Best Graphic Story 2015: My votes

Posted on by

Before I go into this year’s choices, I want to observe that the Best Graphic Story category has really improved. I was dismayed by the dominance of one particular series which won the first three awards made in this category, and which I never really liked; and I was also concerned that this category’s finalists in general in general didn’t seem closely related to the comics that I read and like.

But I didn’t feel this gave me a mandate to try and nuke the awards; instead I just voted for stuff I liked, while whining online about the stuff I didn’t like, and eventually the situation changed. The superb Digger and the first volume of Saga won, and although I didn’t have the patience for last year’s winner, I like the writer’s other work, and can accept that this too was a rewarding experience for those prepared to watch it properly.

I found this year’s finalists pretty easy to rank, as follows (with links to my reviews, none of which are long):

1) Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal, written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt

I was really charmed by this.

2) Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick, written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky

As I wrote earlier, this is different and imaginative.

3) Saga Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples

I nominated this, and I still like it very much, but it’s not quite as mind-blowingly good as the first in the series.

4) Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery, written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch

Funny and a little subversive, but once you’ve grasped the premise a bit predictable.

5) No Award.

There is another finalist, but it is only there because a racist misogynist instrumentalised it as part of his plan to destroy the Hugos. So I am therefore not ranking it at all. I suspect that if I was ranking on literary merit, I probably wouldn’t give it an awfully high vote, not being a huge fan of zombie fiction or of this particular style of webcomic (it is similar to Schlock Mercenary, which a lot of people loved but I didn’t); but I’m not, so the question doesn’t arise.

A couple of people who nominated this and other slate works have already had the honesty to admit that they just nominated what they were told to, without having read any of it. I note that not a single person has reviewed this particular work on Amazon or registered their ownership of it on Goodreads or LibraryThing, although between 60 and 201 people nominated it. I find that conclusive evidence, if any more were needed, that its presence on the ballot is the result of a political stunt rather than any genuine literary consideration, and I am treating it accordingly.

No blame, of course, attaches to the writer/artist, whose own views on this sorry situation are not known to me and would make no difference to my vote if I did know them.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

Posted in Uncategorised

Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

Posted on by

The last of the Hugo nominees for Best Graphic Story, this is a rather cool account of Suzie and John, who have discovered separately that time freezes around each of them whenever they have an orgasm, and together realise that they can rob banks (only for the best of causes of course) while the rest of the world is still. The story is told from Suzie’s point of view, in flashback and breaching the fourth wall, with humour rather than coarseness. It turns out that even frozen time has its guardians, and we end on a bit of a cliff-hanger for the next volume; great fun though.

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 24-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Thursday Reading

Posted on by

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett

Last books finished
ζ5 – 50 pages
η5 – 50 pages
θ5 – 50 pages
ι5 – 50 pages
Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal, by G.Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
κ5 – 50 pages
Here's One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves
λ5 – 50 pages
μ5 – 50 pages
ν5 – 50 pages
υ5 – 50 pages
φ5 – 50 pages
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

Last week's audios
Welcome to Night Vale, eps 64-66
Death Match, by John Dorney

Next books
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones

Books acquired in last week
Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

Posted in Uncategorised

Here’s One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves

Posted on by

Growing up, I knew Peter Purves as one of the presenters of Blue Peter two afternoons a week. It wasn't until after he had left, I think, that I became aware before I was born he had been a regular on Doctor Who, as Steven Taylor, one of the companions to the First Doctor. I was delighted when he was practically the first person I met at Gallifrey One in 2013. I think he's also the earliest of the regular actors on Who to have written an autobiography. (The only other Hartnell-era personality to have done that is Anneke Wills.)

It's a good read. 30 pages of 250 are devoted to his one year on Doctor WhoBlue Peter. That's still less than half of the book, and he makes a good set of anecdotes out of the indignities of the life of an actor, and his subsequent shift to directing (I wished he'd said a bit more about that) and presenting various TV programmes about subjects such as dogs and darts. He also seems to have settled down into a long-lasting second marriage. (Not mentioned in the book, but his Gilly Fraser, his first wife, also appeared in Doctor Who as Ann Davidson, the possessed air stewardess in The Faceless Ones.) The most moving section is where he writes about Petra, the Blue Peter dog who he looked after for much of her long life; she was a rather difficult dog, but she taught him a lot.

The book also provided me with a moment of unexpected enlightenment about Dire Straits. I'm sure many of you are familiar with their song Tunnel of Love. I had personally always been mystified by the lines "Girl it looks so pretty to me / Like it always did / Like the Spanish City to me / When we were kids." It turns out (and here those of you familiar with northeast England will be giving me serious side-eye) that the Spanish City was a famous funfair, close to the railway stations of Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, just north of the mouth of the River Tyne, where the young Peter Purves was taken by his grandparents while visiting from Blackpool, and where the young Mark Knopfler acquired a taste for rock and roll a decade or so later.

One shouldn't expect a lot from celebrity memoirs, but this one is reasonably shot through with humanity and a certain degree of humility. Acting is a fragile career, and Doctor Who and Blue Peter, Purves' high points, both came pretty early. He's had a lot of time to reflect, sometimes through force of circumstances, and this book that doesn't promise much does deliver a bit more.

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 20-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo, by Brendan Simms

Posted on by

I bought this as a result of attending a presentation by the author in Brussels in January (you’ll hear me contributing to the discussion from about 58:48 onwards). It’s lucid, enjoyable and moving – an account purely of one action on the battlefield that day, the ultimately unsuccessful defence of La Haye Sainte by the King’s German Legion, a force of expat soldiers, originally exiles from Hanover, who held their position throughout the course of the day, absorbing massive amounts of fire from the French. Simms draws some wider lessons about European defence cooperation from the episode which I don’t think are really valid, but the rest of it is an entertaining and enlightening description of a small but crucial episode.

Alas, I’ve left it too late to sort out my bicentennial tickets. But where there’s a will, there’s a way…

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 19-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Ms. Marvel Vol 1: No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson et al

Posted on by

To a happier part of the 2015 Hugo discussion. I really enjoyed this graphic story about a teenage Pakistani-American girl in New Jersey who acquires super powers. It deftly combined a number of familiar tropes, from Buffy and urban fantasy on the one hand and the increasing literature about being a non-white kid in a new and largely white country on the other, and was also very entertaining. In this category at least, I may have a tough choice.

Posted in Uncategorised

On crowdsourcing Hugo nominations

Posted on by

Someone sensible has looked at how the available data compares with Brad Torgerson's claim to have drawn up his Hugo nominations slate with “the democratic selection system of the Hugo awards… No “quiet” logrolling. Make it transparent.”

It’s clear from the figures that of the five novels recommended by Brad Torgerson, only three were actually recommended by his readers. They were Trial by Fire by Charles E. Gannon (unsuccessful); Skin Game, by Jim Butcher (successful) and Monster Hunter Nemesis, by Larry Correia (declined nomination). The other two on the slate received no mention at all when Torgerson asked for nominations. They were The Dark Between the Stars, by Kevin J. Anderson (successful); and Lines of Departure, by Marko Kloos (withdrawn).

Less easily visible, but equally interesting: four other novels were mentioned by three people each on Torgerson’s discussion, and were unaccountably omitted from his slate when he proposed it. They were A Sword Into Darkness, by Thomas A. Mays; The Martian, by Andy Weir; Judge of Ages, by John C. Wright; and The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast, by Jack Campbell. Another 21 novels received a nomination each, which is one nomination more than Anderson’s or Kloos’s. I have read and enjoyed The Martian, which has far more owners on both LibraryThing and Goodreads than any other sf novel in the awards process so far this year, and it strikes me as exactly the kind of old-fashioned science fiction that some regret is not getting due recognition these days.

For Best Novella, “The Plural of Helen of Troy”, by John C. Wright, got three nominations and was on Torgerson’s slate. But the slate also included “Big Boys Don’t Cry”, by Tom Kratman, which had no nominations in Torgerson’s crowdsourced discussion; and it did not include “Island in a Sea of Stars” by Kevin J. Anderson, which got two nominations, nor “Sixth of the Dusk” by Brandon Sanderson, which got one.

For Best Novelette, four stories were each proposed once in Torgerson’s discussion. Torgerson’s slate, however, comprised four completely different nominees which had not been mentioned in that discussion, and none of those that were.

Similarly, for Best Short Story, two potential nominees got more than one mention in Togerson’s discussion. They were “Domo”, by Joshua M. Young, which got a massive five (more than anything else in any category except Interstellar), and “Queen of the Tyrant Lizards” by John C. Wright, which got two. Neither, however, appeared on Torgerson’s slate. Another 18 stories were each mentioned once in the “crowdsourcing” discussion. Two of those did make it to Torgerson’s slate, as did two stories that had not been mentioned in the discussion.

In other words, of the 16 written fiction nominees on Torgerson’s slate, 11 – more than two-thirds – had not actually been nominated by anyone in the crowd-sourced discussion from which, we are told, the slate emerged.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

Posted in Uncategorised

William Hartnell as Cliff Richard’s father

Posted on by

Thanks to the brilliant Twitter-sleuthing of Gareth Roberts, we have William Hartnell playing Cliff Richard's father in an episode of a 1969 series called Life With Johnny, so obscure that it is absent from IMDB (which generally seems to include everything down to drama students' five-minute final year projects). There were six episodes in total, each of which had Johnny (as played by Cliff) learning a valuable life lesson the hard way; three of them, including one of the two in which William Hartnell appeared, are lost, and three survive. The show was made by one of the minor ITV franchises, Tyne Tees, and was never picked up by the bigger ITV regions, which is one reason why it has remained quite so obscure. (Maybe not the only reason. The opening song includes the glorious lyrics: "Johnny cares about war! / Johnny cares about cancer! / Johnny wonders if there's any hope / wonders if there is an answer!")

The surviving episode with Hartnell is "Johnny Come Home", based on the parable of the Prodigal Son. Cliff and his band, the Settlers, squeeze six songs into the 21 minutes of the show. It also features Lynda Marchal, better known now as writer Lynda La Plante, as Johnny's girlfriend at home, and Una Stubbs as his girlfriend in London (desperately doing a regional accent, and with Cindy Kent dubbing her songs, but dancing very well). The Hartnell sections are a decent scene starting at 4:25 and a concluding line at 18:57, with no sign of the health difficulties that made it difficult for him to take on substantial roles after Who.

Considering the symbolism of the original parable, we may reflect that Hartnell's last surviving non-Who appearance has him playing God.

The other surviving episodes are "Up the Creek", an update of the Good Samaritan to include racism which also features a rather weird cover of the Beatles' "Help!" at 9:59; and "Johnny Faces Facts", a rather laboured extension of the mote and beam to a full episode which ends with a song and dance routine in front of a backlit cross, just in case you were wondering where all this was leading.

This not high art, but it's interesting to see what you could get away with in the late 1960s. Well done to Gareth Roberts for uncovering a Youtube video which had actually been online since 2011 – clearly there's not a huge overlap between Whovians and fans of Cliff's more obscure backlist.

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 17-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Thursday reading

Posted on by

One thing I’ve been doing this week is polishing off the Clarke Award backlist, reading the first 50 pages of books that I had not got around to earlier in the process. One of them was so enjoyable that I read it to the end, but it was clearly not science fiction. None of the others were shortlist material either. Just a few more to go…

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
Here’s One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves

Last books finished
μ4 – 50 pages 
ν4 – 50 pages 
ξ4 – 50 pages
ο4 – 50 pages
Timeless by Steve Cole
π4 – 50 pages
ρ4 – 50 pages
σ4 – 60 pages
τ4 – enjoyed this so much that I read it to the end
Ship of Fools, by Dave Stone
υ4 – 50 pages
φ4 – 50 pages 
χ4 – 50 pages
Lethbridge-Stewart: Top Secret Files, by Andy Frankham-Allen, Nick Walters, Graeme Harper and David A. McIntee
ψ4 – 50 pages
ω4 – 50 pages
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
α5 – 50 pages
β5 – 50 pages
γ5 – 50 pages
δ5 – 50 pages
ε5 – 50 pages

Last week’s audios
The Romance of Crime, by Gareth Roberts, adapted by John Dorney

Next books
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones

Books acquired in last week
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank
De dagboeken van Anne Frank; wetenschappelijke editie
The Ragged Astronauts, by Bob Shaw
Ms Marvel, vol 1: No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson et al

Posted in Uncategorised

On how and when the Guardian was informed about the 2014 Hugo shortlist

Posted on by

This is just to correct one of the many talking points floating around the Hugo nominations. There is a conspiracy theory that Loncon 3 informed the Guardian ahead of time that Larry Correia's Warbound had been nominated for the 2014 Hugo for Best Novel, and as part of the evil conspiracy between Worldcon and the liberal press, the Guardian then commissioned Damien Walter to write a hit piece about Correia, so as to poison the latter's reputation in advance of the Hugo ballot's publication.

I know for sure that the timing of Damien Walter's piece was definitely not because the Guardian knew the details of the Hugo ballot before 11 April. I know this because, in my capacity as Loncon 3's Director of Promotions, it was I who sent that information to the Guardian on 17 April, six days after Damien Walters' article was published, and two days before the ballot was announced on 19 April. I myself saw the shortlist for the first time only on 14 April, three days after the publication of Damien Walters' article (which I don't think I had read until just now).

It is normal practice in media relations to give trusted and reliable outlets advance information of an upcoming announcement (especially if they ask really nicely), on the understanding that it won't be revealed until the agreed time ("under embargo" in the jargon). In this case I admit that it only partially paid off, as fully half of the article discussed the Wheel of Time nomination. I would have preferred the other finalists, including Correia, to get more equal coverage in the piece, and also to have had some mention of the other categories apart from Best Novel, but of course I had no control over what the Guardian wrote, and I was really just glad to get a generally positive story about Loncon 3. In fairness to the journalist, she was probably right to link her story about the (comparatively less well-known) Hugos to the Jordan/Sanderson epic, which many more readers will have heard of.

I don't know why Damien Walter's article (which incidentally mentions Correia in only one of its seven paragraphs, rather lame for a "hit piece") was published on 11 April, fully two months after the debate about Alex Dally McFarlane's Tor.com article about gender in sf

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 15-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

More on the translation of Anne Frank

Posted on by

Having mused on (and been bemused by) by divergences in the text of the published Diary of Anne Frank a couple of months ago, I was pleased to find a copy of the 1989 scholarly edition with parallel texts from the three versions (Anne's original 'a' text, her revised 'b' text and the 'c' text that her father published). I'll consider it at my leisure, but I feel like sharing the introduction of the dentist (real name Pfeffer, code-named Dussel in the first published version) as it's rather entertaining.

The original 'a'  text, addressed to "Emmy" rather than "Kitty" (Anne was at this stage addressing her diary entries to a number of imaginary friends)  is a bit breathless and hasty.

10 Nov. 1942
Dinsdagavond
Best Emmy,
Vandaag zijn we eigenlijk weer overrompeld, want we hebben er nog eens over gesproken dat we hier eigenlijk nog best één persoon op kunnen nemen en het lot heeft op mijnh. Pfeffer gewesen, want die heeft niet zoveel familie. We hebben er al met Kugler over gesproken en die zal er nog eens een nachtje over slapen, maar het besluit is eigenijk al genomen. Wat zal die man opkijken, maar daar kan ik nog wel van berichten als hij in onze schuilplaats arriveerd is. We zullen vragen of hij nog iets mee kan brengen om holle kiezen te vullen, want hij is tandarts, en ik denk dat hij bij mij de op [sic, should be "op de" or just "op"] kamer slaapt.
Vaarwel
AnneFrank		 10 Nov. 1942
Tuesday evening
Dear Emmy,
Today's been crazily busy again, because we discussed how we could fit in one more person here and it was decided that it would be Mr Pfeffer, because he hasn't got many relatives. We discussed it with Kugler and he will sleep on it, but the decision has been made. He'll be surprised, but I'll tell you about it once he arrives in our hiding place. We'll ask if he can bring something to fill hollow teeth, because he is a dentist, and I think he'll sleep in my room. [original text seems to read "sleep the in my room"]
Bye
AnneFrank

There is then a later note by Anne in the 'a' text, dated 22 January 1944, saying how embarrassed she is by the immaturity of her own writing of a year and a half earlier.

The 'b' text, very substantially revised by Anne presumably around late January 1944, is as follows:

Dinsdag, 10 November
1942
Lieve Kitty,
Geweldig nieuws, we willen een 8 ste schuiler opnemen!
Ja heus, we zijn altijd van mening geweest dat hier nog best plaats en eten voor een 8 ste persoon is. We waren alleen maar te bang om Kugler en Kleiman nog meer te belasten. Toen nu de gruwelberichten van buiten aangaande de Joden steeds erger werden heeft vader eens de twee beslissende factoren gepolst en deze vonden het plan uitstekend. Het gevaar is voor 7 even groot als voor 8, zeiden zij zeer terecht. Toen dit in orde was zijn we in gedachten onze kennissenkring langsgegaan om een alleenstaand mens te vinden, die goed in onze schuilfamilie zou passen. Het was niet moeilijk zo iemand op te scharrelen. Nadat vader alle familie van V.P. van de hand gewezen had, viel onze keuze op een tandarts genaamd Fritz Pfeffer. Hij leeft samen met een veel jongere en leuke Christenvrouw, waar hij waarschijnlijk niet mee getrouwd is, maar dat is bijzaak. Hij staat bekend als rustig en beschaafd en zo naar de oppervlakkige kennismaking te oordelen leek hij zowel V.P. als ons sympathiek. Ook Miep is met hem bekend, zodat door haar het schuilplan geregeld kan worden. Als hij komt, moet Pf. in mijn kamer slapen in plaats van Margot, die het harmonicabed tot legerstede krijgt.
je Anne.		 Tuesday 10 November
1942
Dear Kitty,
Great news, we want to take in an 8 th person!
Yes really, we’ve always thought that there was quite enough room and food for an 8 th person. We were only afraid of giving Kugler and Kleiman more trouble. But now that the appalling stories we hear about Jews are getting even worse Father grabbed the two people who had to decide and they thought it was an excellent plan. It is just as dangerous for 7 as for 8, they said quite rightly. When this was settled we ran through our circle of friends trying to think of a single person who would fit in well with our concealed household. It wasn’t difficult to hit on someone. After Father had refused all members of the V.P. family, we choose a dentist called Fritz Pfeffer. He lives with a much younger, very nice Christian woman, who he probably isn't married to, but that doesn't matter. He is known to be quiet, and so far as we and Mr. Van Daan can judge from a superficial acquaintance, we think he is nice. Miep knows him too, so she will be able to make arrangements for him to join us. If he comes, he will have to sleep in my room instead of Margot, who will use the camp bed.
Yours, Anne

There's obviously a lot more added here, at a point when Anne was thinking of publishing the diary after the war, and wanted to include circumstantial detail. (The so-called "definitive text" changes one word – "factoren" becomes "personen", which is admittedly a better choice of word in context – but also adds the sentence about bringing something to fill teeth from the 'a' text, which Anne had dropped from the 'b' text.)

The 'c' text, which is what Otto Frank published in 1947, is almost the same as the 'b' text, except that the punctuation and paragraphing have been tidied up, "factoren" becomes "personen" and the standard diary pseudonyms are used – Kugler and Kleiman become Koophuis and Kraler, V.P. becomes Van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer becomes Albert Dussel. As I noted in my previous entry, however, there is also one very substantive change in describing Pfeffer/Dussel's family circumstances. Rather than "Hij leeft samen met een veel jongere en leuke Christenvrouw, waar hij waarschijnlijk niet mee getrouwd is, maar dat is bijzaak" ("He lives with a much younger, very nice Christian woman, who he probably isn't married to, but that doesn't matter"), we have "…wiens vrouw gelukkig in het buitenland verblijft" ("…whose wife fortunately is living abroad"). As I suspected, this is Otto Frank's change, presumably to avoid giving offence to Pfeffer's surviving lover (who married him retrospectively after his death was confirmed).

I don't plan to go though it systematically, but I will keep it on the shelf to look at now and again. It's always interesting to see how a text emerges.

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 14-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Two books about Belgium

Posted on by

The Charm of Belgium, by Brian Lunn

Many many thanks for for getting this for me, many years ago, and apologies for not getting around to reading it sooner. It’s a guidebook to Belgium from 1934, and the copy I have was given to his mother by the author, and then reclaimed by him at a later stage. (His father founded the Lunn Poly travel firm.)

It’s interesting just how much of the book is devoted to simply describing the great art on display in each of the large towns – Bruges and Ghent of course get the most coverage by far, but there are decent chapters also on Antwerp, Brussels and “Louvain”. It’s striking also that the linguistic issue simply isn’t mentioned – the street names in Flemish cities are all given in French, so instead of Leuven’s main artery being the Bondgenotenlaan we have the Avenue des Alliés of Louvain. At the same time, Lunn does manage to situate the Belgian national character – suspicious of authority, quietly individualistic – in the historical experience of medieval civic and guild autonomy, and it all makes sense.

The author‘s father founded the travel firm Lunn Poly.

Een geschiedenis van België voor nieuwsgierige kinderen (en hun ouders) by Benno Barnard and Geert Van Istendael

A history of Belgium for curious children and their parents; zooms bracingly through two millennia or so, starting with Julius Caesar. though with some odd editorialising – clerical celibacy? It didn’t really linger with me, I’m afraid.

Both books have quite a lot to say about the Battle of the Golden Spurs of 1302, which few outside Belgium will have heard of. Barnard and Van Istendael explain its relevance to the Flemish movement; Lunn situates it as a Belgian rather than Flemish event. Times change, and history sometimes changes with them.

Posted in Uncategorised

On why George R.R. Martin is wrong: No Awarding the slate

Posted on by

When I saw the domination of this year's Hugo finalists by a slate of works nominated by a misogynist racist and his colluders, my immediate reaction was that I should vote "No Award" ahead of every one of their nominations, no questions asked or quarter given. (I was not alone.)

There has been some debate about this in the last week. Notably, George R.R. Martin, John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal all advocate assessing the Hugo finalists on merit, ie giving the slate nominations an equal chance. On the other hand, Phil Sandifer and Adam Roberts advocate voting No Award in every category, on the grounds that all of this year's Hugos are irretrievably tainted. I certainly don't agree with the latter position; there are no slate nominees in the Best Fan Artist category, and I can certainly choose between the five finalists there with a clear conscience

I was beginning to lean a bit towards making some allowance for those who were unwittingly included on the slate, but do not share its creator's racist and misogynist agenda, such as Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Annie Bellet and Edmund Schubert. Why should they be penalised because of my feelings about the decisions made by others?

But I'm back at my original position. The fact is that most of the slate nominees are on the ballot, not because people enjoyed and appreciated their work and decided to reward them with a Hugo nomination, but because the slate told its supporters to vote that way and they did so, sight unseen. All of the slate nominations are therefore unacceptable, a point made well by Matt Foster, whose wife Eugie, might well have had a chance at a nomination if the slate had not intervened. She will never have another chance to win a Hugo, because she died last September. She, and many other potential finalists, have lost out through the actions of the slate supporters, and by considering the slate nominees at all we compound the damage to them and to us. (Matt's posts in general are a thoughtful and sad response to the situation.)

I agree that some slate nominees are less undeserving than others. Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine does great work, and it's a shame that they have been previously overlooked. I hope that will be put right in future years. But the fact is that at least 94 people nominated ASIM this year, whereas in 2013 and 2014 it did not even get into double figures. Along with one of its former editors, whose post on Facebook crystallised these thoughts for me, I simply do not believe that another 84-plus voters suddenly started browsing the ASIM website in the last twelve months, and then reached the point of enthusiasm where they nominated it in good faith alongside John C. Wright's fiction and Vox Day's editorial skills. In fact, I bet that 90% of those who nominated it have never even looked at it, but simply accepted the instructions of the slate.

The list of Hugo finalists has been rigged, and rigged to fit the agenda of a misogynist racist who clearly states that he wants to destroy the Hugos and whose slate designed for that purpose got 61 of its 67 candidates onto the list. (Three of those 61 declined nomination, and one of them has explained why at length.) These nominations were made out of spite, not out of love for the genre, let alone for the Hugos. I feel sorry for those unwittingly caught in the scheme, but there is only one way for me to cast my vote, and that is to rank "No Award" above all the slate candidates. Deirdre Saorse Moen has helpfully listed the remaining finalists.

Two more thoughts. First, I see (second-hand) reports of abusive messages and threats being sent directly to the slate organisers. This is wrong, stupid, dangerous, and a waste of energy. The way to win this is to engage the uncommitted and confused middle ground, not to yell at those who already disagree with you and are entrenched in their positions, let alone to threaten them. It's a very lazy option, sending someone a rude message and then relaxing in the righteous and erroneous glow of having achieved something thereby. Two wrongs don't make a right. Having said that, I note the complaints by the henchmen of the chief slate organiser that they are being unfairly described as racists, when one is married to an African-American and the other is Hispanic. Well, there are words for people in either of those situations who collude with racists on political projects; and one of the politest of those words is "fool". If you choose to ally with a notorious bigot, I am not obliged to research your family circumstances before passing comment.

Second, while I'm unexcited about most of the changes to procedure that have been recommended (though Mike Scott has a good thought), because they will take a couple of years to implement, there is other action that can be taken immediately. Mary Robinette Kowal proposes to donate supporting (ie Hugo-voting) memberships of Sasquan to anyone who asks, unconditionally. As noted above, I think Kowal is wrong on how we individual voters should approach the ballot, but she is dead right that the best future path is a more open and inclusive voting process, and kudos to her for proposing a practical way of making that happen.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

Posted in Uncategorised

Links I found interesting for 12-04-2015

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Famous books by geography – what I have learned

Posted on by

Why did I do this?

Back in January, Mental Floss listed the "most famous book set in each US state" (and DC, but not Puerto Rico etc). My patriotic European soul was stirred; there are only slightly more European countries than US states, and it must surely be possible, I thought, to find a moderately well-known book set in each.

I also wanted to test the methodology of comparing statistics from Goodreads and LibraryThing, which I have used in other contexts as well, and see what sort of results it delivered for this exercise. To be honest, I couldn't see any other way of actually measuring which the best known books associated with each country might be. Amazon's statistics are notoriously unreliable; there is no central tally of books sold worldwide. At least GR/LT would provide a starting point.

What did I learn?

First, the task was much more difficult for Europe than the United States because of the variations of size of each location that I considered. The largest US state (California) has about fifty times the population of the smallest (Wyoming). Russia has 160,000 times as many inhabitants as the Vatican, and thousands of times more than the other microstates. Not surprisingly, a lot more books have been set in Russia.

Second, the related point that LibraryThing and Goodreads do indeed have a pretty strong Anglosphere bias, which makes it much more difficult to find books set in certain European countries than in any of the United States. I am certain that some of the smaller linguistic markets have pretty vigorous literary traditions that keep themselves to themselves. Online catalogues can be surprisingly deep in places, but not always as wide of reach as one would like. From the literature available in English which is set there, one could easily conclude that only one thing ever happened in Poland.

Third, there is a clear chronological bias to my methodology. Books which were best-sellers in the ages before the internet achieved its present size have often slipped off the radar screens of Goodreads and LibraryThing users. I had a number of grieved comments about this over the course of the project (thanks particularly to Vlatko), and they have a point. Nobel prize winners of past decades are overtaken by more recent airport thrillers. It has been illuminating and a bit depressing to watch this.

Fourth, books which people think of as being associated closely with a particular country are not necessarily set there, and well-known books set in a particular country may not be generally thought of in that way. The Harry Potter novels are strongly associated with England, although most of most of them is set in Hogwarts, which is explicitly in Scotland. The best-known French novels are set in outer space (Le Petit Prince) and Algeria (L'Étranger). Most novels about Armenia address events that took place outside the boundaries of the current state. The Iliad is set in a named place which is today in Turkey. Perhaps I could have considered looking at the best-known book originally written in each European language instead.

What sorts of book were on the list?

The full list is here. It includes:

Cross-cutting categories:

  • Nine books about the second world war – one non-fiction memoir by a writer who died at Belsen (Netherlands), two Holocaust novels (Ukraine, Poland), another five fictional treatments of other theatres of the conflict (Germany, Slovakia, Estonia, Jersey and Guernsey) and two competing memoirs of the resistance in Belarus.
  • Sixteen books of sixty-four are by women: Wales, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Serbia, Finland, Georgia, Bosnia, Albania, Estonia, Guernsey, Andorra, Åland Islands, Svalbard, San Marino. Also Macedonia credits a woman as co-writer. As far as I know, only the writer of the book set in Austria has a non-European family background. Given the parameters of the project, which was more about mapping the existing patterns of reading behaviour than challenging them, it's not very surprising.

Conclusion

It's a little depressing that potboiler thrillers and airport novels are so visible, particular toward the lower end of the list, but I guess that reflects the parameters I set myself. A poorly researched but glamorous Ruritanian setting can often be an attractive prospect to a writer selling in a market where very few people have heard of Ruritania, let alone been there. This is, of course, a tradition that goes back at least as far as Marlowe and Shakespeare; which doesn't make it right.

But where I've been able to identify local writing, it's been very intriguing and made me want to get hold of those books. Carlos Ruiz Zafón was on my to-read list anyway; but I am adding the likes of Sandor Márai, Tea Olbreht, Sofie Oksanen, Arnaldur Indridason, and Ulla-Lena Lundberg, plus various others who have come up in the course of my research. It's been well worth doing this, and thanks to those of you who contributed to the discussion.

Posted in Uncategorised