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jsburbidgeI don't read much short fiction, mainly because my years of getting enough value out of SF magazines to subscribe to them ended many years ago, so any useful contribution I could make regarding Hugo nominations applies only to novels.
I'm not making any recommendations as such. I have, however, pulled together a list of all the books I have read which are eligible, and I thought I'd make a few comments about each.
I don't read at nearly enough volume to cover the majority of the important (one way or another) works published in a given year; to boot, there are some areas I read in relatively little. (For example, although I used to read a lot of epic fantasy, I tend to give it a much lower priority these days unless it comes very well recommended indeed; too much of it comes off as just rehashing tropes I've already run into too many times. This doesn't imply that there's a problem with the books, but rather that I'm somewhat jaded.)
I also tend to avoid dystopian futures (same problem: very little new under the sun: I don't have anything against dystopian or grim backgrounds as such, but, well, many are pervaded by a certain fundamental sameness underneath).
I read a lot of non-fiction, which is about half my reading, which cuts down on SF, and I also spend a lot of time reading new-to-me SF from before 2014.
Plus, my current to-read list is about thirty books long.
All this together means that I'm missing lots or works which have been very highly recommended, including the following (all of which have good reviews, look interesting and I intend to get around to eventually):
I may add that this year looks very unlike last year's crop. Last year was one of those years with one really strong candidate that everyone was talking about beforehand, and which won handily. (The year before was one of those years where all the nominees struck me, and some others, as weak novels.) This year seems to have a reasonable-sized set of strong novels of very different sorts.
That being said, here's my overview:
Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie) The successor, of course, to last year's winner, with a far more focussed canvas (one planet, essentially) and far more exploration of the problematic elements of the Radch. Leckie also managed to avoid middle-book syndrome by having a localized plot which was wrapped up nicely by the end of the novel rather than leaving the reader hanging. I liked this, and I expect that it will get onto the nominations list unless there's a "let somebody else have a chance" reaction after last year's quadrifecta.
Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer) As you might guess from the fact that the list doesn't include the other two Southern Reach books, I wasn't madly enthused about this, although I can see how someone with different tastes might be. There's a sense in which this looks a bit like the set-up in Wilson's Darwinia (without the cheating Wilson used to explain the alien appearance there) or Gerrold's Chtorr novels: the incursion of an alien ecology into our own. It is also clearly in conversation with tropes from the horror tradition,; and there's an additional dimension of concern with our ecology and natural world.
Assail (Ian C. Esslemont) The last of the novels set in the timeframe of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Esslemont is a good enough writer, but not at the level of Erikson, and this was a perfectly readable episode tying up loose ends in the series and with a strong plot of its own. Still, I'd say that this is very much a book for people who have already become attached to the series.
Cauldron Of Ghosts (David Weber, Eric Flint) As with the other books in this subseries, this is a bit of a romp, although a little darker than its two immediate predcessors. Like Assail, this would be a really unlikely Hugo candidate; even the people who like it a lot are likely to put it in a heap of "fun reads" rather than "best of the year": like all of Weber's work (and Fiint's) its virtues are in plotting and "accessible" characterisation.[1]
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) This is a really, really fine piece of worldbuilding and storytelling, with underlying themes regarding colonialism and issues about state authority. It's one of the least "escapist" fantasy novels I've seen recently, as it engages with a whole range of themes relevant to our present in our world, and it does so in ways which are not forced and are integral to the plot. I've seen a lot of enthusiastic responses to it.
Echopraxia (Peter Watts) As usual with Watts, this is diamond-hard SF, with a ton of fascinating concepts and a not-entirely-upbeat view of humanity and our place in the universe. It would be hard to come up the level of Blindsight, to which this is a sequel, and this doesn't quite get there, but it's still a very, very good novel.
Full Fathom Five (Max Gladstone) Usually considered the strongest novel yet of the Craft Sequence. Gladstone is one of the really outstanding new names if SF (he didn't with the Campbell non-Hugo but was nominated for it twice, and I like him better than the other nominees / winners of the last two years that I've read[2]). The sequence as a whole is a bit like an inverted Laundry Files -- set in a different world where magic replaces our technology, but where the social structures (corporations, economic ties, legal patterns) mirror in a twisted way our own corporate world. Like the other books in this series, this is built around an intellectual puzzle -- i.e. it's a kind of mystery or suspense novel -- with strong characters and an undertone of incongruity humour (from our perspective, not the characters) from the mixture of fantasy elements with modern sociological elements.
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) This is a wonderful piece of humane fantasy, with an appealing protagonist, plot, and prose style. (It's very unlike Addison/Monette's other works: I like the Mélusine books too, but they are very different and much darker.) It's one of the books I see a lot of positive reactions to. The whole book is centred around agency and impediments to agency, but handled in such a way as to be naturally integral to the story.
Hawk (Steven Brust) Another very good Vlad installment from Brust, with everything one might look for -- technical virtuosity, intricate plotting, advances the overall plotline, and lots of Vlad and Loiosh being snarky. The cumulative weight of Brust's achievement with the Dragaera books is immense: it's a pity that it's unlikely that any one installment will get a Hugo. (If there's an argument to be made for a series Hugo as opposed to a novel Hugo, the Vladiad is one of the better arguments for it.)
Hidden (Benedict Jacka) And another fine episode in the Alex Verus novels. I'd call this series a guilty pleasure, except that the quality of the writing puts it well above that level. This one in particular grapples pretty heavily with what is involved in evaluating different individuals' personal ethics and overall character (not just Alex, but several other people). An excellent example of the broad category I'd call "good but not great".
Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, eds.) The one anthology on the list. In an odd way, this felt to me like the sort of book that someone who really felt the way Brad Torgersen, say, says he feels about the current field should be trumpeting as a Hugo candidate (or as a source for Hugo candidates for Best Short Story). It's driven by an explicit project to get back to a positive sensawunda but does so via stories which aren't trapped in any way by the past. Of course, the authors come from the "left" side of the field, as a whole, but of all the books I read last year this is what I'd hand to someone who had been brought into the field by the old, optimistic stories for engineers of the Golden Age.
The March North: A Novel of the Commonweal (Graydon Saunders) This was a very, very fine novel, which I have already reviewed. It is probably at a level where it deserves a shot at a Hugo, but its lack of distribution works against it.[3]
My Real Children (Jo Walton) Again, a book with a lot of positive reactions, and which I have also talked about before. Given the overall response to this, I'd be mildly surprised not to see it as a Hugo nomination.
The Rhesus Chart (Charles Stross) The Laundry Files continue to get darker in this installment. With this novel (coupled with last year's "Equoid" Charlie is moving away from the calquing on a spy novel template towards the subversion of fantasy memes; and Case Nightmare Various-Colours moves steadily closer. I really like this series (as a software developer I'm squarely in the centre of its target audience), and I also appreciate the ways in which (like his other work, notably Rule 34) it pokes at the edges of issues involving the panopticon, privacy, and big data.
Waistcoats and Weaponry (Gail Carriger) I read these as Felicity gets them (i.e. I get them for her) as they come out. I think they're better than Carriger's adult Parasol Protectorate novels, and it made for a quick, amusing read.
The Winter Long (Seanan McGuire) This is one of the better books so far in the series -- tightly constructed, good characterization, workmanlike prose – but it does require background in the previous books to appreciate; it's at least the best since One Salt Sea, and possibly the best of the series. It also sets up potential conflicts and issues for the next volume(s) without creating a "left hanging" effect. As with the rest of the series, I tend to feel that the fae are too "human" in their motivations (blind Michael possibly excepted), and that extends to the antagonist in this novel.
[1]Weber himself has cheerfully admitted that he's not the type of writer to turn out jewels of books, although he admires them; he sees himself as a storyteller who's always more driven to move onto the next story he has to tell than polish the current one once it gets to an adequate level of readability.
[2]Note: I haven't read A Stranger in Olondria in particular (on my to-read list (sigh)), so I can't compare Gladstone to Samatar.
[3]I see some posters indicating that they tend to discount self-published and small-press books with limited distributions when considering what to nominate, on the basis that the book in question won't get enough votes to be on the ballot in any case. From my point of view, if you think something was the best novel (short story / novella, etc.) of the year, you should nominate it regardless; maybe enough people have also read it and think well of it so that it might get in.
I'm not making any recommendations as such. I have, however, pulled together a list of all the books I have read which are eligible, and I thought I'd make a few comments about each.
I don't read at nearly enough volume to cover the majority of the important (one way or another) works published in a given year; to boot, there are some areas I read in relatively little. (For example, although I used to read a lot of epic fantasy, I tend to give it a much lower priority these days unless it comes very well recommended indeed; too much of it comes off as just rehashing tropes I've already run into too many times. This doesn't imply that there's a problem with the books, but rather that I'm somewhat jaded.)
I also tend to avoid dystopian futures (same problem: very little new under the sun: I don't have anything against dystopian or grim backgrounds as such, but, well, many are pervaded by a certain fundamental sameness underneath).
I read a lot of non-fiction, which is about half my reading, which cuts down on SF, and I also spend a lot of time reading new-to-me SF from before 2014.
Plus, my current to-read list is about thirty books long.
All this together means that I'm missing lots or works which have been very highly recommended, including the following (all of which have good reviews, look interesting and I intend to get around to eventually):
- The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu
- All Those Vanished Engines, Paul Park
- Steles of the Sky, Elizabeth Bear
- The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman
- The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
- The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine
I may add that this year looks very unlike last year's crop. Last year was one of those years with one really strong candidate that everyone was talking about beforehand, and which won handily. (The year before was one of those years where all the nominees struck me, and some others, as weak novels.) This year seems to have a reasonable-sized set of strong novels of very different sorts.
That being said, here's my overview:
Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie) The successor, of course, to last year's winner, with a far more focussed canvas (one planet, essentially) and far more exploration of the problematic elements of the Radch. Leckie also managed to avoid middle-book syndrome by having a localized plot which was wrapped up nicely by the end of the novel rather than leaving the reader hanging. I liked this, and I expect that it will get onto the nominations list unless there's a "let somebody else have a chance" reaction after last year's quadrifecta.
Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer) As you might guess from the fact that the list doesn't include the other two Southern Reach books, I wasn't madly enthused about this, although I can see how someone with different tastes might be. There's a sense in which this looks a bit like the set-up in Wilson's Darwinia (without the cheating Wilson used to explain the alien appearance there) or Gerrold's Chtorr novels: the incursion of an alien ecology into our own. It is also clearly in conversation with tropes from the horror tradition,; and there's an additional dimension of concern with our ecology and natural world.
Assail (Ian C. Esslemont) The last of the novels set in the timeframe of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Esslemont is a good enough writer, but not at the level of Erikson, and this was a perfectly readable episode tying up loose ends in the series and with a strong plot of its own. Still, I'd say that this is very much a book for people who have already become attached to the series.
Cauldron Of Ghosts (David Weber, Eric Flint) As with the other books in this subseries, this is a bit of a romp, although a little darker than its two immediate predcessors. Like Assail, this would be a really unlikely Hugo candidate; even the people who like it a lot are likely to put it in a heap of "fun reads" rather than "best of the year": like all of Weber's work (and Fiint's) its virtues are in plotting and "accessible" characterisation.[1]
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) This is a really, really fine piece of worldbuilding and storytelling, with underlying themes regarding colonialism and issues about state authority. It's one of the least "escapist" fantasy novels I've seen recently, as it engages with a whole range of themes relevant to our present in our world, and it does so in ways which are not forced and are integral to the plot. I've seen a lot of enthusiastic responses to it.
Echopraxia (Peter Watts) As usual with Watts, this is diamond-hard SF, with a ton of fascinating concepts and a not-entirely-upbeat view of humanity and our place in the universe. It would be hard to come up the level of Blindsight, to which this is a sequel, and this doesn't quite get there, but it's still a very, very good novel.
Full Fathom Five (Max Gladstone) Usually considered the strongest novel yet of the Craft Sequence. Gladstone is one of the really outstanding new names if SF (he didn't with the Campbell non-Hugo but was nominated for it twice, and I like him better than the other nominees / winners of the last two years that I've read[2]). The sequence as a whole is a bit like an inverted Laundry Files -- set in a different world where magic replaces our technology, but where the social structures (corporations, economic ties, legal patterns) mirror in a twisted way our own corporate world. Like the other books in this series, this is built around an intellectual puzzle -- i.e. it's a kind of mystery or suspense novel -- with strong characters and an undertone of incongruity humour (from our perspective, not the characters) from the mixture of fantasy elements with modern sociological elements.
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) This is a wonderful piece of humane fantasy, with an appealing protagonist, plot, and prose style. (It's very unlike Addison/Monette's other works: I like the Mélusine books too, but they are very different and much darker.) It's one of the books I see a lot of positive reactions to. The whole book is centred around agency and impediments to agency, but handled in such a way as to be naturally integral to the story.
Hawk (Steven Brust) Another very good Vlad installment from Brust, with everything one might look for -- technical virtuosity, intricate plotting, advances the overall plotline, and lots of Vlad and Loiosh being snarky. The cumulative weight of Brust's achievement with the Dragaera books is immense: it's a pity that it's unlikely that any one installment will get a Hugo. (If there's an argument to be made for a series Hugo as opposed to a novel Hugo, the Vladiad is one of the better arguments for it.)
Hidden (Benedict Jacka) And another fine episode in the Alex Verus novels. I'd call this series a guilty pleasure, except that the quality of the writing puts it well above that level. This one in particular grapples pretty heavily with what is involved in evaluating different individuals' personal ethics and overall character (not just Alex, but several other people). An excellent example of the broad category I'd call "good but not great".
Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, eds.) The one anthology on the list. In an odd way, this felt to me like the sort of book that someone who really felt the way Brad Torgersen, say, says he feels about the current field should be trumpeting as a Hugo candidate (or as a source for Hugo candidates for Best Short Story). It's driven by an explicit project to get back to a positive sensawunda but does so via stories which aren't trapped in any way by the past. Of course, the authors come from the "left" side of the field, as a whole, but of all the books I read last year this is what I'd hand to someone who had been brought into the field by the old, optimistic stories for engineers of the Golden Age.
The March North: A Novel of the Commonweal (Graydon Saunders) This was a very, very fine novel, which I have already reviewed. It is probably at a level where it deserves a shot at a Hugo, but its lack of distribution works against it.[3]
My Real Children (Jo Walton) Again, a book with a lot of positive reactions, and which I have also talked about before. Given the overall response to this, I'd be mildly surprised not to see it as a Hugo nomination.
The Rhesus Chart (Charles Stross) The Laundry Files continue to get darker in this installment. With this novel (coupled with last year's "Equoid" Charlie is moving away from the calquing on a spy novel template towards the subversion of fantasy memes; and Case Nightmare Various-Colours moves steadily closer. I really like this series (as a software developer I'm squarely in the centre of its target audience), and I also appreciate the ways in which (like his other work, notably Rule 34) it pokes at the edges of issues involving the panopticon, privacy, and big data.
Waistcoats and Weaponry (Gail Carriger) I read these as Felicity gets them (i.e. I get them for her) as they come out. I think they're better than Carriger's adult Parasol Protectorate novels, and it made for a quick, amusing read.
The Winter Long (Seanan McGuire) This is one of the better books so far in the series -- tightly constructed, good characterization, workmanlike prose – but it does require background in the previous books to appreciate; it's at least the best since One Salt Sea, and possibly the best of the series. It also sets up potential conflicts and issues for the next volume(s) without creating a "left hanging" effect. As with the rest of the series, I tend to feel that the fae are too "human" in their motivations (blind Michael possibly excepted), and that extends to the antagonist in this novel.
[1]Weber himself has cheerfully admitted that he's not the type of writer to turn out jewels of books, although he admires them; he sees himself as a storyteller who's always more driven to move onto the next story he has to tell than polish the current one once it gets to an adequate level of readability.
[2]Note: I haven't read A Stranger in Olondria in particular (on my to-read list (sigh)), so I can't compare Gladstone to Samatar.
[3]I see some posters indicating that they tend to discount self-published and small-press books with limited distributions when considering what to nominate, on the basis that the book in question won't get enough votes to be on the ballot in any case. From my point of view, if you think something was the best novel (short story / novella, etc.) of the year, you should nominate it regardless; maybe enough people have also read it and think well of it so that it might get in.
