cahn

So, I started reading the Hugo nominee "All the Beasts and Birds," and got halfway through, and the next day I signed up for a Worldcon membership just so I could vote against it. (And, presumably, the other Puppy works, although this is the only one I have read so far.)

I mean, I liked it! If I had read it on AO3 as New Testament fanfic, I would have kudosed it. And it is not its fault that I read it right after being in beta-mode for a couple of different things -- but -- well, that's the thing. It's decent enough when considered as unbetaed fanfic, but as a candidate for best speculative-fiction professional short story of the year? Really?

This story fails on a fundamental craft level. It starts out decently enough:

The animals gathered, one by one, outside the final city of Man, furtive, curious, and afraid.

All was dark. In the west was a blood-red sunset, and in the east a blood-red moonrise of a waning moon. No lamps shined in the towers and minarets, and all the windows of the palaces, mansions, and fanes were empty as the eyes of skulls. All about the walls of the city were the fields and houses that were empty and still, and all the gates and doors lay open.

I mean, if you're going to be picky, it's maybe a little… trying too hard… and there's that extra "the" in the last sentence that I don't get… but I'm not that picky a reader. I'm game for the old-fashioned Tanith-Lee-esque gothic parable-tale! (And hyphens, apparently. But never mind that.)(ETA:

luzula pointed out that this fails on a basic astronomy level! Sigh.)

And there were pleasure houses where harlots plied their trade, and houses of healing where physicians explained which venereal diseases had no cures and arranged for painless suicides, and houses of morticians where disease-raddled bodies were burnt in private, without any ceremony that might attract attention and be bad for business.

what. I mean, there's this undercurrent of misogyny that is a little disturbing (although there aren't really any women in this story, thank God), but "might be bad for business"? Really? Stylistically it just… clunks, it's banal and completely at odds with what he's trying to do with the beginning of the sentence.

There are several places like this; I just picked the first one I found. The thing is, when you're doing a parable-like tale, style is paramount, and you cannot let it go for one second because you will just throw your reader out of the story. Tolkien could switch between earthy hobbit style and high epic style, because he was master of voicing, and because he had three books to work in. But you, sir, are no Jack Tolkien.

And then there are lines like this:

Now came a great black Lion, walking with regal, lazy steps, into the clearing, and lesser creatures, rabbits and stoats and alarmed larks, leaped and flew and scampered from his path. He shook his mane, and it was far more alarming that the gesture of Horse, and when he yawned, all saw his white fangs were as long as daggers made by Tubalcain, as sharp as the sword that hewed off the head of Goliath.

And, I mean, a black Lion? Do they even exist? (According to Snopes, they don't.) Why black, anyway? Also, his fangs are so sharp they can be compared to a sword cutting through someone's neck? This seems… like you're comparing a sharp point to a long blade, which is not really a good comparison… This is not the kind of thing you want me to be thinking about while I'm reading your story! (Also, the beta-reader in me wants to point out the extra comma after "steps," but I'm willing to let that go as a typo.)

There are a number of sentences that I had to read twice because I couldn't parse them the first time, and I know I'm operating on, like, half the amount of sleep I usually get, but still:

So it is fitting that the last to depart from the garden Man dared not enter be the first to enter the city we dare not.

He gets points for the subjunctive! I do love a good subjunctive. And I see what he's trying to do with setting up the parallelism. But man that is such incoherent prose. My beta would never have let that stand.

I had more, but you're probably bored by now. Anyway! The central conceit of the story — spoilers! — the animals take the place of Man — is more-or-less reasonable as fanficcy sort of theology, as long as you don't expect anything particularly deep. Except that I didn't actually care about it because I didn't care about any of the characters. If they weren't animals I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart, except for Fox, who is actually kind of great and the only character I had any interest in.

THIS NEEDED A BETA. Oh, wait, it had an editor, didn't it? Was Vox Day the editor? ...well then.

It's a joke that the next nominated thing by Wright is "The Mechanics of Fiction," right? I... am not going to read that one. I feel that this story alone is a reason to vote it off the ballot.

So... I guess I'm going to have to read some other Hugo nominees now so I can cast an informed vote (although quite possibly not any more Wright, I feel this is all I can handle). Watch this space for, at the least, Three-Body Problem.