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2024 Hugo Novellas
May. 29th, 2024 06:55 pmTwo last novellas:
"Seeds of Mercury", Wang Jinkang, transl. Alex Woodend. This is very Hal Clement/Robert L. Forward (except some magical/handwavey science regarding durability of human engineering). I sometimes find SFF in translation more interesting as a chance to see what kind of things non-Anglosphere people are writing than interesting in themselves as fiction, and this was a case of that. (My favorite part was trying to remember my favorite scene from _Dragon's Egg_, where the one alien, like, spends a huge part of its life holding still so that it can streak by the window and just barely be seen by the human astronaut, do I have that right?) Some neat moments about how and why people make the choices to dedicate themselves to this creation of life on Mercury project, but I was bored by the anti-religion stuff at the end, and put off by how one character's disability was addressed. (Obviously I am not Chinese and am not going to understand the cultural context/cultural values Wang Jinkang is coming from here, just, for me as a USian reader, it felt ableist in a way I found uncomfortable.)
"Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet", He Xi, transl. Alex Woodend. I found this very clunky and confusing for awhile, possibly from translation problems, but it eventually coughed up some neat imagery and a vaguely Star-Trekkian ethical dilemma. I kind of think the whole doomed-romance angle must have been being carried in poetic language or literary references that didn't come across in the translation.
Ballot behind cut. ( Read more... )
"Seeds of Mercury", Wang Jinkang, transl. Alex Woodend. This is very Hal Clement/Robert L. Forward (except some magical/handwavey science regarding durability of human engineering). I sometimes find SFF in translation more interesting as a chance to see what kind of things non-Anglosphere people are writing than interesting in themselves as fiction, and this was a case of that. (My favorite part was trying to remember my favorite scene from _Dragon's Egg_, where the one alien, like, spends a huge part of its life holding still so that it can streak by the window and just barely be seen by the human astronaut, do I have that right?) Some neat moments about how and why people make the choices to dedicate themselves to this creation of life on Mercury project, but I was bored by the anti-religion stuff at the end, and put off by how one character's disability was addressed. (Obviously I am not Chinese and am not going to understand the cultural context/cultural values Wang Jinkang is coming from here, just, for me as a USian reader, it felt ableist in a way I found uncomfortable.)
"Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet", He Xi, transl. Alex Woodend. I found this very clunky and confusing for awhile, possibly from translation problems, but it eventually coughed up some neat imagery and a vaguely Star-Trekkian ethical dilemma. I kind of think the whole doomed-romance angle must have been being carried in poetic language or literary references that didn't come across in the translation.
Ballot behind cut. ( Read more... )
