Oh no, not more awards discussion!

Yup. The Hugos aren't even cold yet, and I'm already talking about another award. I've been catching up on episodes of the StarShipSofa podcast, and I just got around to #178, which contains three of the four nominees for the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award for Best Short Story. The nominees were "Flying in the Face of God" by Nina Allen, "The Shipmaker" by Aliette de Bodard, "The Things" by Peter Watts*, and "Arrhythmia" by Neil Williamson. The winners were announced at Eastercon on April 23rd this year; Aliette de Bodard took out the Best Short Story category.

It's a little tricky to compare this shortlist directly with the Hugos -- the BSFA defines a short story as anything shorter than a novel, so the Hugos have three categories (short story, novelette, novella) where the BSFA Awards have only one. Nevertheless, I want to note three things, one in brief and two in more depth. First, I think "The Things" is the weakest of these four stories. That's interesting, because I think it's pretty much guaranteed the Best Short Story Hugo this year.

Aliette de Bodard had "The Jaguar House in Shadow" on the Best Novelette Hugo shortlist. I didn't think very much of that story (too much like a fragment from a larger narrative). "The Shipmaker", however, I loved. Part of that is probably because it was about a Chinese spaceship, and the woman responsible for building it, which is a combination of ideas practically tailor made for me. What was really striking, though, is that "The Shipmaker"  takes place in the exact same setting as "The Jaguar House in Shadow" and yet (in my opinion) suffers from none of its flaws. I intend to go back to both of them later, and do a comparison to try and work out why one of them worked so well for me, and the other failed.

I've been thinking recently about a 2009 novella written by Jay Lake, called Death of a Starship. Not so much the story itself (which was really fun), but the title. I'd love to write a story under that title. It's a phrase that sparks off all sorts of nifty ideas. And, as it happens, it's a title that could have worked for "The Shipmaker". Perhaps not really well, but it wouldn't have been completely inappropriate.

Lastly, "Arrhythmia" by Neil Williamson was interesting because it's pretty much exactly what I was talking about in my earlier post on music in SF. This is a story about music, and the way it permeates life and grinds you down and inspires you and all that stuff music does. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a great story -- it's very obvious -- but it was fascinating to see how Williamson tackled the ideas I was having so much trouble articulating earlier.

I haven't even mentioned "Flying in the Face of God" by Nina Allen, which I really liked. I'm not sure what the rules are for nominating for a BSFA Award, but whoever the nominators are, they did a great job this year.

Next time, promise I'll talk about something other than awards! 

* This was the story that wasn't included in StarShipSofa #178.

Hugos 2011: the short stories

I just got through reading the nominees for this year's Best Short Story Hugo. I don't like sounding negative, but I'm just going to say it: I wasn't particularly impressed.

I'm unfamiliar with Carrie Vaughn, and "Amaryllis" doesn't really make me want to rush out and read any of her other work. It's a story about the captain of a fishing boat in a resource-scarce community. She's had a tough life, we're told, but I didn't see any sign of hardship. There was a conflict with a bullying official that was resolved so quickly and simply it barely seemed like a conflict at all. I'm not sure how this one ended up on the ballot.

I am familiar with Kij Johnson's short stories. She was nominated in this category last year for "Spar", which I enjoyed very much. Well, not so much enjoyed as found compelling. Anyway, this year's nominee, "Ponies" seems so obvious that I really don't know what to say about it. It's a very short piece, about using girl's toys as a tool for enforcing conformity. Not much here, and none of it very interesting.

Mary Robinette Kowal's "For Want of a Nail" is a bit better than the previous two. It's about a young woman on a generation ship who is in charge of maintaining her family's AI. When she accidentally breaks its wireless connection, she stumbles on to a startling secret. Which is actually a pretty good setup, and I like the way Kowal writes, but the problem is the story gets a bit jumbled. The world building feels like it doesn't make sense, and the story manages to undermine its own message about the choice between senility or death. The result is a bit frustrating.

The pick of the list is "The Things", by Peter Watts. It is, I gather, a re-telling of the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing from the point of view of, umm, the Thing. I haven't seen that film, so I had to take the story on its own merits. What I saw was a story about a very alien alien struggling to understand a group of humans who were reacting very badly to it. Watts' writing is kind of punchy, while I quite like. I do think "The Things" is held back a little by over-reliance on its source material, though. There were bits I struggled to follow, since I know nothing about the film's chronology. And honestly, I don't think those bits added much to the story.

So there you have it. My vote on a fairly average shortlist is for "The Things", with "For Want of a Nail" a fairly distant second. A quick google pops up tables of contents for three 2010 Year's Best anthologies, edited by Rich Horton, Jonathan Strahan, and Gardner Dozois. I am unsurprised to see that the only story from this shortlist which appears in all three is "The Things". Apart from "Amaryllis" in Dozois' Year's Best, none of the others appear at all. I'm okay with that.