Ancillary Justice will win the Hugo. Here's why.

1.) It's own inherent merits.

It's a thought provoking piece of fiction that will be read decades from now. Goes without saying.

2.) It has award momentum and buzz.

Ancillary Justice recently co-won the British Science Fiction Award and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick award; it is also nominated for the Nebula award. By my (horribly flawed---I encourage you to double check the math) calculations, about thirty five to forty percent of Nebula winners also win the Hugo. That doesn't mean that winning the Hugo would be a lock: however, there is going to be some overlap with voters, and winning the Nebula might push undecided into voting for Ancillary Justice. If it does, I think its odds of success will increase.

Similarly, there hasn't been a lot of talk about Neptune's Brood and Pandemic. Both Stross and Grant/McGuierre have had novels nominated and are clear favourites for the category, and I believe one day they both will win. However, all the talk on all the blogs and podcasts I frequent have been about Ancillary Justice. It's not a slight to them; it was going to happen no matter what.

3.) Wheel of Time is less of a challenger than you think.

A.) It's quality is inconsistent

I've been told that the series gets rocky around books four or five. For readers that gave up around this time, that might be enough to make them withhold their votes. For readers learning about the series by word of mouth, that might give them pause.

B.) The length of the work is too intimidating

Tor went through the unprecedented measure of releasing the series in its entirety as part of the Hugo voters packet. That's, what, twelve novels the length of phonebooks. You have four months. Get cracking. It's a lot easier to open up a four hundred page-ish novel that a thousand page plus doorstopper, and everyone who hasn't read Wheel of Time is going to start on the comparatively shorter novels.

C.) The unprecedented nature of nominating an entire series might offend too many

Now, if this was a case of nominating the last book in the series as a tribute to the series, I don't think that would receive a lot of flack. However, there is (from my empirical, hardly scientific perusing of the blogs) a great deal of backlash to the idea of nominating the entire series. Yes, there is a quirk of the rules that makes this possible. I do not care about that nuance, and a great deal of people do not care either, and that might greatly limit its chances on the ballot.

Nominating Wheel of Time was one thing, because not that many people were required to get it on the ballot. A lot more are going to be needed to make it win, and I think that the people who nominated it are underestimating its level of support.

D.) Epic fantasy is a hard sell at the Hugos

George R.R. Martin, who might not be as influential, but certainly is more prominent, has had several Song of Ice and Fire books nominated, and every one has failed to win the Hugo. I'm confident that Martin will receive some form of commendation in the future, but whether that's the best novel Hugo or a special award is up in the air. Yes, Lois McMaster Bujold won for Paladin of Souls ten years ago, but she's a powerhouse who won several Hugos prior to this; she has a large built in fan base. It's questionable whether Robert Jordan has this level of support for the award---Sanderson maybe, seeing as how he won best novella last year, but count how many epic fantasy novels have been nominated and not won. Urban-style fantasy (American Gods, Graveyard Book, Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) that is not in the Tolkien mold has been far more successful.

Look, I get where the fans of Wheel of Time are coming from. It's a beautiful gesture, and given the ugliness of some of the nominees, a little beauty is a good thing. But nominating an entire series just opens up a can of worms.

4.) "Spite the Trolls" sentiment

The big issue besides Wheel of Time this year was the hijacking of the ballot by right wing morons Larry Correia and Vox Day, both of whom are no challengers to the award. The only question is whether they will be above or below No Award, either on spite or due to the questionably quality of their works. I think that there will be an unspoken campaign prior to the awards to double down on the arguably best work on the ballot, particularly because its by a woman. A "Reclaim the Hugos" mentality will no doubt be a factor this year, growing louder as the award grows closer.

Practical Recommendations:

1. Prohibit any person permanently barred from or expelled from SFWA from nomination, and void nominations with their name on it.
2. Create a Special Achievement Hugo for categories such as the completion of a series
3. Define serialization as works forty thousand words or less

Did Redshirts deserve the Hugo Award?

As I figured, Redshirts by John Scalzi has won the Hugo award. Since the award is open to anyone who bought the required ballot, and has had a good marketing campaign over social media, ie a song by Johnathan Coulton.

I do not think that, as an award winner, it is going to age particularly well. Do not mistake me: I do not think that it is a bad thing. Far from it. It is fun, intelligent, but not particularly deep the same way as, say, Dune or Ender's Game or even last year's winner Among Others, are. I feel like it is a product of it's time, and that while future generations may enjoy it for fun, I can't help but feel that it is not going to last.

I can't think of a novel that deserved to win: 2312 already won the Nebula, and I do not like Kim Stanley Robinson; Blackout was good, but not Hugo worthy. Reading Saladin Ahmed's book is probably a good idea---I feel like there's a trend lately to have a fantasy novel to round out the ballot.

Scalzi was destined for a Hugo Award are some point. I think that he can create a great work of science fiction, and I'm glad a writer of the new guard won the Hugo. I just wish it had been for something more substantial.

The Annex, RIP?

I wrote awhile back about the possibility of a Scott Pilgrim movie reboot. For all those reasons---a new perspective gained by age, millennial nostalgia, an opportunity to make a more balanced feature---a new one is, sadly, approaching: possible Torontonian nostalgia for the loss of the Annex neighbourhood.

Honest Ed's, the well known department store, is closing. In and of itself the loss of Honest Ed's means nothing: it is best known for it's garish lighting display which is succumbing to age, and really was little more than a proto-Wal Mart. It's loss will be missed, similar to that of the late, lamented Sam The Record Man in Yonge and Dundas. A part of the city's history will be gone forever, which is sad. Losing Honest Ed's will not change or affect the city or neighbourhood once it's gone.

It's what will happen after that what scares me.

See, Toronto is "enjoying" a massive condo boom. Every square millimeter of land is now fair game for hideous glass boxes to rise from the ground. I'm not opposed to condos on principle, since they do add density to a neighbourhood, and therefore demand for it's shops and services. However, there are some complications to Honest Ed's, namely the businesses that exist as an ancillary extension of the building. Their fate has not been discussed, and that fills me with dread.

By that I mean Sonic Boom, located within the building, chased out of it's old location by a friggin' Dollarama. In addition, there is a cluster of buildings next to Honest Ed's that is owned by the same people known as Mirvish village, where several buisnesses, from one of my favourite pubs Victory Cafe to Toronto comics landmark The Beguiling, are located. Their fate is now up in the air.

If the decision is made to gut the building, then Sonic Boom is homeless. While it's vinyl department has relocated to the very funky Kensington Market neighbourhood (another neighbourhood under siege---more on that later), what will happen to the larger store, where it will go (especially in a downtown core increasingly occupied by high end or big box retailers) would be an open question. If Mirvish Village is gutted (something that can happen either whole scale or piecemeal), the consequences will be dire.

If The Beguiling goes as collateral damage of all this, the impact on Toronto's comics community will be devastating. Granted, the city is littered with enough Android's Dungeon style comics shops, but The Beguiling is less a store than it is an anchor. Without it, the Toronto Comics Arts Festival is affected, not fatally, but definitely in scale. To be fair, if it does come down to that there will be resistance and rallies and petitions...but I live in a part of town where out local book shop was closed down by it's landlord to make way for a more lucrative nail salon. I do not have faith in the honesty of landlords.

As I mentioned, Kensington Market is under the gun as well: a recent condo/retail development has introduced the possibility (albeit a vigourously resisted one) of a Wal Mart in the area, threatening the smaller scale retailers that make up the market. If that happens, Kensington Market may go the way of Yorkville, which serves as a worst case scenario for what might happen: namely, a part of town that went from hippie stomping grounds to chic bourgeois shopping. Not a fatal blow for a neighbourhood, but I've enjoyed more fun evenings in the Annex or Kensington Market than Yorkille.

Condos aren't the root cause of this problem. Big Box chain retailers moving in and gutting neighbourhoods is the problem (best case scenario is that Loblaws or Target will move right in and establish a superstore). While we will likely gain in corporate conformity we will loose in so much else. Toronto will loose the messy, the tacky, and the grungy; that is, it will lose variety, opportunity, and discovery that dosen't just make a community, but also a city.  

Doing what we say

I don't read GetReligion blog frequently, as I am put off with the religious editorializing, though I suppose that comes with the territory, since the site editors are writing about how the media fails to cover religious news in a substantial way. I do take offence, though, when the analysis of the articles in questions turns into conservative Christian harrumphing at their isolation from the body politic, particularly when those opinions are reason enough as to why they are not being taken seriously.

See, recently Wendy "Khaleesi" Davis made a twelve hour filibuster against a Texas ordinance that would have closed essentially every Texas abortion clinic. Now, the editors mention that this bill is primarily intended to improve the safety and cleanliness of these clinics, especially given the horrific Gosnell story that the media has been covering with mixed success. I don't think that's unfair, however the people behind the bill (i.e., Rick Perry) are as concerned with that as much as they are with obliterating a woman's right to an abortion in a very obtuse manner, which is where the problem lies.

Look, I get where the pro-Life people are coming from. Really, I do. It would be a great thing if the abortion rate was at zero; you get no argument from me. However, believing that you can legislate the problem away is incorrect. Just look at Romania when they tried to do just that---or, rather, what happens to women when they are denied an abortion with the very plain consequences. Forcing a woman to unwillingly carry a child that she cannot care for

So, yes, pro-abortion advocates can be reasonably called women's rights activists, as they are fighting against women falling into a demonstrable decline in the quality of their lives. This is something that I really find difficult: bellyaching about how abortionist supporters "don't care about about unborn women" when pro-choice activists are fighting hard to keep women from enduring a situation that will not end well either for the mother or for the child.

I take very, very great offence at conservative Christian's complete unwillingness to do anything constructive to do anything to reduce abortion rates. And I do not mean taking an iron fist approach to obstruct a woman from receiving one. I mean, to ensure that abortion is not an option, to provide some choice. I mean acknowledging that economic reasons are often the most important ones when a woman considers an abortion. Women who can afford to take care of an infant will be least likely to consider an abortion.

We are living in very trying economical times. If a woman cannot afford the considerable financial costs of caring for a child, she is going to terminate her pregnancy, especially if the difficulties of reentering the working world are too great. Countries that actually provide significant maternal care for mothers have low abortion rates. Why aren't pro-lifers working on that?

Also, women who are informed about reproductive health and have access to birth control are going to be less likely to pursue abortions, and avoid the situations where a termination of a pregnancy becomes an issue.  I don't mean hyping abstinence to the nth degree, as there is no evidence that doing so will work. None. Teaching young adults about birth control and how their bodies work reaps far more benefits than hammering into kids "just don't do it."

But we can't do that, can we? It's both theologically and politically impossible. Beyond the pale. Granted, the Bible is a little sketchy on the abortion issue itself. A firm approach to abortion guarantees that abortions will continue; and laws only slightly removed from The Handmaid's Tale will make the problem immeasurably worse. Tacitly or overtly, Christian conservatives favour policies that will scare people off from enacting them, and cause more problems than they solve if enacted. For that, they have my contempt.

Get Rid Of Slimy attiudeS

There is a belief that boys are not reading YA as much because too many writers, protagonists and award juries are females. I think this misses the forest for the trees; that is, the very attitude that says boys do not read YA because it is so female dominant is the problem.

First of all, I think that it is a pretty poor excuse if you assume that boys are not reading because women are writing and conferring awards. It is very patronizing indeed to think that only an author or a protagonist of your gender is the exclusive reason you are reading, or that you get anything emotionally or intellectually out of the books that you have read. As Liz Williams explains, for all the sexism that is rife in the publishing world, books stand or fall on their own merits. The idea that it must have a specific appeal to one gender or another is just dumb.

Secondly, this is a very self-reinforcing attitude. If you think that women are dominating YA (which is a contestable assumption), then first of all you're conceding the field, and second of all you're guaranteeing that only female-centered stories become synonymous with YA. Actually, come to think about it, why do we think that it's all women's fault, when women are no less capable of men of writing compelling stories and characters? Example: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which has a very compelling female protagonist, or The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater who has a very compelling male protagonist.

In my anecdotal/apocryphal/limited experience, YA seems to be 40/60 male/female. For decades, girls have had to make do with a predominantly male writer base and predominantly male protagonists. I can't for the life of me understand why male readers would be put off by a large percentage (I am not confident enough to say that the YA field is a majority female thing---see the Liz Williams article above) of women writers if they are willing to enjoy female characters in other media (ie, video games, as in Lara Croft).

Witnessing my disbelief

I do not believe in God. I do not believe in any supernatural powers. Sometimes, I wish I did. A long time ago I looked inside myself and discovered that I do not have a God-shaped hole begging to be filled. That is just part of my personality; I consider it to be unchangeable.

Which is why I have a very mild annoyance at some of the conclusions raised in this article. To be sure, I am long out of the academy, and am wistfully remembering those days, mostly for all the things I should have done and done better. I've softened and mellowed my views since those days, but I have not dramatically changed them.

You know what was the most damaging thing ever done to my faith? Animaniacs. For reals.

See, one episode was set in part in h-e-double hockey sticks. I remember as a nine year old walking home from school, my mind abuzz. How can we be so certain that the Judeo-Christian religion is definitively the only one, the best one? After all, the Greeks and Romans thought theirs was the only certain religion, and now we know it to be false. Why are we so sure that we have it right and they have it wrong? Boom. Instant damage.

I always was interested in science. That itself damaged my religious beliefs: we have evidence for evolution, the universe, all those things. God? Ambiguous at best. No rocks I have ever turned over in my life have had "Made by God" stamped on them. Maybe I'm asking too much from God. I'm not asking for the blinding light of revelation, just a tiny bit more than what the religious folk are offering, okay?

I do recall going to Sunday school when I was very, very little. Whoever taught me said it was okay if I said "This is bad" to the creation of the universe. Guess I was always destined to be an iconoclast! I was never exposed to religious traditions to the same depth as some of my childhood peers, and (to my disgruntlement) Christians would bemoan the fact that if I only went to church weekly I'd have impregnable faith in God. I find that to be very condescending. I always had episodes of disbelief in my childhood---I had episodes of faith, to be sure, even devotion, but they were never strong enough to stick.

To agree with the article, ages 14-17 were decisive for me, though not in the way they would think. That was when my weak faith was slowly stripped away from me in degrees. Okay, I've conceded to a very milquetoast deist philosophy, I thought. Thing is, I was stripping the usefulness of God away in parts. God was reduced to simply flicking the on switch and going away to let humans figure things out. In other words, God was horribly redundant. By the time I was seventeen or eighteen I had abandoned the concept of God, not out of spite, but simple pragmatism. I didn't stop being a believer; I was just honest in my disbelief. There was no purpose for God, and therefore no need for me to believe in Him/Her/It.

This is the whole point to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you were ever confused why: it's a deliberately nonsensical concept to highlight how, when examined closely, they break down under the weight of their own implausibility. Yes, if I had a stronger sense of faith I suppose I could counter that somehow, but once you start looking into the mythologies and folklore of the world, you begin to have a harder time accepting the existence of such entities.

I probably identify as a 'skeptic' as opposed to atheist. Not that I am totally immune to the concept of God, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't think this fact is sinking in with believers, who assume if I'm in a meadow overflowing with daisies after a good rainstorm and a rainbow has come out I'll fall to my knees in wonder and dedicate my soul to Christ, or whatever. Rapturous wonder is wonderful, but it is not evidence in and of itself. If I do nothing else, I want to make it clear: a lot of people do not believe in God because they see no reason to believe in God, no hard or tangible reason as opposed to an inadequate supply of faith. I seriously resent the idea that all I need is a good session at a church to turn my into a believer. Really, I do.

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. I have difficulty believing in a soul when there is unmistakable evidence that our minds are linked physically to our brains. I could be wrong. Thing is, it is up to the believer to prove their point beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm not saying that to be difficult. Back up what you are saying with little more than weak arguments and Bible verses---I'm not going to accept anything less, as I would not accept anything less over any other thing I believe in. Sorry if I come across as a militant atheist, but I have trouble accepting the existence of things beyond this world, and I'm sorry if having such doctrines pounded into my skull does not count as evidence.

(At this point the believers smugly whisper "String Theory" and "Hard Problem of Consciousness" to put the screws to any feelings of superiority of my materialist beliefs).

Okay, okay, I never said that strict empiricism is infallible. It is, however, considerably more useful that faith, since faith is pretty much, "Just believe down in your heart!" I'm sorry, but that just isn't good enough.

Empiricism and materialism have their own problems. That does not mean we approach them by piling on hypothetical, supernatural nonsense, usually because when we do find more information that changes our understanding of how things work we have to bend over backwards to accommodate our preconceptions, rather than the other way around.

This world is the only world we definitely know exist; this life is the only one we definitely know we have. We need to concentrate on that and not appeasing Gods that we may loose faith in after a couple of centuries. We need to place humanity and it's welfare as a doctrine above all other doctrines and dogmas. This may ruffle some Christian's feathers. Sorry if that upsets you, but I'm not apologetic for saying that. I'm more interested in the survival of humanity than the survival of Christianity. That's just how I roll.

Ready for the Last War: Starship Troopers and Modern YA Literature

Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers is one of the most popular and influential science fiction novels written. It serves as a bridge between his juvenile novels and his adult work. At the time, the audience he wrote for would have been too young to have experienced the Second World War or Korea and too early to have experienced Vietnam.

Currently, the speculative fiction genre is experiencing a renaissance in young adult literature that has not been seen since Heinlein's time. Contemporary readers of young adult have been born into the post-9/11 world, with the recently "concluded" conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pain of the great recession. The Second World War occurred seventy years ago, and is best known through the legions of first person shooters or movies it has inspired.

Contemporary writers are, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, playing in Heinlein's sandbox: writers such as John Scalzi write works inspired by Starship Troopers. It is a novel that celebrates the dedication and commitment towards service of one's country---in the form of cranky lectures in protagonist Johnny Rico's History and Moral Philosophy classes about how society would function better if there was the same dedication shown to participating in democracy that was displayed in military service (revealing the kernel of authoritarianism at the heart of libertarianism).

Contemporary readers are living in a turbulent world, where violence is common, particularly in the form of extra-state terrorism. Conflict shapes the world they live in. Is Robert A. Heinlein still relevant to contemporary readers of YA? Will younger readers have the same reverence for it that their predecessors once had? I am not entirely optimistic, myself, that Starship Troopers is going to age well.

The relationship between war and contemporary YA SF readers has changed. In Heinlein's time, even the most horrible atrocities of war may not have been hidden away, but they were not as explicit either. Photographs, perhaps movies, could be seen after a respectable period of time. Crucially, the government could and did intercept anything that could be construed as damaging to the public's morale. Today, any atrocity can (and frequently is) immediately uploaded to YouTube within seconds.

The relationship between war and media has changed. For example, much of Mockingjay concerns both the Capital of Panem and Katniss Everdeen's efforts to try and out-soapbox each other. As a result, contemporary readers are no longer passive, but can easily recognize propaganda and manipulation when they see it. Information control is a lot more difficult than it used to be. Also, it is recognized now that whoever frames the perception of the conflict best is destined to win. This is not a new revelation, but in a time when information passes freely, it becomes crucial.

The relationship between civilians and the military is also dissimilar: Starship Troopers was written in a time when armies might clash at a respectable distance from civilian population centers. Not that war was always conducted in this way, or that American forces never participated in fighting in urban environments, but increasingly the amount of fighting is, by necessity, going to occur in urban environments. The relationship between civilian and combatant is now gauze thin.

This is not to say that we have grown any more pacifistic. Far from it: look at the Hunger Games, Chaos Walking and Leviathan or Uglies series, all of which have war or at least violent conflict as a central aspect of their plots. However, compared to Heinlein's veneration of the central role conflict plays in the human experience, modern young adult science fiction has a more realistic and nuanced view of warfare than Heinlein. Isaac Asimov has a famous quote where he says that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Both Heinlein and modern readers agree: warfare's necessity forms a major part of Monsters of Men, the third book of the Chaos Walking series. Warfare involves violence, but it is a focused and deliberate kind of violence as opposed to mass murder or terrorism that often passes for it.

Still, modern readers realize that warfare has very serious consequences. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is involved in the aftermath of the Hunger Games in Catching Fire; and the rebellion against the capital involves false flag operations against civilians, among other things. Compare this with Heinlein's "Bugs" who are literally natural communists, incapable of distinguishing between civilian and soldier. There is nothing in warfare so horrible that you will not do it: you will make alliances with disreputable people who will make trying to live in peace after the war as difficult as possible; you will do things that you think only bad guys do, and you will do them willingly.

Ironically for an author that tried to tell it straight and as it is, Heinlein increasingly is coming across as a man with his head in the clouds. His perspective of warfare is not only dated, it is unrealistic. Because of the influence and prominence of Starship Troopers  it will continue to shape military science fiction; however, readers of modern YA SF, while they may appreciate the novel for it's advocacy of commitment to one's country, are going to be better served by SF that acknowledges that war, while it may be justified, is often anything but glorious.