Hugo nominees 2016

The nominees for Hugo Awards have been announced. It's yet another interesting sociological study in gaming voting systems. The number of voters was huge --- more than double last year's all-time record-breaking high! --- but the effect was apparently diffuse. (We will only find out after the awards are announced, when the distribution of nominating ballots is revealed.)

The resulting list is bleak. I used to look to the Hugos as a recommended reading list, and I became a member of the *cons in order to have access to this reading list. Recent years have really shot me in the foot about that --- the stuff I enjoyed reading, I had read already on my own. And the other stuff turns out to be mostly weird, sci-fi fandom in-crowd hatemail from one group to another.

(Why do they do this? I wouldn't. My reaction to this toxicity is "meh", accompanied by a shrug and not really devoting much time or effort to it... probably as a combination of socialization and my own personality. It's an ultimate de-escalation. Participating in scifi fandom is a leisure activity for rich, literate people. It is super easy to opt out. I find it strange and incomprehensible that there are these internet mob leaders, each spending millions of words responding to each other and rallying their mobs and constructing elaborate facades of sophism to justify disembodied hate of an outgroup with which they share most traits and with whom they spend huge chunks of time interacting online. Rather than work myself into the lather of a long blog rant, I would just go outside. Or take a nap. Self-care. If I want to worry, I worry about the heat death of the universe. My outrage is better than your outrage.)

Here's the list of nominees.

Best novel:

• Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Best novella:

• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Builders by Daniel Polansky
• Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson
• Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

Best novelette:

• “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander
• “Flashpoint: Titan” by CHEAH Kai Wai
• “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, Ken Liu
• “Obits” by Stephen King
• “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke

Best short story:

• “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. Algernon
• The Commuter by Thomas Mays
• “If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and Harris (psychologically gross and toxic take of Rachel Swirsky's "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" which was a Hugo nominee in 2014 and I guess had too much writerly emotion for some people's SFF taste)
• “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao
• Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle

Almost nothing I nominated got onto the ballot. I'm most bummed about China Miéville's short story "The Dowager of Bees" from the collection Three Moments of an Explosion, which was utterly fantastic. But really, the amount of bumming I can suffer from an abstract awards nomination in a niche field is minimal. Sure, this varied my mood down, for a total effect of -ε. Breakfast has more of an effect and occurs more regularly.

I'll try to read the nominees again (see my previous efforts in 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012,2011, 2010, 2009 --- all still incomplete as I gradually retroblog what I thought of them). I have Seveneves in my queue and I'll definitely get to it; the other novel nominees are not very appealing, I have read their opening few pages and they did nothing for me. (This browsing long before they received Hugo nominations.) The extent to which the nominees have been controlled by a voting bloc suggests that I might not find much to hold my interest in the rest of the list. On the other hand, I am interested to see the result of what seems like an experiment by the voting block ("will people vote "no award" above popular authors if we endorse the popular authors who would be on the ballot anyway?").

But I'll try.

I have to keep my English limbered up. This fall I get to talk to captive audiences at length! (Read: teach classes!)


This post's theme word is standpat, "one who refuses to consider change," or "refusing to consider change in one's beliefs and opinions, esp. in politics." The standpats debated each other to a standstill.

The Book of Phoenix

Nnedi Okorafor's The Book of Phoenix fits the mold of her previous writing (Binti, Lagoon) for me: it is vaguely science-fiction/fantasy, with characters whose choices are opaque to me even when the writing reveals their inner monologues. It touches on racism and slavery and human testing and the limits of scientific ethics, for very strong values of "touches on" (in the same way that District 9 "touches on" apartheid).

The protagonist, a woman named Phoenix, is the result of a scientific experiment, and has lived all her life in a large lab complex, surrounded by prodding scientists and the bizarre and puissant other human/animal/robot experimental subjects. She begins as fairly naive and innocent, although very well-read.

Then, of course, she escapes.

The book is her own firsthand (maybe) account of her escape and the ensuing series of revelations (about the extent and horror of human-subject testing by this powerful corporation) and rescues/destructions wrought (of the other human subjects and of the company's physical holdings and employees, respectively). Her reflections on human testing are pretty much as expected: "Human beings make terrible gods." (p. 152)

As always, the conclusion is that Racism Is Bad. All other types of discrimination, too: we should all aspire to just get along, respect each other, be kind, and improve the lives of those around us. ("He accepted what I was as if it were normal. He gazed at me but didn't stare. His world was big and there was room for me." p. 155)

The story was a bit jumbled, or at least, it was not designed for someone with my mindset to comprehend. For example, some event happens several times. Time A it takes 3 days. Time B it takes 1 month. Time C it takes a few minutes. After time C, one onlooking character says that it is getting faster... a conclusion which I think unwarranted, given the available data. But he says it with a certain conviction, and without any second-guessing in the narration, that indicates (to me at least) that the readers should accept this pronouncement as accurate. It is narrative fact. This causes some dissonance in my brain, as the available data might just as well suggest that it is alternatingly fast-and-slow, or just noisy and unpredictable, or really anything.

The entire book is like this: it's not what I expect, I never feel comfortable with what is going on, and it explicitly calls out privileges that benefit me. It's discomforting, but as with Okorafor's other writing, this discomfort is clearly meant to be a feature of the writing for readers like me. And I think that it's good, or right, or at least social-justice-minded, for me to "sit with [my] discomfort" (in the words of Another Round host Heben Nigatu, episode 15).

The final notes of the book are weird --- there is a framestory to wrap up, but then we pop the stack one more time. Somehow. Somehow we pop the empty stack, we jump up another level to a frame story that no one even knew was going on. The fourth wall is broken, which is of course pure Lila-bait, but it's brief and weird and I am still thinking about it and not sure what to make of it: "Once the author wrote the story, the author became irrelevant." (p. 210) and "'I know what you think,' she said. 'You can rewrite a story, ... Think before you do; your story is written too... Who is writing you?' she asked."(p. 211)


This post's theme word is rhizophagous, "feeding on roots". The three-mile-high tree had tremendous rhizophagous needs.