The 2011 Clarke Award shortlist

Running through the shortlist in ascending order of preference:

6. Declare by Tim Powers. This one doesn't seem to have a large amount of defenders, and seems to have earned the general 'does not belong' standard that usually puts one nominee as significantly lower in ambition and quality than the others (Retribution Falls for last year). I don't hate the book, and my initial review was a lot more favorable than a lot of others. Still, the book doesn't work that great as speculative fiction, as spy fiction or as a take on history. It's the last element that, ironically, looks most vulnerable for the book's resurrection. It would probably have been possible to make a case for the book's weaving of mythological strands, conspiracies and the Cold War in 2001, but there's been too much great stuff written that melded speculative fiction with history since then. The Baroque Cycle, Baxter's Time's Tapestry series, Galileo's Dream which I've now mostly come around to liking, and especially Roberts' brilliant recent take on fanciful Soviet Union intrigue. Given that, Powers' work looks almost embarrassingly over-literal or, as I argued in my immediate reaction, very shallow.

5. Generosity by Richard Powers.
It's certainly more ambitious than the other Powers, and gives some interesting arguments and presentations on near-future science. I wondered for a bit in reading reviews, and even while reading it, if this wasn't actually a good book that I wasn't effectively positioned to appreciate. I'm still ambivalent, but I maintain that the work doesn't gel in some significant ways, the characters and story are awkward rather than truly effecting. I can recognize that a lot of people see great value in the work, and unlike Declare I don't view it as a real disappointment that it's on the list. Yet I don't get any value from the novel itself that I couldn't have obtained from some of the well done favorable reviews. Call it a testimony to overall analysis, but there still seem to be some non-trivial structural issues.

4. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes.
Very intriguing setting and overall tone, but there's a question of not quite enough plot to carry the work through, as well as this halting and drawing attention to some less justifiable aspects of the work. My views on the work have shifted several times, always thinking it's good but not quite consistently great. At present I'm in a lower level of regard currently, finding it easier to remember the awkwardness of the novel and a lack of meaning behind some elements. There's still a great setting though, all the more interesting for pushing a rich history, intricate urban fantasy and South African context. The book seems more substantial when read in relation to other works than in isolation.

3. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness.
The last and least satisfying volume in the Chaos Walking trilogy, and it brings the whole universe to conclusion that's less than I had hoped. Still, that's a minor grudge compared to the number of things this work does right: non-romantic male female relations, ambitious space environment, effective exploration of gender, aliens and personal identity. Pretty stunning ambition, all in all, compared with the genre as a whole, and in a way that makes YA exceedingly relevant in consideration of quality literature. My criticism would be that Ness in some ways tries to answer too much, and ends up filing off some of the more interesting ambiguities and questions of the series. It's not a cataclysmic drop in quality and it doesn't prevent the trilogy as a whole from being a major work, but it does seem to close off a lot even as it opens some other questions. In the end I find it a bit difficult to judge compared with other shortlisted items, it's still very entertaining and ambitious, but feels somewhat more restricted in its rounding-out-the-story format, and in how that story settles into a somewhat conventional framework. What is offered is interesting and challenging enough, in the setting as much as in the story, that in another year I'd have no hesitation in embracing this as the Clarke nominee, or finding some other way to laud the series as a whole. Not this year, though.

2. Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
Very impressive work, and one that I feel somewhat similar to Spirit and Yellow Blue Tibia of last year. It's an excellent, genre-breaking and reconstruction work, a great novel that's close to the top for the year. Yet it doesn't quite make my own top five books, and is distinctly secondary to the best on this shortlist. Moving beyond comparison it's worth championing in its own light. It's a pretty narrow book, focusing on a couple of characters experience as they slowly develop understanding of the SFnal premise. There's perhaps more plot movement here than any other book on the shortlist, and Sullivan succeeds in establishing a great deal of happening in some brilliant writing.

1. The Dervish House by Ian McDonald.
A work that I probably was too harsh on after my initial reading, but that's grown on me after a bit of time. Partly from drawing out the great strengths of the piece, particularly the way it re-centers expectations, but also because a different context allows me to compare it to things other than River of Gods and Brasyl. Taken as a shortlist I've not doubt that it's the strongest book by a considerable margin, four of the items are pretty great, but McDonald's is really the outstanding piece. Above anything else it's the best structured work here, as well as the best structured of McDonald's novels and arguably one of the most precisely designed narratives in recent science fiction. From first line to last the book connects prose, characterization, setting and plot in a very powerfully structured work. Even better is that McDonald has a lot of substance to say through this, and he offers it effectively in the direct arguments and the subtle, especially in relation to the market. It shows a future and more prominent Turkey, and one hovering at the brink of even more substantial changes but the leading thing is what the book shows as already happened: a richly woven past that includes unfamiliar non-Western cultural patterns, invented future circumstances and the record laid by anticipations of the future. It's more technically effective and beautiful than almost anything that gets written, ultimately.

The shortlist as a whole:

It's a strong list, certainly, almost certainly better than any other genre award is going to present (and quite likely the non-genre lists, although I lack enough familiarity to assess with real credibility). I experienced it as being a bit less than last year, as the two new items I read didn't really satisfy as against last year's discovery of Far North, a quite magnificent work. I was also in a position of reading Beukes and Ness' latest shortly after earlier ventures that I found more effective, giving the list a second-rate feeling that seems undeserved. So there's a lot of circumstantial factors at work here, although I also think there's some objective ground for criticism, in particular concerning the absence of Surface Detail, Red Plenty and the Windup Girl from this list, as it seems very hard to argue against any of these in terms of quality or core creativity. For all that I only guessed 50% it seems in some way to be an unsurprising list, or at least one that follows a fairly conventional pattern: the long-acclaimed discussion-provoking standpoint science fiction of the year (The Dervish House), the effective narrative deconstruction (Lightborn), the literary work previously given an enthusiastic Strange Horizons review (Generosity), the dubious claim to be science fiction but popular work (Zoo City) the surprising and widely praised choice (Monsters and Men) the surprising and widely condemned work (Declare). Largely non-British in character this time, one previous Clarke-winner, another that has been nominated, four other authors shortlisted for the first time. Most of the authors have a well built reputation, although Beukes has only been practicing for a few years. Two women, four men. Six different publishers.

Themes on the shortlist:
The titles do run together in some interesting ways, put it another way it's one of the shortlists that's stronger than the sum of its parts although not as a whole achieving the level of the strongest of them. It's a very presentist list, even for the Clarke, with three works basically a clock's turn from the current day (Generosity, Lightborn and Zoo City) one set during the Cold War (Declare) and one within the next generation (The Dervish House). Monsters of Men is the only distanced SF, for time or space, being set on another planet centuries in the future. It's also unusual in being one of the few YA books nominated, and a work that's not standalone. There have been books linked to a series that have been nominated, and even one (Baroque Cycle and Bold as Love) but not recently, and to my knowledge this book is unique for being the third volume of the trilogy and the first one to be nominated. Looking at this list in comparison with 2010's it seems more standalone titles, less meta-fictional. If last year's science fiction depended to a large degree on familiarity with preceding texts, for detective noir (City & the City), the Count of Monte Cristo (Spirit), science fiction as a whole (Yellow Blue Tibia), the adventure template and Firefly (Retribution Falls), Galileo's texts (Galileo's Dream) and The Road (Far North) it was a set of texts rather uniquely framed as commentary on what the condition of writing was at. This year seems more focused on where people are in terms of larger community, the main focus seems less on literary patterns and texts as such, and more on questions of wider community. The Dervish House makes this centrally, with different lives from the city used to flesh out an invented future and unfamiliar past, for a story with much plot around literary codes in a near-occult investigation it's ultimately concerned with the ways of understanding and remaking community. Lightborn focuses on very similar things in the context of a traumatic transition that proves less apocalyptic than the setup or standard conventions would seem to demand. The same point could be made with Monsters and Men, although there's some tension with specifically YA questions of personal accomplishment the story is much more about how opposed communities can co-exist, and how the politics of information impact on this. There's arguably some similar concerns at work with Zoo City, although with less overall coherence which points to some of the problems in embracing this novel. As well Generosity brings in a concern with social process relating to happiness as well as the individual level, and Declare is about the (magical, conspiratorial) processes offered as gloss over large-scale political stability in Britain and the Soviet Union.

To an extent most science fiction is about imagined communities, but the items on this year's shortlist seem particularly interested in exploring strains and rebuilding of this in close relation to the present day. It's notable that in this process it's less dystopian than most other shortlists that come to mind. All the invented societies have problems and profound tensions, but none of them are doomed, and all rally elements of hope and even optimism.

Conspicuous absence from this shortlist: Mieville. He's been almost consistently nominated, and usually won, since Perdido Street Station, and Kraken was less fantasy-linked than two of the current nominees. I'm pleased to see this development, though, while Kraken was quite good it seemed a step down from his recent material, and Mieville has gotten quite enough Clarke exposure. I'd be inclined to not see him on the Clarke unless he again comes up with something awesomely challenging and distinct from anything he'd previously written. Perhaps I'm putting impossibly high standards on him, but for a triple Clarke-winner it makes sense to use a pretty high bar.

Predictions:
The Dervish House will win, as it well deserves to. It's a book that subsequent years will be seen as even more significant than it is now, a moving beyond customary assumptions that yields insight in context of McDonald's larger career and science fiction as a whole. The awarding will be one of the choices that people looking back will use to show it's effectiveness, as one of the relatively uncontroversial, popular and critically beloved works that stands the test of time--much like 2006's award Air. Lightborn should also age pretty well, in the context of female science fiction, inter-generational stories, deconstructions of zombie fiction, Sullivan's larger career and post-cyberpunk. Zoo City and Monsters of Men will be decently regarded five years from now, and the nomination will help draw deserving attention to both authors. Declare is unlikely to look any more appealing in another ten years time, and the clunkiness of its Cold War focus and the anachronism of the nomination will probably make this seem a bit of a puzzler looking back, a rough equivalent to Martin Martin or Streaking, although it is much better written than either. Generosity is the wild card in terms of long-term trends, as it's not generally classified as SF for most of its readers, and will either age well or badly. Confessing that I don't really get the appeal of it now, it might be seen as a neglected classic that the Clarke jury shrewdly recognized--I'm not sure.

Science Fiction and Fantasy from 2010

Here's the novels that I read from the past year, in descending level of quality by my own estimation.



First Tier: Excellent, future classics. Will stand the test of time as great accomplishments.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
The Habitation of the Blessed by Cathrynne Valente
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor


Second Tier: Great. Not perfect, but all of these are beyond usual quality by a significant margin, showing good prose, plotting and an effective central concept.

The House of Discarded Dream by Ekaterina Sedia
Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Zendegi by Greg Egan
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz
Harmony by Project Itoh
The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman
Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds
Kraken by China Mieville
2017 by Olga Slavnikova
Noise by Darin Bradley
New Model Army by Adam Roberts
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitcehll
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
Sleepless by Charlie Huston
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
Horns by Joe Hill
Antiphon by Ken Scholes
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
Deceiver by C. J. Cherryh
Cold Earth by Sarah Moss
The Fixed Stars by Brian Conn
The Sorcerer's House by Gene Wolfe
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
The Ninth Wave by Russell Celyn Jones
Above the Snowline by Steph Swainston
Up Jim River by Michael Flynn
The Dream of Max & Ronnie by Niall Griffiths
The Third Bear by Jeff Vandermeer
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
White Ravens by Owen Sheers
He Walked Among Us by Norman Spinrad
Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregellis
The Restoration Game by Ken Macleod
Light Boxes by Shane Jones

Third tier: Good. More to praise than to condemn about these, although enough limitations that they're unlikely to stand the test of time in the same way as the above, and in some cases severe problems become apparent.

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
Meeks by Julia Holmes
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Evolutionary Void by Peter Hamilton
The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
The Poison Eaters by Holly Black
Zero History by William Gibson
Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire
Chill by Elizabeth Bear
Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett
Black Hills by Dan Simmons
The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar
C by Tom McCarthy
The Trade of Queens by Charles Stross
Yarn by John Armstrong
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire
The Waters Rising by Sheri Tepper
A Special Place by Peter Straub
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fourth Tier: Bad. Would not recommend any of these, and would not have read these if I'd known the net experience. A range of problems and qualities, from the merely disappointing to the infuriatingly terrible, but these are either a misuse of the author's talent or evidence that the author doesn't possess any.

The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
The Radleys by Matt Haig
Changes by Jim Butcher
Feed by Seanan McGuire
Blackout by Connie Willis
All Clear by Connie Willis
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Starbound by Joe Haldeman

So, overall the first lesson from this is that it was a high quality array, and in ratio I think better of this collection than I did the 2009 works.

Second, some fun with numbers. 45 of the 82 novels were science fiction, 34 were fantasy and 3 I'd describe as unclassifiable. I noticed in going through this a much higher ratio of the books I considered great were science fiction than fantasy, although it more evenly balanced at the top and bottom of quality. I didn't have as much an impression this year compared with the 2009 reading that many of the most engaging breakout successes were fantasy, while there were a lot of works I enjoyed a lot in fantasy, the SF I read seemed overall better. 37 of the 82 were by authors I had read previous to this project, 45 were new to me. Another aspect that vindicates this project, since I doubt I'd have read more than 10 of the new ones without this focus, and overall they were pretty rewarding.
54 by male authors, 28 by female. Relatively slanted ratio there, not sure how much is caused by published trends or my own pattern of selection within that.

In more subjective terms this appeared to be the year a lot of bigname authors returned with new works, but a lot of them were disappointing. Not entirely--Baxter and Egan were at their usual form, Banks and McDonald were superb, Cherryh was quite good--but there were a number ofre under-performing works from familiar names. Bujold's Cryoburn is perhaps the strongest example of that, because she returned after a long absence to a very rich setting and set of characters, and made what was just minimally competent. Macleod's Restoration Game was a lot better made, but still far under what he's shown himself capable of, and Gibson's Zero History proved a basically unnecessary rephrasing of his earlier triumphs, plus a plot that's forgettable even for him. Add in my very low opinion of Willis' historical retro-epic and Haldeman's indefensibly awful Starbound, and as a whole it doesn't look like the year for trusting long-established major writers. Instead a lot of the greatest surprises and most enjoyable experiences came from relative newcomers, many of them writing for the first time, or writing adult genre for the first time. This seems to indicate that keeping up with the potential for the field involves embracing the newer voices and different techniques. In some areas concepts of the future are just beginning to be uncovered.

For themes this was a good year for apocalyptic fiction, in both overall numbers and relative quality. There were weaker stories in this theme that I read, certainly, most revolving around embracing cliches of the zombie subfield. Yet there were also great books written about the process of collapse (Noise, Cold Earth, Sleepless, 2017) and the weird alternative system that could arise (The Fixed Stars, Who Fears Death, Lightborn, Shipbreaker). It seems to point to a connection with larger cultural circumstances, as the right regrouped and seized major areas of government, new disasters flourished and the future of civilization and consensus derived from this seemed tenuous. Yet many of the authors didn't just use this as a sense of gloom, but took the form of disaster to imagine how the mentality of collapse and aftermath would feel like. In imagining what comes after there's some major hopeful aspects that seem to reclaim the notion of science fiction as a basis for championing human dignity in crucial ways.

Going along with that, in the bigger picture it's surprising how much optimism there across the narratives of this year. There are the range of apocalyptic stories and dystopias, naturally, but also a lot more explicitly utopian content than one would expect--expected in Banks' return to the Culture universe, but also featuring in Harmony's societal reimagining, to an extent in the alternate society of Habitation of the Blessed, and also optimism towards the future that appear in Dervish House, Zendegi, Terminal World and The Golden Age. It's a different atmosphere than last year, impacted so heavily by the appearance of City & the City and Windup Girl, and in seems in certain ways more welcome to hopeful themes.

Of course these generalizations apply more to science fiction that I read than fantasy, about the latter I find it hard to make larger conclusions. Almost every work seems clearly driven by the author's unique stylistic tendencies and larger goals, it seems that on the whole these aren't bodies of work that are in strong dialog with each other. To a large extent this could be my own methodological bias, but I feel that it's possible to compare the contrasting near futures of, say, New Model Army, The Dervish House and Zendegi for the similarities and differences in what they say the future will be like, and how the narratives set out doing this. It's harder to compare, say, Shades of Milk and Honey, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and Black Hills, as they're addressing very different areas with separate concerns and sets of internal dialog. Looking through this there are a lot of fantasies that I thought succeeded or failed on the strength of their characterization, the degree to which they rendered main characters caught in unique circumstances as effective human complexities. The House of Discarded Dreams, for instance, which in its specific details brought the work to a much higher level of quality than I would have expected from a plot description. Or take Our Tragic Universe, rather ambiguously genre, and which succeeds entirely in terms of the small everyday aspects that it's able to render. Perhaps the shift I traced from 2009 to 2010 above wasn't so much alterations in the genre as changes in my own reading. It does appear that a lot of the books from 2010, and particularly the ones that I most valued were quieter than I usually expect of science fiction and fantasy. Even many of the apocalypses were intimate instead of noisy (Cold Earth in particular) and The Dream of Perpetual Motion was exceptional in its small-scale focus rather than any wider sociological construct. Perhaps that's why I didn't find Mieville's Kraken anywhere near as good as his earlier books. In its overall rush and thriller plot it seemed somewhat less thoughtful than previous efforts, making him at least in my view out of step with the very best that SFF is producing.

It'll be interesting to see how well this slate of books ages in even five year's time, but at present I'm well pleased with where the field is now and where it seems to be going.

All Clear

by Connie Willis

I really didn't like this volume, and felt that it shared most of the failings of Blackout rather than raising the quality of the overall work. Beyond specific problems this extended novel feels self-indulgent, committing too much to the author's interest rather than providing an unique, interesting science fiction scenario. At an even more basic level it fails to entertain, not doing enough with especially the characterization and plot. The sense of this being a work not very oriented towards the reader's enjoyment comes with the whole setup for the novel. Blackout had so little indication going in that it was half the story, with no attempt to leave off at a satisfying people that it seems to have annoyed quite a few readers. Clear Air doesn't do much better, picking up the story without any real summary, character overview, preface or indication of the story to date. There isn't even a specific title given to the Blackout/All Clear duology. Someone could pick this off the shelves and, if they didn't read the Acknowledgments, believe that this was somewhat of a stand alone volume. As was it's such a continuation that apparently Willis expected readers to purchase volume 1 after it came out, and either reread it or absorb it for the first time directly before purchasing volume 2. That's asking a fairly large leap of faith.

With the story itself, it's a frustrating one. At some point my criticisms here are going to fall into the book not having the story I would have wanted, but as is I don't think the story provided is very good. Extremely little happens, and that through a glacial pace. There is nowhere near enough plot in the books to justify 1,100 pages and the process of having this play out quickly becomes tedious. Long conversations where people slowly uncover the obvious and coincidental near-misses act to make huge sections of the book fee unnecessary. Even on its own terms, without a lot of contrivance things should have come to a head hundreds of pages earlier. One particular soar spot were the chapters that showed 2060, with one character trying to assess data and preparing for his own trip. It's unnecessary, overlong and ruins the shock value when someone in '41 thinks she sees him, since we know too much to fuel the drama here. Not even Stephenson at his most bloated went so long with so little narrative basis, and Willis' unfortunate approach in this book also builds up the redundancy in the book to an intolerable degree. It feels by the end that there were dozens of separate conversations between the characters about the issue of the retrieval team, waiting for the retrieval team, wondering why the retrieval team hadn't yet managed to retrieve them, and so forth.

Of course the bulk of these books and the rather thin plot are all in service of Willis' main interest, an exploration of the daily lives and crucial heroism of the small people during the Blitz. Certainly the dedication page and the final thematic point hammered that in, and it is in itself a touching notion, to use contemporary science fiction as a tribute for a specific historical time period. That's an approach that makes the time travel in itself of minimal significance, and focuses attention on the juxtaposition between the past and the future, grounding things in a heavily researched environment.

The problem was that I didn't believe any of it. Partly it was the errors Willis made in representing this period in the past. More significantly was the unbelievable way the future historians would written, with the whole plot depending on relentless, over the top stupidity. The main characters and their larger situation shattered my suspension of disbelief continually, acting in a manner just too unbelievable for historians, time travelers and specifically time-traveling historians that had been prepped for this era and knew there was a history of things going wrong. Behind the rather dubious notion of sending historians to active war zones, we also have Mr. Dunworthy knowing full well that slippage was occurring, that people might not end up where they were expecting. Yet he rearranged things in an attempt to minimize the really dangerous points, sending people that got into areas they weren't sufficiently familiar with. This was setup in the first book, but we also see his perspective here, and it really drives home the fact that there's no adequately explored reason for why he went through with the trip under the circumstances.

Beyond that, the main characters are both interchangeable and stupid, sounding far too alike in their thought patterns and not having enough sense to be believed. These are historians with only vague knowledge of aspects of World War Two beyond the specific dates they expected to go, with no backup plan besides waiting for the retrieval team when the slippage occurs. Beyond that they aren't conversant with variants of sources and the archival process that we have even now. At one point there's several pages of drama sucked from the idea that Polly doesn't know the year of the Reign of Terror, and is left in anxiety and uncertainty as to whether it was more than three years after the French Revolution. [page 122] The way the plot develops and specifically its slow pace forces awkwardness to the characters, and ultimately serves to make the whole situation pointless, undermining credibility in all the interactions with the past. The story is woefully dependent on the situation of time travel and the characters that experience it, making the basic incredibility of these elements problematic.

Beyond that I just don't think Willis is a very good writer, on the level of prose, expressing emotion and expressing thoughts the whole text comes across as labored, awkward and rather redundant. I suppose this will have to remain a point on which we agree to disagree, but for a book where so little was happening it made the reading rather a draining experience. I do think there is a pretty clear case that sentiment runs in the way of effective drama in this book, where the cutsey, personalized details run against the attempt at real grimness. Willis' instincts run more to strength in comedy than tragedy, leaving the attempted representation of grimness as rather halting. So, for instance, the attempt by the characters to imagine the horror of interference and a German occupation of Britain [page 400] is little more than a list of names for friends that would be executed, there's a failure in imagination of how this horror would actually feel. Similarly the reluctance to really kill or damage main characters makes the story too comfy, too sage to really suit. What hampers this is a strong lack of subtlety, in the way that Agatha Christie's stories are blatantly name dropped, then she appears in a cameo, then a major character's presence is setup through a Christie-style murder mystery. There's no nuance in how this is applied, and the lack of trust in teh reader to figure out a more involved mystery weakens the book. It's all too contrived and reductive to have the necessary dramatic presence. At best its a fairly specific formula which overstays its presence in the text.

In the last hundred pages we're finally provided an explanation for some of what's going on. This is, at least, something, which gave the project a bit of energy and sense of meaning that was rather lacking in Blackout. I didn't experience it as enough, however, either on its own terms or in view of how long and slow the buildup to this point was. The notion of the continuum as being living and willed if not conscous in some fashion isn't in itself a hugely creative insight, and offers the type of general pantheism applied to SF tropes that have been done elsewhere and done better. Likewise, the notion that the historians' presence might actually be making changes that are needed for the larger system is a pretty obvious inversion, and doesn't show the characters in a good light when the reader is able to guess this hundreds of pages earlier. I also have a problem with this mechanism as it's presented, as it plays to the overly sentimental nature of Willis' writing again. Her eventual resolution depends on the assumption that the whole network of timetraveling depended on the defeat of Nazi Germany, that while it couldn't prevent the rise of the Third Reich it did manipulate individual historians' positioning in the Blitz to allow crucial small details to add up. For this resolution to be credible we have to accept that the continuum shares twenty first century liberal humanist values, that the defeat of Nazi Germany is a common necessity. That's not something the book has demonstrated enough, there hasn't been the detailed examination of the nature of this historical evil that would make sense of the existential struggle. An apparently gnostic situation turning to a deus ex machina should have more force than this, but for all the focus on detail it depends on general representations of 'Churchill Good, Hitler Bad' without manifesting them in a compelling fashion.

In the end I'd say the Blackout/All Clear text is ambitious in all the wrong ways. It goes on very long in focus of a single idea, but it does so in service of rather trite conclusions that aren't expressed in a well written, interesting or well characterized manner.

Similar to and Better Than: Harbringer by Jack Skillingstead

Similar to and Worse Than: Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt, a book I also didn't like.

Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

In short, I was very impressed. Excellent read, very engaging and with a lot of substance to say. It's a return to form for Banks, while not nearly at the level of his greatest Culture books, it was much, much better than Matter. The work felt like a meaningful addition to the Culture universe, offering very new areas and themes that felt like an expansion of previous books. In the process it offered a take on virtual reality, particularly the politics that might ensue, that managed to make a very well worn SFnal theme feel unique.

The plot was quite strong, juggling a lot of different elements into a cohesive hole. There were plenty of surprises and twists but they never felt gratuitous, it was almost always clear why people were acting in the manner they did, and the whole scenario held together quite well. The obnoxious political preaching that dragged down Transition so much was basically absent. While there was a clearly unfavorable representation of conservativism and a brutal satire on traditional values---we need our eternal Hells for social cohesion!--it's left implicit in the way the story unfolds rather than emerging through prolonged preaching. The characters were also much more engaging than I've seen from Banks for almost a decade. Yime was a bit too irrelevant in the way the story developed--an element which was noted in the epilogue--but apart from that it felt like a fully developed cast with a lot of interesting arcs, even in situations where they were mostly observers. Things didn't seemed to be forced, instead there was setting up a lot of people from different positions and then running through them to flesh out the story and the wider narrative. The way Chay became much more prominent than she initially seemed posed for was good, and her story developed in perhaps the most surprising direction.

Vepper was a much more interesting villain than has appeared for awhile. At first I wasn't very impressed--that first chapter with him as a corrupt rapist and killer gave me a rather unfavorable expectation beginning the book. Yet, as it developed his position proved quite an interesting one. Undoubtedly evil, he wasn't nearly as over the top as he seemed, and also featured as a lot smarter than first appearances suggested. The very ending where he's finally killed didn't completely work for me, but most of the stuff in the middle balanced out quite nicely, and provided a very effective pivot to hang the narrative on.

Above all, I loved that the Banksian tone was back, the excellent use of humor, control over these elements without getting lost in them. And all with a very prominent viscous edge, a level of dark humor that makes Banks' writing utterly distinctive. It showed up a bit in the mechanics of the Hell, but even more effectively in the Culture-centered portions, the way past and current violence is rendered. In this regard the Legdedje-Demeisen dynamic was probably the most engaging. Overall there's an energy and lightness of tone, even when coupled with some rather harrowing scenes, that made this perhaps the most enjoyable science fiction book from 2010 that I've yet read. The length of the piece never grates, and is used to build up some very interesting species, invented history and wider characteristics. The new insights into the Culture were also welcome, from an extended look at how the devastation of Orbitals in the Idiran war operated to a look (for the first time) at military and intel branches beyond Special Circumstances.

The ending epilogue was quite an interesting move. I'd have previously thought that tie ins to earlier books were best avoided, that Use of Weapons was best left a completed story in itself. Nevertheless, the final line and the tie in of what had previously been an isolated character was very interesting, and added a level of complexity and wider ambiguity to the preceding account.

An Artificial Night

by Seanan McGuire

An unexpected pleasure, this. Certainly a lot better than Rosemary and Rue, Feed, or even A Local Habitation. There are problems--the overall thinness of the worldbuilding, emotional flatness of the not too bright protagonist, the book consistently snarking in a way that is about as tenth as amusing as the text seems to think it is. Nevertheless, it's a step up in quality in a number of ways. Unlike all her other novels up to this point, McGuire wrote a book that doesn't depend on any kind of mystery or conspiracy with a psychotic mortal. Instead it's a standoff with a creature of myth and terror, someone who makes no attempt to hide and who everyone knows immediately is the villain. That avoids the utter idiocy of the previous Toby Daye books as well as Feed, and settles into an overall momentum that's quite engaging. The book feels significantly better paced for the main part, with action sequences spread across the bulk of it organically, and some areas where things are really quite tense. There are also some very appealing supporting cast members, I'd like to have seen more of them but as was they brightened the book considerably. Tybalt is one of them, naturally, the other has to be May, Toby's harbringer of doom that just keeps hanging out. She's so cheerful and weirdly optimistic that there's a lot of pleasure in seeing her interact with people.

The book is far from perfect, and has some issues that should have been cut in the first draft. Blind Michael is rather anti-climatic when he finally appears, for one thing, and doubly so when he's killed off far too easily. It doesn't really make sense why Toby is being employed in this crucial matter, and she continues to not be smart enough to keep the work viable. And there was a reappearance of Julie that that was completely unnecessary, serving no plot or emotional point beyond dragging things out for another chapter. I also wish the worldbuilding made even a little sense, the whole practice of conservative xenophobic changelings routinely entering their children into public school with humans is rather silly. Plus for this book there's the notion of a group of immortals being surprised by Blind Michael's kidnapping, despite him doing this for ages every hundred years. Still it was fun, exciting and makes me interested in McGuire's next book, even if it's in the Newswatch series.

Similar to and better than: Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

Similar to and worse than: Daughter of Hounds of Caitlin Kiernan

Blackout

by Connie Willis

I read Blackout several months ago. Atrocious in quality, an incredibly dull experience that makes me even more puzzled over Connie Willis' high reputation.
Too much of the book revolves around coincidences and people not quite meeting each other, the future is thoroughly anachronistic (phones with cords in 2060 Oxford?) and the setup is exceptionally derivative. It's unfunny, unexciting and relentlessly dull. Exceptionally little happens, the characterization is thoroughly cliched, and as a take off time travel it's thoroughly flawed. Time travel has been done so many times, often quite creatively, that for Willis to come along in 2010 and simply recreate the experience of the Blitz is not enough, it's failing to offer anything like an appropriate amount of creativity. What's worse, Willis isn't a very good historian. Not in the context of the details of London as such, but in her writing historians in a credible manner, which given most of the protagonists are historians makes a rather large problem. For one thing, there's the notion that given timetravel a future Oxford can think of nothing better to do than send people into the most dangerous hot-spots of the past to observe what's going on. Second, the people that go back are exceptionally stupid, focused on a very narrow portion of the past and left floundering when the inevitable happens and they can't easily get back.

Another problem is the whole presentation of history that emerges here, where apparently the point is to witness heroics and accomplish them. In a rather clumsy update for modern conditions 9/11 is added to the list of great heroic exploits under crisis, to which is also included the Blitz and Pearl Harbor, among others. It's a thoroughly Eurocentric view, for one thing, it's also one that prioritizes individual exploits and flashy altruism above a real understanding of complex social conditions. There's one point where one of the historians fears that Churchill is dead, which would cause the loss of the war to the Germans. This is frankly a stupid viewpoint that shows the historian in question to be a moron, there's no credible reason to believe the Germans could have been able to land on British soil regardless of success in the bombing campaign. Furthermore to accept Churchill as the one bulwark is to buy into the worst kind of simplistic propaganda. It's fairly obvious the ways that this book fails as a novel, but it's also quite underwhelming taken as serious engagement to the past. As a corrective, Clive Ponting's 1940: Myth and Reality is a short read and an effective dismantling of the more simplistic nostalgic view.

I hated this book thoroughly and have zero interest in reading the concluding volume or really anything else Willis has written or will write. There is quite literally no point. I would be curious to hear from people who liked this book more though. What is the appeal? Obviously there's a lot of subjective impression involved but it's pretty blatant that as a piece of science fiction this book doesn't add that much, that the plot is by any standard exceptionally slow, and that the characters are not terribly complex.

Out of the Black

by Lee Doty

There's a scene early on in Out of the Black where Ping is being questioned by the FBI. He's introduced to two agents of differing personalities and promptly declares: "'You know Garvey, I already like and trust you, but Bad Cop here scares me. You know...' Ping paused, stroking his chin in a parody of deep thought, '...the weirdest part is that the two of you together make me want to cooperate fully.'" [120]

Ping subsequently continues to think of the two as Good Cop and Bad Cop, and the narrative follows this approach. That moment captures a lot of the sense of this novel, and is probably a guide into whether a given reader will enjoy this work or not. If you found this interlude and the direct self-awareness of the moment a clever point of energy and humor, then it's likely you will enjoy the larger book. There is after all a fair amount to recommend it, fast pace, decently twisting plot, an unfolding setting, and a work that balances overt humor with a fairly light tone throughout. This is a book where it's easy to see why many people have responded favorably, and if someone approaches the book and likes it on those terms fine for them.

I didn't like that early scene, however, and have to count myself as one of the people who were put off by the overly self-aware narrative and the wider tone it supported. The problem is that this writing fundamentally is a case of cliches, and having the characters be aware of and engaging with such cliches doesn't ultimately make it any more creative. This lack of creativity, the courting of low ambition made the story drag at just the points where it put the most emotional emphasis down. I can be accused of holding too high standards, perhaps, but at some level this remains a five hundred page piece of speculative fiction, and there is the potential for the author to do noteworthy things with that area. Instead what's provided is ultimately a thin narrative, working decently when it's trying to be frightening, working less effectively for my money when it's trying to be humorous, but in any case working for a fairly low bar of action. There's nothing that precludes a novel from being both an effective action-experience and delivering a something of substance, but in this incarnation the later seems to not have been on the table. It becomes most apparent near the end when truly cosmic horror emerges and the narrative would benefit from a sense of real collapse and menace. Instead, what emerges are specific scenes of tension framed by talk of ninja-zombies, in a way that shows the story ultimately failing to take itself seriously.

This all makes it sound like I'm harsher on the book than I really am. There were some good lines and inspired moments--"Most were wearing that evil gonna-get-to-cut0someone grin considered socially acceptable in pre-muder situations." [183] but the work as a whole suffers from over-statement, over-emphasis, forcing a measure of character response that suits a type of wry meta-commentary but is not credible in the situations depicted as such. Along with the story showing too little, ultimately, of real credibility and force there is too much of some of the characters, reveling in their thoughts and cultural comparisons, to an extent that it makes the whole venture appear as rather silly. I'd take Issak Kaspari picturing himself as a mad scientist [223] as a strong example of this, where his quirks and imagination are inflated to a point where any sense of his complexity or larger believability as a character get smothered. What people are saying and thinking is far too obviously in for the state of allowing the novel to position itself in the field.

With all this I'd still have considered it fairly passable, considering the relative effectiveness of the final story, but there's a final major factor that weakens the text. The worldbuilding is where the lack of creativity really becomes crippling, and the issue of taking the future seriously becomes much harder. In essence, this does not feel adequately like a believable extension beyond the present. While there are clear indications of technological change the political dynamic is overly conventional, and the cultural references are incredibly overt. The constant references by characters to Blade Runner are implausible but perhaps can be excused thematically, but the issues go beyond that, with people having a deep working familiarity with The Matrix, Cool as Ice and similar films of that era, but not anything beyond that, or really any cultural construct after the present. It would be as if the whole of our current literary references had no one latter than Henry James. It's incredibly implausible, and features as a real point where more authorial innovation and willingness to go become the conventional would have been effective.

Not a terrible book by any means, but an overly unambitious one, without strong enough humor or sentence-by-sentence writing to give the book enough substance.


Similar to and better than: Feed by Mira Grant

Similar to and worse than: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds