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.

Today I received the latest BSFA mailing through the post. As well as Vector and Focus it contained the expected booklet of stories shortlisted for this year’s BSFA Award.

Unfortunately this is ten or so days late as the voting was to be by 3/4/10 and the award was presented on Easter Day, as usual.

You can’t blame the BSFA for this, the time scale involved is really too short to produce and mail out the booklet before Easter. It’s a historical accdent that the awards are announced at Eastercon, too hallowed by tradition to change now. It’s only the second year the BSFA has attempted to avail its members of this opportunty to cast their eyes over the nominations and is to be applauded.

The booklet is a lovely glossy thing and I’ll let you know what I thought of Dave Hutchinson’s The Push once I read it.

The winners of this year’s BSFA Awards have been announced.

Non-Fiction
Nick Lowe, Mutant Popcorn.

Best Artwork
Stephen Martiniere, Cover of ‘Desolation Road’

Best Novel
China Mieville, ‘The City and the City’

Best Short Story
Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia, ‘The Beloved Time of Their Lives’

Congratulations to the winners.

Commiseratons to the others.

My favourite of the nominated short stories, Vishnu At The Cat Circus, has a chance of the Hugo for a novella.

THE CITY & YTIC EHT by China Miéville is on the Hugo list for Best Novel.

The ballot paper for this year’s awards is due to be completed before or at Eastercon. I’ll not be attending so I’ll need to email my votes. My thoughts on the fiction nominations that I have read are below.

Best Novel
Ark by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz) Not read by me.
Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin (Gollancz) Not read by me.
The City & The City by China Mieville (Macmillan) See my review here.
Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (Gollancz) Not read by me.

I bow to no-one in my admiration for Ursula Le Guin’s writing but I am slightly puzzled as to why Lavinia is on this list. As I understood it the book is a historical novel with no speculative content. If so, why it should be on the ballot for the British Science Fiction Association Awards?

Best Short Fiction

I was hoping to receive a booklet with all the short stories in it in my spring BSFA mailing, as we members did last year, but the package hasn’t arrived yet so I resorted to the internet to read most of the candidates. Links can be found on the page where the shortlists appear.

1. ”Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster
This one is very Science Fictional with a first person present tense narration. It depicts a society where people must choose a mask every morning. To be unmasked is a crime. The mask imprints them with a personality for the day which may mean a pleasurable or painful experience results. One day our unnamed narrator meets someone who unmasks both herself and him….
All the characters are unnamed; only the queen who set up and directs the system (and is clearly inspired by the bee genus) has a designation.
I might add this story has an unusual solution to the problems inherent in info dumping.
Interesting but violent.
It has echoes of last year’s winner Exhalation so may be one to watch.

2. The Push by Dave Hutchinson (Not on internet? Unread.)

3. Johnnie and Emmie-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith
The story is a reworking of Romeo and Juliet (or, given the gang background, West Side Story) with a scenario reminiscent of the car race from Grease or even The Phantom Menace. I was also reminded of Roger Zelazny’s Deadboy Donner And The Filstone Cup (1988.)
The language contains a strange cross-Atlantic mixture and other infelicities. Lakin-Smith uses “arse” not “ass” but “dove” not “dived” and surely could have found a better verb than “splurged” for an exhaust emission. She also unfortunately has a car “loose” momentum as if it can set that quantity free, plus there is a “span” count of one.
This is readable but inconsequential.

4. Vishnu at the Cat Circus by Ian McDonald. (Not on internet? Read from the collection Cyberabad Days.)
This reminded me more than a little of Midnight’s Children. But it’s a Midnight’s Children hyped up on steroids, overdosed on speed and LSD. Told in McDonald’s trade mark pyrotechnic prose it is the life story of Vishnu, a gene-enhanced Brahmin (see his novel River Of Gods,) who ages at half the pace of normal humans. It traces his arc from harbinger of the future to obsolescence and the getting of wisdom of sorts, all mixed up with a compelling depiction of a future India and replete with AIs, other universes and picotechnology. The Paul Daniels allusion and the reference to a Goodness Gracious Me sketch may be over the top for some but I was amused – and the second was justified by the subject matter.

5. The Beloved Time of Their Lives by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia
An unusual story of undying love transcending the boundaries of time.
Jonathan meets the love of his life, a physicist, in her old age. When she dies in his arms he resolves to investigate time and eventually uses the somewhat unorthodox medium of a McDonalds to travel back in time to meet her in her youth. The story is light hearted but contains a degree of amusing speculation. Unfortunately it is slightly marred by being told to us rather than unfolded for us.

6. The Assistant by Ian Whates
This story is about a chief cleaner whose company keeps their client’s building free from infestation by microbots and regenerating moulds and other Science Fictional whatnot. The latest attack weapons turn out to be powered by a strange source.
Conventionally told in the first person this is unusual SF in that it focuses on humble workers rather than on innovators or inventors or explorers.

To pick one of these is like choosing between sellotape, string, glue and Blu-Tack. They all hold stuff together but in different ways; for different purposes.
Vishnu at the Cat Circus is the most ambitious – but it has room to be. The others are shorts. Vishnu is a novella. This argues for the BSFA to split its short story category like the Hugos do. I believe the difficulty here, since the BSFA membership is relatively small, might be there may not be enough nominations for this to be practicable.

Well, here’s a noble thing. Unusual in these me! me! me! times.

No sooner has the ink dried on the BSFA ballot (we’re going to have to come up with some new metaphor for use with electronic media here) than Science Fiction Awards Watch gives us the news that Hal Duncan has withdrawn his nominated piece Ethics and Enthusiasm from the award ballot.

His reasons for this are that his blog essay is marginal to the field at best and others in the final ballot are more central and therefore more deserving of the award.

What a refreshing stance.

Good on you, big man!

Thanks to Jim Steel – see my sidebar – for this news and the link.

The BSFA Awards shortlist for 2010 has been published.

There are links to four of the short stories and to all the artworks plus various of the non fiction pieces on the ballot.

I’ll not get all the novels read and probably not all the short stories either unless the BSFA does a booklet of them like it did last year.

Ah, well.

The latest BSFA mailing dropped through my letter box yesterday. It’s been a while. I thought they’d forgotten about me.

No Focus but the Vector is a J. G. Ballard special.

Plus there was a freebie book, Winter Song, by Colin Harvey, published by the relatively new SF imprint Angry Robot. Presumably they think the PR accruing from this will outweigh any possible loss of sales.

Or maybe it’s just an attempt to get it on the BSFA Award Ballot….

Cynical? Moi?

The BSFA awards have been voted on and are listed at Science Fiction Awards Watch.

Ted Chiang’s Exhalation won best short story.

It wasn’t my favourite among the nominees.

Still, congratulations to him and to the other winners (and commiserations to the non-winners.)

Evidence of Love In A Case Of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account by M Rickert.

Evidence Of Love… is a cautionary tale set in a “Holy Time” in what is (apparently) a theocracy where regular executions take place. As ritualistic and theatrical spectator events.

The executions are of women who under a previous regime had an abortion and are now retrospectively being subjected to the ultimate sanction for their offence. This is despite the fact that some of them have subsequently borne children. These children are given lockets containing locks of their executed mother’s hair as mementos. Display of these has become almost a fashion statement.

Some women have sought to avoid punishment, have disappeared and are said to be forming a guerrilla army, though we are never actually shown any of them.

Our narrator is the daughter of one such absentee and a father who has been left to bring her up and who tries to protect her from knowledge of her mother’s transgressions. However, she knows her prospects of advancement/marriage are blighted as a result of her maternal inheritance. Paradoxically (but this is a theocracy) they would be enhanced if her mother were to be found and executed.

In the context of the other three short listed works the focus on the narrator’s experience here is refreshing even if the premise of the story falls down as soon as immersion in its scenario ends.

Theocracies in SF are relatively familiar – The Handmaid’s Tale is the most obvious example – but they too often feel like straw men and the settings fail to convince. Even allowing for poetic licence I doubt we could get from abortion being tolerated to the society shown in Evidence in the sort of short order the story indicates. I assume the story will have more resonance in a North American or Middle Eastern context but it is probable this particular idea would never have been conceived by a British author.

No typos in this one but we did get sprung instead of sprang and broke for broken which may be due to the narrative voice (and American usage) but still grated with me.

However, if one of the purposes of SF (if it has any) is to warn or advise, then this story does succeed admirably. Plus, Americanisms notwithstanding, it is well written. Tonally, it is close to that of some of my own short works so it is not surprising I found this the most pleasing of the four in contention. Its emphasis on the human helped.

Are these the best four SF stories of 2008?

I have no idea.

But I do wonder what this selection says about those who nominated them. Taken as a four they do seem to bespeak a preference for idea over human experiences and that’s not really where I’m at my happiest.

Little Lost Robot by Paul McAuley

Paul McAuley is an example of that rare beast, a Science Fiction writer who has experience of scientific research. He trained as a biologist but his SF has not confined itself to biological influences, and has explored most aspects of the genre.

Here, a galaxy travelling robotic killing machine is ravaging the planets and suns of its creator’s enemies, seeking out life and civilisations, boldly destroying where others have gone before.

It does its job too well and, despite increasing difficulties in subduing their ever more frantic efforts to frustrate it and not without suffering from their depredations itself, runs out of enemies.

Its attention turns to a faint sign of life from way across the galaxy. A sign that is in some way haunting and familiar…. I guessed the rest.

Another cold story, another lacking in engagement. Another told, rather than showing us. I’m beginning to detect a pattern.