Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 99

More on J.G. Ballard, High-Rise, Brutalism and Architectural Horror

Last week, I posted about J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s recent film adaptation of said novel and about Brutalist architecture in general and its connection to science fiction. I also included several links to articles discussing the book and the movie.

In the meantime, I have come across some more articles about High-Rise. Interestingly, most articles about High-Rise I have seen come from architecture rather than film sites, which suggests that this is a movie that will appeal to architecture and design freaks. Which is okay, I mainly watched Mad Men for the vintage design porn as well. And coincidentally, Elisabeth Moss, who played Peggy Olsen in Mad Men, also appears in High-Rise.

Phaidon tackles the architectural aspects of High-Rise straight away and offers a Brutalist guide to the movie and book, courtesy of architectural historian Peter Chadwick.

Meanwhile, at uncube, Jon Astbury has an extensive interview with High-Rise director Ben Wheatley. Among other things, Ben Wheatley discusses the ideas that went into designing the look of the movie and also the problems of creating a believable building.

Ben Wheatley also discusses both the Doctor Who episode Paradise Towers, which is believed to be a sort of clandestine adaptation of Ballard’s novel, as well as David Cronenberg’s movie Shivers, which came out the same year as Ballard’s novel and bears some thematic similarities. See the original trailer for Shivers here.

Another thematically similar film about a high-rise apartment block turned scene of horror is the 1983 Dutch movie De Lift (The Lift). I don’t know if The Lift had any influence on High-Rise at all – at any rate, Ben Wheatley doesn’t mention it in the interview – but it’s a great movie nonetheless. The full movie in Dutch with English subtitles is available on YouTube, by the way. There is also an American remake from 2001 called The Shaft (also directed by Dick Maas, who directed The Lift), which goes for an Art Deco look instead of the modernist/brutalist sensibility of the original. The remake is available on YouTube as well.

For another work of high-rise and elevator related horror, also see Abwärts (Out of Order), a German thriller from 1984 starring Götz George, Hannes Jaenicke, Wolfgang Kieling and Renee Soutendijk. Once again, the movie is available on YouTube and well worth watching. Abwärts was shot in the so-called Silberturm (Silver Tower), a distinctive 1970s bank building in Frankfurt am Main and once Germany’s tallest building.

Finally, for movies featuring high-rise buildings as places of horror, there’s also the 1971 disaster classic The Towering Inferno, in which a newly completed skyscraper (portrayed by 555 California Street, a brutalist office building in San Francisco) catches fire on the night of its grand opening and kills a whole bunch of famous actors, including Robert Wagner, Richard Chamberlain and Jennifer Jones. A pre-murder-trial O.J. Simpson was also in the movie, though I have no idea, if his character survived or not.

Like many people who grew up during the 1970s and 1980s, I have a deeply conflicted relationship to the disaster movies of that era, because I clearly remember being terrified by many of them as a kid and not least of all because they killed off all the big stars (and for me the likes of Robert Wagner and Richard Chamberlain were big stars, because I knew them from TV, while I had no idea who Paul Newman or Steve McQueen were), which simply wasn’t supposed to happen. Meanwhile, rewatching these movies as an adult often reveals how corny and predictable they really are, while at the same time turning them into interesting period pieces.

However, no 1970s disaster movie has the potential to scare my adult self with one exception: I still don’t feel comfortable watching The Towering Inferno, though the fact that the last time I tried watching it was fairly shortly after the house across the road burned down, which caused the movie to trigger some latent PTSD I didn’t know I had, might have something to do with that.

Last but not least, there is also the original Die Hard from 1988 for another movie that features a skyscraper as a place of terror. The setting in this case was the postmodern Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, built in 1987, which to generations of moviegoers will always be the Nakatomi Plaza.

Coincidentally – and I for one did not know this – Die Hard was based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, which in turn was inspired by the movie The Towering Inferno.

Films and books where high-rise buildings, particularly modernist and brutalist high-rise buildings, become places of horror were definitely a thing in the 1970s and early 1980s. Sometimes the horror is due to external sources (fire, terrorists), sometimes due to the people inside the building turning upon each other and sometimes it is supernatural or semi-supernatural in nature. But it’s definitely telling that even in the 1970s and 1980s, i.e. the prime period of Brutalism, when such buildings were touted as the very embodiment of progress and modernity in the Western world, people were eagerly producing stories where the very alienating nature of such buildings leads to horror. So J.G. Ballard’s novel definitely fits into the spirit of the times, so to say.

It’s also telling that the filmic versions of these high-rise horrors are quite often set in very new buildings that were only a couple of years old at the time of filming, if that. And yes, most of them are Brutalist – the postmodern Fox/Nakatomi Plaza being the big exception here.

So with a renewed interest in Brutalism, including a renewed filmic appreciation of the style, it was only a matter of time before the architectural horror movie of the 1970s/early 1980s made a return as well. The film version of High-Rise seems to herald this return.

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Hugo Season 2016: The Return of the Puppies

The deadline for the 2016 Hugo nominations and 1941 Retro Hugo nominations approaches fast, so we’re seeing the annual increase in pre-Hugo nomination chatter. BTW, if you were a member of Sasquan, MidAmeriCon II or Worldcon 75 before January 31, 2016, go here to nominate.

The nominees for the Hugo Awards have been contentious since forever and you can see my take on and summary of previous debates here. However, in the past two years, particularly the last year, the annual Hugo nomination controversy has been cranked up to eleven due to the so-called Sad and Rabid Puppy campaign. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just read the posts linked above, cause it’s all there.

The Sad Puppies are at it again, for the fourth consecutive year, and announced their recommendation list last Thursday. The link goes to File 770, where the list was reposted, just in case you don’t want to visit the Sad Puppy site itself. There is also a lot of discussion in the comments.

Meanwhile, occasional Sad Puppy fellow-traveller Vox Day has been posting his own Rabid Puppies slate in bits and pieces over the past month or so. Once again, the tireless Mike Glyer at File 770 has reposted the Rabid Puppy picks, so click here, if you don’t want to wade through the morass that is Vox Day’s blog.

Leaving aside the Rabid Puppies for now, one thing that is notable is that the Sad Puppy list for 2016 a) contains up to ten choices in many categories rather than just five and b) contains works like e.g. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers or The End of All Things by John Scalzi that don’t look like obvious Puppy picks at fist, second and third glance.

So it seems that the Sad Puppy 4 organisers headed by Kate Paulk did stick to their word and created their list based on all recommendations they received and not just those of puppy affiliates. What is more, they also posted a list of ten recommendations in many categories, making a puppy sweep due to bloc-nominating like last year less likely.

This is a good thing.

Nonetheless, following last year’s controversy, a lot of people are less than thrilled to find themselves on the Sad Puppy list.

Alastair Reynolds, whose novella “Slow Bullets” is on both the Sad and Rabid Puppies list, requested to be removed and was promptly inundated with angry comments from irate Puppies.

Catherynne M. Valente, whose novella “Speak Easy” is also on the Sad Puppies list, was initially furious, especially since she was one of the puppy targets last year, but eventually decided to give the Puppies the benefit of the doubt, at least for now, though she reserves the right to change her mind. Oh yes, and Catherynne Valente was also inundated with angry comments from irate Puppies on social media.

John Scalzi, whose novella The End of All Things 1: The Life of the Mind is also on the Sad Puppies list, points out that he has withdrawn all his 2015 works from awards consideration, and that putting people and their work on a nomination slate against their will is kind of arseholish. No irate comments from Puppies this time, at least not at Whatever, because Scalzi wisely closed the comments.

Several people who did not find themselves on either puppy list weighed in as well:

Rachael Acks says that she wishes she could trust that the Sad Puppies have changed, but given their history, she remains sceptical. And of course – I sense a pattern here – she promptly receives hostile comments from angry Puppies.

At Crime and the Forces of Evil, Dara Korra’ti is pleased that the Sad Puppies seem to have mended their ways and points out that she objects not to recommendation lists per se, but to the Puppies’ culture war rhetoric and their ballot stuffing. She also points out that we still need the E Pluribus Hugo amendment to the World Science Fiction Society statutes in order to prevent any group of any political orientation from exploiting the flaw that the Puppies exploited last year again.

At nerds of a feather, the G declares that he feels that Sad Puppies 4 have abandoned their strident culture war rhetoric for now and make some decent recommendations.

At Blue Author Is About To Write, Alexandra Erin wonders about the possible motives behind this year’s Sad Puppy list and points out that the best thing to do is to ignore the Puppies altogether, since they will probably claim victory anyway, regardless of what happens.

As for myself, I’d like to believe that the puppies have changed (at least the Sad Puppies, Vox Day remains his ever charming self) and learned from last year’s mistakes. At least, the Sad Puppy 4 organisers have done what they said they’d do, namely crowdsource recommendations and create a list of the most recommended items regardless of pedigree. Given the intransparent way in which Brad Torgersen created his list last year, this is a great improvement, as is the fact that they offer more recommendations than slots in many categories.

As for the non-obvious choices on the Sad Puppy list, I don’t necessarily assume any malicious afterthought there. What I presume happened is a) the Sad Puppy supporters’ taste is not as out of tune with the rest of fandom as they believe, or b) people not affiliated with the Sad Puppies took them by their word and offered recommendations, which promptly ended up on the final list, because the Puppy supporters either aren’t as numerous as they believe or maybe too burned out from last year and too busy with the upcoming US election to care.

Nonetheless, I sympathise with those who find themselves on the Sad Puppy list against their will and want their names removed. Because the truth is that after three years of increasingly unpleasant shenangigans, including ballot-stuffing, racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric by some outspoken Puppy representatives (note that I said some, not all of them), attacks on previous Hugo winners and anybody who dared to disagree with the Puppies and last year’s spokespuppy wanting to evict works he doesn’t like from the genre altogether, the Sad Puppy brand has become toxic.

I think few people would have minded finding their name on a recommendation list – at least, I know I’ve always been flattered the few times I’ve found my name on such a list – even if the list was compiled by people with whose politics they disagree. Nor do I think that e.g. Catherynne Valente or Alastair Reynolds hate conservative readers, as some commenters insinuate. Because writers normally don’t care about their readers’ politic al views. I certainly don’t. Though I have to admit that I’m always a bit surprised when I find prepper fiction (a subgenre whose readership tends towards the right) in the also-boughts of my post-apocalyptic works. If only because people who want to read how the right people with enough guns, ammunition and cans of beans can totally survive the apocalypse will probably be very disappointed with my works, which have no shooting, characters who are neither white nor straight and a lot of people dying.

Nonetheless, the reason why many writers don’t want to be associated with the Sad Puppies, let alone the Rabid Puppies, is not because they hate conservatives, but because the Puppy brand is unbelievably toxic by now. Never mind that the experience of last year’s Puppy shield nominees, i.e. people who were not directly affiliated with the Puppies, were otherwise reasonable nominees (e.g. Jim Butcher, Kary English or many of the nominees in the editor categories) and yet still found themselves ending up under “No Award”, shows only too clearly why a lot of people don’t want to be associated with the Sad Puppies in any way.

Besides, the flood of negative comments, which everybody who either requested to be withdrawn from the Puppy list or who was sceptical of the Puppies’ motives received, shows that at least some of the Puppy followers haven’t changed their ways at all. So if your followers heap abuse on everybody who dares to disagree with you, is it any surprise that a lot of people want nothing to do with you?

As for what to do, I am inclined to agree with Alexandra Erin and simply ignore the Puppy lists (both Sad and Rabid). Because it turns out that there is some overlap between my personal nominations and the Sad Puppy list and – to my infinite surprise – even the Rabid Puppy list. My Mom – who wants to attend Worldcon 75 in Helsinki and is thus eligible to nominate – also has some overlap with both Puppy lists, e.g. she is a big fan of Jim Butcher’s. I guess the old German saying that even a blind chick find a grain of corn on occasion applies here. Even Puppies sometimes find something decent to recommend.

And so I am not going to let the fact that the Sad or Rabid Puppies happened to like something influence my nominations. I will respect people’s wishes not to be nominated this year or ever (John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal and Annie Bellet are some names that come to mind), but otherwise I will nominate what I enjoyed most, regardless of who else happened to enjoy the same thing.

As for voting, I will follow the same strategy as last year and the year before. If I like a work, I will rank it accordingly, regardless of how it got onto the ballot. If I don’t like a work, it goes under “No Award”, again regardless of how it got onto the ballot. If the creator of a work is a horrible person, the work will have to be knock-your-socks-off amazing to make me forget that fact.

Finally, if you are eligible to nominate, i.e. if you were a supporting or attending member of either Sasquan, MidAmericonII or Worldcon 75 before January 31, 2016, please nominate whatever 2015 works you read/watched and enjoyed. Because the more of us nominate, the less likely it becomes that any small but organised group floods the ballot with their choices.

And if you’re still looking for recommendations beyond the Puppy lists, check out the excellent Hugo Nominees Wiki and the equally excellent Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom.

ETA: At File 770, Mike Glyer has collected some responses from the Puppy camp to the withdrawal requests of Catherynne Valente and Alastair Reynolds. They usually boil down to “Who do these people think they are anyway?” and “How dare they insult their fans?” and “We will never buy their work again (even though we didn’t know who they were until two days ago)” with the usual noisy Puppy rhetoric.

And the Puppies wonder why no one wants anything to do with their brand.

Comments are closed for obvious reasons.

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Remembering Guido Westerwelle

Yesterday, Guido Westerwelle, former head of the liberal party FDP and German foreign minister in the second Merkel cabinet from 2009 to 2013, died aged only 54. Westerwelle was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2014, but was until recently believed to be recovering.

I did not necessarily agree with Mr. Westerwelle’s politics, though I always liked him as a person and did not agree with the ridicule heaped on him for his sometimes unorthodox campaigns and ideas. But there was one thing I always admired about Guido Westerwelle and that is that he was one of the first openly gay politicians in Germany and the first openly gay cabinet minister. And he wasn’t just a second and third rate cabinet minister, but our foreign secretary and Germany’s representative in the world.

A lot of people – even people I wouldn’t classify as outrightly homophobic otherwise – had issues with being represented by a gay man in the world. However, I always loved the idea that every foreign dignitary who came to visit Germany – no matter from what homophobic and backwards country they originated – would have to shake the hands of not one, but two gay men – Guido Westerwelle and former mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit (who, at least as far as I remember, was the first big name German politician to come out as gay, a few years before Guido Westerwelle). And they couldn’t even refuse, because to do so would be impolite.

I loved the idea that Guido Westerwelle took his husband Michael Mronz along for state visits just like a heterosexual male politician would take his wife and that he ignored any sly “Well, maybe you should leave him at home, cause some things are just not done” advice. It always made me smile to see Michael Mronz – sometimes together with Angela Merkel’s husband Joachim Sauer – touring touristic sights with all the political wives. Because this sent a big signal to all the bigots, both in Germany and abroad, that LGBT relatioships are normal, as normal as heterosexual couples.

Given the current political climate in Germany, it is also worth remembering that Angela Merkel’s second cabinet from 2009 to 2013 was the most diverse in German history with a woman chancellor (and several women as ministers), a wheelchair user as secretary of finance (Wolfgang Schäuble), a gay men as foreign secretary (Guido Westerwelle) and a man of colour (Philipp Rösler, who was born in Vietnam and later adopted by a German couple) first as the secretary of health and later as secretary of economics. There was also a cabinet minister who was strongly believed to be lesbian, but since she never came out publicly, we shall respect her privacy. What makes this diverse cabinet even more remarkable is that is was not the cabinet of a leftwing government, but of a conservative-liberal, i.e. center-right coalition.

Because Guido Westerwelle’s party FDP is liberal in the European sense, i.e. pro-business and pro-low-taxes, but socially liberal, i.e. closer to what Americans call “libertarian” and not “liberal” as a synonym for “left”, as many Americans tend to use it (which I’ve never gotten – honestly, folks, words have meanings and “liberal” does not mean “left”).

The fact that a conservative-liberal government just happened to have the most diverse cabinet in German history and that this was mostly no big deal except for a few grumbling bigots also shows how much the country has changed for the better. This is important to remember, especially now that a xenophobic party of rightwing bigots (the AfD and no, I’m not using cutesy euphemisms like “national-conservative”, cause bigots is what they are) is gaining voters, particularly but not limited to East Germany.

A lot of commentators blame the rise of the AfD in certain benighted demographics on Angela Merkel who has allegedly moved the conservative party CDU too far to the left and thus alienated conservatives. This always infuriates me, because IMO the great victory of Angela Merkel is that she turned the CDU into a party – and I never thought I would ever say this – that you can vote for without feeling bad about it. Angela Merkel quietly got rid of the xenophobic and racist elements in her party, the ones who hated anything that wasn’t straight, white, German and petit-bourgeois. And the conservative-liberal coalition of the second Merkel government and its diverse cabinet were a beacon in that regard, a beacon that centre-right no longer came part and parcel with ugly bigotry, but that a centre-right government could still be the most diverse in German history and have women, LGBT people, people of colour and disabled people and make absolutely no big deal of it.

The second Merkel government was a big fat signal to the jerks who now support the AfD that their straight, white, bio-German, Christian and petit-bourgeois country is a thing of the past, no matter how much they might want to cling to it. Guido Westerwelle was a big part of that and that’s reason enough to mourn him, whether you agreed with his politics or not.

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J.G. Ballard, High-Rise and Brutalist architecture as instant dystopias

In the past few weeks, there has been a flurry of articles and posts about J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise, inspired by Ben Wheatley’s film adaptation, starring Tom Hiddleston, which opens in the UK this week, following a sort of adaptation as the Doctor Who episode Paradise Towers back in 1987.

At the Guardian, Sam Jordison discusses both whether High-Rise is a surrealist novel and how the detached tone of the book poses a moral challenge to the reader. Meanwhile, Christopher Fowler discusses the psychotic London that J.G. Ballard describes in High-Rise and other novels of the period.

The movie High-Rise looks gorgeous BTW, which marks a pleasant change from the Doctor Who episode Paradise Towers, which tells an interesting story, but is serious marred by low production values. However, High-Rise offers something both for architecture and design freaks as well as for fans of Mr. Hiddleston. Though it’s probably not a movie for dog lovers, knowing how dogs fare in J.G. Ballard’s novel. Here is a trailer.

There is also this faux advertisement for the titular building of High-Rise:

One I saw those trailers for the first time, I was stunned by how very much production designer Mark Tildesley nailed the look of the early to mid 1970s. Coincidentally, the films also nails the look of the science fiction films of that era – all of which inevitably were dystopian before Star Wars came along and changed everything – which makes it eerily appropriate for the film adaptation of a 1970s dystopian novel.

However, the most interesting article about High-Rise is this one by Oliver Wainwright in the Guardian, which views both novel and movie in the context of the Brutalist architecture of the 1960s and 1970s as well as of contemporary luxury skyscrapers being built in London and elsewhere. The article also features a great photo of Ernö Goldfinger, the British architect who managed to inspire both the eponymous Bond villain as well as the sinister architect of Ballard’s High-Rise who just happens to live in the luxurious penthouse just as Ernö Goldfinger once lived on the top floor of one of his most famous buildings, the Balfron Tower in London.

The adaptation of High-Rise comes at a time where there is a revived interest in and appreciation for Brutalist architecture, ironically while many of those buildings are being torn down and destroyed as eye-sores. Meanwhile, Brutalist buildings in the UK are also among the biggest attractions of the annual open house weekend, often the very same buildings I used to walk past and ignore as a student only twenty years ago.

On the one hand, the renewed interest in Brutalism manifests itself in the campaigns to save such classic Brutalist buildings as the Robin Hood Gardens estate in London (still standing so far), Birmingham’s Central Library (currently being demolished) or the Tricorn Shopping Centre in Portsmouth (gone since 2004). On the other hand, it also manifests itself in the sheer amount of mostly British films and TV shows, which use Brutalist architecture as settings and background, with the camera often lovingly travelling over the crumbling concrete to the point that I have dubbed this aesthetic (featuring prominently in Misfits, but also found in Luther, Hustle, Spooks, The Fades and others) “council estate punk”. The film adaptation of High-Rise fits right in here, because it looks like prime council estate punk, coupled with currently popular dystopianism.

The revival of Brutalism is fascinating, given that these buildings are incredibly ugly, hard to love, often vehemently hated by the public and have a horrible reputation as a hotbed of all sorts of social ills. Indeed, the sheer ugliness of these buildings is probably part of what makes them so fascinating and iconic. A lot of the current British Brutalism revival seems to be a defiant celebration of the sheer ugliness of these buildings. I even sympathise – something I never thought I’d ever say, considering how vehemently I hated modernist and Brutalist architecture as a teenager – because a lot of the more iconic Brutalist buildings are truly fascinating in their ugliness. I find that I experience a pleasant shudder when I look at a particular notable example of Brutalism – something like Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick and Balfron Towers, Robin Hood Gardens, the Birmingham Central Library or the Alexandra Road Estate in London. I also find myself snapping photos, because a building that awful must be recorded for posterity, since it will either be gone or renovated beyond recognition in a few years time.

Another part of the appeal of Brutalist buildings is that they are science fiction become concrete. These buildings began as utopian visions for a better life for ordinary people (and it is notable how many of the great icons of Brutalism are either social housing estates or civic buildings of some kind like schools, universities, museums, libraries, sports facilities, etc…, i.e. buildings for the people) that quickly degenerated into instant dystopias.

In fact, the utopian intention behind those buildings is at least part of the impetus behind saving them. No matter how ugly many of them were, these were buildings for the people and not just the wealthy and the middle classes either (and High-Rise – both novel and film – serve as reminders that these estates were once viewed as housing for the aspirational middle classes, even though they became associated with the lower classes later on), but for the working class as well. No matter how flawed, housing estates like Thamesmead, Robin Hood Gardens and the Balfron Tower (the latter two conveniently located right across from Canary Wharf with its gleaming bank towers) offer some of the last affordable social housing in central London. And that alone is reason enough to save them, because you know that once they go down, whatever is built in their stead will be luxury flats of some kind and no longer offer any place for the poor. Indeed, the attempt to get rid of the current social housing tennants and create flats for the bankers of Canary Wharf is rather obviously the motive behind the attempts to demolish Robin Hood Gardens. Meanwhile, the Balfron Tower has been privatised and the social housing tennants “decanted”, as this Guardian article puts it euphemistically. It almost sounds like something from a J.G. Ballard novel.

What is more, Brutalist architecture also is the iconic look of 1970s visual science fiction. If you squint a little, Brutalist buildings look like something from A Clockwork Orange (shot at least partly in Thamesmead and the Barbican, both Brutalist icons), Rollerball, Logan’s Run (shot at the Dallas Market Center), Soylent Green or Star Wars (which features the iconic BMW Headquarters in Munich). There is something incredibly cinematic about Brutalist buildings, which is why so many of them have been used as film sets. If you take a stroll through Thamesmead, you expect to walk right into Alex and his droogs or the Misfits gang in their orange overalls. If you walk past the Balfron Tower, you cannot help but remember how it was overrun with zombies in 28 Days Later and also featured in the Oasis video “What’s the Story, Morning Glory?”. In fact, I spent years referring to the Balfron Tower as “the morning glory building”, because I didn’t know it’s proper name.

Oh yes, and the Balfron Tower was designed by a genuine Bond villain or at least the model for one, while John Poulson, the Yorkshire architect who wound up in prison for bribing officials, was the model for memorable morally dubious to outright villainous characters in works such as the TV shows Our Friends From the North and Ashes to Ashes as well as David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet and the TV adaptation thereof, which is only a trilogy for some reason. Of course, the real Ernö Goldfinger never gold-plated ladies, attempted to slice off the genitals of heroic MI6 agents or nuke Fort Knox and while John Poulson may have bribed officials, he was never involved in a massive kidnapping and sexual abuse scandal as in David Peace’s novel. Nonetheless, there is something larger than life about those buildings and the men who designed and built them. Brutalist buildings are science fiction dystopias designed by men who may not have been bonafide supervillains, but who certainly inspired them.

I have a recurrent dream of walking through the endless corridors of a gigantic sprawling Brutalist complex, often lost, often trying to get someplace that I never reach. There are lifts that get stuck, staircases that lead into nowhere, walkways and open atriums. The dream varies a bit. Sometimes the building is a space station or a space ship or an undersea base. Sometimes, I am chased by zombies or Stormtroopers or – in one memorable version – a mob of protesters throwing wrapped gifts. Sometimes, I am a secret agent on a mission, trying to rescue someone or get crucial information to someone important. Sometimes, I am merely on the run. I have had variations of this dream for almost thirty years now and it is easy to see where it comes from, namely from bits and piece of movies I’ve seen, combined with the buildings, many of them Brutalist, I remember from my youth. And since I have an interest in architecture, my dreams usually feature architectural details.

My generation has a curious love and hate relationship with Brutalism, because we were the generation which grew up inside these failed dystopias of our parents’ generation. My highschool, my university and the church where I was baptised and had my confirmation were all Brutalist buildings (coincidentally all long since refurbished, often beyond recognition). I never lived in a Brutalist building, apart from spending a few memorable months in this Dutch apartment block that sits at the borderline between Brutalism and Postmodernism (it was a great building BTW), but many of my generation did. And though a lot of us intensely disliked these buildings growing up – I certainly did – they are also inevitably tied up with memories. Seeing them demolished or refurbished beyond recognition is also a destruction of our youth, often even more difficult to grasp, because those buildings were not just futuristic, they also looked solid enough to survive a nuclear war or the zombie apocalypse. Seeing them going down is seeing the impossible.

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Photos: Springtime Crocuses

After a mild start to the winter with overeager trees blooming in December, the first two and a half months of 2016 got off to a cold start. Hence, there aren’t a whole lot of signs of the coming spring yet.

However, there are a few, including crocuses (or croci, if you prefer the grammatically correct Latin version) blooming in my garden. So here are a few photos:

Bright purple crocuses in my garden.

White crocuses/croci in the garden.

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Rest in Peace, Sir Ken Adam

On Friday, one of my personal heroes, Sir Ken Adam, died aged 95.

Even if you’ve never heard the name Ken Adam, you’ll probably recognise his work when you see it, for Ken Adam determined our ideas of what a supervillain lair is supposed to look like. He was the production designer on the James Bond movies from Dr. No all the way up to Moonraker and gave us such visual delights as submarine swallowing supertankers, Bond’s famous tricked out Aston Martin, the only slightly less famous Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine, a translucent waterbed with real fish inside, the glittering interior of Fort Knox that looked so much cooler than the real thing probably did, undersea bases and space stations, Alpine lairs and rocket launch pads, genital slicing lasers and of course Blofeld’s volcano lair cum rocket launch pad, complete with monorail and piranha pond. The Guardian has a gallery of some of Ken Adam’s famous designs.

In these days of ubiquitous greenscreen and CGI, it is hard to imagine that all of those sets were physical and specifically built for the respective films. But if you look at a vintage Bond movie from the 1960s or 1970s, you’ll notice how real those sets look. When I watched those movies for the first time as a kid, I actually thought they were real places and that there were really hollowed-out volcanoes and mountaintop supervillain lairs out there in the world somewhere. The first time I saw an actual waterbed, I was disappointed that it was neither translucent nor contained any living goldfish like the one in Diamonds Are Forever.

Nor am I the only person who mistook Ken Adam’s designs for real. During the Cold War, East European intelligence services eagerly watched Bond movies to see what the enemy was doing and what cool tech they had. The KGB reportedly even tried to order an example of Bond’s gadget-laden Aston Martin, only to be told that the actual car doesn’t have any of those functions. And Ronald Reagan – who used to be an actor, after all, and should have known how filmic illusions work – reportedly asked to see another famous Ken Adam set, the NORAD War Room from Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, when he visited the real NORAD shortly after his inauguration as President.

Of all of Ken Adam’s designs, it’s the volcano lair from You Only Live Twice that has stuck with me most. Seeing that volcano lair for the first time on TV, I immediately exclaimed “I want to live there.” With the rocket, the monorail and everything, though I would have swapped the piranhas in the pool for goldfish. And in my early attempts at writing, everybody – both heroes and villains – had elaborate secret lairs hidden in seemingly innocuous places. There was an undersea spaceport, too, that was clearly inspired both by the Blofeld’s volcano lair from You Only Live Twice and the underwater spaceport from Raumpatrouille Orion (and I strongly suspect the latter was inspired by the former as well). Coincidentally, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who wanted to move into the sets of the Bond movie. I sometimes do translations for a company that builds mega-yachts for the ultra-rich and a lot of the time the specs boil down to “Someone has seen too many Bond movies and thought they were real”. More precisely, they all want to own some variation of the Disco Volante, Emilio Largo’s yacht from Thunderball.

I have the theory that the true reason why the Bond movie franchise survived both replacing the lead actor several times and having fuck-all to do with the actual Ian Fleming novels after the first few movies is because what makes a Bond movie is not so much the actor playing the lead role nor the Fleming novel it’s supposedly based on. Of course, all Bond movies contain certain set pieces, but what sets them apart from umpteen other action franchises is that Bond movies have a certain look and style. Tune into any Bond movie at random and it is immediately recognisable as a Bond movie, even if neither Bond nor any other recognisable character is on screen. And this Bond film look was largely defined by Ken Adam, along with Maurice Binder who designed the distinctive psychedelic title sequences with the floating nudes, and composer John Barry, who created the sound of Bond films. All three are dead now, but their legacy remains and not just in Bond movies either.

I don’t remember when I first heard Ken Adam’s name. It must have been during my cineastic phase as a teenager and I must have either read it in a book somewhere or picked it up directly from the credits of a Bond movie. But while I have known his name for a long time and have admired his designs for even longer, it was only years later that I learned that Ken Adam had been born in Germany, in Berlin to be exact, as Klaus Hugo Adam. And that he had been at least partly inspired by the dull Bauhaus modernism that I loathed with a passion. Though as an adult, I can clearly see both the Bauhaus influence (especially if you know that a lot of what was actually built was watered down Bauhaus) and the influence of German expressionist cinema of the 1920s on Ken Adam. I also suspect that this is why German cinema of the 1960s is full of Ken Adamsesque sets – because they were all drawing on the same inspirations.

Coincidentally, I also wonder how Ian Fleming felt about Ken Adam’s designs for the Bond movies, given his well-known dislike of modernist architecture in general and of architect Ernö Goldfinger in particular, a man Fleming disliked so much that he named one of his most famous villains after him. This isn’t Ernö Goldfinger’s only claim to literary fame BTW, he was also reportedly the inspiration for the sinister architect in J.G. Ballard’s novel High Rise, which has just been filmed with sets that look like something Ken Adam might have come up with in the 1970s.

I obviously wasn’t the only person who was inspired by Ken Adam’s glorious designs. You can see his influence in many movies he never worked on. The later 1960s birthed dozens of cheap Bond knock-offs with plywood and cardboard sets that look like Ken Adam on a budget. Here is one of the better examples, Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse from 1964, with a very Ken-Adam-like supervillain lair. Poor Dr. Mabuse, a true legend of villainy with a ninety year reign of terror and yet he was never able to afford a real Ken Adam lair.

Ken Adam’s visual influence also extended beyond the Bond knock-offs of the late 1960s. The Imperial Star Destroyers, the Death Star and the Starkiller Base of the various Star Wars installments are very clearly influenced by Ken Adam’s designs for the Bond movies and Dr. Strangelove, as are the Triskelion and the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier from the Marvel movies. Ditto for the Stark/Avengers Tower and Tony Stark’s Malibu home (with a bit of Oscar Niemeyer thrown in for good measure). Ironically, a lot of these movies were shot at the 007 Stage at the Pinewood Studios in London, which was specifically built to house Ken Adam’s set of the submarine swallowing supertanker from The Spy Who Loved Me.

So rest in peace, Sir Ken Adam. I still want to live in that volcano base BTW.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for February 2016

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some January books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. We have space opera, military science fiction, science fiction romance, paranormal romance, epic fantasy, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, horror, steampunk, alternate history, post-apocalyptic fiction, lots of young adult SFF, witches, demons, zombies, intergalactic conspiracies, alien invaders, were-foxes, magical swords, beleaguered queens, alternate history PIs, Valentine’s Day in space, Victorians in space, increasingly transparent girls, bioengineered jellyfish terrorists and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Emerald Emergent by James Aaron

Emmie’s mother never lets her forget that an obsession with ancient magic killed her father and left Emmie horribly scarred.

When her best friend Bryte offers Emmie a chance to explore an ancient city, Emmie is torn between her father’s sense of adventure and her mother’s common sense. She also can’t deny her fascination with bookish Bryte.

Following her heart, Emmie will face her fears and discover secrets bound to change her life forever. . . once she chooses to stand up and fight.

Book 1 in the Adventures of Emerald of Elegaia, a thrilling new science fantasy series offering a world of action and romance to explore and love.

Welcome to Elegaia, where the past can kill you.

Valentine’s Day on Iago Prime by Cora Buhlert

Kai and Maisie are about the celebrate their first Valentine’s Day on the planet Iago Prime. However, the holiday traditions they established back on Earth such as celebrating Valentine’s Day with a picnic on the beach are impossible to maintain in the hostile environment of their new home. But in spite of the many limitations imposed by living on Iago Prime, Kai pulls out all the stops to give Maisie an unforgettable Valentine’s Day.

This is a science fictional Valentine’s Day story of 2200 words or approx. 10 print pages.

Station 332 by Darcy Coates

For Charles, responding to Station 332’s emergency help request starts out no different than any other mission. She’s been paired with a near-retirement medic, Robin, and a lax mechanic, Jay. Their job is simple: check the station, kill any threats, provide assistance if needed, then return to Central.

But this is unlike any assistance request Charles has been on before.

Someone or something has destroyed the station, smashing the control panel and upending equipment. They find two bodies–murdered–in the bedroom, and the third staff member is missing.

Robin labels it a murder-suicide, but Charles has doubts.

Something is killing Central’s best fighters, leaving humanity defenceless. It’s spreading quickly. And the danger lives closer to home than anyone ever expected…

Station 332 is a short story in the five-part Cymic Parasite Breach series. Each story can be read independently.

The Memory Thief by Sarina Dorie

What would the Victorian era look like if they had “rediscovered” space flight? Would the British really be interested in colonizing the continent of America if they could colonize an entire planet?

Imagine a Neo-Victorian alternate history romance set on a shogun-like planet. Felicity is a young lady betrothed to a British noble of rank and fortune who will someday inherit a space station. Her life should be happy and perfect. Alas, she fears she will never achieve happiness—or wholeness—until her memories have been returned by the man who stole them.

In pursuit of her past, Felicity returns to an alien planet where she once encountered descendants of Japanese colonists from Earth who had settled millennia before. After a seven year absence, she finds the world much changed. The climate and geography have been altered, the planet has been colonized by her own Victorian culture, destroyed by unethical surveyors, and she is told the man she believes may have stolen her memories—a man she once loved and trusted—is dead. Her only hope for finding answers about her mysterious past is performing the Jomon courtship ritual of memory exchange. The idea of trusting another man enough to perform the ritual after what she has been through is too much and she doesn’t know if she can go through with it. Worse yet, she finds herself falling in love with the alien planet’s leader, even though she is already engaged. Only when she learns to let go of her fears can she learn the secrets that may aid in the freedom of the Jomon people—and herself.

One Sunny Night by Charon Dunn

On March 20, 3748, terrorist clones in submarines made of bioengineered jellyfish attacked the stadium where fifteen-year-old Sonny Knight was watching the

clashball championship game, kidnapping his family and his two best friends.

But the day wasn’t a total loss. Sonny got to meet one of his favorite sports heroes, he got a new dog, and he ran into an extremely tattooed man who has a really fast ship. Which might have been fast enough to get Sonny safely home in a couple of days if they hadn’t run into the tsunamis, and the pliosaurs, and the cattle stampede, and more clones, and all those other complications.

Complications fly fast and furious in this fast-paced adventure story set in a far future in which the climate has changed significantly, making travel difficult.

The Strength to Serve by Claire Frank

Home after their long absence, Daro and Cecily want nothing more than to pick up the pieces of their life and return to normalcy. But outside events intrude and the memories of what they lived through aren’t so easy to leave behind.

Pathius languishes, an unchained prisoner in a foreign land, doubtful of his place in the world. In Imara, he is offered a chance for a new life, if he can release the ghosts of his past and accept the man he has become.

As an invading army threatens their homeland, Daro, Cecily, and Pathius are drawn back into the political turmoil of Halthas. An assassin wreaks havoc in the city, a dangerous artifact is stolen, a force bent on conquest marches toward their border, and they all must take up arms to defeat an enemy their kingdom is not prepared to face.

Lay Me Down by Tamara Hart Heiner

Life is more than just breathing.

Kylee Mansfield knows what it is to be alone. Her dad left when she was seven, and her mother remarried an abusive alcoholic. Kylee finds ways to escape reality, usually by substituting one pain for another.

Things take a deadly turn when a jagged cut shows up on her arm, and she doesn’t know where it came from. She enlists her neighbor, Price Hudson, to help her uncover the truth. But Price shows her much more than just her past—he shows her what it is to be alive.

A heartbreakingly beautiful teen/young adult paranormal romance that will chill you to the core.

Starfall by John Hegenberger

After rescuing Annette Funicello’s stand-in from the amorous clutches of Guy Williams, Stan Wade, young, LA-based PI, gets a new, but secret, assignment from his number-one client, Walt Disney. The elder cartoonist and filmmaker wants Stan to investigate a death at Edwards Air Force Base. The victim, who drowned while testing an outer-space uniform, was the eighth astronaut candidate for America’s new space agency, NASA. Working out of his cramped office in the back of the Brown Derby restaurant where he’s employed as a part-time “bouncer,” Stan uncovers much more than a suspicious death…putting his own life—and the lives of those closest to him—in danger.

An Alternate History Mystery

Dream Stalker by Amy Hopkins

All Emma wanted was to sell her enchanted teas in peace; instead, she’s caught up in the chase for a killer who’s stalking the streets of London. He’s targeting half-bloods, people with limited magical ability. People just like Emma.

The police are baffled by the long string of deaths, but they’re not willing to put in the legwork to make an arrest. After all, magic users can take care of themselves, right? Except, those with real power don’t give a damn about half-bloods. So, when Emma wakes from a strange dream that nearly gets her killed in the waking world, she knows she has to deal with it herself.

With only her boggart shop-assistant and the two strange men who have offered to help, can she thwart the killer and make the city safe again?

Stop the Sirens by E.E. Isherwood

When the sirens end, “post-apocalypse” begins.

Exhausted after two weeks of rolling chaos since the sirens, Liam and his family prepare for their biggest challenge yet.

Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters starts his day in a muddy creek. The Air Force tried to wipe his subdivision off the map, but luck and fast feet helped him find refuge from the big bombs. When he looks up, he sees his whole life has been swept away by fire. And Grandma? He’d been successful getting her out of the city, and across suburbia, but she was snatched from him minutes prior to the attack. She’d gotten a one-way ticket to a brutal government facility set up to research the cure.

As a studious reader of zombie literature, Liam knows the dangers of being without shelter or direction during the zombie plague. He’d already been attacked by angry looters, malicious refugees, and hordes of zombies. His house had been riddled by a chain gun–twice–before the final bombs fell. He tried to look ahead, but saw little hope. He was bolstered by Victoria, but without Grandma by his side he felt defeated.

And yet, hope was out there. People were coming together to survive and help each other. One such group was at the Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation. It was an enclave of peace within the swirl of zombies and death engulfing all of metropolitan St. Louis. There Liam and his family might find a base from which to search for Grandma Marty.

As book 3 concludes, Liam will learn the origin of the plague, the fate of Grandma, and whether a couple of teenagers have anything to look forward to in a world filled with zombies

The Necromancer’s Daughter by Patty Jansen

One brave woman’s struggle against magical forces.

Queen Johanna’s position in Saardam is fragile. The Barons and Kings of the countries in the hinterland are not happy that she helped the royal family to survive and is now about to ensure the next generation. They vow to teach this little upstart country a lesson for once and for all.

Of course it is not so much about petty rivalry, but about access to the sea port that connects the hinterland with the lucrative ocean trade.

Johanna knows that if it came to a fight Saardam could never survive, so she has invited all the heads of state and other important people for talks to invest in the city’s shattered infrastructure for the benefit of all.

As a congregation of royal families gathers such as the lowlands have never seen, the magicians travelling with the esteemed guests prepare the final and most insidious attempt to get control of the upstart little country and its usurper, commoner queen: through her baby daughter.

Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy by V.A. Jeffrey

The Dark Energy Project, started by a group of far-thinking engineers, scientists and programmers many years ago has come roaring back like a storm!

Meant to catapult human exploration and civilization out to the farthest reaches of space, it centered around the groundbreaking information on how to build working stargates. Except, the information was stolen and its founders and all other humans attached to the project killed by alien loyalists. Thereafter, it was renamed The Blackguard Project, the linchpin of the entire drama between humans, alien rebels and the alien loyalists. It’s a shortcut for the aliens in the approaching Black Fleet who abandoned their dying planet and are heading to the solar system to invade Earth and wipe out humanity.

Bob receives a copy of the Blackguard files by The Boss with a new mission: stop the inaugural activation of the new stargate at the annual Sci-Tech Convention. To most people, this is a momentous year in the history of science and space exploration. However, Bob and his U-net band know that this gate is a Trojan Horse! It must be stopped and the aliens behind this sinister plan exposed, no matter the cost.

The Full Moon by David Neth

Kathy and her sister, Samantha, have always been a team. Throughout their time as witches, they’ve taken out more than their share of bad guys. But after Kathy meets Will, who she learns is a demonic Dark Knight, her loyalties begin to change.

Meanwhile, Samantha doesn’t trust Will or his intentions. Still, Kathy can’t help but feel tempted by the dark side as she falls deeper in love with Will. Crossing over would give Kathy the freedom to do whatever she wanted with her magic. No rules. No limitations. It would also mean breaking the bond she has always shared with her sister, who has made it clear that she wants nothing to do with the dark side.

When Will proposes they take over the underworld, Kathy loves the idea of having power. But it also leaves her with a choice that will change her life: abandon her family and the life she has always known, or give up the love of her life forever.

The Forgotten Engineer by T.S. Paul

Ensign Athena Lee was on her first engineering assignment. She was helping to build a secret space station. There was a war on and this new station was vital. When the engineering fleet was attacked and destroyed she was left lost and alone. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. She was going to have to Engineer her way home.

 

 

 

Desert Planet by Jim Rudnick

“After 55 years of waiting for an answer to the invite to join the RIM Confederacy, the planet Enki has responded with an alternate idea—that the RIM Confederacy join them instead. Captain Tanner Scott is sent on the Diplomatic mission to get the Enkians to reconsider.

What he and the Atlas crew do is to help the new Ambassador to find a way to both diplomatic as well as the Enki into the RIM Confederacy without exposing to them the secret of why that is so important. If the Enkians can be persuaded, the RIM could gain access to the newly discovered metal ores that appear to make a ship invulnerable.

But all of the RIM wants to shortcut the process so the Atlas needs to quarantine the planet as well as maintain full diplomacy with the Enkians. When the Caliphate gets involved and back room deals are made it all comes to a head at the Atlas Adept Officers trial for Terrorism.

Captain Scott will try to defend his officer by acting as his defense counsel—a job that is made even more difficult as the Enkian society and justice system are both hard to learn and hard to navigate within the law…”

Wind Chill by Patrick Rutigliano

What if you were held captive by your own family?

Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother’s death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. Obsessing him, controlling him, they now whisper the end days are finally at hand.

And he doesn’t intend to face them alone.

Emma finds herself drugged and dragged to a secluded cabin, the last refuge from a society supposedly due to collapse. Their cabin a snowbound fortress, her every move controlled, but even that isn’t enough to weather the end of the world.

Everything she knows is out of reach, lost beyond a haze of white. There is no choice but to play her father’s game while she plans her escape.

But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it’s already had a taste…

Foxed by Hollis Shiloh

Wallace Avery, bookworm extraordinaire, is not out at work in either sense, as a gay man or as a fox shifter. He likes his privacy, and he’s quite content in records management, thank you: filing papers and spending his off hours quietly.

When the opportunity he never wanted is thrust into his lap, he has to decide what to do about it. Police work and a pay raise, and probably stress up to his eyeballs, or trying to stay in his old life and pretending he’s not capable of so much more?

Whatever he chooses, he definitely doesn’t want to fall for someone from his workplace. Especially not that cop . . .

Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue by Frances Smith

Michael has survived his battle with the Voice of Corona, and is determined to walk the path of service to the immortal Empress Aegea. But opposing him is none other than his own beloved brother, Felix, who was thought dead but is the chief servant to Michael’s enemy, Quirian.

Meanwhile, the quarrels between the Empire’s feuding factions continue as Miranda finds herself increasingly entangled in the treacherous currents of Imperial politics. As plots multiply, Miranda finds herself increasingly unsure of her loyalties to anyone but her lover Octavia and her dear friend, Empress Portia. But as the Empire hurtles towards civil war the day approaches when she will have to choose a side once and for all.

The roads of Michael, Felix and Miranda entwine in Eternal Pantheia, the Empire’s capital, where betrayals and revelations try their resolve. As the city burns around them the three divided siblings must reunite and put their faith in one another, for only together can they save the Empire, or let the fires of its hubris consume the nation.

The Increasingly Transparent Girl by Matthew Stott

Things live between awake and asleep. In the moment after your eyes grow too heavy to stay open, but before the dreams take you.

One day, Melody May begins to disappear from view. Her hands, her knees, her face, her everything. A monster’s enchantment has ensnared her, and now Melody must travel across a strange and dangerous land between awake and asleep to reclaim herself; otherwise, in 48 short hours, she will never have existed at all…

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Yet more reactions to the 2015 Nebula Awards Nominees

I already offered my own reactions to the 2015 Nebula nominees in this post and collected some responses from around the web here.

Now, for the third post about the 2015 Nebulas, here are some more reactions from around the web:

At the Fangirl Happy Hour podcast (which is on my personal Hugo list for best fancast BTW), Renay Williams and Ana Grilo talk about the 2015 shortlists for the Nebulas and the Kitschies.

In many ways, their comments match my own, down to the fact that I have never heard of Hugo Wilcken whose novel The Reflection is on the Kitschies shortlist either and that all but one of the Kitschies’ best debut novel nominees are unknown to me.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Kitschies fill a void in the SFF awards spectrum, because they tend to recognise works that are often overlooked due to not being core genre. In spite of her well-deserved acclaim in the greater literary world, Margaret Atwood is a name you’ll never see on the Hugo or Nebula shortlist, not least because of that giant squid comment, which she has since repudiated and which I suspect was based on a misunderstanding in the first place, since it is impossible to find the source of the comment. And a writer like Hugo Wilcken, published by a small literary press that is mostly known for its regular rants against Amazon, is not on the radar of most genre folks at all.

I also liked getting Ana and Renay’s impressions on the shortlist for the Andre Norton Award for best YA SFF, since I’m not that plugged into the YA sphere and therefore several of the nominees were unknown quatities to me, in spite of apparently having gotten a lot of buzz in the YA world. In many ways, this is a positive development, because it means that the Andre Norton Award has gotten better at recognising what YA readers are actually reading, whereas in the past the nominees often included (male) writers of adult SFF’s forays into YA (see Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi or Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi), which got a lot of buzz in SFF circles, but not so much in YA circles.

Ian Mond also weighs in on the Nebula nominees, the Kitschies shortlist and notes a gap in the shortlist for the Aurealis Awards.

In particular, he notes that the Nebula nominations were rather predictable, largely because of the SFWA’s recommended reading list being made public. Coincidentally, Ana and Renay offered a good theory for the reasons behind this on their podcast, namely that given the ongoing uproar in fandom about secret and public slates and alleged or real awards manipulation, maximum transparency was probably the best answer.

Ian Mond is also pleased by the increased diversity of both the Kitschies and the Nebula nominees and notes a good gender mix as well as the presence of several writers of colour on both shortlists. It’s far from perfect, of course, and Ian Mond also notes that the same writers of colour keep showing up again and again, but it’s a start.

Ian Mond also notes that the Nebula nominees include several books that are part of a series, whereas the Kitchies tend to favour standalones. Given that the Kitschies also tend to favour works that are not core genre works, this isn’t all that surprising, since the prevalence of series is a genre thing (any genre, not just SFF), whereas literary fiction and literary genre works tend to favour standalones.

Unlike Ana and Renay (and me, for that matter), Ian Mond has also actually tried to read Charles E. Gannon’s Caine series and bounced off hard. In fact, Charles E. Gannon and Jack McDevitt are names that frequently pop up on the Nebula shortlist, but aren’t discussed a whole lot in the wider SFF sphere. Both strike me as authors that have a very devoted fanbase (which can be enough for an awards nomination), but not all that much impact outside their fanbase. There are a couple of other authors to whom I believe this applies as well. Small devoted fanbase, but little known or read in the wider SFF community.

In fact, I suspect this lies at the heart of most of the genre award controversies of recent years, namely that certain authors and/or their devoted fanbases simply fail to grasp that even though author X is massively popular in their circle, he or she isn’t all that well known nor highly regarded outside it.

To a certain degree I even sympathise. I have no idea why e.g. Ann Aguirre, Rob Thurman, Rachel Aaron/Rachel Bach or Simon R. Green – to name some core genre writers – aren’t more widely discussed in the SFF world and never show up on awards shortlists. Meanwhile, there are also authors whose names regularly show up on awards shortlists and whose every work gets a lot of buzz, even though I dislike their work so much that I’m not sure how it even got published in the first place, let alone landed on an awards shortlist. Coincidentally, I’m very pleased that this year’s Nebulas dodged at least three bullets of that sort and hope that the Hugos will dodge them as well.

However, where it gets ugly is when someone or a group of someones fails to grasp that the fact that their favourites are largely ignored is due to a discrepancy of taste and not to a conspiracy or affirmative action voting or any such nonsense.

Ian Mond also asks what the purpose of awards shortlists in general is (found via File 770), whether it’s a) to sell books, b) create buzz, c) honour the nominees, d) serve as a recommendation list, e) create a discussion about the state of the genre/literature or f) a combination of all of the above.

Personally, I choose option f), all of the above. a, b and c are obvious. d is rather obvious as well, since a lot of people – myself included – use awards shortlists as a recommendation list. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I will automatically read everything on a given shortlist (e.g. I won’t go out of my way to read Raising Caine, because it doesn’t sound like my thing at all), but I usually check out the nominees, particularly if they’re books I’ve never heard of. And if something sounds interesting, it makes me more likely to buy it.

As for option e, awards shortlists do create discussion, even in years that are not marred by one controversy or another. They also serve as snapshots about where the genre is going. Note how the Hugos went from only one woman (Naomi Novik) among the twenty nominees in the fiction categories in 2007 to nigh parity in 2013, though sadly the ratio has declined in subsequent years due to canine influence. Note how we are seeing more women and writers of colour on awards shortlists in recent years. Note how the Nebulas boasted only female winners for the first time in history in 2015. Note how some writers whose names frequently appeared on awards shortlists maybe ten years ago are no longer nominated, even though they are still alive and writing, because their brand of SFF is falling out of fashion. Note how the short fiction shortlists show the rise of the online zines and the decline of the traditional print magazines. Note how self-published works gradually make inroads onto the various genre awards shortlists.

So in short, awards shortlists offer a lot of material for debate, even if it is only, “How the hell did that crap get nominated?” and “Why was my favourite not nominated?”

Though Ian Mond is also correct in pointing out that the two weeks between the announcement of the Kitschies shortlist and the announcement of the winners are too short for any useful discussion, let alone to allow people to read the works (I presume the judges have already read them). But then, Ian Mond also points out that the Kitschies shortlist was usually announced earlier in the year, which suggests that there might be behind-the-scenes reasons at work here.

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More Reactions to the 2015 Nebula Award Nominees

I already shared my thoughts on the 2015 Nebula Award nominees in my last post. At the time, I also mentioned that I couldn’t find a whole lot of other analysis and reaction apart from discussion in the comments at a few genre sites.

There are a few more reactions now, though a lot of places are still conspicuously silent.

Chaos Horizon, who pretty accurately predicted this year’s Nebula nominees based on the SFWA suggested reading list, engages in some analysis of the Goodreads and Amazon ratings of the seven Nebula nominees for best novel.

At the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham shares his thoughts about the 2015 Nebula nominees and is particularly impressed by the diversity of the nominees, both with regard to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, but also with regard to style, subgenre and subject matter.

Meanwhile, Nebula nominee Amal El-Mohtar shares her pesonal favourite reaction to the 2015 Nebula nominees, courtesy of former Locus reviewer Lois Tilton:

brb, printing out this reaction to the 2016 Nebula Nominees to have framed forever pic.twitter.com/o9bjpS8zag

— Amal El-Mohtar (@tithenai) February 23, 2016

Personally, I’m more inclined to agree with Joel Cunningham than with Lois Tilton, but then I’ve found that Ms. Tilton’s reviews rarely match my personal impression of the stories in question.

At Inverse, Lauren Sarner tackles one particular Nebula category, namely the Ray Bradbury Award for best dramatic presentation and points out that the Nebula nominees kick the Oscars’ arse in that respect.

The only problem with the post is that the Ray Bradbury Award and the Oscars aren’t really comparable at all, because the Oscars are for all motion pictures, regardless of genre, released within the eligiblity period, whereas the Ray Bradbury Award is for dramatic presentations, regardless of type, in the science fiction and fantasy genres, released within the eligibility period. Hence, Jessica Jones can be nominated for a Nebula Award, but is not eligible for the Oscars, since it is a streaming video series and not a motion picture, whereas this year’s Oscar darlings The Danish Girl and The Revenant are not eligible for the Nebulas (or the Hugos, for that matter), since neither is SFF, even though the title of The Revenant suggests a horror film.

So if we remove any nominees that aren’t eligible, there is actually quite a bit of overlap between this year’s Oscar nominees and Ray Bradbury Award nominees. The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out are all nominated both for the Ray Bradbury Award and the Best Picture or respectively Best Animated Feature Oscar and are also nominated in several other categories, both technical as well as Best Screeplay, Best Actor and Best Director. Since Jessica Jones is not eligible, this means that of the Ray Bradbury Award nominees only The Force Awakens (Ryan Britt takes exception to this at Tor.com) and Ex Machina have been snubbed by the Academy, though The Force Awakens has been nominated in a couple of technical categories, while Ex Machina has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Special Effects. And even though the original Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture back in 1978 (and promptly lost out to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in one of the great WTF? decisions of Oscar history), Star Wars isn’t really the sort of movie to win Oscar nominations, while Ex Machina was simply too obscure.

In conclusion, the Nebula and Oscar nominees don’t really differ all that much. However, Lauren Sarner makes an important point, namely that the Oscars tend to reward a particular type of movie – referred to as “Oscar bait” by many of us – that isn’t really all that popular among the general audience nor all that daring and innovative. If anything, the same sort of movies that used to win Oscars in the 1930s are still winning Oscars today (including the same appalling lack of diversity among the nominees), even though both film making and society itself have changed drastically in the intervening eighty years. And it’s very likely that today’s Oscar-bait “prestige” pictures will no more stand the test of time than those of the 1930s, whereas many of the snubs of today will become the timeless classics of tomorrow.

Finally, in his announcement of the Nebula nominees at Black Gate, John O’Neill makes a brief remark that 2015 was “a good year for Tor.com and Asimov’s“, which in the comments turns into discussion of the conspiracy theory, quite widespread among the Sad and Rabid Puppy crowd, that Tor allegedly manipulates the Hugo and Nebula Awards in favour of its own authors and books. The discussion is surprisingly civil, given how contentious these debates can become, and Nebula nominee Charles E. Gannon even pops in to say that the fact that the alien antagonists in his nominated novel Raising Caine are called the K’Tor is not intended as a jab against Tor. And of course, K’Tor is pretty typical for the names of alien species in the space opera and military SF genres.

Regarding the supposed Tor domination of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, it is notable that the name Tor shows up a lot on genre awards shortlists. However, Tor is a big imprint and publishes a lot of books. What is more, Tor.com is a popular genre site, which publishes approx. one piece of short fiction per week. And then there is their new novella line. So in short, the reason why the name Tor pops up a lot on awards shortlists is because they publish a lot of stuff in several categories.

What is more, for short fiction, the traditional print magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog and Fantasy & Science Fiction are difficult to access outside North America. For example, I have never seen Asimov’s, Analog or F&SF at a single newsstand in Germany. I have seen Asimov’s and Analog for sale in the UK – in London in the SFF basement of the late lamented Murder One – but that’s the only place in Europe where I have ever seen the so-called “big three” SFF magazines. As a result, I only ever see fiction from Asimov’s, Analog or F&SF when it is put online (which is how I read Eugene Fisher’s “The New Mother” and Sam J. Miller’s “Calved”) or shows up in a Year’s Best anthology. Meanwhile, I can read the various online magazines right here at my computer.

So if online magazines seem to dominate the genre awards shortlists of late, a large part of the reason is that they are more accessible to greater numbers of readers, particularly those outside the US. Now this is not that relevant to the Nebula, since I suspect that a sizeable number of Nebula voters subscribe to the print magazines (and note Asimov’s strong showing at the 2015 Nebulas). But it’s certainly relevant to the Hugos.

As for Tor.com, they don’t just publish a lot of good stories (though looking through my own list, I find that Lightspeed dominates, followed by Tor.com, Uncanny and Clarkesworld, whereas for novels, my list is dominated by Ace, followed by Orbit with Tor in third place), but they’re also pretty good at marketing them.

Years ago, I signed up for the Tor.com site. I haven’t posted there in ages and I’m not sure if I even still remember my log-in. However, I still get their newsletter every week with links to notable articles at Tor.com. This newsletter almost always also includes a link to a piece of short fiction. I usually click on that link and I often read the story. If I enjoy it, it goes on my personal “potential Hugo nominees” list. I doubt I’m the only SFF reader who does this and the result is that you see a lot of Tor.com stories on the various awards shortlists.

So you see, there is no conspiracy necessary, just a combination of wide market penetration, good works and clever promotion.

Meanwhile – just so they won’t be forgotten – a couple of other awards shortlists have been announced as well in the past few days. And so the nominees for the 2015 Kitschies, the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards and the 2015 Ditmar Awards have also been announced. Some very good and interesting choices are to be found on all three.

But then, 2015 was a strong year for SFF and at least so far, the various awards shortlists reflect that.

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Two Literary Deaths and Some Thoughts on the 2015 Nebula Nominees

It’s been a sad day for the literary world, because on Friday we lost both Harper Lee and Umberto Eco.

Of the two, the death of Umberto Eco probably affects me more, because I vividly remember reading (and shuddering at) my mother’s copy of The Name of the Rose as a teenager. Of course, I didn’t get the many literary allusions until many years after. Except for William of Baskerville – I got that reference, only that I didn’t understand it was a literary allusion and instead assumed it meant Baskerville was a real place. I was also thrilled that Eco had mentioned Melk, where our partner school was located (the Abbey school in fact, the bus of our school musical group infamously got stuck while passing through the gates). References to Melk aside, I enjoyed the book as a straightforward historical thriller about murder and execution in the Middle Ages. Coincidentally, I’m pretty sure my Mom didn’t get the literary allusions either. But the genius of Umberto Eco was that his novels worked on multiple levels – you could read them as straightforward thriller or adventure novels or you could get so much more out of them.

By the way, the film version of The Name of the Rose also has the distinction of being the first “adult” movie I watched in the theatre. I enjoyed it, too, except for the sex scene between Christian Slater and Valentina Vargas (fairly tame by current standards and focussed on the bobbing backside of Ms. Vargas), which squicked out my thirteen-year-old self and caused me to vow that if sex looked like that, I’d never ever have any. I still think it’s a badly shot sex scene, by the way.

Unlike most of my American friends, Harper Lee means less to me than Umberto Eco did, because I came of age in the 1980s, at a time when To Kill a Mockingbird had fallen out of fashion in Germany and was little read in schools. I eventually encountered the novel, while at university, and though I enjoyed it, I was also keenly aware that I was past the age where you should discover the book.

Interestingly enough, in the twenty plus years since I graduated, To Kill a Mockingbird has experienced something of a renaissance and is once again read in grade 11 or 12, usually in the context of a unit on the American South and sometimes substituted by or complemented with John Grisham’s A Time to Kill (WTF?) and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. The teens usually enjoy To Kill a Mockingbird a whole lot, but then they are at the right age for it. At least one loved it so much that he voluntarily read Go Set a Watchman once it came out (as well as The Help).

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In happier news, the nominees for the 2015 Nebula Awards have been announced.

Once again, I could just recycle my Nebula reaction posts from last year and the year before, because my comments are quite similar. For the Nebula shortlist is once again pleasantly diverse, with women, writers and colour and international writers well represented (though as Joyce Chng pointed out on Twitter, we tend to see the same few writers of colour and international writers pop up again and again, even though they are hardly the only marginalised writers out there). And once more, I suspect that the Nebula shortlist will be a lot more representative of my personal tastes than the Hugo shortlist.

More detailed analysis under the cut:

Delving into the categories, I am pleased to see Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin nominated in the best novel category. I haven’t read Updraft by Fran Wilde and The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, but I have heard good things about both and they’re definitely on my to-read list. I have also heard a lot of buzz about Uprooted by Naomi Novik and Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen, but I have little desire to read either (though I will give them a shot, if either gets a Hugo nomination). I don’t much care about animal protagonists, which knocks out Barsk. As for Uprooted, in spite of all the buzz, the description just didn’t grab me enough to pick it up. Plus, Foz Meadows’ review suggests that it might push some of my personal buttons. As for Charles E. Gannon, this is his third Nebula Award nomination in a row, so he clearly has a fanbase among the electorate. However, I find that I have zero interest in his work. His novels strike me as “ye olde Nutty Nuggets” basically and that’s just not my thing.

Fran Wilde’s Updraft also shows up on the shortlist for the Norton Award, which is if not a first, at least very rare for the Nebulas. I’m also pleased to see Court of Fives by Kate Elliott and Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older nominated. Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace and Nimona by Noelle Stevenson got a lot of buzz, though I haven’t read either. However, I’m surprised that Nimona is eligible, considering it’s a graphic novel. The unknown quantities for me are Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly (though it sounds great), Bone Gap by Laura Ruby (from the cover and blurb, I wouldn’t even have thought this was SFF) and Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee (sounds a bit like a YA version of Rollerball).

The nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for best dramatic presentation are largely good choices as well. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Mad Max: Fury Road were pretty much the obvious nominees this year and Ex Machina has gotten a lot of positive buzz as well, though I haven’t seen it (not sure if it even had a German theatrical release, in fact).

The Martian was another obvious nominee and I have resigned myself to the fact that I am apparently one of the very few people in the world who intensely dislikes both the novel and the film, because I consider them throwbacks to a type of science fiction I thought we’d moved beyond. But then, retrograde SF is exactly what the traditionalist crowd tends to like, so I’m not surprised The Martian popular.

The Pixar film, Inside Out, is probably another obvious nominee, because Americans – and the overwhelming number of Nebula nominators are Americans – just love Pixar films. But whatever magic Pixar movies possess, it doesn’t work on me nor on most Germans I know. My cousin falling asleep during one of the Toy Stories pretty much sums up how I feel about Pixar movies. And for the record, I love both classic Disney films and anime movies, but Pixar’s output is just “meh” to me. And in fact, I tend to place the annual Pixar or similar (since last year’s Lego Movie was not made by Pixar, apparently) movie under “No Award”, when it shows up on the Hugo ballot and I have voting rights.

Seeing an episode of Jessica Jones nominated in the dramatic presentation category was a pleasant surprise, because I’ve been very impressed with Jessica Jones, but felt that it was probably too female-centric for mass appeal. And indeed, I have seen a couple of comments – inevitably by men – that they didn’t like Jessica Jones and that Daredevil (which was the first thing produced under the Marvel banner that I didn’t like, even though I wanted to) was so much better. Though I’m a bit surprised that Jessica Jones is the only Marvel Studios production to make the Nebula shortlist this year, since I suspected Avengers: Age of Ultron and/or Ant-Man might make it as well. But then, Ant-Man was one of Marvel’s slighter entries (though fun) and a lot of people seem to dislike Age of Ultron, though I liked it quite a bit. I may talk some more about that eventually.

The short fiction categories look very good as well. In the novella category, I’m very pleased to see “The New Mother” by Eugene Fisher nominated, since that novella is definitely on my Hugo shortlist. I also enjoyed “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik, “Binti” by Nnedi Okorafor and “Waters of Versailles” by Kelly Robson. I tried reading “The Bone Swans of Amandale” by C.S.E. Cooney, but bounced off it. For me “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” by Beth Cato is the only unknown quantity in this category.

In the novelette category, I enjoyed “And you shall know her by the trail of dead” by Brooke Bolander very much and it will go on my Hugo ballot. I also liked “Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg. The other four stories are unknown to me, because they are from print magazines, which are pretty much impossible to get in Germany. Though I have heard praise for “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker.

The short story category looks very strong as well. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer was a personal favourite last year and definitely on my Hugo list. For that record, I also loved Ms. Kritzer’s novelette “So Much Cooking”. I’m a big fan of Sam J. Miller’s work, though I haven’t read the Nebula nominated story of his yet. My favourite Sam J. Miller story last year as “Calved”, though I also liked “Ghosts of Home” very much. “Damage” by David Levine is another 2015 short story I liked a lot. IMO it was much better than “Turncoat”, last year’s Hugo nominee with a similar theme. “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar and “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong are both very fine stories as well. The only short story on the Nebula shortlist that didn’t work for me is “Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker. I like the idea behind the story, but the execution didn’t work for me and that fire was way too contrived. Besides – and that’s a personal thing – I just don’t like Alzheimer stories.

Coincidentally, the Nebula nominees once again prove that there are certain themes drifting both through the zeitgeist in general and the SFF part thereof in particular. Because if you look back at Hugo and Nebula nominated works, particularly in the short fiction categories, or check out the Year’s Best anthologies, you tend to find clusters of stories with particular themes showing up in certain years.

For example, approx. five years ago there was a flurry of really depressing stories about parents and dead children, all set in environments hostile to human life like an undersea base or an alien planet.

This year, I’m seeing a bunch of Alzheimer stories on the Nebula shortlist. Both “Today I am Paul” and “Madeleine” deal with the subject of Alzheimer’s disease, though only “Madeleine” manages to do something unexpected with it. One might also include “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”, though the mother of the narrator is a reclusive hoarder (and not human anyway) rather than suffering from some form of dementia. Last year’s Hugo nominee “Totalled” by Kari English deal with cognitive decline as well, though it uses the old trope of the “brain in a jar” story to do so. Of course, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are also big themes in the mundane media to the point that I coined a name for this subgenre, dementia dramas. I talk some more about dementia dramas and why I dislike them in these posts on the Oscars, where dementia dramas tend to do well.

Artificial Intelligence is another theme currently drifting through the zeitgeist, both genre and beyond, and so we’ve been seeing a flood of artificial intelligence stories of late. On this year’s Nebula ballot, there’s the delightful “Cat Pictures Please”, “Damages”, “Today I Am Paul” and of course Ancillary Mercy, the finale of the Imperial Radsch trilogy which probably started the trend. Ex-Machina in the dramatic presentation category would also fit right in here. Last year’s Hugo nominees “Turncoat” and “Big Boys Don’t Cry” also fit into this category, as does Avengers: Age of Ultron and the human/AI romance in Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It’s not a new theme, of course, AI stories have been part of science fiction for a long time now. But the current cluster of AI stories is certainly notable and it dovetails the fact that we’re also currently seeing a lot of articles about artificial intelligence in the media, from “AIs can’t even successfully solve an 8th grade science test” to “OMG, AIs are going to exterminate us all”.

Though the AI story is involving, for the AI protagonists of previous years were often military systems and autonomous weapons of some kind such as Breq from the Imperial Radsch trilogy, Maggie from “Big Boys Don’t Cry” or Benedict from “Turncoat” and the focus was on these weapons breaking away from their masters. This year still has military systems such as the narrator of “Damage” and of course Breq ditching their programming and finding their own moral compass. But there are also more benevolent AIs such as the meddling and cat-obsessed narrator of “Cat Pictures Please” and the care-bot from “Today I am Paul”.

Meanwhile, the fairytale retelling or faux fairytale (a.k.a. Kunstmärchen) trend of the past few years seems to be fading somewhat, which is fine by me, because I never much cared for it. Part of this is cultural protectiveness, because no one likes to have their culture appropriated, and part of it is that a lot of fairytale retellings are not nearly as clever and innovative as they think they are. Cause if thirty to forty year old Czech TV movies did it before (and often better), it’s neither new nor innovative.

Notable by its absence is climate change as a theme. Because nary a week goes by without another article about cli-fi a.k.a. fiction about climate change. Here are two fairly recent examples by Rafi Letzter and James Wallace Harris; there are many more. However – and that’s interesting – I don’t really see this alleged rise of cli-fi reflected in the SFF fiction I read and in the SFF fiction that is nominated for awards all that much. Paolo Bacigalupi tends to write about climate change and received a number of awards nominations and even wins for The Wind-up Girl and Shipbreaker, but that was a couple of years ago and his latest book hasn’t received the same attention. Of recent short fiction, “Calved” by Sam J. Miller is set in a world ravaged by climate change, while last year’s Hugo nominated novella “Flow” by Arlan Andrews Sr. is a sort of anti-climate-change story set in a post-apocalyptic world during a new ice age.

Another trend I’ve noticed in recent years are stories about parents, children and legacies. Of this year’s Nebula nominees, “The New Mother”, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” and “Madeleine” all fall into this category. Other 2015 stories with this theme are “Calved” by Sam J. Miller (I suspect his Nebula nominated story “When your child strays from God” would fit in there as well) and “Points of Origin” by Marissa Lingen. In the past few years, “Selkie Stories are for Losers”, “The Water The Falls On You From Nowhere” and “Totalled” would also fit into this category. In some ways, this even ties into the taste for really depressing stories about the grieving parents of dead children that were popular approx. five years ago.

In recent years, we’ve also had a cluster of stories about LGBT relationships (which inevitably infuriated the canine fraction of fandom), such as John Chu’s “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere”, Sofia Samatar’s “Selkie Stories are for Losers” or Sam J. Miller’s “We are the Cloud”. This continues in this year’s Nebula Awards, since among the nominees, “The New Mother” by Eugene Fisher, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong and “Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg feature LGBT protagonists, ditto for Sam J. Miller’s not nominated story “Calved”.

This looks like a trend at first glance, but it’s actually a case of normalisation, for until fairly recently, the SFF genre was extremely heteronormative and such stories were plain not published. So now we’ve finally broken through this heteronormativity to some degree, we suddenly start seeing a lot more stories with LGBTQI protagonists, so it seems like a cluster, even though it’s actually due to the SFF genre finally reflecting the wider world. Ditto for the increase in stories with non-American and non-Western settings and protagonists. SFF was so US and western-centric for so long that what is actually a normalisation, namely an increase in non-American and non-Western settings and characters, seems like a trend.

I wanted to link to some other reactions to this year’s Nebula nominations, but so far I haven’t found a lot of them beyond the wholly understandable squeeing of the nominees.

Nicholas Whyte has ranked the best novel nominees by Goodreads/Library Thing stats and Rocket Stack Rank offers an annotated list of the 2015 Nebula nominees in the short fiction categories with links to reviews, etc… There is also a bit of discussion going on in the comments of James Nicoll’s livejournal and File 770.

Comments are off, because awards posts tend to bring out the ugly.

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