Microreview [book]: Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

A no holds barred, fully feminist and fulsome military SF space opera that showcases the talents of the author in a new subgenre.

Persephone is a rough and tumble planet. The Serrao-Orlov Corporation has a tight lid on it, and there is a colony there, but its usefulness is a big question. Life outside the colony is harsh, in terms of weather, and the local fauna and flora. So why does Serrao-Orlov bother with the place? Therein lies the secret of Persephone: An alien race, inheritors of a high precursor civilization live on Persephone, secretly. A few in the Corporation know this, and the deal in place keeps everyone happy. Its a big secret, because alien races are not and should not be treated this way. But when an ambitious executive of Serrao-Orlov decides to alter the deal to squeeze more out of the aliens,, a group of mercenary types are the only thing to stop them from doing so.

This is Stina Leicht’s Persephone Station.

There is a broad wealth of worldbuilding here, from the personal to the interstellar. There is so much packed in the novel that if not for the writer’s skillful plotting and characters, it would be all too much and unwieldy, even in 500 pages. A well developed and interesting alien planet, check. Interesting set piece locations that work within the city. Check. Lots of interesting detail on corporations, corporate politics (internal and external?) Check. Interesting development and a strand on artificial intelligence and human-AI interactions, complete with fears, maneuvering and development? Check. It’s a big and rich world, and I ate it all up. It feels resonant with books like Patrick Tomlinson’s In the Black and Martha Wells Murderbot series, but it is entirely Leicht’s own universe.

The author’s skill with characters comes in here with this ragtag crew of mercenaries, criminals, thieves and others who come together ultimately to oppose Serrao-Orlov. They have a distinct and wide set of backgrounds and story arcs, and the author gives us lots of detail on them, especially our viewpoint characters, to bring them and their stories home. Be it Rosie, owner of Monk’s Bar, a hive of scum and villainy all the equal to the Mos Eisley Cantina, to Angel, the head of a mercenary band who finds herself at the point of the defense against Serrao-Orlov, to Kennedy Liu, who is passing for human and learning human ways while she really is...well, that would be telling.

That does seem to be a theme in the book and the characters that the author likes to play with and explore--who people are and what they want to be, and what face they present to the world--be it to themselves, to their close friends and colleagues, and to others. The aliens, when they come onto the stage in the main portion of the novel (they appear in a prologue) further explore these questions of identity and personality in a vivid and nuanced way. All of the mercenaries and outcasts that line up against Serrao-Orlov have their issues, their breaks, their attempts to build themselves better. The author goes for this theme alternatively in heavy and forceful notes, and sometimes much more subtly. It’s a theme that has appeared before in Leicht’s writing, and she explores it in a new and different way, here.

The author’s writing skills were also honed on the action sequences in her earlier fantasy novels, and the answer to whether or not those translate to a Mil-SF Space Opera setting is a resounding yes. Be it a barroom brawl, a standoff between corporate types and mercenaries, or the show stopping set piece battle that dominates the back portion of the book, the author’s fluid ability to bring the excitement, the pain, the danger and the power of action sequences translates very well to the far future world of Persephone. I keep thinking of the Borderlands video games, hardscrabble vault hunters going up against fearful odds, often at high personal cost. Fans of those games will find a lot to love in this novel.

The plotting is strong even as it falls under familiar lines. After the aforementioned prologue, we get introduced to our main characters, who are drawn together by the prospect of a payday in what seems like a simple protection plan. Even as corporate politics and cutthroat deals swirl around, the main conflict that executes over the end portion of the book is efficiently put together piece by piece. And when that final conflict sets off, the tension rises and crests, with excellent use of breathing spaces, and pacing to keep the reader turning page after page. My only nit is that I think that the main conflict could have used one particular additional point of view to capture the action even better than she does.

Finally, it should be said that the novel is firmly and unapologetically feminist as all out. All of the main characters on both sides of the conflict are women and the novel takes the point of view, still a radical one here in 2020 it seems, that women can run a space opera verse and run it very well, thank you very much. The novel is a thumb in the eye to endless space opera novels where women are as scarce as hens’ teeth, to be at best prizes and awards, if they appear at all, or at best a Smurfette. Leicht says no to that, and thusly proves the absurdity of that point of view.

Persephone Station is a levelling up for the writer, launching her and her work into a new subgenre of SFF with verve, daring and drive. I’d love to see more from her in this vein, be in this universe (which has a ton of potential for more stories for these and other characters) or other SF works. More, please!


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for ia kickass group of well drawn mercenaries, with arcs, backstories and fully fleshed characterization
+1 for kick-arse action sequences and pulse pounding action.

Penalties: -1 A little more flexibility with point of view in a couple of sequences would make the strong narrative even better.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 Well worth your time and attention

Reference: Leicht, Stina. Persephone Station [Saga, 2021]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Microreview [book]: Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

Online privacy message fiction for the masses

He who controls the online information flows controls everything — including you. When our lives become increasingly digital and our everyday appliances, apartments and cars are assortments of computers with dubious privacy, we can never be truly secure. This is especially true if we disagree with those who control everything. Something along these lines might be the message of Cory Doctorow's novel Attack Surface. Indeed, it is a book with a message which makes it a bit hard for Doctorow to make in truly enjoyable, but he does not do a bad job. As far as online privacy message fiction goes, Attack Surface is in fact a rather good read, especially when Doctorow manages to keep his didactic impulses at bay.

Attack Surface continues the story of Little Brother (2008) and Homeland (2013) in which we followed Marcus Yallow, a nerdy teen who becomes a hacker guerrilla after a terrorist attack on San Fransisco. US that Marcus and his friends live in becomes practically a police state which turns loose its overreaching security agencies with devastating consequences. Whereas the first two novels were YA, I suppose Attack Surface is a book aimed at adult readers. This time the protagonist is Masha Maximow, a conflicted hacker who sneers at Marcus's ethical grandstanding but still cares deeply for privacy and (although a little less) for doing the right thing. Unfortunately, she works for a shady IT firm that specializes in selling surveillance technology for authoritarian regimes.

While working, she helps the bad guys with tech, but off-duty, she helps anti-government protesters stay safe from the same technology. It is inevitable that her hobby will get her into trouble, and that is where the story starts. In the beginning of the book, she is based in "Slovstakia", a code-named East European country where the security apparatus plans to keep democracy activists and other troublemakers pressed down indefinitely. Losing her job is unavoidable, as is losing her friendly connections to the Slovstakian activists, and Masha returns to San Francisco without knowing what to do next. Back home, her childhood friend Tanisha who is also a political activist has run into trouble with surveillance technology as well, and when Masha looks into it, it looks a little too familiar. Turns out Tanisha is targeted by the cyber surveillance technologies Masha had been developing for another shady government contractor. There are demonstrations, weaponized self-driving vehicles, eroding civil liberties, mass surveillance and a lot of hacker talk about security and compromised devices.

Masha's backstory forms a big chunk of the narrative. She was a supporting character in ther earlier novels but now Doctorow fills in everything around the events featured before. In Little Brother, Masha used Marcus to plan her own escape from government goons and kidnapped him in the process, and in Homeland, she became Marcus's helper and a whistleblower who revealed some dirty secrets. In theory, Attack Surface can be read on its own, but readers who are familiar with the earlier books certainly get the most out of it. Otherwise, the details of how Masha got hold of the information she gave Marcus in the previous novel is probably not very interesting. Switching the main character is a good move, however. At least I preferred Masha Maximow to Marcus Yallow who always felt a bit simplistic protagonist. Now, a well-meaning IT and privacy enthusiast has been replaced by a more Snowden-esque and conflicted character, who has to juggle, negotiate and compartmentalize in order to stay sane. The Edward Snowden quote on the front cover is certainly stamped on the right book.

Attack Surface is a smart technothriller with smart people and smart technologies. The technical side is mostly interesting, but at times Doctorow really cannot hold back. When Masha gets out of jail after a brief and borderline unlawful arrest, she gets back her cellphone that the police has done who knows what while she was in custody. Masha cannot trust the device anymore but having a cellphone at hand and not using it is impossible. So she smashes the phone. That it followed by a page-long discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of the concept of Olysses pacts that at least this specific reader could have done without plowing through. Undoubtedly this is how nerds think and speak but enough is enough. The narrative lecturing and infodumpy dialogue leave little work for the reader.

Sadly, the novel is highly relevant and could take place in our world — or I guess one could make the argument that in fact it does. San Francisco, Iraq and Mexico City are real places that feel real, and it is a little disappointing that the Eastern European country that is so central to the story is so artificial. Like Dr. Doom's Latveria, Slovstakia is an exotic mishmash of stereotypes. It would have been neat to learn something about a real place like Belarus or pre-Maidan Ukraine that Slovstakia is clearly emulating, but the country — like many elements in the novel — is there to make a point.

The Math

Base Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for relevance

Penalties: -2 for overbearing explanations

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 – "an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

POSTED BY: Spacefaring Kitten, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018.

Reference: Doctorow, Cory. Attack Surface [Tor Books, 2020]

Microreview [Book]: When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

History and storytelling make a proficient pairing in this gorgeous novella.

It’s hard to pen a story in which the lines are blurred but the narrative is always clear. Ambiguity and warring perspectives can hurricane into incomprehensible pandemonium. However, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain manages to have characters who not only inhabit both the bodies of animals and humans, but have characters performing oral storytelling that’s just as fluid. What kept me engaged wasn’t rigidity and linearity, but a narrative voice that always had control with a grip greater than any rigidity.

This story takes place in the same world as Nghi Vo’s other novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but it can be enjoyed without reading its predecessor. It follows Chih, a travelling cleric who has a run-in with three tigers of seemingly malevolent intent. At the tigers’ request, Chih tells them the story of Ho Thi Thao, a figure with a complex history. The tigers’ interest of the story lies less in Chih’s retelling, but in seeing the differences between the human recounting and their own specie’s recollection. With death by tiger-mauling perhaps on Chih’s horizon, the story is infused with a sense of dread. But Nghi Vo expertly mitigates the horrors with the tigers’ flavorful, humorous personalities. It adds zest to the novella but not overly so to rob it of dramatic stakes.

I was a fan of Nghi Vo’s lyrical writing in her first novella, but with When the Tiger Came Down the Mountains, she takes it to the next level. It’s a tricky feat to have poetry worthy of admiration without losing the momentum of the story, but Nghi Vo infuses every sentence with ornate lyricism while still being pacier than most fantasy novels. And best of all, reading it is a lot of fun.

If there’s one complaint, it’s that a lot of the events in the first chapter seemed minor compared to what succeeded it. Characters are introduced at a breakneck pace, but many of them play an inconsequential role. The writing at the beginning certainly sets a mood, but the story would’ve felt more satisfying if some characters weren’t stripped of importance in the latter portions.

Mutability is the key word in this novella. Characters change forms, from human to tiger. Interpretations of stories are colored based on the teller’s disposition, history, and predilections. The right thing for the character to do in a story depends on the teller’s upbringing. Ferocity can be seen as a sign of villainy or strength. Submissiveness can be seen as a sign of weakness or necessity. The way we tell our stories and the things we take away from them is the most powerful window into someone’s values. And each culture is unique—there is no mutability that can morph into a carbon copy of our own.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain doesn’t have an earth-shattering conclusion. The stakes aren’t so dire that if Chih fails, the world will end. But its message still has weight. It offers an array of perspectives of one story. And by looking at every permutation, you can look at the distinctiveness of people. Like how sometimes a perspective that seems malevolent on the surface is actually conceived in good faith. The understanding of that mutability can prod you to cross a blurred line and find level ground to share with others.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 For writing my favorite tigers in fiction.

Negatives: -1 For a first chapter that feels a little disconnected from the rest of the story.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

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

Reference: Vo, Nghi. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain [Tordotcom, 2020]

Andrea's Holiday Gift Guide (mostly books)

For reasons beyond "we love to read!",  books make wonderful gifts.  If you've ever been gifted a book that you ended up loving, you know the feeling of remembering the gift giver every time you read, or even think about that book. Maybe the gift giver wrote a note to you in the front of the book?  Maybe they managed to purchase a signed copy, or a special edition. Maybe the gift-giver just took the time to really understand the kind of books you love reading. 

It is also wonderful to gift a wonderful book to yourself. 

By the time you read this post, it may be too late to get a book delivered by Christmas. I promise everyone will still love a surprise present in January.  You'll notice the majority of the books on this list aren't brand new,  which means they aren't currently out of stock everywhere. That makes these titles easier to find at your local bookstore, and easier to surprise someone with a book they maybe aren't familiar with.  All of these titles should be available as e-books as well, for the Kindle and tablet users in your life.  And this isn't just a list of my favorite comfort reads that have helped me think about anything other than the year 2020. (ok, maybe it is)

Happy shopping, and happy reading!

(heads up, be aware that I consider nearly all of the books listed below to be "rated R" for adult content - swear words, violence, adult themes, drug use, sex, etc)

For the reader who wants to start a long, satisfying science fiction series that will help them think about anything but the year 2020, I recommend In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker. This pseudo-stand alone is the first book in The Company series.  Perfect for readers who enjoy the long game, science fiction romance, cyborgs who can't forget how to be human, out-of-control AIs, and excellent dialog.

For the reader who is looking for beautifully written short stories that aren't just smart, they are brilliant, I recommend Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh.  Most of the characters in these stories are trying to get home. Due to their curiosity about machines, science, time travel, and "hmm, maybe it'll work if I do this", they've become volunteers in their own experiments. I've made it sound a little frightening, but in a way, nearly all of these stories are love stories.

For the reader who like hard science fiction and heist stories I recommend The Quantum Magician, by Derek Künsken.  Hard scifi, impossible odds, genetically modified humans, smart dialog and smarter science, and characters and visuals that leap of the page, this is the hard science fiction version of Ocean's Eleven.

If you were intrigued by the Ocean's Eleven reference, but you're purchasing for a reader who prefers fantasy, I recommend The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.  Buckets of snark,  beautiful con-jobs, thieves who somewhat have hearts of gold,  echoes of Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser, and simply tons and tons of fun.  I have lost count of how many times I have read this book, by the way. 

For the reader who appreciates a unique take on the post apocalyptic genre, I recommend the duology Archivist Wasp and Latchkey by Nicole Kohner-Stace.  To save her community, Isabel must go down in the haunted catacombs of the old dead city, where she finds a nameless ghost, a famous dead woman, and enough hungry ghosts to scare off any sane person. If Isabel gives up out of fear or exhaustion, everyone she knows and loves with die. How can Isabel can save her world when all memories and knowledge of the past have been lost?

For the reader who loves post apocalyptic stories but wants something shorter and more stabby, I recommend Ration by Cody Luff. In this futuristic home for girls, calories are rationed.  Should a girl hoard calories, the rest of the girls on the floor risk starvation.  Light on the adult supervision, heavy on the atmosphere, and with the feeling of a cornered injured animal with nothing left to lose, this short novel packs quite a punch, and ultimately is as hopeful as it is terrifying. 

For the reader who wants their fantasy series to have it all - courtly intrigue and betrayal, amazing mythology,  angry gods who walk around talking (and doing other things) to mortals, bad guys who you can maybe grow to sympathize with,  family dynamics and the connections between parents and children, history that has literal weight, fantastic characters who refuse to stay on the page,  and delicious sexual tension I highly recommend N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy. 

For the reader who is feeling a little exhausted and is looking for something to help them calm down and feel like they are out in the country I recommend  Waystation by Clifford Simak.  In this delightfully pastoral story, Enoch is the guardian of a waystation for aliens. The waystation is hidden inside Enoch's farmhouse, and all Enoch has to do is offer hospitality to the aliens, and keep nosy humans off his property.  Appearing to his neighbors as a socially awkward and quiet man, in reality Enoch has friends across the galaxy and has been gifted with near immortality. 

After all this book shopping, you deserve a gift for yourself!  If you missed Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris books when they first came out, I recommend the newly printed Ambergris one-volume omnibus. The strangeness and beautiful surreality of the festivals, history, and residents of  the city of Ambergris made the original trilogy a cult favorite. Every novella and novel in the Ambergris-verse focuses on a different character, making them all function as linked stand-alones.  Maybe you know Vandermeer because of Annihilation or Borne? Ambergris is a smidge less horror and a lot more beautiful weirdness.

And if you have the responsibility of purchasing a gift for someone who has said "please, no more books! I have more than I could ever read in a lifetime!",  do they like pie?

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.  

Microreview [book]: Machine by Elizabeth Bear

A potent and timely story about infection, disease, greed, and the power of collective action to deal with large-scale problems

Ancestral Night, in 2019, marked Elizabeth Bear’s return to big wide scale space opera and I was blown away by salvager Halmey Dz’s story of finding a rather strange and amazing prize and discovery that shakes up a lot of preconceptions in her future verse (my review). Memorable characters like the ship AI Singer, and “Mantis Cop” Cheeirilaq completed the novel and made it my favorite novel of the year and I think it is a “definitive and decisive book for SF readers who want to try her work.”

Machine is not a direct sequel to Ancestral Night, although the events of the novel are briefly referenced, and two characters, Cheeirilaq and Singer, do show up in less prominent roles. No, Bear has plenty of stories to tell in this verse and in this novel, Bear decides to tell -- a medical story. Her main character this time is Jens, of the I Race to Seek the Living, an emergency medical rescue vessel of the Synarchy, out of Core General. When the vessel is dispatched from a beacon, they find not only a ship in distress, but also an ancient generation ship, Big Rock Candy Mountain. But the exploration of that ship is not truly in Jens’ purview, and worse, their return afterwards to Core General coincides with strange breakdowns and coincidences. As it becomes clear something is dangerously wrong, it’s up to Jens and her allies to identify it, and fix it before things threaten not only Core General, but the Synarchy itself.

This is the matter of Machine.

Bear calls out in the acknowledgements the inspiration for Core General that was to me delightfully obvious but perhaps newer readers to SF might not be aware of. James White’s Sector General stories and novels describe the adventures of a hospital in space, and Bear’s Core General is clearly a spiritual successor and heir to White’s ideas. Bear of course brings her own sensibilities and ideas to a Hospital in Space but the bones of the homage are there, and the social mores and ideas of White’s novels are updated for modern sensibilities.  This is also done a bit explicitly within the novel itself, as corpsicles found on Big Rock Candy Mountain have some rather archaic, primitive, frankly offensive and un-Synarchy-like ideas about many things. There is a culture clash and some real conflict between Jens and the rest of the Synarchy with Helen, the AI of Big Rock Candy Mountain, and the crew of the ship that they manage to unfreeze and revive.

A feature of Bear’s novels is that many of her protagonists are “Broken, but still good.”. That is something that has been in Bear's novels since the days of Hammered, and if that does not appeal, you are going to have problems engaging with her work. I see so many reviews of Bear's work complain about the falliability and feet of clay of the protagonists. The reviewers do not seem to or do not want to see that Bear's choice is deliberate in using them. Halmey Dz of Ancestral Night extensively used Synarche techniques to improve and stabilize brain chemistry. Dr. Jens, too, is hardly a Heinlenian super protagonist, she has problems, fears, and weaknesses that she has to deal with, her  personality emerging from the first person narrative, and how others regard her and deal with her. As she digs into the central mystery of the book, and as things hit the fan, Jens has a challenge both personal as well as global and running those conflicts in twain is a conveyor belt of personal and station-wide drama that the author leverages effectively and excellently.

But theme is where this novel shines, where the plot shines a light on the themes of the novel and, Bear could not have predicted, themes resonant for a 2020 where we are running rampant with a pandemic. The disease and central problem of the novel is not a viral pandemic (although there are mentions of being worried the corpuscles of the generation ship causing one given how long they have been in space) but an infection of a different but no less dangerous nature. This pandemic allows Bear to explore a variety of themes--the availability of medical care, the responsibility of a community to protect its citizens, the dangers of a stratum of citizens hoarding such care, how a society pays for and supports care for its citizens and, even more subty, the devil’s bargains and tradeoffs that result from such efforts.  There is an overall bigger theme and it is this--that a society owes, should be designed as such, to be directed to the well being of every person  Every person. That, in 2020, is a dangerous and radical notion.  The Synarche is not a utopia, far from it, and less so than Dr. Jens thinks it is as events progress, but it does have a built in social contract that, frankly, the author’s home time and place lacks. 

Be you afraid, though, that this novel is a political treatise and nothing more, Machine fuses the worldbuilding and efforts and world of a multispecies hospital with a ticking bomb plot (once that plot gets fully in motion) that provides all the action and adventure beats you want. Even before the ticking bomb, we get exploration of the generation ship, and the hazards of space...but when things really get moving, the novel presents Jens and the others in a variety of high pressure set pieces and situations that keeps the pages turning. A hospital in space, near a huge Black Hole, and having an infection and a station-threatening problem running rampant, is a recipe for drama, action and adventure, and the author leverages setting, plot and character to make those action beats happen. It is a build to that back half of the novel, but the ramp upward is not boring, and when Jens is under the gun, the novel just flew for me.This novel, like the first, uses elements of the mystery chassis to propel the SFnal one, something Bear is awfully adept and long skilled at deploying.

The only real question is -- do you need to read Ancestral Night before reading Machine? Aside from the couple of crossover characters, there isn’t a lot of connective tissue. Ancestral Night does provide additional grounding in the world of the Synarchy, for readers who not want to be dumped into the deep end. And, frankly, I think Ancestral Night, as good as Machine is, is just slightly the better novel overall (but honestly it would take fractional points in our system to tell the difference). So I say, if you have the time, read them both. If you do not, pick up Ancestral Night and if you do, you know will be in good hands for coming to Core General. I still maintain the first novel is the best one volume introduction to Bear’s work. I think this second novel builds on Ancestral Night, but doesn’t quite manage to surpass it. It may be well that the theme of a pandemic, reading it in a pandemic, gave just the slightest welcome taste of lactic acid taste for the novel for me. 

Still, give me more White Space novels, Bear. My body is ready.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Strong use of theme really drives the novel.

+1 for the worldbuilding and verve and daring to create a Hospital in Space for the 21st Century.

Penalties: -1 A novel regarding a pandemic may not quite be the novel that you want to read in a pandemic. 

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 very high quality/standout in its category

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Reference: Bear, Elizabeth. Machine  [Saga, 2020] 

The Nerds Guide to Voting in the Hugo Awards, Part 1: Nominations

You might have noticed that we here at Nerds of a Feather are big fans of the Hugo Awards: the genre award voted on each year by the members of the annual Worldcon convention. Now in their 65th, or 67th year, depending on how you count, the Hugos have recognised some of the most outstanding work in genre fiction, and the community around it (and a fair amount of forgettable stuff). The award may have had its ups and downs, and even the occasional (well, OK, “regular”) full-scale fandom controversy, but for us, each year the awards represent an opportunity to engage in a conversation with SFF fandom about the best stuff in the community that year.

If you’re new to the community, getting involved in the Hugos might seem like a difficult task: how does nomination in all these categories work? What about voting? What’s this about a constitution? Where can I go to see other people’s opinions? And, most importantly, how will I find time to read (or watch) all these things? While we can’t help with that last one, this guide is designed to give you all you need to know about being part of the Hugo awards, and why we think it’s a cool thing to do. We’ll be splitting For the official lowdown on the awards, the official website is here.

Who gets to vote?

Members of the World Science Fiction Society - which is comprised of those signed up to that year’s Worldcon. If you’re planning on attending you can get an attending membership, which gets you in to multiple days of panels, author chats, events and miscellaneous fandom fun. In 2020, Worldcon went virtual for CoNZealand, opening it up to anyone around the world. While 2021’s Worldcon, DisCon III, hasn’t directly confirmed the format of their event, it’s looking certain that there will be some significant online components, even if an in-person event is able to go ahead.

If an entire con - even a virtual one - sounds a bit much, you can sign up as a supporting member for a much lower fee. This entitles you to nominate and vote in the Hugos (including access to the Hugo packet, which offers a selection of samples and full works from that year's finalists at the discretion of the individuals and/or publisher), and do a few other things like vote on the site for the next-but-one Worldcon. You can also start out as a supporting member and then upgrade to attending later, if you choose.

If you are reading this in 2020, the deadline for signing up for the 2021 Worldcon (DisCon III) in time to nominate is December 31! Get your membership (starting at US$50) here: https://discon3.org/

What categories are in the Hugo Awards?

The Hugos are, first and foremost, an award for those who love science fiction and fantasy literature. That means there’s awards for stories at four different lengths (novel, novella, novelette and short story), as well as other formats (e.g. graphic story), specific publications and editors. TV and movies get a look in too, through the awards for Best Dramatic Presentation, split into long form for movies and TV series, and short form for TV episodes or anything else that clocks in under 90 minutes (recently, concept albums by Janelle Monae and Clipping have also hit the ballot).

What sets the Hugos apart from many other awards is that, as well as having awards for media, there are also fan categories, awarded by the community for the best fan collectives (e.g. fanzines, the websites and zines which report on fandom news and reviews, and fancasts, including podcast, Booktube and lots of other multimedia) and individual writers and artists. We think that honouring the work and talent of fans is extremely cool for a major genre award, and we’re not just saying that because Nerds of a Feather has picked up a couple of nominations for Best Fanzine over the years.

Alongside the Hugo Awards themselves, there are two more awards that are technically not Hugos (for Reasons, which basically amount to “we don’t want work to overlap between multiple categories”) but which are administered and awarded and usually talked about in the same breath as the Hugos themselves. Those are the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, awarded to someone whose first professional publication was in the last 2 years; and the Lodestar Award for best Young Adult book, which encompasses YA novels, anthologies and graphic stories.

In 2021, with Discon running a special category for Best Video Game, there’s going to be a cool 20 different areas to nominate and vote on, meaning your favourite genre thing of 2020 is probably eligible somewhere!

How do I nominate?

As mentioned above, you’ll need to be a member either of the previous year’s Worldcon, or the current year’s, by 31 December in the year before you want to get involved.

Once you’ve done that, sit tight! All the instructions for nomination, including a handy online form, will rock up in your inbox at some point in January. You’ll usually have until the middle to end of March to think of up to 5 things per category, enter them into the handy form, and send it off. The online system can usually be updated right up until nominations close, so you can fill in a bit at a time as you read/watch more or new things come to you.

5 things in 20 categories? That’s so many things! I don’t know what to nominate!

Yes! Isn’t it wonderful? Luckily, this isn’t a graded test: you don’t have to nominate in every category, and you don’t have to fill out all spaces in the categories you are nominating in. And if you’ve got some time on your hands, this is the perfect time to go searching for your new favourite eligible thing:

• Lots of people create eligibility posts. Go check out your favourite creators on Twitter or their websites to see what they’ve written, refresh your memory or discover new things. There are also people who compile eligibility posts, making it even easier to find those favourites. (At the time of writing, it’s a little too early to link most to those (here is one compilation from A.C. Wise), but if you need a lead on Twitter follows to find the community, you can follow any or all of the Nerd flock using the links to the right)
• There are also some great recommendation lists. One standout each year is the Hugo spreadsheet, which is editable by anyone and contains masses of great stuff across all of the categories. The spreadsheet is hosted by our cool friends at Lady Business, who also happen to be 2-time Hugo winners for Best Fanzine!

I haven’t read enough this year!

Listen, nominate whatever you think is awesome. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only read five books published this year. If you think any of them are excellent, nominate them! If enough people agree one (or more) of them might make the ballot and your vote might be the one that pushes it across the line.

What is up with [x category], this makes no sense

The Hugos have been around for a long time and because of the way WSFS is set up, category boundaries and eligibility doesn’t always move with the current media landscape. On top of that, some categories are just a little bit weird. For example: what’s a semiprozine? Well, it’s a genre fiction magazine that fits a very specific model about who in the team gets paid (i.e. the writers do, some of the editors don’t). For the average reader, knowing the difference in internal structure for Clarkesworld vs. FIYAH vs. the Tor.com website is a lot less important than the stories they are putting out, but for the sake of nominations, it helps to know what isn’t eligible even if you don’t know why. Luckily, the Semiprozine directory keeps tabs on eligible publications each year: http://semiprozine.org/semiprozine-directory/. In general, cross checking against other peoples’ recommendations or lists is easier than trying to figure out the ins and outs of the WSFS constitution for yourself.

I don’t know if this thing is in the right category!

So you’ve got a favourite story, but you have no idea how many words it is? Not sure how to ask your favourite artist whether they made over 25% of their income from their art last year to sort them into pro or fan artist? You are not alone. Again, recommendation and eligibility lists are your friend when this happens: the Hugo Spreadsheet gets cross checked for eligibility, with questionable works moved out or opened for discussion, and authors often make it clear what categories their work fits into.

There is some fuzziness between certain categories: for example, if a short story is technically just over the word count, but enough people nominated it as a short story but not a novelette, it will be entered into the short story category regardless. When this happens, votes in the second category can be moved at the discretion of the administrators, but only if you have an open slot on your ballot in the more appropriate category.

Of course, the worst case scenario is that you vote for something that’s ineligible, and it doesn’t count. That sucks, but it doesn’t invalidate any of your other votes in the category, so if you’re not planning to fill out the category, it’s worth adding in that uncertain favourite anyway. If you’re trying to choose between lots of stuff in a single category… well, that’s harder.

I’ve nominated, now what?

OK, we can go a little bit into how the sausage is made: feel free to skip if you’re not a voting systems nerd. Rather than using a first past the post system to create the final ballot, the Hugo Awards use a preferential voting system called E Pluribus Hugo. This was implemented due to a little fascism problem a few years back. Basically, all of your nominations in a category are worth one total point. How that point is split up during the nominating stage depends on the number of works you are nominating (2 works = 0.5 points each, 5 works = 0.2 points each), but as a work you nominated is eliminated from contention the value of your remaining nominations increases until 6 works are selected for the final ballot - those with the most nominating points. It’s a little complicated, but it helped with the particular fascism problem Worldcon and the Hugos were dealing with. More broadly, it’s a system that prioritises selecting works from a broad range of ballots with different opinions, rather than allowing a small subset of voters with homogenous tastes to dominate the results. (TL;DR, see here http://www.worldcon.fi/wsfs/hugo-new/#tally)

Basically, nominate the works you think are best, math will sort everything out in the end.

No but, seriously, now what?

Well, after the magical WSFS robots are done crunching your nominations, along with those of thousands of other voters, they will create that year's Hugo ballot. Finalists get notified (and given an opportunity to decline and pass the honour on to the next work on the list), and then the ballot is announced! 6 works in each category, all waiting to be voted on... but that's for next post!

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about?

 

de Bodard, Aliette. Seven of Infinities [Subterranean]
Publisher's Description

Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.

Sunless Woods is a mindship—and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.

When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship--and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.

Why We Want It: de Bodard's Xuya stories are consistently excellent and novella length is a sweet spot and always leaves us wanting more.

Drayden, Nicky. Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis [Harper Voyager]
Publisher's Description

The Compton Crook Award-winning author weaves her trademark blend of science fiction and dark humor in this dazzling story that continues the imaginative saga begun in Escaping Exodus, in which a society lives in the belly of a beast—and an entire civilization's survival depends on a pair of uneasy allies who must come together for one epic battle.

Nearly a thousand years removed from Earth, the remnants of humanity cling to existence inside giant, space faring creatures known as the Zenzee. Abused and exploited by humans for generations, these majestic animals nearly went extinct, but under the command of its newly minted ruler, Doka Kaleigh, life in the Parados I has flourished. Thanks to careful oversight and sacrifice by all of its crew, they are now on the brink of utopia, and yet Doka’s rivals feel threatened by that success.

The Senate allowed Doka to lead their people believing he’d fail spectacularly—a disaster that would cement the legitimacy of their long-standing matriarchy. Despite vocal opposition and blatant attacks on his authority, Doka has continued to handle his position with grace and intelligence; he knows a single misstep means disaster. When a cataclysmic event on another Zenzee world forces Doka and his people to accept thousands of refugees, a culture clash erupts, revealing secrets from the past that could endanger their future. For Doka, the stakes are bigger and more personal than ever before—and could cost him his reign and his heart.

He has fallen for the one woman he is forbidden to love: his wife, Seske. Doka and Seske must work closely together to sway the other Zenzee worlds to stop their cycles of destruction. But when they stumble upon a discovery that can transform their world, they know they must prepare to fight a battle where there can be no winners, only survivors.

Why We Want It: We love Nicky Drayden's novels around these parts. Each one is a wild ride as different from each other as can be. Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis is the first sequel from Drayden, following 2019's Escaping Exodus (Adri's review) and I loved that book at least as much as Adri, if not more.

Martin, George R.R. and Gardner Dozois. Songs of Love and Death [Saga]
Publisher's Description

From epic fantasy, post-apocalyptic America, to faerie-haunted rural fields in 18th-century England, to an intergalactic empire, join star-crossed lovers as they struggle against the forces of magic and fate.

A star-studded cross-genre anthology Songs of Love and Death features all-original tales from seventeen of the most prestigious names in romance, fantasy, and science fiction.

Why We Want It: Is this the last Gardner Dozois anthology? Regardless, even though I haven't read them all, I know that any anthology from GRRM and Gardner Dozois is a top notch anthology.

Robson, Justina (editor). Tales of Catt and Fisher [Solaris]
Publisher's Description

A brand-new collection of stand-alone stories featuring the return of two fan-favourite characters from the world of the critically acclaimed Redemption’s Blade and Salvation’s Fire novels.

Four new tales of Doctors Catt and Fisher…

Scholars, shopkeepers, collectors… aficionados. Obtainers of rare antiquities; relic hunters who can’t resist a lead, even when it takes them into terrible danger. There’s always an opportunity to be found amid the confusion, in the wake of the terrible Kinslayer War. There’s always a deal to be done, a tomb to open, a precious thing to… obtain.

From encounters with the monstrous Vathesk to exploring new worlds; from wielding great power to do great good, to unearthing dark things best left lost. If you need the experts, if you can find your way to their Cherivell shop, maybe you can hire Doctors Catt and Fisher.

Why We Want It: I've read the five volumes of Robson's Quantum Gravity, but I've only dipped my toes in the rest of her catalog. Somehow, up until the time I was putting together this article I was under the assumption that this was a collection of Robson's stories - but as you can see from the description above, it is not. With that said, I've been interested in the After the War world since it was announced so while I may not be dipping my toes into  more of Robson's fiction maybe this is the time to dip into After the War.

Vo, Nghi. When the Tiger Comes Down the Mountain [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

"Dangerous, subtle, unexpected and familiar, angry and ferocious and hopeful. . . . The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a remarkable accomplishment of storytelling."—NPR

The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.

Nghi Vo returns to the empire of Ahn and The Singing Hills Cycle in When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, a mesmerizing, lush standalone follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune.

Why We Want It: One of two books on this spotlight where I haven't read the preceding book, I've been excited to read The Empress of Salt and Fortune since it was first announced. 2020 has been a heck of a year and many of my reading goals and expectations have not quite come through - so my everlasting to-read pile is now one book deeper because the follow up to one of my more anticipated books of the year is naturally also highly anticipated.

Winter, Evan. The Fires of Vengeance [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

In order to reclaim her throne and save her people, an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in the second book of this”relentlessly gripping, brilliant” epic fantasy series from a breakout author (James Islington).

Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the ‘true’ Queen of the Omehi.

If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught.

Why We Want It: One of the most buzzed about books from 2019 which I haven't read is Evan Winter's The Rage of Dragons. I own it, I just still need to read the book. Regardless of that, this is shaping up to be an incredible fantasy series and the publication of the second volume should be all the inspiration I need to read the first. It's also the only book I haven't read off of my 2020 Summer Reading List.

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.