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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   16441 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I'm shocked that you had never heard of the Hugos before Jemesin. For me it was Ender's Game, which had the Hugo Winner sticker plastered all over it. That plus Speaker for the Dead were my introductions to the award, but then I looked at the winners, and found many, many great books.

The year prior to Card's back-to-back, Gibson won with Neuromancer.

The 70s were stunning with, in order starting from 1970, The Left Hand of Darkness, Ringworld, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (ignore this one), The Gods Themselves, Rendezvous with Rama, The Dispossessed, and The Forever War. The 60s were great, too:

1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz

1962 Stranger in a Strange Land

1963 The Man in the High Castle

1966 Dune

1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

1968 Lord of Light

The good books lasted through the 90s, with Hyperion, A Fire Upon the Deep, Green Mars / Blue Mars, Forever Peace, and A Deepness in the Sky. It was this last one, in 2000, that marks what I consider to be the end of the predictive power of the award. In 2001 Harry Potter won, and the award had some hits in the years following (American Gods in 2002, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 2004, Rainbows End in 2007), it never really was the same, and finally died in 2013. Redshirts was about two-thirds of a good book, and had no business winning. 2014 is Leckie's book, which beat Wheel of Time. 2015 was when Cixin Liu won because his was the only book that wasn't on the original Rapid Puppy slate. Then comes three years of Jemesin, and since then we've had basically nothing but white male transsexuals and colored females even nominated, with predictable outcomes.

Blue Mars

Blue Mars won a Hugo? How? Did they have an off-by-one error and mean to award Red/Green Mars? (Looks like Red Mars was up against A Fire Upon the Deep, so I see how it lost) ... glancing at the nominations list, yeah, okay, I guess that was a pretty weak year. Only other book I've read there is Holy Fire and I thought it was actually a good book unlike Blue Mars but I can see how it lost to the third in a series with two good entries already.

I liked Blue Mars, and while Green Mars won, Red Mars didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a capstone or make-up award.

I get what you are saying about "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" (great premise let down by lack of 'now where do I go?' plot development and poor execution) but Philip José Farmer has always been hit-or-miss, and you will either really like the Riverworld series or be mildly disappointed.

I've had a copy of Riverworld sitting on my shelf for years, worth a shot? Hearing about the later books sorta put me off trying.

With the caveat that it's 70s SF and so of its time. But it's a fantastic premise: every single human being that has ever lived (up to a certain date) has been resurrected on an alien planet beside a seemingly endless river. Who did this? How? What is the intention behind it? And by "every single human being", Farmer really means that - from Neanderthals to Jesus and Buddha. Villains and heroes both, all starting afresh with (at first) no advantages at all.

The first book sets up questions that later books don't really answer adequately, but the first one at least is worth a go. You'll know soon into it if it's for you or not.

I must confess, I've never read it. Rama and Forever War were my two favorite from the 70s.

There's not much truly recent that I can recommend. Kim Stanley Robinson is still publishing new works like 2312. Jim Butcher has been nominated for the Hugo a couple of times, including for Skin Game, but I'm not going to call that representative of golden age sci-fi. Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time is six years old.

I actually loved To Your Scattered Bodies Go lol. It's so insane.

The Gods Themselves

I had no idea this won! I love this book, one of the little gems I found in a secondhand store years ago. Had no idea it was so popular. That list in general is damn impressive.

Seems like you've been tracking it a lot longer than I have, though I've stumbled on a bunch of those. Not sure how I hadn't looked into the Hugo earlier. I had heard it mentioned here and there but never really took a look at the winners.

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