Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

I finished N.K. Jemisin's THE FIFTH SEASON (2015), part 1 of her BROKEN EARTH trilogy.

To confirm what I have said on this before: this is a fantasy novel in a world that is a bit later than 'pseudo-medieval' - maybe pseudo-Renaissance or even later. Transport is by horse or walking; there is no electricity or motor power. Cannon appear at the end of the novel and are a dangerous new invention. The novel takes place on an imagined continent called The Stillness, ironically because it is not still but is always quaking and erupting. The sense of a geological landscape that is very unstable is fundamental to the book. The word 'season' is used to refer to an ecological catastrophe that comes around quite frequently and destroys communities. This may be an allegory of the fragility of human society now in the face of ecological breakdown.

The people in this world think in very long terms - centuries and millennia - and I get the impression that they live a very long time. This time frame also connects in a way to the ecological outlook. A minority of the people are 'orogenes', who have a special power of being in touch with the Earth and able to affect the movements of rock formations. Rather than being revered, these people are despised as dangerous - effectively treated as a 'racial other'; in fact they are given the derogatory name 'rogga', which some of them 'reclaim'. Some of these orogenes work for an official place called The Fulcrum in the capital city. They are also in thrall to The Guardians, who have power to prevent the orogenes' power. A further 'racial group' is the Stone Eaters, who are somehow able to move through stone as if it's air.

The concept of race features in another way, in that many of the characters seem to be in one way or another 'Black'. You could say that Blackness in one way or another is the norm in this world, and Whiteness is more unusual. Meanwhile, the author also tends to invert gender norms, so that most strong characters, including eg: leaders, governors, officials, scientists, are women. Further, there is an element of sexual fluidity. Two main characters (a woman and a mainly gay male) get into a kind or '3-some' with another, bisexual male. Another character presents as a woman but seems to have aspects of maleness. It would be fair to say that the author is avoiding some of the 'normativity' of the real world, through this fantasy.

The book has one quite unusual feature, in that it features alternating chapters about three female characters, all of whom are ultimately revealed to be the same character with three different names. So each set of chapters was actually taking place at a quite different time, not simultaneous, but this isn't announced explicitly; the reader has to detect it in the last third of the book. I don't think I've ever seen this effect before in a novel.

The writing is functional, moves along fast, but not high quality. It is marred by very frequent use of 'fake swear-words', ie: characters 'What the rust were you thinking?' and 'Earthfires, what was that?'. This doesn't carry much conviction (cf an earlier discussion of Asimov's entertaining versions of this). Confusingly, characters *also* sometimes use real-world obscenities. More generally the characters' thoughts and speech, plus narrative voice, are typically a version of contemporary US idioms; very casual, informal, sarcastic. I don't enjoy this much. Overall, the style is a weakness.

I believe that the trilogy won the Hugo Award 3 years running. I can see that it could have been deserving of one award, for the lot as it were, but if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field.

Perhaps the awards went to her because some people don’t have the same problems with her books? Your implication that they’re not deserved is pretty ghastly tbh

Why ghastly?

but if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field.

― the pinefox, Friday, March 3, 2023 10:21 AM (eleven hours ago)

I'm looking forward to the series but the field is so enormous now that nobody can hope to keep up or get the kind of overview that one had even a decade before but some people have been pretty scathing about what gets nominated for short fiction now

Clarke awards has a better reputation but that's novels only I think and not publicly voted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke_Award

i liked the broken earth series quite a lot iirc

if this is as good as SFF got, for 3 years running, then that would be worrying for the field

no one would say this sort of thing about 'film' based on whoever won an oscar. it's just an award

Why ghastly?

SFF and its awards have been highly politicized for years now. nk jemisen is a black woman. i imagine table read user the pinefox's complaints as meaning 'she only won those awards because of political correctness'

The implication that the first Black person to win the Hugo for best novel did not deserve the award is pretty questionable, imho! That Jemisin was the first Black woman to win that award makes it more questionable.

I’m not being accusatory, as I don’t think pinefox meant what was said to come off the way it did, but it came off as delegitimization of a set of novels that are infinitely better (to my mind) than most SFF, to my mind. (I read them when they came out).

I don't think saying "this trilogy is deserving of winning once, but all three winning seems a bit excessive" is quite the same thing as deligitimizing the author entirely! He's still saying she deserves a Hugo.

Pretty certain the pinefox is blissfully unaware of the culture wars the Hugos have been embroiled in, and good for him, wish I didn't know about the fucking puppies either.

Will say I read the first book of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series and found it a slog, but perhaps it is not Jemisin's best work (I don't often hear ppl mention it specifically) and I should try again with a different series.

Perhaps there’s also the idea that the pinefox’s tastes and requirements for what makes good SFF are old-fashioned, and that the Hugo committee trying to bring in new readers from the most underrepresented group in the most popular genre of fiction is something to be celebrated

I mean, what else would win from the years she won? Looking at the other nominees, mostly looks not great. One can certainly say that the novels aren’t as typical to the Hugo awards as most nominees, but that’s good, not bad.

the Hugo committee trying to bring in new readers from the most underrepresented group
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Saturday, March 4, 2023 6:41 PM

It's publicly voted (you have to pay though) and it was a very popular series.

The novel category generally seems quite strong in recent times, it's the short fiction, non-fiction and best related awards that cause more controversy (I think an award speech and blog rant getting nominated was silly)

I read The City We Became a year or so ago. I wanted to like it, I really did, but I found its prose and what I perceived to be faux hipness offputting. Not a terrible book, but not great either.

agree

I tried one of them and gave up pretty quickly because it seemed like I was reading YA. That’s my view of all the recent Hugo novels I’ve tried so they were not unusually bad or good in that respect.

Whole "read like YA" thing is an issue for me in general, although haven't actually tried any or hers yet that I bought on sale.

My partner didn’t like The City We Became— but we both absorbed the trilogy

my main takeaway from 'the city we became' was wow she fucking *hates* staten island

there's a sequel now (i guess it's a trilogy?) but i'm not feeling it

apologies for saying 'takeaway'

what does "read like ya" mean?

reads like Young Adult fiction

Yes, but what does that mean? What are the qualities that one might associate with young adult fiction that one might also find in other types of fiction?

Ease of reading, in a nutshell? Less of an emphasis on style, clear, concise sentences. Possibly also a focus on age appropriate protagonists and a dose of melodrama. I'm oversimplifying but in a nutshell I'd say that's it.

in a double nutshell

agree w that. i was going to say snappy, sarcastic dialogue, protagonists uncertain of themselves, v horny

It’s also traditionally a way for older readers to dismiss the merits of books they don’t like, for whatever reason.

Knew that was coming.

YA fiction (or fiction that is redolent of YA in style and theme) is not enjoyable for most As to read.

i liked the living cities books. they’re propulsive bits of popcorn fiction, but i don’t really agree that they read like y.a. she is very naturalistic and not very showy, and folks who are more interested in the writerly aspects of writing might not get much out of her books.

nb, i haven’t gotten to the hugo-winning trilogy yet

Those non-series Naomi Novik novels I referenced upthread---Spinning Silver a few weeks ago, Uprooted further back---are in the YA section at local library, have the elements Daniel mentions, also some of Tracer's at times, but they're both about iso girls and families and neighbors, friends and adversaries, working through their problems in isolated communties, with incursions pushing them into new situations, new enclosures in the outside world(s). keyword: work. Characters and readers have to do it, so does the author, but with the xpost occasional wave of wand for stage properties needed at the moment, what the heck.
The payoff, aside from drama of pace incl flung fistfuls of imagery, is in the momentum of character development, plain villains becoming more needy and sympathetic, while one heroine-narrator goes realpolitik and another goes from it, into xpost magical thinking in our-world sense---for instance. Lots of material for good classroom discussion, if teachers want to take a chance in today's America.

iso girls started to put "isolated" there, then used it for "isolated communities," should have taken out the previous. These are isolated, perhaps Dark Ages or Medieval communities in the deep forests of what was at times part of Poland,judging by historical traces: in Spinning Silver, Jewish identity is an element dealt with in various ways---

so systemic racism, at least in terms of quotas and niches, is there if you see that way, though not preached about, still might not be kosher for some schools.

also there in village life, way before we go to grander settings.

But there are other identities in play (this does lean into fantasy).

I think when people say "reads like YA" it really means that it reads like stereotypical or bad YA. I've heard that some regular SFF books are initially intended as YA books because they make bigger money and if they can't be sold as YA the author makes minor changes but the YA aspects still remain to an extent. Lavie Tidhar said something recently about science fiction being a little speck compared to the commercial juggernaut that is YA. I really dislike seeing the disneyfied aesthetics being so prevalent in regular SFF now.

Very fine interview with Mariana Enriquez featuring John Langan and Paul Temblay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xXaLnW8qUY

Have no idea what the selection in this is going to be like

COVER REVEAL! You are the first to see the official cover of my debut non-fiction book about horror books! 101 HORROR BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU'RE MURDERED
Cover Artwork & Fully Illustrated by @FontaniliMarco.
Foreword: @JoshMalerman pic.twitter.com/UUI0JjvFTv

— Sadie Hartmann (Mother Horror) (@SadieHartmann) February 23, 2023

fwiw while I didn't like the Jemisin I read I don't think it read like YA at all.

there's def a clique of SFF writers on twitter who are obsessed with writing warm 'n' fuzzy stories and recoil at any instances of writers inserting anything challenging into their work, big crossover with the puriteens stuff as well. they've certainly adopted the discourse of identity and YA being a marginalized genre for their own bourgeois purposes. occasionally it turns out one of them works for a defense contractor. but tbf I also think the writers championing the backlash to that overinflate its importance as well.

I just object to novels written as adult novels by Black women and featuring a more inclusive cast of characters consistently being derided as YA by certain readers. That’s all.

i started this, so for the record: I'm reading and enjoying octavia butler right now, and i would make the same "YA" criticism of ann leckie.

I haven't read any Butler before but I picked by Wild Seed recently, purely because it had an awesome cover

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1392340217i/968848.jpg

Plus you have to imagine the letters being all glossy and reflective

Another fun interview, Michael Cisco about his new book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7QvCu-34s

I am now at liberty to announce that @CLASHBooks will be publishing a new novel of mine in 2022. It's called PEST and it's about architecture and yaks. pic.twitter.com/avsSMlWWX4

— Michael T. Cisco (@MichaelTCisco) December 23, 2020

David Zindell released his first Neverness book in 25 years!

What happens when a man tasked with developing perfect memory forgets the most important thing in the universe?#TheRemembrancersTale by David Zindell is out today! 💫

Embark on a journey to the stars: https://t.co/ZtNCo2h3Ye pic.twitter.com/2GGlNN3KFb

— HarperVoyagerUK (@HarperVoyagerUK) February 16, 2023

Never heard of either of them, are they good? Ok silly question.

Currently reading Under the Blue by Oana Aristide which features someone trying to teach an AI ethics, but their opinions and arguments are idiotic. I think the purpose is so the AI can demolish our deeply cherished beliefs about our own importance and morality, but since the person is not otherwise shown to be a clueless tech type it sort of reflects badly on the author.

I used to see Cisco's The Narrator and Animal Money at Waterstones all the time and now they're very expensive as print-on-demand because they're very big

Finally!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91tcFMqmvoL.jpg

White Cat, Black Dog: Stories

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

In “The White Cat’s Divorce,” an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which child will become his heir. In “The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear,” a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In “Skinder’s Veil,” a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers—or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.

Twisting and turning in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable—these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the realm of short fiction.

I have read good things about Kelly Link. She sounds important.

I read C.M. Kornbluth's story 'The Luckiest Man in Denv', first published in GALAXY in 1952. Lots of old-time SF ideas here: Denver and LA transformed in the future, high rises, permanent war between the cities, nuclear attacks, social hierarchies. Then I started reading Kornbluth's 'The Silly Season' (1950), about a news agency staffer, which seems appealingly near-future.

In that story, a character 'had a mobile phone in his trailer' - presented as something somewhat unusual. But in the same paragraph, a pure 1950s SF sentence:

'I got a taxi company on the phone and told them to have a cross-country cab on the roof in an hour'.

Kelly Link is astonishing.

Extremely promising new small press
https://strangeportspress.weebly.com/

I continue with Kornbluth's stories.

'The Silly Season' (1950) is quite remarkable, basically describing the period before an alien invasion, in which the Martians (! introduced in the last sentence! as if WAR OF THE WORLDS has happened again) deceive humanity into a sense of security by fabricating 'silly season' mysterious events. The twist at the end is striking but what really makes the story is the density before that: the life of the journalist and his blind contact who, being blind, can detect the false character of the illusions.

'The Remorseful' (1953) is quite stark and grim, describing a post-apocalyptic Earth with one man left alive, who is then observed by an alien race of tiny bugs, whose nature is very different from ours. An exercise in imagining alterity of being and perception.

'Gomez' (1955) is about nuclear physics research and its dangers. A humble Puerto Rican dishwasher turns out to be a scientific genius and is spirited away by the US state to work on its nuclear programme. We hear about his brilliance and his periods of relentless scientific thought. At last he pretends to have forgotten his physics knowledge, so that he can return to a simple life and start a family.

'The Advent on Channel 12' (1958) is a brief work about the entertainment industry. A children's character called, quite unpleasantly, 'Poopy Panda' is being marketed to millions of children via TV, toys and so on. The original creator of the character seems to sabotage it by rewriting the script so the character is a god. The distinction of the story is that it is written in cod-Biblical language. The essence of this story or its intention didn't quite come across to me.

Now I'm on 'The Marching Morons', first published in GALAXY in 1951.