Hugos 2020: Novelette (mostly)

[cahn]

I am so behind on everything, including making posts. (I have stillllll not made an opera post on opera I've been watching for the last... five months...) But I did read these a while ago and I guess I should talk about them :) Obviously all my rankings are dependent on reading the Jemisin story, but from my previous experiences with Jemisin I'd expect to put her at #3. We'll see though! All rankings obviously dependent on where that goes.

Also, although I think there is definitely angst in all of these, it's not the grinding depressive "look how oppression grinds us down!!" of the short stories, which was nice, and all of them (that I haev read) even had more-or-less happy endings :)

Links to all the novelettes except the Jemisin and the Chiang

“The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed April 2019) - This was fine. IDK, I didn't have strong feelings about it one way or another. It wouldn't have stood out to me as something that I would have wanted to nominate for the Hugos, mind you.

“Away With the Wolves”, Sarah Gailey (Uncanny Magazine: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy Special Issue, September-October 2019) - This is the first Gailey I've read that haven't been seriously underwhelmed by, which is not to say that I was overwhelmed by it, just that... it was fine. It's a little obvious about the disability metaphor, but not as in-your-face about Checking The Boxes as the previous stuff I've read by her.

“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny July-August 2019) - So the thing with Pinsker is that I like her writing, and I like the story, and then I sort of feel like when I get to the end, I think, oh, that was it? This one followed that pattern. It's a nice story! I kept wanting a little more, though -- it's not that I need earthshattering events to happen, but if they don't happen, then I think I need some character arc, and everyone here was static character-wise. One might expect the POV character to change as a result of what she finds out in the story, but we didn't see that change happening. I guess #3

“Emergency Skin”, N.K. Jemisin (Amazon Forward Collection) (No excerpt located) - this is the only one I haven't read yet.

“For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com July 10 2019) - Read previously. I was totally charmed by this story because, well, the title is actually more relevant than I had been expecting, and ever since high school when I went to music camp and we did a bunch of Britten (*), including the choir doing Rejoice in the Lamb, I have loved the poem this came from. Voting #2.

“Omphalos”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation, Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador) - I bought D Exhalation for Christmas, so then I stole it back to read the Hugo nominees (I'll read the other stories too, of course, though probably after Hugo season). So I feel like Chiang has this mastery of the writing craft that everyone else on the ballot just... doesn't quite. He thinks through the implications of what he's writing about on the scientific level, the societal level, and the personal level. And he writes well on top of it. I felt like there was a distinct difference between the level of skill of this story and the other ones on the ballot (excluding the Jemisin, which I haven't read; my previous experience of Jemisin is that she does relatively well on the scientific and personal and writing craft levels, but often falls down on the societal level because she is too quick to assign bad guys -- not that bad guys don't exist, but the trick is that no people think of themselves as bad guys). "Omphalos" is not one of my favorites on a personal level (as opposed to the Chiang novella, which I adored and which I'll post about either with the novellas or separately), but the craft is so evident... Voting #1.

(*) This particular camp was not just for music (I happened to go for music, but there were several different academic disciplines as well) and was focused on the twentieth century. So we read twentieth century philosophy and played twentieth century pieces, and the choir did twentieth century songs and the theatre people put on twentieth-century plays. At the time we were ungrateful little brats who didn't appreciate it much at all and wanted to do Classical and Romantic instead :) But now I'm really grateful they put up with us -- it was my introduction to not just Britten, but also Corigliano and Shostakovich and several others, and it did change my life in that small way.

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

[Jemisin] often falls down on the societal level because she is too quick to assign bad guys -- not that bad guys don't exist, but the trick is that no people think of themselves as bad guys

This is so perceptive, and so true. You've perfectly articulated the problem I've always had with her writing.

[cahn]

Yeah, and it's really too bad because she writes well and she has valuable things to say! And then I feel like sometimes she undermines her own messages.

[dolorosa_12]

I seem to remember an interview with her back when The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had just been published, in which the interviewer asked her why her villain seemed to lack any explicable motive for their villainy (basically why her villain was cartoonishly evil), and Jemisin replied that she had zero interest in villains or their motivations, only insofar as they might be an impediment to the hero(ine), and basically that her decision to write an underdeveloped, cartoonishly evil villain whose only motivation was being really nasty was her intention all along. You're right, she does write really well, and she does have important things to say, but she has absolutely glaring blind spots (the characters in her novel The City Born Great who embodied cities other than New York were like caricatures), and, if anyone ever asks her about those blind spots she defensively says that she wrote those things poorly deliberately.

[cahn]

*facepalm* I mean, that may be her intention, but it just doesn't make the characters (and therefore her books) believable. Which I guess is OK if your aim is purely entertainment, but I think at least part of her overall intention is to raise up a mirror to this world (which I think is part of the point for most art as a whole), and given that it's a definite huge point of failure. Like, I believe that she wants readers to ask the question, "Am I complicit in dystopia?" but it's not going to happen, because no one's going to empathize enough with her villains to ask that question.

[sophia_sol]

I've had my thoughts written up for the four available-online stories for ages, and was waiting to post until I'm able to get my hands on the Chiang and Jemisin, so it's interesting to see the ways in which my opinions of the other four stories do and don't align with yours!

I'm pretty much with you on the Yoachim and Gailey, but my reactions to the Pinsker and Carroll were definitely different than you. (Pinsker: too creepy for me! Carroll: boring, dependent on the reader liking cats.)

I'm excited to read the Chiang now!

[cahn]

ahahaha perhaps I should have waited until I could read the Jemisin! Maybe it's not so fair to her otherwise :)

Yeah, my creep-o-meter is much less sensitive than yours, so that didn't bother me at all. Now, I'm not particularly fond of cats, but the Carroll -- I didn't want to say this in the post because it verges on spoiler (at least, it would have been a spoiler I didn't want to know) -- it's basically fanfic of For I will consider my Cat Joffrey and, in the way of fanfic, is probably not particularly resonant unless you know and love the source material. Considered rationally, I think that's a weakness, but I love the poem (or, at least, Britten's setting for it) and it has a lot of positive associations for me so I don't really care... :)

I actually don't know if the Chiang falls into the intersection of our interests! It's more hard-sciency than I think you usually do, and when he talks about religion, for me there is always this knee-jerk discomfort I have to work through before I can appreciate what he's doing :) But it's so well done. I'll be interested to see what you think.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, I did actually know that story was based on the poem, but for me at least when I gave the poem a read, it also depends on the reader having an interest in cats. Would you be able to say more about why you like the poem, as someone who's not really a cat person?

I'll be interested to see what I think about the Chiang then! I do really enjoy stories about religion, and it's not that I don't like hard science, it's that I also want to care about characters and too often hard science fiction focuses on the science to the exclusion of people seeming like people.

[cahn]

So it's part of Jubilate Agno (and was how I first encountered it, as part of the larger work), which was written when Christopher Smart was in Bedlam, and the whole thing is just unabashedly and gloriously WTF. Like you could tell he just did not care one bit what anyone else in the universe thought, he just wanted to Write His Thing and That Was That.

Here is a bit from one of the other parts:

LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night.

Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.

Let James rejoice with the Skuttle-Fish, who foils his foe by the effusion of his ink.

Let John rejoice with Nautilus who spreads his sail and plies his oar, and the Lord is his pilot.

Let Philip rejoice with Boca, which is a fish that can speak.

Let Bartholomew rejoice with the Eel, who is pure in proportion to where he is found and how he is used.

Let Thomas rejoice with the Sword-Fish, whose aim is perpetual and strength insuperable.

Let Matthew rejoice with Uranoscopus, whose eyes are lifted up to God.

Let James the less, rejoice with the Haddock, who brought the piece of money for the Lord and Peter.

Let Jude bless with the Bream, who is of melancholy from his depth and serenity.

Let Simon rejoice with the Sprat, who is pure and innumerable.

Let Matthias rejoice with the Flying-Fish, who has a part with the birds, and is sublimity in his conceit.

Let Stephen rejoice with Remora -- The Lord remove all obstacles to his glory.

Let Paul rejoice with the Scale, who is pleasant and faithful!, like God's good ENGLISHMAN.

(Why the Moon Fish? Who knows? But apparently it was VERY IMPORTANT! Also I laugh at God's good ENGLISHMAN.)

And so I think of "Joffrey" as less "a poem about cats" than "part of this completely WTF poem," if that makes any sense? Also I have a lot of good memories of all of us in high school (eta: at music camp) listening to the choir sing the Britten arrangement and going "What... did we just listen to? Did we just listen to them sing a SONG ABOUT THIS GUY'S CAT??"

Yes, you could ignore all the physics in the Chiang story and read it as a story about people and how they react to (1) a particular AU and (2) their faith being shaken. That is what I love about it, that it works as a story on both levels.

[sophia_sol]

Ah, fair, I can see how if one's emotional resonances with Joffrey were to connect with the whole of the extended poem, not just the bit about the cat, it would land differently!

That sounds very promising about the Chiang story then :)

[cahn]

:)

Yeah, I hope you like it! Or at least if you don't that you dissect it so that I know better for next time :) I will say I liked Chiang's novella better, so if you end up not liking the novelette you might still try the novella to see if it's more to your taste.