Hugo 2015 Reviews

In early April, my oldest son and I purchased supporting memberships to Sasquan Worldcon.  We will go through the packet of material provided and vote for the best work in each category.  Because I am a slow reader (my son is far faster), I have started reading some of the packet material that has been provided online.

If I marked a story with “❌” then I will not be listing it on the ballot (seems to be stories below 20 points).  I will not use “No Award” in these circumstances because there is an attempted slate of “No Awards” as a counter-reaction to two other slates (Sad Puppies III and Rabid Puppies).  I will vote on the merit of the work — and where there is an atrocious category as a whole, I will use “No Award”.  If I marked a story with “🏆” then I will have that as my top item on the ballot for that category.

 

Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form

John W. Cambell Award for Best New Writer

  • Rolf Nelson 🏆
  • Eric S. Raymond

Best Professional Artist

I’m scoring art a little different. Each provided image can get up to 10 points.

  • Allan Pollack (22 Points for 3 works: Avg: 7.33 Points) 🏆
  • Julie Dillon (66 Points for 14 works: Avg: 4.72 Points)
  • Kirk DouPonce (53 Points for 8 works: Avg: 6.67 Points)
  • Nick Greenwood (44 Points for 8 works: Avg: 5.5 Points)

Best Fan Artist

I’m scoring art a little different. Each provided image can get up to 10 points. Due to the low quality for this category, I will vote “NO AWARD”.

  • Brad W. Foster (9 Points for 3 works: Avg: 3 Points)
  • Elizabeth Leggett (11 Points for 3 works: Avg: 3.67 Points)
  • Nini Aalto (7 Points for 2 works: Avg: 3.5 Points)
  • Spring Schoenhuth (12 Points for 3 works: Avg: 4 Points)
  • Steve Stiles (4 Points for 2 works: Avg: 2 Points)

Best Graphic Story

I’m scoring Graphic Stories/Novels in a greatly simplified variant of my general story evaluation criteria. Due to the low-medium quality for this category, I will vote “NO AWARD”.

  • Ms. Marvel Vol 1 (18 Points)
  • Rat Queens Vol 1 (22 Points)
  • Saga Vol. 3 (22 Points)
  • Sex Criminals Vol 1 (18 Points)

Best Related Work Candidates

Best Short Story Candidates

Best Novelette Candidates

Best Novella Candidates

Best Novel Candidates

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Special Effects: 9/10
Plot: 9/10
Characters: 8/10
Ideas: 9/10
Acting: 7/10
Total: 42/50 or an Excellent Movie. 4.5 Stars

Overall very solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Manages much the darkness of the Nolan Batman trilogy while maintaining more light.

Guardians of the Galaxy
Special Effects: 9/10
Plot: 8/10
Characters: 9/10
Ideas: 8/10
Acting: 7/10
Total: 41/50 or an Excellent Movie. 4.5 Stars

Very fun movie, great rewatch value. Some of the plot holes were more glaring than CA:WS.

Interstellar
Special Effects: 8/10
Plot: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Ideas: 9/10
Acting: 7/10
Total: 42/50 or an Excellent Movie. 4.5 Stars

A lot of heart in the movie, fighting against despair and desolation. Selfishness and sacrifice are well portrayed. A classic sci-fi movie made in the 21st century.

The Lego Movie
Special Effects: 6/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 6/10
Ideas: 6/10
Acting: 5/10
Total: 31/50 or a Good Movie. 3.5 Stars

Fun for the kids, a decent story, and in truth better than some of the Hugo Nominations that I will not be voting for in other categories!

Best Related Work Candidates

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright:
Ideas: 9/10
Prose: 9/10
Persuasiveness: 7/10
Total: 25/30 or a Excellent Related Work. 4.5 Stars

I have completed the essays in this horribly named collection — it was slow going, but very rewarding. The collection is far more interesting than the title would have one believe! The scores originally followed the fiction criteria for: “John C. Wright’s Patented One-Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fictions” but I have updated to use a more “related work” criteria for the overall the collection. I loved the essay on writing, and wished that his example story was made into a novel. Loved the discussion of craft, and the difference of a sci-fi reader from a muggle. While not academic, I would suggest this essay is a sister or companion essay to Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories.

The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF by Ken Burnside
Ideas: 8/10
Prose: 8/10
Persuasiveness: 7/10
Total: 23/30 or solid related work

I had mixed feelings about this essay. It was certainly good/worthwhile to read. I find that overall I didn’t agree with the author’s conclusions or philosophies — but perhaps I am not a “hard SF” aficionado. A solid Hugo entry, but didn’t create the delight in discourse that Mr. Wright’s work did.

Best Short Story Candidates

The Parliament of Beasts and Birds by John C. Wright:
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Ideas: 8/10

Total: 28/40 or a Good Book:  3.75 Stars

A fun romp, with fun concepts to explore, I think better suited to being a longer story.

Turncoat by Steve Rzasa:
Prose: 8/10
Plot: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Ideas: 9/10

Total: 33/40 or an Excellent Book: 4.5 Stars

Great story, great premise, great concept. Loved it, and this has confirmed that Mr. Rzasa is on my authors to watch list!

Best Novelette Candidates

The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale by Rajnar Vajra:
Prose: 5/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Ideas: 7/10

Total: 25/40 or a Good Book: 3.25 Stars

Certain points the voice and writing devices jarred me from the story. The bar fight at the beginning had one of those moments, and I wasn’t too happy with the ending being cut short and the summarized at the end. The latter problem could be solved by a slightly longer story. The former would require some wordsmithing of the scene (and I think more work). Worth a read — of my old boyhood/YAhood sci-fi authors,R Rajnar’s writing reminds me most of Alan Dean Foster.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium by Gray Rinehart:
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Ideas: 8/10

Total: 28/40 or a Good Book: 3.75 Stars

My chief complaint is the story didn’t feel wrapped up. We are left with uncertainty about the pseudo-lizards’ plans as reaction to the burial. Overall a fun read, and reminiscent of the old days of Sci-Fi.

The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt Translator
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 4/10
Characters: 4/10
Ideas: 4/10

Total: 18/40, 2 Stars

This wasn’t really a Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Speculative Fiction story as I understand them.  Unless stories where everything is a dream, or has no internal consistency counts.  Then, I’m not sure what we’d be excluding from this category.  This story was essentially an allegory of someone’s life turning upside down because his girlfriend, that he obsessed over, broke up with him.  Sucks to be the rest of the world in this teen/twentish break-up angst story.  The main character is pretty depressing, and ultimately the story is meaningless.  The main character steals a glider from someone that he quickly assumes is some sort of pervert to rescue a little girl, but then abandons the little girl to some crazy elderly ladies who are going to “drop” into outerspace to see what it is like.  Primarily, they provided a convenient plot device to get rid of the little girl (did I mention, he let the girl’s mother die because he was self-absorbed?) and for the character to move on.  If you like stories that feel psychedelic, or insane, or loosely following any sort of cause-effect framework — this is your story!

Championship B’tok by Edward M. Lerner
Prose: 7/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 6/10
Ideas: 7/10

Total: 25/40 or a Good book, 3.25 Stars

My chief complaint about this story is that it shouldn’t have been a Novelette.  I did not see any sort of resolution of any arc that was introduced in this story, and it clearly is just the layout for a sequel.  At least in Empire Strikes Back, Leia and Chewie were rescued — even if Luke didn’t succeed at his ultimate goal.  The best analogy I can think of is if Tolkien had ended his first book when the hobbits were leaving Tom Bombadil — a) a very interesting story was presented, b) a crafty enemy portrayed, c) no resolution of anything.  This story shouldn’t have been broken into parts (or at least not into the part it was broken at), and likely would have been a good contender in a Novella or Novel category.

The Journeyman: In the Stone House by Michael F. Flynn
Prose: 5/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 6/10
Ideas: 7/10

Total: 24/40 or a Good book, 3 Stars

Unlike B’tok, this story actually handled a complete sub-story while being embedded in a larger story arc that is yet to be continued. There were a few anachronisms that jarred me from the story and this hurt the prose — otherwise it would have been higher. In particular, the spunkiness of the main characters removed any illusion of people living in a culture alien to ours and was more reminiscent of a stereotypical teenager that is very talented, snarky, spunky, and … What can I say, I didn’t care for the main characters. Overall premise is good, and has lots of potentials, and this had a very episodic feel to it.

Best Novella Candidates

One Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright:
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 5/10
Ideas: 7/10

Total: 24/40 or an Ok Book:  3 Stars

I would have given the Characters category a 6 but the Tybalt resurrection (Christ stand-in) scene was weird and pulled me out of the novella (but not in a way that made me meditate upon it).

I would have given the Plot category a 7 but the stopping at the middle of a cliffhanger and then having the character retell events from the cliffhanger didn’t resonate and I found it annoying.  Examples where retelling has worked in other stories: Gandalf about being captive to Saruman ( Tolkien had us in suspense for a long period of time about why Gandalf never showed up to help Frodo and it answered why) and Awake in the Night ( Wright builds up a mystery of what happened to the main character’s friend, and his friend telling of the story after a long ordeal of finding the friend was very satisfying to the suspense).  The common thread in each area where retelling worked was that the story built up suspense about what happened.  Going from Chapter “n” to “n+1” is not sufficient time for this suspense to build.

Pale Realms of Shade by John C. Wright
Prose: 7/10
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Ideas: 8/10

Total: 29/40 or a Good Book: 4 Stars

Overall, I enjoyed the story, and the twists and turns.  The change in perception and the temptations faced.  I have mixed feeling for the ending, I liked it, but felt somehow the potential it had wasn’t as great.  Like many of the works I’ve read by Wright, this would have been better in a longer format.

The Plural of Helen of Troy by John C. Wright:
Prose: 9/10
Plot: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Ideas: 9/10

Total: 36/40 or an Excellent Book: 5 Stars

The backwards in time storytelling reminiscent of Memento worked, as there was a reason for it beyond just being a storytelling trick.  The characters were very enjoyable, especially as Wright kept unraveling the layers of the story.  Even the simple conversation with the first Helen took on new meaning as the story progressed.  Wright’s strength in this story (and also in Pale Reams of Shade) are in the unraveling of the onion, revealing with time — longer stories are better suited for Mr. Wright’s skills.
The premise was great (a better version of Enterprise’s temporal cold war), and as a Protestant, I would say I saw shades of purgatory in the story.  And as far as the purgatory goes, I liked this presentation.  One of the sad realities of our mechanistic/utilitarian world seems to be that even in our fiction we don’t have room for the ineffable and hopeful, and so even stories about people fighting for a better world (all of them) leaves the world sterile and without heart — not even a simple concept of good vs evil is allowed.  Wright’s Jake is like David Dunn from Unbreakable, there is a hole in his heart, a sense of loss that comes out in his jaded interactions with the world, and this is because the purpose and meaning of life has been taken them.

Flow by Arlan Andrews Sr.:
Prose: 3/10
Plot: 4/10
Characters: /4/10
Ideas: 4/10
Total: 15/40, 1.5 Stars

If it weren’t for the sake of it being a Hugo nominee, I wouldn’t have gotten past 10%. I spurred myself to keep trying, as there was an author in a writer’s workshop a long time ago who wrote a story that was hard to get into, I think the author’s name was Jesse Bangs, a sort of sci-fi metaphor for Lamentations from the Bible, but once you got through the first third, it was a gripping and excellent story. Unfortunately, this story was not a repeat of that experience, and if I had to come up with a word to describe it: Mundane. If I had to describe the writing style, it reminded me of Dallas Willard (who many people rave about in Christian circles) who seemed to me to take 10 pages to say what could be said in a paragraph. One other thing about the writing style: I thought of the trope about calling a rabbit a Smeerp, which seemed to be used in spades. And I’m not sure what the plot was, except for stealing some biter-web and the consequences of it, but this tale could have been told with nearly the same depth with about 15 pages.

Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman:
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 9/10
Ideas: 9/10
Total: 31/40 or a Good Book, 4 Stars

I enjoyed the premise of this tragedy. Some portions were better written than others, some seemed like large chunks of tell/info-dump while other parts were immersive. The opening portion and ending were very immersive. Worth reading and even rereading.

Best Novel Candidates

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie:
Prose: 5/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 5/10
Ideas: 4/10
Total: 19/40, 2 Stars

Since only an excerpt was provided for the Hugo (100 pages), I didn’t feel obligated to read the entire excerpt because I wouldn’t have had the whole story anyway. This story is slightly better than Flow, which I could not follow at all. At least with this story, I could sort of tell what was going on. Unlike Flow, I could sense some real potential in this author, and there were spurts of paragraphs where my attention was engaged. This had some of the bad parts of the upside down story: way too much focus on internal angst and contemplating. And really, paragraphs could be summarized into a sentence or two without any loss. My wife likes to read an author called Marsha Lynn McClure, and her writing style reminded me VERY much of Mrs. McClure. I stopped reading at the 22% mark and saved my time. The whole use of “she” as the exclusive pronoun would have been at least useful if Ms. Leckie had simply inverted the “he”/”she”, rather than getting rid of “he” altogether. It essentially made the prounoun of “she” as useless as “it”.

Skin Game by Jim Butcher:
Prose: 6/10
Plot: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Ideas: 7/10
Total: 29/40, 4 Stars or a Good Book

The excerpt of this book provided for the Hugos was nearly the opposite of Ancillary Sword. When I was done, I wanted to read the book — even though it is clearly in the middle of a series. The characters are likable, the bad guys are interesting and fun, and the from a storytelling perspective… it follows the put a likable character in a bad situation, now make it worse, and worse, and worse plot device. There is a reason it exists, because when it is well done (like Skin Game) it is a very enjoyable and readable story.

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu:
Prose: 5/10
Plot: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Ideas: 8/10
Total: 33/40, 4.5 Stars or an Excellent Book

This is the first in a series (trilogy?) by Cixin Liu, and reads like good and classical hard sci-fi. I’ve seen some reviewers that complained about the math of certain events, but I chalk that up to typos or mistrantranslations — the story is a solid one that starts out quite bizarre. I don’t want discuss the details of the story, but it is a very enjoyable story that resolves a small arc, but opens a larger one for the series to resolve later. Some people found this annoying, but as long as some major arc (even if small in this case) is resolved I am content. Definitely will be looking for the sequels.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison:
Prose: 5/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: 5/10
Ideas: 5/10
Total: 20/40, 2 Stars

I’ve only read about 100 pages of the book (over 20% according to Kindle) and had to call it quits. It basically failed my Brin test — In Brin’s book “Earth” which I loved, it took almost 100 pages to start getting interesting, which each subsequent chapter being better than the prior one. The best way I can describe The Goblin Emperor is to compare it to a composition for music: a) it has not discordant music, b) it has nothing of interest or heart in it. And yet it was submitted as being a great story worth reading. The political intrigue (at least up to that point) was pretty boring and certainly not up to the Dune levels, or even the Midkemia levels.

The Darkness Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson:
Prose: 3/10
Plot: 4/10
Characters: 3/10
Ideas: 3/10
Total: 13/40, 1 Star

I’ve only read about 60 pages and had to call it quits. I kept thinking: “Where was the editor?”, “Why was this character sheet allowed to be dumped as an excuse for a chapter?” and then I came upon the passage that was anti-organized religion and realized that was the magic checkbox that allowed it to escape any kind of quality criteria. I’m not joking about the lack of quality, I was editing my second draft of my 2nd episode and found sentences which had some info-dumping in it and I fixed/improved those — but seriously, I’m no special writer but my stuff in 2nd draft form had 80% less info-dumping content than this published Hugo-nominated work. I’ve read many self-published works that sucked and clearly had a spell-checking / sentence-level editor but not a content editor — this work was of the same (or less quality).