Second paragraph of third chapter:
Margery and her husband, Guilhabert, had only one child. She was a child of love and as such bore all the signs of a blessed conception. Her eyes were bright and aware, her small hands curious and slim-fingered, her complexion pinkly perfect. Every inch of her tiny body was perfect. Margery would sit in the garden with her; beside the flowering herbs and the small apple tree they had planted on the day of her birth, and sing the few small songs she knew. Guilhabert doted on her, as fathers often do with their daughters. He would pick flowers for his two beloveds, and for me, each day. He would wander into Gauzia’s room before daybreak and place the small posy by her sleeping face, touching her flushed cheeks with just the tip of his finger.
This won the Tiptree Award in 2014. It’s a complex and richly written story set in several different centuries, involving a woman who is part-human, part-machine and the entanglements that she gets into. I’m afraid it’s a rare “Meh” from me in this sequence of reading. I don’t like cute anthropomorphic androids anyway, and I didn’t quite have the energy to get into the layers of writing. You can get it here.
The Tiptree Honor List included eight novels, a short story by Aliette de Bodard and a music album by Janelle Monáe. I have read two of the novels, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and Hild by Nicola Griffith, and liked them both more. (Personally I don’t think Hild is sf; but it was also a finalist for the Nebula.)
That was the year that Ancillary Justice won almost everything – Hugo, Nebula, Clarke and tied for the BSFA Award with Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth Powell. The Adacent by Christopher Priest and God’s War by Kameron Hurley were both on both the BSFA and Clarke lists.Also the year of Gravity.
The following year, the Tiptree Award went jointly to The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne and My Real Children by Jo Walton; the BSFA Award to Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie; and the Clarke Award to Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. That was my first year as a Clarke judge, and I read them all (they were all submitted) but did not write any of them up at the time. So I will return to them now.
