belated/not-belated awards reading
Jul. 28th, 2017 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe first two of these share the property of being things that went on my to-read list with an eye towards possible interest in Hugo-nominating them and then I didn't get to them in time.
Runtime, by S.B. Divya, is a 2016 novella Nebula finalist that I would very happily have put on my Hugos list instead of "Every Heart" or "Census-Taker" (and I would guess we'll see on the long list in a few weeks). Near-future, our cyborg protag is running an extreme race over the Sierras, it's the kind of perfectly-done small scope of plot that weaves together its survival-story strand, a look-at-society, and some bigger themes/questions about fairness and opportunity. Really interesting gender stuff, imagining a world where nonbinarity is becoming the dominant gender - I am automatically sympathetic to a protag wanting to ditch their gender but I thought Divya did a good job of showing how (like any gender orthodoxy) this is great for some people and less so for others. Anyways, recommended.
The Girl In The Road, by Monica Byrne, was a 2014 novel, so clearly I'm a little later catching up on this one. Coincidentally it also couples survival-story elements with its SF and dramatic themes - in this case a trek story, putting its protagonist on a floating bridge between India and Africa (and a secondary protagonist on a convoy across Africa). I think the last setting I found this striking might have been in Forest of Hands and Teeth except this one does so much more with its dramatic linearlly-constrained setting. It's possible that there's something suspect in my hunger for stories that don't center white people, something exotifying/appropriative or whatever, but I really liked that I had to go look at maps because this story took me through parts of the world my dumb ass could barely find on a map, that inter-national and inter-racial encounters were so much a part of the story without any Europeans or Americans around. It's definitely on the literary end of SF - unreliable narrators, recurring imagery and symbolism, references and foreshadowing - although not so much so that I felt like too much was going over my head. Recommended, but I feel I should mention that this is a pretty upsetting book, involving rape, child abuse, intimate partner violence, violence against trans people, self-harm, child harm, animal harm, and POV characters in manic, dissociated, and hallucinatory states. (I am always happy to have a more specific/spoilery conversation about content stuff if that is useful to anyone.)
The Djinn Falls In Love, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, is an anthology from this year. Although the name might make it sound like a YA anthology in search of this year's sparkly vampires, there is no YA or romance here, this is... how do I put this. "Serious adult SFF" makes it sound like I don't take YA or romance seriously. But, you know what I mean, it is tonally/thematically mainstream SFF on the Lightspeed/Clarkesworld type axis. Standout stories to me include "Majnun" by Helene Wecker, about a djinn who has converted to Islam, "Black Powder", by Maria Dahvana Headley, taking djinn into a tall tale/fable/Western context, "Reap", by Sami Shah, an unforgettable tense classic ghost story updated to drone surveillance and simultaneously a very contemporary story that could only be about drone surveillance - "Reap" is the one I'm putting a star by - and "Bring Your Own Spoon", by Saad Z. Hossain, about djinn and human survivors in a post-apocalyptic/dystopic future. The Gaiman piece here is in fact the djinn story from American Gods (only reprint in the collection) which on the one hand is the best thing in American Gods and on the other hand is not a new Gaiman story about djinn, phooey. Other authors I've recced stuff by before: JY Yang, Monica Byrne, Amal El-Mohtar, Usman T. Malik, Nnedi Okorafor. Content notes for intimate partner violence, child harm, maybe some other stuff... there was one in particular near the end that went somewhere really upsetting.
Runtime, by S.B. Divya, is a 2016 novella Nebula finalist that I would very happily have put on my Hugos list instead of "Every Heart" or "Census-Taker" (and I would guess we'll see on the long list in a few weeks). Near-future, our cyborg protag is running an extreme race over the Sierras, it's the kind of perfectly-done small scope of plot that weaves together its survival-story strand, a look-at-society, and some bigger themes/questions about fairness and opportunity. Really interesting gender stuff, imagining a world where nonbinarity is becoming the dominant gender - I am automatically sympathetic to a protag wanting to ditch their gender but I thought Divya did a good job of showing how (like any gender orthodoxy) this is great for some people and less so for others. Anyways, recommended.
The Girl In The Road, by Monica Byrne, was a 2014 novel, so clearly I'm a little later catching up on this one. Coincidentally it also couples survival-story elements with its SF and dramatic themes - in this case a trek story, putting its protagonist on a floating bridge between India and Africa (and a secondary protagonist on a convoy across Africa). I think the last setting I found this striking might have been in Forest of Hands and Teeth except this one does so much more with its dramatic linearlly-constrained setting. It's possible that there's something suspect in my hunger for stories that don't center white people, something exotifying/appropriative or whatever, but I really liked that I had to go look at maps because this story took me through parts of the world my dumb ass could barely find on a map, that inter-national and inter-racial encounters were so much a part of the story without any Europeans or Americans around. It's definitely on the literary end of SF - unreliable narrators, recurring imagery and symbolism, references and foreshadowing - although not so much so that I felt like too much was going over my head. Recommended, but I feel I should mention that this is a pretty upsetting book, involving rape, child abuse, intimate partner violence, violence against trans people, self-harm, child harm, animal harm, and POV characters in manic, dissociated, and hallucinatory states. (I am always happy to have a more specific/spoilery conversation about content stuff if that is useful to anyone.)
The Djinn Falls In Love, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, is an anthology from this year. Although the name might make it sound like a YA anthology in search of this year's sparkly vampires, there is no YA or romance here, this is... how do I put this. "Serious adult SFF" makes it sound like I don't take YA or romance seriously. But, you know what I mean, it is tonally/thematically mainstream SFF on the Lightspeed/Clarkesworld type axis. Standout stories to me include "Majnun" by Helene Wecker, about a djinn who has converted to Islam, "Black Powder", by Maria Dahvana Headley, taking djinn into a tall tale/fable/Western context, "Reap", by Sami Shah, an unforgettable tense classic ghost story updated to drone surveillance and simultaneously a very contemporary story that could only be about drone surveillance - "Reap" is the one I'm putting a star by - and "Bring Your Own Spoon", by Saad Z. Hossain, about djinn and human survivors in a post-apocalyptic/dystopic future. The Gaiman piece here is in fact the djinn story from American Gods (only reprint in the collection) which on the one hand is the best thing in American Gods and on the other hand is not a new Gaiman story about djinn, phooey. Other authors I've recced stuff by before: JY Yang, Monica Byrne, Amal El-Mohtar, Usman T. Malik, Nnedi Okorafor. Content notes for intimate partner violence, child harm, maybe some other stuff... there was one in particular near the end that went somewhere really upsetting.
