Books read July

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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Because I decided to go to Loncon as you may have noticed, this month my reading was dominated by Hugo related works, but I still managed to fit three more novels than last month in:

Hurricane Fever — Tobias Buckell
A fast moving near future thriller set in a Caribbean menaced by almost constant hurricanes. Read because Tobias Buckell was kind enough to provide a review copy.

The Lives of Tao — Wesley Chu
Wesley Chu is one of the candidates for the Campbell Best New Writer award this year and this provided as part of the voting package. A decent adventure read, but nothing special.

A Stranger in Olondria — Sofia Samatar
Another candidate for the Campbell, Sofia Samatar got my vote on the strength of this novel, a fantasy travelogue set in a world that’s not your average medievaloid setting.

Three Parts Dead — Max Gladstone
Another candidate, this was a great secondary world/urban fantasy story about a chartered accountant (more or less) investigating the death of a god.

Moon over Soho — Ben Aaronovitch
An urban fantasy murder mystery set in contemporary London; part of a series.

Six Gun Snow White — Catherynne M. Valente
My vote for the Best Novella Hugo, this retelling of the Snow White fairytale set in the Wild West, was published as a short novel. (And would’ve been a normal length novel forty years or so.)

Deep Wizardry — Diane Duane
Second in the Young Wizards series. This almost made me cry. Almost.

Your Happening World (July 28th through August 2nd)

Your Happening World
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  • Why I’m spending today swapping out the dialect in my novel | Mary Robinette Kowal – My project today is replacing all the dialogue spoken by Antiguan characters in Of Noble Family with dialogue rewritten by Antiguan and Barbudan author Joanne Hillhouse. Let me explain why I’m doing this.
  • Google Groups – An code name is quickly picked for the exploration of Earth 1/4 Billion: Green Door. Like 'tanks', 'Manhattan District' or many other project names, it is designed to give away as little as possible about the project. As usual, the Soviet hear about GD in a few weeks.
  • EPONA – Third stone from taranis – Imagine that you have just landed on a planet twenty-one light years from Earth. You are about to enter a lush world where things are more than just a little different! Evolution has taken exotic paths and a whole new kingdom of life reigns over land, sea and air! You are the leader of a first contact mission on the planet named Epona. The mission you have organized has journeyed here in an interstellar craft that orbits Epona. Your hand-picked crew must provide all the information you will need about Epona from the 21st Century technology available to you. Your objective is to unlock the secret of Epona's remarkable life-forms and discover if there is intelligent life you can communicate with.
  • Markov Chains – Markov chains, named after Andrey Markov, are mathematical systems that hop from one "state" (a situation or set of values) to another. For example, if you made a Markov chain model of a baby's behavior, you might include "playing," "eating", "sleeping," and "crying" as states, which together with other behaviors could form a 'state space': a list of all possible states. In addition, on top of the state space, a Markov chain tells you the probabilitiy of hopping, or "transitioning," from one state to any other state—e.g., the chance that a baby currently playing will fall asleep in the next five minutes without crying first.
  • The Mouth of the WWE « – In a match between a 15-time World Champion and the most dominating real-life wrestler in the world, Paul Heyman is somehow the best pro wrestler in the story line. So forget Cena and Bryan and Orton and Roman Reigns — Paul Heyman is the face of the WWE. How in the world did that happen?

Hugo Awards: Editors and Retro Hugos

Fandom, science fiction
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So I’ve said before that I wasn’t sure if I was going to vote for the editor awards. I’ve ended up not doing so for a couple of reasons, mainly because I haven’t the faintest what makes for a good editor and I would mean largely voting by name recognition. Even with the stories/novels provided in the voters package it’s hard to say how much or how little the editor mattered for the success of them.

The Retro Hugos on the other hand I did vote in, though only in the fiction and artist categories.I know too little about the fan categories to make an educated choice there:

Best novel:

  1. The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (Collins)
  2. The Legion of Time by Jack Williamson (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1938)
  3. Galactic Patrol by E. E. Smith (Astounding Stories, February 1938)
  4. Carson of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Argosy, February 1938)
  5. Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (The Bodley Head)

Best novella:

  1. “Who Goes There?” by Don A Stuart [John W. Campbell] (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938)
  2. “The Time Trap” by Henry Kuttner (Marvel Science Stories, November 1938)
  3. “A Matter of Form” by H. L. Gold (Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1938)
  4. “Sleepers of Mars” by John Beynon [John Wyndham] (Tales of Wonder, March 1938)
  5. No Award

Best novelette:

  1. “Werewoman” by C. L. Moore (Leaves #2, Winter 1938)
  2. “Pigeons From Hell” by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, May 1938)
  3. “Hollywood on the Moon” by Henry Kuttner (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1938)
  4. “Dead Knowledge” by Don A. Stuart [John W. Campbell] (Astounding Stories, January 1938)
  5. “Rule 18” by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1938)

Best short story:

  1. “How We Went to Mars” by Arthur C. Clarke (Amateur Science Stories, March 1938)
  2. “Hyperpilosity” by L. Sprague de Camp (Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1938)
  3. “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma” by Ray Bradbury (Imagination!, January 1938)
  4. “The Faithful” by Lester del Rey (Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1938)
  5. “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey (Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1938)

Ubermawkish, sexist “Helen O’Loy” better not win.

Best Professional Artist

  1. Virgil Finlay
  2. Alex Schomburg
  3. Frank R. Paul
  4. Margaret Brundage
  5. H. W. Wesso

Damn, there were some great artists doing sf and fantasy illustrion back then. Any of them is a worthy winner.

Hugo Awards: Best Novella

Fandom, science fiction
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The last major fiction award I still need to talk about: the best novella. A bit of a mixed bag this category, with stories that are in that awkward stage halfway between novel and short story. Indeed, at least one could’ve been published as a short novel in its own right. As with some other categories, the two struck through candidates I haven’t considered due to reasons described in my first post.

To be honest, the remaining three stories were good but not spectacularly so, not nearly as good as some of the entries in the short story and novelette categories.

  1. Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean Press)
    As the title indicates, this is a Wild West retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. Well done.
  2. “Wakulla Springs” by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages (Tor.com, 10-2013)
    This is a great story about several generations of an African-American family living near the lake used to film Tarzan movies and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but the fantastical element is minimal.
  3. “Equoid” by Charles Stross (Tor.com, 09-2013)
    A typically fun, manic Laundry story about unicorns.
  4. The Butcher of Khardov by Dan Wells (Privateer Press)
  5. “The Chaplain’s Legacy” by Brad Torgersen (Analog, Jul-Aug 2013)