Rachel Swirsky's Blog, page 38
February 8, 2011
Rachel Swirsky's YA Novel Recommendations, 2011
Finishing my catch-up posts:
So—whoops! After I posted my first set of recommendations for the Norton, people kindly pointed out to me that Nnedi Okorafor's WHO FEARS DEATH isn't really a YA novel. I wasn't sure what to do about that—I considered nominating it anyway—until I ran across Jason Sanford's list of nominations, which included two YA novels I hadn't read yet. So I read them—and they were both great.
My revised ballot includes
HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER by Lish McBride – The protagonist isn't having a good day to start with, given that he hates his job behind the counter at a fast food joint. His day gets worse when a mysterious customer accuses him of being a sorcerer and sends someone to rough him up. But it's when someone delivers a severed head to his front door—and the head begins to talk—that things get really weird. This was fun and peppy and not very long or very serious. I had an eerie feeling that I'd read a short story treatment of this in a Datlow anthology, but if I'm right about that, I didn't ever figure it out. Anyway, it was quite enjoyable.
THE BONESHAKER by Kate Milford – Circa 1910, set in Arcane, a crossroads town with a ghost town from an earlier era beside it. When a strange and unsettling medicine show comes to town, a mechanically inclined young girl tries to investigate their strange remedies and even stranger machines. When she discovers her terminally ill mother has been brought in for one of the arcane treatments, her investigation takes on chilling urgency. This is another knockout, which makes three in the YA category for me (the other two being Shipbreaker and Hereville). I couldn't believe the way this novel actually managed to keep its plot complex and eerie. Usually, I find that when suspenseful novels finally reveal their central mysteries—especially when the central mystery is supernatural horror—I'm disappointed. The build-up is usually much more interesting/scary than the reality. I felt differently about this one. The reveal happens in steps, each one chilling, and although I was ahead of the curve on figuring out most of them, it didn't really matter because the book wasn't premised on gotchas. I really liked the character development in this, the rich historical setting (which felt accurate to my non-expert eye), the oddnesses of setting and world-building. The book is situated in American mythology, but Milford brings her own view and voice to it, creating something surprising, compelling and unique.
As well as
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi
HEREVILLE by Barry Deutsch
I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT by Terry Pratchett –
which means that I'm no longer nominating, although I still recommend
GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD by Karen Healy
So—whoops! After I posted my first set of recommendations for the Norton, people kindly pointed out to me that Nnedi Okorafor's WHO FEARS DEATH isn't really a YA novel. I wasn't sure what to do about that—I considered nominating it anyway—until I ran across Jason Sanford's list of nominations, which included two YA novels I hadn't read yet. So I read them—and they were both great.
My revised ballot includes
HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER by Lish McBride – The protagonist isn't having a good day to start with, given that he hates his job behind the counter at a fast food joint. His day gets worse when a mysterious customer accuses him of being a sorcerer and sends someone to rough him up. But it's when someone delivers a severed head to his front door—and the head begins to talk—that things get really weird. This was fun and peppy and not very long or very serious. I had an eerie feeling that I'd read a short story treatment of this in a Datlow anthology, but if I'm right about that, I didn't ever figure it out. Anyway, it was quite enjoyable.
THE BONESHAKER by Kate Milford – Circa 1910, set in Arcane, a crossroads town with a ghost town from an earlier era beside it. When a strange and unsettling medicine show comes to town, a mechanically inclined young girl tries to investigate their strange remedies and even stranger machines. When she discovers her terminally ill mother has been brought in for one of the arcane treatments, her investigation takes on chilling urgency. This is another knockout, which makes three in the YA category for me (the other two being Shipbreaker and Hereville). I couldn't believe the way this novel actually managed to keep its plot complex and eerie. Usually, I find that when suspenseful novels finally reveal their central mysteries—especially when the central mystery is supernatural horror—I'm disappointed. The build-up is usually much more interesting/scary than the reality. I felt differently about this one. The reveal happens in steps, each one chilling, and although I was ahead of the curve on figuring out most of them, it didn't really matter because the book wasn't premised on gotchas. I really liked the character development in this, the rich historical setting (which felt accurate to my non-expert eye), the oddnesses of setting and world-building. The book is situated in American mythology, but Milford brings her own view and voice to it, creating something surprising, compelling and unique.
As well as
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi
HEREVILLE by Barry Deutsch
I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT by Terry Pratchett –
which means that I'm no longer nominating, although I still recommend
GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD by Karen Healy
Rachel Swirsky's Novella Recommendations, 2011
Meh. Got hung up on actually typing this up. Being sick sucks.
Anyway, after talking to friends and acquaintances, emailing authors, aggregating years best lists, and asking editors and critics for recommendations, I came up with a list of 17 novellas I wanted to read. Four were unavailable to me; I read the other 13.
I fell in love with two of them.
THE LIFE-CYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS by Ted Chiang – When a company develops AI with malleable intelligence, intending them to be pets, they're unprepared for the consequences of releasing learning, sentient beings that are dependent on hardware that can out-evolve them and customers who are easily bored. Two of the employees dedicate themselves to overseeing the welfare of a few of the AIs, shepherding them through both adolescence and increasing troubles. Ambitious, detailed, pitch perfect in its integration of technical details in an interesting way that supports the character, stories and ideas.
ALONE by Robert Reed – One of Reed's series of "great ship" stories which take place on an enormous, high-technology ship, which no living race of aliens know how to imitate. This novella tells the story of a reclusive, immortal, powerful machine that has no idea of its origins or purpose, except that it likes to explore the great ship, and definitely does not like to be seen. Eerie and epic in all sorts of good ways, the kind of really neat far future SF that draws you into an entirely unknown world and seems to be much longer than it actually is—in that it provides a plethora of things to think about.
The rest of my ballot:
MAMMOTHS OF THE GREAT PLAINS by Eleanor Arnason – A young woman recalls the stories her grandmother used to tell her about their family's relationship to the mammoths of the great plains, whose DNA had been preserved by one of their ancestors which made it possible to resurrect them via cloning generations later. I liked this surprisingly well given the conversational format that it was in, though I had some questions about the incorporation of the speculative element, and the ending was not as solid as I'd have preferred.
IRON SHOES by J. Kathleen Cheney – The standard melodrama plotline—a widow must save her farm, marry the guy she likes, and avoid the advances of the creepy villain. Told in a practical, charming voice. Romance aspects annoy slightly, but that's just my reading preference, I think. Fully-rounded, enjoyable.
THERE'S A GREAT BIG, BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW by Cory Doctorow (podcast) – This novella follows the story of a boy who was designed to be the next stage of trans-human. He's immortal, stuck as a preadolescent, both mentally and physically. He loses his Peter Pan innocence after his father dies, but still can't grow up or find his place in the world. This was kind of a mess. The beginning didn't resonate with the end; the middle was someplace else entirely. The story wasn't entirely coherently plotted. It was sort of as if it was several different stories, joined awkwardly at the seams, and maybe that's kind of what happened—I note from the link that it looks like Doctorow began podcasting the piece before he finished writing it. The middle story was the longest story and the best. It was pretty cool, actually. I'm nominating the middle story. The rest may ride along.
Notable
PARTICULAR FRIENDS by Camille Alexa – Another nineteenth century plotline—a child is orphaned while at boarding school and mistreated by the callous staff. When the boy turns eighteen, he leaves the school and tries to find out the truth of his mother's death, a mystery that draws him into a royal intrigue that's been festering for twenty years. I liked some of the premises of this, and it was generally engaging, but I felt that it didn't fully engage with its set-up—if Victorian gender roles are reversed, then why is a waspish waist still feminine? I mean, I think there's intrigue in the premise of a sex-role reversal that somehow doesn't affect the masculine and the feminine, but I think I needed some more world-building to give me a sense of how the culture was supposed to function. Also, I wasn't particularly drawn in by the actual plot. I liked the main character, though, and the idea of the journey.
THE SULTAN OF THE CLOUDS by Geoffrey A. Landis – The richest man on Venus wants to talk to an expert on Mars terraforming, so he summons the best, a female scientist and sometimes lover of our protagonist. The protag follows her to Venus, only to be separated from her when the richest man on Venus turns out to be a twelve-year-old boy whose interest in the terraforming expert isn't purely scientific. This was perfectly readable, and had lots of lush imagery and fun eyeball kicks about life in space colonies, but I admit to being slightly uncertain about the piece; from the number of times it got mentioned by people as one of the stories of the year, I was expecting something more unusual and exceptional. Instead, I got a decently plotted bit of traditional SF with a few issues—primarily, imo, that the narrator was underdeveloped and the central cultural scientific concept about chain marriage was short-changed for the adventure story, which prevented the story from reaching any great depth, for me. I enjoyed the story, mind. I was just expecting something different. I had the same issues with Steven Rasnic Tem's "A Letter from the Emperor," which was perfectly enjoyable, but didn't really transcend.
SECOND CHANCE by David Levine – 80 years ago, the protagonist signed up to go into space. He was trained, his genetics were copied, and the mission promised to resurrect him as a clone in space, ready to explore the solar system. Then he died. When he wakes up as a clone, alone, his training incomplete, he's baffled about what's happening. When he finds the rest of his crew hostile and uncommunicative, he's even more baffled, and then increasingly alienated among his own people. I had mixed feelings about this novella when I was reading it. There are things I like, but it also felt stilted at points. I kept feeling like the novella was a processing of race fail. That could completely be my imposition on the text, but it kept coming up for me. Processing in fiction can be cool (although there was a moment at the end that dropped my jaw, but maybe I was misreading), but I kept getting distracted. Characters seemed marked by axes of difference: the trans woman, the gay man... although that's not entirely fair; some of the characters had more complex identities. I don't know. I was ambivalent. The characterization wasn't particularly deep and the political aspects seemed to dominate, but there are times I'm okay with that. In this case, though, I wasn't quite. I think my problem was that the text seemed to want to be a slightly more complex, literary kind of characterization, but it was actually at its most comfortable when it was dealing with science. The science was neat. And from the perspective of intellectual engagement, it was an easy read—I was curious about what the story had to say.
PARAGON LURE by Tony Pi – A long-lived shapeshifter traces the location of several historical treasures which he'd lost over the centuries. When he finds a local auction house listing a pearl that had once been owned by Cleopatra, he decides to see whether the claims are authentic, marshaling all the skills and connections he has as a shapeshifter, an antique dealer, and a thief. This read like a thriller adventure. The magic system is neat and there's lots of detail to the unusual magic world. I think I'd have preferred slightly different details, but that's probably just me wishing everything was more about characters' mundane lives and less about hostage situations. I wondered if it was part of a longer work, though. There jags that didn't resolve and pieces of exposition that pointed toward plots that didn't actually unfold—they weren't distracting while I was reading the story, but when I was done, I felt a bit unfinished.
Anyway, after talking to friends and acquaintances, emailing authors, aggregating years best lists, and asking editors and critics for recommendations, I came up with a list of 17 novellas I wanted to read. Four were unavailable to me; I read the other 13.
I fell in love with two of them.
THE LIFE-CYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS by Ted Chiang – When a company develops AI with malleable intelligence, intending them to be pets, they're unprepared for the consequences of releasing learning, sentient beings that are dependent on hardware that can out-evolve them and customers who are easily bored. Two of the employees dedicate themselves to overseeing the welfare of a few of the AIs, shepherding them through both adolescence and increasing troubles. Ambitious, detailed, pitch perfect in its integration of technical details in an interesting way that supports the character, stories and ideas.
ALONE by Robert Reed – One of Reed's series of "great ship" stories which take place on an enormous, high-technology ship, which no living race of aliens know how to imitate. This novella tells the story of a reclusive, immortal, powerful machine that has no idea of its origins or purpose, except that it likes to explore the great ship, and definitely does not like to be seen. Eerie and epic in all sorts of good ways, the kind of really neat far future SF that draws you into an entirely unknown world and seems to be much longer than it actually is—in that it provides a plethora of things to think about.
The rest of my ballot:
MAMMOTHS OF THE GREAT PLAINS by Eleanor Arnason – A young woman recalls the stories her grandmother used to tell her about their family's relationship to the mammoths of the great plains, whose DNA had been preserved by one of their ancestors which made it possible to resurrect them via cloning generations later. I liked this surprisingly well given the conversational format that it was in, though I had some questions about the incorporation of the speculative element, and the ending was not as solid as I'd have preferred.
IRON SHOES by J. Kathleen Cheney – The standard melodrama plotline—a widow must save her farm, marry the guy she likes, and avoid the advances of the creepy villain. Told in a practical, charming voice. Romance aspects annoy slightly, but that's just my reading preference, I think. Fully-rounded, enjoyable.
THERE'S A GREAT BIG, BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW by Cory Doctorow (podcast) – This novella follows the story of a boy who was designed to be the next stage of trans-human. He's immortal, stuck as a preadolescent, both mentally and physically. He loses his Peter Pan innocence after his father dies, but still can't grow up or find his place in the world. This was kind of a mess. The beginning didn't resonate with the end; the middle was someplace else entirely. The story wasn't entirely coherently plotted. It was sort of as if it was several different stories, joined awkwardly at the seams, and maybe that's kind of what happened—I note from the link that it looks like Doctorow began podcasting the piece before he finished writing it. The middle story was the longest story and the best. It was pretty cool, actually. I'm nominating the middle story. The rest may ride along.
Notable
PARTICULAR FRIENDS by Camille Alexa – Another nineteenth century plotline—a child is orphaned while at boarding school and mistreated by the callous staff. When the boy turns eighteen, he leaves the school and tries to find out the truth of his mother's death, a mystery that draws him into a royal intrigue that's been festering for twenty years. I liked some of the premises of this, and it was generally engaging, but I felt that it didn't fully engage with its set-up—if Victorian gender roles are reversed, then why is a waspish waist still feminine? I mean, I think there's intrigue in the premise of a sex-role reversal that somehow doesn't affect the masculine and the feminine, but I think I needed some more world-building to give me a sense of how the culture was supposed to function. Also, I wasn't particularly drawn in by the actual plot. I liked the main character, though, and the idea of the journey.
THE SULTAN OF THE CLOUDS by Geoffrey A. Landis – The richest man on Venus wants to talk to an expert on Mars terraforming, so he summons the best, a female scientist and sometimes lover of our protagonist. The protag follows her to Venus, only to be separated from her when the richest man on Venus turns out to be a twelve-year-old boy whose interest in the terraforming expert isn't purely scientific. This was perfectly readable, and had lots of lush imagery and fun eyeball kicks about life in space colonies, but I admit to being slightly uncertain about the piece; from the number of times it got mentioned by people as one of the stories of the year, I was expecting something more unusual and exceptional. Instead, I got a decently plotted bit of traditional SF with a few issues—primarily, imo, that the narrator was underdeveloped and the central cultural scientific concept about chain marriage was short-changed for the adventure story, which prevented the story from reaching any great depth, for me. I enjoyed the story, mind. I was just expecting something different. I had the same issues with Steven Rasnic Tem's "A Letter from the Emperor," which was perfectly enjoyable, but didn't really transcend.
SECOND CHANCE by David Levine – 80 years ago, the protagonist signed up to go into space. He was trained, his genetics were copied, and the mission promised to resurrect him as a clone in space, ready to explore the solar system. Then he died. When he wakes up as a clone, alone, his training incomplete, he's baffled about what's happening. When he finds the rest of his crew hostile and uncommunicative, he's even more baffled, and then increasingly alienated among his own people. I had mixed feelings about this novella when I was reading it. There are things I like, but it also felt stilted at points. I kept feeling like the novella was a processing of race fail. That could completely be my imposition on the text, but it kept coming up for me. Processing in fiction can be cool (although there was a moment at the end that dropped my jaw, but maybe I was misreading), but I kept getting distracted. Characters seemed marked by axes of difference: the trans woman, the gay man... although that's not entirely fair; some of the characters had more complex identities. I don't know. I was ambivalent. The characterization wasn't particularly deep and the political aspects seemed to dominate, but there are times I'm okay with that. In this case, though, I wasn't quite. I think my problem was that the text seemed to want to be a slightly more complex, literary kind of characterization, but it was actually at its most comfortable when it was dealing with science. The science was neat. And from the perspective of intellectual engagement, it was an easy read—I was curious about what the story had to say.
PARAGON LURE by Tony Pi – A long-lived shapeshifter traces the location of several historical treasures which he'd lost over the centuries. When he finds a local auction house listing a pearl that had once been owned by Cleopatra, he decides to see whether the claims are authentic, marshaling all the skills and connections he has as a shapeshifter, an antique dealer, and a thief. This read like a thriller adventure. The magic system is neat and there's lots of detail to the unusual magic world. I think I'd have preferred slightly different details, but that's probably just me wishing everything was more about characters' mundane lives and less about hostage situations. I wondered if it was part of a longer work, though. There jags that didn't resolve and pieces of exposition that pointed toward plots that didn't actually unfold—they weren't distracting while I was reading the story, but when I was done, I felt a bit unfinished.
February 5, 2011
Alas, an introductory phrase
The gravity given to the opinion of a certain individual who evidences a disturbing obsession with the grammar in online magazines would be higher if a google search of the name of said individual did not turn up as its first link an electronically published story which contains a grammatical error in the third sentence.
One feels it would be distasteful to include the sentence in question; however, one also feels that an individual who possesses such passion for grammar should not be impaired by mere ignorance of how grammar actually works. In the interest of edification, one will happily demonstrate how to correct the salient grammatical error by using purely hypothetical examples.
Introductory phrases that begin with prepositions are to be marked off with a comma that separates them from succeeding phrases or clauses.
For example, if one were to write:
"When you critique grammar attempt to actually know some"
this would actually be more properly expressed as:
"When you critique grammar[,] attempt to actually know some."
A few more variants (for purely explanatory purposes, of course):
When you are being a dick to someone[,] don't expect random strangers on the internet to support your vendetta.
When you snipe about how professional authors laugh at online publications and the authors who publish in them[,] it would be useful if you showed a minimum of self-consciousness about the irony of someone who is effectively unknown attempting to assert superiority over award-winning editors and magazines.
Or to sum up:
When considering whether or not to demonstrate to the internet that you are an obsessive asshole[,] stop typing immediately and get a friggin' clue.
--
In entirely unrelated news, anonymous comments posted to this livejournal will be screened for the near future.
One feels it would be distasteful to include the sentence in question; however, one also feels that an individual who possesses such passion for grammar should not be impaired by mere ignorance of how grammar actually works. In the interest of edification, one will happily demonstrate how to correct the salient grammatical error by using purely hypothetical examples.
Introductory phrases that begin with prepositions are to be marked off with a comma that separates them from succeeding phrases or clauses.
For example, if one were to write:
"When you critique grammar attempt to actually know some"
this would actually be more properly expressed as:
"When you critique grammar[,] attempt to actually know some."
A few more variants (for purely explanatory purposes, of course):
When you are being a dick to someone[,] don't expect random strangers on the internet to support your vendetta.
When you snipe about how professional authors laugh at online publications and the authors who publish in them[,] it would be useful if you showed a minimum of self-consciousness about the irony of someone who is effectively unknown attempting to assert superiority over award-winning editors and magazines.
Or to sum up:
When considering whether or not to demonstrate to the internet that you are an obsessive asshole[,] stop typing immediately and get a friggin' clue.
--
In entirely unrelated news, anonymous comments posted to this livejournal will be screened for the near future.
February 3, 2011
Rachel Swirsky's Novelette Recommendations, 2011
After talking to friends and acquaintances, emailing authors, aggregating years best lists, and asking editors and critics for recommendations, I came up with a list of 28 novelettes I wanted to read. I read 27.
I expect this number isn't actually representative; I imagine that a number of the things I assumed were short stories were actually novelettes. I didn't poke into actual length unless I liked the stories well enough to nominate them.
(Even so, I may have made some mistakes classifying novellas.)
Ballot
FLYING IN THE FACE OF GOD by Nina Allen – Nina Allen's affecting story of alienation, a beautiful and intelligent examination of what it means to be left behind. The story is masterful; it's told from the perspective of a woman who is making a documentary about the biological reprogramming her best friend, Rachel, is undergoing so that she can embark on a no-return mission into space. The relationship between them grows strained as Rachel becomes increasingly less human. For those who may be interested, an intelligent review by Niall Harrison.
MAP OF SEVENTEEN by Christopher Barzak – A teenager who can bend reality is forced to confront her anger at her older brother, a famous artist, when he returns to their parents' house after a long separation, bringing in tow his new husband. Themes about the clash of urban and rural cultures emerge here as they did in last year's novel, THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING. The themes are interesting; the writing is lovely; the relationships between the family compellingly drawn; the older brother's art intriguing. Still, I felt a slight disconnection from the characters, or perhaps a dissatisfaction with the way the threads wrapped up; perhaps the novella is a section of something longer.
THE HISTORY OF POLY-V by Jon Ingold – A beautiful story of memory, nostalgia, and the narrative construction of self-consciousness, tied together with intelligent hints of meta-fiction.
PLAGUE BIRDS by Jason Sanford – Another of my favorites in this category, Sanford writes about a far-future in which genetic engineering has merged human and animal DNA, making civilized behavior a struggle. Most humans are ruled by AIs that enforce the rules of civilization, including both computers that oversee town politics, and the titular plague birds which enforce the laws. This story shares the features of Sanford's other work with which I'm familiar; vivid, strange imagery underpinned by a well-structured plot. He takes the imagistic equivalents of surrealist paintings and makes them into coherent, intriguing stories—somehow, without losing their strangeness.
STONE WALL TRUTH by Caroline Yoachim – In this world, the loss of high technology has left people with limited understanding in control of powerful artifacts. One of these is the wall—when convicts are flayed and pinned to the wall, the shadows of their guilt ooze out of their chests, allowing them to be sewn up again without sin. The main character, a surgeon who performs the flayings, begins to doubt the goodness of her profession after one of her childhood friends is sentenced to the wall. Another vivid, surreal story, underpinned by a strong plot—although I found the resolution of this one less satisfying than Sanford's. Still, Yoachim creates an interesting world, and a sense of urgency and intensity that gives the story emotional freight.
Recommended
THE FORTUITOUS MEETING OF OLUDARA AND GERARD VAN OOST by Christopher Kastensmidt – Fun, epic adventure fantasy in an unusual setting, the kind of story that invites you to kick your feet up by the fire and enjoy the ride. Clearly a prelude to longer stories about Oludara and Gerard Van Oost, but not in a way that felt objectionable—as I described the story when I first reviewed it, it's a flavorful forkful promising an equally flavorful meal.
THE BRIDE REPLETE by Mary Robinette Kowal – Traditional science fiction, in the best way. "The Bride Replete" follows the story of a young girl from an interesting alien race, elucidating interesting cultural and biological issues in the context of an adventure story. Although the story takes place from the perspective of an alien surrounded by aliens, it reminded me of Nestvold's Nebula-nominated "Looking Through Lace." Both have fun, traditional plots that manage a sense of freshness because of the interesting science fictional ideas brought to bear. Both stories felt slightly constricted by their plot formulas—but both are intriguing and enjoyable.
BELOVED OF THE SUN by Ann Leckie – A young woman wakes up with amnesia. She can no longer speak. An ant possessed by a god whispers stories in her ear. She learns that before she fell she had been chosen as a sacrifice to another god, but now that her mute tongue has made her "imperfect" she can no longer participate in the rite. She also learns that, mute tongue or not, she is still central in a power struggle between gods. The imagery—snow-covered mounds of earth, frozen rivers—especially when combined with the main character's silence--gives this story a pervasive, chilly mood. The plot has Leckie's characteristic intricacy, and her gods are always intriguingly drawn.
FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN by Will McIntosh – Historical figure Phineas Gage—who was stabbed through the head with a railroad spike that remained in place until he died--ends up as part of a racket wherein he pretends to be Frankenstein's monster. The spike is their proof; it's verifiably stuck in his skull. Problems start when Gage runs into a second scammer with the same gag. Problems get worse when they realize a scientist is taking their Frankenstein shtick seriously. The writing is lovely; the dialogue is lovely; the historical details are lovely. The plot felt somewhat predictable.
THE BLEEDING AND THE BLOODLESS by Ruth Nestvold – Another traditional science fiction story, though the ending of this one suffered more from the plot formula. Although there were too many characters to keep track of easily, the alien world and culture were intriguing, and the mystery kept me reading.
THE LEVIATHAN, WHOM THOU HAST MADE by Eric James Stone – The third traditional science fiction piece on this list. A Mormon congregation leader is living near the sun where scientists have discovered enormous beasts made of energy. When one of the aliens in his congregation describes an experience akin to rape and explains that his species has no concept of sexual consent, the protagonist decides to appeal to the aliens' elders. He asks for help from a local xenobiologist (who seems to practice like an anthropologist) who yells at him about cultural relativism. The story was interesting and enjoyable, very nicely executing the goals of traditional SF. I admit to being slightly weirded out by the anthropologist—I was under the impression that the variety of cultural relativism she was advocating had gone out of fashion in the 1970s. I'd have had an easier time suspending disbelief if there had been a reference to a retro wave of academic thought or something. As it was, she smelled slightly of straw. Still a good story, though.
--
General observations - Interzone dominates this section of my ballot; I think they're putting out strong, longer work that exploits its length in order to fully develop plot through character, and character through plot.
I ended up picking three traditional SF stories with a slightly old-fashioned flavor–"The Bleeding and the Bloodless," "The Bride Replete" and "The Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made"—novelette seems like a good length for this kind of thing.
In general, it seems to me that most of the successful novelettes I read this year were plot-focused.
I expect this number isn't actually representative; I imagine that a number of the things I assumed were short stories were actually novelettes. I didn't poke into actual length unless I liked the stories well enough to nominate them.
(Even so, I may have made some mistakes classifying novellas.)
Ballot
FLYING IN THE FACE OF GOD by Nina Allen – Nina Allen's affecting story of alienation, a beautiful and intelligent examination of what it means to be left behind. The story is masterful; it's told from the perspective of a woman who is making a documentary about the biological reprogramming her best friend, Rachel, is undergoing so that she can embark on a no-return mission into space. The relationship between them grows strained as Rachel becomes increasingly less human. For those who may be interested, an intelligent review by Niall Harrison.
MAP OF SEVENTEEN by Christopher Barzak – A teenager who can bend reality is forced to confront her anger at her older brother, a famous artist, when he returns to their parents' house after a long separation, bringing in tow his new husband. Themes about the clash of urban and rural cultures emerge here as they did in last year's novel, THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING. The themes are interesting; the writing is lovely; the relationships between the family compellingly drawn; the older brother's art intriguing. Still, I felt a slight disconnection from the characters, or perhaps a dissatisfaction with the way the threads wrapped up; perhaps the novella is a section of something longer.
THE HISTORY OF POLY-V by Jon Ingold – A beautiful story of memory, nostalgia, and the narrative construction of self-consciousness, tied together with intelligent hints of meta-fiction.
PLAGUE BIRDS by Jason Sanford – Another of my favorites in this category, Sanford writes about a far-future in which genetic engineering has merged human and animal DNA, making civilized behavior a struggle. Most humans are ruled by AIs that enforce the rules of civilization, including both computers that oversee town politics, and the titular plague birds which enforce the laws. This story shares the features of Sanford's other work with which I'm familiar; vivid, strange imagery underpinned by a well-structured plot. He takes the imagistic equivalents of surrealist paintings and makes them into coherent, intriguing stories—somehow, without losing their strangeness.
STONE WALL TRUTH by Caroline Yoachim – In this world, the loss of high technology has left people with limited understanding in control of powerful artifacts. One of these is the wall—when convicts are flayed and pinned to the wall, the shadows of their guilt ooze out of their chests, allowing them to be sewn up again without sin. The main character, a surgeon who performs the flayings, begins to doubt the goodness of her profession after one of her childhood friends is sentenced to the wall. Another vivid, surreal story, underpinned by a strong plot—although I found the resolution of this one less satisfying than Sanford's. Still, Yoachim creates an interesting world, and a sense of urgency and intensity that gives the story emotional freight.
Recommended
THE FORTUITOUS MEETING OF OLUDARA AND GERARD VAN OOST by Christopher Kastensmidt – Fun, epic adventure fantasy in an unusual setting, the kind of story that invites you to kick your feet up by the fire and enjoy the ride. Clearly a prelude to longer stories about Oludara and Gerard Van Oost, but not in a way that felt objectionable—as I described the story when I first reviewed it, it's a flavorful forkful promising an equally flavorful meal.
THE BRIDE REPLETE by Mary Robinette Kowal – Traditional science fiction, in the best way. "The Bride Replete" follows the story of a young girl from an interesting alien race, elucidating interesting cultural and biological issues in the context of an adventure story. Although the story takes place from the perspective of an alien surrounded by aliens, it reminded me of Nestvold's Nebula-nominated "Looking Through Lace." Both have fun, traditional plots that manage a sense of freshness because of the interesting science fictional ideas brought to bear. Both stories felt slightly constricted by their plot formulas—but both are intriguing and enjoyable.
BELOVED OF THE SUN by Ann Leckie – A young woman wakes up with amnesia. She can no longer speak. An ant possessed by a god whispers stories in her ear. She learns that before she fell she had been chosen as a sacrifice to another god, but now that her mute tongue has made her "imperfect" she can no longer participate in the rite. She also learns that, mute tongue or not, she is still central in a power struggle between gods. The imagery—snow-covered mounds of earth, frozen rivers—especially when combined with the main character's silence--gives this story a pervasive, chilly mood. The plot has Leckie's characteristic intricacy, and her gods are always intriguingly drawn.
FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN by Will McIntosh – Historical figure Phineas Gage—who was stabbed through the head with a railroad spike that remained in place until he died--ends up as part of a racket wherein he pretends to be Frankenstein's monster. The spike is their proof; it's verifiably stuck in his skull. Problems start when Gage runs into a second scammer with the same gag. Problems get worse when they realize a scientist is taking their Frankenstein shtick seriously. The writing is lovely; the dialogue is lovely; the historical details are lovely. The plot felt somewhat predictable.
THE BLEEDING AND THE BLOODLESS by Ruth Nestvold – Another traditional science fiction story, though the ending of this one suffered more from the plot formula. Although there were too many characters to keep track of easily, the alien world and culture were intriguing, and the mystery kept me reading.
THE LEVIATHAN, WHOM THOU HAST MADE by Eric James Stone – The third traditional science fiction piece on this list. A Mormon congregation leader is living near the sun where scientists have discovered enormous beasts made of energy. When one of the aliens in his congregation describes an experience akin to rape and explains that his species has no concept of sexual consent, the protagonist decides to appeal to the aliens' elders. He asks for help from a local xenobiologist (who seems to practice like an anthropologist) who yells at him about cultural relativism. The story was interesting and enjoyable, very nicely executing the goals of traditional SF. I admit to being slightly weirded out by the anthropologist—I was under the impression that the variety of cultural relativism she was advocating had gone out of fashion in the 1970s. I'd have had an easier time suspending disbelief if there had been a reference to a retro wave of academic thought or something. As it was, she smelled slightly of straw. Still a good story, though.
--
General observations - Interzone dominates this section of my ballot; I think they're putting out strong, longer work that exploits its length in order to fully develop plot through character, and character through plot.
I ended up picking three traditional SF stories with a slightly old-fashioned flavor–"The Bleeding and the Bloodless," "The Bride Replete" and "The Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made"—novelette seems like a good length for this kind of thing.
In general, it seems to me that most of the successful novelettes I read this year were plot-focused.
January 31, 2011
Rachel Swirsky's Short Story Recommendations, 2011
Phew! I'm finally done. I kept acquiring more stories and novels that I wanted to read, so I had to set a limit for myself. Technically, that limit was "whatever I finish by Sunday night," but I bent it so that I could read a bit more this morning.
There were a lot of knockout short stories this year. I could easily have nominated 10 without changing my standards.
After talking to friends and acquaintances, emailing authors, aggregating year's best lists, and asking editors and critics for their recommendations, I came up with a list of 152 stories I wanted to read (not counting short stories I'd read earlier in the year). I managed to get through 120 of them. A further five turned out to be unexpectedly unavailable to me, and the last 25 I just didn't have time to get to. I prioritized my reading based on a very precise algorithm calculated from my prior experience with the author, the number of sources that recommended the story, and whim.
To one degree or another, I enjoyed about 75% of the stories, which is a pretty good hit rate for me. Of course that's not surprising given that the list was already a winnowing down of this year's field. I mention that partially by way of suggesting that I probably enjoyed any given story that I read but am not mentioning on this list. I had to winnow down my recommendations to a smaller number than the number of stories I enjoyed reading.
Part of how I evaluated material this year was to think about which stories evoked strong emotion and full immersion. I favored stories that hit my emotions. Don't get me wrong. I love stories that can be intellectually analyzed; Kij Johnson's "Evolution of Trickster Stories" is one of my favorite stories. So is Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners." These are stories that flirt with the brain, that tease with meta-fiction and ambiguity and the sense of wonder that comes from using a magical slant to deconstruct the world we think we know, and then reassembling our vision into something recognizable but slightly different—a new way of looking. What is adolescence? What is the boundary between love and slavery?
Charles Yu's "Standard Loneliness Package" is a story in the intellectual mode, like those, although (also like those) it certainly evokes emotions. Many, perhaps most, good stories will evoke both emotions and intellect, of course.
But this year I found myself primarily focusing on the experience of the emotional over the intellectual, stories like "Ponies" by Kij Johnson, and "The Isthmus Variation" by Kris Millering. Stories that swept me away, stories that left me with vivid images and moods and characters, stories that bypassed my thinking brain so that I wasn't analyzing as I read, just experiencing.
Nominations
PONIES by Kij Johnson – Last year, when Spar was nominated (and won), I found myself in the minority, wondering what the heck was so controversial about the story. Don't get me wrong; I love Kij's work. I just didn't see Spar as others seemed to, as a visceral punch in the gut. Ponies, though? Visceral. My stomach knotted as I began to read and stayed knotted. It's still kind of knotted. I want to give a synopsis, but I'll refrain—I think the story says what it's about in just the right length of time it takes to say it.
THE HISTORY WITHIN US by Matt Kressel - A stunning, emotionally resonant far-future apocaclypse, in which the alien setting only serves to enhance the questions the story poses about genocide, humanity, and memory.
THE ISTHMUS VARIATION by Kris Millering– This eerie, chilling mystery about a destroyed theater troupe evoked its mood so strongly that I had to pause reading afterward to digest. Subtly built, intelligent, and evocative.
THE GHOSTS OF NEW YORK by Jennifer Pelland – Another viscerally emotional story for me, this one ponders grief and memory in the wake of 9/11. What I like about it is the distance it brings to the events; the perspective of years gathering between then and now gives this piece a historical slant, looking not quite at what 9/11 was, but what it will eventually mean.
STANDARD LONELINESS PACKAGE by Charles Yu – This story was less emotionally evocative for me than the others, but like Charles Yu's masterful novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, this story employs a fresh, intelligent, and insightful interpretation of science fictional tropes, combined with excellent character work and skillful control of the prose, to create something unique and worthy of rereading and reconsidering.
Highly Recommended (Stories I'd nominate if I had a couple more slots!)
ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER LEX by N. K. Jemisin – Jemisin's stories about all-powerful beings are shockingly evocative; she writes breath into gods so that they occupy both an epic, mythical, archetypical role, but also become strange and fascinating characters. It was lovely to see her bring this talent into a post-apocalyptic story about Death and other human gods, struggling to cope in a world without people. (Interestingly, the story shares many elements with Richard Parks's "Four Horsemen at Their Leisure." Although Parks is taking on the problem of evil,
HWANG'S BILLION BRILLIANT DAUGHTERS by Alice Sola Kim – In brief, scattered flashes, a narrator tells the story of a time traveling man who visits his descendents through many generations. Beautiful, fun fragments of science fiction futures, combined with interesting characterization and thoughts about time.
SURROGATES by Cat Rambo – A future in which people can interact with robotic substitutes for their loved ones. A touching portrayal of a relationship disintegrating, of alienation growing between people, of joy that's disappearing and must be seized.
AMARYLLIS by Carrie Vaughn – This is the story I had most trouble breaking off of my nominations list. When I was reading it, the emotion swept me entirely; I was fully immersed by the characters and world in a way I rarely achieve in a short story. Carrie Vaughn does a brilliant job of creating sympathetic characters in a meaningful situation, while elucidating an ambiguous world that is simultaneously more oppressive than ours and more free.
Recommended
THROWING STONES by Mishell Baker – Well-plotted fantasy with intriguing world building and creature details.
STEREOGRAM OF THE GREY FORT, IN THE DAYS OF HER GLORY by Paul M. Berger – Another well-plotted fantasy with an intriguing structural premise.
OAKS PARK by M. K. Hobson – A ghost story of loss and nostalgia.
SINNERS, SAINTS, DRAGONS AND HAINTS, IN THE CITY BENEATH THE STILL WATERS by N. K. Jemisin – Brilliant dialogue and swift pacing underpin this story of Katrina and its aftermath. The speculative element is prettily described, but not entirely satisfying.
IN-FALL by Ted Kosmatka – A hard science fiction story that incorporates some of the theoretical details about black holes into an emotional narrative about anger, grief, redemption and eternity.
AMID THE WORLDS OF WAR by Cat Rambo – Strange, intriguing story of an alien exiled from her people.
CONDITIONAL LOVE by Felicity Shoulders – Character-driven near future sf.
NOTABLE (at best, a partial list)
LOVE WILL TEAR US APART by Alaya Dawn Johnson
I'M ALIVE, I LOVE YOU, I'LL SEE YOU IN RENO by Vylar Kaftan
THE SPEED OF DREAMS (podcast) by Will Ludwigsen
ASTRONAUT DRAG QUEEN by Sandra MacDonald
SEVEN SEXY COWBOY ROBOTS by Sandra MacDonald
NOT WAVING, DROWNING by Cat Rambo
TU SUFRIMIENTO SHALL PROTECT US by Mercurio D. Rivera
ALIENATION by Katherine Sparrow
THE CHILDREN OF MAIN STREET by A. C. Wise
SO DEEP THAT THE BOTTOM COULD NOT BE SEEN by Genevieve Valentine
FINISHING UP with a few observations about magazines: Usually I find at least a few stories from F&SF that I really like; this year, I had trouble connecting with most of the F&SF stories I downloaded from the SFWA forums, even ones by authors I really like. I don't know whether that's because F&SF is moving more toward a particular tone I'm not especially fond of, whether I just ended up selecting for the wrong stories, or whether the change has to do with JJA's departure. I also didn't end up nominating much from Asimov's, although I expect that's because I had trouble (my fault) with my subscription so I discovered at the last minute that I didn't have access to a number of the stories I wanted to read, including work by Alice Sola Kim, James Kelly, Michael Swanwick, Carol Emshwiller, Sara Genge, and others.
On the plus side, I felt like this year's Clockwork Phoenix may have hit its stride; all the stories I picked up from it this year were vivid and imagistic. Clarkesworld remains both stylistically distinct and strong, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is publishing stuff that's distinguished by sharp plotting, and Lightspeed is publishing an astonishing number of really excellent stories.
I'm really excited about these. I hope people read and enjoy—if not these stories, then others. I'm happy to get to talk with people about fiction. :D
There were a lot of knockout short stories this year. I could easily have nominated 10 without changing my standards.
After talking to friends and acquaintances, emailing authors, aggregating year's best lists, and asking editors and critics for their recommendations, I came up with a list of 152 stories I wanted to read (not counting short stories I'd read earlier in the year). I managed to get through 120 of them. A further five turned out to be unexpectedly unavailable to me, and the last 25 I just didn't have time to get to. I prioritized my reading based on a very precise algorithm calculated from my prior experience with the author, the number of sources that recommended the story, and whim.
To one degree or another, I enjoyed about 75% of the stories, which is a pretty good hit rate for me. Of course that's not surprising given that the list was already a winnowing down of this year's field. I mention that partially by way of suggesting that I probably enjoyed any given story that I read but am not mentioning on this list. I had to winnow down my recommendations to a smaller number than the number of stories I enjoyed reading.
Part of how I evaluated material this year was to think about which stories evoked strong emotion and full immersion. I favored stories that hit my emotions. Don't get me wrong. I love stories that can be intellectually analyzed; Kij Johnson's "Evolution of Trickster Stories" is one of my favorite stories. So is Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners." These are stories that flirt with the brain, that tease with meta-fiction and ambiguity and the sense of wonder that comes from using a magical slant to deconstruct the world we think we know, and then reassembling our vision into something recognizable but slightly different—a new way of looking. What is adolescence? What is the boundary between love and slavery?
Charles Yu's "Standard Loneliness Package" is a story in the intellectual mode, like those, although (also like those) it certainly evokes emotions. Many, perhaps most, good stories will evoke both emotions and intellect, of course.
But this year I found myself primarily focusing on the experience of the emotional over the intellectual, stories like "Ponies" by Kij Johnson, and "The Isthmus Variation" by Kris Millering. Stories that swept me away, stories that left me with vivid images and moods and characters, stories that bypassed my thinking brain so that I wasn't analyzing as I read, just experiencing.
Nominations
PONIES by Kij Johnson – Last year, when Spar was nominated (and won), I found myself in the minority, wondering what the heck was so controversial about the story. Don't get me wrong; I love Kij's work. I just didn't see Spar as others seemed to, as a visceral punch in the gut. Ponies, though? Visceral. My stomach knotted as I began to read and stayed knotted. It's still kind of knotted. I want to give a synopsis, but I'll refrain—I think the story says what it's about in just the right length of time it takes to say it.
THE HISTORY WITHIN US by Matt Kressel - A stunning, emotionally resonant far-future apocaclypse, in which the alien setting only serves to enhance the questions the story poses about genocide, humanity, and memory.
THE ISTHMUS VARIATION by Kris Millering– This eerie, chilling mystery about a destroyed theater troupe evoked its mood so strongly that I had to pause reading afterward to digest. Subtly built, intelligent, and evocative.
THE GHOSTS OF NEW YORK by Jennifer Pelland – Another viscerally emotional story for me, this one ponders grief and memory in the wake of 9/11. What I like about it is the distance it brings to the events; the perspective of years gathering between then and now gives this piece a historical slant, looking not quite at what 9/11 was, but what it will eventually mean.
STANDARD LONELINESS PACKAGE by Charles Yu – This story was less emotionally evocative for me than the others, but like Charles Yu's masterful novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, this story employs a fresh, intelligent, and insightful interpretation of science fictional tropes, combined with excellent character work and skillful control of the prose, to create something unique and worthy of rereading and reconsidering.
Highly Recommended (Stories I'd nominate if I had a couple more slots!)
ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER LEX by N. K. Jemisin – Jemisin's stories about all-powerful beings are shockingly evocative; she writes breath into gods so that they occupy both an epic, mythical, archetypical role, but also become strange and fascinating characters. It was lovely to see her bring this talent into a post-apocalyptic story about Death and other human gods, struggling to cope in a world without people. (Interestingly, the story shares many elements with Richard Parks's "Four Horsemen at Their Leisure." Although Parks is taking on the problem of evil,
HWANG'S BILLION BRILLIANT DAUGHTERS by Alice Sola Kim – In brief, scattered flashes, a narrator tells the story of a time traveling man who visits his descendents through many generations. Beautiful, fun fragments of science fiction futures, combined with interesting characterization and thoughts about time.
SURROGATES by Cat Rambo – A future in which people can interact with robotic substitutes for their loved ones. A touching portrayal of a relationship disintegrating, of alienation growing between people, of joy that's disappearing and must be seized.
AMARYLLIS by Carrie Vaughn – This is the story I had most trouble breaking off of my nominations list. When I was reading it, the emotion swept me entirely; I was fully immersed by the characters and world in a way I rarely achieve in a short story. Carrie Vaughn does a brilliant job of creating sympathetic characters in a meaningful situation, while elucidating an ambiguous world that is simultaneously more oppressive than ours and more free.
Recommended
THROWING STONES by Mishell Baker – Well-plotted fantasy with intriguing world building and creature details.
STEREOGRAM OF THE GREY FORT, IN THE DAYS OF HER GLORY by Paul M. Berger – Another well-plotted fantasy with an intriguing structural premise.
OAKS PARK by M. K. Hobson – A ghost story of loss and nostalgia.
SINNERS, SAINTS, DRAGONS AND HAINTS, IN THE CITY BENEATH THE STILL WATERS by N. K. Jemisin – Brilliant dialogue and swift pacing underpin this story of Katrina and its aftermath. The speculative element is prettily described, but not entirely satisfying.
IN-FALL by Ted Kosmatka – A hard science fiction story that incorporates some of the theoretical details about black holes into an emotional narrative about anger, grief, redemption and eternity.
AMID THE WORLDS OF WAR by Cat Rambo – Strange, intriguing story of an alien exiled from her people.
CONDITIONAL LOVE by Felicity Shoulders – Character-driven near future sf.
NOTABLE (at best, a partial list)
LOVE WILL TEAR US APART by Alaya Dawn Johnson
I'M ALIVE, I LOVE YOU, I'LL SEE YOU IN RENO by Vylar Kaftan
THE SPEED OF DREAMS (podcast) by Will Ludwigsen
ASTRONAUT DRAG QUEEN by Sandra MacDonald
SEVEN SEXY COWBOY ROBOTS by Sandra MacDonald
NOT WAVING, DROWNING by Cat Rambo
TU SUFRIMIENTO SHALL PROTECT US by Mercurio D. Rivera
ALIENATION by Katherine Sparrow
THE CHILDREN OF MAIN STREET by A. C. Wise
SO DEEP THAT THE BOTTOM COULD NOT BE SEEN by Genevieve Valentine
FINISHING UP with a few observations about magazines: Usually I find at least a few stories from F&SF that I really like; this year, I had trouble connecting with most of the F&SF stories I downloaded from the SFWA forums, even ones by authors I really like. I don't know whether that's because F&SF is moving more toward a particular tone I'm not especially fond of, whether I just ended up selecting for the wrong stories, or whether the change has to do with JJA's departure. I also didn't end up nominating much from Asimov's, although I expect that's because I had trouble (my fault) with my subscription so I discovered at the last minute that I didn't have access to a number of the stories I wanted to read, including work by Alice Sola Kim, James Kelly, Michael Swanwick, Carol Emshwiller, Sara Genge, and others.
On the plus side, I felt like this year's Clockwork Phoenix may have hit its stride; all the stories I picked up from it this year were vivid and imagistic. Clarkesworld remains both stylistically distinct and strong, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is publishing stuff that's distinguished by sharp plotting, and Lightspeed is publishing an astonishing number of really excellent stories.
I'm really excited about these. I hope people read and enjoy—if not these stories, then others. I'm happy to get to talk with people about fiction. :D
January 20, 2011
Nebula reading extravaganza, YA Novel Edition
First, methodology--I read a number of YA novels during the year, but didn't keep explicit track of them. Unfortunately, most of them struck me as pleasant but forgettable--for instance, Suzanne Collins's MOCKINGJAY which was the final, bottom point on a sharp slope moving straight down from the well-done first book in the series, HUNGER GAMES.
I picked up a few extra books to read in the last week or two. I found books by checking the following sources: recommendations from friends and acquaintances; solicitation of authors, editors, and critics; and sifting through the Nebula tally list (which is attached to the SFWA forums and is recording nominated works, but not vote counts, so it functions like a recommendation list; very useful).
I used other techniques to rustle up short stories, novelettes, and novellas, but for reasons of time, I needed to limit the number of novels I read, so I didn't probe as widely. Also, I was pickier about what made it onto my list, favoring books that were recommended more than once and books by authors whose work I had already enjoyed.
This system creates a bias in which I'm more likely to pick up books by authors I've already read, but I hope that the redundant methods (in which I pick up books that are recommended more than once) compensate for that.
I did not read books that were the latest in a series I hadn't read before, such as Tim Pratt's BROKEN MIRRORS. Holly Black's WHITE CAT was on my list of books to read, but ended up getting cut because I didn't have time (it was on the bottom of my list because I disliked the synopsis).
So, to the meat of the thing:
YA NOVEL RECOMMENDATIONS
HEREVILLE by Barry Deutsch -- A graphic novel detailing the adventures of Mirka, a ten-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl who lives in a Yiddish-speaking, Hassidic enclave, and who wants to get a sword and fight monsters. The graphic novel is free and fun and sometimes silly with occasional breaks into emotional depth and the explorations of Mirka's family. It's garnered very good reviews from a number of sources. I mention the reviews because my attachment to this novel is suspect. I think it's just the best thing ever, but the author is a friend of mine, and I've been one of his first readers since it was a self-published chapbook that predated the mass market publication. I love this book, but don't take my word for it.
SHIP BREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - I reviewed this recently, so I won't go over the whole thing again, but I really got into the emotional journey of this book, from the intense world building to the well-rendered characters. It's difficult to compare this book to HEREVILLE--apples to oranges, humor to wrenching, a sheltered ten-year-old to an impoverished teenage laborer--both are very good at very different things.
I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT by Terry Pratchett - This is the latest in Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series. I enjoyed it a bit more than the others; Tiffany's moral universe is growing more complex. There was a bitter sadness to the subplots about loss that gave some of the imagery a poetic depth beyond its service in the plot. The endnote about Pratchett's childhood also gave me a sense of longing and nostalgia, put in tension with the disappearing origins of the lifestyle on Tiffany's chalk. Of course, these themes stand out more strikingly in all of Pratchett's work since his alzheimer's diagnosis; it's possible I imagine or overemphasize them. But it does seem that there's a bit of the loving, but slightly bitter (on my end as a reader), goodbye in the novels that have come out since his announcement. In a twitter discussion about the book, my friend Sarah said that she thought the plot of this one was a mess... and really, I suppose there may not be a lot of coherence to the big, bad magic threat and its big, bad magic quest to be big, bad, magically destructive. But it seems to me that's true of most (though not all) Pratchett books, and it's really orthogonal to why I read and enjoy them.
WHO FEARS DEATH by Nnedi Okorafor - I didn't totally immerse in this one, and I think that was probably partially arbitrary, and partially for structural reasons--while the novel covered a great breadth of events, it sometimes spent many pages on relatively minor incidents, and few pages on major ones. That's a pet peeve of mine. I was also sort of shocked that the book was YA (I don't know if it was marketed that way or not, but it showed up in the Norton tallies) given some of the discussion of female genital surgeries and war crimes--but once I got over being surprised, I really liked that element. Teenagers aren't fragile flowers. They live in this world, good and bad. Anyway, the way it dealt with the violence was really interesting (though I don't want to analyze it in depth in a short review, partially for spoilery reasons), the magic was fabulously interesting, the landscape and world was transporting, the hints of how it came to be compelling, and Onyseonwu an entertainingly hard-scrabble narrator, sometimes very sympathetic, sometimes very annoying, just like real people. The epic scope of this novel and its magical vision of a world blending science fiction and fantasy were striking and unusual.
GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD by Karen Healey - I didn't like this book as much as the other four, but it was still enjoyable. It tells the story of a teenage girl in New Zealand who discovers she has magic powers and interacts with the local equivalent of the fae. The magic system was cool and it was really neat to see someone bringing in mythology from New Zealand. I liked the characters, and I was entertained by the adventure. But it didn't really break out of that "this is pleasant" zone for me.
I picked up a few extra books to read in the last week or two. I found books by checking the following sources: recommendations from friends and acquaintances; solicitation of authors, editors, and critics; and sifting through the Nebula tally list (which is attached to the SFWA forums and is recording nominated works, but not vote counts, so it functions like a recommendation list; very useful).
I used other techniques to rustle up short stories, novelettes, and novellas, but for reasons of time, I needed to limit the number of novels I read, so I didn't probe as widely. Also, I was pickier about what made it onto my list, favoring books that were recommended more than once and books by authors whose work I had already enjoyed.
This system creates a bias in which I'm more likely to pick up books by authors I've already read, but I hope that the redundant methods (in which I pick up books that are recommended more than once) compensate for that.
I did not read books that were the latest in a series I hadn't read before, such as Tim Pratt's BROKEN MIRRORS. Holly Black's WHITE CAT was on my list of books to read, but ended up getting cut because I didn't have time (it was on the bottom of my list because I disliked the synopsis).
So, to the meat of the thing:
YA NOVEL RECOMMENDATIONS
HEREVILLE by Barry Deutsch -- A graphic novel detailing the adventures of Mirka, a ten-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl who lives in a Yiddish-speaking, Hassidic enclave, and who wants to get a sword and fight monsters. The graphic novel is free and fun and sometimes silly with occasional breaks into emotional depth and the explorations of Mirka's family. It's garnered very good reviews from a number of sources. I mention the reviews because my attachment to this novel is suspect. I think it's just the best thing ever, but the author is a friend of mine, and I've been one of his first readers since it was a self-published chapbook that predated the mass market publication. I love this book, but don't take my word for it.
SHIP BREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - I reviewed this recently, so I won't go over the whole thing again, but I really got into the emotional journey of this book, from the intense world building to the well-rendered characters. It's difficult to compare this book to HEREVILLE--apples to oranges, humor to wrenching, a sheltered ten-year-old to an impoverished teenage laborer--both are very good at very different things.
I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT by Terry Pratchett - This is the latest in Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series. I enjoyed it a bit more than the others; Tiffany's moral universe is growing more complex. There was a bitter sadness to the subplots about loss that gave some of the imagery a poetic depth beyond its service in the plot. The endnote about Pratchett's childhood also gave me a sense of longing and nostalgia, put in tension with the disappearing origins of the lifestyle on Tiffany's chalk. Of course, these themes stand out more strikingly in all of Pratchett's work since his alzheimer's diagnosis; it's possible I imagine or overemphasize them. But it does seem that there's a bit of the loving, but slightly bitter (on my end as a reader), goodbye in the novels that have come out since his announcement. In a twitter discussion about the book, my friend Sarah said that she thought the plot of this one was a mess... and really, I suppose there may not be a lot of coherence to the big, bad magic threat and its big, bad magic quest to be big, bad, magically destructive. But it seems to me that's true of most (though not all) Pratchett books, and it's really orthogonal to why I read and enjoy them.
WHO FEARS DEATH by Nnedi Okorafor - I didn't totally immerse in this one, and I think that was probably partially arbitrary, and partially for structural reasons--while the novel covered a great breadth of events, it sometimes spent many pages on relatively minor incidents, and few pages on major ones. That's a pet peeve of mine. I was also sort of shocked that the book was YA (I don't know if it was marketed that way or not, but it showed up in the Norton tallies) given some of the discussion of female genital surgeries and war crimes--but once I got over being surprised, I really liked that element. Teenagers aren't fragile flowers. They live in this world, good and bad. Anyway, the way it dealt with the violence was really interesting (though I don't want to analyze it in depth in a short review, partially for spoilery reasons), the magic was fabulously interesting, the landscape and world was transporting, the hints of how it came to be compelling, and Onyseonwu an entertainingly hard-scrabble narrator, sometimes very sympathetic, sometimes very annoying, just like real people. The epic scope of this novel and its magical vision of a world blending science fiction and fantasy were striking and unusual.
GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD by Karen Healey - I didn't like this book as much as the other four, but it was still enjoyable. It tells the story of a teenage girl in New Zealand who discovers she has magic powers and interacts with the local equivalent of the fae. The magic system was cool and it was really neat to see someone bringing in mythology from New Zealand. I liked the characters, and I was entertained by the adventure. But it didn't really break out of that "this is pleasant" zone for me.
January 14, 2011
Mini-reviews, to catch up on other news next week
I got off-track with the blog entries I wanted to make, but I've started my Nebula reading, so I thought I'd toss out some mini-reviews now, and catch up with the other stuff next week.
SHORT STORIES
"Clockwork Fairies" by Cat Rambo - Told from the perspective of a man who is engaged to a mixed race inventor who invents steampunk-type machines. The man conflicts with the radical politics espoused by his fiancee's wealthy father who champions women's rights and atheism. He also puts himself in conflict with his fiancee's ambition. The reader is left watching a man who is not as smart as he thinks he is, whose goals the reader hopes will be defeated. Cat's prose is sharp and rich with nice Victorian detail, the setting is fun, the plot is workable, but I wanted something more from the piece. It felt a little bit too pat, too closed in on the edges, with no room to explore boundaries or deeply know the characters.
"Not Waving, Drowning" by Cat Rambo - A woman's husband wants to join the psycorp, in which he will be able to read thoughts. No marriage has survived the combination of one telepath with one null, and despite their efforts, their relationship dissolves. There's a lot of emotion in this one, a very strongly conveyed mood that creates visceral involvement. The setting is weirdly unexpanded, perhaps with surreal intent, but it didn't quite work for me for some reason I can't identify--I guess maybe there was a sense of genericness stamped on many of the pieces of the setting, as if they could be in a now-future, a near-future, or a never-future, without ever really committing. Despite the affecting emotion of the piece, I felt oddly distant from it--the characters seemed, to me, to be ideas and emotions but not quite people, lacking in some of the particulars that would have made them and their relationship fully realized and specific.
I enjoyed both of these, and would recommend reading them, but neither snared me the way Cat's best (imo, obviously) work does.
NOVELLA
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason - A young girl goes to visit her Lakota grandmother and hear the story of her family's role in resurrecting the great plains mammoths. Although this piece is basically told by a grandmother, in dialogue, while the narrator watches, and although it features some of my pet peeves about stories structured that way (the narrator's revelations tend toward small, her internal life is not particularly important to the story, passages are interrupted to track the light through the room and thus remind us about the story's setting), none of this registered on me-as-a-reader. The story could have been dry and boring, but was actually very interesting. My first pet peeve was that I didn't understand why the story was about mammoths rather than about some of the other plains megafauna. Not that mammoths aren't cool, but it seemed like adding a showy element for the purposes of being showy when something real would have done as well. As the science fictional intent of the piece became clear, I stopped worrying about that. I enjoyed the family history, the dreams and interactions with spirits representing mammoths and bison, the tensions between whiteness and Lakotaness, the science. But the story had a bit more of the sense of a memoir, to me, than of fiction--I suppose that's admirable in that it mimicked the sense of a real family history, but it also failed to satisfy as fiction. I was engaged, but not particularly satisfied. In particular, the ending seemed arbitrary, and I was actually surprised that it stopped.
I think I would have liked to see a secondary plotline centering on the experiences of the narrator, and what she does with the family history. But maybe I'm asking the wrong thing from this piece.
NOVELS
TOADS AND DIAMONDS by Heather Tomlinson - The toads and diamonds fairy tale retold in a fictional pre-modern India, at the site of a culture clash between Islam and Hinduism. I love the tenderness with which the characters are handled, with none of the "first daughter good, second daughter bad" crap from the original story. The relationships between the two daughters and their mother are really nicely done, and a pleasure to see, as was the way that both female main characters were allowed to be flawed and different from each other, but still worth rewarding. The interpretations of the gifts--the titular toads and diamonds--was intelligent and surprising. Lush descriptions maeit possible to enjoy the book on a sensual level, from architecture, to embroidered dresses, to plagues and farmwork. Unfortunately, the plot is not as well-considered. The stakes for one sister are sky-high, while for the other sister, they're whisper-low. Rather than reinforcing something about contrasts, this lopsidedness just serves to make the reading experience strange and careening. The male romantic leads are nicely portrayed, as are some of the female secondary characters, but the villain is one dimensional. So are some of the morals, and sometimes the female main characters, when they get too sweet. Though the book is flawed, it's worth reading if you're interested in a unique and well-considered reconsideration of the fairy tale, and also for the settings and descriptions.
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - For some reason, I never really connected to WIND-UP GIRL. I understood it as a well-crafted work, but I beheld it from a distance I couldn't cross. SHIPBREAKER, on the other hand, was immediately visceral, with characters and problems intense enough that I alarmed my husband and all my cats by gasping at one of the early reveals. SHIPBREAKER follows the story of Nails, a boy living in subsistence (or lower-than-subsistence) level poverty by working at a ship salvage yard where his small, flexible body allows him to do dangerous work. When he and a friend find a possible way off of the beach and out of poverty, they must defend their opportunity from the tough men who work the heavy salvage crew, ill-intentioned corporations, and Nails' abusive father. Bacigalupi's world is desperate, convincing, and immersive, inhabited by smartly rendered characters, many of whom aren't likable, but all of whom are relatable, in a way that I did not find the characters from Wind-Up Girl. The latter half of the story moves away from the intense world-building to embark on a more traditional chase-and-adventure story. I liked the first part better, but they were equally well done. I wondered about some of the threads that weren't developed as well as they might have been--particularly the arc of the gen-modded dogman, Tool, who departs the novel while leaving behind a number of open questions--but it was a great, satisfying read, and a really well-done book.
HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu - For the past year, I've envisioned myself marking Jemisin's masterful HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS as the year's best novel. Without taking away anything from Jemisin's beautiful, epic work--at this late date, I've been seduced by a science fictional universe. I think it'll take a lot to unseat How to Live Safely from its top position; this strange, metafictional novel about a time traveler lost in the present indefinite is smart, funny, profound, moving, innovative and relatable. Yu poses a fictional universe in which physics is not quite installed, in which the inhabitants are all sad and lacking in self-esteem, in which time travel is fueled by regret. The fictional Yu in this universe is accompanied by a depressed AI, Tammy, and a non-existent dog, who help him navigate the time loop in which he finds himself trapped, and also help him in his ultimate goal of finding where his father has gone. I saw Kincaid's review of this book before I read the book itself, and so I tried to avoid reading the whole review, but I caught one sentence--(paraphrased) this is a book that can be read satisfyingly as a metaphor or an adventure. It felt like both to me. A surreal adventure, and an extended metaphor, both about isolation, disappointment, and the dissolution of family.
HORNS by Joe Hill - A man (Ig) suspected of murdering his long-time girlfriend and first love wakes up one morning to discover that he's grown horns. These horns allow him to manipulate people by getting them to reveal their secrets and persuading them toward sin. On the other hand, the horns kind of suck--people reveal their secrets whether or not Ig wants them to, and they all want his opinions on just how much they ought to sin. The main plot line, tracing Ig's attempts to reconcile himself to his horns and, in the meantime, discover and punish the real murderer--is entertaining. Portions of the novel told from alternate perspectives were mostly also entertaining, and appropriate (as Ig's horns give him a limited mind-reading ability that gives him access to these perspectives at the appropriate points in the book). The characters are somewhat cliched in places, but also smartly developed in others, leading me to believe that the text embodies a tension where it wasn't quite sure how to pose itself in terms of comedy versus realism. Ig's character struck me as often inconsistent, particularly in early chapters. The portrayal of the villain, Lee, was rather clever in certain respects--it felt like a convincing, occasionally chilling, progression of lack of empathy and misogyny. While there were a number of structural problems in the novel, I felt the primary difficulty lay in the lack of reconciliation between its disparate elements--the backstory, the farcical comedy, the social commentary comedy, the nostalgic reminiscence, the mythology, the clever reparte, the interweaving points of view, the magic and the mundane... in particular, the story got lost in what felt like the world's most interminable chapter about a dare and a cherry bomb. I admit I'm not the greatest fan of Rockwell-esque boyhood escapade chapters, but this one was about thrice as long as it needed to be, and a real disappointment on the heels of the cleverer material before it. I enjoyed this read, and I'm glad I read the book, but it didn't quite work for me on the next level up from that.
SHORT STORIES
"Clockwork Fairies" by Cat Rambo - Told from the perspective of a man who is engaged to a mixed race inventor who invents steampunk-type machines. The man conflicts with the radical politics espoused by his fiancee's wealthy father who champions women's rights and atheism. He also puts himself in conflict with his fiancee's ambition. The reader is left watching a man who is not as smart as he thinks he is, whose goals the reader hopes will be defeated. Cat's prose is sharp and rich with nice Victorian detail, the setting is fun, the plot is workable, but I wanted something more from the piece. It felt a little bit too pat, too closed in on the edges, with no room to explore boundaries or deeply know the characters.
"Not Waving, Drowning" by Cat Rambo - A woman's husband wants to join the psycorp, in which he will be able to read thoughts. No marriage has survived the combination of one telepath with one null, and despite their efforts, their relationship dissolves. There's a lot of emotion in this one, a very strongly conveyed mood that creates visceral involvement. The setting is weirdly unexpanded, perhaps with surreal intent, but it didn't quite work for me for some reason I can't identify--I guess maybe there was a sense of genericness stamped on many of the pieces of the setting, as if they could be in a now-future, a near-future, or a never-future, without ever really committing. Despite the affecting emotion of the piece, I felt oddly distant from it--the characters seemed, to me, to be ideas and emotions but not quite people, lacking in some of the particulars that would have made them and their relationship fully realized and specific.
I enjoyed both of these, and would recommend reading them, but neither snared me the way Cat's best (imo, obviously) work does.
NOVELLA
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason - A young girl goes to visit her Lakota grandmother and hear the story of her family's role in resurrecting the great plains mammoths. Although this piece is basically told by a grandmother, in dialogue, while the narrator watches, and although it features some of my pet peeves about stories structured that way (the narrator's revelations tend toward small, her internal life is not particularly important to the story, passages are interrupted to track the light through the room and thus remind us about the story's setting), none of this registered on me-as-a-reader. The story could have been dry and boring, but was actually very interesting. My first pet peeve was that I didn't understand why the story was about mammoths rather than about some of the other plains megafauna. Not that mammoths aren't cool, but it seemed like adding a showy element for the purposes of being showy when something real would have done as well. As the science fictional intent of the piece became clear, I stopped worrying about that. I enjoyed the family history, the dreams and interactions with spirits representing mammoths and bison, the tensions between whiteness and Lakotaness, the science. But the story had a bit more of the sense of a memoir, to me, than of fiction--I suppose that's admirable in that it mimicked the sense of a real family history, but it also failed to satisfy as fiction. I was engaged, but not particularly satisfied. In particular, the ending seemed arbitrary, and I was actually surprised that it stopped.
I think I would have liked to see a secondary plotline centering on the experiences of the narrator, and what she does with the family history. But maybe I'm asking the wrong thing from this piece.
NOVELS
TOADS AND DIAMONDS by Heather Tomlinson - The toads and diamonds fairy tale retold in a fictional pre-modern India, at the site of a culture clash between Islam and Hinduism. I love the tenderness with which the characters are handled, with none of the "first daughter good, second daughter bad" crap from the original story. The relationships between the two daughters and their mother are really nicely done, and a pleasure to see, as was the way that both female main characters were allowed to be flawed and different from each other, but still worth rewarding. The interpretations of the gifts--the titular toads and diamonds--was intelligent and surprising. Lush descriptions maeit possible to enjoy the book on a sensual level, from architecture, to embroidered dresses, to plagues and farmwork. Unfortunately, the plot is not as well-considered. The stakes for one sister are sky-high, while for the other sister, they're whisper-low. Rather than reinforcing something about contrasts, this lopsidedness just serves to make the reading experience strange and careening. The male romantic leads are nicely portrayed, as are some of the female secondary characters, but the villain is one dimensional. So are some of the morals, and sometimes the female main characters, when they get too sweet. Though the book is flawed, it's worth reading if you're interested in a unique and well-considered reconsideration of the fairy tale, and also for the settings and descriptions.
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - For some reason, I never really connected to WIND-UP GIRL. I understood it as a well-crafted work, but I beheld it from a distance I couldn't cross. SHIPBREAKER, on the other hand, was immediately visceral, with characters and problems intense enough that I alarmed my husband and all my cats by gasping at one of the early reveals. SHIPBREAKER follows the story of Nails, a boy living in subsistence (or lower-than-subsistence) level poverty by working at a ship salvage yard where his small, flexible body allows him to do dangerous work. When he and a friend find a possible way off of the beach and out of poverty, they must defend their opportunity from the tough men who work the heavy salvage crew, ill-intentioned corporations, and Nails' abusive father. Bacigalupi's world is desperate, convincing, and immersive, inhabited by smartly rendered characters, many of whom aren't likable, but all of whom are relatable, in a way that I did not find the characters from Wind-Up Girl. The latter half of the story moves away from the intense world-building to embark on a more traditional chase-and-adventure story. I liked the first part better, but they were equally well done. I wondered about some of the threads that weren't developed as well as they might have been--particularly the arc of the gen-modded dogman, Tool, who departs the novel while leaving behind a number of open questions--but it was a great, satisfying read, and a really well-done book.
HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu - For the past year, I've envisioned myself marking Jemisin's masterful HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS as the year's best novel. Without taking away anything from Jemisin's beautiful, epic work--at this late date, I've been seduced by a science fictional universe. I think it'll take a lot to unseat How to Live Safely from its top position; this strange, metafictional novel about a time traveler lost in the present indefinite is smart, funny, profound, moving, innovative and relatable. Yu poses a fictional universe in which physics is not quite installed, in which the inhabitants are all sad and lacking in self-esteem, in which time travel is fueled by regret. The fictional Yu in this universe is accompanied by a depressed AI, Tammy, and a non-existent dog, who help him navigate the time loop in which he finds himself trapped, and also help him in his ultimate goal of finding where his father has gone. I saw Kincaid's review of this book before I read the book itself, and so I tried to avoid reading the whole review, but I caught one sentence--(paraphrased) this is a book that can be read satisfyingly as a metaphor or an adventure. It felt like both to me. A surreal adventure, and an extended metaphor, both about isolation, disappointment, and the dissolution of family.
HORNS by Joe Hill - A man (Ig) suspected of murdering his long-time girlfriend and first love wakes up one morning to discover that he's grown horns. These horns allow him to manipulate people by getting them to reveal their secrets and persuading them toward sin. On the other hand, the horns kind of suck--people reveal their secrets whether or not Ig wants them to, and they all want his opinions on just how much they ought to sin. The main plot line, tracing Ig's attempts to reconcile himself to his horns and, in the meantime, discover and punish the real murderer--is entertaining. Portions of the novel told from alternate perspectives were mostly also entertaining, and appropriate (as Ig's horns give him a limited mind-reading ability that gives him access to these perspectives at the appropriate points in the book). The characters are somewhat cliched in places, but also smartly developed in others, leading me to believe that the text embodies a tension where it wasn't quite sure how to pose itself in terms of comedy versus realism. Ig's character struck me as often inconsistent, particularly in early chapters. The portrayal of the villain, Lee, was rather clever in certain respects--it felt like a convincing, occasionally chilling, progression of lack of empathy and misogyny. While there were a number of structural problems in the novel, I felt the primary difficulty lay in the lack of reconciliation between its disparate elements--the backstory, the farcical comedy, the social commentary comedy, the nostalgic reminiscence, the mythology, the clever reparte, the interweaving points of view, the magic and the mundane... in particular, the story got lost in what felt like the world's most interminable chapter about a dare and a cherry bomb. I admit I'm not the greatest fan of Rockwell-esque boyhood escapade chapters, but this one was about thrice as long as it needed to be, and a real disappointment on the heels of the cleverer material before it. I enjoyed this read, and I'm glad I read the book, but it didn't quite work for me on the next level up from that.
January 10, 2011
On Writing and Mortality at Big Other
I've posted some thoughts on Writing and Mortality at Big Other.
An excerpt:
Read more at Big Other.
An excerpt:
A year or two ago, an article made the rounds which had collected ten pieces of writing advice from a number of famous authors. Some of the advice was irritating, some was true but banal, some was presumably profound, and some were amusing for their own sake.
One piece of advice that got picked up and repeated was the idea that if you were working on a project, and found out that you had six weeks to live, and then would be willing to set aside the project, it was the wrong project.
I really dislike that advice. It seems to me that it originates from the same place that makes writers say things like "a real writer *has* to write" or "any writers who can be discouraged, should be."... I don't have to write. I have to eat. I have to sleep. I might miss writing. I don't *have* to do it.
I feel like saying "I *have* to write" is a way of absenting oneself from agency over the decision, consciously or subconsciously. Writing is a risky career choice and one that doesn't always yield a lot of concrete reward or social approval. But if one pretends it's not a choice, then one doesn't have to worry about those things, or at least not in the same way. It's not their fault that they aren't making more money; they *have* to write. They don't have to doubt themselves; they had no choice. Likewise, how could you be so cruel to doubt them when this is something they must do to survive?
Art is cool. But it's not bread.
And if I had six weeks to live, I would want to spend as much of them with my husband, family and friends as I possibly could.
Read more at Big Other.
A Year of Writing News, Part Four - The Monster's Million Faces
My short story, "The Monster's Million Faces," was published this October on Tor.com.
Rarely tame calls it "one of the most powerful stories I've read all year," but her review also mentions that she "almost wish[es] it had come with some sort of warning label at the top..."
She writes:
(She also mentions in her post that she'd rather not discuss the story or her reaction to it, so please don't leave comments here interrogating her reaction, either.)
The Monster's Million Faces:
Rarely tame calls it "one of the most powerful stories I've read all year," but her review also mentions that she "almost wish[es] it had come with some sort of warning label at the top..."
She writes:
I am posting this now to simultaneously encourage you to go read it... or... possibly stay very far away from it, depending. (Apologies to Ms. Swirsky.)...
If you were ever a victim of child abuse (in any form, I think), you may want to be cautious about when and where you read "The Monster's Million Faces."
If you were never a victim (or even if you were, but think you can handle going there) I recommend the story. I think it's one of the most powerful stories I've read all year. Rachel Swirsky's stories are always good--she's one of my very favorite short fiction writers--but this one... I'm sure I'll never forget this story.
(She also mentions in her post that she'd rather not discuss the story or her reaction to it, so please don't leave comments here interrogating her reaction, either.)
The Monster's Million Faces:
He's old this time. A hospital gown sags over his gaunt frame. IV wires stream from his arms, plugging him into a thousand machines. I could tear them out one by one.
I ask, "Do you know who I am?"
January 9, 2011
A Year of Writing News, Part Three - In the Zone
Last year, L. Timmel Duchamp mentioned to me that she wanted to start a new forum for reviews. She was joined by Nisi Shawl, Kath Williams, and Lew Gilchrist, and the four of them have brought the project into reality as the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
For the first issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, I took a look at Kathe Koja's striking and tangled new novel UNDER THE POPPY (Small Beer Press, November 2010).
The novel traces the events surrounding, and the lives touched by, Under the Poppy, a brothel that is also a theater. From my review:
Check out Under the Poppy and also the shifting, quaking, perpetually renewing ground of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone aims to bring reviews, criticism, interviews, intelligent essays, and flashes of creative artwork (visual and written) to a readership hungry for discussion of work by not only men but also women. Work by women continually receives short shrift in most review publications. And yet the majority of readers are women. Ron Hogan writes in an August 2010 post on Beatrice.com, "[Jennifer] Weiner and [Jodi] Picoult, among others, are giving us a valuable critique of a serious problem with the way the [New York] Times [Book Review]—and, frankly, most of the so-called literary establishment—treats contemporary fiction. Which is to say: They ignore most of it, and when it comes to the narrow bandwidth of literature they do cover, their performance is underwhelming, 'not only meager but shockingly mediocre,' as former LA Times Book Review director Steve Wasserman said three years ago. And it hasn't gotten any better since then, leaving us with what Jennifer Weiner describes as "a disease that's rotting the relationship between readers and reviewers."
The relationship between readers and reviewers interests us. We want to bring attention to work critics largely ignore and offer a wider, less narrowly conceived view of the literary sphere. In short, we will review work that interests us, regardless of its genre or the gender of its author. We will blur the boundaries between critical analysis, review, poetry, fiction, and visual arts. And we will do our best to offer our readers a forum for discussion that takes the work of women as vital and central rather than marginal. What we see, what we talk about, and how we talk about it matters. Seeing, recognizing, and understanding is what makes the world we live in. And the world we live in is, itself, a sort of subduction zone writ large. Pretending that the literary world has not changed and is not changing is like telling oneself that Earth is a solid, eternally stable ball of rock.
For the first issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, I took a look at Kathe Koja's striking and tangled new novel UNDER THE POPPY (Small Beer Press, November 2010).
The novel traces the events surrounding, and the lives touched by, Under the Poppy, a brothel that is also a theater. From my review:
The story has an epic quality, tempered by concentration on concrete details. Its late nineteenth century setting felt compellingly convincing—at times, it was like reading a book which had slanted slightly to the side, examining characters and events that would have been marginal to the original text...
Rich, intelligent descriptions, and a compelling cast makes Under the Poppy an intense, lingering experience. There are more quibbles I could make—at times the prose could have used sharpening, the villains read as flat, and I'm tired of sexual sadism symbolizing "bad person"—but part of the pleasure was that there was so much texture. Each section was a burst of images. I wanted to read it slowly as I might eat a rich meal—savoring each bite before taking another.
Check out Under the Poppy and also the shifting, quaking, perpetually renewing ground of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
