My Hugo award votes 2019 part 5: Novels

It was very easy to decide what was the best book this year; there was no contest at all. There was only one book I really enjoyed, as the others had at least some faults. I have not yet finished Revenant Gun, but I find it to be better than the second part of the series, even though the number of characters and the nonlinear style of events make it sometimes a bit demanding to follow. Would it be so horribly hard to indicate when and where the events are happening, especially if there are many flashbacks?

The Calculating Stars will probably win, but little really happened there and I found it to be somewhat pretentious in places. Record of Spaceborn Few might have been pretty good if it had presented some kind of a plot. In spite of that, it will be the second one on my list. The last one was also pretty easy to decide; The Space Opera was mostly stupid without any real merits that I could see.

1. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
2. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
3. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
4. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
5. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
6. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

My Hugo award votes 2019 part 4: related works

The best related works was a very varied category. Nominees were a net site achieving a huge amount of fan fiction, a documentary about why the trilogy of the Hobbit movies is so shitty, a history of Hugo winners, a memorabilia net site of Mexican authors who were visiting the last Worldcon, an interview book of Ursula K. Le Guin and a very detailed history of an important scifi-pulp Astounding science fiction. Fan fiction has never really been very interesting to me. I have ever read only a couple pieces of it. So the archive was pretty lukewarm for me. Neither did I find the travelogue of the Mexicans and samples of their fiction very interesting at all. The YouTube video series about the Hobbit was excellent and explained what was so wrong with that series. Personally, I stopped watching at the scene where dwarfs were escaping inside barrels in a stream. Just too stupid and cartoonish to be tolerated…

All three books were excellent. The one detailing Astounding spent a bit too much wordage for Ron Hubbard, but, apparently, he was a very important person for John W. Campbell, the long-term editor of Astounding. But it was altogether a very good and comprehensive history book, and I am now about 60% through it, and I will write a more detailed review of it later.

The History of Hugos was a fascinating discussion about almost all winners and nominees until the year 2000. I wonder why that was used as a cutoff point – will there be a part two someday? Most opinions in the book were well justified, even if I didn’t always agree. There were some slight editing issues, as the material was first published as a blog. I got a fairly long addition to my TBR pile from this book.

The interview book with Ursula K. Le Guin consists of three parts. All three were interesting, but it is a pity that the most interesting one, the one about fiction, was by far the shortest one.

My voting order in this category is as follows:


1. Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, by Alec Nevala-Lee

2. An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards 1953-2000, by Jo Walton

3. The Hobbit Duology (a documentary in three parts), written and edited by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan

4. Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon

5. Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

6. The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76 by Julia Rios, Libia Brenda, Pablo Defendini, and John Picacio

Agatha Christie: Lordin kuolema (Hercule Poirot #9) [Lord Edgware Dies]

A pretty standard, perhaps below average, Agatha Christie mystery. Without its pretentious diversion, I would have figured out the murderer about halfway through.

Autossa äänikirjana kuunneltu kirja, joka on varsin tavanomainen Agatha Christie, jossa yritetään selvittää kuka murhasi varsin epämiellyttävästi useampia henkilöitä kohtaan käyttäytyneen lordin. Paras motivaatio hänen murhaamiseensa oli lordin puolisolla, jonka jopa nähtiin tulevan lordin asuntoon juuri hetki ennen hänen murhaansa. Mutta vaimolla on täydellinen alibi: hän oli saamaan aikaan illalliskutsuilla, joilla useat henkilöt näkivät hänen olevan paikalla. Miten tämä on mahdollista?
Kirja oli aika standardi viihdyttävä dekkari. Itse tosin olisin keksinyt murhaajan ja murhatavan jo noin puolivälissä kirjaa, mutta kirjailija käytti aika raukkamaista harhautusta hiukan hämäämään lukijaa. (mainittiin, että kertojahenkilö ei nähnyt yhtä henkilöä enää koskaan paitsi yhden kerran joskus myöhemmin). Tämän vuoksi ja yhden toisen aika tarpeettoman, ilmeisesti lähinnä juonta mutkistamaan tarkoitetun yhden henkilön kertoman valheen vuoksi ei kuuluu kirjoittajansa parhaimmistoon.

Reijo Mäki: Hot Dog (Vares #27)

Another humorous detective novel about a private dick who works at Turku and likes his booze and women. Pretty average for the series, after a very slow start with nice banter and interesting villains who end up dead in fascinating ways.

Välipalana taas Vareksen seikkailuja. Tällä kertaa Vares selvittelee vanhan poliisikaverinsa katoamista. Tämä oli hiukan epäselvissä olosuhteissa irtisanoutunut poliisilaitokselta ja muuttanut sitten syntymäkotiinsa pohjanmaalle. Muutamia vuosia myöhemmin hän ilmaantui takaisin Turkuun metsittyneen näköisenä ja oli vihjaillut tietävänsä jotain muutamia vuosia aikaisemmin tapahtuneesta rikollispomon teloitustyyppisestä murhasta. Pian tämän jälkeen hänestä ei ollut jälkeäkään missään.
Kirja oli aika standardia Vares-laatua. Letkeää sanailua, jänskiä tilanteita ja hämyjä konnia, joille lopussa pääosin käy kovin huonosti. Alkupuoli oli kovin hidas, mahtaakohan kirjailija saada kovatkin lahjukset DBTL-festareilta, siinä määrin niitä käsiteltiin (pääosin ihan täysin turhaan) kirjan ensimmäiset lähes sata sivua. Melkein tuli jo uskonpuute siitä kannattaako kirjaa edes jatkaa, kun oikein mitään merkittävää ei tuntunut tapahtuvan, mutta sitten vauhti kyllä parantui. Kirja oli kevyttä, viihdyttävää kesälukemista, ei sen enempää eikä sen vähempää.

464 pp.

My Hugo award votes 2019 part 3: novellas

All stories in the novella category were worse this year than last year. Some of them were at best fairly good, but most of them were pretty contrived and tried too much to be “literate” at the cost of readability and plot. The order of the stories was pretty easy to decide, as there were two stories I enjoyed pretty much, three that were okay and one I pretty much hated. The two best stories were both parts of a series, which is always a drawback when considering whether the story is award worthy or not. The order of those two could go both ways, but I decided to put the one with a more satisfying plot in the first place. The last place was obvious, and the order of the other stories was also fairly easy to determine.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
The story continues with last year’s nominee pretty much straightaway. The killerbot is trying to find out what happened to it earlier when it apparently had lost its mind and killed all humans on a mine where it was working. To find clues, it returns to the place where the massacre happened. On the way, it encounters a ship mind with which the bot makes friends, as much as there can be friendship between artificial intelligences, and the ship mind helps the killerbot look less like a bot and more like an augmented human. For permission to get to the mine the bot hires himself out as a security consultant for a small team that needs a backup for a business negotiation. It seems obvious that the “negotiation” is a setup for an ambush, and, as it turns out to be so, the killerbot finds itself helping its new friends. A pretty good and entertaining story, but not as good as the first part of the series.

Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
The story continues pretty straight from the last part. Unfortunately, it isn’t better than the middle part, but worse. Anything that was wrong in the first two installments is even more wrong in this one.
Binti faces hard tasks, her family is apparently murdered for poorly defined reasons and she must mediate a peace treaty between two factions who have hated each other for generations for some very contrived reasons. The plot is hard to follow and confusing, the “science” described is beyond stupid, the main character is as irritating (or even more irritating) as ever and she is (like apparently all her people) hopelessly stuck in old customs and behaviors (and apparently that is considered a GOOD thing by the author). She endlessly worries about otjize, a clay/mud her people have traditionally used on their skin to repel insects. She worries about that so much, that the word “otjize” is mentioned 80 (!) times during the novella, and even if the story is badly overlong, it isn’t very long. And she uses that mud even when there is no need for it, even in a space ship and at her school, even if it constantly scales off. The cleaning personnel must REALLY, REALLY hate her. And/or her quarters must be filthy like a pig pen. This will go under “no award” at my Hugo voting.

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
An alternative world where the American Civil War ended in a stalemate, airships are commonly used for transportation (and war) and some magical elements are real. A young teen lives on the streets of New Orleans. She aims higher than being on small-time crook: she wants to get on an airship. She has a bargaining point: some secret info about a secret weapon and contacts a smuggler airship (which is secretly an espionage ship). The situation is fairly volatile. New Orleans is, in principle, free, unaffiliated and demilitarized, but is filled with spies of all parties of former wars. Southern states still use slaves, which were made docile by a gas which robs all initiative. A fairly good story, but the setting is overly complicated: maybe just one or two differences of the real world would have been enough.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
Ecosystems have been destroyed and humanity has spent a long time in the caves. Now the world is being reclaimed and ecosystems are being replanned. Someone gets an idea to study carefully ancient riverbeds to restore new ones. So they book a trip to 2000 BC to survey the Mesopotamic area. The first half of the story is pretty dull and deals mostly with project management - or even worse, talking about project management. So, a team where some of the members are “enhanced” with goat legs or with the lower body with tentacles instead if feet are sent to the past. Everything doesn’t go smoothly. The story felt overlong, and the motivations of the characters were unclear and contrived. And the ending was very sudden and seemed to leave things hanging.

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
It continues a series about children who have traveled to different worlds when they have been unhappy in the “real” world. This story continues pretty directly the first part while the second part (which was nominated last year) was kind of a prequel. This time it turns out that the death of one youth in the first part has unseen consequences. She was supposed to return to her “world”, defeat an evil witch, and become the benevolent ruler of the world and to have a daughter. As she died, that will not happen. As her world behaves in a nonsensical way at a different timestream, the events she might have done have already happened and start to unravel shortly after her death - including her future daughter. The children of Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children must find a way to resurrect the dead girl and to achieve that they must visit several different worlds. Another very well written and good installment of the series, easily at the same level as the earlier ones.

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
The story apparently happens in the same Chinese derivative nepotistic world as many of her other works. This time the focus isn’t on the ruling families, but on a ship intelligence who tries to earn her living by making tea blends. Together with a mysterious woman, they try to solve the death of an unknown woman. A bit better than some of the other stories by the same author (I have never been a great fan of hers). The actual mystery plot was almost a sidetrack to the story, which is pretty slow-moving, describing mainly the world and characters.


My voting order will be:

1. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
2. Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
3. The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
4. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
5. The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
6. no award
7. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor

Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers #3) by Becky Chambers

The book is supposed to be the third part of a series. I have read the second part which felt pretty much like a separate book. This does also; I didn’t really notice anything which would tie it together with the former part. This book didn’t exactly have any coherent plot in the traditional sense. It followed several different people, who live at generation ships which were launched from the Earth centuries (?) ago. After they met aliens, the fleet of the ship stopped and some people moved to planets. As humans were the least developed known sentient species, they had little to offer for the galactic society. The human society on the ships has developed to some sort of anarcho-communist. There is no money, everyone’s needs are met and also, everyone must take part in less desirable work. The ships are self-sufficient and basic food and housing are free, but there is some banter going on, especially with things which originate from the alien worlds. (There were some problems in how the electric energy used on ships was described to originate - apparently, the author isn’t very familiar with the basic laws of thermodynamics).

The stories of the different people didn’t exactly tie together, but they at least tangentially touched each other’s lives. There was so little actual plot, that it is hard to give any real synopsis of it. The writing was fine, the characters were fairly (but mostly not very) interesting, but the book wasn’t really captivating as everything felt more like a “slice of life” than like something would be really happening. The book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything really good, either.

359 pp.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin, David Naimon

Three interviews or discussions with Ursula K. LeGuin: The main emphasis of the first interview is on fiction. The second concentrates on poetry, and the last one on non-fiction. All three were interesting, but it is a pity that the most interesting one; the one about fiction was by far the shortest one. All three were interesting though, but this won’t be my first choice in this Hugo-nomination category.

150 pp.

Antti Tuuri: Lakeuden kutsu (Pohjanmaa #6)

Finlandia- palkinnon voittaja, joka on päätösosa Pohjanmaalaisen suvun elämästä kertovalle kirjasarjalle.
Mies palaa USA:sta, minne hän on paennut verottajaa rahatukun kera. Siellä hän on ilmeisen hämärillä bisneksillä rahojaan nähtävästi lisännyt entisestään. Kirja tapahtuu yhden vuorokauden kuluessa ja kerronta on minämuotoista. Kirjan alussa on runsaasti erilaisia ihmisten tapaamisia ja asioiden muistelemista sekä kuulumisten vaihtoa. Myös toista maailmansotaa ja myös kansallissotaan käsiteltiin varsin tarkkaan ja mietittiin näiden tapahtumia. Tämä vaikutti aika käsittämättömältä kirjassa, joka tapahtuu 90-luvulla ja jonka kaikki päähenkilöt olivat mitä ilmeisimmin sodan jälkeen syntyneitä. Ensimmäinen sata sivua vaikutti aika kummalliselta ja jopa sekavalta sellaiselle, joka ei ole lukenut sarjan muita osia. Vähitellen sitten kirjan varsinainenkin tarina pääsi liikkeelle. Paluumuuttajana tullut mies osti lähes konkurssiin joutuneen metalliverstaan ketkuilta omistajilta (tai pikemminkin pankilta) ja yritti estää näitä kärräämästä jo myydyt metallintyöstölaitteet pimeyden turvin pois tehtaalta. Hän oli myös palauttamassa suhdetta puolisoonsa, joka ei ollut Amerikassa viihtynyt, oli palannut Suomeen ja oli jo Suomessa saanut uuden lapsenkin ”lapualaisen” kanssa - tämä mies ei enää kuvioissa ollut mukana.
Kirja oli parempi kuin alkupuoli näytti: alussa oli aivan käsittämätöntä, että kirja oli voittanut Finlandia-palkinnon, lopussa tämä oli vain melko käsittämätöntä. Kirja oli ihan sujuvaa tekstiä ja kerrontaa, mutta se ei oikein toiminut itsenäisenä teoksena. Muutenkin pitkän sarjan viimeisen osan palkitseminen vaikuttaa aika erikoiselta ratkaisulta. Kirjan aiheet olivat paljolti aikaansa sidottuja, siinä määrin 25 vuotta vanhaa EU- pohdintaa siinä oli. Turhan tyhjänpäisen ”jutustelun” ja typerien juoneen liittymättömien pikkutarinoiden kertominen toi mieleen Turusen Lampaansyöjät, joka on tällä saralla aika suvereeni, tässä kirjassa vain ihan kaikki eivät olleet turhanpäiväisiä juoppoja kuten Lampaansyöjissä. Kirja jää ainakin kirjallinen taso huomioiden Finlandia-voittajissa selvästi keskitason alapuolelle.

A shady businessman returns to Finland after years spent in the US escaping taxes. He has apparently made even more money, possibly not in an entirely legal way. The book describes the first day when he buys a small metal factory and starts to reconnect with his wife. The book is the last part of a series and doesn’t really work alone very well. It won the Finlandia Award on the publication year, but I don’t really see why.

363 p.