Hugo 2009 scorecard

If you care about the Hugos, you already know that  winners have been announced. All I know is that it looks like neither my votes nor my predictions went very far.

Hugo 2009 roundup

Well, I’ve read all of the Hugo nominees that I’m going to. I managed the first chapter of  Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross, and kept putting off returning to it. The perky tone of Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi is exactly the kind of YA that punts me right out. Then I ran out of [...]

True Names

Filled with computronium, parity checkers, references to running hot or slow, and sockpuppets, “True Names“, by Cory Doctorow & Benjamin Rosenbaum is a breakneck story about the struggles of numerous instances of personalities fighting in various levels of reality over love, power, and–what else?–suzeranity over the universe. Beebe is a chaotic civilization of personalities. They [...]

The Tear

Ian McDonald makes difficult reading. I had to machete my way through Brasyl and it took me three tries to read “The Tear.” It’s a dense story, filled interesting ideas and  beautiful language on a grand scale. There’s so many peoples and places and worlds and universes, it’s just too much to take in at [...]

Truth

I was totally suckered me in by the sense of mystery in Robert Reed’s  “Truth“. The mystery is at first embodied in a prisoner the narrator is watching in preparation for interrogating him. Ramiro, if that’s his real name, is endlessly intriguing: his effortless smiles, his persistent attempts to engage his guards in conversation, and [...]

The Erdmann Nexus

“The Erdmann Nexus,” by Nancy Kress has the trademark detailed descriptions and well-drawn characters, but I have a problem with its One Impossible Thing. The story opens with a slightly confusing passage about a spaceship that’s not the spaceship Dr. Erdmann imagines it to be. Then we actually meet Dr. Henry Erdmann, a physicist retired [...]

The Gambler

In “The Gambler,” by Paolo Balcigulpi, Ong is a Laotian who fled a despotic regime. His father was an idealist who believed in Thoreau,  civil disobedience,  and publishing broadsheets denouncing Laotian politics. His mother was a realist who escaped with Ong after his father was arrested. Now Ong is in LA, working for
Milestone Media—a combination [...]

Article of Faith

If I believed in a god I would swear to him/her/them that I’ve read “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick before. A priest has a robot servant who wants to understand god. The robot asks him questions and takes his answers to heart. The robot desperately wants to believe. It wants to know if it [...]

Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders

One thing’s for sure about “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick; the title lets you know right away that it’s a magic shop story. And if you like sentimental magic shop stories, this one delivers.

Exhalation

Where “Evil Robot Monkey” touched my heart, “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang engaged my brain. No, wait. It stole my brain and turned it inside out in one long thought experiment.  The reading on Escape Pod perfectly matches the dry tone of the narration. Opening with the jarring image of exchanging lungs for freshly charged ones [...]