like everything I (should?) need to say is contained in the following: I've read thirteen novels this year. One was kind of crappy, three were solidly average, and I really enjoyed the remaining nine. Ten of them were written by women. Three of them -- To Say Nothing of the Dog [1997] by Connie Willis, Slow River [1995] by Nicola Griffith, and The Dervish House [2010] by Ian McDonald -- were fantastic, and I'd recommend them enthusiastically even to people who don't typically read SF.

Has this exercise changed my reading (and purchasing) habits? I suppose time will tell, but I suspect (and hope) the answer is a resounding yes. If nothing else, two authors have been added to my automatic-purchase list: Elizabeth Bear and N. K. Jemisin. I'm very keen to read more by Nicola Griffith, Lauren Beukes and Nancy Kress. And soon I'm going to have to make a difficult decision: do I read Justina Robson's Natural History [2003] or Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang [1992] next?

So there you have it. If there's a lesson in my experience so far this year, it's that there's a lot of great genre fiction being written by women, and we should all be reading and talking about it. And surely that's as obvious as something that's very obvious indeed.

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.

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.

Diving the Wreck

I just finished reading Diving the Wreck, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This is a novel that grew out of a couple of Reader's Choice Award-winning novellas published in Asimov's. I liked it fine. It's about a woman (called only 'Boss') who dives wrecked spaceships, largely for historical interest. The book is really focussed on the dangers of those dives, playing up the tension pretty effectively. This is not science fiction where people happily don spacesuits and whip about the place safe and secure -- oxygen is scarce, suits rip easily, and a single mistake can cost you your life.

The writing is straightforward, which makes the book easy to read. I also liked Boss' story arc. She spends time throughout examining her own motivations and mistakes, in a way that makes her come across as very capable, but completely believable. Maybe not likeable, but admirable.

The book, I feel, is an excellent demonstration of an author keeping her promises. For example, Rusch makes it very clear that diving wrecks is dangerous, that people can die. And then people do. That's satisfying, but it also means (at least in this case) that there wasn't any point where the book particularly surprised me.

You could do far worse than pick up Diving the Wreck, but it probably won't change your world. Sometimes, though, that's exactly the sort of novel you're looking for.

I read in small chunks

Eesh. I promised I was back to regular posting, and then immediately went silent again. For nineteen days. Sorry about that! I've got an excuse, or at least an explanation: I'm really struggling with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. And whenever I find my reading a bit of a chore, everything else slams to a halt.

So why am I finding To Say Nothing of the Dog slow going? It's a good question. It's true that it is a time travel story, and I'm not particularly fond of those. But it is well written, and often drily funny, and set almost entirely in a time and place that I enjoy in historical novels (Victorian England -- there's a bit of Jane Austen, and a bit of P.G. Wodehouse to it).

In the end, I think it is purely a mechanical issue. I read in many small chucks across the course of a day. A couple of pages waiting for the bus, a couple of pages waiting for the kettle to boil. The chapters in To Say Nothing of the Dog are fairly long, and completely without breaks. These things are combining to make the book feel really disjointed. It doesn't flow, because I keep interrupting it.

If you're supposed to write what you like to read, there's a lesson in this for me. Short scenes, frequently breaks. The issue that's vexing me at the moment, though, is this: do I push through to the end of To Say Nothing of the Dog, or do I put it aside for a time when I can give it the attention it deserves?

How much for the women?

It occurs to me that I haven't read nearly enough novel-length science fiction written by women. I'd like to fix that, so I'm looking for suggestions.

I've got a copy of Dust by Elizabeth Bear waiting for me. I've enjoyed her shorter stories a lot, particularly "Boojum" and "Mongoose" (both with Sarah Monette), "Tideline" (short story Hugo winner in 2008), and her story in METAtropolis. I should also read some Connie Willis, but I confess that I'm not a huge fan of time travel stories (funny, really). Maybe Bellwether? How about something by Nancy Kress (Probability Moon?) or Nicola Griffith (Slow River?)? They both had stories on the Hugo ballot last year that I enjoyed.

Have you got any recommendations?

City detective spots trend

Looking back over the list of books I enjoyed most this year, I noticed a couple of trends. The most pronounced is that six of the eight books I mentioned are urban novels. Actually, in the majority the city was basically an extra character -- Finch and The City & the City in particular. The second trend is that half of the genre novels I listed were detective stories. Two more of them featured law enforcement prominently.

Looking back over the complete list of things I read this year, it doesn't look like urban detective stories were all that common. They just turned out to be the ones I really enjoyed.

I think it's pretty obvious why I like urban novels: I live in the city (or, at least, very close to it). I also think that urban genre fiction is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment, particularly in fantasy. That makes sense, I think. Ours is a largely urbanised society. Cities are what we -- both authors and readers -- know.

I'm less sure why I've enjoyed the detective stories so much. Maybe I'll get back to you on that one.

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?

Things I may have learnt from Paul McAuley

I've read four of Paul McAuley's novels -- Fairyland, The Quiet War, its sequel Gardens of the Sun, and I just finished Four Hundred Billion Stars (McAuley's first novel). I keep coming back to him because I think I like space opera and he's supposed to be good at it. I also think I like hard science fiction, and as a former botanist McAuley is well positioned to write it.

Thing is, I've never really loved what I've been reading. I didn't hate it either; it just hasn't grabbed me.

I'm not really sure why this is, but I've got a few ideas that I'm going to try laying out here. It comes down, I think, to McAuley's science and McAuley's characters. When I'm reading hard space operas those are the two things that are likely to drive me through the book -- how cool are the science-fictional ideas, and how interesting are the characters.

I mentioned that McAuley was a botanist. I'm a physicist, and so when I talk about whether a story is hard SF, I'm usually thinking about the author's treatment of the physics. McAuley, however, spends a lot of his hard SF time on botany. Details on ecosystems and genetically engineered gardens and things like that. I'm sure it's all clever, well thought-out stuff, but it just isn't a branch of science I'm interested in. Consequently, those bits don't really grab my attention. (Incidentally, I wonder if this is what it feels like when people who aren't particularly keen on science read any hard SF?)

So, if the science fictional ideas aren't really grabbing me, that leaves the characters. And again, I have trouble engaging. Partly I think it's the types of characters he tends to write (often cold, often outsiders who don't want to participate in events, often slaves to circumstance), and partly it's the way he writes them. What it comes down to is this: I don't really feel like I understand them. 

I'm going to stop here rather than try to dig deeper into McAuley's characters. Basically, I don't think I can speak intelligently about what I feel just yet. Maybe I'll come back to it in subsequent posts. For now, though, I think I have my take-home message: even if science is a prominent part of your story, you better make sure the other bits are enough to carry a reader through, because not everyone is going to be interested in the sciencey stuff.

(It may or may not interest you to know that I've got a Paul McAuley short story coming up next in the anthology I'm reading. It's called "The Thought War", in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Three. I'll let you know what I think.)