Tor and the 2014 Hugo Awards

by J. D. Popham

The 2014 Hugo Awards were held yesterday at the World Science Fiction Convention, hosted this year by Loncon3, the London Science Fiction Convention.  I walked away from this year's ceremony with three main observations: 

First, Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie's first novel, picked up a well-deserved win for best novel. Ancillary is thoughtful, well written and a good story well told in the best tradition of Science Fiction.  Ms. Leckie's novel pretty much ran the table for awards in its category this year.  Ancillary Justice won the Arthur C. Clarke award (for Science Fiction first published in the United Kingdom), the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and the Locus award for best first novel. Taken together, this represents a rare consensus across the Science Fiction/Fantasy community with regard to the quality of Ann Leckie's work.

Second, Game of Thrones, 'The Rains of Castamere' won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. During the presentation (which was broadcast on UStream TV) there was a bit of snarking on Twitter that at least it didn't go to Dr. Who.  This puzzled fellow blogger Amanda Rutter from England, who asked whether there was some backlash behind the sniping at the beloved BBC series.

The answer is that the good Doctor has been dominating this category for the last ten years.  In fact on this year's ballot alone the Time Lord occupied three of the six final nominations for the category, with two episodes from the show itself (The Day of the Doctor and In the Name of the Doctor) and one comedic send-up of the show (The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot).  While Game of Thrones has won this category two years running (winning with Game of Thrones, 'Blackwater' in 2013), Doctor Who has not had fewer than two nominations in the category since 2005.  From 2006 to 2012 the good Doctor pretty much owned Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, losing only once; in 2009 (the year of the great television writers' strike) to Joss Whedon's Dr. Horribles' Sing Along Blog.  

I enjoy Doctor Who very much.  However, it would be wise for the Hugo Awards to limit final nominations for shows in an episode format to one episode.  Allowing a single television show, however popular, to occupy multiple slots on the final nomination ballot presents a myopic view of the state of the art.  There's a lot of excellent Science Fiction and Fantasy being produced in short form these days that are well regarded by fandom, but looking at the Hugo ballot the last few years, one would think that weren't the case.  Limiting final nominees by a single franchise would present a more expansive view of what fandom is watching.

Finally, you'll recall I pointed out earlier this year that Tor Books is very far ahead of the other Science Fiction and Fantasy imprints when it comes to proactive outreach to the fan community.  Their website, Tor.com, does more than merely flog it's latest offerings and broadcast marketing-chum onto the web. Tor maintains a family of bloggers whose writings inform opinion for much of Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom. It publishes short stories, novellettes and novellas and has the resources needed to ensure good quality both in terms of the fiction acquired and the editing and presentation of that fiction on its web site. The authors, bloggers and editors in the Tor community know each other and each others' work. Fans who visit and read the Tor website know them as well. 

And you can see the pay-off on Tor's community building strategy in this year's Hugo Awards. Tor authors won the Hugo's in the short story, novella and novelette categories. Ellen Datlow, a Tor editor, won the Hugo for Best Editor, Short Form. Aidan Moher, whose A Dribble of Ink won the Hugo for Best Fanzine is a former member of the Tor.com blogger community. This doesn't mean Tor expects its community to vote in lock-step, but that Tor understands that people in a community tend to look kindly on works by their peers within that community and that translates into both votes and vote recommendations.

Of course winning Hugos in the shorter fiction forms doesn't automatically translate to revenue for Tor. However, it goes a long way toward reinforcing the image of the Tor brand and the Tor community as a center of quality in Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom.  It creates pride and shared accomplishment within the Tor community - a sense of 'Look what we did'.  So, when Tor promotes books to that community, readers and writers therein are much more likely to consider reading those books and then going on to generate positive social media buzz for those books they enjoy.  

What I find fascinating is that none of Tor's competitors seem minded to repeat Tor's success in this area.  While Tor's website has become an internet destination for SF&F fandom, Orbit, Del Rey, Harper Voyager, Angry Robot, DAW, AceRoc and the rest of the Science Fiction and Fantasy imprints, all seem flat-footed and crude when it comes to their presence on the web. Their websites and social media broadcasts announce their presence and push product, but little more. While they seem to view social media as mere digital billboards for peddling their imprints, Tor is integrating themselves into the fan's Science Fiction and Fantasy experience.

So props go to Tor this Hugo season. Congratulations, and well done. As for the rest of the SF&F imprints, you might want to slip out of your bow-ties and eye-shades, get off the sidelines and into the game. 

Sex and the Single Robot

by J. D. Popham

In a story I’m writing now, the main character is a robot called Primitive James.  Despite his male name, James is neither male nor female. James’ only interest in human sexuality is its relevance to solving problems; how it motivates behavior for example, or what rate of human reproduction is needed to sustain a population. And so forth.  

To paraphrase Isaac Asimov, James has no interest in human seduction. 

Unlike many fictional robots and artificial intelligences, James is not fascinated by or inclined to experiment with human reproductive imperatives or the emotional/social constructs that have built up around it over time.  James does not yearn for the intimacy of sexual intercourse any more than you might yearn for the intimacy of having your timing belt changed. 

And yet, I think of and write James as a ‘he’. This is, primarily, because ‘his’ voice, as I hear it in my head, sounds male. His delivery has the noirish tang of a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett protagonist.  Could I change that?  Absolutely.  But something crucial in James’ character would be lost, much as C. J. Cherry’s novella Companions would be altered for the worse if Anne, a spaceship’s artificial intelligence and character in the story, were not female in name and voice. 

It is decidedly human, this tendency to assign gender to inanimate objects.  Perhaps it’s because sex, so essential to our collective continuance, is deeply embedded in how we interpret the world.  Confronted with a bipedal creature such as James, who has evolved a personality that is in many ways indistinguishable from a human personality, it would take a conscious effort of will not to associate the robot with a gender.  Indeed, Primitive James’ enemies routinely make a point of referring to the robot using the pronoun ‘it’ as a means of reinforcing James’ non-human nature in an attempt to depersonalize him and make him less sympathetic. 

In the movie I, Robot, Dr. Susan Calvin, describing her work with US Robotics says:

"My general fields are advanced robotics and psychiatry.  Although, I specialize in hardware-to-wetware interfaces in an effort to advance U.S.R.'s robotic anthropomorphization program". 

Rendered it in a more human-friendly manner, she "[makes] the robots seem more human."  Science Fiction writers do the same. Robots in Science Fiction have been routinely assigned gender by their literary creators since the genre’s earliest days. In most cases this is intended to make the robot appear more human and be therefore compelling to a human audience, or to underscore some human aspect of the underpinning plot. 

As a result, we have the iconic False Maria from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, with her profoundly Art-Deco enhanced female appearance. Star Trek's Lt. Commander Data is not only male in appearance, but is 'fully functional' sexually and takes a periodic interest in exploring that aspect of his design. The robot Diktor, from Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella comic strip is fully functional as well, but worries that his technique is too 'mechanical'. 

In general, the more inimical the robot, the less likely it is that gender will factor into its character.

Doctor Who's Daleks are as bereft of gender as they are of compassion.  In The Day the Earth Stood Still, based on Harry Bates' Farewell to the Master, the robot Gort, which has the power to destroy humanity, is roughly human in shape.  But Gort is otherwise without gender or expression, making its presence distant and foreboding.  HAL 9000 from both the novel and movie versions of 2001 a Space Odyssey is an interesting balancing act.  HAL is male, but only by dint of his disembodied voice.  Otherwise his sole outward manifestation is the famous red camera eye. His voice, quiet and rational even while doing murder, provide HAL a disconcerting 'almost human' quality during the act.  Yet it also serves to make HAL strangely sympathetic when his 'mind' is finally shut down by David Bowman.

Sex isn't important or necessary to Robots, but it is to the humans with whom they interact. Any number of writers have imagined the robot as not merely a helper or appliance, but as a life partner. From Helen O'Loy to Her, writers have explored the concept of robot/AI as the perfect mate; highly attuned to their human counterparts and utterly focused on the task of meeting their humans' emotional and physical needs. Human relationships, by contrast, are endlessly complex, with the wants, needs and egos of the involved humans frequently in competition, and self-interest complicating communication. Stories of humans entering relationships with machines literally designed to be their perfect companions are often couched as cautionary tales. However the persistence of the theme in movies and literature bears witness to its compelling nature.

Which of course brings up the question of whether it's moral have a relationship with a sentient (or at least seemingly sentient) machine that has no choice in the matter of whether or not it loves you.  C.J. Cherry toyed with that concept somewhat in Cyteen, though it was not traditional robots in question, but genetically engineered and machine birthed humans whose conscious minds were programmed throughout their early lives and reprogrammable in adulthood.

A sexless robot welding cars, assisting in an office or cooking food is easy to think of as an appliance.  It has no free will and that's OK - it's just a machine someone bought to perform a task.  But assign the same robots gender and provide them characteristics we might associate with gender, and suddenly we see them differently; as more like us - more human.  It's the way we're wired. It makes us more comfortable interacting with robots. And it's reasonable to speculate that future robots, programmed to optimize hardware-to-wetware interactions, are going to leverage that bit of human hard-wiring. Next thing you know you're wondering whether the android bar-tender with the sexy voice has a soul. 

Happily for me, Primitive James seems no more interested in the human obsession with the soul than he is their obsession with sex. 

Hugo Voting and Busy Days

by Mord Fiddle

It's busy days, here at the offices of The Infinite Reach.

A workman is out hanging up the new sign on The Reach's oak front doors. Another is outside washing the windows that look toward the National Mall.  He sways precariously on a swing dangled from the roof as he lunges back and forth, squeegee in hand, the ruddy tower of the Smithsonian castle visible over his shoulder.  The wooden floors are polished and the climate controls in the rare volumes room have had their yearly service.  Things are beginning to come together.

Long-time readers will be pleased to know that Jenny, our former research librarian, is back at The Reach for the moment; on loan from the National Archives' Special Acquisitions Branch.

Special Acquisitions, for those of you out of the loop, is the only covert ops unit made up entirely of librarians.  You won't find Special Acquisitions ('Acquisitions', or simply SA, as they're sometimes called) on the National Archives' website or their budget, so don't bother looking.  Most of the things they acquire are 'special' to the point of being dangerous.   When ancient texts or artifacts of mysterious provenance pose a national or global threat, Acquisitions gets the call.

Hooey?  Yeah, maybe.  And maybe the Rosetta Stone didn't set off the Tunguska event. 

I've three stories in the works at the moment; a tyranny of choice. One is an interstellar heist story for Bryan Ward, who designed the banner for The Infinite Reach.  Another extends an SF flash fiction piece into a proper short story/novellete on war and boundaries of human identity.  I've also dragged an old story with a robot protagonist from the desk drawer, dusted it off, and am looking at how it might be reworked into something publishable. 

Then there's Boots, a novel-length Science Fiction/Fantasy piece I began when my children were young. Now and then they remind me that I've promised to finish the story and commit it to paper. As said children are coming onto middle age, I suppose I'd better get a move on.  Boots, Mother, Alis, Spoon and Hlist all seem inclined to cooperate in the telling, so maybe this time will be the charm.

I've gotten my reading for the Hugo Awards under way.  This will be by first time voting in many, many years.  I have to say I appreciate being able to download the digital nominations packet.  The voting deadline for the Hugos is the end of July so I've a fair bit of reading to do between now and then. I'd read one of the novels and one of the novellas before the packet arrived, but even with that it's a non-trivial stack of reading. So, with the packet downloaded, I've rolled up the sleeves, dragged out the specs and gotten to work.  All the short stories are out of the way and I'm starting in on the novellettes. I save the novels for the evenings when the world slows down and gives me a bit of elbow room for uninterrupted reading. 

I plan on writing reviews of some of the nominated pieces I'm reading.  However, in the interest of permitting my fellow Hugo voters to make up their own minds as to the merit of the nominated works, I won't publish them until the voting deadline has passed.

I'm presently reading June's Women Destroy Science Fiction issue of Lightspeed Magazine., and should have a review of the fiction therein up some time this week. The eminent Doctor Hasslein is putting the finishing touches on another Ask Doctor Hasselin feature. John is churning away at another bit of commentary and Uncle Mike has another movie review in the pipeline.

As I said. Busy days.

Hope you're enjoying the reading so far.  If you are interested in contributing a review or article to The Infinite Reach, please feel free to contact me via my mordfiddle gmail address.  The works in place so far will give you an idea of the type of content and tone we're looking for.  Be sure to include a writing sample (or a link thereto) in your email.  These are early days, so the pay is lousy and we've no cred with the SFWA yet.  But the business plan for The Reach is straightforward: It's all about the writing.

Producing thoughtful, well written content isn't the fastest road to success, but it's a road that always leads to someplace worthwhile.

Book Review: Skin Game, by Jim Butcher

Reviewed by J.D. Popham

Skin Game, the fifteenth entry in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, will be a pleasing read for most of Mr. Butcher's dedicated fan base.   Indeed, a week having passed since Skin Game's release, most of said fan base have already bought the book, read the book and pronounced the book a triumph.  Mind, some were pronouncing Skin Game a triumph before it arrived on their doorstep or in their e-reader.  All of which is as it should be; the reason why we call them dedicated fans and true believers.   

This review is not for them.

I encountered Harry Dresden for the first time in New York City's Penn Station, where I picked up a copy of Summer Knight (book number four) for the train ride back to DC.  Summer Knight is a clean, well balanced story about how a down-on-his luck gumshoe/wizard, punching well out of his metaphysical weight class, solves a  murder mystery and thereby saves Chicago from a supernatural war and himself from execution by his superiors on the White Council of wizards. Having reread the series last year, I still regard Summer Knight as the best written book in the Dresden Files series. 

As the series has moved onward through its next eleven iterations, Mr Butcher has managed to maintain the essence of the Dresden Files zeitgeist with a larger series story arc informed by events unfolding in each stand-alone episode. In each book Butcher has upped the ante, with Harry Dresden accruing power and allies but, in keeping with his role as underdog, always finding himself confronted by enemies more formidable than himself and battling against long odds.  Along the way Butcher has developed a compelling cast of supporting characters, many of whom are as popular with his fan base as Harry Dresden himself.

However, with Skin Game, this pattern is beginning to become unwieldy.

Skin Game is, in essence, a heist story in which Harry Dresden is required to collaborate with Nicodemus Archeleone; arch villain, host to a fallen angel and arguably the most formidable of Harry Dresden's enemies. Nicodemus made his first appearance in Death Masks, the book that followed Summer Knight, and immediately proved his Evil Overlord bone-fides.  He is a fan favorite in the Dresden pantheon of bad-guys, and the prospect of Harry having to assist Nicodemus in planning and executing an Oceans' Eleven style robbery of a Greek god's metaphysical valuables vault has had Dresden's followers all a-buzz.

Harry is compelled to assist Nicodemus by Mab, faerie queen of air and darkness.  This is due to Harry having taken the job as Winter Knight, chief enforcer for Mab.  That and the fact that there is something in Harry's head that will burst out in a few day, killing him and very likely those he cares about, if he doesn't complete the job in time. Nicodemus, of course, intends to kill Harry before the festivities conclude. Harry knows this.  Nicodemus knows Harry knows this.  Harry knows Nicodemus knows Harry knows this, and so on.  So, all the elements are in play for a merry romp.  And it is a well executed romp for the most part.

Typically a Dresden Files book includes multiple threats and plot threads that Harry has to deal with, each creating complications for the others. For example, in Death Masks, Harry has to deal with Nicodemus' plot to set a plague loose in Chicago, arrange and fight a duel with a vampire nobleman, and find the recently stolen Shroud of Turin.  The result in Butcher's hands is usually a story that unfolds at breakneck pace, with many plot-element balls in the air and plates spinning perilously a-wobble, until the reader is finally allowed to draw breath as the story comes to its close.  Of late, however, Mr. Butcher has had to limit the number of competing plot lines.  In Skin Game, he is reduced pretty much to one. The series has lost its early lightness of foot over time and, though Butcher takes care to keep Harry's snark and banter undimmed, the current book lacks much of the series' trademark velocity and agility.  Skin Game takes flight whenever we are dealing with the heist, but it frequently gets bogged down in explication and fan service.

Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Warden of Demonreach and Winter Knight is struggling against the weight of his own back-story.

The Dresden Files appears to be suffering from a case of Series Bloat. That it has taken fifteen books for this to become evident speaks well to the care Butcher has taken in writing The Dresden Files to date. In Changes, the eleventh book in the series, Butcher pruned back some of the growing underbrush of characters, setting and subplots in order to create room for Harry's development as Mab's Winter Knight. However, Mr. Butcher is something of a character hoarder and in the three books following Changes the back-story underbrush has grown as thick and tangled as before. Skin Game alone introduces at least four new characters from whom I expect return appearances, and several return appearances from characters I'd hoped not to see again.

Then there's the Superman conundrum.  As Harry becomes more and more powerful, so must his enemies.  As both Harry and his enemies become more powerful, his friends and allies as written in the early books are correspondingly weaker by comparison. For example, the rough and tough pack of werewolves who are invaluable to Harry in book four are, by book fourteen, relatively useless as allies, being more or less as vulnerable to the forces at play as the hapless humans Harry must protect.  To offset this, Butcher has resorted to 'power-ups' to keep fan-favorite characters relevant to the action and in play.  Two such power-ups occur is Skin Game, and to me both came off as rather shameless dies ex machina plot devices disguised as fan service.

Further, as Harry becomes more powerful, it's becoming harder and harder for Butcher to credibly impede his hero when the plot requires it.  Despite all Harry's accrued power, Butcher persists in allowing Harry to be stymied by foes who should no longer be a credible threat to him. Despite the accompanying explication, Butcher is unconvincing more often than not in such cases.  Indeed, Butcher devotes a good part of Skin Game to dialing back Harry's Winter Knight powers somewhat in order to make the character more manageable.  Suddenly they are revealed to be much more limited than the readers were once led to believe; the Winter Knight's potency or lack thereof subject to the immediate needs of the narrative.  The result is a Harry Dresden only marginally more powerful than he was before he compromised his basic principles in order to take up the mantle of Winter Knight.

Such writing, while convenient for the author, detracts from Skin Game.

Still for all of that, Dresden Files fans will (and do) find a lot to like here.  While the book doesn't move as deftly as it ought to and the plot device machinery tends to clank and clunk, the essence of Harry Dresden and company still comes through.  For those new to The Dresden Files, Skin Game is not the book with which to begin and I would recommend starting early in the series, when Chicago was a simpler place.

The lives of Harry Dresden and the inhabitants of his Chicago have become, as Harry would say, complicated.

Down and Out in Mingo City

by J D Popham

What with being a ruthless tyrant and all, I'm sure Ming the Merciless is mindful that he has spent a lifetime cultivating an image that is not, it is safe to say, personable.

Ming is not the sort of leader who expects to be invited round the corner for a pint, or to book club. Not that Ming seems the book club sort; but rest assured he does not sit about lamenting that, even so, it'd nice to be invited now and then. Ming is quite upfront in expressing his preference for a certain emotional distance between himself and the people of the empire over which he exercises absolute power.  After all, one doesn't tack the descriptor 'Merciless' onto one's name if one wishes to communicate to the public an interest in how the public feels.

So, if Ming the Merciless were to suddenly make a public appeal for my sympathy and support on the grounds that his enemies are not competing fairly against him, it would leave me rather taken aback.

That's largely been my reaction to this month's public media and press offensive led by Hachette Book Group against Amazon.

It seems that Amazon, pressed by its shareholders to actually turn a profit, is seeking to bargain for a bigger cut of e-book revenues with the major book publishers.  Needless to say, book publishers are not in business to make money for Jeff Bezos and thus Amazon has reached an impasse in its negotiations with Hachette.  By way of demonstrating its importance to Hachette's bottom line, Amazon took the step of eliminating price discounts on Hachette products and began delaying delivery of Hachette titles.

The publishing establishment seems to have been waiting for such a moment; when Amazon would seek to leverage its dominance in the book retail world by tipping the retail playing field against publishers unwilling to meet its terms. The publishing industry having, for good or ill, become dependent on Amazon as a retail outlet, has fallen in line behind Hachette, painting Amazon as the retail equivalent of  Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine. To this end the publishers have mobilized their stables of writers to reach out via social media to dedicated fans and make the publishers' case against Amazon.

Among the writers taking the publishing industry's part in this fracas has been the noted Science Fiction author Elizabeth Bear.  She put up a string of aggressive posts to her followers on Twitter that were widely re-tweeted by a number of other writers and publishing industry hangers-on.  Her posts are passionate statements, fired from the hip and, I believe, reflect her honest view of the current goings-on.  Unfortunately, they are the comments of an industry insider with an financial interest one of the dogs in this fight.  And they are surprisingly self-oriented, conflating the interests of readers with her own interests.  

Two key points in Ms Bears position jump out at me:

1) Jeff Bezos is not on your side.

Well, of course Jeff Bezos is not on my side. Jeff Bezos is in a for-profit business. I don't buy books from him because he's on my side. Ours is a business relationship.  I buy them from him because he is the best at giving me what I, as a consumer, want.  He has the most complete selection of titles, has an effective and efficient user interface and gets the books to me promptly.  To the degree he can't deliver the titles I want when I want them at a price I'm willing to pay, I will purchase them elsewhere.  And I don't feel bad about letting Jeff down when I shop elsewhere, be it through another website or a brick-and-mortar book store.  I'm not on Jeff Bezos' side any more than he is on mine.  I don't have an emotional or financial stake in Amazon.  I do, however, like the level of service Amazon provides.

The publishing industry likes the services and marketplace Amazon provides as well.  However they are ever mindful that it is a marketplace that does not exist to serve their interests and over which they exert little control. While they are quick to deplore Amazon's negotiating tactics as unfair or monopolistic, the major publishing houses are every bit as quick to leverage their own size and market advantages when negotiating with suppliers and authors.

Like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Hachette's Michael Pietsch is running a for-profit business and has financial targets to meet.  Neither Jeff nor Michael are on my side and do not expect it would be otherwise.

2) The publishing industry is Elizabeth Bear's bread and butter. She very much likes the industry as it is and depends on it for her livelihood.  Amazon is a threat to the status quo, willing to turn Ms. Bear and the other established writers into literary sharecroppers in order to return value to Amazon shareholders. 

Ms. Bear justifiably feels that Hachette's Michael Pietsch is on her side. And well she might. She is a successful, established writer, heavily vested in the current publishing industry business model; a business model that has been in place for a very long time, has become somewhat blinkered and ossified, and is increasingly under pressure.  Nonetheless, it is a business model that has been very good to her and, she holds, to those who enjoy her works.   

However, much as it pains me to admit it, her livelihood is not my lookout. Nor are the livelihoods of the various middlemen and gatekeepers who populate the literary ecosphere of concern to me any more than mine is to them.  I appreciate that Ms. Bear is living the life to which most would-be authors aspire, but if the business model that sustains her is not viable, it's no never-mind to me if she has to take up literary sharecropping alongside the rest of us.

By way of analogy, you could say that Ms. Bear is a Mingo City insider, the gatekeepers of that metropolis having found her worthy of citizenship.

It's a nice place, Mingo City.  The trains there run on time, the trash is picked up promptly, and it's safe to walk the streets at night (provided one's papers are in order).  Say what you will about Ming, he's very impatient with failure and knows how to motivate civil servants.  And, as the capital of Ming's evil intergalactic empire,  Mingo City is a great place to make a living as long as one steers clear of politics and shouts 'Hail Ming!' enthusiastically when the appropriate occasion presents itself.  Mingo City boasts all the cultural amenities one might expect from a city of its stature.  It has quite the night life and its arts and literary scene, while subject to certain editorial controls, is second to none.

I mean, sure, Ming is an absolute ruler who will extirpate any opposition, real or perceived, to his steely grip on power.  But for Mingo City's movers and shakers invested in his continued reign, he's not so much a bad guy as...driven.  Our Ming is not a hugger. Our Ming is a doer.  If Ming were such a bad guy, why would there be such a loud and annoying rabble camped outside the gates of Mingo City, clamoring for entrance?  Everybody, it seems, wants the sweet life; the gala luncheons, the acclaim for their work, the adoring fans.  Alas for these unwashed masses, the gatekeepers are discriminating.

But the world is changing.  Emperor Palpatine's Death Star hangs above the horizon, and Imperial Walkers are slowly calumphing toward Mingo City's gates.  Ming's legions, with their old-fashioned rocket ships and death rays are simply out of date and no match for Palpatine's modern arsenal. Ming the Merciless, it seems, is a traditionalist and slow to adapt to the times.   

The city's insiders call down to the huddled masses camped outside the gates and urge them to battle against the interlopers. Palpatine, they say, is not on your side.  He's not competing fairly.  Ming is the keeper of tradition and all that is beautiful within Mingo City. If the city falls, then to what will you aspire?  How would you continue without us?  

For the book publishing industry to survive it is going to have to do more than appeal to reader's sentimental attachment to it or to the authors it publishes.  However special or holy the high priests of the industry regard the business of book publishing, from a pure business standpoint they are primarily an intermediary in a content provision chain that stands between content creators (authors) and content consumers (readers). The publishing industry must come to terms with changes in the marketplace, what value-add it can deliver in the context of that marketplace, and how to do so most effectively in terms of costs and revenues.

They can no longer afford to hold themselves as gate-keepers.  Because, from the mud at the foot of Mingo City's walls, one tyrant looks pretty much like the other.

Then There Was One

by J. D. Popham

Regular readers will recall that on May ninth I pointed out only three works managed a nomination for all three of the major Science Fiction/Fantasy awards, the Nebula, the Hugo and the Locus.

All three were mid-length works. Two novellas, Wakulla Springs, by Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13) and Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean) were nominated for all three awards in the Novella category.  Aliette de Bodard's  The Waiting Stars (from The Other Half of the Sky) was nominated for all three awards under Best Novelette.
 
As many of you will know, the Nebula's were announced last weekend.  The Weight of the Sunrise by Vylar Kaftan (Asimov’s 2/13) took the Nebula award for Best Novella, denying both Wakulla Springs and Six-Gun Snow White a chance at a sweep.  The Waiting Stars, on the other hand, took Nebula honors for Best Novelette and Aliette de Bodard is left as the last author standing with a chance at ending award season with the possibility of a Nebula, a Locus and a Hugo over her fireplace.  

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (Orbit US/Orbit UK), the only book nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, took the Nebula for best novel, blocking Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Morrow; Headline Review) from picking up both the Nebula and Locus awards.  Meanwhile, Rachel Swirsky's If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love (Apex 3/13) and Sofia Samatar's Selkie Stories Are for Losers (Strange Horizons 1/7/13) were both up for the Nebula and the Hugo awards in the in the short story form.   Rachel Swirsky took the Nebula honors, and retains the hope of picking up two of Science Fiction's most prestigious awards.

The Locus Awards will be held in Seattle at the end of June. The Hugos are, of course, awarded at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, hosted in London this year by Loncon 3 from August 14 - 18.   Should The Waiting Stars be blessed with a Locus in June, it will open the road toward a hat-trick in August.  Mind, if that occurs I don't expect London's eminently civilized con attendees will be waving brooms and chanting 'Sweep! Sweep!'; at least not for anything short of a novel.  

Such speculation might seem silly. This is Science Fiction and Fantasy writing, after all, and not a sporting event or music award season. However, this genre of ours is both broad and deep, producing a large body of works each year that are very diverse in terms of subject and style for a readership with equally diverse tastes and preferences.  Concurrence across this community as to the praise-worthiness of a given work is, I think, increasingly rare, and therefore noteworthy.

Book Review: Broken Homes

Review by J. D. Popham

Broken Homes, the fourth in the Rivers of London (AKA Peter Grant) series by Ben Aaronovitch, has all the hallmarks of a ‘reset’ novel.  

If you haven’t noticed, the modern genre fiction market is obsessed with series.  It’s no longer enough to write a good Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. Part of the pitch to an agent or publisher has to be the novel’s potential as a series. 

A one-off success is nice, to be sure, but after its initial blush of financial success it will rapidly fade from a revenue standpoint. A series, on the other hand, is the gift that keeps on giving.  The audience that loved the first book will likely return to buy the second. And then the third, and so on. Readers who discover the series mid-run are likely to go back and buy the earlier installments, boosting sales of the author's back-list. So, the next installment of a successful series is much lower risk proposition for the publisher than a completely new story, and is a cheerfully reliable income stream for the author.  

Consequently, it’s not unusual to see a stand-alone first novel subtitled: ‘Book one in the [insert franchise name here] series’, and left with major plot threads dangling for the folow-on book in the series to take up. 

 

Happily, in Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the US, as Rivers of London was apparently thought too gentle a title for adrenalin-addled American sensibilities), Ben Aaronovitch delivered a novel that stands easily on its own, managing to avoid the look and feel of a series set-up.  Rivers introduced us to newly minted Police Constable Peter Grant, and follows his first encounters with the ghosts, mystical creatures and Newtonian magics that exist just beyond the public's sight in contemporary London.  In London, of course, even things that go bump in the night are subject to the Queen’s peace, and the Metropolitan Police has the job of dealing with breaches of said peace; even when they involve malevolent spirits and river goddesses.  What follows is an excellent bash-up of Urban Fantasy and police procedural, populated by an engaging cast of well-drawn characters. 

Aaronovitch followed  Rivers of London with Moon over Soho, and  Whispers Under Gound, each of which was as witty as the first, deftly fleshing out and extending Aaronovitch's characters and the London they inhabit, while introducing the reader to London’s jazz vampires, ‘ethically challenged’ wizards, subterranean ‘quiet folk’, goblin markets, demon traps, and a pale lady with a …discomforting MO for murder. 

Broken Homes features the return of the Faceless Man, an evil (or ethically challenged, as Peter Grant would say) wizard introduced in Moon Over Soho. The Faceless Man is, at least for the moment, the series' primary antagonist, though his appearance in Soho is brief and he exists primarily as an undercurrent in Whispers. In Broken Homes he's back and hatching ethically challenged plans that, as the plot thickens, seem to center around Highgarden Estate.  Highgarden, an eccentric high-rise designed by an even more eccentric German architect, and possibly incorporating the principles of industrial scale magic, may be housing more than a colorful collection of aging protesters and low-income cranks.

Broken Homes lacks the easy charm of the first three books in the Rivers of London series.  It has a somewhat distracted quality, the story never quite able to get its footing and momentum until it builds toward its climax.  Each of the previous books has revolved around the revealing of a new facet of London's mystical underground; The genius loci of Rivers, the jazz vampires of Soho, and the quiet folk of Whispers.  In Broken Homes Aaronovitch stands pat with the status quo, allowing the search for the Faceless Man to be the focus of the story and otherwise occupying himself with re-arranging the exiting furniture and adding a few new pieces. 

Aaronovitch introduces us to a number of new characters who seem peripheral for Broken Homes, but I assume will play a larger role going forward. Peter Grant and his Sierra Leonean mother abruptly begin speaking Krio with each other, with no hint given as to why they've never done so in any of the previous books. A nurse from Whispers is promoted in Homes from a bland secondary character to a lead role as the dynamic and exceedingly dangerous Varvara Sidorovna, a Russian witch and magical assassin. The book's most significant change would amount to a spoiler and so cannot be mentioned here. Suffice it to say that we leave Broken Homes with the field of play very much changed and 'To Be Continued' writ large in the skies over Perter Grant's London.

I suspect this is due, at least in part, to the fourth book having to pull double duty.  Homes must attend to its own story while laying groundwork for future books and resetting certain aspects of the Rivers of London series back-story.  I would venture this is occurring for the happy reason that Aaronovitch didn't anticipate how successful the Peter Grant series would be.  With Rivers apparently settling in for a long run, Aaronovitch likely needed to make changes in order to avoid being boxed in by the series' first three books.  In such cases sooner is better than later and, with this housekeeping complete, I look forward to a return to form in Aaronovitch's next book.

This is not to say that Broken Homes isn't worth the readers time and money.  While it doesn't cohere as well as its predecessors it is an entertaining read. However, it is not a good introduction to Peter Grant and the denizens of his London.  It does not stand on its own as did its predecessors, and those unfamiliar with the series will want to introduce themselves through its earlier books. Which, as homework assignments go, is a very pleasant one. PC Grant and company are acquaintances well worth making.

Hugos and Nebulas and Locuses (Oh, my!)

Tor.com has begun flogging it's Hugo Award nominees on Twitter, which has reminded me that award season has come again to the Fantasy and Science Fiction community.

Merit, or course, goes a long way toward determining the nominees and eventual winners. However, as with any awards process where money is on the line, politics and promotion come into play. A work with well-organized backers and/or publishers advocating for it has a marginal edge over those that do not.  This doesn't mean that PR trumps quality. However, shaping expectations and keeping the spotlight on a particular work can cause it to stand out in the minds of the electors. 


Then there is the matter of the collective literary taste of the pool of electors.  The electors of the Hugo, for example, are the membership of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) tend to nominate works that appeal to the popular readership.  The Nebula, in the other hand, is awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America, who tend to reward works that appeal to its smaller community of writers.

Consequently, while there is some degree of overlap in the award nominees, there is less continuity across award sites than one might expect.  However, I've found that continuity, when it does occurs, is often an indicator of stand-out quality and broad appeal across the F&SF community.  As a result, one of my favorite pass times when the nominees are announces is to look for commonality among the nominee lists.  My primary awards for this purpose are the Hugo and the Nebula, awarded respectively by the WSFS and SFWA membership. To that I add the Locus (almost as venerable as I am), awarded by that magazines readership.  

This year is interesting in that not a single novel appears on all three nomination lists.  Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK) is up for both the Locus and Hugo, Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Morrow; Headline Review) was nominated for the Locus and Nebula, and Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (Orbit US/Orbit UK) is in play for both the Hugo and Nebula.

None of the Short Story nominees for the Locus appear on the nomination list for either the Hugo or the Nebula. However two stories in the category, Selkie Stories Are for Losers, by Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13) and  If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, by Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13) appear on both the Hugo and Nebula lists.

Things get interesting, however, when we turn to the Best Novella and Best Novelette categories.  Among the novellas, Wakulla Springs, by Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13) and Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean) appear as nominees for all three awards.  Likewise, Aliette de Bodard's novelette, The Waiting Stars (from The Other Half of the Sky) is up for all three awards under Best Novelette.  

I've noted in the last few years that these two shorter forms have been showing quite well. I'm also seeing a number of names in those categories that seem to specialize in middle-length forms. It seems that the digital shift to avenues for publishing and content distribution are making these forms more viable for authors and available to readers resulting in a higher profile for this form. It's interesting watching how the various publishing houses are responding to these changes. Tor, in particular, seems to be at the front of the pack when it comes to showcasing Novellas and Novelettes as stand-alone works.  

There are a number of works here I haven't read yet, so I'm pleased to have some new adds to my reading list. Enjoy the awards season.  Save me some champagne, and I'll see you at the after-parties.

-John Popham

Before We Begin

Ours is the life digital.  

The days of broadsheets and quill pens are long past.  We are so over Gutenberg, the printed page crumpled and discarded in favor of streaming media and electronic ink.  From the moment of birth we are immersed in the vast sea of social media: down-loading, texting, twittering, podcasting, liking, linking and linked in.  Our social velocity accelerates, and our lives are ever more immediate and relentless.

Analog is just so…analog.

Anyone wishing to create a 'popular' website will follow a broadly circulated set of rules and guidelines intended to allow said website to compete for the jaded eye of the media-soaked internet audience.  In exchange for ‘hits’, that ultimate internet currency, websites must deliver content to us in brief, dazzling spasms, lest our attention wander elsewhere.  We, these guidelines hold, have lost our ability to focus, our attention spans constantly eroding as the digital hucksters clamor and compete for ever smaller increments of our lives.

Piffle.

Consider this your invitation to high tea in a world of rave parties.  

The Infinite Reach is about Science Fiction and Fantasy.  There will be views, news, reviews and, now and then, stories.  We’ll start slow and see where it goes.  Think of us as an ongoing F&SF literary work in progress. Some of us write with quill pens, so patience is a virtue here. 

Interactive flash and pre-digested infolets you can get elsewhere. However, if you’re looking for thoughtful analysis, daring prose, deep insights, and a tendency to use words neither writ nor spoken conversationally since Middle English went out of fashion, then welcome home.

Welcome to The Infinite Reach.