Hugos 2019: best novella
May. 30th, 2019 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnArtificial Condition, by Martha Wells (Tor.com publishing) - Can I talk about all the Murderbot novellas here? WHICH I LOVE. I have observed that people's reactions to these have fallen mostly into two categories: (1) These novellas and Murderbot are okay, but nothing special to write home about. (2) LET MURDERBOT JUST WATCH ITS SERIAL DRAMAS, OKAY?! (their? not sure of murderbot's pronouns)
I am firmly in the second camp. I love these all very much. Also, they've gotten more and more obvious to me as they go along about Murderbot being a standin for an Aspergers/ASD character, where by "more obvious" I mean "the number of times I was like 'gosh, Murderbot, I really get you,'" which increased as the novellas went on. But obvious without being in-your-face about it, which I appreciated.
Beneath the Sugar Sky, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com publishing) - Astonishingly I liked this one, after bouncing hard off the second one and having mixed feelings about the first. The Arch Narrator was toned waaaaay down, and we see Nancy again but the really disturbing subtext of the first novella (older powerful man isolating teenage girl) was toned down a lot too. And no one commented on poor parenting choices. All good writing choices there! A bit plot-coupon-y, and then there was this bit 2/3rds through where the villain is defeated and they... just... leave her there???? There's a certain amount of compassion and mercy I expect from YA books -- and even though this isn't sold as YA it totally codes to me as YA, especially the progressivist "it's not good to make fun of people for being fat or Mexican" bits -- the compassion-and-mercy part got sort of trampled on here, and I'm not sure that it was an intentional message ("but you can totally make fun of people who think thoughts you don't agree with"). And as well the whole concept of this series kind of bothers me because I feel that YA should have a certain amount of "figure out how to live in the world you're in" that the whole premise sort of undermines. Possibly I just have really strong feelings about YA.
Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com publishing) - DNF, though not for my usual reason of not being able to deal with the "math." I think it just looked like it was going to be super depressing.
The Black God’s Drums, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com publishing) - Liked this one a lot! Well written. The ending was not particularly surprising, but it was very satisfying.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson (Tor.com publishing) - My betasprocket is always asking me to consider whether I might chop off some large part of text off a fic. (Sometimes the answer is "no," but I then have to think about why I don't want to chop it off.) I couldn't help but think that Robson needed my beta, because I claim the entire first half could have been chopped and it would have been a much stronger story for it. The worldbuilding also seemed sort of weirdly not interested in what I wanted to know, like, at one point the protagonist (I guess) says something like, the banks weren't interested in time traveling ecologists because they just wanted to make money! Which begs the question of, how were the banks using time travel?? I mean, isn't that the obvious interesting question?? (It is dropped and never comes up again.)
Also, this was a very very depressing and irritating story. As far as I am concerned the synopsis is "obnoxious people doing a time-travel jaunt do a lot of really stupid and obnoxious things and suffer the consequences" and at some point I was mostly reading to see everyone get their comeuppance.
The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press / JABberwocky Literary Agency) - I liked this one! I find de Bodard a little hard to read -- I have to be in the right mood -- but I like her writing and this one was a nice Holmesian homage.
Voting: Artificial > Detective ~ Drums > Peach > Sugar > Binti > No Award.
I am firmly in the second camp. I love these all very much. Also, they've gotten more and more obvious to me as they go along about Murderbot being a standin for an Aspergers/ASD character, where by "more obvious" I mean "the number of times I was like 'gosh, Murderbot, I really get you,'" which increased as the novellas went on. But obvious without being in-your-face about it, which I appreciated.
Beneath the Sugar Sky, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com publishing) - Astonishingly I liked this one, after bouncing hard off the second one and having mixed feelings about the first. The Arch Narrator was toned waaaaay down, and we see Nancy again but the really disturbing subtext of the first novella (older powerful man isolating teenage girl) was toned down a lot too. And no one commented on poor parenting choices. All good writing choices there! A bit plot-coupon-y, and then there was this bit 2/3rds through where the villain is defeated and they... just... leave her there???? There's a certain amount of compassion and mercy I expect from YA books -- and even though this isn't sold as YA it totally codes to me as YA, especially the progressivist "it's not good to make fun of people for being fat or Mexican" bits -- the compassion-and-mercy part got sort of trampled on here, and I'm not sure that it was an intentional message ("but you can totally make fun of people who think thoughts you don't agree with"). And as well the whole concept of this series kind of bothers me because I feel that YA should have a certain amount of "figure out how to live in the world you're in" that the whole premise sort of undermines. Possibly I just have really strong feelings about YA.
Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com publishing) - DNF, though not for my usual reason of not being able to deal with the "math." I think it just looked like it was going to be super depressing.
The Black God’s Drums, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com publishing) - Liked this one a lot! Well written. The ending was not particularly surprising, but it was very satisfying.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson (Tor.com publishing) - My beta
sprocket is always asking me to consider whether I might chop off some large part of text off a fic. (Sometimes the answer is "no," but I then have to think about why I don't want to chop it off.) I couldn't help but think that Robson needed my beta, because I claim the entire first half could have been chopped and it would have been a much stronger story for it. The worldbuilding also seemed sort of weirdly not interested in what I wanted to know, like, at one point the protagonist (I guess) says something like, the banks weren't interested in time traveling ecologists because they just wanted to make money! Which begs the question of, how were the banks using time travel?? I mean, isn't that the obvious interesting question?? (It is dropped and never comes up again.)Also, this was a very very depressing and irritating story. As far as I am concerned the synopsis is "obnoxious people doing a time-travel jaunt do a lot of really stupid and obnoxious things and suffer the consequences" and at some point I was mostly reading to see everyone get their comeuppance.
The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press / JABberwocky Literary Agency) - I liked this one! I find de Bodard a little hard to read -- I have to be in the right mood -- but I like her writing and this one was a nice Holmesian homage.
Voting: Artificial > Detective ~ Drums > Peach > Sugar > Binti > No Award.
