Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Best Novel

Hugo nominations are due in just a week, so it's past time to list my favorite SF/F of 2010, starting with best novel. These are the five novels I'm planning to nominate:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Aliette de Bodard, Servant of the Underworld
Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Catherynne M. Valente, The Habitation of the Blessed

I expect the Bacigalupi novel to make the final ballot, and I think the others all have at least a chance at nomination, except perhaps Servant of the Underworld. (If de Bodard is nominated this year, it will be for one of her outstanding pieces of short fiction.)

As usual when selecting novels to nominate for the Hugo, I am dismayed to realize how many books from last year by some of my favorite authors I've yet to read. If I could stop time and read everything I'd like to before the nominating deadline, these are the ones I think would be most likely to elbow their way onto my list:

Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail
Greg Egan, Zendegi
Ian McDonald, The Dervish House
China Miéville, Kraken
Connie Willis, Blackout/All Clear

Whether you agree with any of my choices or not, I hope you find time to nominate by next week.

Book Review Teaser :: The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente

New on Fantastic Reviews is Aaron's review of The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente.

From Aaron's book review of The Habitation of the Blessed :
In a sense, Catherynne Valente's work doesn't much need reviewing. No one has to tell you it's terrific - just open it up and weird and amazing things will leap off the page at you. The Habitation of the Blessed is beautifully written from the opening lines:

I am a very bad historian. But I am a very good miserable old man. I sit at the end of the world, close enough to see my shriveled old legs hang over the bony ridge of it. I came so far for gold and light and a story the size of the sky. But I have managed to gather for myself only a basket of ash and a kind of empty sorrow, that the world is not how I wished it to be.

If that passage grabs you the way it did me, then you need to read The Habitation of the Blessed. Because there is a great deal more like that in store for you:

When a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things You grant us in this mortal mere - the fruit in the garden, too, was like this. Unknown, and therefore infinite. Eve and her mate swallowed eternity, every possible thing, and made the world between them.

Catherynne Valente's use of language is consistently exquisite....

...The Habitation of the Blessed is loosely based on the medieval legend of Prester John, a Christian king once thought to rule a strange land somewhere in the Orient. Valente joins a diverse group of modern authors who have written of Prester John, including Robert Silverberg and Umberto Eco - he has even appeared in Marvel comics.

To read the entire review -> The Habitation of the Blessed

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Movement by Nancy Fulda

The story recommendation of the week goes to "Movement" by Nancy Fulda, our second SROTW from the March 2011 issue of Asimov's.

This is a short but very powerful piece, the first-person narrative of Hannah, a young woman with "temporal autism," experiencing the passage of time differently from most humans:

[My parents] are not calm and quiet like my brother. They are sweaty from the night air and speak in tense sentences that all jumble on top of each other. If they would bother to wait I might find words to soothe their frantic babble. But they do not know how to speak on my time scale. Their conversations are paced in seconds, sometimes in minutes. It is like the buzzing of mosquitoes in my ears. I need days, sometimes weeks to sort my thoughts and find the perfect answer.

Hannah's condition prevents her from having "normal" interpersonal relationships, but it also allows her a unique perspective on the fast-changing world around her and contributes to her exceptional dancing and cognitive skills. Her parents are considering a medical procedure to undo Hannah's condition. Her mother asks her if she wants this done, but of course Hannah cannot answer right away.

This tale has a strong set-up, raising difficult questions about what is most important in life. Reminiscent of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Fulda's narrative does a wonderful job of getting us inside the mind of her unusual protagonist. The story is also spiced with interesting speculations about the implications of new communications technology.

But what makes "Movement" especially memorable is the outstanding ending. In just a few paragraphs, we learn Hannah's decision, we understand why it is so important to her, and we are heartbroken to realize it is unlikely she will be able to make her wishes understood.

"Movement" is an award-caliber story, and clearly a major breakthrough in the career of Nancy Fulda.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: "I Was Nearly Your Mother" by Ian Creasey

My story recommendation of the week is for "I Was Nearly Your Mother" by Ian Creasey, from the March 2011 issue of Asimov's.

Here is a 10,000-word story in which the main character never much does anything but talk, yet I found it fascinating reading. The protagonist of "I Was Nearly Your Mother" is Marian, a teenage girl living with her grandparents, because her mother died four years earlier and her father is in prison. She has come through these trying circumstances with admirable composure, but there are hints that her mental state remains fragile.

Then arrives on her doorstep an unfamiliar version of her late mother. This woman (who refers to herself as Della) has traveled from an alternate universe, where she aborted her pregnancy then came to regret the decision. Della assumes that Marian will instantly accept her as her lost mother, even though it is obvious from her behavior that she knows nothing at all about parenting, but of course Marian's reactions are far more complicated than that.

Marian is a flawed character and her para-Mother is deeply flawed (she pays for her alternate universe excursions through multiversal drug deals), but Creasey presents their flaws with sympathy. For instance, Marian is well on her way to an eating disorder, but Creasey shows this as a believable manifestation of her distrust of a world that has betrayed her: "She hated being told that weight didn't matter, when it so obviously did. It was just another way that adults lied, pretending the world was different, pretending that the fake surfaces didn't eclipse anything real that might lie underneath."

Creasey nicely develops alternate universes as a metaphor for how we all have choices to regret, we've all strayed from the path that would have worked out best for us:

Marian thought about the world Della came from, just one of an infinite range of worlds where things had happened differently -- mostly gone wrong in various ways. It felt like there was one real universe, a shining summit where everything happened as it should: a needle-thin pinnacle, surrounded by endless swampy lowlands full of bad decisions, unlucky accidents, and damaged people. As you slogged through the mire, could you clamber up to some better state? But how, when you couldn't see the landscape of probability? You'd find yourself flailing inevitably downward to your doom, confronted with far more wrong options than right. And everyone else in the world plummeted down too, dragging you with them. Even if you did the right thing, you had no control over other people's mistakes, their car crashes and jail sentences. Every time you slept, the world fell a little further during the night.

Even if we could travel between universes, that wouldn't relieve the need to come to terms with our own mistakes or the mistakes of those around us.

Clearly a new writer to watch, in the past five years Ian Creasey has had ten stories in Asimov's -- including "Erosion," which was chosen for multiple year's best collections for 2009 -- and has appeared in other top-notch magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Postscripts.

To my tastes, Asimov's has been a bit uneven for the past few years, but the March 2011 issue is excellent, reaffirming the magazine's position as the premier source of short fiction in the field. I'll recommend another story from the March issue next week.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Beauty Belongs to the Flowers by Matthew Sanborn Smith

My story recommendation of the week (only the third one since December, but "Story Recommendation of the Month" would sound stupid) goes to Beauty Belongs to the Flowers by Matthew Sanborn Smith, posted in January at Tor.com.

Most of the stories I recommend here grab me from the opening line, and often I start composing an SROTW post in my head halfway into the story. It didn't happen that way with "Beauty Belongs to the Flowers." I found the piece well-written from the outset and Smith's future Nagasaki nicely imagined. But the story of a young woman's unrequited love did not grab me at first. I felt the love story could as easily have been set in the present day or even Victorian England; it seemed to me disconnected from the futuristic setting.

Sometimes it's nice to be completely, gobsmackingly wrong.

By the end of the tale, Miho's love story proves wonderfully revealing of this all-too plausible future Nagasaki. In this future, young people are so tied into the "feeds" to the video strips over their eyes that our protagonist Miho transmits a photo of someone she just met at a party to a friend, rather than simply pointing him out. Smith conveys the feel of this future through some wonderful imagery, such as an advertisement overlay to Miho's feed, by which a huge version of Aimi, the anime-dream-girl robot, seems to be emerging from the bay like Godzilla.

This society values the artificial above the natural, so Miho only feels sad for the misguided old man who tells her a real flower is more beautiful than a man-made one. Naturally then, when the narcissistic young man Miho loves falls instead for a shiny new Aimi model, it doesn't occur to Miho to tell him to grow up. Instead, she wonders how she can be more like a robot. Her solution to the problem is memorably disturbing.

I urge you to check out "Beauty Belongs to the Flowers," and if it doesn't grab you at first, keep going -- you'll be glad you did.

The only bad thing about "Beauty Belongs to the Flowers" is it led me to Smith's blog, where I read that he named his protagonist after the lead singer of Cibo Matto, and now I will have "Know Your Chicken" bouncing through my head for the rest of the day. Oh, well, small price!

I am glad to see Tor.com publishing more fiction by promising new authors, rather than just promoting its existing corps of novelists. Matthew Sanborn Smith's fiction has appeared at ChiZine and GUD, among other publications. He's also big into podcasts, at StarShipSofa and his own Beware The Hairy Mango. He has vowed to write nearly 900 more stories in the next ten years, so we will either be seeing much more of him or he will soon be institutionalized.

Book Review Teaser :: Ash by Malinda Lo

New on Fantastic Reviews is Aaron's review of Ash by Malinda Lo.

From Aaron's book review of Ash :
"Ash by Malinda Lo is a beautifully written novel, combining modern sensibilities with the elegant, wistful voice of a fairy tale. Published as a young adult novel, but equally enjoyable to adult readers, Ash is a loose retelling of the story of Cinderella. The set-up is roughly the same: the untimely deaths of her parents leave Aisling, Ash for short, in the care of a cruel stepmother and nasty stepsisters (although it turns out one of the sisters isn't so bad when you get to know her), who treat Ash as a servant. Her hopes for escape rest on assistance from the fairy world."

"From there, however, the details of the story bend in a decidedly un-Disney direction. For one thing, while there is a grand ball hosted by a charming prince who must choose a bride, it gradually becomes apparent that Ash is drawn instead to Kaisa, the King's huntress."

"Some have described Ash as a lesbian version of Cinderella, but I think that does the book a disservice. It is first and foremost a vividly imagined expansion of the Cinderella story, with a mysterious and ominous analogue to the fairy godmother, and a wonderfully realized protagonist who takes a far more active role in her own story than the traditional character. The fact that Ash is attracted to the King's huntress rather than the prince is only one of many ways in which she defies her fate and others' expectations...."

To read the entire review -> Ash

Story of the Week :: Losing Your Grip at Linger Fiction

I won't cheapen the Story Recommendation of the Week by giving one to myself, but I will at least pause to note that my story Losing Your Grip has been posted in the February 2011 issue of Linger Fiction. Check it out!

This is my third fiction sale, and my second publication, since Writers of the Future, Volume XXVII isn't out yet. Will there be more???????

Writers of the Future Field Completed

The Fourth Quarter results for the Writers of the Future contest have been released -- apparently the judging for this quarter was hurried along to accommodate moving the award ceremony up to the spring, so this quarter's finalists were deprived of the pleasure of waiting month after agonizing month for their results.

Huge congratulations to Jeffrey Lyman, Patrick O'Sullivan and Adam Perin. I'm looking forward to meeting you at the Writers of the Future workshop this spring.

Book Review Teaser :: Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

New on Fantastic Reviews is Aaron's review of Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal.

From Aaron's book review of Shades of Milk and Honey :
"It's refreshing to see a fantasy novel based on Jane Austen that takes Austen seriously, rather than merely as fodder for a goofy parody like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and all its imitators. Shades of Milk and Honey, the first novel by Campbell Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal, is part fantasy, part romance, and all Jane Austen homage. It should appeal to every Austen reader and to anyone who enjoys light fantasy or romance; zombie fans may stay away."

"Shades of Milk and Honey takes place in an alternate version of Regency England, where one can learn to use "glamour" to create impressive optical illusions, such as bringing indoors all the images and sounds of a beautiful garden complete with birds and waterfalls. In this universe, glamour is nearly always employed for artistic effect and seldom used for military or commercial applications. British society as a whole is little changed by the existence of glamour...."

To read the entire review -> Shades of Milk and Honey

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: A Game of Lost Boys by Aaron Polson

My story recommendation of the week is for A Game of Lost Boys by Aaron Polson, from the January 2011 inaugural issue of Linger Fiction.

The ten-year-old protagonist of "A Game of Lost Boys" is still coming to grips with the loss five years earlier of his father, missing in action in Vietnam. Now his orphaned best friend is moving away, transferred to a different foster home. On one of their last nights together they wander a dark forest, trying to spook each other with scary stories, but the tales begin to strike too close to home.

I've read plenty of tales of mysterious, frightening things in the woods, but this one works particularly well because Polson brings it to a personal level. He conveys the parallels between the characters' boyish fears and their personal losses very effectively.

Aaron Polson has been publishing fiction for only a couple years, but has already sold short stories to Blood Lite II, Apex, Shimmer, and many other publications. His horror novel Loathsome, Dark and Deep is recently out from small publisher Belfire Press.

Linger Fiction is a new webzine, which I have a self-serving reason for promoting: the next issue will contain a story of mine. But I gladly admit that Linger must have lowered its standards for me, since my story has nowhere near the emotional impact of "A Game of Lost Boys."