My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1997

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.

Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon- Grade: B
I enjoyed this pastoral first contact story. Ofelia is left behind at an abandoned colony and begins her life fresh, intent on living out her last days in relative peace and comfort. But her comfort is disrupted by an apparently violent clash with new colonists and the native aliens on a different part of the planet. The rest of the story centers around Ofelia’s interactions with the native people, their remarkable qualities, and another human group coming to make contact. Interspersed throughout are delightful explorations of pastoral settings, which is quite reminiscent to me of the best Clifford Simak novels. I wish the story had done more with the impact of colonialism and the impact of that on the people. That’s not the story Moon is telling, but I think it could have been added to it and built upon.

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Winner)- Grade: B
Blue Mars is the third book in the trilogy by Robinson, and at this point you should know what to expect. The books are door-stopper length hard sci-fi explorations of what a future life on Mars might look like. In this one, we’ve got a couple twists thrown in as Earth experiences some severe climate problems, leading to pressure to expand Martian population. Meanwhile, on Mars, a group of people calling themselves the “Reds” (due to the planet’s color) push to keep Mars in its original non-terraformed state. This, of course, is the cause of Some Drama. Like a Ben Bova novel–another prolific hard sci-fi author of the time–your mileage on this one will directly correspond to two things: how much fake science (loosely based on real science) you can handle/enjoy and how much tolerance you have for fairly wooden characters. Don’t get me wrong, some of the characters here get development and real bones under their skin, but their arcs are predictable nearly from the first page you encounter any of them. I found it to be a good read, despite being overly long. It’s a worthy end to the trilogy.

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (My Winner)- Grade: A-
Miles Vorkorsigan must give up his double life and fully get involved in Barrayaran affairs as he needs to help uncover some nefarious plot therein. Simon Illyan, a top military man and Miles’s former boss, is struggling with his memory and he’s fading faster than seems possible. Miles is given broad power as Imperial Auditor to investigate what happened and why.
I’ll be first to admit that the Vorkorsigan Saga is largely beach reading type sci-fi for me. While I will stand up and say Barrayar is among the all-time SFF greats, most of the series is pretty pithy and fun without much thought involved. Memory walks the edge, touching on the depths of despair memory loss can cause while still remaining pretty light reading. It’s definitely one of the best in the long-running series.

Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer- Grade: B-
Sawyer wrote in the introduction to this book (in the edition I have) that his goal was to write a final spaceships go boom type of science fiction novel before he dove into his more recent stuff that focuses on more literary and plot conventions. I’m paraphrasing there, but after the intro I was kind of surprised at how little spaceships go boom type stuff there was. No, this is, like most of Sawyer’s other works, a thought-provoking look at the subject at hand. Here, the subject happens to be super powerful aliens (maybe) and mysterious interconnected gates and why/how they work. It’s a well-told story overall, though I did think Sawyer got caught up a bit too much in the minutiae of the invented tech rather than moving the plot along. It’s a good read, though, as most of Sawyer’s works are.

Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling- Grade: B+
In the future, humans have pushed life expectancies well into 100+ years. Going along with that, though, the near-utopic society provides the best health care to those who practice the best health practices. This has led to some people becoming truly ancient, as they push their health and limits to post-human endurance maximums. When our main character, Mia, has the option to become a youth again, she takes it, only to find out the utopia in which they’re living may in fact be sucking their humanity away.

Thematically, this is one of the more interesting books on post-humanism I’ve read, which makes the few caveats all the more frustrating. Starting with those caveats, the biggest one is that the post-human society is both sold to readers as a kind of moral quandary and as a moral horror. How are we supposed to see this society? Leaving it a question left up to the reader is a choice I enjoy in this dystopic/utopic type fiction, but having the post humans also casually dropping billions of deaths to set up the society makes the whole thing a bit of a non-starter. A society backed on such an act cannot be moral; that seems obvious. And because of that, some of the power of the ambiguity with some of the other questions introduced is sapped away. Additionally, Mia doesn’t strike me as a particularly powerful protagonist. Instead, she is kind of dragged along by events, only coming to realizations when other, perhaps more intriguing characters leader her to the conclusions. Perhaps that’s a function of Sterling’s narrative–Mia is a stand-in for the questioning reader–but it still makes it somewhat unsatisfactory.

There are, however, some truly fascinating things about post humanism mixed in here. What would we be willing to give up to “ascend” into a different kind of humanity. And just what would be worth it? And who would get to do that ascending–the powerful? Or are there other ways that play out (the healthy as the ascendant here)? It’s all very fascinating and Sterling is such an electric thinker and writer that I’m willing to forgive several of the more disappointing aspects of the novel. This is sci-fi for people who want to be forced to think about deep topics.

1997- 97 is an excellent year at the Hugo nominations. None of the books are terrible, and all of them are worth reading. The winner for me, barely, is Memory, which serves up a look at the horrors of memory loss while still giving readers more of the Vorkorsigan saga they know and love. Holy Fire is a superb read but stretched my credulity a bit too far to push it over the top. It’s a great read for those interested in post-humanism and I’d definitely put it on a required reading list for those readers. Sawyer’s entry is a fine space opera, though I admit I found it fairly forgettable. Blue Mars serves up a good conclusion to the trilogy, though problems of writing characters for KSR remain. Finally, Remnant Population hearkens back to some early cozy sci-fi along the lines of Simak, a favorite of mine. The list is fairly diverse in subgenre representation, as well, though it retains the 90s penchant for hard sci-fi. What did you think? Let me know in the comments.

Links

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1996

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites.  I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. At the end, I have a summing up of my thoughts on the year’s nominees.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (Winner)- Grade: B-
The Diamond Age starts off strong. The interplay of the two major and several minor plots that were all woven together made it an interesting read just to see how it was written. Stephenson also does a tremendous job writing cyberpunk, though I guess it is technically postcyberpunk, based on a perusal of articles based on the book. It was intense at times, but also went down too many rabbit holes. It starts to get bloated beyond what the plot demands. At times, it reads almost like it’s a lingering dedication to the author’s skill rather than a tightly woven novel. Ultimately, I think it’s a good, not great book.

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter (My Winner)- Grade: B+
Baxter wrote an authorized sequel to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine that manages to capture the tone and feel of the original while also massively expanding its plot and science. The two difficulties here are that it goes on a bit too long and that it diverges into some rather heavy handed pushing of worldview onto the reader. But neither of these issues becomes too distracting from what feels like, in actuality, one of those adventure-type sci-fi novels from Wells or Verne. It’s just as enjoyable as those books while also integrating a bunch of modern science into a time travel story. Buckle up and enjoy the ride if you like hard sci-fi, the tone of Wells, and/or time travel.

Brightness Reef by David Brin- Grade: C-
Brightness Reef starts another trilogy in the Uplift universe Brin created. Here, there’s a new planet to explore with uplifted critters. I gotta say, like the other books in this series, this one drags and drags and drags along forever. The core ideas are great, but the book is then filled with so many characters and storylines that it just gets to be not confusing but just distracting. At some point, as a reader, I just kind of gave up trying to slog through all the names and people’s motivations, because despite being humans or aliens or whatever they all speak with the same voice, with little variation of character. The thing is there are great ideas here, as Brin always has, but it doesn’t get executed on the character front as well as many of his other books. I think this series just isn’t for me.

The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer- Grade: C-
Robert J. Sawyer’s work as a science fiction author ranks among the most influential for my own development as a sci-fi reader.  I read his Calculating God as a teen and found that it pushed me to think more deeply about my own faith. It made me think about bigger questions. Hominids and the books that followed it are among the most amazing and frustrating science fiction books I’ve read. The Terminal Experiment continues some of that grand tradition, asking questions about what it would mean if we could have conclusive proof that a soul-like thing exists within the human brain. The story is part mystery, part hard sci-fi, and full of thrusts and jabs at various beliefs, as I’ve come to expect from Sawyer. 
Peter Hobson develops a device capable of reading the activity of the brain with the help of his friend, Sarkar Muhammed. He’s shocked when he discovers that it appears to demonstrate that some cohesive brain activity departs the body at the moment of death. The rest of the world is rocked by this discovery as well, and Sawyer reports that largely through various news summaries at the end of chapters.
Two things detract significantly from my enjoyment of the novel, along with a minor third. The minor thing is that, once again, Sawyer fails to take any religion seriously. While Sarkar is portrayed as a fairly devout Muslim, his different beliefs are frequently a source of annoyance for Peter, who’s supposed to be his best friend. It’s frustrating that Sawyer seems incapable of writing a religious person in an empathetic way. The two major detractors are, first, that suspension of disbelief is required very heavily, and second, that the book is filled with some truly obnoxious comments about women. Suspension of disbelief is just a part of reading science fiction, but time and again I struggled with the leaps of logic, abilities, and more of the characters. One example is late in the book when a character writes a massive, powerful piece of code having never done anything of the kind before, complaining it took him a few days. Another is when Hobson manages to cobble together completely new variants of his soulwave (that’s the name of the brain function in the book) detector basically at will without any effort. They’re small things, but they happen so often that it becomes hard to do anything but roll your eyes once you’ve run into another.
Regarding the comments about women, I found myself laughing out loud at one point when Hobson congratulates himself on being a supporter of “the women’s movement.” Hobson himself has had so many awful comments about women so far that it is a clear example of a man thinking he’s a much better person than he is. For example, early in the book he mentally loses it because his wife isn’t dressed to impress. He complains in his head that they haven’t had sex in weeks, and is disturbed that she’s wearing a ratty sweatshirt. How dare she wear things that are comfortable, says this champion of women’s rights! Other examples abound, such as when Hobson thinks about how a detective he just met “hadn’t looked pretty to Peter when she came in, but when she laughed she looked very nice indeed” (Kindle Location 3727). Why does Hobson care if a detective clearly coming to pump him for information about being a possible murder suspect is pretty? Because he’s the epitome of male gaze in the novel. He later thinks about how if he weren’t so constrained by his high and mighty morals, he’d have had sex with multiple women like the detective right in his office. What a champion of the women’s movement! What makes this especially annoying is that it seems Sawyer is trying to portray Hobson as such, but failing spectacularly.
Anyway, the novel does do a good job introducing a number of fascinating questions about the implications of knowing with certainty humans have souls–questions about abortion, about extending life, and more. Sawyer also weaves a somewhat compelling plot, even if a lot of the comments about the internet seem quaint some years later. 
Sawyer continues to both frustrate and interest me with his writings. I think I’ll continue to struggle with him for a while. I know I’ll be reading more.

Remake by Connie Willis- Grade: B
Imagine if we developed technology that would allow us to just interpose whomever we want on various movies and even change the plots on a whim. What would Hollywood do with that technology? The obvious answer seems to be that it would be abused as much as possible, used to replace actual people, and milked and litigated for every dollar. Willis imagines that exact scenario–one which seems not all that far off today–in Remake. Your mileage on this one will vary depending on how much you appreciate old movies–especially Fred Astaire. The more you enjoy them, the more you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s a love letter to film, in a way, while also absolutely castigating the movie industry for preferring remakes, sequels, and reboots to advancing new ideas. It’s an enjoyable ride with limited scope. Since I read this book, the proliferation of AI tech with some creative fields has only increased, and the novel feels more and more a warning than it did when I first read it.

1996- ’96 continues to demonstrate the 1990s fascination with hard science fiction. While Remake and The Diamond Age don’t clearly follow into that subgenre, the former has some of its trappings. The Time Ships is a sci-fi adventure, but Baxter at times seems obsessed with the technology. Brightness Reef is a bloated space opera with hard sci-fi elements, and The Terminal Experiment is a frustratingly tantalizing look at what could be an intriguing core idea. Remake is disturbingly realistic almost 30 years later. It reads like a nearly prescient view of what could happen with filmmaking in the near future. I personally wasn’t blown away by any of these novels, but that’s the nature of taste. Sometimes things fall flat. Which books were your favorites here?

Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1995

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.

1995

Mother of Storms by John Barnes- Grade: D+
[Content warning: sexual assault, some explicit sexual language.] I was deeply disappointed by this book. There’s no question it had wide acclaim when it was released. In addition to the Hugo nominee, it was also shortlisted on the Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, and Nebula lists for best novel. But the book is brutal. It’s probably lazy to say a book “hasn’t aged well,” so I’ll expand on that a bit. I’ve noticed something of a trend in novels, especially in the mid 80s through mid 90s, featuring a ton of violence against women. Usually, this is used to establish someone is “really” bad because they commit some heinous act like rape. Barnes takes this to another level. Brutal rape, extremely violent sex, fantasies about rape (one character thinks about how they’ve fantasized during consensual sex about it being rape instead), getting off to violence intermingled with sex–all these are acts or fantasies that occur about as frequently the science fiction does. These aren’t just casual uses of the phrase either, the scenes are often extremely explicit. One violent (consensual-ish) sex scene lasted for several pages, talking about the bruising that happened after, and describing all the acts afterwards as well. All of this was done in excruciating detail. Then, wildly, the characters decide to get to know each other and are nonplussed by their previous sex act.

The novel isn’t about any of this, though, it’s about a super huge storm touched off by a nuclear explosion and, it seems, a bit of climate change, that builds in detail through the early part of the novel before becoming a major force through the rest as humans–and near humans?–struggle to fight it, or at least endure it. And those parts of the book are absolutely fascinating. Barnes clearly did a ton of research on storms, and it shows. The scenes in which the storm sparks off, seemingly from such innocent winds here, and a bit of methane there, are captivating. It’s hard science fiction at its best. And as scientists and some cyborg-like people race to find a solution to the storm, the tension rachets up. 

Coupling the two sides of the story, the novel reads: rape-storm-explicit casual sex-storm-fantasy about rape-storm-getting off on violent imagery-storm. I don’t think this is an exaggeration as all. There are more than 400 pages of this. It was exhausting. If I were an editor for this, I would have cut basically half the novel out and it would have been a simply fantastic hard sci-fi exploration of a superstorm with some cyberpunk details mixed in. As it stands, it is a frequently brutal read. This was so hugely acclaimed in 1995! Violence against women and sexual violence does not need to be normalized. Full stop. 

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Winner)- Grade: B
Another year, another Bujold win! Personally, I didn’t find Mirror Dance as compelling as some of the other books in the Vorkorsigan Saga, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Miles continues to carve out his own space in, well, space, as he has to find his way after being duped by his clone, Mark. Meanwhile, said clone is taking on Miles’s role to try to go free more clones from servitude. The whole thing has a kind of interwoven ridiculousness to it that still somehow works. But, to be fair, it takes a bit away from the story’s strength to have it be so entirely unbelievable at times. Bujold is a strong enough writer that she muscles it through, almost forcing readers to accept that Mark could pull of what he does, and some of the bigger plot reveals help explain it late in the game. I enjoyed this read, and the whole series.

Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress- Grade: A
Kress’s sleepless series continues to impress. In this second book, society has effectively been broken into 3 tiers–the “Livers” who make up the majority of the population but have little to do or reason to do so; the “donkeys” who generally hold political power and come from a pool of genemod individuals; and the Superbrights, who are so advanced in intelligence that they have effectively transcended how other humans think and behave. Obviously questions of transhumanism and genetic modification abound, and ethical quandaries follow. Kress’s impressive characterization continues. These books do a wonderful job asking questions about the future of humanity that we might face.

Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop (My Winner)- Grade: A+
Brittle Innings is less a work of science fiction than it is a perfectly constructed character piece about playing minor league baseball in the southern United States (Oklahoma) in the 1940s. I was captivated by the story of Danny Boles trying to navigate the dusty baseball diamond and the dust-bowl like setting of the novel. In exacting detail, Bishop drew me in to Boles’s world and would not let me go. I could smell the dust of the diamond. I could hear the conversations on the bus traveling between venues. I could feel the heat of an Oklahoma summer and a hot kitchen. Boles’s journey is not without difficulty, nor is he a perfect world. And Bishop does not sugar coat the racial tensions of the time, showing the disdain for which many characters treated black people throughout the novel–and there is use of unedited racial slurs throughout. Boles is, for most of the novel, unable to speak, and so we experience most of the world through his narrative voice, without the other characters ever hearing his voice. Of course, the reason this novel ended up on the Hugo list is it is science fiction as well. Bishop has imagined a kind of sequel to Frankenstein here, and that part of the plot only really ramps up on the second half of this 500+ page novel. But this interwoven plot is also excellent. Bishop writes in a voice that readers could be mistaken for thinking truly was Mary Shelley writing the parts of the Frankenstein monster’s journal. The novel is a literary achievement. I also have a longer look at the book here.

Towing Jehovah by James K. Morrow- Grade: C-
There’s a lot going on in Towing Jehovah. Some if it is good, but it’s drowned out by a lot of really rough edges. Morrow frequently presents disturbing satire of intense literalism of the Bible. He pokes at those who would take the Bible literally or who ignore the more difficult passages. These parts felt fresh and welcome as someone who’s a Christian who has had to deconstruct a lot of the literalism battered into me. The premise itself is disturbingly taboo–God has died and God’s body is quite literally festering in the water, with angels dying as they try to get someone to Do Something about it. The plot then follows the interminable voyage across the sea as a disgraced captain uses a disgraced oil tanker to quite literally tow Jehovah across the ocean to be interred in an icy tomb made by the angels before they passed away. Questions of who God is, what God might choose to do for humanity, and more abound. Some of it is quite beautiful, honestly. Some is grotesque. No small amount seems to be intentionally offensive to Christian sensibilities. No one going into this book should operate under the illusion that it is not intended to do the latter. For all that, the book is frequently an intriguing read. But! There are so many problems.

One, the novel is horribly long for the premise. It’s dragged out, allowed to rot, and decomposed before you even get to the halfway point. Morrow helps along the dissatisfaction of the reader by introducing a World War II reenactment sub-plot that is simultaneously bore-you-to-tears and drawn out over the course of something like a quarter to a third of the novel. It’s so bad. It’s like Morrow got to the halfway point of the book and decided it needed to be much longer so he inserted this nonsensical section to teach readers what it might be like to have one’s brain atrophy. The humor is hit-or-miss, as all humor is. The prose is frequently wooden, and the dialogue at times is eye-rolling in its quality. One lingering plotline has the avowed super-feminist anti-theist trying to convince another woman to allow her to send a message to save feminism from the existence of the male god-corpse. It’s badly done. Let’s sit around and laugh at the hysterical feminists, am-I-right? That’s the tone of that whole section. It’s unfortunate, because so many thought-provoking threads are there. I may read the next book because the core premise snagged me in some ways, but wow I hope I don’t have to deal with so many of these flaws.

1995- While I didn’t love all the books, what I did love is the sheer variability among subgenres presented here. No two of these books represents the same slice of sci-fi or fantasy, and they’re all very different from most Hugo nominees. I’ve talked about this before, but the 90s were dominated by hard sci-fi at the Hugos, including many of the nominees. Here, though, Mother of Storms and Beggars and Choosers each have hard sci-fi elements without making that the whole of their being. Brittle Innings is such a wacky book, totally unexpected and unique here. A baseball story with a sci-fi bend. I loved it so much. Mirror Dance is another space adventure written well by Bujold, while Towing Jehovah is a unique premise that overstays its welcome. Again, a fascinating year at the Hugos.

Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1994

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress (My Winner)- Grade: A
There’s a certain kind of dread involved in the inhumanity of humanity. We look upon evil deeds and think “Ah! That is inhuman.” And we say this, even as we know that it is very much human to perpetrate evil. We see people being cast out and spat upon because they are different, and we pontificate about our shared humanity. We don’t like to look in the mirror and say to ourselves, “Yes, you, too, are capable of wickedness.” Nancy Kress’s phenomenal Beggars in Spain forces those uncomfortable thoughts very much near the surface. In the novel, we learn of the Sleepless, an intentional genetic mutation that has made some people who never sleep. Going along with a few changes to demeanor, these Sleepless people are capable of far more than the “normal” human being. Think about it–never a minute lost to sleep, or even being tired! How much more could be accomplished. Then, the dark side of humanity quickly approaches, and the Sleepless are scorned for their success. But the Sleepless themselves are forced to wonder–what do they owe to humanity at large? What do they owe to the titular beggars in Spain? But Kress plays with that theme far more than expected, creating competing philosophies that hearken to Ayn Rand and Ursula K. Le Guin (my thanks to Wiki for this insight for the inspirations), and showing how the most unexpected–even the vaunted Sleepless–may become beggars at times. Its a stunning achievement.

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Winner)- Grade: B
I was surprised by this novel. I did not expect to like it after thinking Red Mars was okay at best. But the faults of the first book in the series have largely been rectified here. There is much better characterization, and less frequent utilization of women as tools rather than characters. The plot moves along more swiftly and can actually stand on its own feet. The hard sci-fi elements are just as entertaining as in the first book. I love books about Mars gaining independence–a niche trope for sci-fi, but it’s there nonetheless. This book has that as well. The main flaw is that it feels overly bloated. The plot moves along at a clipping pace but because of how frenetic parts of it are, it becomes exhausting at times. Then, when it slows down, it starts to lose interest. It’s a good read, though not my winner.

Moving Mars by Greg Bear- Grade: B-
The third entry in a hard sci-fi/cyberpunk mashup series by Bear, Moving Mars focuses a bit more on the political side of the ramifications of what has happened on Mars at this point. This book changes tone again. While the first two books had the kind of frenetic firehose of ideas that is common in cyberpunk novels of the time, this third novel slows things down and reads honestly quite a bit more like Kim Stanley Robinson’s own Mars series (above). It’s fascinating to see these two quite different takes on Martian futures. Bear takes the novel in an unexpected direction, though, as the conflict leads characters to success literally moving Mars elsewhere to avoid Earth-Mars conflict. It’s kind of a strange turn of events, and certainly one that calls forth ideas of other vaguely science-magic-y novels. I didn’t hate the tonal change, though, and the wacky ideas weren’t awful so much as occasionally off-putting. The series concludes on a decent note, though I think Robinson’s Mars series is perhaps a bit better overall.

Glory Season by David Brin- Grade: C-
What an absolute slog. This overly-bloated work tells the story of a colony founded with an emphasis on attempting a kind of utopia by manipulation of human sexuality and reproduction. We follow the story as it plays with people who are either cloned or made in the “original way” (sexual reproduction). And it goes on, and on, and on. While some of the story vignettes are interesting enough, they are interspersed throughout actually hundreds of pages of… not much happening. Interludes between chapters share some thoughts about human sexuality and other topics, aligned with what might be expected from a slightly left leaning work in 1993. They’re of interest, and honestly some of the more thought-provoking parts of the book. Indeed, the book apparently garnered attention both as a feminist utopia and as a post-feminist critique of feminism (according to Wikipedia). I could see that, as the Wiki states, the complexity of the society lends itself to either reading. Like all of Brin’s works, this is a cerebral read. Unfortunately, it massively overstays its welcome.

Virtual Light by William Gibson- Grade: C-
Doubting your own perception and even reading ability is part of reading any William Gibson novel in my experience. Virtual Light is no different, bombarding readers with numerous concepts and pieces of world building that go totally unexplained. Here, we have a pair of stolen glasses becoming the centerpiece for the plot a these apparently contain some super secret important and awful plans. And the plot flies by like it’s a scene from some lost 1980s cyberpunk flick, looking out of the window while the world flies past on aircars. It’s tough to get into a Gibson book, in my opinion, and this one was no different.

1994- If there’s a year that exemplifies the 90s for the Hugos more than any other, it may be 1994. The 90s were absolutely dominated by hard sci-fi in the Hugo Awards–something I’ll be writing about–and this year is no different. 3/5 nominations are straight up hard sci-fi. Thankfully, they all do a pretty good job on the character and plot side of things as well. Beggars in Spain, my choice for the winner, is one of those novels I think any fan of sci-fi should at least try. Green Mars is a better book than the prior novel, and Greg Bear pretty much always brings something unique to the table. Then, to round the year out, we have cyberpunk–because what else would the 90s have, and a strange attempt to form a utopic society. It’s just… this is 90s sci-fi, largely. It would be nice to have some other stuff represented here, though. Iain M. Banks published Against a Dark Background, another in the Culture series, each of which is an absolute must-read. And, of course, I have to mention the all-time great, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which absolutely stands among the best-ever science fiction novels ever written. Overall, while I think those were definite misses from the nominating ballot, this was still a pretty good year at the awards.

Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1993

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. At the end I have a brief summary comment on the year’s nominees.

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Co-Winner, My Winner) Grade: A
The main plot is a first contact story, largely, between some dog like species (the Tines) who exist as kind of individual pack hive minds and humans. Dancing around this core plot is a much, much bigger plot involving, you know, the fate of the galaxy. A malevolent AI, issues of traveling through space and what that might mean for the capacities of species at different parts in the galaxy, and inter-species conflict abound. Questions about what it means to be an individual, to be intelligent, and more come up as the story goes on. It’s a simply phenomenal read that demands additional read-throughs just to be sure one catches more details. It is definitely space opera on a high level, but it’s also managed to be a fairly personal space adventure type story that is deeply intimate. It’s the kind of book that every fan of science fiction should at least give a try once to see if they like it. Also I really wish that that awesome illustration on the cover had some bearing somewhere on the contents, because a manta ray space city thing would be a ridiculously over the top and awesome story bit.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Co-Winner)- Grade: B
Doomsday Book is a beautiful tale of someone traveling back in time to the Black Death only to be caught there and try to do the best she can with the technology at hand–which is to say she can’t do very much. It’s a heart-rending tale that I remember even years after first reading it as one I enjoyed enormously. The biggest issue with the book is that basically every “modern” scene is an absolute slog. I hate to do this to you, dear reader, but I’ll share something I wish I hadn’t thought of or heard at some point about Willis’s writings. She’s incredibly gifted, but she’s utterly obsessed with telephony and I don’t know why. I can’t unsee it. Several of her books have multiple scenes of people just missing someone else based on a land line phone, or talking about phones, or being on the phone, and it’s compounded here by some of the most frequent and annoying scenes of missed phone calls I’ve ever read. Like… can someone please pick up the damned phones!? And that’s basically the most memorable part of the book that isn’t the Black Death side of the story. That’s unfortunate, because the Black death side of the story is one of the first stories that made me cry as an adult reading a novel. It’s just so good. But wow, points lost for the phone-obsessed present era. I don’t want to visit it again.

Doomsday Book ends up as a mixed bag with a solidly superb past plot combined with a pretty forgettable and even annoying modern plot. 

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson- Grade: C+
A short summary of my opinion of this book would be: “cool science, boring plot.” I’m willing to accept I’m in the extreme minority here–the book got Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, and Arthur C. Clarke Award nominations/wins so it is clearly an accepted classic across the board. For me, though, the people making up the core of the story were bland. It’s difficult to make up for that, as I found myself caring little for the action and even intense sequences in the plot. The characters simply did not grab me. And that’s a shame, because the science ideas in this novel are so cool. Robinson delves deeply into the technology and speculative science behind what could drive colonization of a world like Mars. Exhaustive sequences describing some of this going on make for, in my opinion, some of the most interesting reading of the whole book. I enjoyed these sections very much. But the human element was not enough to sustain the book, especially for such a lengthy reading. I honestly prefer Ben Bova’s Mars and following books to these by Robinson.

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh- Grade: C
I don’t know what to think about this enigmatic work. It has some big ideas in it–the United States also experienced a communist revolution; the future is dominated by communism; etc.–but those big ideas never translate to anything on the page. Is it an exercise in making something that should be fascinating boring? Or is it a masterful play on science fiction expectations, basically giving readers a ho-hum look at a different world? I lean a bit towards the latter, but I have read the book twice now and haven’t experienced any stunning moments of insight or revelatory “getting it” that I have had with other novels that I’ve enjoyed more. Maybe I still don’t “get it,” but I don’t think I’ll give the book another try. If you really enjoyed it, I’d love to read about what struck a cord with you in the comments.

Steel Beach by John Varley Grade: B-
Varley’s skill as a satirist is on full display in this novel that perhaps best serves as a way to convey that dark sense of humor throughout. The central plot is narrated by a decidedly unreliable Hildy Johnson, who vascillates between wishing for suicide and delighting in whatever life throws at him. The whole story is wonky–a word that sounds just as strange as it ought to for the description of the book. Examining the plot too closely reveals many holes, and Varley himself has a rather funny afterward (at least in the addition I read) in which he tells readers not to bother sending him letters about how things should have or didn’t work because he doesn’t care. That’s very clear. This isn’t meant to be on the science side of science fiction, but rather leans heavily into the fictional side, utilizing readers’ suspension of disbelief to poke at assumptions about gender, capitalism, and more. I’m not sure where Varley lines up on most of these topics, but having read this book I bet he’d be pretty interesting to talk to. 

1993- 1993 is a very ’90s feeling year at the Hugos. Varley is probably the best example of this, with a sardonic plot that absolutely captures the spirit of the time. China Mountain Zhang is one I see a lot of people listing as a favorite book, and I’ve read it twice now and I struggle. Red Mars is emblematic of 90s sci-fi, with a strong hard sci-fi bent and light on characterization. I also have already talked about phones enough so we’re going to skip one of these. Okay, fine Doomsday Book is another I’ve read multiple times, but I can’t unsee the issues with it. If it were just the Black Death portion, it’d be an A+ from me. Finally, Vinge’s offer is a fantastic book that I think has something for most fans of sci-fi, though some will be put off by the length and the sometimes stilted prose.

Links

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1992

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. Here are the nominees and the winner of the 1992 Hugo Awards. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees.

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold (Winner, My Winner)- Grade: A+
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga continually addresses surprising topics in science fiction. I recommend reading the series in chronological order, starting with Shards of Honor and working your way forward from there. I read this one a second time for this post (I listened to the audiobook, this time), and I was blown away a second time by this fantastic novel. At one point, I was driving down the interstate, tears streaming down my face, as I tried to contain my emotions from a particularly poignant scene. Bujold here confronts questions about parenthood (specifically motherhood, but certainly also fatherhood), adult child relations (father-son), PTSD, and more in ways that are both absolutely real and true to the fictional characters she’s made. It’s rare to have characters so true to life while also being set in a far future a long ways away. Barrayar is top shelf science fiction and any fan of the genre should give it a try at least once.

The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge- Grade: C+
The Summer Queen is a mix of incredible brilliance with sometimes mind-numbingly lengthy scenes and descriptions. Like the previous work, there is no denying Vinge’s skill as a writer. The prose is powerful, the dialogue well-written, and the overall plotting is good. It gets bogged down in the details, though, and many, many scenes in excess of what was necessary for the plot. And there’s so much plot here. The book weighs in quite heavily in a very literal sense. One may be able to skip gym sessions after hauling it around. But more seriously, readers who are looking for sci-fi with serious literary meat on its bones will love this. At times, I loved it. But overall, I found it a bit too complex and drawn out for my taste.

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card- Grade: C-
Xenocide picks up right where Speaker for the Dead left off in the Ender series. However, it isn’t nearly as polished as the first two books in the series. The novel should be at least 150 pages shorter. It would easily convey  the same characterization and plot. So many scenes involve characters animatedly shouting or talking about “what are we gonna do next?” We get it, the family has a ton of drama. It got to the point, however, at which I started actively disliking all the characters. They all just seemed unpleasant to be around, and certainly did not enjoy being around each other. There remains much of Card’s dedication to speculation about morality, religion, and big questions, however. That makes the book readable despite the rather incessant arguing of the characters. But honestly, it’s only barely readable. The more I think about it, the more I’m aggravated by the characters themselves. The first two books in the series are probably the ones readers should stick to on re-reads.

Bone Dance by Emma Bull- Grade: D
Sparrow sells stuff and makes Deals for a living, selling especially videos from the World Before. It’s got a kind of cool post-apocalyptic 80s/90s vibe going. Bone Dance rides upon that feeling for a while, but then it just gets stale. The characters simply are not strong enough to sustain the plot. The plot itself becomes a kind of ho-hum adventure story post-amnesia. There are many tropes of sci-fi and fantasy in this cyberpunk novel, but the biggest trope is the plot twist at the end that I saw from miles upon miles away. I honestly found myself saying “uggh” at the end. Yes, originality is overrated, in my opinion. There really is nothing new under the sun, as the Ecclesiastical author says. But–and this is a big “but”–doing the same thing in ways that are totally predictable is still tiresome. I found Bone Dance an intriguing premise with a tiresome set of plot points that ultimately had me just riding it out at the end.

All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McAffrey- Grade: A-
I’ve enjoyed reading the Pern series over the last several years. All the Weyrs of Pern is deep into the series, and it has much more of the science fiction aspects than any of the previous books had. It’s through-and-through science fantasy–you have some hard science questions about how the “thread” might actually be generated set alongside time traveling dragons dispatched to stop the threat. I especially enjoyed the AI and the idea of lost technology. It’s been done before, many times, but I’m a sucker for it and having it be so prominent in a world I’ve grown to love so much was great. The only real complaint I have with the book is that it seems a bit too long. I don’t mind lengthy works, but this one felt like it could have been edited down by about 100 pages or so. It’s a delightful read that I think I’ll be happy to experience again whenever I decide to do a re-read of the whole series.

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick- Grade: B+
A bureaucrat gets sent planetside to investigate illegal seizure/use of technology and a strange, thought-provoking journey ensues. Our nameless protagonist, the Bureaucrat, goes on an incredible journey of discovery not just about magic and technology, but also about himself. This somehow involves quite a bit of sex along the way. Anyway, following our Bureaucrat through his journey is a surprisingly revealing way to explore the world Swanwick created in the novel. The world itself is a bit unclear, because the lens through which you see it is the Bureaucrat, and the narration almost assumes you have some of the knowledge of that character. The whole thing adds up into a sometimes bewildering journey. Swanwick’s prose, however, makes that journey enjoyable all the way through. The style in which he writes invites the reader in to enjoy the path just as much as the characters along it. It’s tantalizing. Readers who enjoy New Wave sci-fi will want to pick this one up, in particular.

1992- The reign of Heinlein is ended. The age of Bujold has begun. Okay, technically that turnover began more like 1989 with Bujold’s first nomination, but still. From 1989-now (writing in 2023), Bujold has been nominated 10 times for the Hugo Award for best novel. Ten. Times. She won 4 of them. It ties Heinlein (not counting retro Hugos) for the 10/4 count. NK Jemisin might be the next, with 5 nominations and 3 wins already. Anyway, it’s fun to read through eras like this. And, frankly, I prefer the Bujold era to the Heinlein one so far as the books are concerned. Barrayar is an all-time great. The rest of the year’s slate is okay. Swanwick’s book is intriguing. McAffrey delivers dragons in science fantasy if you’re into that kind of thing. ’92 isn’t bad. But Barrayar is the obvious choice and a year the voters definitely got right.

Links

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1990

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees.

Prentice Alvin by Orson Scott Card- Grade: D+
The third book in the Tales of Alvin Maker once again shows that Card is a strong storyteller. But he’s telling it in a way that makes it unreadable due to its problematic language, assumptions about whole groups of people, and caricatures instead of characters when it comes to those with whom he disagrees. I try not to over-read into things, but it’s difficult to see anything redemptive about the need to change a half-black boy’s DNA in order to save him from slave hunters. Yes, I understand the way the magic Card set up works this way, but it just doesn’t sit right to me that the solution is to inherently change who someone is internally. And the book is filled with, again, rigid gender norms, racially-charged language and situations with no critique, and more.

The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson- Grade: C-
The Boat of a Million Years is a sprawling epic covering thousands of generations of human history as eleven immortals struggle to find each other and create a kind of pseudo-family with their shared gift. Time and again, I’m forced to think that perhaps Poul Anderson is just not for me. I just think that in defter hands this idea would have been totally awesome. As it stands, though, it’s rather bland. Anderson’s prose is just not up to the task to which he set himself. He has a great idea, but the execution is so boring that I felt as though I forced myself through the hundreds of pages that the book drags on. None of the immortals feels especially remarkable, either, which is its own kind of amazing. How does one write a novel like this, with such a huge scope and with such big ideas, while also not really making anything about it stand out? I don’t know, but here we are.

Grass by Sherri S. Tepper- Grade: D+
I read Grass twice to see if I was missing something. A span of a few years came and went between the two readings. I remain in that space of thinking I might be missing out on something brilliant while also being somewhat skeptical that I am. The planet, Grass, is somehow immune to a plague that’s been creeping across human settlements. But why is it immune to it? And why does the whole book seem to center around a faux-fox hunt tradition? At some point in each read, I found myself just forcing my way through the novel. It’s so opaquely written that I struggle to piece together the plot. Is it intentionally written in such a confusing fashion? I don’t know, and I found eventually that I stopped caring. Eventually, it becomes tedious.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Winner, Tied for My Winner)- Grade: A+
Hyperion is a work of marvel. It’s a masterpiece. It’s a stunning achievement of literature and genre. The premise is a kind of sci-fi Canterbury Tales in which various people from across the galaxy are thrown together in a quest to meet the indomitable Shrike and make a request of it. Each person has their own reasons for wanting to make a request, and they range from selfish to totally selfless. The stories included in this book are heart-rending, funny, and terrible by turns; sometimes all at once. It’s a beautiful piece of literature that also explores questions of faith and ultimate meaning in a vast universe. There is a bigger story hiding in the shadows of the stories shared by the travelers, but not much of it is revealed in the first novel in this series. The book is a beautiful epic, with each of the travelers’ stories becoming its own piece of art. 

A Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger (Tied for My Winer)- Grade: A+
One of the best things about this book is its prose. Each sentence, however unimportant to the overall plot, oozes with character. Fairly early on, Marîd meets his estranged mother, and their conversation turns into a fight. His mother lashes out at him, annoyed that he was prying into her affairs. Effinger writes, from Marîd’s perspective, that “I had an answer to that, but I didn’t use it.” It’s a simple thing, but that single line does so much for the plot. As a reader, you wonder–will he be using that answer later in the conversation? Or perhaps we’ll read his answer later in the book? Or maybe it’s just a tantalizing hint that Marîd is more than the character on the page. He’s got a mental life, because Effinger infused him with it. Writing like this makes the book an enthralling read.
But it’s not just excellent prose that warrants this book my top score. The plotting, characters, and ideas are all top-notch as well. The first book in this series, When Gravity Fails surprised me with its feel of a genuine look into our future paired with an intense mystery and characters you could feel on the page. In this second book, I was surprised that Effinger managed to surpass his spectacular first effort. We see Marîd taking on new roles, expanding his influence, and developing as a character in the novel. It feels like a living, breathing world. And it’s one that I plan to return to time and again.

1990- What a mix! I don’t just mean the scores I’m giving out here, I mean the genre mix is strong this year. Cyberpunk, Space Opera, Historical Fantasy, whatever the heck Grass is supposed to be, and a kaleidoscopic story? Loved it, even if I didn’t love all the books. I gave both Effinger and Simmons my highest score, though if I were absolutely forced to choose between the two, I’d choose Hyperion. It’s one of those transcendent science fiction novels that makes you think about its content for years after reading it. That doesn’t say anything negative about A Fire in the Sun, which is easily one of the most fun books I’ve read. It was great to have these two books on this list, because otherwise it would have been a pretty down year. As it stands, though, 1990 has two all-time reads. 

Links

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1989

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites.  I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees.

Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card- Grade: D-
The second book in the Alvin Maker series turns out to be even more problematic than the first book. In Seventh Son, Card turned those with differing religious beliefs into (literal) tools of the devil. With Red Prophet, Native Americans are in his sights, and through the use of Ta-Kumsaw, among other Native characters, it is revealed that the Native people of the Americas have special spiritual powers from the land which are thwarted when they do things like put on white man’s clothes and the like. Yeah… and it gets worse throughout the book. Whiskey is the Native Americans’ main enemy, because it thwarts some of their innate magic as well. One character goes to find his “dream beast” to heal his hurting soul. Alvin Maker Jr.’s brother, Measure, is able to be used as a white savior narrative towards the end of the novel, of course. No caricature of interaction with Native Americans would be complete without that, right? The heck of it is that Card still manages to make the whole thing interesting enough to not make it an entirely loathesome experience all the way through. I initially read these books as a teenager and loved them, but on a re-read, with even the slightest awareness of the problematic elements, it becomes essentially unreadable.

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold- Grade: B
The Vorkorsigan saga is one of my favorite reads. Falling Free takes place a few hundred years before the main action of that series. It centers on the Quaddies, a group of humans genetically engineered to have arms instead of legs, so that they are ideally suited to life in null-g space. It’s a story that is largely about corporate interests and experiments gone awry. The corporation that developed the Quaddies attempts to make them totally dependent upon the corporation for everything, even as they exploit their labor. Leo Graf, an engineer hired to train the Quaddies, ultimately helps to free them. The book is a fine adventure. It’s not terribly deep, but I enjoyed my time in the world.

Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling (My Winner)- Grade: B
Sterling has created a complex, interweaving novel that is as steeped in the time in which it was written as it is imaginative and even challenging for the future. In the future of Islands…, corporations are independent entities with the power of nations, in a sense. The story ranges across multiple continents and countries as these corporations vie with nations for power. This setup might make it seem like the novel is a vast political epic–but it’s quite the opposite. It is a fairly focused novel following Laura Webster–an employee of one of these global corporations–as she tries to make sense of the world-changing events around her. And, indeed, she is directly involved in some of these events herself. Sterling throws a dizzying array of details at the reader right away, and the world building never quite settled down enough for me to feel I got my bearings. Moreover, the character-driven plot didn’t work as well as it could have with a more dynamic character. Laura seems more to be carried along by events than she does a driving force in the plot. The book is much more about ideas than it is about the central plot, but the ideas are startling–even prophetic–and looking back on them more than 30 years later doesn’t take any of the freshness and weirdness away. The book stands up superbly.

Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh (Winner)- Grade: C+
Cyteen is a book that can be and probably has been used as a doorstop. At times, I contemplated relegating it to that exact use going forward. It’s a hugely dense book that reads almost as an overview of political, economic, and societal history of the Cyteen system. The core plot follows the goings on of some of the most privileged of this society, and it reads as such. It becomes tedious at many points along the way. Cherryh’s skill with interpersonal drama is one of the driving forces that keeps it going. I  would classify this one as a slog, though not always a bad one.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson- Grade: C
Another Gibson novel, another baffling array of plot points, strange names, and mind-bending ideas. Gibson wearies me. Each time I read something from him, I come out on the other end feeling physically tired. Mona Lisa Overdrive ostensibly “only” has 4 plots going on in parallel, each with a number of people, confusing terms, and sometimes baffling human activity. Of course, they align eventually with each other, but the climax is surprisingly predictable. I don’t even try guessing endings of books (just not something that helps me enjoy them, usually) and I saw this one coming. That surprised me more than anything. I guess it’s an okay novel. It’s just not my cup of tea.

1989

I found this year to be among the less notable years for the Hugo nominees. Nothing really rises above the pack. It’s also one of those years you can definitely look at what was eligible and exclaim, “Wow! That didn’t make it?” For example, The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks was eligible for a 1989 Hugo, and despite being in my opinion one of the best science fiction novels ever written, it didn’t even end up on the ballot. David Zindell’s Neverness is another that has achieved cultic popularity later on, but didn’t make the ballot. So… I kinda wish the awards had been different this year. Islands in the Net is a fine novel, but quite flawed for me to choose it as a winner among the nominees. Falling Free is also… fine. It’s a decent story, but not one of my favorites in the lengthy Vorkorsigan Saga. And Cyteen, the winner, is obviously an extraordinarily ambitious novel, but it’s also quite difficult to read. Nevertheless, it’s not the worst year for the Hugos. Hopefully 1990 will be better!

Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1985

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. Here are the nominees and the winner of the 1985 Hugo Awards. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees.

1985

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge- Grade: B-
Vernor Vinge has huge ideas, and that is fully on display here. A hard sci-fi combination with dystopia and superweapon (almost a play on “Red Scare” type vintage sci-fi) fears comes together into this story of humanity imploding and coming out of the rubble. I have such mixed feelings after having read it. The first 100 pages or so are an amalgam of confusing data, breathtakingly cool ideas, and characters being thrown around in ways that are difficult to follow alongside everything else going on. As a reader, you’re very much just plopped in the middle of this story without much ground to figure out what’s going on. Why does the Peace Authority go full on totalitarian so quickly? What motivates the central players here? Why does the dude who created the superweapon manage to escape? In the midst of all this we have, as I said, some hard sci-fi ideas like quantum decay, parallel universes, and the like being thrown together in what is a stunning but confusing mess of a novel. I alternately was enthralled and confused by this. I think I liked it?

Neuromancer by William Gibson (Winner)- Grade: B-
I have a lengthy relationship with Neuromancer. I first bought it as a teenager and tried to read it and was completely confused. I’d only really read Star Wars novels for sci-fi before this point, and the complexity of this cyberpunk world was beyond me. I tried again later, and then again when a friend at work recommended it. I finally got through it then. I’ve since read it in total 4 times, with numerous false starts. I still don’t think I understand the book, and at this point, I’m becoming more willing to blame Gibson than myself for it. Although Gibson writes an in introduction to one of the versions I read that he was not out to try to predict the future, this novel seems almost prophetic in some ways as Gibson coined a number of terms and used ideas that have since become reality. The dialogue-to-action ratio is off. The world and characters feel somewhat empty and lifeless. There’s a great hook at the beginning, but we then spend an enormous amount of time just following one guy around as he follows a hacking job down a rabbit hole. Though there are characters with all kinds of cool backgrounds, they never seem much more than cutouts put there to help the plot along. There is very little characterization, and as a reader, that’s something I look forward to most. The thematic details are, I am okay admitting at this point, totally lost on me. I often feel I don’t get this novel, but I can admire what’s going on from a distance. There’s no denying that Neuromancer is one of the best examples of Cyberpunk, but that’s more for its ideas than for its excellence of plot or character development. People looking for big ideas in their sci-fi will love this. I’m still trying to decide.

Emergence by David R. Palmer (My Winner)- Grade: B+
Emergence will be a polarizing book. The novel is told from the viewpoint of a young super-genius who writes in shorthand. That means grammatical rules largely don’t apply. I am usually annoyed hugely by that, but Palmer manages to use the backstory of the character and still make it work. And what a character she is! Candidia Maria Smith-Foster–or “Candy”–is 11 years old and at first seems to merely be a precocious character who possibly has a heavy overdose of being too good at everything. But as you read her story, you discover why she is the way she is. The earliest part of the novel–the first 1/4 or so–is the best part by far in my opinion. Here, you spend all your time with Candy and her “twin brother” (a bird, Terry) as you peel away the layers of a disaster and how to survive. Of course, Candy has a huge leg up as she starts off with an almost embarrassingly well-equipped bomb shelter. But again, this is all part of the story and it makes sense. Revealing too much more would give away some of the better parts of the plot, and I have to admit Candy is such a wonderful character that I couldn’t not love the book for that. That said, there are some scenes that grossed me out. (SPOILER: specifically, when she runs into an older boy and they think they may be the only human-ish people left so he tries to convince her, not even a teenager, to have sex or give him some kind of relief. It’s gross and the way he keeps pushing on the topic makes it even worse. This alone, along with another similar scene later in the book, is what leads me to mark it down. I can see the argument for people would really act that way, but it didn’t prevent me from feeling extremely awful about the scenes anyway. /SPOILER.) Aside from those, this is a pretty fantastic post-apocalyptic story that has a heartwarming, almost comfort-food type of feel to it that only a few books can truly grasp.

Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein- Grade: F
Reading this was an absolute chore. If I had to choose a single word to describe this novel, it would be “pretentious.” In the hands of a humbler author, an exploration of the end times going along with corruption of a main character in a fall from grace type narrative could be a wonderful, tongue-in-cheek adventure. Here, it reads as projection. There are so many ideas about Christianity thrown together here in a mishmash of ecumenical soup that it doesn’t even make sense. Is Heinlein trying to offer a critique of Christianity? Is he trying to say there’s something more going on? I doubt it, and if he is, his combination of Roman Catholic ideas, American millenarianism, folklore masquerading as theology, and various other branches of beliefs into one is done with all the deftness of using a dump truck to spread mulch around your flowers. It’s incredibly frustrating to read, and set alongside a central plot that is a yawn-inducing reflection on (surprise, surprise) a man choosing to reason by means of sexual desire instead of any sort of character drive (I’m not surprised–this is Heinlein), it becomes unbearable. It’s not the worst Heinlein book I’ve read, but it’s mighty close.

The Integral Trees by Larry Niven- Grade: C
The Integral Trees is milquetoast to me. It wasn’t offensive or terrible enough to make me downgrade it, but it wasn’t captivating or thought-provoking enough to make me feel anything more than a general sense of… “meh.” The core idea of some trees that can move and have changed how humans evolve and interact once they’ve crash landed on some planet is okay, and may have been more exciting at the time the book came out. But as it stands it just doesn’t really have any single point that makes it worthy of recommendation or any effort to critique it beyond this review. The characters are bland; the societies are bland; the tension is almost nonexistent; and the overarching plot is barely enough to engage with. Even as the characters faced various perils, I just wasn’t engaged. It’s a novel for which the offhanded remark of “fine” seems entirely appropriate.

1985- The nominees here are a banner year for some heavy hitters past and present at this point. We’ve got yet another Heinlein, who continues to show up due to a voracious fan base; Larry Niven, William Gibson, and Vernor Vinge. I don’t think I’d read anything from Palmer before, but found Emergence one of the more unique narrative voices I’ve experienced. I’m sure there are many who would be upset by my picks and grades here, but that’s the joy of diverse opinions, right? If we all liked the same thing, it’d be pretty boring out here.

Links

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

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SDG.

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1984

I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.

1984

Millennium by John Varley (My Winner)- Grade: B-
The concept here is pretty awesome. On a future Earth, the present is bleak, so they send back time travelers to grab healthy humans from the past to try to reinvigorate their present. They’re spotted, and hijinks ensue. It’s a great thread, and one of the better uses of time travel. I love time travel abstractly as an idea for a story, but it’s so rarely used in ways which make it actually integral to the plot. Varley, however, uses it in a way that is impactful without ever feeling like it’s just there for the sake of the plot or throwing people into past situations. The characters aren’t terribly compelling, which makes it difficult to get into the book. Ultimately, the ideas behind the story are what kept me going as a reader. It’s definitely of the better time travel-themed novels I’ve read recently.

Startide Rising by David Brin (Winner)- Grade: C-
Conceptually, Startide Rising–and indeed, the rest of the series–has quite a bit going for it. The idea of “uplifting” other species to sentience and then traveling through the stars with them is a good one that I have surprisingly not really run into much anywhere else. My issue with this book and the others in the series is that it drags out the concept for far too long and without as much payoff as I’d like. The cacophony of viewpoints becomes more than a bit annoying to try to follow as aliens, dolphins, and humans each chime in on galactic affairs and the events surrounding one specific ship, the Streaker, on which the humans and dolphins reside. The reader is shifted back and forth so frequently that settling in and trying to experience the story is impossible. The book is also quite lengthy, which adds to the difficulty of trying to manage so many sporadically appearing characters. I found myself wondering occasionally if I should remember a character encountered in one or another part, and it became a chore to read after a while. With a more tightly focused narrative, I think this would have been a much better read. As it stands, it shows flashes of brilliance throughout.

Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. McAvoy- Grade: C-
Sometimes you read a book and you can tell it’s probably much better than it feels. For me, Tea with the Black Dragon was one of those books. There’s a quietude in the novel that is both appealing at times and also off-putting at others. I found myself feeling a bit bored. I know that’s a strong indictment, but its nevertheless true. I found my mind wandering off to other novels or locales, hoping that some action would occur, or that something would break the tone of the novel. I don’t really know how to describe it; I was underwhelmed here. I acknowledge the craft while at the same time noting it’s not for me.

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern by Anne McAffrey- Grade: B-
McAffrey takes readers back to an earlier time in Pern, making this book one of the potential entry points into the series. The science fantasy world of Pern has humans using dragons to fight voracious alien invaders known as Thread which falls whenever a sister planet gets close enough for them to cross the space between planets. In Moreta, a disease is spreading throughout the Weyrs to the point where effectively fighting against Thread is in danger. That puts the whole planet at risk, and Moreta must muster up the people of the Weyr to finally fight off the incursion, which is only successful when they rediscover vaccination. Reading the novel post-Covid makes it feel like a somewhat pointed and possibly refreshing science fantasy defense of vaccination as a proper way to combat disease. The book is, as I said, a good entry point into the series, but for those who’ve read everything so far, it could feel formulaic. At this point McAffrey definitely has a pattern in the stories of the novels and even in tropes of characters that show up. Fans of the series will enjoy it, and those who are new to the series may find it a good point to jump in. Those already unimpressed or with waning interest in the series will find this one another tough read. I enjoyed it pretty well, and continue to find the series a kind of comfort read. You get what you expect to get out of them.

The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov- Grade: C
I enjoy Asimov’s Robots series overall. They tend to have stronger characters than the Foundation series (let’s be honest, basically any characterization is stronger than that series) and I enjoy mystery novels, so combining that with sci-fi makes for a potent mix. We revisit Elijah Baley and see what he’s up to as he tackles yet another mystery, this time mixed with a heaping helping of agoraphobia. It’s a fairly good mystery story in which Asimov continues to use the setting to his advantage. The problem is that it seems almost interminably long with very little action to drive the plot forward. It’s a fine novel, but it serves much more as a springboard for discussions of Asimov’s pet issues than it does anything else. It’s a fine read, especially if you enjoyed the other books in the series, but there’s nothing extraordinary about it.

1984- A somewhat disappointing year for the Hugos. None of these books are runaway winners for the award, but none are egregiously bad, either. It’s more of a milquetoast feel to the whole thing. I chose Millennium as my personal winner over Moreta only because the former feels much fresher as a read. Each book on this list has some difficulties, but each has enough qualities to make them worth at least sampling. Not a bad year, nor a good year. Look, even the cover of the winner, Millennium, is boring! What did you think?

Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.