My 2015 Hugo and Nebula Award nominations

Update: See my related post on why you shouldn't straw man these nominations, or vote for these stories because I like them.

Below are the novels and stories I'll be nominating for this year's Hugo and Nebula Awards. Now, I'm well aware that many people don't like these award-promotion lists. In fact, last year someone went full rocket to the moon on me after I encouraged people to consider certain works for the Hugos.

If you feel like that, don't check out the novels and stories below. But if you are interested in the stories and authors I'm hoping will hit the awards this year, and the stories and authors who are influencing our genre right now, read on.

Best Novels

  • The Mirror Empire: Worldbreaker Saga 1 by Kameron Hurley. See my original review of the novel.
     
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. This is why we need translated fiction! This novel, which spans recent Chinese history as it revolves around a strange case of alien contact is one of the best hard science fiction novels I've read in years. Can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy.
     
  • Defenders by Will McIntosh. Just when I thought I'd read every type of alien invasion and military SF story out there, along comes Will McIntosh with something new.
     
  • Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor. Wow. That's all I could say after reading this novel, which explores what happens when first contact happens in Lagos, Nigeria. I've always loved Nnedi Okorafor's amazing ability to create true-life characters which both resonate with readers and stories and twist you into new directions — and Lagoon does this and far more in superb ways. Unfortunately, the novel is hard to find in the USA (I had to order a copy from the UK). The USA release is slated for later this year.
     
  • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. If I could, I'd nominate the entire Southern Reach series as one complete work. See my original review of the series.

Best Novellas

  • "We Are All Completely Fine" by Daryl Gregory. It's surprising more fictional genre characters don't enter therapy, what with all the supernatural horrors they continually experience. Daryl Gregory explores this topic in a unique and interesting manner.
     
  • "Where the Trains Turn" by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Tor.com. Another great example of why we need more translated fiction. I'd never even heard of Finnish author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen until I read this novella. Now I want to read more of his fiction. Warning: This novella will forever change how you view trains.
     
  • "The Regular" by Ken Liu, from the anthology Upgraded. Only Ken Liu could compel me to read a futuristic tech-based version of detective noir. Only Ken Liu could pull off such an amazing story.
     
  • "The Mothers of Voorhisville" by Mary Rickert, Tor.com. Motherhood will never be the same after this story by award-winning author Mary Rickert.
     
  • "Entanglement" by Vandana Singh, from the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. It's rare to read an optimistic hard science fiction story about climate change, but Vandana Singh creates one by showing how ordinary people fight to save their world. An all-too-rare fictional look at how humans work together in the face of disaster.

Best Novelettes

  • "Marielena" by Nina Allan, Interzone 254
    I've long been a fan of Nina Allan's beautiful stories, and "Marielena" must surely rank among her best. The story is the tale of a refugee in near-future Britain who is both haunted by a literally demon from his past who lives alongside the demons of the present and future.
     
  • "Sleep Walking Now and Then" by Richard Bowes, Tor.com. One of the tragedies of the SF/F genre is that so few people read Richard Bowes' touchingly disturbing stories. Well, now's your chance to change this damned trend with this lovely near-future theater story.
  • "Steppin' Razor" by Maurice Broaddus from Asimov's Science Fiction, Feb. 2014.
    This impressive steampunk novelette is a great introduction to Maurice's fiction. The story is set in an alternate-history Jamaica, where competing factions and beliefs compete for dominance and power.
     
  • "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson, F&SF July.Aug 2014. One of my frustrations with F&SF in recent years is that many of the stories seem to blur together in my reading mind. Not this strong story by Johnson in the issue guest edited by C.C. Finlay. This is also the only vampire story I've read in the last decade which I'm recommending to people. Warning: Don't read before you visit a certain tropical island.
     
  • "Wine" by Yoon Ha Lee, Clarkesworld. I'm always hesitant to say too much about one of Yoon Ha Lee's stories because part of the joy of reading them is in approaching them with fresh eyes. This "space opera but not a space opera" story is no exception. And if you haven't read her short story collection Conservation of Shadows, track it down today.

Best Short Stories

  • "The Breath of War" by Aliette de Bodard, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Another story which is pointing toward a revitalization of military SF, or perhaps more accurately an expanding of possibilities for a subgenre which until recently limited itself in unacceptable ways.
     
  • "When it Ends, He Catches Her" by Eugie Foster, Daily Science Fiction. This story is both touching and disturbing, and an beautiful elegy on life and death. I was blown away by this story when I read it and immediately knew it'd be on my year's best list, with this story ranking in my mind with Eugie's Nebula Award winning "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast." I only wish I'd been able to tell Eugie how much I loved this story before she passed away.
     
  • "Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points" by JY Yang. This is why we read science fiction and fantasy — to discover an exciting new story by a new author who opens our eyes to new realms of possibility and imagination.
     
  • "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion" by Caroline M. Yoachim. Another great story by one of my favorite short story writers. The title is both self-explanatory and totally unable to capture the depth of this story.
     
  • "Santos de Sampaguitas" by Alyssa Wong, Strange Horizons. Alyssa Wong had an amazing year as a short story writer. Her horror story "Scarecrow" (originally published in Black Static 42, reprinted in Tor.com) was on my award shortlist, as was "The Fisher Queen" from F&SF. But in the end this disturbing tale from Strange Horizons is what refused to leave me in peace. My prediction: Alyssa Wong is beginning an amazing journey as an author and everyone will be reading many more great stories from her in the years to come.

ConFusion is a genre-fun, name-dropping, people-blast of a convention

Last weekend I attended the Back to the Confusion convention in Detroit. This is the second time I've attended ConFusion as an author and it is, simply, one of the best regional conventions I've gone to. The authors and guests are approachable, the panels are interesting, and the convention itself is well-run.

One of the thrills of this year's ConFusion was meeting guest of honor Karen Lord and her signing two books for me. I also shared panel time with fascinating authors like Joe Abercrombie, who is a hilarious speaker and panelist; Susan Dennard, who has tons of insight into today's Young Adult fiction scene; Jay Ridler, who has the perfect name for a comic book writer; Diana Rowland, who I've been dying to meet ever since I heard about her White Trash Zombie series; Delilah S. Dawson, who makes even sparsely attended panels fun; Shanna Germain, who tries to "lay out all the options in life" with her stories, which is kick-ass; and Kameron Hurley, who contains so much insight and awesomeness that if you're not reading her fiction you're a fool.

Hmm. Lots of name-dropping going on here, Jason. Are you intentionally trying to be a kiss-A?

I also met lots of other interesting authors and people at ConFusion, including Whitney Ross, Patrick S. Tomlinson, Cinda Williams Chima, Michael R. Underwood, Rayna Scherer, Tom Doyle, Tracy Barnett, Michael J. DeLuca, and Justin Howe. I was also excited to briefly meet two book reviewers I have a lot of respect for and frequently read, Andrea Johnson and Justin Landon.

Wow. Will the name-dropping ever end? Are the names somehow possessing me?

Finally, I enjoyed seeing friends and authors and editors I already knew, like Saladin Ahmed, Scott Andrews, Bradley Beaulieu, Jim Hines, and many other I'm no-doubt blanking on at the moment.

Are you quite done with the names, Jason?

Yes, I believe I am.

All joking and name-dropping aside, ConFusion is a perfect example of what conventions are about — the people. We go to see our friends and to make new friends. We go to enjoy the community which arises from the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. We go because there's a thrill in knowing other people share your passions and outlook on life.

If you're wondering which conventions to attend next year, I suggest giving ConFusion a go. I know I'll be there.

The top 10 reasons to attend Back to the Confusion in Detroit

This weekend I'm attending the Back to the Confusion convention in Detroit. Here's my schedule of panels and appearances. If you see me, do say hello.

In honor of the convention, here are the top 10 reasons you should attend Confusion this weekend.


On hating elevator speeches

Because naturally your life or work or art or writing should be boiled down to 25 words of less, delivered in an elevator to a harried agent who wants you to send a shiver down their damn spine but doesn't want to actually interact with you or your life or your work or your art or your writing.

Because we should all be Tim Robbins in The Player. Because if you're not a player you're obviously being played.

Because life is a damn Shark Tank, and if you can't pitch your idea you might as well be churned through a spinning propeller and left as chum for the fishes of the world.

Because we need more cliches than truth in our lives. Because we crave summary instead of story. Because we embrace continual mindnumbing instead of mindfulness. Because comforting 25 word spiels are better than actual vision.

Because John Grisham said it so.

Because we think there's originality in cliched reworkings of what's been done before. Because we want a pitch to equal value. Because we want to pretend "Star Wars meets the Real Housewives of Hollywood" is a creative thought instead of a diagnosis of what ails society.

Because this is what people do to sell their product. Because we believe our lives are merely products to be sold. Because we can't see how we're limiting ourselves. Because deep down we hate elevator speeches but everyone told us to have one so we spent two weeks perfecting those 25 words.

Because your life is naturally reduced to little more than the parts which create you.

Because you must meditate and become one with the elevator speech.

Because an elevator speech beats doing anything useful with your life.

 

On forcing The Hobbit, or any story, to be what it's not

This weekend my family saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the third and final of Peter Jackson's Hobbit films. As I watched nearly three hours worth of action and fighting and more action and more fighting — and marveled at how CGI and poor directing can turn epic battles into nothing more than boredom — I realized what was wrong with the entire Hobbit trilogy.

The problem is Peter Jackson tried to force The Hobbit to become a story it is not.

If you've read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, you likely know what I mean. The novel is fun, lighthearted, fast-paced, and above all centered on Bilbo Baggins, a main character you can't help but love. You can still see flashes of this original story in the film trilogy — you'll be watching Martin Freeman as Bilbo and he'll say or do something which echos back to the original novel, where Bilbo is very much a fish out of water as he takes part in adventures no reasonable person would take part in. And Bilbo knows this. Which makes us love him all the more for going on the adventures and supporting his friends and struggling to do right in Middle Earth.

No, the problem with The Hobbit films isn't Martin Freeman's portrayal of Bilbo Baggins — the problem is that Peter Jackson wanted to force the entire story to be an extension of his Lord of the Rings film trilogy. So Jackson buried all the loveable parts of The Hobbit beneath non-stop action and irrelevant scenes.  The end result: instead of making a new Lord of the Rings series, he turned the Hobbit trilogy into a parody of the very films which made Jackson famous in the first place.

The funny thing is Jackson should have known this would destroy the story. After all, no one else than J. R. R. Tolkien himself learned this very lesson the hard way.

You see, The Hobbit was originally written as children's literature and became a classic in that genre. When Tolkien was asked to write a sequel, he eventually began work on what became The Lord of the Rings. But this trilogy was very different in tone and structure than his original novel.

To fit The Hobbit in with the new series, Tolkien made minor retroactive changes to the novel, such as turning Gollum into a much more disturbing character. For example, in The Hobbit's 1937 edition Gollum willingly gives Bilbo the ring after losing the riddle game. Gollum's anger at Bilbo, and his famed cry of "Thief, Thief, Thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!" was only added to later editions by Tolkien.

But Tolkien wasn't satisfied with these minor changes. By 1960, The Lord of the Rings had become as big a hit, if not bigger, than The Hobbit. So Tolkien sat down to rework his children's novel into something more like his new series.

As Jason Fisher, author of Tolkien and the Study of his Sources, explains:

"What Tolkien was doing in those abandoned 1960 revisions was attempting to bring The Hobbit in line with The Lord of the Rings in terms of its style and its tone and its character. I think that’s very much what Peter Jackson is probably doing. Judging by the material I’ve seen so far, it seems that Peter Jackson is attempting to create a prequel to The Lord of the Rings that will match The Lord of the Rings in terms of style and tone and character."

Fortunately for us, when Tolkien was only 30 pages into this major rewrite he showed the revision to people and everyone basically said it was an abomination and totally destroyed what they loved about the original novel. So he abandoned the urge to rework The Hobbit into something it was not.

It's a shame Peter Jackson didn't learn from Tolkien's experience. There are flashes of the original Hobbit in these films and in Martin Freeman's performance. I'd love to see an entire film based on such a true retelling of The Hobbit. (Note: If anyone wants to creatively "edit" the Hobbit trilogy into a single film which is honest to the original novel, I'd watch it in a heartbeat.)

Sadly, the Hobbit trilogy has been so financially successful that it won't matter to either Jackson or Hollywood that the films are now merely a parody of both Tolkien's original novel and The Lord of the Rings films. But if you care about stories, remember this: When a story works, the worst thing you can do is try to change the story into something it is not.