I have a whole lot of posts to make following on from the last three days on the road, but given that I have just put the Nebula Awards results up on the SF Awards Watch website, here are a few thoughts.
As Kevin and I explained on our podcast last week, the Campbell is “not a Hugo” because it doesn’t belong to WSFS. The award is owned and presented by Dell Magazines, and it would be quite wrong for WSFS to try to lay claim to it by calling it a Hugo. Nevertheless, every year outraged fans complain about how awful it is that WSFS insults young writers by not recognizing the Campbell as a Hugo.
The Nebulas, in contrast, have only four categories: novel and the three short fiction lengths. Two additional awards are presented with the Nebulas: one for movies and one for YA novels. They are both owned and presented by SFWA, but they are not Nebulas. I hardly ever hear anyone complain about the Bradbury or Norton being “Not a Nebula”. Which I think shows that all of the complaints about the Campbell have far more to do with fannish spitefulness than any real concern about the awards.
Having said that, I think the short list for the Norton this year was spectacular. Shipbreaker, White Cat and Mockingjay are all wonderful novels, and none of them won because they were up against Sir Terry Pratchett. Discworld novels are not really my cup of tea, but I knowledge the popularity and critical acclaim that they have garnered. The other three novels would all be ahead of several of the Novel finalists, including the winner, on my ballot, if I had one.
I’m always pleased to see Kij Johnson win awards, even if she does so with stories that were not published in Clarkesworld. I am a bit disturbed, however, about what I heard about the award ceremony. If you have a tie for an award you announce it as a tie, you don’t announce a winner, let her make an acceptance speech, and then announce that the result was a tie.
I haven’t read the winning novelette, though I will do soon as it is in the Hugo Voter Packet. I will note, however, that it is good to see Analog getting stories on award ballots again. Well done, Stan.
The novella winner is no surprise. Rachel Swirsky’s story has been getting award nods all over the place.
As for the novel, as I said on the podcast, Connie Willis is popular. The Nebula win, however, shows that she is popular with her fellow authors as well as with fandom. That’s something that people often forget when discussing the Hugos. A lot of writers attend Worldcon, and many of them vote. So if you don’t like the results of the Hugos, you can just dismiss that as the result of fannish stupidity.
I’m not particularly interested in the political campaign that has been waged against Willis’s book. This isn’t the first time that a novel has been split in two for publication, and it won’t be the last. This suggests, once again, that there is rather more going on that the stated reason for the complaint. But what of Blackout/All Clear as a novel?
Well, I haven’t read it yet. I have read several of Connie’s other books, and a new one is not high on my “to read” list. But I have had reason to complain before about her slapdash approach to story backgrounds. I was willing to give her a pass over the idea of extending the London Underground to Oxford. Not everyone is interested in railways, although if you live in the UK it is pretty obvious what a daft idea it is. The issues being reported with the new novel, however, appear much more serious. The Jubilee Line being open during WWII? Three hours to walk from Euston to Oxford Street? These are errors that any simple fact check ought to have turned up.
I suppose it is possible that Willis is trying to signal that these stories do not take place in our world. A more likely explanation, however, is that she and her publishers don’t care. That in turn, I suspect, is because the books are not set in the UK, but in a Disney theme park version of the UK. Which is why American readers love them, and British readers hate them.
Of course this too is nothing new. Hollywood does it all the time. Mary Poppins was hugely popular in the UK, despite Dick Van Dyke’s portrayal of a Londoner. But I like to think that in books we can, and should, do better. Also, giving a high profile award to a book that is so sloppy is a slap in the face to writers who do try to get their history right.
Unfortunately I Shall Wear Midnight is not a good book. Characterisation is inconsistent and Tiffany’s narrative arc is reduced to the search for a man who won’t mind her being a witch. I love most Pratchett but the past three books have been clumsy and awkward, both in terms of plot, and on a line by line basis.
This isn’t the first time that a novel has been split in two for publication, and it won’t be the last.
To the best of my knowledge it is, however, the first time that two halves of a split novel have been nominated as a single work on the Hugo ballot.
This suggests, once again, that there is rather more going on that the stated reason for the complaint.
Such as?
At any rate, I don’t know if this is directed at me, but I’ve never made any secret of my disdain for the practice of book-splitting, and the last time that the possibility of a split novel being nominated for the Hugo was floated (I believe it was Gene Wolfe’s The Wizard Knight) I was just as firmly against it, and for the same reasons.
No one likes book-splitting, except maybe a few accountants. I know I have complained about it in the past, and Gary Wolfe noted in his podcast this weekend that he was grateful to be able to read the two halves of Connie’s book back-to-back for his review.
But I accept that publishers are going to try to maximize their revenue from books. At my age I’m liable to be willing to pay more for a book in two parts than for a single volume with very small print, which I’m sure we would have got had the book been combined. And I find book splitting no more annoying financially than having books I want put out as limited edition collectables.
I also note that the comments I have seen (though I haven’t followed the debate closely) appear to focus on Connie and her publisher, and ignore the role of the chain bookstores in the practice.
What matters to me is that the publishers have put both halves of the book out in the same calendar year, making it easy for awards to look at it as a single artistic work. I’m pleased it has happened in this case.
This issue it is is clearly important to you, and people have all sorts of reasons for how they vote in the Hugos. You are entitled to yours. And if you are being consistent in your views then good for you. However, you say yourself that you are singling Connie out for attention because her book is in the running for awards. That’s smart politics on your part. It gets your cause plenty of attention. Connie might feel that she’s being picked on because she wrote a good book rather than a bad one.
I also note that fandom in general tends to dislike people winning awards time after time. Connie has 10 Hugos already, which is a small number compared to the hauls picked up by Charles Brown and Dave Langford, but an enormous number for someone who only competes in the four written fiction categories. As a consequence I suspect you may be getting support from people who are more concerned about the number of wins Connie has had in the past than they are about the issue of book splitting.
However, you say yourself that you are singling Connie out for attention because her book is in the running for awards.
That’s not what I said at all. You’re making it sound as if I’m running some sort of campaign against booksplitting and have glommed onto the book as a convenient rallying cry, when really what happened is that as soon as Blackout was published fans started calling for it and All Clear to be nominated as a single work because otherwise it wouldn’t be “fair” to Willis, and this struck me as entirely the wrong way to look at the situation.
I object to book splitting in general, but I’m more bothered by the notion that a split book might receive a Hugo nomination as a single work because that seems to me like validation of the practice (in fact when it comes to relatively unknown writers, like Hal Duncan with his Book of All Hours or Catherynne Valente with The Orphan’s Tales, I’m a lot more forgiving of book splitting, but in that case the books were published in different calendar years and there was no chance of them being nominated for awards as a single work). My specific objection is that an award given by fans shouldn’t validate and reward behavior that exploits them.
It’s nice to know that you think I’m getting support. Obviously the fact that Blackout/All Clear has been nominated for the Hugo and has won the Nebula indicates that that support is somewhat minimal.
Not for the Hugo Awards. If a work is published in multiple installments, it’s eligible in the year in which the final installment appears. Think of a novel serialized in multiple issues of Analog (as used to be a common way of first publishing) crossing a year boundary; it was eligible in the year in which the final part appeared. If a book was issued that was clearly part 1 of a two-part novel, it would almost certainly be eligible when part 2 came out. Whether it was nominated would be up to the voters, of course.
“Political”? Who complained about it on political grounds?
If you mean political content of the book, no one. However, as Abigail notes above, she believes that the publishers are unfairly exploiting fans, and that’s a political judgement about the book, not an artistic one.
May I squeak a little about being American and being assumed not to care about a correct historical representation of London? That sort of sloppiness bothers me greatly and bothered me in this instance. Grant you, I don’t always pick up details, just as many UK authors don’t seem to notice that Americans go out for coffee (not “a coffee”). (Starbucks, will, of course, eventually change that locution. America–no longer the home of the bottomless cup.)
Ship Breaker was on my Hugo nomination ballot, as was Who Fears Death. I had hoped for different results. But I’m not sure that people who love Connie Willis’ novels do so because they’re Americans and like their Great Britain in glossy four-colour prints with the cute buses and adorable accents.
People from/in/around Istanbul seem sometimes to react in similar fashion to The Dervish House. (If I’m not mistaken, you and I may both have nominated DH for a Hugo.)
Well there are always exceptions. Kevin knows the UK railway systems much better than I do. But the errors in these books appear to be so egregious that I have yet to find anyone in the UK who is happy with them.
There are always problems with writing books about places you don’t know. There have been questions asked about all of Ian McDonald’s developing economy books. I don’t know any Turks well enough to ask about The Dervish House, but I do know that Ian makes a point of spending time in every country he writes about, and I’m pretty sure he would be mortified to have made an error as basic as having the Jubilee Line running during WWII.
Errors of language use you can forgive. I still trip up over the way that people from the Bay Area will refer to a highway as “101” whereas people from Los Angeles call it “the 101”, though it does now grate on me when I hear anyone refer to “Frisco”. But there’s a point at which the level of sloppiness makes you think that the author didn’t care, and that’s where people get irritated.
The more I think about this the clearer the “Hollywood” quality of Willis’ world seems to get. Certainly you could sell me on Future Oxford as a version of Brigadoon. I’m afraid that makes me like it more.
I still don’t think that Americans like Willis’ time travel novels because they’re just desperate for some culturally naive version of the UK, but I might be prepared to go with a conditioned response to both the forward drive and the overly-neat tie-up of Hollywood plotting (which carries with it a just-the-iconic-bits-please approach to setting). On which point, the historical errors make me feel like someone’s just dumped itching powder in my clothes, but I always find myself reading straight through to the end, even if I’m having a hissy fit about the set-up. Maybe I do fit your generalization.
I don’t think people often deliberately seek out inaccurate portrayals of other countries. But I do think that Connie is feeding American readers an image of the UK that they have been conditioned to expect. And those of you who don’t know the UK very well don’t notice anything wrong.
As to why you keep reading despite the itches, that’s partly because Connie is a very good writer. It may also be because the mistakes don’t seem quite as much of a personal insult as they do to many people over here.
I haven’t read “White Cat” yet and I’m with you 100% on “Ship Breaker” but I just can’t get there with “Mockingjay.” I thought it read like a rushed first draft with so many totally implausible plot lines, especially in terms of matters military, which were pretty much laughable. And the whole Katniss, Peeta, Gale triangle just never worked because the character of Gale was so poorly drawn.
When ‘The Hunger Games” came out I thought it was one of the best books I had read in a long long time, but I felt both “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” highlight just how badly an author can drop the ball with second and thirds in series. Strong words I know–but I think the extent to which THG wowed me as only deepened my corresponding disappointment with 2 & 3.
I read the whole thing back to back, which may have made a difference.
“I suppose it is possible that Willis is trying to signal that these stories do not take place in our world. A more likely explanation, however, is that she and her publishers don’t care. That in turn, I suspect, is because the books are not set in the UK, but in a Disney theme park version of the UK. Which is why American readers love them, and British readers hate them.
Of course this too is nothing new. Hollywood does it all the time. Mary Poppins was hugely popular in the UK, despite Dick Van Dyke’s portrayal of a Londoner. But I like to think that in books we can, and should, do better. Also, giving a high profile award to a book that is so sloppy is a slap in the face to writers who do try to get their history right.”
Yes, this. So much so. Thank you for saying it. (My version is the exploding historian model, and far less polite).
The exploding historian model would amuse me very much.
I’m still trying to forgive Willis for Doomsday Book, where she inexplicably confuses the category “future medieval historians” with the category “those people who produced The Court Jester.” White clothes and pointy hats? Chaucerian dialect far, far from London? Statistical models applied smoothly to any increment of a population? Either she really, really likes strawmen, or she’s entirely convinced that we’re all going to forget everything we know any day now.
You don’t suppose Future Oxford is just a computer simulation stuffed with “The Court Jester” and “Mrs. Miniver” posing as “historical documents?” No? Ah, well.
I suppose I’d better trundle off to Epcot and get in touch with my cultural identity. Maybe I’ll like the novels more when I get back.
Tangentially, I don’t know even know which Connie Willis novel has an extension of the Underground to Oxford, let alone the context in which this was said to occur, but it isn’t as crazy an idea as it may first seem. The Metropolitan line used to go a lot further than it does now, and it used to be possible to go through from Baker Street to a place called Quainton, north-west of Aylesbury. From there you could change onto a branch line (still operated by the Metropolitan) to Brill, which is only about 10 miles from Oxford.
http://underground-history.co.uk/brill.php
Well you can get off the Underground at Paddington and change onto a train to Oxford. And when Crossrail is up and running it may well be possible to get on a train at, say, Tottenham Court Road and go direct to Oxford. That’s all perfectly reasonable. Building an underground railway all the way to Oxford, on the other hand…
Ah, while you might have been able to get to Brill on the sort-of Underground 100 years ago, very little of the journey would be underground. An actually underground Underground line to Oxford would be very silly yes.