It’s that time of year again. The BSFA Award nominations are out.

The full lists can be found here.

The fiction nominees are:-

Best Novel:-

Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press)

Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan)

The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

By Light Alone by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

Of which I have (so far) read one.

Best Short Fiction:-

The Silver Wind by Nina Allan (Interzone 233, TTA Press)

The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s, July)

Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley (Kameron Hurley’s own website)

Covehithe by China Miéville (The Guardian)

Of Dawn by Al Robertson (Interzone 235, TTA Press)

I have read none of these as yet but only The Copenhagen Interpretation is not available online via the BSFA page linked to above. Presumably the booklet of nominated stories that the BSFA has produced for the past two years will be repeated this time around, too.

Angry Robot, 2010, 349 p

(Plus 4 pages of acknowledgements, 1 page “about the author” and 24 pages containing three short stories from winners of a competition to set a story in the milieu of Beukes’s previous novel Moxyland, an unnecessary addition to my mind.)

I have previously lamented the fact that the general run of fantasy novels seem to be set in a default mediævality and that no-one is trying to write fantasy in a contemporary setting. Well Zoo City is taken by some to be SF – it was on the BSFA Award shortlist for best novel last year – but to my mind fantasy would be a better description. In particular magic is an essential component of the setting and plot. Yet the novel takes place in the present day! (Albeit a present day thoroughly transmogrified.)

Zinzi December is an aposymbiont – who are derogatorily termed as animalled. Aposymbionts are individuals who, as a result of committing a serious crime, have gained an animal companion with whom they have a psychic link, in the process acquiring an attribute. This is not quite the same as in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which Beukes does refer to in the text, as in his universe the animals begin attachment at birth. Zinzi’s companion is a sloth and her attribute is sensing lost objects. She can follow psychic threads to recover things. This is her apparent job but to pay her debts she moonlights as an email scammer. She is engaged by two rather unsavoury individuals (both animalled) to find a lost pop star and is drawn into a world of intrigue, backstabbing and murder.

Narrated in an urgent present tense, apart from the interpolations of cod press articles and psychological papers fleshing out the background, the novel is of a piece with the thriller feel of much near future SF. But Beukes is good at this – very good indeed – the gritty realism makes her scenario entirely believable while you’re immersed in it. That the novel takes place in South Africa may be one factor in its appeal. African phrases and words are utilised frequently but not so as to obfuscate or confuse. The acceptance of magic is a given (as it may be in “our” South Africa.)

Where the story veers away from thriller SF into fantasy is that the transformation of the world to one where animals can become “familiars” is not given much of a rational explanation.

Zinzi and her boyfriend Benoît, whose animal is a mongoose, are well drawn, nuanced characters with full backstories which mercifully emerge from the story as it is told rather than being dumped on the reader. Others are equally believable.

This was fun, sharp and (the misuse of pre-empt aside) well written stuff.

Over at Science Fiction Awards Watch the results of this year’s BSFA Awards have been posted.

The novel award went to Ian McDonald for The Dervish House and the short story to Aliette de Bodard for The Shipmaker.

Congratulations to all the winners.

I’ve now read four of the five short-listed novels – the first time I’ve ever managed such a feat before the vote. While it is so much easier to find books in these internet days I did make a conscious effort this time. My reviews of these five are in the previous post plus here, here and here. It’s probably the one I’ve missed (Zoo City by Lauren Beukes) that will win now.

The nominations for Best Art are to my mind profoundly uninspiring except perhaps the spaceship by Andy Bigwood on the cover of Conflicts.

As to the short stories: the BSFA booklet has been devoured and here are my thoughts.

Flying In The Face Of God by Nina Allan.

The Kushnev drain is a(n unexplained) treatment that allows deep space expeditions to be undertaken more easily. Viewpoint character Anita, a film-maker whose mother was murdered in an anti-space-exploration terrorist attack when she was months old, is in love with Rachel, a recipient of the Kushnev drain who is about to set off into space. Rachel’s boyfriend, Serge, has moved on already.

The Science Fiction in this story is peripheral, being only the mentions of the Kushnev drain and space travel. Apart from that it’s … well, nothing much really.

At the level of the writing, an apparent change of viewpoint character in paragraph 1 (and 2) brought me to a shuddering stop in paragraph 3. Throughout, there is a high degree of info dumping. Tenses within the flashbacks are not precise enough making keeping track of things difficult. Anita’s grandmother features for no good plot reason that I could see. None of the characters displays much psychological depth.

As a result I found this story to be a bit incoherent. And nothing happens.

The Shipmaker by Aliette De Bodard

In a Chinese dominated future culture the shipmaker of the title is in charge of designing a spaceship – on principles that appear to relate to or derive from feng shui. The ship is to be piloted by a flesh and electronic hybrid Mind, gestated in the womb of a volunteer, the mechanics of which process are not laid out. The birth-mother turns up early and throws the delicately balanced design process into confusion. The culture is sketched efficiently and the characters’ problems are believable enough.

This is a proper story with forward movement and motivated characters but with an ending that is perhaps too glib.

The Things by Peter Watts

This story is told from the point of view of an alien, who has always heretofore been able to meld with and assimilate to other lifeforms, and is capable of warding off entropy. The creature’s offshoots have survived a crash and are trying to come to communion with the human members of an Antarctic expedition who come to realise its presence and resist it. Its gradual understanding of the singular nature of human existence, that we have brains – which it regards as a form of cancer – that we die; is well handled.

Again, this is a story, but due to its nature the humans it depicts are never more than names. The alien, however, is as real as you could wish. The last sentence is a little intense, though, not to say unsavoury.

Arrhythmia by Neil Williamson

In a Britain which is reminiscent of the early- to mid-20th century with concomitant working practices and social attitudes yet still has room for Top Of The Pops, Steve whiles away his days at the factory and yearns for the company of Sandra, who is sometimes assigned to work alongside him.

The factory runs to the tune of the Governor. Literally. The assembly line moves in time with piped music – as if Music While You Work was a control mechanism. In fact so suffused with music is this story it even begins with an anacrusis.

The key event is when Sandra gives Steve a copy of a vinyl single by the singer Arrythmia, whose iconoclastic attitude encourages rebelliousness.

As I almost said in my review of the anthology it came from, Music For Another World, this story could perhaps have been titled 1984: The Musical. Arrythmia doesn’t suffer too much by that comparison.

Orbit, 2010. 507p.

I tend to mistrust hype. This novel comes garlanded with adulatory quotes so it was going to have an uphill struggle to convince me. But it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards; which ought to be some indicator of quality.

The book is set almost entirely in the City of Divine Beings in Thailand, sometimes rendered as Bangkok, or Klong Thep, its harbour area. After an environmental fall where sea levels have risen – the city is surrounded by levees – the proudly independent Thais feel under siege from the technology of a resurgent West. Gengineered diseases, deliberately created or not, abound, people live in fear of their (re-)occurence. Among other animals and plants, cats have been swept away, their niche overtaken by almost invisible gengineered creations known as Cheshires. In this Thailand anything technological is frowned upon and subject to bribery for acceptance. Machines – even down to hand guns – are powered by mechanisms known as kink-springs or, for heavy work, (this being Thailand) megodont, genetically modified elephants. It is a reasonably convincing vision of a future rendered difficult and more threatening than even our troubled present.

The windup girl of the title is one of the less-than-human clones engineered by the Japanese to deal with a worker shortage and known as heechy keechy by the Thais. She has tell-tale jerky movements, an inbuilt inability to sweat except through her hands and is conditioned to please and obey (spot the fantasy here.) On his leaving Thailand her original owner sold her into a kind of slavery where she is subjected to regular sexual degradation in the floor show of an exceedingly seedy night club. (This aspect reminded me a little of one of the narrative strands in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.)

The novel is by no means flawless. We have four viewpoint characters – not all entirely convincing – one of whom is killed halfway through and whose narrative is taken over by a fifth who is ultimately the agent of change. Perhaps she should always have been the focus of the relevant strand.

While Bacigalupi may have intended our windup girl to feature more prominently, and she does kick off the dénouement, she is more or less a side line character and not involved in the resolution which, rather than being about something more interesting, degenerates into a shoot-em-up civil war. In the early chapters characters spend a lot of time talking to each other. Later chapters do however become shorter and snappier as the action takes over. Despite its setting and several Thai or Chinese main characters it feels a touch Western triumphalist in overall tone.

Hyped? Certainly.

Worth it? Perhaps not. I suppose Bacigalupi has been getting brownie points for his unusual (for a USian) adoption of exotic settings. His Thailand did appear well researched.

It’s up for the BSFA Award, but probably won’t get my vote, though I’ll read his next with interest.

Aside:- The edition I read sadly seemed to have been printed on poor quality paper with many blemishes and at least one outright hole obliterating several letters on both sides of the sheet – at least in the early pages. Another niggle was that the copy seemed to be reproduced directly from a US edition. Cheaper no doubt, but annoying since it was printed in St Ives. Bacigalupi adopts the spelling chile throughout for what is evidently the capsicum normally spelled chilli. Wikipedia states this is actually the modern Mexican usage. He also had a Thai saying “I’ll take that on advisement.” This is a phrase I’ve only ever heard on US TV programmes.

The latest BSFA mailing dropped onto my doormat today.

As well as the usual review magazine, Vector, which (unusually, since I’m normally slow at catching up with the latest thing) contains reviews of three books I’ve already read – Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief which I reviewed for Interzone, Ken MacLeod’s The Restoration Game and Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House – the envelope also spilled forth the A4 magazine of those short stories on the ballot for the BSFA Awards for 2010 and an A5 booklet published as a memorial to Robert Holdstock.

Apart from the book reviews this edition of Vector is a special Stephen Baxter issue.

Much of my reading for March is now more or less scheduled. As well as the short stories mentioned above, I have one more of the five novels shortlisted in the BSFA Award novel category in my to be read pile. I’ve just finished Paolo Bagicalupi’s The Windup Girl – review to come. For my thoughts on Ken MacLeod’s The Restoration Game and Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House see previous posts. Tricia Sullivan’s Lightborn awaits. Only Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City will escape my attention.

In addition Interzone has sent me Dominic Green’s Smallworld to review by the end of March. Busy, busy.

I’ve received another book to review from Interzone (whose webpage I note has links to the short stories on the BSFA Award ballot that they published.)

The review book is a short story collection. It’s called Engineering Infinity and is edited by Jonathan Strahan.

The review is due on January 31^st so I’ve my work cut out.

This year’s BSFA Awards shortlist has been published.

Five novels have made it this year (I’ve read one) and four short stories (ditto,) five non-fiction pieces and six art works.

I didn’t make the list with Osmotic Pressure (I doubt I was nominated by anyone) but
I’ll look forward to reading the shorts I’ve missed so far: I assume the BSFA will send them out in a booklet as in the past two years. They’ll all likely be available on the web soon I should think – if not already.

Osmotic Pressure is the story I had published recently. Along with everyone else in Postcripts 22/23 I’ve been reviewed. Since Postcripts 22/23 contains a lot of stories you have to scroll down a fair way to find the bit dealing with “Osmotic Pressure” which ends with, “It’s a good story in terms of character development.”

I sense a “but” after that sentence. I’m happy with it, however. Character development ought to happen in a story. I like to think it’s what I do with my fiction. A strength if you will.

I also recently received my latest mailing from the BSFA which contained their review magazine Vector, wherein was relayed the information that nominations for the BSFA Award are now open.

This is as good a place as any to remind people that Osmotic Pressure is eligible in the short story category.

There is apparently a new rule this year that you ought not to nominate yourself. Would people do such a thing? Tut, tut.

But….

Should any members of the BSFA feel so inclined they know what to do.

Nominations close on 14/1/11.

I’ll shortly start reading some eligible novels with the awards in mind.

The BSFA booklet containing the short stories and art works listed on the ballot form is handsomely produced. It’s dated 2009 because the awards were for stories published in that year. It’s a pity it didn’t arrive before the deadline but the BSFA has had trouble recently with printers and distributors for their magazines going bust on them. However, it still gave me the chance to catch up on the story which I had not been able to read online.

The Push by Dave Hutchinson

This is a traditional tale, traditionally told. No pyrotechnics, no fuss. Straightforward exposition, twist at the end. The Push of the title is a faster than light drive, improvements in which reduce the time dilation effect of its use but not enough for our narrator, Neil Hanson, not to appear much younger than his contemporaries who have done less travelling.

He has been called back to the planet Reith, which he helped colonise, because a problem has arisen with a local species, called rockers, which has suddenly developed sentience. These creatures also worship him as a god. This second factor is explained but the first, much the most interesting feature of the story to me, is unfortunately left hanging.

The characterisation is fine, you can believe these are real people – except for the newly sentient rockers, who are little more than props.

It’s not my favourite of the contenders but I would have placed it above several of them.

For my comments on the other stories on the ballot see here.