I’m huddled in bed with my warmest jacket and extra blankets, and I still can’t shake the chills. Although I feel cold inside, in minutes my pillows too hot. I flip it over and rest my cheek on the comforting coolness. Occasionally, I sandblast my throat with another bout of hacking. I can hear Jana grossed out in the living room. “Take some cough drops!” she yells.
But there is a shiny, silvery lining on this dark germ-laden cloud. I get to lie in bed and read. And I’m too muddled in the head to read translations of apocryphal third-century Jewish Christian texts, so I read things that are *fun.*
One of my many annual projects is to read the Hugo and Nebula Award Nominees for best novel. Here are the Hugo nominees. These will be voted on by ticketholders for members of the World SF Convention in Denver this year [thanks, Michael Walsh, for the clarification!]:
- The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
- Brasyl by Ian McDonald
- Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer
- The Last Colony by John Scalzi
- Halting State by Charles Stross
And here are the Nebula nominees for best novel. These are chosen by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association:
- The Accidental Time by Joe Haldeman
- The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson
- Odyssey by Jack McDevitt
- Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell
- The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
No time or energy *cough*cough* to find the links. You can do those. I also have a secret tips for you. That’s right, step a little closer…I don’t bite, unless you asks nicely. *wheeze* As it gets closer to voting time, a lot of the stories, including the novels, start to pop up on the internet for free, as *legitimate* downloads! There’s something academy awardish in the politicking behind the Nebulae and Hugo-ae-ii-s-whatevers. Later, I’ll try to point out some worthy nominees among the shorter forms.
Here’s another hint–I have never been disappointed reading one of the relatively few books that made it to both ballots. This year that’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. When I pick up a genre book, I usually come for the plots and ideas, sometimes I am stay and chat and am changed by the characters; rarely do I savor the words that make up the edifice. Chabon’s hard-boiled detective tale is full of ornate and quirky word carvings and knick knacks, that you want to look over again and again, or borrow and share with your best friends.
The setting is an alternate history U.S., not so different from our own, but where Israel was defeated in 1948 by the Arabs, and the U.S. reluctantly created a temporary settlement for Jews on some mosquito infested islands in the Alaskan panhandle. Savor this description of the main character’s (Landsman’s) sister:
It was from an early boyfriend that she had caught the itch to fly. Landsman never asked her what the attraction was, why she had worked so long and hard to crash the homoidiotic world of male bush pilots…But as Landsman understands it, the wings of an airplane are engaged in a constant battle with the air that envelopes them, denting and baffling and warping it, bending and staving it off. Fighting it in the way a salmon fights against the current of the river in which it’s going to die. Like a salmon–that aquatic Zionist, forever dreaming of its fatal home–Naomi used up her strength and energy in the struggle.
In this paragraph, Chabon has managed to describe Naomi’s masculine character, the world of the bush pilots, Landsman’s own fear of flying and at the same time tied it together with Jewish and Alaskan imagery that forms the context for the entire story. I want to share more–there are hilarious bits, yiddish-colored noir, descriptions of dark beauty, but I’ll save all that for the review. One thing that I do want to emphasize–Chabon transcends genre. Non SF-afficianados might be thrilled by this work.
I’ll finish this in the next day or two, and would love to have a bloggy chat about it–even if it’s in a few weeks from now. Any one interested?
My next book will be Charlie Stross’ Halting State. Let me know if you’re interested in reading the same.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Michael Walsh // Mar 22, 2008 at 11:38 am
“Here are the Hugo nominees. These will be voted on by ticketholders for the World SF Convention in Denver this year:”
The World SF Convention doesn’t sell or offer tickets.
Rather it’s memberships, a subtle, but important difference!
Look at it this way, the membership decides, not an audience.
Anyway, Chabon has pulled off a fairly impressive trick, his book is up for Best Novel not only for the Hugo and Nebula, but also an Edgar for best mystery.
2 markii // Mar 23, 2008 at 9:50 am
okay. i’ve never been into SF. but i think i’d totally dig it. hopefully you can point me in the direction of a good book to start with.
when i was a kid, i loved The Tripods trilogy and
The Prydain Chronicles. when i was in high school i loved michael crichton- anything by him- especially sphere, and the lost world.
some of my favorite movies are gattaca, the matrix, aeon flux (the cartoon), minority report, and T1-T3 (starring tha governator).
looking at the list in your post, Haldeman, Stross, Scalzi, and McDonald (i served a mission in brazyl) looked interesting.
so, doc, those are my interests. can you prescribe something fun for me to read?
3 John // Mar 23, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Michael, thank you–I corrected the post to reflect your comment.
markii, that’s a tall order! Let me ask you this–what fiction (non-sf) have you read in the past few years that you’ve totally enjoyed?
4 John White // Mar 23, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Why make this more complicated than it needs to be? Kids in space of course: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
5 tedrick // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:54 am
Back when I was Mormon I got so excited to think that the author of the well-respected Ender’s Game was also LDS. But then a Mormon buddy told me that Card plagiarized parts of the Nephi/Laban/brass plates story for another one of his books. That pissed me right off.
6 John White // Mar 24, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Is this for the Homecoming saga? OSC should be raked over the coals. Not for plagiarism (no idea if it’s true), but for writing such a crappy series. I want my $15 back.
7 John // Mar 24, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’m not sure if that counts as plagiarism–we’d have to condemn every retelling of Jane Austin’s Emma, of Cyrano de Bergerac, and reworkings of classic stories (Wicked, The 13th Warrior, etc.).
The life of Alvin Maker begins as a riff on Joseph Smith’s bio. The first two books are all right. I am glad that I’ve never bothered with the Homecoming series, though.
8 John White // Mar 25, 2008 at 2:00 am
Alvin Maker? Really? You’ll have to explain the references to me some time.
9 Michael Walsh // Mar 25, 2008 at 6:22 am
“But then a Mormon buddy told me that Card plagiarized parts of the Nephi/Laban/brass plates story for another one of his books. That pissed me right off.”
And why do you believe this? Did you do any follow checking?
Just asking.
10 John // Mar 25, 2008 at 7:00 am
Michael, it sounds like you’re trying to respond to tedrick’s experience, but I just wanted to clarify that there’s not any debate around whether or not Card borrowed from the Book of Mormon to write the Homecoming series. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s read the Book of Mormon, and he’s pretty open about it himself:
So, it seemed to me only natural that I should write my Homecoming series — The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, The Ships of Earth. These books are really just another dramatization of the Book of Mormon, only transformed into a science fictional setting, where by fictionalizing it I have the freedom to explore questions of character and society in a way that I couldn’t in a more direct adaptation.
I personally don’t have a problem with authors retelling older tales–this is what storytellers do. Consider our most revered authors, from Shakespeare to James Joyce. I’m sure that some Mormons take offense at Card playing around with their holy writ in this manner (though many are delighted). I haven’t read the series, mostly because I’ve encountered enough SF readers, Mormon and otherwise, who love Card but not this group of books. There’s too many other great works out there waiting to be read!
11 GINO // Apr 30, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Chabon is the only novelist I know of that has been nominated for the Hugo and for the Nebula and has won the Pulitzer for a previous, and incredible, novel.
[redacted by xJane: all punctuation & spelling left, all capitalization removed except where appropriate. Gino, please don’t shout.]
Leave a Comment