Before I get to the somewhat traditional recap of the science fiction and fantasy awards from this year, I wanted to take a moment to recognize a book on the longlist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. I was furnished a copy of this by the editor (someone we probably all would recognize if she didn't go around in a trench coat and sunglasses all the time). It's a really affecting story and a gorgeous book (as much as any book about the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki can be gorgeous). If you don't believe me, you can read the review in the New York Times.
This year, all the sci-fi and fantasy awards actually got handed out, so there was improvement from last year. Some of my favorites, and lots of links, below.
SHORT STORY WINNERS:
Nebula and World Fantasy Winner - Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers - by Alyssa Wong - (link)
Just read it. The title kind of sums it up. This was a really good and deserving winner.
Hugo and Locus Winner - Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer - (link)
Finally, an explanation for the internet's fascination with the feline.
SHORT STORY NOMINEES:
The Dowager of Bees - by China Mieville - I have Mieville's story collection (Three Moments of an Explosion) sitting on my bedside table, and I'm very excited to get into it. The title story and this one are both really really good. This one involves the presence of secret cards that can appear in any regular deck.
The Game of Smash and Recovery - by Kelly Link - Link is such a master of revealing just one more thing as you get further and further into the story.
Madeleine - by Amal El-Mohtar - The narrator remembers being someone else. And it keeps happening more and more often.
The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill - by Kelly Robson - Tiny aliens trying to keep their host alive.
NOVELLETE WINNERS:
Hugo Winner – Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang – (link)
A very cool idea, Beijing is three cities, each only active while the other two sleep, and travelling between them has dangers.
Nebula Winner – And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead by Brooke Bolander – (link)
A kind of tech crime/virtual reality/love story? I don't know the best way to describe it except that it moves fast and is a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out.
Locus Winner – Black Dog by Neil Gaiman –
Can I tell you a secret? I don’t like Neil Gaiman’s novels. On the other hand, I have consistently enjoyed his short fiction. “Black Dog” is a good ghost story where a traveler stumbles upon a town with more to it than meets the eye.
NOVELLETTE NOMINEES:
Our Lady of the Open Road - by Sarah Pinsker - A band on the road in a slightly more post-apocalyptic world than our own.
Another Word for World - by Ann Leckie - A recently anointed ruler is shipwrecked on an unfriendly planet. (scroll to the end of the linked post for a download link)
NOVELLA WINNERS:
Hugo & Nebula Novella – Binti by Nnedi Okorafor –
Standalone book. Very good. The main character is the first of her family/community to attend a university on another planet. The trip there is hijacked by an alien menace. An exploration of what is alien.
World Fantasy Novella – The Unlicensed Magician by Kelly Barnhill –
Standalone book. A 1984-like state has been rounding up magic children. Written in a very particular style (an affected, self-aware childlike tone) that made the world interesting, this still told an engrossing story.
Locus Novella – Slow Bullets by Alistair Reynolds –
Standalone book. A generational starship of war criminals, soldiers and settlers from the recently concluded space war begins to wake up. Reynolds is a pretty good sci-fi author, and he delivers some pretty good sci-fi here.
NOVELLA NOMINEES:
Penric’s Demon – by Lois McMaster Bujold – A country boy is unwittingly tapped as a vessel for a demon and the magic that comes with that. This might have been my favorite of the novella nominees. The audiobook is a brisk 4 hours and it tells a good story. Bujold has published two more in the series this year, which I keep meaning to check out.
The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn – by Usman Malik – A story of multiple cultures and generations.
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls – by Aliette de Bodard – A space station disappeared years ago, and now it seems it might be possible to find it, visit it, or maybe bring it back. I'm just going to keep recommending de Bodard's short fiction every time I write one of these. This is in Asimov's SF magazine, whose stories sometimes appear and disappear online if you search them. I couldn't find it right now, but keep an eye out.
Guignol – by Kim Newman – Horror story revolving around a theater of the grotesque in Paris. This was terribly gory, but still did a great job of creating suspense and payoff.
The New Mother – Eugene Fisher – Genetic mutation and what it means to be human and to tolerate those on the other side of that line.
Honestly, this year there wasn't one story that I was over-the-moon excited about, which is kind of rare. Hungry Daughters and Folding Beijing were both really good, but I don't know that either rises to that level where I will remember them when I write a recap like this next year.
As far as novels go, I'm still working my way through the nominees there a little bit, but N. K. Jemisen's The Fifth Season is probably my current favorite.
Uprooted by Naomi Novik was also really good. A good old magic story.
I'm currently reading The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi and I'm not too impressed. It's like a re-setting of The Wind-up Girl. Which I don't mean as a compliment.
The thing I'm most excited to read from the nominee lists is K. J. Parker's Savages. I really liked some of Parker's novellas (A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong and Let Maps to Others), so I'm looking forward to reading this longer effort.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
"Don't like" is far too strong for me, but there was something about American Gods that just seemed missing. I'd give it a B, but no more.
Only I've read of his, and yeah, liked, but didn't love. B as well.
I put down American Gods after a couple of chapters.
I was left completely flat by The Ocean at the End of the Lane, just no reaction.
The Graveyard Book was OK, but not something that really grabbed me.
At that point I kind of decided there wasn't a lot to be gained by continuing to try and find what everyone else liked about his books. They just weren't for me.
Huh. I thought there was some sort of Citizenship test that hinged on liking American Gods.
I for one really, really liked it.
I thought it was ok. Not my kind of book.
I for two really, really liked it.
It is "The Unofficial WGOM Book after all.
I really like "American Gods" and was entertained by "Stardust" - the movie version of which is on Netflix and stars a young Matt Murdock.
"Good Omens" is on my shelf. I should probably try to read that over the winter.
The movie version of Stardust is a much loved film in our house. It's like a grown-up Princess Bride.
Finished Cixin Liu's new trilogy ender Death's End. Went all over the place, and introduced a slew of interesting ideas, but was a semi-satisfying end to a cool series.
I finished "Speaker For The Dead" in about 4 days. I really liked it, but I don't know as I'll go onto "Xenocide". I've heard the series gets progressively less good after the first two.
The first two kicked major butt; saying they're less good isn't fair after the high bar the first two set.
I read Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye, and it was one of the best baseball biographies I've read in a long time. While I already knew the basics about Satchel (he pitched while he was really old, he claimed he didn't know how old he was, he used to barnstorm against Dizzy Dean, etc.), I really didn't know most of the important details about how he toiled forever slowly but surely helping take down Jim Crow one city at a time. It was a very, very good read with only a few ridiculously silly small sample size things thrown in (every once in awhile, the author would include a stat about how Satchel struck out a remarkable 12 batters in 8 innings(!) and act like it was something no other pitcher could ever accomplish).
I also read a bio of Henry Clay that fell very flat (other than that he was very Hillaryesque in getting so close to the precious and was imminently qualified only to lose out to a populist who he found be be completely indifferent to the Constitution).
I just started Volume 1 of Manchester's three-volume biography of Winston Churchill, so these books may take me awhile. They're very dense (the preamble and prologue to volume 1 are more than 100 pages long combined(!), but painting a full, incredible picture of the British Empire during the Victorian Era.
Thanks, DG!
Blackacre by Monica Youn. Poetry. On the longlist for the National Book Award in the Poetry category, as it happens. Youn was a lawyer before becoming a poet, and blackacre is a legal term for a hypothetical estate. The book contains a lot of references to other writers and other works, which I found a bit intimidating as I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a single reference. But the poems are short and beautifully crafted, so I kept reading. The final section explores infertility (based on Youn’s own experience), and I found it particularly powerful in the way it uses metaphors describing fertile land to discuss the female body.
March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. Nonfiction Graphic Novel. Finalist for a National Book Award in the Young People’s Literature category. This book is fantastic. It is the third (go figure!) of three graphic novels telling John Lewis’s life story. I can’t recommend this one highly enough. It focuses on Freedom Summer and the push for voting rights for African Americans in the South. The pacing is quick, the art is very well done, and the subject matter is certainly highly relevant to current conversations about race in our country. I was particularly affected by a meeting between John Lewis and Malcom X that took place in Nairobi after Malcom had parted ways with the Nation of Islam. I’ll be cheering for this one to take home the National Book Award tonight!
Woohoo! March: Book Three wins it!
Oh hey, apparently there were also some awards given out for books for grown-ups last night. Here's the full slate of winners: