Adri and Joe Read the Hugos: Novel

  

Adri: Time for the second installment in our Hugo chats: and this time we’re moving on to novel. This year we’ve got books from a very all-star author list - five out of six already have at least one Hugo in the silverware cupboard - and an even split of sequels and new adventures. What are your thoughts?

Joe: And the one writer who doesn’t have a Hugo (Tamsyn Muir) was a Best Novel finalist last year for her debut novel, which isn’t too shabby either.

Similar to how I feel about Novella, this year’s Novel ballot is a fairly strong one and a reasonably varied list in terms of what sort of novel is nominated.

I listen to too many Academy Award focused podcasts (Oscar Season is almost as eternal as Hugo Season), so let’s blame that for what’s coming next, but I kind of want to talk about the narratives around the Best Novel Hugo Award finalists.

The City We Became is N.K. Jemisin’s first novel after winning three Hugo Awards in as many years for her Broken Earth trilogy. One more win ties her with Robert A. Heinlein and Lois McMaster Bujold, and breaks her tie with Connie Willis and Vernor Vinge. That’s heady company to be in. Network Effect brings Murderbot to the Best Novel ballot for the first time and it’s really difficult to overlook the power of Murderbot (two wins for Novella, a finalist for Series this year). We also have Susanna Clarke’s first novel since winning a Hugo for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and that’s not something we can discount. Then again, don’t discount Mary Robinette Kowal for her follow up Lady Astronaut novel. The first book in that series won two years ago. That’s not to dismiss Tamsyn Muir and Rebecca Roanhorse because you absolutely cannot and should not dismiss Tamsyn Muir and Rebecca Roanhorse.

I know we don’t talk about books and the Hugos like we do movies, but given how good of a ballot we have this year and you noted that five of the six finalists are previous Hugo Winners and three of them have won this category before - a little Oscar talk is kind of fun.

Adri: It’s fun to mix up the punditry sometimes! As long as nobody thinks we’re taking ourselves TOO seriously. Also, compared to last year, which was quite a debut heavy ballot, it’s fun to see a field of returning champions and consistent favourites. I’m making a big effort to keep this sort of year-by-year fluctuation in mind, because I’m sure I said something melodramatic and overblown last year about debuts dominating the Hugo awards forever. I should not say things like that if I want people to believe I am in touch with reality.

Joe: Hey, we all like the new and shiny books but I’m with you in wanting a solid mix depending on the makeup of a given year’s publishing.

Okay. I’d like to kick this off by talking about Network Effect, the first novel from Martha Wells to make the Hugo ballot. It’s Murderbot, and Murderbot seems to be everywhere these days, having twice won the Hugo Award for Best Novella and is now on the ballot for Best Series where I’m a little afraid it’ll steamroll the rest of the finalists there, though that’s a conversation for another day.

Adri: Murderbot! As a series, it’s lovely to see how it’s captured the hearts of the SFF community, and I think those novella wins were both well deserved. But Network Effect occupies an odd place in my heart right now: I loved it, I gave it 8/10 in review (Paul gave it a 9), I’m really excited for the way it changes Murderbot’s terms of engagement with humans and potentially takes the series into new territory (not that Fugitive Telemetry, the latest novella, does anything with that...) but when it came to pinning down my favourites for the year, it didn’t really come into the equation for me. As you say, we’ll have the series conversation later, but I’m more comfortable discussing Murderbot as an outstanding ongoing series than holding up any individual volume as a pinnacle of achievement at this point.

Joe: I’m notoriously inconsistent with my goodreads ratings, especially since it doesn’t let us give half stars. We both gave it 5 stars, but I’d say my star rating probably would come out to around 85% and then I rounded up. Not that it matters or you can gleam anything about how I use goodreads to do anything more than incessantly log everything I read.

The point is that I thought Network Effect was really good. It’s Murderbot. It’s fun, it’s delightful, and like you I didn’t have it on my nominating ballot. Network Effect is among the best of the year, it’s just not among the best of the best of my year. I think we’re talking about the same thing - despite the Nebula win and the potential Hugo steamroll that it may well do in this category, it’s just not as individually special as some of the other novels here.

Another novel I thought was excellent but not as much of a standout in this category is The Relentless Moon. I reviewed it last year, gave it an 8/10 (and a meaningless 5 stars on Goodreads). I noted, and please excuse me for quoting myself, that “this novel, like the two Lady Astronaut novels before it, is about striving towards excellence and truly building a better tomorrow even in the face of a devastating future. The Relentless Moon is hopeful science fiction, and that's something worth celebrating - especially when it's this good.”

Because we’ve talked around this for a while, I know you don’t agree.

Adri: Yeah, sadly I didn’t get on with The Relentless Moon at all (after actually liking The Calculating Stars quite a lot! And then The Fated Sky... much less), and I stopped reading halfway through. Like its predecessors, this book revolves around a nice white lady who battles sexism and is totally Aware of Systemic Injustice but still prone to using her extensive privilege to put herself over the top wherever she can. I know that’s certainly not the intended takeaway, and other people get very different things out of these books and I don’t want to diminish that, but they just don’t deliver what I want from a science fiction story like this. Even as a white woman reader, I can get wish fulfilment competence porn that works better for me elsewhere. Sorry, Nicole and Elma!

Joe: That’s a fair criticism which I can absolutely see, though that’s obviously not the way I read The Relentless Moon. It’s not my favorite of the three Lady Astronaut novels, but I thought it was delightful.

How I’m reading the novel (and granting my position of a relatively privileged white man) is that, given the timeframe in which it is set, a generally nice while lady who battles sexism but is aware of systemic injustice is a good thing. Yes, Elma and now Nicole, are relatively privileged to get into the American space program. It’s one of the foundational what ifs of the Lady Astronaut series. On the one hand the recognition of the systemic injustice can be a little heavy handed. On the other hand, there *is* a recognition of systemic injustice. That’s not something we get in every novel even one with the basic what ifs of Lady Astronaut and The Relentless Moon.

I’ll absolutely grant that the three Lady Astronaut series would fall more into the category of entry level science fiction - something which John Scalzi has made no bones about writing himself and being proud of. I’m not at all being dismissive - I think Mary Robinette Kowal is writing excellent science fiction and while The Relentless Moon doesn’t quite live up to The Calculating Stars and all of the wonder of that novel, I still find it generally delightful.

Adri: And, you know, here’s the other thing I need to recognise: I’m being very hard on The Relentless Moon, a book which tries to incorporate racial injustice but (for me) falls short. But two of my favourite books here don’t even try, and yet I still consider them favourites for what they DO focus on. So… I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, but I think it is that “opinions are hard”.

Joe: Moving on, I really don’t have anything to say about Piranesi. It’s not a book for me. I’m just happy it wasn’t 1000 pages long.

Adri: Funnily enough, Piranesi is one of my favourites (and, at the time of writing, it’s just won the Women’s Prize for Fiction). It’s so delightfully bizarre, with a really strong character voice, and I really appreciated both what it ended up explaining and what remained a weird mystery. I know other readers who didn’t enjoy the extent to which it pulled back the curtain on its own premise - there’s quite an extended epilogue - but I just thought it was really cool. Also, a very different book from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and definitely not one that could sustain 1,000 pages - which is fine!

The other book I have less to say on for now - although I really, really enjoyed it and am anticipating the sequel with delight - is Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun. Epic fantasy doesn’t often make the ballot and I’m glad this one has, but at the same time it feels like we’ve only just started to scratch the surface of Roanhorse’s world - not to mention that ending cliffhanger! - and I hope I’m going to be more equipped to talk about this in a couple of years time when, hopefully, we get to see it on a Best Series ballot

Joe: I’m with you on Black Sun. It was quite good, gave us something new in epic fantasy. I love new perspectives, especially as well written as Black Sun was. But, perhaps moreso than some other first novels in a series, Black Sun feels less complete on its own - which would be a weird thing to say, except, as you noted, the cliffhanger ending.

But - if I contrast Black Sun with The City We Became, another novel that is setting up a series to come, Jemisin’s novel feels more complete while opening up the wider conflict than Black Sun does. The City We Became is more a “now what?” than a “oh shit what the hell?” - both are valid ways to end a novel and build anticipation but, for me, the way The City We Became ended is more satisfying.

It’s also solidly at the top of my ballot. I’ve read N.K. Jemisin’s short fiction since before she published her first novel, but The Fifth Season was the first novel length work I had read of hers. I do plan to go back and read her Dreamblood Duology and Inheritance Trilogy, just to get that out of the way. I have the omnibus editions taunting me. But, with that said, her Broken Earth novels were truly special and exceptional, which makes The City We Became all the more impressive because it’s something very different from that triple Hugo Award winning trilogy and there is no let down.

Adri: I love The Inheritance Cycle and really enjoyed the Dreamblood Duology as well, but Broken Earth was undoubtedly a level up for Jemisin and I think The City We Became maintains that level of quality. At the same time, it’s a book that gives me a bit of trouble, rankings-wise, because while I think it’s objectively an amazing concept and I loved the take on cosmic horror and urban fantasy (in the most literal possible sense), some of the core elements didn’t “click” with me as much, and I was left feeling more out of the loop on some of the worldbuilding elements than I wanted. I know Paul, as a New Yorker, had quite a different reading experience to me, so I think it's my Britishness (and my whiteness) standing in the way here. Anyway, objectively I think The City We Became is the start of another amazing series for Jemisin and it’d be a more than worthy winner. Plus, as you say, it feels much more like a whole thing in itself, even as there certainly is set-up for more books.

Joe: I wonder if that’s part of it for me as well. Pour one out for me with this admission in light of the novel, but I grew up on Staten Island until 8th Grade so there is a certain amount of familiarity with New York that doesn’t quite go away while still granting that I didn’t know the city as an adult or even as a teenager so my experience is necessarily different. But those elements that didn’t click for you? They very much worked for me.

We’ll get into discussing the top of our ballots in a moment, I think, but since I’ve already noted The City We Became as at the top of mine, we should probably move on to my number two - which is the final novel on the ballot and it’s an absolute stunner: Harrow the Ninth.

For all that Gideon the Ninth was filled with spit and elbows to the face and a seething sarcastic anger - Harrow the Ninth was an adjustment of a second novel. Tamsyn Muir flipped every expectation we might have had, subverted a few of them, and then continued to deliver a beautifully told story that was unlike anything we would have expected from her debut novel (as happens when expectations are flipped). It was brave as hell and it worked so, so well.

Adri: I couldn’t agree more. Harrow the Ninth quite literally rewrites the rules that Gideon the Ninth established, and the fact that Muir pulls it off so well while also managing to put full-on Dad jokes in some of the tensest moments of the story is just so impressive. It also manages to be an outstanding book while largely doing without the biggest selling point of Gideon the Ninth: Gideon herself. I know that it’s quite a divisive book (if you didn’t like Gideon, you won’t like Harrow, and even if you did like Gideon it might not be what you want), but for me it was exactly my jam.

Joe: That is an excellent way to describe Harrow. I loved Gideon, but I was expecting Harrow to be Gideon x 2 and, well, spoilers, but Harrow was mostly Gideon x 0. The first few pages / chapters I was wondering what the heck was going on. I am amazed Tamsyn Muir pulled it off, but she absolutely did. Harrow the Ninth is the only novel that could conceivably overtake The City We Became at the top of my ballot.

Since I refuse to not talk about the top of my ballot, should we move on to talking about the tops of our ballots?

Adri: Totally. My top three this year are very hard to pick between: Harrow the Ninth, Piranesi and The City We Became all did very different things to me as a reader, and they're all right up there as the best of this year. The dilemma I have is, I think, a common one: do I go for the book I objectively think is the best, or do I go for the book I enjoyed the most (and I use the word "enjoy" very broadly here)? Most of the time, it's the thing that hit me hardest personally that goes on top of my ballot, and then everything else goes in what I feel is the best "objective" order. If I do that this year, Harrow the Ninth is the immediate winner. It's my first and so far only 10/10 rated book on Nerds of a Feather, it's a book of my heart, it's full of exactly the kind of nonsense shenanigans that I am a sucker for, and it has some great fanart on Twitter.

This year, though, I'm feeling more strongly than usual about my runners-up. Piranesi is just such a cool book, and I'd love to see Susanna Clarke come in after her long hiatus and walk off with another Hugo. And The City We Became... well, it's not a book that spoke to me as much personally, but it's N.K. Jemisin continuing at the top of her game after Broken Earth, and that needs to be recognised. With that in mind, I think I’m going to be switching up my voting criteria this year and going for an actual “best novel” rather than an “Adri’s favourite novel”. Which I’m sure people will tell me I should have been doing all along, but objectivity is a silly concept anyway.

Joe: I’m somewhere between “fuck objectivity” and “what is the best, anyway?”, but it’s a little bit more nuanced in my head than that might come across in an explanation so let’s see if I can work with that a bit.

There are novels that I dearly love (and I’m not going to name names) that I can comfortably say are among my favorites of the year but aren’t among the best. But once we get to the point that we’re thinking about the best of the year and we can recognize some sort of excellence beyond the pure joy a book brought us, I’m not sure there is such a thing as objectivity.

When I’m looking at the top of an awards ballot, or my completely subjective “best of the year” list, I’m trying to find the intersection of what I loved with what I think is best. I can admire the technical skill of Piranesi all I want and I recognize that you thought it was great, but I can’t say it’s “best” because, for me, it’s not.

The Hugo Awards are about celebrating the “best”, right? But it’s the best as voted on by a group of people pooling their opinions, ranking their choices, and coming up with what is closer to a consensus best. There is no consensus best. In my mind, The Fifth Season is the closest thing we have to what *I* think is a consensus best novel. The Fifth Season is an all time great novel and I think will hold up to the history of science fiction and fantasy. Even for that book, there’s not enough of a consensus that it is best. There are folks who ranked it 5 or 6 in 2016.

I’m sorry. I’m monologuing. The larger point I had is that there’s no wrong way to do this and if you shoot for the best + your favorite you’ll find a really nice balance between the two.

Adri: Agreed! And on that note, let’s salute this novel ballot one more time and then move on to our next category. Join us next time for a look at the Short Story finalists.

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Microreview [Book]: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi is a deceptively simple story that's transcendent at its core.

Piranesi is a tremendously imaginative and powerful novel proposing that an ideal home isn’t universally agreed upon. It’s not just predicated on whether the floors should be hardwood or carpeted, but how the dispositions of those around you should be. Or how which preferred culture has molded their general beliefs. Piranesi shows that progress constantly changes how we believe the world must be formed. Oftentimes, progress is a boon, but sometimes it taps into a malicious part of humanity that makes us yearn for before. Nostalgia is rose-colored glasses, tinted with a shade of truth. Susanna Clarke has the ability to delve into this topic with an unprecedented level of depth even though she's writing about a character trapped in a giant house, isolated from Earth, with only one other person to intermittently talk to. It’s a story that strips the hustle and bustle of Earth, and allows the story to develop in an ominously quiet environment.

Piranesi lives in an infinitely expansive house. He’s lived there since he can remember. There are human remains in the house, along with live animals. But the only other living person there is a man he calls The Other, who delivers him goods He's nice enough, but mostly stays apart from Piranesi. Things are going great for Piranesi—he never tires of exploring the house’s myriad halls and statues. But then another live inhabitant is found in the house. And things methodically unravel, leading to major revelations.

I’m not going to dig deep into the characters because much of the suspense of Piranesi is figuring out who the players in the story are. But I will say that they’re written in a unique way that forces a sense of distance because of Piranesi’s structure, yet they feel fully realized despite the confines. And as for Piranesi, he has one of the most zesty, original, and endearing voices I’ve read in some time. Writing the story from his first person perspective was a great choice. His hunger for exploration, and dedication to learning and transcribing about every nook and cranny of the house is infectious. It’s propped up with bubbly language that elevates what could’ve been depicted as a drab environment into a labyrinth that I’d rather read about than even the most exciting Greek mythology.

The novel keeps you guessing by both having things that are what they seem to be in one instance, and the opposite in the next. A character cloaked in foreboding mystery isn’t a good person. A slimily charismatic leader spouting what sounds like lunacy is often telling the truth. Despite not categorically embracing progress, it works hard to be its own original beast, not beholden to tropes of the past. And by showing me that stories still have untrodden avenues available to take, it made me want to march forward, not looking back.

I want to keep this review brief, so I won’t go on about the rich imagery that begs for dozens of literary essays. Instead, I will end with this: a story that progresses the genre forward while simultaneously criticizing aspects of worldly progress is a tough trick to pull off. But having it take place in an expansive house, with limited characters and a narratorial voice that I could’ve read for one-thousand more pages is the best way to do it. Because it strips down all the superfluous elements of our world, and shows that when we are stripped of the flashy but vapid qualities that drain our time, leaving us worse than where we were before, we are left fulfilled. Progress is important to us, in a time when It feels like the world is covered in superfluous thorns. Piranesi encourages its readers to walk forward along a pleasurable path, because the world shouldn’t be covered in thorns in the first place.

The Math

Baseline Score: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 For conjuring incredible mystery and tension out of a premise that in theory doesn't sound like it'd have any.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, stand-up comedian, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!"

Clarke, Susanna. Piranesi [Bloomsbury, 2020].

Summer Reading List: Tia

Below is my (overambitious) summer reading (wish) list. I must admit, it makes me look like a really bad fantasy reader, but thats because my fantasy reading mission in life is to absorb as many of the must-reads as possible, but not ignore the lesser known but equally as amazing stand-alones and series. So this list is composed of books I want to read this summer that I haven't gotten to yet, while still leaving room for those wonderful stories I don’t know about that will eventually find their way to my bookshelf.

1. The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton [Tor, 2015]

This is officially the first thing on my list, since I recently reviewed and really liked The Just City, the first in the proposed trilogy. I love stories that incorporate Greek Mythology, especially ones that throw gods into the modern (or at least not Ancient Greek) world. If that’s your thing too, make sure you check out The Just City by Jo Walton, and if you haven’t already, go read Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. I hear that’s a movie as well. Add one to my summer watching list…

2. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson [Tor, 1999]

From the second I picked this book up, I couldn’t wait to finish the series so that I could start it over. I am a big fan of rereads in general and believe that the first time you read a book you find out what happens, and the second time you read it you find out why. I knew right away the Malazan Book of the Fallen would be in my top three rereads ever (up there with ASoIaf and Harry Potter), not because the world is so complex (which it is of course), but because Erikson so brilliantly drops you right into the thick of things and lets you figure it out on your own. I’m excited because this time around I’ll know what’s going on and what things like warrens are, and most importantly, if I’m not sure about something it will be relatively safe to wiki it.

3. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke [Bloomsburry, 2004]

With so many books and so little time, it’s hard to decide which books on your TBR list to actually read. Sometimes the hype of publicity can be the catalyst for choice. Such is the case with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. With the TV adaption bringing it back into the spotlight and causing so many folks to (re)sing its praises, I cannot allow myself to go another summer without reading this one.

4. The Magicians by Lev Grossman [Viking Press, 2009]

This is another series I’ve been itching to give a try, something I’m repeatedly reminded of whenever a TV rumor surfaces. I’m a total sucker for magical schooling (Potter, Kingkiller) but haven’t read this one yet because (a) time and (b) mixed reviews. But the premise is too much up my alley for me to ignore it any longer, and The Magicians is officially on my reading list this summer.

5. Mistborn, The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson [Tor, 2006]

I actually started reading a sample of this book and really liked it, but it got lost somewhere in life and I never downloaded the full copy. Every now and then something pops up on Twitter about Mistborn to remind me I need to read it, and especially so now that Rebel Leader, Steve Kamb has been singing its praises. I don’t even really know what the overall plot of this series is (which makes me a bad fantasy reader but is good for reading fantasy) but I do remember that I liked the sample and I do know that this is one I have to read.

6. Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan [Tor, 2015]

The premise of this book is just too intriguing to ignore. Basically it’s your typical medieval-type war and kingdom fantasy world but with dinosaurs. It would be higher on my summer reading list but honestly, I’m sort of suffering from gritty medieval war-type fantasy fatigue right now, and I don’t know if the inclusion of dinosaurs can sway that. Besides, I have a feeling it might be scary and I’m not really into the whole horror adrenaline rush thing. But I keep coming back to Dinosaur Lords again and again because deep down inside, I really, really, want to read it. I mean, just look at that cover!



So lets recap. This summer I intend to read a 10 book series, 2 trilogies, and 3 others; while still reading all the review copies that come my way, only one of which is included in this list. Needless to say, my Summer Reading List is really an Overambitious Summer Reading Wish List. But, just in case I have some time left before the leaves start to change and the baseball season ends, I think it's best to name an honorable mention:

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Posted by Tia  -- bad fantasy reader and even worse sci-fi reader, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2014

Summer Reading List: Vance

And thus begins Nerds of a Feather Summer Reading List II: Electric Boogaloo. Over the next week or so, the contributors will be weighing in with what we all plan on jamming into our brains through our eyeballs this Summer. Last year I did pretty well, reading all but one of my of the books on my list, which I was especially proud of considering I went into the summer already working on Proust's Swann's Way: Remembrance of Things Past, Book I. That said, this year I have to admit I'm less optimistic, so if this winds up being more of a Summer Reading Wishlist, don't say I didn't warn ya..

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

This book is the one that got away last year, and I plan to tackle it right away this time around. Neil Gaiman helped pluck Susanna Clarke out of obscurity about a decade ago by working to get this book out into the world. It's a magical, fantastical epic that I've been excited to read for a few years, and this time I'm going to take it down. But it's waaaay long, so it might keep me from the rest of my list. Such are the perils of time management.

2. - 4. The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn

We have more Star Wars movies in our collective future, and they will feature Luke, Leia, and Han, all of whom are now total Oldsters. Even though J. J. Abrams and Co. are rumored to be creating a new story for the movie, it's hard to imagine that they're going to drastically rewrite the existing canon regarding what happened after Return of the Jedi. I'm told The Thrawn Trilogy - Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command - is an indispensable chapter of the larger saga of these characters, so I'd like to check it out.

5. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick

It's a Philip K. Dick book with an awesome title that I haven't read yet. That's pretty much all the invitation I need (and you should need).

6. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee and Walker Evans

This is not a particularly nerdy book - a chronicle of real 1930s tenant farmers living in dire poverty - but I started reading it late last year after using a number of Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration photos for projects relating to my folk album The Ghost of John Henry. Along with Dorothea Lange and others, Walker Evans was one of a group of photographers engaged by the U.S. government to document life during the Great Depression. Evans and journalist James Agee went to the Deep South and spent several weeks living with a few sharecropper families, ultimately releasing this book as the chronicle of those experiences. But damn is this some dense writing. Agee was trying something new with journalism, combining detailed list-making and straight reportage with modernistic abstractions on the order of something out of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The result is engaging, but exhausting, requiring close and careful reading of each word as they build upon each other to form sentences that go on for pages at a time. I will get through this eventually. Hopefully this Summer.