The Hugos: Redshirts

Over the past two years, I split my blogging self in two like those darn urSkeks in The Dark Crystal. 

One half contributed (barely) to THIS blog, falling impossibly behind in Hugo Award reviews and disturbing insights on Robot Porn (or whatever it is I do here) while the other half devoted every single day to a certain Paramount Pictures sci-fi property which this summer celebrated its 47th anniversary and highly profitable 12th motion picture.

That selfsame SF property is very much at the heart of the 2012 novel which won the 2013 Hugo: Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas by John Scalzi. As just about everyone already knows, "Redshirt" is a jesting term for the poor devils in Starfleet security who so often find themselves stuck halfway down the business end of an acidic space amoeba.

In the 25th century, Andy Dahl learns a little too much about the life expectancy for those of low rank aboard the space cruiser Intrepid. Dahl and his new friends live in terror of the day their number will be called up for an exciting away mission alongside the handsome, impossibly lucky bridge officers. But it is when they resolve to do more than cower- when they actually seek the source of their tribulation- that the real adventure begins.

Redshirts was my favourite book of 2012. Hands down. 5 stars out of 5. I read it twice as fast as my usual speed, and resolved to find more stories by this author post-hence. His Old Man's War series is really fantastic, as my good chum Bookmonkey will attest. And realized the author'd been one of the minds behind the blink and you already missed it Stargate Universe I was enjoying. But I imagine Mr. Scalzi found the Hugo more rewarding than any of my thumbs up.

As a distant relative of John Wilkes Booth, John Scalzi is therefore distantly related to fictional FBI Agent Seeley Booth from Bones! You would certainly benefit immeasurably by contemplating his insightful blog Whatever or becoming one of his 52,700 stalkers on Twitter!

The Hugos: Ender's Game

1986's Hugo winner merely proves what I have always known: I love 1986.

When I was 10, everything was perfect in the world of TV, film, and fiction. If my own actual life was a never-ending sinkhole full of crap- what of it?

I was never there: I was inside books.

This book wasn't one of them, not at that time. But during my Hugo reading in my adult life I rarely turned up a story I liked better.

I give Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card the ultimate 5 stars out of 5.

Ender Wiggin is six years old, and a whiz in the skills required to kill Formics (an insectoid alien species bent on Earth's destruction). Those skills include being able to play video combat games the best of all. Bullied by the other students at Battle School, Ender nevertheless perseveres and thrives to become Earth's savior, executioner, and pawn in a final epic space battle.

It's very black and white, very simplistic. Exactly the sort of morals I was issued with. But of course, there is so much more to the problem. Earth's hero is merely another kind of victim, a soldier drip-fed only as much information as is necessary, and only from a human point of view.

There's a less forgiving but perfectly valid take on Ender's Game from Ryan. (That it is no more or less than a disturbing adolescent power fantasy.)

My great fondness for this story does not negate my disagreement with some of what the author personally believes. Card is the descendant of Brigham Young, second prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As such, he is vocally and financially opposed to legalizing gay marriage.

For a man whose books asked me to take a hard look at the Other Guy and see him as something besides an enemy, and especially to ask ourselves to REALLY question what our authorities have told us since our births, that feels, just to me, like a smidgen of hypocrisy. I'm just sayin'.

Lord knows I've never met the guy. He's probably nice. He looks nice. His books are certainly powerful. I want to like him. Or understand him, at least.

And I DO want to see his movie next year or soon. I just DON'T want any of my ticket money to end up forcing two boys to stop kissing.

The Hugos: Neuromancer

Deep breaths.

Prepare to not be shocked.

Ready? It's not my taste. At all.

'Neuromancer', the 1984 novel by William Gibson that won the 1985 Hugo award (and was the first to win Nebula & Dick awards into the bargain) is VERY highly regarded by many as a pioneering book in the SF sub-genre now referred to as cyberpunk.

It tells a bleak, disjointed story about a dystopian future where various unsavory and damaged characters compete for money and survival, culminating in the activation of a sentient computer which will probably also grow up to be a giant ass-hat.

I gave it 2 stars out of 5, and that was mainly because I was pleased to hear Gibson was a Nam draft-dodger. Also because I prefer to go along with the crowd if I can, and the crowd LOVED this.

I could not find things to like about a single grim character in the humorless septic tank of this morality-free, jargon-crammed future. Probably WORSE is how forgettable the whole affair was: I've been reading Wikipedia and other people's reviews for an hour trying to spark a recollection of any kind! Sadly, what rubbed off was negativity. Although my swiss cheese memory was only backed by my OWN star review, I think I got the gist.

As in-

Lister: Some smegger filled out this 'Have You got a Good Memory' quiz!

Kryten: Yes, sir. YOU did. A week ago.

Lister: Have I?

Kryten: Yes, sir. Nobody else spells Thursday with an 'F'.

Gibson apparently wrote a short story about a character who voluntarily turns his back on 'The Gernsback Continuum' (named for the guy behind the Hugo award), a reality where the futurist visions of the 40s & 50s came true. Granted, a bunch of those visions were racist and/or hollow pie-in-the-sky nonsense, but give me a sexy gal with a jet pack in a shiny utopia above a metal-eyed crack-whore with a spinal plug in a back alley ANY DAMN DAY!

Call me shallow, but I loves me my escapist fiction. That said, I liked 'The Matrix' and even 'Johnny Mneumonic', movies that wouldn't exist without Gibson's unique vision. Also, I'll soon be reading Gibson & Sterling's 'The Difference Engine' for my bookclub, so I better buckle up my big boy steam-powered laser boots!

(I am clearly more cyberdisco than cyberpunk.)

The Hugos: Startide Rising

Oh, you guys and gals and uplifted mammals, it's so good!

This a Hugo winner (and Locus and Nebula) I really liked.

Startide Rising won in 1984, and this reading project gave me the chance to get around to reading the first three books in David Brin's Uplift Saga. They take place nearly 500 years in the future, while the people of Earth are newcomers to a rigidly codified galactic culture where status is based on your sapience lineage.

Every other space culture knows who engineered, taught, and otherwise cajoled them into the world of thought. Not humans. Their foundling status is in dispute: who uplifted them? No one claims credit or blame- is humankind the first since the Progenitors to smarten themselves up? Who made who? Who made YOU?

(Heh. AC/DC'd!)

Whatever the case, humans are not the popular kids, but they have a couple of 'kids' of their own: genetically engineered intelligent apes, dolphins, and dogs have become Earth races on their own quest for rights and respect in a wider community.

Startide Rising is the tale of the Streaker, the first dolphin crewed starship, and the startling discovery they stumble upon that makes them the most wanted fugitives in space.

Intrigue, mutiny, moon-sized derelict ships, and a talking chimp. What's not to love? Why did the movie fail to happen, I ask you? I'd go see that. Is it because dolphins are well-known 'slappers'? Couldn't keep their fins off themselves long enough to make a serious movie?

I've got a bunch of unread Brin on my shelves I'd like to get back to.

Also, check out David Brin's blog under his name highlight above: he had much to say about the recent Rapture Fail.

Seems like a cool guy. I'm glad he didn't vanish up to heaven yet. In fact, everybody I like is still here: I guess we'd better get used to uplifting each other.

The Hugos: The Windup Girl

If I gave this one star on goodreads, and I wanted to, I would be a big jerk, right?

I gave it two out of five, probably because of overfed white guilt.

I mean, The Windup Girl won every award going. Tied for the Hugo last year. Has some crap to say about the world, right? 'Don't be so greedy, whitey'. 'Don't make weird shit in labs.' 'Don't fuck up the world.' 'Don't fuck over the things you make in labs.'

This is an unpleasant book with brutal characters in a future version of Thailand that, put gently, sucks the devil's ass.

O.K., too much cursing. But- GOD DAMMIT!

This is a bleak, miserable, old vomit stain of a book. Don't let Paolo Bacigalupi's smile pull you in- there's no fun to be had here. Me, personally, I find rapes very upsetting. There are several and they are described in nauseating detail. The riots, disease, starvation, random cruelty... that's just a bonus! For you, the reader!

I know- I'm a whiney bitch. I know this. But... if it's not entertaining, and it offers no hope, then it should be instructive- and I don't mean instructive like how to rape somebody until they get sick of it and behead you.

I mean it should TEACH me something: and since I've already learned the four 'don't' lessons in paragraph 2 all I've learned in 400 hot, sticky, gritty pages is: for god's sake DON'T:
1) Go to Thailand. Ever.
2) Go to the Future. Best to die now and save face.
3) Read Paolo Bacigalupi with 'enjoyment' as a goal.

If I could convince P.B. and China Mieville to go at it with knives in the Hunger Games... well, a guy can still dream, can't he?

Sadly, that was me being diplomatic.

The Hugos: Foundation's Edge

Smart dude, that Isaac Asimov.

Him giant brain win heap big Hugo award 1983. Me think it worth 3 stars on goodreads!

I mentioned already that I liked his robot detective stories when I was a kid, right? Please don't think I'm the lowest common denominator. (I am. I really am.)

For a more insightful review than mine, go here.

Foundation's Edge was not a favourite, nor did I actively dislike it. It's not in my library anymore, but it's readily available if I need it again someday.

It's pretty good, worth my time and probably yours. The whole series, if you please. It's not going to make a lick of sense on its own.

Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Robert Heinlein were known as 'The Big Three' of science fiction. This might be unfair, but to me Asimov is the third guy. (The Hugo people felt exactly the opposite in 1983, with Clarke's '2010' and Heinlein's 'Friday' nominated but never the bride. Sniff.)

There's few thrills and very little juiciness in this leisurely paced, lecture-filled mystery adventure thousands of years in the future.

Fourth in the lengthy but excellent 'Foundation' series, which has concerned itself with the collapse and rebuilding of a galactic human civilization based on either physical strength or mental force in competition. All under the auspices of the scientific predictions or "psychohistory" of a dead man's hologram. (Hari Seldon, shown here being enigmatic.)

'Foundation's Edge' postulates the formation of a galaxy-encompassing group mind where peace and harmony may be achieved by means of everybody sharing consciousness with everything else.

Yeeurgh.

Do YOU want to feel what a carrot feels while you eat it? I personally have no wish to experience deep sea angler fish sex. Or worse, LOWER life forms! Don't make me use Kardashian neural impulses or swap mentalic energy with Tiger Blood Sheen!

I'm not convinced sharing our every stupid thought is the true road to universal peace.

(PROVE ME WRONG, TWITTER!)

You wouldn't want to live in my head and frankly I don't have enough couch space in there, not even for the weekend. Stop asking!

Asimov's Galaxia model may be superior to rule by brute force.

Or simply a fine excuse for doddering old scholar Janov Pelorat to do the nasty with group-mind aficionado and local hottie Blissenobiarella. (Bliss for short.)

Group-mind girls just LOVE big brains!

And when you're doing it with a group mind, it REALLY is the nasty.

The Hugos: The City & The City

How to be diplomatic about this?

First, I'll look at China Mieville and know deep in my bones that he can kick my pasty ass.

So... no. I didn't like it. But that's just me! Stop pummeling me!

The City & The City didn't JUST win the Hugo award last year. It won LOTS of awards for genre fiction. And, more importantly, it won the hearts of the book club I'm in. Several excellent gentlemen of my acquaintance including my inestimable BFF Bookmonkey got behind this book in a big, big way.

And I picked it. So... I'm glad they liked it.

*SPOILERS*

From my perspective, it's the bleak, empty tale of a tormented city where everyone is indoctrinated from birth to NOT SEE half of what exists. Complex rules separate into two what is actually one environment. If you breach the rules you wind up in the Breach where you become a Breach and angrily police the Breaches. (Although not made entirely clear, you probably wear breeches.)

Again, FROM MY PERSPECTIVE this is a frustrating, gloomy, meandering, intentionally ambiguous story with unappealing stock characters and a downbeat ending providing zero emotional catharsis.

That said, I ALSO think this story is like the Dagobah cave Yoda shows Luke in Empire; what is in there is 'only what you take with you'.

Upsettingly, I now suspect I have no soul. Certainly no imagination.

I don't like what it says about me that I don't appreciate being forced to THINK or make up my own justifications for a book that doesn't make the effort to explain itself plainly to a dumb guy like me.

But I concocted a moral lesson for myself which (funnily enough) I DO like, paraphrasing what this book MIGHT be saying:

"Social betterment cannot be attained where arbitrary ideological barriers are enforced."

Or: the other guy has a point, too.

Next time on Mike's Best Blog Ever: Something with a flying car, for frak's sake.

The Hugos: Downbelow Station

'Downbelow Station' by Carolyn J. Cherryh won the 1982 Hugo award for best novel.

That is a given.

All else being equal, how can the BEST SCI-FI novel of the WHOLE year be so astoundingly dull? There's a space war, a space station, a tribe of cute fuzzy aliens, and it STILL manages to be the second worst Hugo (for my taste) of the decade.

I read this on my real-life wonderful amazing trip to Disneyworld in Florida with my lady love and our friends. That trip remains my gold standard of heavenly temperatures, tranquil surroundings, and overall enjoyment. Best trip EVER, is all I'm trying to say.

Meanwhile in hotel room, airport, and airplanes that horrible, boring book droned on in my head for what I believe was seven million pages. It's all bland inactivity far from the battle and third person immersion in the minds of some very unappealing characters unmatched until I read 'Cyteen'.

You can pitch this book to me by pointing out that Pell Station in the 24th Century is a lot like Babylon 5, or that the planet Pell has the Hisa (who are very similar to the Ewoks I loved unequivocally in my youth).

On goodreads.com (where I gave it 2 stars out of five, still willing to give the author an "O.K." for effort) reviewers favorably compared Cherryh (the 'H' is fictional, it's actually Cherry) to fellow Hugo winners Le Guin or Bujold. Some favorably compared her morally bankrupt female starship captain character to Kirk or Picard(!)

Doesn't make it true, I just mention it for comparison: lots of people LIKE this. C.J. is touted as a master of 'hard sf'.

If true, I think the subgenre should be renamed 'Hard-to-take sf'.

I prefer human characters with open minds, kind hearts, and a sense of humor, I guess, at least if I have to invest weeks in the reading.

Bujold is superior, and either Kirk or Picard is preferable.

The Hugos: The Snow Queen

You'll never be rid of me! I've ruled this blog for 150 years and I've created my own clone to rule it for the NEXT 150 years! Suck on that, internet!

Sorry, for a moment I thought I was the titular lead character in the 1980 novel by Joan D. Vinge, winner of the 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novel: The Snow Queen.

It's a sci-fi version of the Hans Christian Anderson fable with which witch I am not familiar.

I am, however, familiar with Dune and Star Wars. Take a water planet with big sentient fish instead of a dessert planet with giant worms, then the characters from "Star Wars" only gender-reversed, add a thousand kilograms of court intrigue and you've got 'The Snow Queen'!

That's over simplifying, something I wish this VERY long book had done.

Now, I didn't set out to bash it and I don't want to: I need you to understand that as a dude I don't WANT to trash the efforts of lady writers, but sometimes that's how I'm wired.

So I'll repeat what I said at the time: this would make a good movie, with the right people involved and a lot of luck it could really be the girl geek version of 'Star Wars'. But I only thought it was O.K.

Moon isn't a terrible protagonist, and the Snow Queen is a fine villain. Unfortunately, the romantic interest, Sparks, is impossible to like. He's pretty, easily manipulated, and a sexual captive for the villain, like a traditional princess. Oh, dear, how I hated him.

As I read others' reviews, I noticed a lot of people liked the robot. I don't even remember this character anymore! And I LOVE robots!

I DO remember wind-swept, empty, coastlines and back-stabbing, decadent, palace conversations. Or was it empty conversations and a wind-swept palace?

I'd read this author again, maybe her series with magic cats?

Recommended for those who love fantasy and, ideally, have vaginas.

I still like her better than her ex-husband Vernor.

The Hugos: The Fountains of Paradise

Is it gauche to suggest that only a gay guy could invent the space elevator?

Not that a classic tiny, thrusting rocket isn't a little obvious, too, but when it comes to erecting the Earth a mighty, turgid structure, a real MAN'S apparatus, there's nothing like a big, black carbon nano-tube phallus that reaches 1/15th of the way to the moon, pally!

That's the main character of Arthur Clarke's 'The Fountains of Paradise': an elevator 3 times the diameter of the Earth, designed to make 22nd century space travel safer and more economical. Especially if they get to... I mean HAVE to... knock down some monk-covered mountain in Asia.

An engineering feat for the ages.

A machine from atop which to scoff at the gods.

Take that, Zeus! Mine's bigger!

Ahem. Sorry.

I only gave 1980's Hugo-winning novel 2 stars out of 5.

When I reviewed Clarke's 1973 winner here, I was lukewarm but I used the word 'fun' a time or two.

Not so much this time out.

It has all the hot, engineering action and all the cool eastern philosophy you could ever want... certainly more than I did.

Maybe if it was about a nice, tight, wormhole... with boobs...

The Hugos: Dreamsnake

I celebrate the birth of a new year with the last Hugo winning novel of the 1970's.

Praise be to Heinlein, now I can FINALLY start complaining about the 1980's Hugos!

Sigh.  It's true.  I have NO idea what they were thinking in the seventies. With three exceptions I don't have a lot of praise for this decade in terms of Hugo awards.  And while the eighties has my LEAST favourite winner so far, it's not too awful otherwise.

Nor is 'Dreamsnake' AWFUL.  Two stars out of five is something I considered O.K.  The COVER is DREADFUL!  But the story's o.k.

I REALLY got the impression this was for girls instead of me.  But the emphasis on snakes in the story itself means I won't ask my wife to read it and tell me.  She HATES SNAKES, Jacque.  HATES 'EM!

In a post-nuclear world, a noble desert woman with brains, guts, control over her body's autonomic functions, and a bag full of medicinal pet snakes takes on all comers.  Sadly, not sexily.

The whole thing would probably have seemed better if I'd had a medicinal snake to fill with LSD and inject myself.  In fact, I think it should be sold with packets of acid and a snake-training manual.  Couldn't hoit! 

(It would hoit.)

Author Vonda Neel McIntyre, I gotta say, is pretty cool.  She wrote some of the first Star Trek novels I ever read (ripping good adaptations of the 2, 3, & 4th movies) as well as an original Star Trek novel which I quite enjoyed:

'Enterprise: The First Adventure', if I may be so bold, was a much better read by far than 'Dreamsnake'.  Further fuel for the fire in my belly that Hugos aren't ever handed out to franchised or shared world novels.  A pox upon you for trying to be fair and unbiased, Hugo awards!

Grateful I am, beat out a book by C.J. Cherryh, this did. 

Yes.  Talk like Yoda, I do.

The Hugos: Gateway

Frederik Pohl is 91 years old, and writes a blog, which I only discovered today and therefore have very little to say about it.  I read the entries tagged 'Gateway', the only book of his I've read, which won the Hugo award in 1978.

Pohl's won the Hugo for other things 3 times, and has a large body of work both as a writer and editor.  I've snapped up several of his 'Heechee Saga' (Gateway is the first) books at used bookstores, but thanks to the lure of television I am practically illiterate, so they've just  gathered dust for years.

Ancient treasures like Pohl and his books are the subject of 'Gateway', along with the wonder and terror of extremely dangerous space travel.

Picture this: an asteroid was left behind in our solar system eons ago by an advanced culture called the Heechee, about whom almost nothing is known.  The asteroid, called Gateway, is a thriving destination for desperately insane prospectors struggling to survive on overpopulated Earth.  Gateway is riddled with little automated interstellar spaceships that still... work.  Kind of.  Humans are dangerously underqualified to run these spaceships, but that's fine because nobody's qualified but the Heechee- and they're gone.  

It works like a Vegas slot machine: get in the ship, pull the lever, and you takes your chances.

Two thirds of the people who get in the ships die- of starvation, radiation, deadly destinations, who-the-hell knows and other.  Less than a third make it back to Gateway... but the lucky ones make themselves and Gateway Corporation filthy rich by discovering livable worlds, advanced technology, or other such doodads.

Our wealthy protagonist Bob relates the three such trips he risked his life on to his computer psychologist Sigfrid von Shrink.  You know Bob got out alive... and yet...

This was a great concept and an exciting read, with very human characters and certain inescapable tragedies.  Despite my preference for happy endings, I gave it 4 stars out of 5 on goodreads for some reason.  It's good, is what I'm saying.  

I'll be drawn back to the sequels someday- I never know what I'll get but I just can't resist the gamble.

The Hugos: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

The 1977 Hugo award went to Kate Wilhelm for 'Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang'.

When pollution and disease wipe out humankind, a rich little bunch of Americans save themselves.  They soon discover they are infertile, and turn to cloning in the hopes that their clones will be able to reproduce as per usual again someday.

The clones decide it's NASTY to do the nasty.

What will Cosgrove do?  What will Cosgrove do??  WHAT WILL COSGROVE DO???

(There's nobody called Cosgrove in this story, sadly.)

What little I recall was kind of dull but frankly I'd read worse and will again.  There's stuff about how nature is good and communities are bad and individuals are great.  It does not make me want to ride off by myself in a canoe: I like communities. And the TV series Community.  

Also, speaking of clones I REALLY like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and I REALLY dislike Spider-Man: The Clone Saga.  

Approximately between them at 'it was o.k.' lies 'Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang'.  If you have a strong urge to read it I suggest you do what I did: clone yourself and get your clone to review it for you.  

(The review will be 'meh'.)

And now, here to eat some sweet, sweet birds...

The Hugos: The Forever War

In 1976, the year I was born, Joe Haldeman won the Hugo award for 'The Forever War'.

It concerns the adventures and tribulations of William Mandella and Marygay Potter, Earth soldiers in an interstellar war with the Taurans, of whom nothing is known and with whom the Earth is at war "for no raisin".  

From 2007 to 3143 these bright young people suffer the brutality of war on several brief tours of violent duty which take them not only away from Earth but centuries of out of time.  Due to relativistic time dilation, they return to a home world which they can no longer relate to and which reviles and despises them.

Take away the sci-fi trappings and it's familiar enough tale to the veterans of Vietnam (such as Haldeman), or indeed of any war.  I really enjoyed this one, 4 stars out of 5, I'm glad to own it and I'm looking forward to more from this author.

For what it's worth, I thank VETERANS today.  

I may be an ungrateful pacifist couch potato, but I wouldn't even be THAT without their sacrifices.  

I'm talking sacrifices of all kinds.  My grandmother's brother came back from WW2 but it killed him anyway.  Drove him mad.  I'm VERY glad they turned my grandpa down when he tried to enlist.  Plenty of our grandpas did not come back, and from where I stand that might have been the last time a war was WORTH IT.

It's just a fantasy, of course, but a good one: someday we'll either stop having these things (on land, sea, or space) or we'll treat our veterans better.

Meanwhile, never forget.

The Hugos: The Dispossessed

Praise be to Heinlein, it's 1975 and I'm finally halfway out of the blasted seventies!

Praise also to Ursula K. Le Guin, but not from me. Not for this book.  Her previous Hugo winner 'The Left Hand of Darkness' also got my 'meh' review, and I liked this one slightly better, but not a full star rating better.   I felt about the same level of 'not GETTING this at all'.  I gave them both two stars out of five on goodreads.

How can I like 'The Lathe of Heaven' SO much more?  5 out of 5, deeply moving, awesome sci-fi.  The Hainish Cycle (of which The Dispossessed is a part) is NO Vorkosigan Saga.  No outer space thrills here, just a sociology lecture.  

'The Dispossessed' takes place around the year 2300 on the planets of Urras and Anarc-who-cares and feature diatribes about culture clashes of incompatible political and economic systems, what it means to own or not to own, and the faint wish of hope for a utopia that can never be... 

BAW-RING!  Very slow pacing, nothing to hold my interest, nothing I even RECALL about this book all this time later.  Fish-out-of-water physicist Shevek has a Vulcan name but there's no Star Trek fun here.  Nor is he a quirky laugh-at-yourself kind of physicist like those delightful nerds on 'Big Bang Theory'.  

Shevek's loaded down with the crush of his angst in two worlds without compassion where no one can see the value of his work.

I swear by all you hold holy, I WISH I liked this.  Le Guin is an amazing person, deeply gifted, well worthy of the esteem of the science fiction community.  

Nevertheless, BOTH her Hugos left me cold and disillusioned, wondering what I ever liked about her Earthsea books back in the day.

It's a book about US.  About our limitations as a species.  The miseries and the lonely isolation and the cruelty. There is NO good reason not to like this book.

But that didn't stop me! 

Despite how I come across here, I STILL think, outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.

Because INSIDE of a dog it's too dark to read.

The Hugos: Rendezvous With Rama

It won the Hugo Award in 1973, I gave it 3 out of 5 stars on goodreads, I don't own a copy anymore and that's that.  

I find it hardest of all to do a review for a book that I liked fine.  Where do I go with FINE?  I can't gush, I can't spew my bile: it's a pretty good, if thick, space adventure in which a giant alien cylinder is discovered, explored, and abandoned when time runs out and it flies away again.  

I liked it, but I didn't love it. (And that COVER!  Is it intentionally inducing the nausea one would feel in outer space?  WTF, Nineteen-Seventies?)

'R With R' is a mystery story which ultimately provides no answers.  Still, I found it to be a good ride, an intriguing puzzle, and a fun adventure, in much the way that the TV show Lost wasn't.  Oooh, SNAP!   Plus, it had a giant biosphere with some robots and some other freaky stuff inside a metal tube in space!  That's better than some lame-ass smoke monster!

Although I understand the sequels have a bad reputation with some, I own them and plan to read them someday, if only so I can discard them as well, making space for more of the drivel I favor.  Or maybe I'll adore them. Who can say?  Mysteries abound.

There was a Niven and also a Heinlein nominated in the same year.  I haven't read them yet.  (Odds are real good I'll be royally pissed at the Hugo peeps for their lack of being in total agreement with me.  Heinlein vs Clarke?  No contest, mac.)

Morgan Freeman loves 'Rendezvous With Rama' and wanted it to be a movie decades ago, and if he hasn't soured on the whole thing, still does.  I'd go watch that, sure.  A world inside a cylinder?  Hook me up with them fancy visuals, brother!  As far as casting, the characters in the novel are all interchangeable space professionals with chiseled jaws (even the girl.  If there WAS a girl. I can't recall any point at which it would've made the slightest difference one way or the other).  

Competent Professionals + 

Giant Mostly Empty Artifact = 

Nobody Getting Laid.

Arthur Clarke was an army guy, briefly married, was knighted, loved scuba diving, and is partly responsible for the invention of the satellite.  Sweet, right?  I use those.  What did Heinlein ever invent?  WATERBED!  Feh!  

Clarke wrote much of the movie 2001, which is VASTLY overrated, and some of the movie 2010, which is keen!

The Hugos: The Gods Themselves

Continuing the Hugos with a dismal 'treat': Isaac Asimov's triumphant return to science fiction and the winner of the 1973 Hugo award.

Call me a traitor if you must, I didn't think much of this one.  (It also won the Nebula award, and was the novel Asimov cited as his personal favourite.)  

It may be a joyless slog through the tedious sex lives and monumentally uninteresting jobs of blobs from another dimension, but at least it beat 'What Entropy Means To Me' by George Alec Effinger, a nominee from the same year that is the worst Nebula nominee I have ever read.  (I think that book actively HATED me.)  So, good thing 'The Gods Themselves' won.  I GUESS...

I gave it 2 stars of 5 on goodreads.com.  It was o.k.

Frankly, anybody who's heard me complain about C.J. Cherryh knows we haven't come to my least favourite Hugo yet.  

I kind of liked the backstabbing scientists in part one fighting over the rights to a perpetual energy machine that is hastening the death of the Earth's sun.  But I just completely lost interest with the 'hard' and 'soft' extraterrestrials. (That's what she said!)

It's hard (tee hee!) to imagine, but it proves there's a book with aliens and sex that does NOTHING for me AT ALL.  And, oddly, Asimov wrote it in response to criticism that his books never had such things before.  Turns out that was for the best.  If I want sexy sci-fi I'll find more Piers Anthony, Larry Niven, and Heinlein, thanks.

I was a lot happier as a kid reading Asimov's robot detective tales.  Does that guy know robots!  Shucks, boy, howdy!  

And I know this is a low blow, but that is one dog-barf ugly cover.  Seriously.  What were you thinking, Nineteen Seventies?

The Hugos: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

If you're still alive...

...Congratulations!  You missed the cut-off date (2008) to be resurrected after your death on the planet Riverworld.  Sorry.

I, for one, breathe a sigh of relief.  Wherever I'm going, including oblivion, I'm glad it's not Riverworld.  Probably.

From Ringworld on to Riverworld: the 1972 Hugo winner was 'To Your Scattered Bodies Go' the first of five books by Philip Jose Farmer set on a mysterious planet which (as you may have guessed) is virtually all river and riverbank, providing plenty of surface area for every human being who has ever lived & died to live again forever.

So these billions of poor slobs all wake up naked one day on a riverbank where mechanical mushrooms provide regular nourishment, and where if you get killed you are revived again, possibly not in the same spot as before, but somewhere along the winding planet-spanning river in a healthy youngish body with all your memories of life on Earth and Riverworld intact.

Discovering there REALLY IS an afterlife AND it's catered doesn't stop people from wigging out, wandering around, and raping and/or pillaging.  Killing also continues, possibly with more vigor than before since it's become less permanent.

Our main characters in this first book are actual deceased  historical figures such as explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton 

(bearded, above), nutbar thug Hermann Goering (dandling child, left), and ordinary Alice Liddell (the inspiration for Alice, of Wonderland fame).  Also some poor schmo alien being who happened to have died on Earth in the period specified.  And everybody else.  If there's a moral judgement involved in this resurrection it treats Alice in Wonderland as exactly equal to Nazi scumwads, while essentially trapping them on nude beaches together, so GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

I gave it 3 stars out of 5. It's an exciting and curious adventure, with a mystery to which I still want the answers, so I'll keep reading the series one day. Who the hell set all this up?  WHEN is all this?  WHY did this seem like a good plan?

I remember wondering afterward, and maybe the book proposed these possibilities within itself: is this one of many such worlds?  Is this supposed to be a reward or a punishment? Is this the human races' descendants' idea of a retirement colony?  Or a nursery for backward, vicious children?

Whatever it turned out to be (assuming Farmer ever told us, and if YOU know then don't tell me yet) it's a cinch PJF missed out, too. He died in 2009.  Hope he went somewhere better than Riverworld.

The Hugos: Ringworld

Are you sure?

You want to hear about Larry Niven's ringworm?

Ohhhhkaaaay... well, it's a microscopic dermal parasite characterized by the raised circular lesion it leaves on famed septuagenarian sci-fi author Larry Niven...

What?  Ring-WORLD!  Oh, that's much better.  Thank goodness.

Ringworld is the 1970 book that won the 1971 Hugo and my heart.  In all seriousness, this is the best Hugo of the seventies, hands down.  Don't even bother with the rest. Go read it. Now.

Back already?  That was quick!  Ringworld (as you now know) is a rollicking adventure tale set on a world, right, shaped like a ring, y'know?  

IT'S REALLY FREAKIN' COOL!  It has a big, astonishing concept, and even better characters. 

Louis Wu, the 200-years-young misanthrope 

who leaves Earth in 2855 on the spaceship Lying Bastard with the genetically cowardly alien Nessus (left), the brutish felinoid (kitty man) Speaker-To-Animals (below), and the bred-for-luck gal Teela Brown.  

Then some other stuff happens, both sexy and science-y.  

Yes, stuff can be both!

I really, really liked this. 5 stars on goodreads, then I read 'Ringworld Engineers' as well, also very good, then I bought like 20 other Niven books I haven't gotten around to yet but very much hope to enjoy in some semblance of order one day soon.

Niven's contributions to 'Green Lantern' comics are worthy, his grisly/funny essay 'Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex' while no doubt ghoulishly accurate to the horrors awaiting the human in a human/Kryptonian mating fails to take into consideration the several methods by which Superman has been known to diminish his powers.  I imagine Clark and Lois 'do it' under a red sun lamp, for instance.  My evidence?  Lois is still slightly alive.

ANYway.  If you play Halo, then Ringworld is where the concept came from.  If you saw 'The Slaver Weapon' episode of the cheesy seventies 'Star Trek' cartoon (which I adore), or the 'Inconstant Moon' episode of the green cheesy nineties 'The Outer Limits' series, then you owe Larry Niven thanks or whatever remarks you deem appropriate.  Is he weird?  Probably.  His wife puts up with a lot, I bet. Of course, when they married she was Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, which I had to include here because that's frakkin' awesome.

Discovering Larry Niven was the best part of my Hugo reading project.  That and the snooty way I get to lord having read all the Hugos over everybody.