The Novelette and Novella are the ugly step children of the Hugos, novelette being a long short story, and a novella being a short novel. Nonetheless, they are often have the most diversity in offerings of the categories. This slate of novellas is particularly strong, with five of the six stories being excellent and deserving of award.
Tag: SFF
Science Fiction & Fantasy – really just a catch all for fiction that isn’t historical or modern.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Novelette
The Novelette and Novella are the ugly step children of the Hugos, novelette being a long short story, and a novella being a short novel. Nonetheless, they are often have the most diversity in offerings of the categories.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Short Story
I love short stories, but don’t read enough of them. For science fiction in particular, a short story represents the perfect length to show off a good idea without getting bogged down. Stories here are less than 7,500 words, listed in order of reading. Given the short length, spoilers are somewhat inevitable.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Introduction
So it’s time for my semi-annual attempt to read the bulk of the Hugo Award Fiction Nominees and vote for my favourite candidates.
What are the Hugos?
The Hugo Awards are probably the best known Science Fiction and Fantasy awards for books…
Review – The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
I loved Old Man’s War, became increasingly disillusioned as the series went on, then jumped off the Scalzi train with Redshirts, which was a great idea of a book that I just hated. Still, my residual goodwill for that first book was enough to get me to try his new space opera, and while not an instant classic like Old Man’s War, this was a thoroughly enjoyable book.
Review – Gridlinked by Neal Asher
This should have been a slam dunk: an intergalactic agent fights terrorists and negotiates with aliens while accompanied by a pet shuriken at the behest of an immortal Japanese administrator working for a superintellegent AI. Furthermore it comes with an impressive pedigree, as the first of over a dozen polity novels by Neal Asher. Unfortunately it’s just kind of there, not bad, but inferior to similar books such as Altered Carbon or most of the Culture novels.
Review – Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick
The problem with Among Thieves is that it is two great novels fighting against each other to make one merely good book. Drothe is a classic lovable rogue; he’s an information dealer with interesting relatives, a homicidal best friend, and a bit of an attitude. The parts of the story where he interacts with his informants, navigates the obligations of the kin (fantasy mob), and tries to avoid being knifed are amongst the best examples of a fantasy underworld I’ve seen. At the same time, the high fantasy story of an empire ruled by a triumvirate of serially reincarnating emperors who are becoming erratic and beginning to hate each other hold endless promise.
Review – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
In the current climate it is very easy to focus on the big picture of the Handmaid’s tale: a take over of the US by religious fanatics leads to the wholesale oppression of women. This would however, be a disservice to what is an incredibly personal tale. At its heart, this is a book about what happens when you treat people as things, and what people in that position will do to survive. By focusing the story down to one person, the misogyny in the Handmaid’s tale expands beyond its setting to stand in for the depredations leveled against women in the past, present, and most distressingly, the future.
Review – The Merchant Princes by Charles Stross
When I read the Bloodline Feud, I thought it was a high concept masterpiece, by the time I got to the last volume of the Merchant Princes, I couldn’t finish it, and returned the first book of the new series in the same world, Empire Games, unread to the library.
Review – The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig
Chuck Wendig already writes one of the best ‘almost’ urban fantasy novels in the Miriam Black books, so I had high hopes for the Blue Blazes. Unfortunately, this one gets a bit of a shrug.