The 2018 Hugo Awards for science-fiction and fantasy shortlist has recently been announced. I didn't contribute to the nomination process this time around (although I may register to vote) but here are my initial thoughts.
Best Novel
I've read two of the six novels on the shortlist. Yoon Ha Lee's Raven Stratagem is a considerable improvement on last year's Ninefox Gambit, which I admired more than I liked. I'm starting to see him as a potential successor to Iain M Banks and his intricate far-future epics. The novel is definitely a strong baseline for others on the shortlist to see if they can better, although it may suffer from being a sequel.
And with four other Best Novel award-winners on the shortlist (N K Jemisin, Ann Leckie, Kim Stanley Robinson and John Scalzi) to reckon with the competition could be steep. Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire, however, is merely default Scalzi: highly enjoyable space opera but no Redshirts, and not the remarkable work you'd expect to clinch the award.
Short fiction
Much to my surprise, I've read seven of the short fiction entries already, which is highly unusual. I've not been absolutely floored by any of them yet but here is what is setting the pace:
Novella: Sarah Gailey, River Of Teeth
Novelette: Sarah Pinsker, Wind Will Rove
Short Story: Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Fandom For Robots
Best series
A new category as of last year. I'm particularly pleased to see Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy up - it started well with City Of Stairs (my review here) and finished very strongly last year with City Of Miracles.
Best film (AKA Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form)
Probably the Hugo equivalent of the Group of Death, with Blade Runner 2049, Get Out, The Last Jedi, The Shape of Water, Thor: Ragnarok and the mighty Wonder Woman all battling it out.
Best Fan Writer
Nice to see a nod for Camestros Felapton, who I've nominated in previous years.
No block voting - hurray!
After last year's changes to the nomination process showed diminishing returns for block voting tactics it's a relief to see block voting entirely absent this year. Discussing the politics of this would take a whole other post, so I'll just say that it didn't noticeably improve the quality of the work on offer to the Hugo voter and in some cases actively prevented good work making it onto the shortlist.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Monday, April 9, 2018
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Vorrh! (Huh!) What is it good for?
Well, it was a good joke the first time around...
[some spoilers ahead]
Brian Catling is an artist and poet who has expanded into fiction, which probably explains a lot about The Vorrh, his first novel. It's poetic, impressionistic and filtered through Catling's own interests, idiosyncracies and predilictions.
It's also a sprawling, incoherent beast of nearly 600 pages that - if it didn't astound and horrify as much as it does - would at times be ejected out the window with force.
The Vorrh of the title is a Conradian heart-of-darkness rainforest in a fantastic colonial Africa, the name borrowed from Raymond Roussel's 1910 avant-garde travelogue Impressions of Africa. Roussel himself features in the book as one of the main characters, under the reductive alias of The Frenchman.
The forest is a place of revelation, mysterity and insanity, as well as a source of income for the settlers of Essenwald, the timber town at its edge. Catling uses both as a common thread for five overlapping stories, although one of them, concerning Victorian photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge is barely Vorrh-related at all and seems almost to be a palimpsest of an earlier work.
Well, I did mention this was a sprawling effort, didn't I?
It might be written in the fantastic mode, including magical weapons, angels, wise women, mythical beasts and cyclopses (Catling loves him a cyclops), but The Vorrh is a long way from the genre mainstream, however it's been marketed. Far better points of reference for the reader are gothic horror and magic realism, both of which I'm fortunately very much down with.
For a couple of good reasons, this is one of those books I dare say I will end up reading again. First, there are some plotlines in The Vorrh which are beautifuly told, working as short stories (existential horror, usually) in the broader narrative. The sections involving Roussel, making a creative pilgramage to the forest, are universally good.
Second, there's a lot going on here, as you might expect from a professor and polymath like Catling. He's happy to throw in a reference to this or that esoteric, technological or historical datum every few pages, such that I inevitably didn't get them all first time around.
But, and you have probably sensed some buts on the way throughout this review, this is one of those books where the author is clearly throwing a lot at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not all of it does - the dream monologue of the dog is a particularly low point, and generally the sex is your average bad literary sex. The prose too, verges on the purple at times; Catling's poetic instinct to try and knock every sentence out of the park is endearing, but not every description, not every metaphor works.
Not much of the plot is wrapped up by the end either. The presentation of the Vorrh as a part one of a trilogy might be more commercial contrivance than fact, and I suspect we're probably dealing with one epic 2,000 page novel here.
Tropes and traps
It's also hard to not write about The Vorrh and not address the challenges inherent in writing an 'African fantasy' from a white European perspective. To his credit, Catling rises to the challenge: his perspective is pretty clearly anti-colonial, and to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge no specific cullture is being bowdlerised in the name of fiction. The strand of the novel involving Roussel is a good critique of literary tourism, among the many other things that it is.
So a lot of obvious traps are avoided. Yet there are still problematic tropes here, in particularly the use of the forest and its inhabitants as a stand-in for the African Other: mysterious, magical, dangerous and unknowable. Catling isn't immune from cliche in his African magic either, and his use of a white character who goes native in one of the stories makes sense in context but is a bit of a tired substitution. Plus, the only black protagonist a) is a bit of a bad 'un b) is impressed into servitude c) dies.
None of which to say that The Vorrh isn't a good book, in some places an excellent one, nor to say that Catling isn't aware of the issues - I believe he is and has tried to make sure the novel includes its own critique of these stereotypes. But this may be a sticking point for some readers - each of which will reach their own judgement as to how much he gets the balance right.
[some spoilers ahead]
Brian Catling is an artist and poet who has expanded into fiction, which probably explains a lot about The Vorrh, his first novel. It's poetic, impressionistic and filtered through Catling's own interests, idiosyncracies and predilictions.
It's also a sprawling, incoherent beast of nearly 600 pages that - if it didn't astound and horrify as much as it does - would at times be ejected out the window with force.
The Vorrh of the title is a Conradian heart-of-darkness rainforest in a fantastic colonial Africa, the name borrowed from Raymond Roussel's 1910 avant-garde travelogue Impressions of Africa. Roussel himself features in the book as one of the main characters, under the reductive alias of The Frenchman.
The forest is a place of revelation, mysterity and insanity, as well as a source of income for the settlers of Essenwald, the timber town at its edge. Catling uses both as a common thread for five overlapping stories, although one of them, concerning Victorian photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge is barely Vorrh-related at all and seems almost to be a palimpsest of an earlier work.
Well, I did mention this was a sprawling effort, didn't I?
It might be written in the fantastic mode, including magical weapons, angels, wise women, mythical beasts and cyclopses (Catling loves him a cyclops), but The Vorrh is a long way from the genre mainstream, however it's been marketed. Far better points of reference for the reader are gothic horror and magic realism, both of which I'm fortunately very much down with.
For a couple of good reasons, this is one of those books I dare say I will end up reading again. First, there are some plotlines in The Vorrh which are beautifuly told, working as short stories (existential horror, usually) in the broader narrative. The sections involving Roussel, making a creative pilgramage to the forest, are universally good.
Second, there's a lot going on here, as you might expect from a professor and polymath like Catling. He's happy to throw in a reference to this or that esoteric, technological or historical datum every few pages, such that I inevitably didn't get them all first time around.
But, and you have probably sensed some buts on the way throughout this review, this is one of those books where the author is clearly throwing a lot at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not all of it does - the dream monologue of the dog is a particularly low point, and generally the sex is your average bad literary sex. The prose too, verges on the purple at times; Catling's poetic instinct to try and knock every sentence out of the park is endearing, but not every description, not every metaphor works.
Not much of the plot is wrapped up by the end either. The presentation of the Vorrh as a part one of a trilogy might be more commercial contrivance than fact, and I suspect we're probably dealing with one epic 2,000 page novel here.
Tropes and traps
It's also hard to not write about The Vorrh and not address the challenges inherent in writing an 'African fantasy' from a white European perspective. To his credit, Catling rises to the challenge: his perspective is pretty clearly anti-colonial, and to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge no specific cullture is being bowdlerised in the name of fiction. The strand of the novel involving Roussel is a good critique of literary tourism, among the many other things that it is.
So a lot of obvious traps are avoided. Yet there are still problematic tropes here, in particularly the use of the forest and its inhabitants as a stand-in for the African Other: mysterious, magical, dangerous and unknowable. Catling isn't immune from cliche in his African magic either, and his use of a white character who goes native in one of the stories makes sense in context but is a bit of a tired substitution. Plus, the only black protagonist a) is a bit of a bad 'un b) is impressed into servitude c) dies.
None of which to say that The Vorrh isn't a good book, in some places an excellent one, nor to say that Catling isn't aware of the issues - I believe he is and has tried to make sure the novel includes its own critique of these stereotypes. But this may be a sticking point for some readers - each of which will reach their own judgement as to how much he gets the balance right.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Hugo-nominated novel ranking update
1. Too Like The Lightning, Ada Palmer
2. All The Birds In The Sky, Charlie Jane Anders
3. Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
4. A Closed And Common Orbit, Becky Chambers
Gave up reading (but will retry): Death's End, Liu Cixin
Not yet read: The Obelisk Gate, N K Jemisin
The standout book on the list, at least provisionally, is Too Like The Lightning, for which there will be a review as soon as I can get round to it. Suffice to say for now that it's like no other SF novel I've read in the last few years and that counts for a lot in my world.
2. All The Birds In The Sky, Charlie Jane Anders
3. Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
4. A Closed And Common Orbit, Becky Chambers
Gave up reading (but will retry): Death's End, Liu Cixin
Not yet read: The Obelisk Gate, N K Jemisin
The standout book on the list, at least provisionally, is Too Like The Lightning, for which there will be a review as soon as I can get round to it. Suffice to say for now that it's like no other SF novel I've read in the last few years and that counts for a lot in my world.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
2017 Hugo nominations: a much more open field
I came home today to the news this year's Hugo Award nominations had been announced.
And you know what, it's mainly good news.
Getting the inside baseball point out of the way first, the first reason to be cheerful is that it's not a re-run of the problems the awards experienced in 2015 and 2016. After changes to the nomination process were agreed last year, the power of block voting has been much reduced.
Granted, former block voters the Rabid Puppies are still around, having adapted their approach to the new rules. Their picks have secured at least one nomination (out of six candidates) in around half of the categories. But even the bare fact it's a much more open field than the last two years is cause for celebration; it will be interesting to see if it translates for this reader into an improvement in overall quality.
Let's take a look at the contenders and see what leaps out.
Best Novel
I've read precisely one of the nominees - Charlie Jane Anders' All The Birds In The Sky - which I thought was a solid four-star effort and voted for its inclusion on this list. Previous 2015 and 2016 winners Cixin Liu and N K Jemisin are back with a trilogy-closer and a sequel respectively, so are presumably the early favourites.
And it's interesting to see Becky Chambers up for A Close And Common Orbit; having enjoyed A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet a great deal but not necessarily seen it as award-worthy, let's see what this loose sequel does for me. Yoon Ha Lee and Ada Palmer, on the other hand, are entirely unknown territory.
In short, an intriguing mix of the known and unknown, and just the sort of line-up to see me paying up for my Worldcon membership to become a Hugo voter so I have an excuse to read my way through them. :)
Short fiction categories
Essentially the Hugo's are my opportunity to read what I hope is some of the best short SF and fantasy fiction of the year, as they don't normally form part of my literary consumption patterns. So I'm excited to see Lois McMaster Bujold, N K Jemisin (again) China Mieville and Alyssa Wong among the nominees, especially the last-named, as her entries last year were excellent. And those are just the authors with which I'm already familar...
I'm also looking forward to the Semiprozine category for much the same reason.
The rest...
As you can probably tell, the big-ticket fiction categories are mainly what interest me, but here's what's grabbed me from the others.
- Any Best Related Work category that manages to include Kameron Hurley, Carrie Fisher,
Robert Silverberg, Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin is alright with me.
- I thought Arrival was great and would probably award it first place in Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form without hesitation.
- [prays silently for anything in Best Professional Artist or Best Fan Artist to be truly great]
- A little sad to see File 770 decline its nomination for Best Fanzine as it's continued to play a vital role in reporting fandom over the past year. But it has won seven times in the past, so I'm sure the hat-tip of a nomination plus another for proprietor Mike Glyer in Best Fan Writer will suffice.
- I remain to be convinced by the need for a Best Series category, here for now as a one-off, but it's fab to see Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London series up there with the other nominees. Simultaneously very British in its approach and very contemporary in its execution, this is actually a good example of a serial work where the whole exceeds the sum of their parts, fun though all of them are.
Can you tell I nominated it? :)
- Am unable to decide if I'm more surprised by a nomination for Chuck Tingle in Best Fan Writer or Laurie Penny in Best New Writer, but a hearty welcome to both.
Voting will open shortly - in the meantime let the reading commence!
And you know what, it's mainly good news.
Getting the inside baseball point out of the way first, the first reason to be cheerful is that it's not a re-run of the problems the awards experienced in 2015 and 2016. After changes to the nomination process were agreed last year, the power of block voting has been much reduced.
Granted, former block voters the Rabid Puppies are still around, having adapted their approach to the new rules. Their picks have secured at least one nomination (out of six candidates) in around half of the categories. But even the bare fact it's a much more open field than the last two years is cause for celebration; it will be interesting to see if it translates for this reader into an improvement in overall quality.
Let's take a look at the contenders and see what leaps out.
Best Novel
I've read precisely one of the nominees - Charlie Jane Anders' All The Birds In The Sky - which I thought was a solid four-star effort and voted for its inclusion on this list. Previous 2015 and 2016 winners Cixin Liu and N K Jemisin are back with a trilogy-closer and a sequel respectively, so are presumably the early favourites.
And it's interesting to see Becky Chambers up for A Close And Common Orbit; having enjoyed A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet a great deal but not necessarily seen it as award-worthy, let's see what this loose sequel does for me. Yoon Ha Lee and Ada Palmer, on the other hand, are entirely unknown territory.
In short, an intriguing mix of the known and unknown, and just the sort of line-up to see me paying up for my Worldcon membership to become a Hugo voter so I have an excuse to read my way through them. :)
Short fiction categories
Essentially the Hugo's are my opportunity to read what I hope is some of the best short SF and fantasy fiction of the year, as they don't normally form part of my literary consumption patterns. So I'm excited to see Lois McMaster Bujold, N K Jemisin (again) China Mieville and Alyssa Wong among the nominees, especially the last-named, as her entries last year were excellent. And those are just the authors with which I'm already familar...
I'm also looking forward to the Semiprozine category for much the same reason.
The rest...
As you can probably tell, the big-ticket fiction categories are mainly what interest me, but here's what's grabbed me from the others.
- Any Best Related Work category that manages to include Kameron Hurley, Carrie Fisher,
Robert Silverberg, Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin is alright with me.
- I thought Arrival was great and would probably award it first place in Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form without hesitation.
- [prays silently for anything in Best Professional Artist or Best Fan Artist to be truly great]
- A little sad to see File 770 decline its nomination for Best Fanzine as it's continued to play a vital role in reporting fandom over the past year. But it has won seven times in the past, so I'm sure the hat-tip of a nomination plus another for proprietor Mike Glyer in Best Fan Writer will suffice.
- I remain to be convinced by the need for a Best Series category, here for now as a one-off, but it's fab to see Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London series up there with the other nominees. Simultaneously very British in its approach and very contemporary in its execution, this is actually a good example of a serial work where the whole exceeds the sum of their parts, fun though all of them are.
Can you tell I nominated it? :)
- Am unable to decide if I'm more surprised by a nomination for Chuck Tingle in Best Fan Writer or Laurie Penny in Best New Writer, but a hearty welcome to both.
Voting will open shortly - in the meantime let the reading commence!
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Death metal Somerset Maughan
Currently enjoying Europe In Winter by Dave Hutchinson (write-up of his entire Fractured Europe trilogy possibly forthcoming), not least for writing like this.
"Juhan was wearing skinny black jeans, a black T-shirt and a massive black leather jacket with jangly silver zippers, which hung from his shoulders like the wings of a pteroactyl. In appearance, it was as if Somerset Maugham had, in the final years of his life, decided to take up death metal."
Douglas Adams would be proud.
"Juhan was wearing skinny black jeans, a black T-shirt and a massive black leather jacket with jangly silver zippers, which hung from his shoulders like the wings of a pteroactyl. In appearance, it was as if Somerset Maugham had, in the final years of his life, decided to take up death metal."
Douglas Adams would be proud.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
2016 in books
My favourite reading from 2016. Thanks due in particular to family, friends, Mr B's Emporium in Bath with its book spa service and the Hugo Awards for passing many of these my way.
Links are to reviews on the blog.
Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Underground, Broken Homes, Foxglove Summer and this year's The Hanging Tree
Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys
Charlie Jane Anders - All The Birds In The Sky
Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
H G Bissinger, Friday Night Lights
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Demon
Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
Samuel R Delany, Dhalgren
Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, The Man In The High Castle and Valis
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln
Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree
Barbara Harford, Greenham Common: Women At The Wire
Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
Dave Hutchinson, Europe After Midnight
N K Jemisin, The Fifth Season
Ursula Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters
Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest
R K Narayan, The Bachelor Of Arts
Naomi Novik, Uprooted
Nnedi, Okorafor, Binti
Sydney Padua, The Thrilling Adventures Of Babbage And Lovelace
Joanna Russ, Extraordinary People
Philip Sandifer, Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons
Neil Stephenson, Seveneves
Charles Stross, The Annihilation Score
Koushun Takami, Battle Royale
James Tiptree Jr, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Catherynne M Valente, Deathless
Jo Walton, The Just City
Alyssa Wong, Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers and The Fisher Queen
Links are to reviews on the blog.
Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Underground, Broken Homes, Foxglove Summer and this year's The Hanging Tree
Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys
Charlie Jane Anders - All The Birds In The Sky
Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
H G Bissinger, Friday Night Lights
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Demon
Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
Samuel R Delany, Dhalgren
Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, The Man In The High Castle and Valis
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln
Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree
Barbara Harford, Greenham Common: Women At The Wire
Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
Dave Hutchinson, Europe After Midnight
N K Jemisin, The Fifth Season
Ursula Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters
Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest
R K Narayan, The Bachelor Of Arts
Naomi Novik, Uprooted
Nnedi, Okorafor, Binti
Sydney Padua, The Thrilling Adventures Of Babbage And Lovelace
Joanna Russ, Extraordinary People
Philip Sandifer, Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons
Neil Stephenson, Seveneves
Charles Stross, The Annihilation Score
Koushun Takami, Battle Royale
James Tiptree Jr, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Catherynne M Valente, Deathless
Jo Walton, The Just City
Alyssa Wong, Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers and The Fisher Queen
Thursday, September 1, 2016
The shortlist that never was
One of the interesting geeky things about the Hugo's is that after the awards have been announced they publish a load of voting statistics, including the top 15 nominations in every category, so you can see how close work that you liked got to being one of the shortlisted top 5.
For example, it's nice to know that other people (about 6-7% of nominators) joined me in putting forward The Just City by Jo Walton and Ken Liu's The Grace Of Kings, two very different books that I enjoyed a great deal.
This information is also particularly interesting this year since it means that you can reconstruct the shortlist that never was - who got left off because of block voting for the Rabid Puppies slate. For example:
- Becky Chambers (of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet fame) would probably have reached the final five for the John W Campbell Best New Writer award.
- Alyssa Wong's vampiric Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers and Ursula Vernon's modern-day fairy tale Wooden Feathers would have been on the ballot for Best Short Story.
- Eric Flint would have probably made it onto the shortlist for Best Fan Writer. Primarily a SF/fantasy author in his own right, he wrote some lucid and trenchant commentary on last year's Hugo controversy which was well worth reading.
And the thing is, it's hard to argue that all the work which leapfrogged them onto the Hugo shortlist thanks to the voting slate was demonstrably better. In some cases, it was quite the opposite. Vernon and Wong were kept off the final ballot for Best Short Story by a piece of space dinosaur erotica (not a phrase I thought I'd ever be typing) and a satirical poem in poor taste about the awards.
For example, it's nice to know that other people (about 6-7% of nominators) joined me in putting forward The Just City by Jo Walton and Ken Liu's The Grace Of Kings, two very different books that I enjoyed a great deal.
This information is also particularly interesting this year since it means that you can reconstruct the shortlist that never was - who got left off because of block voting for the Rabid Puppies slate. For example:
- Becky Chambers (of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet fame) would probably have reached the final five for the John W Campbell Best New Writer award.
- Alyssa Wong's vampiric Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers and Ursula Vernon's modern-day fairy tale Wooden Feathers would have been on the ballot for Best Short Story.
- Eric Flint would have probably made it onto the shortlist for Best Fan Writer. Primarily a SF/fantasy author in his own right, he wrote some lucid and trenchant commentary on last year's Hugo controversy which was well worth reading.
And the thing is, it's hard to argue that all the work which leapfrogged them onto the Hugo shortlist thanks to the voting slate was demonstrably better. In some cases, it was quite the opposite. Vernon and Wong were kept off the final ballot for Best Short Story by a piece of space dinosaur erotica (not a phrase I thought I'd ever be typing) and a satirical poem in poor taste about the awards.
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Anger is an energy - N K Jemisin's The Fifth Season
Edited to add: congratulations to The Fifth Season and N K Jemisin on their Hugo win in Best Novel!
To begin with, a prediction: one day soon N K Jemisin will write a great novel.
The Fifth Season isn't quite it, but it's such a giant step forward from anything else I've read by her that it went from 'novel I was least looking forward to on the Hugo shortlist' to a very pleasant surprise.
Everything I've read by Jemisin has always delivered conceptually, and The Fifth Season is no exception. Imagine a science-fantasy world of such tectonic instability that disaster - volcano, earthquake, tsunami, climate change, starvation - threatens on a regular basis. Where orogenes, those with the power to control the forces of the earth, are respected yet hated and feared, cossetted yet coerced into labouring for 'the greater good'.
The Fifth Season tells tales of three orogene women at different stages of their career. In the main plotline, Essun is searching for her missing daughter and infanticidal husband against the backdrop of a civilisation-ending volcanic eruption. But the novel also flashes back to Damaya's experiences of training and Syenite's unpredictable field mission with Alabaster, a seismic wunderkind with all kinds of issues.
If that sounds grim - that's because it is. It's crapsack world time again, and this is one of those novels where a good deed rarely goes unpunished. Essun, our notional protagoist, is herself a mass-murderer out of anger and perceived necessity, while the implicit body-count from the eruption begins to rival Seveneves, another novel about the end of the world.
Yet The Fifth Season is no exercise in cheap nihilism. Jemisin sets up a world which is always waiting for the hammer of natural disaster to fall and therefore must function according to an iron code - part Darwinian calculus, part inherited wisdom - in which sentiment plays no part.
And while the reader is not asked to condone the actions of orogenes driven to revolt - despised and spat upon as they are - their root causes can be easily understood, even sympathised with. You'll be unsurprised to hear that both the orogenes' situation and their response function as a fertile metaphor for anger and oppression; correspondingly the novel makes signposting nods in the direction of race and gender.
The Fifth Season doesn't offer simple parallels or didactic exercises though - these are themes not tablets of stone. It's a cracking story and a great exercise in world-building, regardless of political context.
But anger is an energy, as John Lydon pointed out some time ago. And it's anger expelled in the form of concentrated story that gives this book an edge and a boldness that lifts it above anything N K Jemisin has done before.
To begin with, a prediction: one day soon N K Jemisin will write a great novel.
The Fifth Season isn't quite it, but it's such a giant step forward from anything else I've read by her that it went from 'novel I was least looking forward to on the Hugo shortlist' to a very pleasant surprise.
Everything I've read by Jemisin has always delivered conceptually, and The Fifth Season is no exception. Imagine a science-fantasy world of such tectonic instability that disaster - volcano, earthquake, tsunami, climate change, starvation - threatens on a regular basis. Where orogenes, those with the power to control the forces of the earth, are respected yet hated and feared, cossetted yet coerced into labouring for 'the greater good'.
The Fifth Season tells tales of three orogene women at different stages of their career. In the main plotline, Essun is searching for her missing daughter and infanticidal husband against the backdrop of a civilisation-ending volcanic eruption. But the novel also flashes back to Damaya's experiences of training and Syenite's unpredictable field mission with Alabaster, a seismic wunderkind with all kinds of issues.
If that sounds grim - that's because it is. It's crapsack world time again, and this is one of those novels where a good deed rarely goes unpunished. Essun, our notional protagoist, is herself a mass-murderer out of anger and perceived necessity, while the implicit body-count from the eruption begins to rival Seveneves, another novel about the end of the world.
Yet The Fifth Season is no exercise in cheap nihilism. Jemisin sets up a world which is always waiting for the hammer of natural disaster to fall and therefore must function according to an iron code - part Darwinian calculus, part inherited wisdom - in which sentiment plays no part.
And while the reader is not asked to condone the actions of orogenes driven to revolt - despised and spat upon as they are - their root causes can be easily understood, even sympathised with. You'll be unsurprised to hear that both the orogenes' situation and their response function as a fertile metaphor for anger and oppression; correspondingly the novel makes signposting nods in the direction of race and gender.
The Fifth Season doesn't offer simple parallels or didactic exercises though - these are themes not tablets of stone. It's a cracking story and a great exercise in world-building, regardless of political context.
But anger is an energy, as John Lydon pointed out some time ago. And it's anger expelled in the form of concentrated story that gives this book an edge and a boldness that lifts it above anything N K Jemisin has done before.
Friday, July 22, 2016
YA goes gothic: Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree
A quick review for this remarkable YA-goes-Victorian-gothic novel from last year, recommended to me by family and friends.
Can lies, disinformation and fakery ever serve a higher purpose? What if you felt so passionately about an as-yet indeterminate truth that you were willing to fabricate evidence in its favour? To what extent to we make our own reality?
Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree wraps these questions in a 19th century magic realist murder mystery and tells the surface story so elegantly it's easy to overlook the themes that lie below.
The tree of the title is both the central metaphor and the plot engine for the book. A legendary plant, when fed with a widely believed falsehood or rumour, it grants its keeper oracular visions of the particular truth they seek, be that as mundane as one's medical condition or as profound as evolution.
People will kill to possess the Lie Tree for the answers it purports to give, as the novel demonstrates. One such unlucky owner and murder victim is the Reverend Erasmus Sunderby, a fossil expert drawn to a remote island with his family under false pretenses. His young daughter Faith's clandestine investigation of his death and burgeoning relationship with the Tree forms the heart of the novel.
One of the great thing about a whodunnit is that it provides a clear foundation for a book - the pendulum of suspicion can swing back and forth, clues are progressively accquired, new insights into character are gained. The Lie Tree is a very nicely structured book in that sense.
But, more than that, it means that Hardinge can weave in sophisticated themes around this tough yet flexible structure, like the phantasmagorical experience of grief, the evolutionary debates of the Victorian era and the limited options facing middle class women of the time. These very much enhance rather than detract from the story itself.
A real doozy of a concept, then, but also a very good, extremely readable book.
Can lies, disinformation and fakery ever serve a higher purpose? What if you felt so passionately about an as-yet indeterminate truth that you were willing to fabricate evidence in its favour? To what extent to we make our own reality?
Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree wraps these questions in a 19th century magic realist murder mystery and tells the surface story so elegantly it's easy to overlook the themes that lie below.
The tree of the title is both the central metaphor and the plot engine for the book. A legendary plant, when fed with a widely believed falsehood or rumour, it grants its keeper oracular visions of the particular truth they seek, be that as mundane as one's medical condition or as profound as evolution.
People will kill to possess the Lie Tree for the answers it purports to give, as the novel demonstrates. One such unlucky owner and murder victim is the Reverend Erasmus Sunderby, a fossil expert drawn to a remote island with his family under false pretenses. His young daughter Faith's clandestine investigation of his death and burgeoning relationship with the Tree forms the heart of the novel.
One of the great thing about a whodunnit is that it provides a clear foundation for a book - the pendulum of suspicion can swing back and forth, clues are progressively accquired, new insights into character are gained. The Lie Tree is a very nicely structured book in that sense.
But, more than that, it means that Hardinge can weave in sophisticated themes around this tough yet flexible structure, like the phantasmagorical experience of grief, the evolutionary debates of the Victorian era and the limited options facing middle class women of the time. These very much enhance rather than detract from the story itself.
A real doozy of a concept, then, but also a very good, extremely readable book.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Mystery authors dominating Amazon bestsellers list
Out of curiosity, I checked what Amazon's 100 biggest selling fantasy and SF novels are right now. It's updated hourly, so the link above will give different information over time, but you can still draw some interesting information from it as a snapshot.
- All but one of the top ten are either by J K Rowling or George R R Martin, and I can't see that changing much for a while.
- Rowling and Martin together provide 14 of the top 100 entries.
- The only other authors to have 2 books in the top 100 are Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, jointly for their Long Earth series.
- Nearly 1 in 5 (19) are there as £1 or less deals.
- Over 1 in 4 (27) are there are £2 or less deals.
- Most of the cheap books are for authors I've never heard of, Peter Hamilton excepted. That doesn't make them bad, of course, just unknown to me.
- Authors known to me other than Rowling and Martin make up only 15 of the top 100. And I'm reasonably widely read and have good name recognition for authors I see on the shelves.
- No, the unknown authors aren't just urban fantasy romances (although some are).
- No, they aren't other genres mistagged (with one or two honourable exceptions).
- Add in Rowling and Martin to the other known authors, compensate for imperfect knowledge and I'm still wondering who 3 in 5 of these best selling authors are.
Where did all these Games Workshop novels come from?
Here's a thing I discovered the other day in my local library - nearly a fifth of the books in the adult science-fiction and fantasy section were Warhammer (40K or Fantasy) novelisations.
That seems like a lot relative to the actual quality of the books - and yes, I have read some of them. But I guess you can explain it by the fact that the library-using demographic skews either young or old, and many a teen cuts their gaming teeth on Games Workshop.
I couldn't find any reportage on this phenomenon, so it might actually be worth looking into, if anyone's reading this.
That seems like a lot relative to the actual quality of the books - and yes, I have read some of them. But I guess you can explain it by the fact that the library-using demographic skews either young or old, and many a teen cuts their gaming teeth on Games Workshop.
I couldn't find any reportage on this phenomenon, so it might actually be worth looking into, if anyone's reading this.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Alyssa Wong creeps me out
Two weeks on, and Alyssa Wong's still creeping me out. The four short stories included in my Hugo voters' packet to support her nomination for Best New Writer* (AKA the John W Campbell Award) are formidable exercises in body and transformation horror. They're several shades grimmer than I usually care to go, but she's darn good at what she does.
Hungry Daughters Of Starving Mothers, The Fisher Queen, Santos de Sampaguitas and Scarecrow (all available online at the links given) take in vampires of the id, mermaids of the Mekong delta, spirit magic in the Philippines and homophobic bullying in small town America respectively.
And as you might guess from that brief outline, Wong's protagonists and settings are generally not those offered by your typical genre yarn. Whether geographically or psychologically, we're outside white, straight America here.
I tend to find this is good for me - as product of white, straight Britain it stops me reading lazily through the prism of my own life experience and preconceptions. And in this case the pay off in the form of Wong's writing certainly makes the imaginative leap worthwhile. These stories have stuck with me in a way that many don't.
Maybe it's the short story format or the feminist (not to mention LGBT) sensibility with which Wong writes, maybe it's the underplayed brutality of the stories, but there's also something here reminscent of Tiptree. I know as I type that this might be seen as a lazy comparison to roll out, but having only recently read Tiptree it feels relevant and is is high praise indeed in Mothworld.
My only (very constructive) criticism would be that Wong is trying to compress a lot into her work - they do read like pocket novels. It could be that longer-form writing would give her characters more room to breathe and the decisions on which her stories turn more weight.
That said, this is a very strong body of work to be coming out of the gates with so early in her career. Three of these stories have won awards, with Hungry Daughters winning last year's Nebula for best short story. For this reader, all of them are comfortably better than anything in last year's Hugo short fiction categories.
So, with one more nominee on the Campbell shortlist to read, it looks like it's between Wong and Andy Weir for my first place vote. And for all Weir's deserved success, I'm leaning towards Wong as the deserved winner and better writer.
*Wong is the only nominee on the Campbell shortlist not on the Rabid Puppy slate.
Hungry Daughters Of Starving Mothers, The Fisher Queen, Santos de Sampaguitas and Scarecrow (all available online at the links given) take in vampires of the id, mermaids of the Mekong delta, spirit magic in the Philippines and homophobic bullying in small town America respectively.
And as you might guess from that brief outline, Wong's protagonists and settings are generally not those offered by your typical genre yarn. Whether geographically or psychologically, we're outside white, straight America here.
I tend to find this is good for me - as product of white, straight Britain it stops me reading lazily through the prism of my own life experience and preconceptions. And in this case the pay off in the form of Wong's writing certainly makes the imaginative leap worthwhile. These stories have stuck with me in a way that many don't.
Maybe it's the short story format or the feminist (not to mention LGBT) sensibility with which Wong writes, maybe it's the underplayed brutality of the stories, but there's also something here reminscent of Tiptree. I know as I type that this might be seen as a lazy comparison to roll out, but having only recently read Tiptree it feels relevant and is is high praise indeed in Mothworld.
My only (very constructive) criticism would be that Wong is trying to compress a lot into her work - they do read like pocket novels. It could be that longer-form writing would give her characters more room to breathe and the decisions on which her stories turn more weight.
That said, this is a very strong body of work to be coming out of the gates with so early in her career. Three of these stories have won awards, with Hungry Daughters winning last year's Nebula for best short story. For this reader, all of them are comfortably better than anything in last year's Hugo short fiction categories.
So, with one more nominee on the Campbell shortlist to read, it looks like it's between Wong and Andy Weir for my first place vote. And for all Weir's deserved success, I'm leaning towards Wong as the deserved winner and better writer.
*Wong is the only nominee on the Campbell shortlist not on the Rabid Puppy slate.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Grimdark-tagnan: Sebastian de Castell's Traitor's Blade
One of the reasons I'm a little hesitant to read fantasy these days is that I'm over familiar with the cliches. Sacred monarchy, prophecy, quests, missing heirs, evil dukes - it's hard to do something new with the same old materials. And the grittier end of modern fantasy tends to cynically upend the tropes and then not do anything interesting with the inversion, which is almost more annoying.
There are still contemporary novels in the genre that carry with them the shock of the new (City Of Stairs) or the thrill of the old (The Goblin Emperor). And sometimes I'll come across a craftsman like Stephen Erikson, squarely in the epic fantasy/my awesome DnD campaign tradition, where the forensic attention to worldbuilding enhances rather than detracts from the writing.
Occasionally, though, I'll come across books like Sebastian de Castell's Traitor's Blade, gleefully emitting fantasy tropes without a shred of repentance.
And you know what? I'll surprise myself by quite enjoying them.
De Castell is up for the nearly-but-not-quite-a-Hugo-Award that is the Campbell Award for New Writers.* And with four novels to his credit, he's included Traitor's Blade in the Hugo Voters' packet.
This is the first in a four-part series of books about the Greatcoats: travelling magistrates and swordsmen dispensing the King's justice. At least, until the King was overthrown by corrupt and quarrelsome dukes and his men left to roam the land - hated, mistrusted and feared.
The backdrop - venal aristocrats versus enlightened monarchs, city-states, gunpowder weapons, poisoners and courtesans - gives off distinct Renaissance Europe vibes, as do the somewhat musketeer-eque Greatcoats. Although de Castell puts a desert one side of his kingdom and howling mountain barbarians on the other, because fantasy, people!
The plot sees chief-Greatcoat Falcio and his compadres Kest (master swordsman) and Brasti (master bowman) fallen on hard times, hunted and hired on as caravan guards to nobles of uncertain morals, all the while trading banter and trying to fulfil the last wishes of their beloved King.
Like all too many modern fantasies, their adventures come with a high on-stage body count and the odd bit of torture. But this is also a strangely high-minded form of grimdark, with de Castell not just concerned to show good (or at least 'good') triumphant and evil defeated but also to explain why.
What this allows his characters to do is indulge his talent for dialogue as they ponder these ethical questions. In this sense his creation of an order of magistrates to focus the story on is well done indeed as it means the story always returns to matters of honour, power and justice.
Most of these conversations do end up segueing into one of his well-described if lengthy action scenes, but at least you'll know there'll have been some light discussion of legitimate authority in the early modern state beforehand. And at one point de Castell lets Falcio go full magistrate and pass judgement - it's a skillful bit of rhetoric and gives the book its undeniable punch-the-sky moment.
And I've just realised what Traitor's Blade reminds me of a little: grimdark David Eddings.** Slightly predictable and contrived plot, lots of well-used fantasy material, stock character types, villains being irredeemably villainous, the occasional misstep*** - all present and correct. And yet, something in de Castell's skill for narration and dialogue and the alchemy by which all the other elements are combined make the story very readable.
This novel, then is very effective at what it does. It doesn't make de Castell the best new writer of 2016 - or even necessarily the best writer on the Campbell Award shortlist - but it does mean he's likely to have a long and successful career and have time to get better.
And it also suggests I might pick up the next book in the Greatcoats series at some point when I'm in the mood for this sort of thing.
Notes
* De Castell was on the Rabid Puppy slate but as far as I can tell has no connection to the culture wars dimension of the whole thing. The selection of a fairly orthodox piece of fantasy certainly reflects some of the literary arguments when this happened for the 2015 Hugo's.
** Back in 2012 I looked back with some affection at David Eddings, but without rose-tinted spectacles, here and here.
*** There's a lot of cliche I'll forgive in a book like this, it seems, but one thing that did annoy me was the fridging of Falcio's wife. Surely de Castell could have found a better way of setting up his protagonist's motivation than this old and problematic saw?
There are still contemporary novels in the genre that carry with them the shock of the new (City Of Stairs) or the thrill of the old (The Goblin Emperor). And sometimes I'll come across a craftsman like Stephen Erikson, squarely in the epic fantasy/my awesome DnD campaign tradition, where the forensic attention to worldbuilding enhances rather than detracts from the writing.
Occasionally, though, I'll come across books like Sebastian de Castell's Traitor's Blade, gleefully emitting fantasy tropes without a shred of repentance.
And you know what? I'll surprise myself by quite enjoying them.
De Castell is up for the nearly-but-not-quite-a-Hugo-Award that is the Campbell Award for New Writers.* And with four novels to his credit, he's included Traitor's Blade in the Hugo Voters' packet.
This is the first in a four-part series of books about the Greatcoats: travelling magistrates and swordsmen dispensing the King's justice. At least, until the King was overthrown by corrupt and quarrelsome dukes and his men left to roam the land - hated, mistrusted and feared.
The backdrop - venal aristocrats versus enlightened monarchs, city-states, gunpowder weapons, poisoners and courtesans - gives off distinct Renaissance Europe vibes, as do the somewhat musketeer-eque Greatcoats. Although de Castell puts a desert one side of his kingdom and howling mountain barbarians on the other, because fantasy, people!
The plot sees chief-Greatcoat Falcio and his compadres Kest (master swordsman) and Brasti (master bowman) fallen on hard times, hunted and hired on as caravan guards to nobles of uncertain morals, all the while trading banter and trying to fulfil the last wishes of their beloved King.
Like all too many modern fantasies, their adventures come with a high on-stage body count and the odd bit of torture. But this is also a strangely high-minded form of grimdark, with de Castell not just concerned to show good (or at least 'good') triumphant and evil defeated but also to explain why.
What this allows his characters to do is indulge his talent for dialogue as they ponder these ethical questions. In this sense his creation of an order of magistrates to focus the story on is well done indeed as it means the story always returns to matters of honour, power and justice.
Most of these conversations do end up segueing into one of his well-described if lengthy action scenes, but at least you'll know there'll have been some light discussion of legitimate authority in the early modern state beforehand. And at one point de Castell lets Falcio go full magistrate and pass judgement - it's a skillful bit of rhetoric and gives the book its undeniable punch-the-sky moment.
And I've just realised what Traitor's Blade reminds me of a little: grimdark David Eddings.** Slightly predictable and contrived plot, lots of well-used fantasy material, stock character types, villains being irredeemably villainous, the occasional misstep*** - all present and correct. And yet, something in de Castell's skill for narration and dialogue and the alchemy by which all the other elements are combined make the story very readable.
This novel, then is very effective at what it does. It doesn't make de Castell the best new writer of 2016 - or even necessarily the best writer on the Campbell Award shortlist - but it does mean he's likely to have a long and successful career and have time to get better.
And it also suggests I might pick up the next book in the Greatcoats series at some point when I'm in the mood for this sort of thing.
Notes
* De Castell was on the Rabid Puppy slate but as far as I can tell has no connection to the culture wars dimension of the whole thing. The selection of a fairly orthodox piece of fantasy certainly reflects some of the literary arguments when this happened for the 2015 Hugo's.
** Back in 2012 I looked back with some affection at David Eddings, but without rose-tinted spectacles, here and here.
*** There's a lot of cliche I'll forgive in a book like this, it seems, but one thing that did annoy me was the fridging of Falcio's wife. Surely de Castell could have found a better way of setting up his protagonist's motivation than this old and problematic saw?
Saturday, May 28, 2016
If MetaFilter were filk-fixated: File 770
It's time to kick off the Hugo review season with a look at the nominees I'm already familiar with. And where better to start than with two linked contenders who serve as an excellent point of orientation for the newcomer: the blog/fanzine File 770 and its editor/publisher/ Mike Glyer.
The electronic side of the File 770 operation is much more prolific these days - with regular updates (or 'Pixel Scrolls') collating genre news and opinion from fandom, SF/fantasy writers, publishers, film, TV and more. Notwithstanding an understandably American slant, it's an excellent resource to skim and take the temperature of the scene at any given moment.
Or to put it another way: imagine if MetaFilter were fixated on filking, the details of lawsuits against Star Trek fan films and voting systems for literary awards. There, that's File 770.
The zine, nearly forty years old now, can also be read on the site and comes out once or twice a year. Since it tends to focus on the US fan community, its conventions and its personalities, it's more for the hardcore. So it's mainly the blog I'm focussing on here, but probably the closest British equivalent of either is cult legend David Langford's similarly long-running Ansible, whose website and newsletter fulfil similar functions in the UK.
File 770 is no stranger to a Hugo Award - it's won six times since the 1980's for Best Fanzine (which nowadays also includes blogs) - while Glyer has snagged another three for Best Fan Writer. So ordinarily the fact that they've both been nominated again would cause mild eye-rolling and a disinclination to back them if other worthy contenders presented themselves.
But that would be to overlook the fact that File 770 has also perfomed an exemplary service to fandom and the global science-fiction and fantasy community by reporting on the Hugo controversies over the past year. For people like me who are interested in what's going on, it's been the go-to resource to educate ourselves.
It helps that - occasional op ed articles aside - the blog not only links back to the original stories but quotes liberally from the sources themselves. Glyer and other contributors usually confine themselves to introducing each item rather than responding to it, although occasionally a little mild frustration can be detected.
In short - if File 770 had an DnD alignment, it would be Lawful Neutral, or at least trying to live up to it. Which is really what you need from a news service.
The File 770 community, on the other hand, existing in a ecosystem of comments on individual blog posts, is all about opinions plural. Whether it's taking a position on the stories of the day, swapping book or recipe recommendations or engaging in an epic comic riff about what to say to the Balrog in Moria (archived here), the threads are always insightful. Occasionally a little hot-tempered, but by comparison to Twitter (say) they're a paragon of civility. :)
I nominated File 770 and Mike Glyer in my Hugo ballot mainly for the Pixel Scrolls, but also for enabling this rich and varied conversation among fans. As it turns out, both were on the Rabid Puppy slate that swept the shortlist, albeit in the 'didn't ask to be there, probably would have been on the shortlist anyway' category, so I see no reason to hold that against them.
The main criticism I could level at File 770 is inherent in the nature of the site - that news reporting, especially when couched mainly in quotes from other sites, doesn't lend itself to the kind of bravura, turn-on-a-sixpence writing that I usually feel drawn to. And the op-ed pieces are often too specifically focussed on US fandom to reel me in, too.
However, I still feel this is more than offset by the value that File 770 has provided both to fans and people like me in the peanut gallery. Without jumping the gun on how I'll vote, it certainly lays down a benchmark that anyone else in the Fanzine and Fan Writer categories will find tough to beat.
The electronic side of the File 770 operation is much more prolific these days - with regular updates (or 'Pixel Scrolls') collating genre news and opinion from fandom, SF/fantasy writers, publishers, film, TV and more. Notwithstanding an understandably American slant, it's an excellent resource to skim and take the temperature of the scene at any given moment.
Or to put it another way: imagine if MetaFilter were fixated on filking, the details of lawsuits against Star Trek fan films and voting systems for literary awards. There, that's File 770.
The zine, nearly forty years old now, can also be read on the site and comes out once or twice a year. Since it tends to focus on the US fan community, its conventions and its personalities, it's more for the hardcore. So it's mainly the blog I'm focussing on here, but probably the closest British equivalent of either is cult legend David Langford's similarly long-running Ansible, whose website and newsletter fulfil similar functions in the UK.
File 770 is no stranger to a Hugo Award - it's won six times since the 1980's for Best Fanzine (which nowadays also includes blogs) - while Glyer has snagged another three for Best Fan Writer. So ordinarily the fact that they've both been nominated again would cause mild eye-rolling and a disinclination to back them if other worthy contenders presented themselves.
But that would be to overlook the fact that File 770 has also perfomed an exemplary service to fandom and the global science-fiction and fantasy community by reporting on the Hugo controversies over the past year. For people like me who are interested in what's going on, it's been the go-to resource to educate ourselves.
It helps that - occasional op ed articles aside - the blog not only links back to the original stories but quotes liberally from the sources themselves. Glyer and other contributors usually confine themselves to introducing each item rather than responding to it, although occasionally a little mild frustration can be detected.
In short - if File 770 had an DnD alignment, it would be Lawful Neutral, or at least trying to live up to it. Which is really what you need from a news service.
The File 770 community, on the other hand, existing in a ecosystem of comments on individual blog posts, is all about opinions plural. Whether it's taking a position on the stories of the day, swapping book or recipe recommendations or engaging in an epic comic riff about what to say to the Balrog in Moria (archived here), the threads are always insightful. Occasionally a little hot-tempered, but by comparison to Twitter (say) they're a paragon of civility. :)
I nominated File 770 and Mike Glyer in my Hugo ballot mainly for the Pixel Scrolls, but also for enabling this rich and varied conversation among fans. As it turns out, both were on the Rabid Puppy slate that swept the shortlist, albeit in the 'didn't ask to be there, probably would have been on the shortlist anyway' category, so I see no reason to hold that against them.
The main criticism I could level at File 770 is inherent in the nature of the site - that news reporting, especially when couched mainly in quotes from other sites, doesn't lend itself to the kind of bravura, turn-on-a-sixpence writing that I usually feel drawn to. And the op-ed pieces are often too specifically focussed on US fandom to reel me in, too.
However, I still feel this is more than offset by the value that File 770 has provided both to fans and people like me in the peanut gallery. Without jumping the gun on how I'll vote, it certainly lays down a benchmark that anyone else in the Fanzine and Fan Writer categories will find tough to beat.
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