The Hugo Awards 2012

So the Hugo Awards nominees have been out for a few months and the Nebula Awards have recently been held. I haven't read Among Others or Dance With Dragons, so consider my thoughts preliminary.

Embassytown by China Mieville

This was the sort of book only China Mieville could have written because only someone so spoiled on critical and popular acclamation could have written something so lifeless and aloof and get away with it. Its like Mieville said, "Hey! I'm going to hold a party and I'm a gonna invite Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker and we're going to have a great big hoe down about language! We're hold it at the coolest club on the planet! Be there or be square!"

So everyone gathered around the club and Mieville and Pinker and Chomsky arrived with bitches on their arms, and then went inside and the bouncer with a glare slammed the velvet rope down, and we're all on the outside nodding and saying, "Yep. Sounds like a heck of a party."

This book does not possess any characters or a particularly strong narrative. I'm less than impressed with the inability of the science fiction critical community from calling him out on it.

Deadline by Mira Grant

This book did not need to be nominated.

Really, there's nothing wrong with the book per se. I believe it was nominated on the strength of its predecessor Feed which was good though not exactly without its flaws: if you couldn't figure out where the book was going a quarter of the way in there's no hope for you. There were no real dealbreakers in either Feed or Deadline though nothing to elevate them to Olympian heights either.

Functionally, Deadline is not a terrible novel but it is not Hugo Award caliber.

Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)

Hell. Frickin'. Yeah.

This my lovelies is exactly what I want to see in a science fiction novel. True hard SF space opera. Action, adventure, and thoughtful. Can't get any better than that.

I am not a big Daniel Abraham fan; I think he can create interesting worlds to play around in but he can't quite get a story going. I was frustrated to the point of madness with the first volume of the Dragon and the Coin series that came bundled with my eBook copy. I think the collaboration with Franck works because Franck pushes Abraham to develop characters

Summation

Going into the Hugo Awards I believe it will be a fight between Leviathan Wakes and Dance With Dragons. I think George R.R. Martin is going to recieve a Hugo for the Song of Ice and Fire series at some point, and with the success of the HBO series. However, Among Others' Nebula win does complicate my estimations somewhat: about forty percent of Nebula Winners win Hugos, so its chances have been elevated.

There were some omissions I think do not reflect well on the science fiction community: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline did not make the ballot and I find that next to incomprehensible; similarly, Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (on my to read list) also did not make it despite good reviews.

I don't hate this ballot. But I do think the science fiction community needs a stronger sense of prioirites.