"An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition" by Ken Liu :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

My Story Recommendation of the Week goes to "An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition" by Ken Liu, from Liu's Saga Press collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (cover art by Quentin Trollip).

Science fiction and fantasy readers out there don't much need me to tell them that Ken Liu can write a decent short story. But you may not be aware that his new collection The Paper Menagerie has one new story in it (among all the reprints of award nominees and winners), and it's one you want to check out.

"An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition" alternates between brief passages explaining the systems of memory and cognition observed in various alien species and a scientist's love letter about his estranged wife, written to their daughter.

Every one of the descriptions of alien species is interesting and original enough to support its own story, but apparently Ken Liu comes up with good story ideas so routinely he can afford to toss off a half-dozen of them all at once. Show off!

The most telling of the alien passages describes a dying alien race that saved a few of their children by putting them on a near-lightspeed starship with no means of decelerating, thus ensuring that the children would live until the end of the universe—which they would experience in just a few short years. The passage concludes, "All parents make choices for their children. Almost always they think it's for the best."

In the main narrative, a husband and wife, both nerdy scientists, would each make a different choice for the future of their daughter. The parent who prevails has at least as many regrets as the parent who does not.

This is a well-constructed, emotionally charged story, right up to the sad and lovely closing line: "There are many ways to say I love you in this cold, dark, silent universe, as many as the twinkling stars."

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, Championship Round :: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu vs. The Just City by Jo Walton

We have arrived at the championship round of our current bracket of the Battle of the Books. In one corner we have The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. In the other corner we have The Just City by Jo Walton. Two fine novels!  I (Aaron) have read through page 200 of both these books, and the one I most want to continue reading to the end will be the champion of Bracket One of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2015 Books.

The Grace of Kings:   Saga, April 2015, 618 pages, cover art by Sam Weber. The Grace of Kings is Book One of the Dandelion Dynasty series. The second volume, The Wall of Storms, is just out. Ken Liu is a two-time Hugo Award winner for his short fiction, as well as accounting for two more Hugos by translating Chinese SF. The Grace of Kings is his first novel.

The Grace of Kings overwhelmed Infinity Lost by S. Harrison in the first round. Next The Grace of Kings conquered Fortune’s Blight by Evie Manieri in the second round. Then The Grace of Kings won out over The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro in the semifinals to reach here, the championship match.

The Grace of Kings is set on the Islands of Dara, an archipelago with a culture similar to ancient China. Dara has recently been unified under the rule of a single emperor, originating from the island of Xana. That emperor has just died, however, and his contemptible administrators have passed the crown to his younger, weaker son. Rebellions are breaking out throughout the empire in the resulting power vacuum. Our main characters, the clever but mischievous Kuni Garu and the massive Mata Zyndu, whose family was all but wiped out by the emperor, have become leaders of two of the rebellions. The turmoil is worsened by the fact that the gods in this universe play an active, if indirect, role in what is transpiring.

The Just City:   Tor, January 2015, 364 pages, cover art by Raphael. Jo Walton won a Hugo and Nebula for her novel Among Others, and has also won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and a Tiptree Award. The Just City is also the first book in a series. The second volume, The Philosopher Kings, was published in June 2015, and the third book, Necessity, is just out.

The Just City overpowered Towers Fall by Karina Sumner-Smith in the first round. Next The Just City got by Letters to Zell by Camille Griep in the second round. Then The Just City defeated Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz in the semifinals to reach here, the championship match.

The eponymous setting of The Just City is a city created by the goddess Pallas Athene, modeled on Plato's Republic, to see if it could be done. She has recruited a group of 300 scholars to run the place, including one of our heroines, Maia, a young woman who felt limited by her options in 19th Century England and prayed to Athene for a way out. Maia and the other city "masters" snatch 10,000 children out of ancient history to be the founding citizens of the city. Among these is Simmea, a young woman rescued from slavery, and a dynamic young man named Pytheas. As the young citizens mature, Simmea becomes more and more fascinated with Pytheas, unaware that he is actually an incarnation of the god Apollo. A recent arrival to the city is Socrates, the Socrates, who is of course asking a lot of questions that may throw the city's future in doubt, such as whether the robots who do all the labor would rather be doing something else.

The Battle: I am not supposed to pre-judge these battles before I finish reading. But I'm only human, and I can't help anticipating where a battle is headed. For this championship round, I didn't think I even needed to do the reading. Based on the first 100 pages of both books I had already read for the semifinals, I was sure I knew the inevitable winner. And I thought so as I was reading through 200 pages of both. Then I finished, and realized I had been wrong the whole time.

These are two quite different but each well-written and original fantasy novels, certainly both worth your time. But through 100 pages and then some, it seemed to me that the focus of The Just City was philosophical musings about Plato, which I was finding interesting but hardly compelling, while the focus of The Grace of Kings was on the storytelling, which is usually the best way to pull me into a novel.

But a funny thing happened by the time I got to page 200 in both books. Even though there's a lot more plotting in The Grace of Kings, I came to realize that The Just City would be the harder book for me to put down, for two reasons.

First, I feel more connected to the characters in The Just City. While I continue to enjoy The Grace of Kings, the main characters have not developed much since the early pages. Instead, we've visited a host of minor characters with tangential roles in the rebellion against the empire. Some of these sub-plots are nicely spun out; for example, here a young man named Jizu, recruited by self-serving ministers to lead a small kingdom joining the rebellions, saves his people from slaughter by the imperial army by offering himself instead. When the empire's representative, General Namen, accepts his proposal, Jizu promptly sets himself on fire:

General Namen shook his head. The smell of burned flesh nauseated him, and he felt very old and tired at this moment. He had liked Jizu's pale face, his curled hair and thin nose. He had admired the way the boy held his back straight, and the way he looked at him, the conqueror, with no fear in his calm gray eyes. He would have liked to sit and have a long talk with the young man, a man he thought very brave.

He wished again that Kindo Marana had not sought him out. He wished he were sitting in front of the fire in his house, his hand stroking a contented Tozy. But he loved Xana, and love required sacrifices.

This is a nice scene, especially when Jizu's sleazy ministers get their comeuppance, but it has already played out and so doesn't much pull me into the larger story arc. Overall, the book has something of an episodic feel through 200 pages, and I haven't gotten to know the key characters Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu as well as I would have liked.

In contrast, while the first 200 pages of The Just City tell a quieter story, they gradually combine to develop the main characters into people I feel I know and care about. For instance, here is a passage from the point of view of Pytheas, aka Apollo:

Being a mortal was strange. It was sensually intense, and it had the intensity of everything evanescent—like spring blossoms or autumn leaves or early cherries. It was also hugely involving. Detachment was really difficult to achieve. Everything mattered immediately—every pain, every sensation, every emotion. There wasn't time to think about things properly—no possibility of withdrawal for proper contemplation, then returning to the same instant with a calm and reasonable plan. Everything had to be done in time, immediately. Paradoxically, there was also too much time. I constantly had to wait through moments and hours and nights. I had to wait for spring to see blossom, wait for Simmea to be free to walk with me, wait for morning. Then when it came, everything would be hurtling forward in immediate necessity again, pierced through with emotion and immediacy and a speeding pulse. Time was inexorable and unstoppable. I had always known that, but it had taken me fifteen years as a mortal to understand what it meant.

On initial reading, this is an interesting thought about an immortal's perspective. But it comes back later, as Simmea is developing a teenage crush for Pytheas, and the reader realizes how impossible it is that things will work out for them on a romantic level.

The entire system that Athena and the masters have created seems at once admirable yet hopelessly unstable. The masters pride themselves on having rescued the young citizens from slavery, but they dictate to these adolescents where to live, what to eat, what work to do, even (as they get older) their sexual partners, all to conform to Plato's directions. At the same time, they're training their young citizens to be independent thinkers. Sooner or later, these youngsters are bound to have the independent thought, "Why are we putting up with all this shit?"

There are many such aspects of this tale that didn't grab me immediately, but have developed into storylines that I care about. How will the idealistic Simmea handle learning that people in this city are not what she believes? Which masters will be corrupted by the power they've been handed? Who will join in the inevitable rebellion? How will Maia (who won't rebel) handle being torn between the other masters and the youngsters with whom she identifies? How will the system adjust when the young citizens start having children of their own? What happens if Socrates prompts the robots to stop working for the masters? I want to keep reading to find all this out, even if some of the answers may not come until later volumes in the series.

The second reason I find it harder to put down The Just City is the story is so unique. Of all the countless people to read The Republic in the past 2,400 years, if it has ever occurred to anyone else to render Plato's thought experiment literal, I missed it. And I'm enjoying the return to a more philosophical style of science fiction, the kind the field used to get from authors like Ursula LeGuin and Joanna Russ. I am intrigued to see where Jo Walton plans to take this story and setting.

Meanwhile, the sprawling, secondary-world epic fantasy has been done a whole lot recently. The most distinctive aspect of Liu's approach to the subgenre is his Eastern setting and mood, but even this has already been done very effectively in the past few years, for example by Guy Gavriel Kay in Under Heaven and River of Stars and by Elizabeth Bear in her Eternal Sky series. (Hopefully this won't hurt Ken Liu's feelings overmuch. I know I'd be delighted to have someone criticize my writing for being similar to Guy Gavriel Kay and Elizabeth Bear!)

Much to my own surprise, after 200 pages, The Just City is the book I most want to keep reading to the end.

THE WINNER: The Just City by Jo Walton

The Just City wins Bracket One of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2015 Books. Congratulations to our newest Battle of the Books champion!

To see the completed bracket, click here.

We've crowned a winner for this bracket, but soon we'll announce a whole new bracket of sixteen books. Aaron will judging the next bracket which will be full of 2016 books. Stay tuned for more book battles to come!

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, First Semifinal :: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro vs. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Our first semifinal match in Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books features The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro going against The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. In the semifinal round, the books are judged after reading 100 pages. The winner, the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages, will advance to the championship round.

The Buried Giant:  Alfred A. Knopf, 317 pages, March 2015, jacket design by Peter Mendelsund. Kazuo Ishiguro won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Remains of the Day.

The Buried Giant overpowered Firesoul by Gary Kloster in the first round, then The Buried Giant overwhelmed The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler in the second round to reach the semifinals.

Set in ancient England, the main characters of The Buried Giant are an old couple named Axl and Beatrice. Axl and Beatrice have left their farming community and set off across Saxon lands in search of their son, frustrated that they don't remember him very well. A mist has settled across this land that has apparently deprived everyone of many of their memories. Axl and Beatrice travel through a Saxon village, where a young boy was recently carried off by ogres but saved by a passing Briton warrior.

The Grace of Kings:   Saga, April 2015, 618 pages, cover art by Sam Weber. The Grace of Kings is Book One of the Dandelion Dynasty series. Ken Liu is a two-time Hugo Award winner for his short fiction, as well as accounting for two more Hugos by translating Chinese SF. The Grace of Kings is his first novel.

The Grace of Kings overwhelmed Infinity Lost by S. Harrison in the first round, then The Grace of Kings conquered Fortune’s Blight by Evie Manieri in the second round to reach the semifinals.

The Grace of Kings is set on the Islands of Dara, an archipelago with a culture similar to ancient China. The opening 50 pages introduced us to our main characters Kuni Garu, a clever but mischievous young man hoping to win the hand of his mayor's daughter, and Mata Zyndu, a huge brooding young fellow seeking revenge against the emperor for the deaths of most of his family. In the second 50 pages, the emperor meets his gods, figuratively and literally, and the resulting power vacuum opens the door to rebellion. Kuni Garu is quick to join the fray.

The Battle: By the semifinals, judging the Battle of the Books gets really tough, because the books that make it this far are typically very good. Case in point, here is a battle between two fantasy novels I am greatly enjoying, by two authors I hugely admire. One is a straight historical fantasy set in ancient Britain (it feels historical so far anyway—people speak of ogres and such, but so far none has appeared onstage), while the other is a secondary world fantasy drawing heavily on Chinese history. It will be difficult to choose a winner.

Through 100 pages, The Buried Giant is elegantly written and has introduced me to an appealing historical setting, some likeable characters, and an interesting mystery: why do the main characters and everyone around them seem to be suffering from gaps in their memories?

Through 100 pages, The Grace of Kings is also nicely written and has introduced me to a fascinating world, this one not strictly historical but leaning heavily on Chinese history. The characters are similarly engaging, with interesting conflicts looming in their futures.

So what's to separate these two strong entrants? The answer is, the Battle of the Books rewards novels that add new layers to the narrative for each round. (You may be skeptical that authors are writing their novels with the Battle of the Books in mind, but they are, my friends, they are.) A memorable opening will carry the first round. Then broadening the opening out into some intriguing storylines gets you through the second round. Kazuo Ishiguro and Ken Liu both did those things.

For the third round? Give me something extra. Keep adding to the story as it unfolds, so I appreciate more after 100 pages than I did after 50 pages. Again, Ishiguro and Liu both do that, but one a bit more successfully.

In The Buried Giant, the new story element is two new traveling companions for our main characters. One is a lad driven from his home by superstitious villagers who believe he was bitten by an ogre. The other is a brave and strong warrior named Wistan, whom Axl meets at a vantage point overlooking a dense woodland:

"Yesterday I rode down that hillside," Wistan said, "and my mare with hardly any prompting set into a gallop as though for sheer joy. A strange thing, as if I were returning to scenes from an early life, though to my knowledge I've never before visited this country. Can it be I passed this way as a small boy too young to know my whereabouts, yet old enough to retain these sights? The trees and moorland here, the sky itself seem to tug at some lost memory."

One suspects this warrior is the same lost son Axl and Beatrice seek. If it turns out so, that is an awfully convenient development.

Meanwhile, the second 50-page section of The Grace of Kings does a masterful job of broadening the scope of the story. While the opening chapters focused on the development of Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu as youths, now we are starting to see the events shaping leadership of the Islands of Dara. That includes a betrayal of the Emperor Mapidéré's wishes upon his death, which leaves the empire without a strong ruler, as well as the surprising revelation that the gods have taken an active interest in Dara. Here, the bickering gods refuse the dying emperor's request to be cured of illness to continue his works to honor them:

"War has its own logic, Little Sister," said Fithowéo. "We can guide, but it cannot be controlled."

"A lesson that mortals have learned again and again—" said Rapa.

"—but it doesn't seem to take," finished Kana.

Tututika turned her gaze to the forgotten Mapidéré. "Then we should pity this man, whose work is about to be undone. Great men are always misunderstood by their own age. And great seldom means good."

By first introducing us to two different but equally sympathetic main characters and then broadening his scope, Ken Liu has pulled off the difficult trick in epic fantasy of weaving a story on a grand scale that is firmly anchored in characters the reader cares about.

As much as I love Kazuo Ishiguro's pastoral writing style in The Buried Giant, through 100 pages The Grace of Kings is giving me more to anticipate, more reasons to keep reading.

THE WINNER: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

The Grace of Kings advances to the championship round to face either Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz or The Just City by Jo Walton.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One :: Final Four

We're down to the Final Four in Bracket One of Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2015 Books:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
vs.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz
vs.
The Just City by Jo Walton

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. Now only four books remain of the starting sixteen. This bracket contained books from across the genre. There were secondary-world fantasy books, historical fantasies, urban or contemporary fantasies, science fiction books, and a horror novel. To get to the Final Four, these four books won their first two matches. The other books in the competition, and some of them were quite good but by chance faced a strong competitor, have been knocked out of the running, like in college basketball's March Madness.

Judging between books, which can be totally different, based on reading only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult. It's also inherently subjective. But our Battle of the Books format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

In this bracket, all four books which we named as the "seeded" books at the outset ended up advancing to the Final Four. This is atypical, but not unprecedented. Usually at least one and sometimes two unseeded books pull upsets to reach the Final Four.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. Several future brackets of Battle of the Books are now in the hands of our reviewers, so check back for many more battles to come.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, Second Round :: Fortune’s Blight by Evie Manieri vs. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Our second match in the second round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books features Fortune’s Blight by Evie Manieri taking on The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Fortune's Blight: Tor, February 2015, 363 pages, cover art by Kekai Kotaki. Fortune's Blight is Book II of the Shattered Kingdoms series. Book I is Blood's Pride and Book III, Strife's Bane, is due out in December. Fortune’s Blight defeated Oathkeeper by J. F. Lewis to get into the second round.

Fortune's Blight deals with the aftermath of a revolution led by King Daryan of the Shadari, which has overthrown the rule of their telepathic Norlander conquerors. In the opening 25 pages, we've seen Daryan confronted with a populace struggling with post-war hardships and now nearing rebellion against him. The second 25-page section consists of chapters from the point of view of two members of a Norlander noble family, the Arregadors. Rho Arregador (owner of the sword "Fortune's Blight") left his home in the north, by his own account because he slept with his brother's wife. Now he travels by ship with the deposed governor of Shadar. They still have an ace in the hole, however: a young Shadari under their control with powerful telekinetic abilities. Meanwhile, Kira Arregador, the brother's wife in question, remains at home in frozen Norland. Her husband has died in battle, and she must negotiate a minefield of court politics, centered on a new Norlander king she holds in contempt.

The Grace of Kings: Saga, April 2015, 618 pages, cover art by Sam Weber. The Grace of Kings is Book One of the Dandelion Dynasty series. Ken Liu is a two-time Hugo Award winner for his short fiction, as well as accounting for a third Hugo by translating last year's Best Novel winner The Three-Body Problem. The Grace of Kings is his first novel. The Grace of Kings overwhelmed Infinity Lost by S. Harrison to get into the second round.

The Grace of Kings is set on the Islands of Dara, an archipelago with a culture similar to ancient China. In the opening 25 pages we met Kuni Garu, a clever but mischievous student, and Mata Zyndu, a huge young fellow bent on revenge against the emperor. The second 25-page section jumps us ahead seven years, focusing on Kuni. He has been expelled from school and now lives a life of leisure, relying on the hospitality of friends and tavern-keepers who appreciate that a crowd tends to follow him about. But his lifestyle may be about to change as he meets the mayor's spunky daughter Jia Matiza, who sees his true potential.

The Battle: Here we have two complex secondary world fantasies going head to head.

Through 50 pages, to me the greatest strength of Fortune's Blight is Manieri's vivid descriptions of the different landscapes in her strange world. Here, for instance, Kira pauses to consider the courtyard in front of Norland's royal palace:

She preferred the narrow streets and little courts; here, she felt like she was being watched from every angle: from the towers and apparently empty slit-windows of Eotan Castle; from the huge green-glass terrace on the western side, supported by two twenty-feet-tall statues of wolf-headed Eotan the Progenitor; from the worn faces on the carvings of the ancient monarchs lining the rise; from the top of the hewn steps between them to the headland's highest point where the beacon burned day and night to guide ships into the harbor; and where the skull of Gargrothal, last of the great sea monsters, gaped down at them.

Although I appreciate the writing of Fortune's Blight, I find the story rather slow to get moving. In the second 25-page section, nothing especially significant happens. Rho Arregador looks over the water and thinks about stuff; Kira Arregador goes to a dinner party and thinks about stuff. Part of the problem is this is the second book in a series, and there's a lot of background information to catch us up on, but we've seen other sequels in Battle of the Books that have managed to keep the action moving more effectively early on.

I also like the writing in The Grace of Kings, and I feel connected to the characters, particularly Kuni, a rogue with a heart of gold. In the same chapter, he gleefully talks his way out of paying his enormous tab at a tavern, then intervenes to help a stranger desperate to keep her son from being conscripted into civil service. The mayor's daughter Jia, herself a willful young woman, first becomes interested in Kuni when she witnesses this moment.

In contrast with Fortune's Blight, 50 pages into The Grace of Kings, the plot is already well under way. This doesn't necessarily require a lot of action-packed scenes (although there has been one of those), only that the scenes feel important to the lives of the characters. In Fortune's Blight, Kira goes to a dinner party where nothing much happens. In The Grace of Kings, Kuni goes to a dinner party where he meets the woman one suspects he will marry. The dinner party in The Grace of Kings makes me feel involved in the story. I want to keep reading, to see more of the interactions between Kuni and Jia, and to see how their romance will ultimately impact the future of the islands of Dara.

THE WINNER: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

The Grace of Kings advances to the semifinals to take on The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, First Round :: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu vs. Infinity Lost by S. Harrison

Our fourth match-up of the Battle of the 2015 Books has The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu doing battle with Infinity Lost by S. Harrison. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Grace of Kings: Saga, April 2015, 618 pages, cover art by Sam Weber. The Grace of Kings is Book One of the Dandelion Dynasty series. Ken Liu is a two-time Hugo Award winner for his short fiction, as well as accounting for a third Hugo by translating last year's Best Novel winner The Three-Body Problem. The Grace of Kings is his first novel.

The Grace of Kings is set on an archipelago, the Islands of Dara, reminiscent of our ancient world. The largest island consists of six different kingdoms, all of which have been conquered by Xana, located on one of the smaller isles. The opening 25 pages introduce us to two students, Rin and Kuni, who cut class to see the emperor pass through on a grand tour of the empire. They witness an unsuccessful attempt on the emperor's life, and Kuni is delighted to realize that the emperor was afraid, that he is just a man. Next we meet Mata Zyndu, a giant of a man, most of whose noble family was wiped out by the emperor's forces. He and his Uncle Phin, who has trained Mata from infancy, also watch the emperor's procession, planning their revenge.

Infinity Lost: Skyscape, November 2015, 250 pages, cover design by M.S. Corley. Infinity Lost is Book One of the Infinity Trilogy, the debut work by New Zealander S. Harrison.

The main character of Infinity Lost is Infinity "Finn" Blackstone, 17-year-old daughter of the richest man in the world, whom she has somehow never met. Finn's mother apparently died in childbirth. In our world's near future, her father's company, Blackstone Technologies, is Microsoft on steroids, dominating the world economy. Blackstone produces super-duper artificial hearts everyone uses; Blackstone even controls the weather. Finn, who has never had dreams before, starts to dream events from her past she doesn't remember, including learning to use firearms and meeting her father's executives. Then she learns that top students from her private school will soon get to visit Blackstone Technologies.

The Battle: I read the opening 25 pages of each of these two books over a week ago, but got busy and didn't have time to write up this battle post right away. It turns out that the passage of time makes it easier for me to articulate the basis for my decision.

After a week, I had to reread much of the opening of Infinity Lost to write the above synopsis. The first two chapters of the book are written well, and yet they did not stay in my mind. I think that's because so far it's a one-dimensional story: it's exclusively about Finn trying to figure out what the deal is with her rich, reclusive father. And I think after 25 pages, I can pretty much guess the answer. There have been many hints that Finn's father ignores her because she is to him only one of his company's many research projects.

In contrast, I remembered The Grace of Kings well enough that I could have picked it up and continued reading without missing a beat. The opening pages of The Grace of Kings begin to weave a rich tapestry, and the parts I've glimpsed so far have very much stuck with me.

We have already learned some of the interesting history of the Islands of Dara, but we can tell there's a lot more backstory that will yet be filled in. The characters have also caught my interest, Mata because of his burning need to address the wrongs done his family, Kuni simply for his wit and eagerness. I don't know what is going to happen to them, but I know one way or another Mata and Kuni will prove a challenge to the emperor's rule, and I want to see how that story unfolds.

THE WINNER: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

The Grace of Kings advances to the second round to face Fortune's Blight by Evie Manieri.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Aaron's Take on the 2012 Hugo Nominees :: SHORT STORIES

Kudos to the folks nominating for the Hugo Awards this year. All of this year's Hugo-nominated short stories are well written, and the nominees include my two favorite short stories of 2011, either of which would be a most deserving winner.

Working my way up, "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu features some beautifully constructed sentences, which are especially impressive from such a young author. But I confess I reached the end without understanding the point of the exercise. The fault may be mine as a reader, but people who nominated this piece for the Hugo plainly got something out of it that I missed.

John Scalzi's "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue" is a very funny parody (and I believe Scalzi ties Connie Willis for most colons in a Hugo-nominated title). I particularly love the first three sentences. I don't begrudge the story's nomination—it's not easy to write something this funny—but to me there's not enough substance for this one to win the award.

"The Homecoming" by Mike Resnick is a strong tale of a father's reunion with his son, who is estranged in more than one sense. The father-son dynamic put me strongly in mind of Resnick's story "One Perfect Morning, with Jackals," which received a well-deserved Hugo nomination in 1991.

That brings us to my two favorite short stories of 2011, and I'd be happy if they tied and both won the award. Forced to pick one, I'm going to make Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" my #2 choice. The story is simple yet moving, presenting basic themes—an immigrant's alienation; how children often don't appreciate their parents until they're gone—in an original and powerful way. Great work by a fellow Writers of the Future winner.

My personal favorite short story of 2011 (and it was from the time it first came out) is "Movement" by Nancy Fulda. Like "The Paper Menagerie," this is a powerful and moving tale, with the added element that it successfully tells the story from a nearly-alien point of view. Most impressively, Fulda uses her protagonist's condition to craft the story's sad and poignant ending. This is a unique and outstanding piece.

Aaron's Ballot for Best Short Story
1. Nancy Fulda - Movement
2. Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie
3. Mike Resnick - The Homecoming
4. John Scalzi - Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue
5. E. Lily Yu - The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees