There is a long-standing debate about how important science is to science fiction. Basically, the argument goes: If your technology is indistinguishable from magic — if it's all midi-chlorians and red matter that serve the plot but that are no more realistic than Polyjuice Potions or palantírs — then you're not really writing science fiction at all, just fantasy dressed up in lasers and robots.

And I tend to agree with that sentiment, at least when I've got my nitpicky copy editor green eyeshade on and I'm trying to be vewy, vewy caweful with my words. When I don't have the eyeshade on, of course — which is usually, since wearing it interferes with my beer helmet — I'm much less exacting and willing to welcome everyone from the X-Men to the Ghostbusters to the party, and probably even Taylor Lautner, because I'm hoping he'll bring his girlfriend. I guess I've always thought that was the best way to handle the problem: to admit that, yes, technically speaking, "science fiction" has a very specific meaning, and much of what we apply the term to doesn't actually meet that meaning's criteria; but also to acknowledge that for practical purposes, a lot of us who like stories about terraforming Mars like stories about dragons, too.

A Case of Conscience got me thinking about this some more, because this book is just packed with science, a lot of it the real kind. It runs the whole gamut of disciplines, from biology to geology to chemistry to physics to astronomy, and nearly all the crucial plot points hang on one of those. You've got:

• an alien planet that's valuable to Earthlings because of its massive reserves of lithium and tritium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons;
• its native species, which are suspected of being creatures of Satan by a Jesuit priest because even though they're peaceful and good-natured, their science fundamentally doesn't add up;
• and a climax that hinges on a couple of technological breakdowns.

And at first, I was going to suggest that the story could be told just as easily without any such level of veracity at all — that you could substitute dilithium or thiotimoline for the real elements, briefly explain how they work, etc., etc., and provide the reader with an entertainment that was more or less as thought-provoking as the real book is. Because despite all the science in A Case of Conscience, it's also very clearly an allegory, a piece of literature with a message, and the bulk of its second half reads like a cross between V and K-PAX and Network. So, I wondered, why all the scientific accuracy? Just for purposes of pedantry? The same way some of us* have to imagine our wives dead of a tragic** illness before we fantasize about delivering a pizza to Taylor Lautner's girlfriend?

But the more I thought about it, and especially the second and third plot points mentioned above, the more I realized that no, you couldn't tell this story without the science. At least not without doing ten times more work to concoct something a hundred times less believable.

James Blish not only trained as a scientist, but also worked as a science editor for a major corporation until he could earn enough of a livelihood from his fiction. And although a career background in science is certainly something a lot of SF writers have possessed, I have to say I'm especially impressed with how he managed to weave so many disparate aspects of it into a very neatly packaged story — one that takes its characters off into all different directions and still manages to resolve every thread at the end — in A Case of Conscience. This was an odd little book, one I'm not sure I liked, exactly, for the reasons I tend to like books — the characters, to a one, are pretty frickin' annoying, and a bit too visibly robotic in the service of the plot — but one that I suspect will linger with me much, much longer than any of the Hugo winners that came before it.

*Some of you, I mean, not me.

**Also painless.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other weekend. In the next installment: Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein, from 1960.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

Rules. Rules are what I keep coming back to as I think about this book, which won the Hugo in 1958. Is it fair to say that rules are more essential to science fiction than they are to other genres?

I mean, they're essential to any story, outside of outlandish, arty, experimental stuff (and even then, really). But you don't see romance fans or western fans or plain old regular fiction fans getting up in arms over whether the Millennium Falcon can do such-and-such, or whether zombies could really beat Galactus. You don't find Time Lords restricted to twelve regenerations in other genres, or pets you can't feed after midnight, or concerns about "canon." And I suppose that makes sense — rules are what science fact is about, too, and surely some of the same pleasure centers light up whether you're recalling the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition or how a real quark works.

Anyway, rules are what The Big Time lives and dies by. They're as crucial to its success as they are to its failure to have become something larger.

The book's first overarching success comes from circumventing the rules. (And isn't their circumventableness, like, the best part of rules? Nearly every one of Asimov's robot stories is predicated on that notion, anyway.) Leiber, the son of thespians, wrote The Big Time less as a novel per se and more as a play shaped like a novel. Almost all the action takes place in one room that you instinctively recognize as being about the size of a stage, and characters' entrances, exits, and movements across it are noticeably and elegantly choreographed. Plus, two of them speak in blank verse.

And (as io9 commenter Braak serendipitously pointed out this week) plays are subject to less rigorous standards of verisimilitude than, say, novels. So Leiber can get away with things — like skimpy character development — that he might not otherwise.

Most notably, for example, he has a couple who fall in love within minutes of meeting (technically, there's kind of a stalker-y thing going on there, but still, the romance is mutual and quick), and then the male half of it deciding rather abruptly to stage a revolution. It's all very sudden, and it should be jarring, but you automatically visualize it happening in front of you, as if you were in the audience, and you buy it.

Even the subject matter fits the theatrical style, involving as it does a small group of people wrestling with enormous, timeless questions. And they're literally timeless questions here: The cast are soldiers and support personnel fighting in the Change War, a conflict between two factions from the far future, the Spiders and the Snakes. The Spiders and Snakes muster their forces by pulling average people, from as far as a million years in the past and a million years in the future, out of their lives just before they die, bringing them into what's called the Change World, the zone beyond normal time and space. Then they send the recruits to different eras and places to conduct military actions, to change history.

There are, as you can imagine, a lot of rules about how it all works. The best is the law of the Conservation of Reality, which states that "when the past is changed, the future changes barely enough to adjust." It just feels true. Others get a little more complicated, and chief among Leiber's achievements is that he explains them clearly enough in a book that's only about 120 pages long, and has room left over to work them first into a mystery (that's the other genre of literature that thrives on rules) with a satisfying solution and second into a story that reaches a fairly profound conclusion.

He doesn't sacrifice the human element for artifice, either. Like the previous Hugo winner, The Big Time tells its story in the first person from the eyes of an entertainer — although rather than an actor, Greta Forzane is an escort whose job is to comfort and pleasure soldiers. I'm not sure you ever really get to know her — she's guarded, even inside her own head — but you do believe she's real, no qualification.

Given all of this (I mean, time travelers fighting an interplanetary war — and speaking in blank verse! — right?), the book seems like obvious fodder for the pop-culture machine. It's not, though, despite moments when the notion of warriors locked in an invisible struggle to determine the fate of humanity, governed by forces beyond their ken, may remind you of, like, Neo and Morpheus and Trinity or some other epic tale. It did me, anyway.

No, though there are sizable aspects to it, The Big Time is really a pretty small book. (And I mean that in a good way.) And frankly, Leiber's system of time travel probably is too complex to translate to the mainstream. But that's OK. This is still a haunting, multilayered, finely crafted work.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other weekend. In the next installment: A Case of Conscience, by James Blish, from 1959.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

A quick recap, for those of you just joining us: The first Hugo winner, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, was, in my humble opinion, possessed of some interesting ideas whose execution didn't do anything to elevate science fiction as a genre. The second, They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, has more merit than it probably gets credit for — but that's not saying much.

But now — now we come to number three. And fittingly, one of SF's Big Three is at the helm this time, and it really is a charm.

I'm gushing. I am, actually, mildly giddy. It's because, I'm a mite abashed to admit, until I picked up Double Star last week, I hadn't read any R.A.H. in longer than I can recall.

And since I can't say too much about the book itself without spoiling it — it's not a complicated story, and to summarize the plot in even the bare-bonesiest way might ruin the action for those new to it, as I was (it will be more fun if you don't even read the flap copy, I promise) — let me first talk about the author, and why, for all the criticisms typically leveled against him, he deserves his place of primacy in the canon.

For starters, that voice. Now, assuredly, by the time you get to the end of his oeuvre, especially in the case of anything written in the first person, like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Heinlein's style and tone and general sensibility can seem more like an impediment than an asset — the problem being that every one of his protagonists sounds exactly the same. The journeyman Heinlein fan can pick up a single page torn from any piece of his fiction, whether they've read it before or not, and recognize it as such within seconds.

But there's also something very comforting about that. Some io9ers will remember that I am an inordinately die-hard U2 fan. I'm not about to make any serious comparison between them and Heinlein, except to say that slipping into Double Star, rediscovering him after a few years away, reminded me of the sensation I get when I go back to my favorite band: Oh, yes — I remember this. Even when it's a story I haven't read or a song I've never heard, the general feeling of familiarity is there, and when you don't overdose on it, it's awful pleasant.

Heinlein's voice, too, is deeply accessible. And I think that's really important for a Hugo winner. To me, SF's other big award, the Nebula, decided on by the genre's writers and not just its fans, has always struck me as slightly less concerned about approachability. (Slightly — there's a lot of crossover between the two. But still: Samuel Delany's and Gene Wolfe's novels ain't won no Hugos.) Whereas when I pick up a paperback with "Hugo" on the cover, I expect a text that will exercise my brain but never strain it.

Double Star does that. And although it's not technically one of Heinlein's "juveniles," it's hard to imagine it didn't draw many of their readers — which, given its pre-civil-rights-era publication date and not at all subtle anti-racism theme, can only have been a good thing. And it's on this point that, to me, he truly earned his spot in the pantheon.

He is not an author frequently associated with Star Trek. People think of Harlan Ellison, or Isaac Asimov, or even James Blish. But honestly, I can't think of a more well-known SF writer than Heinlein who consistently beat the drum for those values for which the show (and much of the SF I love best) is famous: Equality among not just humanity, but among all species. Justice and fair treatment of others. Confidence in science and reason, but never at the expense of our emotional capacities. An unwavering belief that, though eminently fallible, Homo sapiens has within itself the ability to attain untold heights.

That's not to say he's perfect in this regard. Double Star is a product of its time and features all of one female character. And we don't hear too much from her, but she's more or less the same female character he usually wrote.* Still, he improved on that front as the years went on. (While no Beverly Crusher, a late-era Heinlein heroine is a hell of a lot hardier than Lt. Uhura ever has been.)

In other ways, too, Double Star is no masterpiece. I called out The Demolished Man for a predictable end reveal, and the one here is even easier to guess at. However, I'll say that the final passage, written from a different perspective, time-wise (and even character-wise), than the rest of the book, compensates for it, and then some. It's not anything groundbreaking, but it's elegantly, even movingly executed, and a rather neat trick for Heinlein, relying as it does on as an awareness of that persistent, instantly recognizable voice that pervades everything leading up to it.

Heinlein would go on to earn three more Hugos for his novels, tying him for the most with — and maybe this is kinda fitting too, given the notes above about women — Lois McMaster Bujold. Double Star is probably the least known of his four winners, but it's nonetheless where the award becomes worth paying attention to.

*In Heinlein's defense, I will say that an SF editor once told me that same female character he always wrote was essentially a not-that-idealized version of his wife, Virginia, who apparently was as pretty and brainy and horny and able to shoot a gun as we're told. Also, again, he basically wrote the same male character over and over again, too, so.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other weekend. In the next installment: The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber, from 1958.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

The Wikipedia entry for the book says* that They'd Rather Be Right, also published as The Forever Machine, "has often been considered the worst novel ever to win a Hugo." So it was with muted enthusiasm that I logged into Amazon and ordered a used copy. (The book is no longer being printed, as best I can tell, although I see it's available for the Kindle.) I confess, too, that I didn't dive right in when the mailperson delivered it a few days later.

As it turned out, once I actually started reading, I was pleasantly surprised. This should come as no shock — first, my expectations were low, and second, the Wiki entry doesn't even have a citation for its claim; the only external link from it is to this review by Dave Langford (himself a Hugo winner in several categories), although the review is indeed unequivocally negative.

I'll certainly agree with Langford that Clifton and Riley do more telling than showing in this novel, and I'm of the opinion too that this is generally a bad thing. And I'll even buy that They'd Rather Be Right is "an implausible award-winner," as he puts it. And yet...

The story is about three men on the run — two professors and a grad student. They're in hiding in San Francisco because they've built a supercomputer into which only pure facts — no assumptions, no theories — have been programmed. The supercomputer, Bossy, isn't quite an artificial intelligence, because she never demonstrates any individual initiative, but she can tell right from wrong, and in the mildly dystopic future setting of the book, where the government uses "opinion control" to keep the public in line, she's seen as a threat to humanity's place of primacy. Or something. It's not entirely clear what the public's initial problem is with Bossy, and that lack of detail is the sort of problem that plagues the story.

The public is right to be concerned, though. What Bossy is, though it's never mentioned by name (probably because Vernor Vinge wasn't even a teenager at the time), is the Singularity. Is she the first Singularity in SF? I don't know. She's definitely the first in a Hugo-winning novel.

What Bossy can do is, through "psychosomatic therapy," take a normal person and erase years of accumulated stress from their cells, essentially resetting the person, freeing them from a lifetime of frustrations and problems stemming from the unfounded assumptions that start afflicting everyone shortly after birth — and making them more or less permanently young. The catch is that the patient has to be willing to give up all the biases and prejudices, about themselves and others, that have been pounded into them.

Yeah, it's a little silly, but far from the silliest idea in SF. And it's a metaphor, and Clifton and Riley's telling is such that you can suspend your disbelief without much trouble. (Certainly, their recognition that you have to want to change for psychotherapy to work rings truer than the Freudian bits in their Hugo predecessor.) And although Dave Langford is arguably right in his review that the big idea here is "lamentably undeveloped," on the other hand, there are a lot of different ways to write a good book. They'd Rather Be Right does have a lot — like, a lot — of those sort of pontificatory passages about How Dumb People Are and How Smart We Could Be. And I can certainly empathize with readers who hate that shit. At the same time, plenty of great authors — Heinlein, Asimov, Card, Simmons, Stephenson, and innumerable others – have done it with frequency, and it can be very satisfying.**

And in They'd Rather Be Right's case, it might even be healthy, because the one core idea the book focuses on — again and again — is How Little We Know, and how reflexively we adopt and cling to what we think we know as truth. Proponents of hard science fiction lament the dearth of scientific accuracy in the genre, but far more important to me than whether a fictional technology is possible is driving home an idea that is the very foundation of science: that we only know what we know, and that what we know could change at any moment, subject to additional data. Science's job is not to preclude.

Rather does some other things well, too: Its handling of telepathy rings utterly true; and if you've read as much Marshall McLuhan as I have, you may find its notion of multi-valued facts, as well as its calling-out of the specialist mind-set, eerily prescient. And the workout at the end of the book — tycoon Howard Kennedy's solution to the Bossy problem — isn't stunningly original, but Slashdot types should appreciate it. (The final chapter, however, could be cut completely and the story would be better for it.)

Anyway, I can see how it was an implausible award-winner. But still, it reminded me, several times over, not to assume anything I don't actually know (like how good a book I haven't read is), and it did so in a way that'll stick. I'm not sure I'd run out and hunt down a hard copy if I were you, but think about getting it if you've got a Kindle.

*At least, as of this writing. Wikipedia changes, you know.

**The tone and style of They'd Rather Be Right are especially reminiscent of another classic work of science fiction that usually doesn't get regarded as such: Atlas Shrugged. Clifton and Riley aren't as compelling of novelists as Ayn Rand, but their philosophy holds up a lot better under scrutiny; one could do worse than administer their book as an antidote to hers.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other Sunday. In the next installment, on November 15: Double Star, by Robert Heinlein, from 1956.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

I started this project because a secret dream of mine has been to write a Hugo Award–winning book. This is not, at present, a particularly realistic dream, as I have yet to write even a non-Hugo Award–winning book. But I'm working on it, and as I stumble through that process, I thought I might glean something useful from those who've succeeded where I would like to.

So then, where it all began: The Demolished Man, which received its honors in 1953 at the 11th Worldcon, in Philadelphia.* Go ahead, get your bleach-blond Wesley Snipes and "Now all restaurants are Taco Bell" jokes out of the way in the comments now. I'll wait.

This is a mystery novel, and it centers around a murder, but it's not a murder mystery, because we know from nearly the start who the killer is — wealthy businessman Ben Reich — and follow him as he commits the crime. The mystery is Reich's underlying motivation, and I'll tell you right now that the reveal — to my modern-day eyes, and probably to yours — is a disappointment. The tension leading up to that disappointment comes from the fact that in this version of 22nd-century Earth, a good chunk of the population is telepathic, and as a result, homicide doesn't generally happen anymore. There's also some romance, kind of. (It's creepy.)

I don't want to say much more; if you're curious, you should read the book. Instead, I should share this theory of mine with you right now, which ripened as I read The Demolished Man, because it will inevitably shade at least the next few postings in this series. I'll try to correct for it, but I'd appreciate your help, readers, if at any point you think I'm giving too much credence to my preconceived prejudices.

Here's the theory: Science fiction was ghettoized for a long time because at first, it deserved to be.

The long-standing complaint is that SF isn't taken seriously as "real" literature or art because it's about robots and spaceships and ESP and the like, which are written off as childish subjects. My sense is that this complaint extends back to SF literature's so-called golden days.**

But my admittedly limited experience with a lot of older SF books leaves me unconvinced that many of them should be taken seriously as literature. I don't mean this in a Sturgeon's law kind of way, where the vast majority of anything is bound to be mediocre or worse. I mean that much of the well-regarded older SF I've read is, by basic storytelling standards, cripplingly underdeveloped.

Take, for instance, The Demolished Man's good guy, a telepathic cop named Lincoln Powell. Yes, he speaks in Cary Grant–like diction — "A little mercy for your host, please. I'll jump in my tracks, if we keep on weaving this mish-mash" — but that's forgivable, because who in 1950s SF doesn't?

What's bizarre is that Bester gives Powell a foible — a weird one, especially for a cop: Occasionally, Lincoln is a compulsive liar. Why is that bizarre? Because despite popping up several times throughout the story, it has not a whit of bearing on any of the action. It's as if Bester's editor told him, "Round the guy out! Make him a little interesting!" But qualities with no bearing on the narrative aren't interesting — they're just setups for payoffs that never take place.

There are more issues, including yet another shoddy reveal, having to do with the book's title, which maybe seemed crafty back in the day, but which is telegraphed from so early on; the deus ex machina-type power Powell uses to save the day; and the fundamental premise that an honor code would keep a minority psychic society from trying to take over the world. This is stuff it would be hard to swallow even half a century ago — and no, we can't let the book off the hook because of the era: The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer in 1953, might be boring, but it doesn't strain credulity this way.

The Demolished Man does do some interesting things. It might be the first instance where non-letter characters were used in names — Bester's Wyg& and @kins are early precursors to William Gibson's 3Jane and Neal Stephenson's Da5id. And his unsatisfyingly brief take on telepathic society could have been the foundation for something much more provocative. He also deserves credit for writing characters here who mostly don't come straight out of Central Casting.

But those positives don't outweigh the overall averageness of the first Hugo winner. And so I'm looking forward to watching its successors struggle up and into respectability.

*Hugos were awarded for 1946, 1951, and 1954, but they were retroactively awarded, so we will not be considering those winners.

**If it doesn't — if most of the writers back then thought they were producing largely throwaway mush — please, really, correct me.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other Sunday. In the next installment: They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, from 1955.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

Probably the biggest surprise was Best Novel winner, Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, which defeated Neal Stephenson'sAnathem, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, Charles Stross' Saturn's Children and John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale. Nancy Kress also professed to be surprised that her novella "The Edrmann Nexus" won the Best Novella award, but nobody else seemed that startled. The most moving speech of the night was probably David Anthony Durham, who won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. He talked about how he had achieved some success as a literary writer, but felt that he needed to be true to science fiction, since the genre had gotten him through some hard times and had made him want to be a writer in the first place.

Here's the official list of winners, from the Hugo site, and our gallery (including Neil Gaiman licking his Hugo rocket!) is below:

Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Best Novella: "The Erdmann Nexus", Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
Best Novelette: "Shoggoths in Bloom", Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)
Best Short Story: "Exhalation", Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
Best Related Book: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008, John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)
Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Best Editor Short Form: Ellen Datlow
Best Editor Long Form: David G. Hartwell
Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
Best Semiprozine: Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
Best Fan Writer: Cheryl Morgan
Best Fanzine: Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
And the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): David Anthony Durham

The Hugos, of course, are the fan-voted awards, and anybody who attended last year's WorldCon or plans to attend this year's gets to vote. That makes them the most democratic of all the major awards, although actual numbers of voters still tend to be quite small.

And Roberts argues that the voice of fandom, through the Hugo Awards, has chosen to represent the genre poorly. With the possible exception of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, the six books chosen for the Hugo Awards shortlist are utterly unremarkable, says Roberts. He calls Scalzi's Zoe's Tale "mediocre but pleasant," Gaiman's The Graveyard Book "twee" and "cosy," Stross' Saturn's Children "as scattershot a novel as any Stross has written," and Doctorow's Little Brother "stylistically dull." As for Anathem, it's "enormous and deranged and so boring it goes through boring into some strange condition on the far side."

Adds Roberts:

Widely publicised shortlists of mediocre art are a bad thing. What do these lists say about SF to the multitude in the world-to the people who don't know any better? It says that SF is old-fashioned, an aesthetically, stylistically and formally small-c conservative thing. It says that SF fans do not like works that are too challenging, or unnerving; that they prefer to stay inside their comfort zone.

As for the fact that the novel shortlist is so dominated by young adult fiction, Roberts quotes Abigail Nussbaum who says that's not the real problem:

Though it might be tempting to conclude that the shoddy state of this year's shortlist is the result of the infantilization of the genre, to my mind the problem isn't that YA books are being nominated, but that the wrong YA books have been. How much stronger would this year's best novel shortlist have been if Terry Pratchett's Nation, Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, or even Allegra Goodman's The Other Side of the Island had been on it? (This is not even to mention books that have received a great deal of critical attention, but which I haven't yet read myself, such as Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go, Kristin Cashore's Graceling, or Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.)

But once you unpack Roberts' statements further, you realize that he's actually making a larger argument about what a good novel is, and what science fiction novels should do. It's not just that he didn't like the shortlist, it's that those books didn't do what he wanted them to. Writes Roberts:

[T]he very heart's-blood of literature is to draw people out of their comfort zone; to challenge and stimulate them, to wake and shake them; to present them with the new, and the unnerving, and the mind-blowing. And if this true of literature, it is doubly or trebly true of science fiction. For what is the point of SF if not to articulate the new, the wondrous, the mindblowing and the strange?...

Fandom, look at the 2009 Clarke novel shortlist. Do you know why that list is better than yours? It's not that its every novel is a masterpiece-far from it (although it seems to me regretable that you couldn't you vote books as good as The Quiet War, House of Sons or Song of Time onto your shortlist.) But some of the books on that list fail, no question. Martin Martin's on the Other Side, for instance, is a mediocre novel. But (and this is the crucial thing) it's a mediocre novel trying to do something a little new with the form of the novel. It's an experiment in voice and tone, and ambitious in its way. The novels on the Hugo shortlist-except Anathem, as I mentioned-try nothing new: they are all old-fashioned: formally, stylistically and conceptually unadventurous.

And that's probably the crux of it, I think — do we want awards like the Hugos to celebrate works that tell a good story, or do we want to uplift works that are experimental and "do something a little new with the form of the novel"? I don't think it's actually true that mainstream literary fiction values strangeness or formal experimentation, outside of a few rarified circles. I have a feeling the Hugos represent the books that most of the WorldCon-goers read and liked the most, rather than ones which pushed the envelope in some way.

Maybe we should have a different set of awards for envelope-pushing works? What do you think? [Punkadiddle]

For those of you unfamiliar with Scalzi's previous novels in this series, a quick recap. Humanity has reached the stars to find the neighborhood teeming with other races all vying for the same planets to colonize. The Colonial Union governing all the human worlds except Earth has a tight monopoly on all travel, commerce, and information between the colonies. The home world is kept ignorant technologically and politically. Mother Earth is just the CU's breeding ground for more colonists, mostly from the Third World, and cannon fodder for their endless wars. The Colonial Defense Force doesn't draft witless eighteen-year-olds to do their dirty work. They want educated volunteers with life-experience who no longer fill useful roles in dirtside society.

On his seventy-fifth birthday John Perry leaves Earth to fulfill his contract with the CDF expecting never to return. He and his fellow septuagenarian are shortly amazed to find themselves in young healthy bodies. CDF soldiers wear cloned flesh with augmented abilities covered in chloroplast imbued skin. These old fogies are now mean green fightin' machines armed to the teeth facing alien armies over hotly contested planets, "Get off my lawn, you tentacled scum!"

This series has often been compared favorably with Starship Troopers, although Scalzi treads a bit lighter on the soapbox than Grand Master Heinlein and has a superior sense of humor. If you haven't read Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony you are in for a treat. Zoë's Tale is more of a companion novel than a sequel and works fine as a stand alone story. It recounts the events from The Last Colony but from the viewpoint of John Perry's seventeen-year-old adopted daughter Zoë and is the stronger novel for it.

The story opens as John and his wife, Jane Sagan a former Special Forces officer, have retired from the CDF in new demilitarized bodies living as rural colonists with their daughter. Zoë's biological father was Charles Boutin, a scientist who schemed with an advanced race called the Obin against humanity. The Obin were uplifted to sentience by the Consu, a godlike and enigmatic species who gave the Obin intelligence without consciousness, then kicked them to the galactic curb without explanation. Boutin offered the Obin a technology that would give them all individual consciousness and emotion in exchange for wiping out the CU whom he believed responsible for Zoë's death.

Of course Zoë wasn't dead, the plot failed, Boutin was killed, but the technology worked. To honor Boutin for his miraculous gift the Obin made a truce with the Humans and sent two of their kind to protect and serve Zoë, whom they revere with something akin to worship. Her two bodyguards, Hickory and Dickory – she named them when she was very young – vaguely resemble a cross between a giraffe and a tarantula, carry huge knives and scare the bejeesus out of everybody. They treat her like a beloved magic princess but she still has to do homework and chores and junk, bummer. Clearly the girl has issues.

Naturally, a quiet pastoral life is not in the cards for this odd but loving little family. The growing populations of the older established colonies pressure the CU to continue spreading out into an increasingly dangerous galaxy. Because of their leadership skills and military record John and Jane are asked to lead a brand new colony called Roanoke. I know, why not just call it Certain Doomsylvania? At least their ship isn't named the Titanic. Immediately things go terribly wrong. The tiny colony is cut off from the rest of the CU deprived of advanced technology on a world with an incompatible biology and a savage native species. A Conclave of a hundred hostile races patrols space sworn to destroy any further human colonization. And oh yeah, the whole planet smells like a stinky locker room.

As young people do, Zoë adapts quickly to this difficult new life. She, her wise-cracking pals, and her absolutely dreamy boyfriend, Enzo, manage to have fun when they can while working alongside the adults for Roanoke's survival. Zoë inherited Boutin's brilliance as well as her adopted father's relentless,sarcastic wit and Jane's fierce determination and resourcefulness. Good thing too, because she's going to need all that and more to save herself and the new colony.

I wondered if it was very realistic to have a heroine that young be so clever and observant while spouting off with Scalzi's trademark sarcasm. Some readers might think that a brilliant and resourceful young Messiah of an alien race who Saves the Day with blatant Deus ex Machina has it a bit too easy. But Zoë's Tale isn't really about the clash of mighty empires or rescuing loved ones from monsters, exciting as those parts are — it's about Zoë. It's about that time in our lives after we've come to grips with how the world sees us but we are still not sure how we see ourselves. It's not about what you are, but finding out who you are. This whip-smart, often funny, and deeply moving novel portrays that journey of self-discovery to the satisfaction of adults young or otherwise.

Zoë's Tale via Amazon

This month, io9 reviews all the nominees for the Nebula, Hugo and Clarke awards. You can read them all here.

Commenter Grey_Area is known among the space-cruising whipper-snappers as Christopher Hsiang. Why can't you young punks let an old man read in peace?!

Here's the full list:

Best Novel
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
‘‘The Erdmann Nexus'' by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
‘‘The Political Prisoner'' by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008)
‘‘The Tear'' by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
‘‘True Names'' by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Truth'' by Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
‘‘Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders'' by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Jan 2008)
‘‘The Gambler'' by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Pride and Prometheus'' by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
‘‘The Ray-Gun: A Love Story'' by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's Feb 2008)
‘‘Shoggoths in Bloom'' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)

Best Short Story
‘‘26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss'' by Kij Johnson (Asimov's Jul 2008)
‘‘Article of Faith'' by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe Oct 2008)
‘‘Evil Robot Monkey'' by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
‘‘Exhalation'' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
‘‘From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled'' by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Feb 2008)

Best Related Book
Rhetorics of Fantasy
by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood Books)
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds. (Baen)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications)
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)

Best Graphic Story
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle
Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers Publishing)
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Fables: War and Pieces Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic Story and art by Howard Tayler (The Tayler Corporation)
Serenity: Better Days Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen (Dark Horse Comics)
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. (DC/Vertigo Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director (Warner Brothers)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director (Dark Horse, Universal)
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director (Paramount, Marvel Studios)
METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi; Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder, writers (Audible Inc.)
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Lost
: "The Constant", Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director (Bad Robot, ABC studios)
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Battlestar Galactica: "Revelations", Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director (NBC Universal)
Doctor Who: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Turn Left", Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director (BBC Wales)

Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld Magazine
edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fan Writer
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver

Best Fanzine
Argentus
edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank
edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

Best Fan Artist
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Aliette de Bodard
David Anthony Durham
Felix Gilman
Tony Pi
Gord Sellar

Illuminatus said:

Don't hate on Chabon. That guy is in the trenches defending SF and Fantasy. Check out Maps & Legends if you need proof. And he's bringing literary snobs (read, my former roommate) over to SF and Fantasy. He earned it . . . What you're saying is that it bothers you that the superior author won the prize. That's like saying Olympic gold medalists shouldn't be allowed to compete in other tournaments, because they are guaranteed the prize.

It just isn't the case. Neither Cormac McCarthy nor Thomas Pynchon were even nominated, despite the fact that both The Road and Gravity's Rainbow are sci-fi books. GR even won the Saturn Award. This isn't some lit author slumming it to win an award, this is recognition of good writing in a genre the author respects and cherishes.

Most big lit writers who try this sort of stuff fail miserably or, worse, are chastised for it. The Road and The Yiddish Policeman's Union are exceptions, not the rule.

Goodness, 95% of the Hugo winners are hardcore SF writers, it's alright if once every two decades a "mainstream lit" writer gets one. It probably means they've earned it.

Then Pink Clerical Collar wrote:

And as for Chabon, he's never pulled a Vonnegut; he's too legit to quit, and after KAVALIER AND CLAY, he's a fanboy I trust to keep it real no matter how mainstream /slipstream / crossed streams he gets.

Ron Hogan added:

Annalee writes, "It felt a little wrong to me that the award went to somebody who writes mainstream literary fiction that merely borrows a few tropes from SF."

TYPU does not "merely borrow a few tropes." It is a fully formed science fiction novel—and, apparently, one that both science fiction fans AND science fiction writers consider worthy of recognition as best in show, considering that Chabon also won the Nebula three months ago.

Using the "merely borrows a few tropes" argument, by the way, one might conceivably argue that Charlie Stross wasn't doing science fiction when he wrote HALTING STATE, merely dabbling in technothrillery with a few futuristic touches.

Tim Faulkner asked pointedly:

If scifi fans don't want their favorite genre to be an ostracized ghetto, why do they insist on it being an ostracized ghetto?

Lightning Louie finally persuaded me completely by writing:

But here's the thing: "mainstream" is a total misnomer, a marketing term. The "literary fiction" section at your local retailer boasts plenty of fantasy and science fiction novels, as well as representatives of other genres, whether it's Winter's Tale, Little, Big, or Lonesome Dove. The notion of genre as a form of identity politics is just an excuse not to read more widely, and it's a surefire guarantee for boredom.

OK, you guys totally win. One of the foundational ideas behind io9 is that science fiction is mainstream pop culture, and writers like Chabon prove that's the case.

It's sometimes hard to throw off that ghetto feeling when you're a scifi nerd. But even the Hugo voters who made Chabon this year's winner know that the world of scifi is changing. It's not just the genre of underground scifi conventions. It's everybody's genre, and has invaded literary fiction and Hollywood movies alike.

So that's why I was wrong about Chabon. He represents the future of science fiction as popular fiction, and it's encouraging to see people both within and outside scifi fandom recognizing that.

Here are the winners, as listed on the official Hugo website:

* Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins; Fourth Estate)
* Best Novella: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007; Subterranean Press)
* Best Novelette: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang (Subterranean Press; F&SF Sept. 2007)
* Best Short Story: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s June 2007)
* Best Related Book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Stardust Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman Illustrated by Charles Vess Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who “Blink” Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
* Best Editor, Long Form: David G. Hartwell
* Best Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder
* Best Professional Artist: Stephan Martiniere
* Best Semiprozine: Locus
* Best Fanzine: File 770
* Best Fan Writer: John Scalzi
* Best Fan Artist: Brad Foster

The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Mary Robinette Kowal

Kowal and Scalzi should also have won for most glamorous self-presentations — Kowal's golden gown matched her winner's tiara perfectly, and Scalzi dressed like a secret agent and did action poses with his award.

The only controversial win, at least in my mind, was Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union for best novel. Certainly it's a brilliant novel, and is undoubtedly a work of SF-ish alternate history, but it felt a little wrong to me that the award went to somebody who writes mainstream literary fiction that merely borrows a few tropes from SF. Chabon was too busy to attend the awards, but he did write a sweet and genuine acceptance speech which was read with ironic gravity by venerable fantasy author (and Chabon influence) George R. R. Martin.

The real fun began after the Hugos, when all the most elite non-winners headed to a local hotel for the "Hugo Losers Party," with a tightly-guarded guest list (several sources revealed to io9 that losers can bring as many dates as they want, thus resulting in a party packed with venerable writers and cute people they met in the elevators on the way up to the party). A few floors below the Loser's Party was a bash thrown by SF imprints Ace and Roc, also packed to the gills with SF fiction's biggest stars. Check out our party gallery, and see which luminaries you recognize.

At the end of the evening, everyone retreated to the Hyatt Regency bar, where the losers continued to drink their sorrows away and I had a chance to babble fannishly to Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell about how he'd written one of my favorite episodes of the new show.

Hugo Awards [via official Hugos site]

This has been a hot topic on the email list of the Secret Masters of Fandom (SMOFs), a group of long-time convention attendees and organizers. Several influential SMOFs are opposed to making WorldCon memberships too cheap, worrying it'll allow publishers to buy tons of votes. In fact, there's a proposal among some SMOFs to restrict who can vote for the Hugos.

But as blogger Steve Davidson points out, putting complicated and draconian restrictions on Hugo voting is just one approach to preventing vote fraud. The other, more sensible approach, is to ake it as easy to vote as possible, so you have tens of thousands of actual voters and it's not possible to buy enough votes to outweigh them all.

Writes Davidson:

Hugos are respected and utilized by publishers and such for marketing purposes: Hugo winning books have new editions rushed into print, proudly displaying the win on their covers.

So you can’t say they are a meaningless award, despite the small amount of participation. But I believe that they would be MORE meaningful if, instead of winning on four or five hundred votes, a novel, story, artist, magazine or movie won with four or five THOUSAND votes.

I hadn't actually realized that most Hugo Awards are decided on the basis of a few hundred votes. I thought WorldCon was a bigger event (I haven't been yet) and more people bought supporting memberships. It's a bit scary to think that the awards process is that insular — let alone that it might get even more insular soon, if some of the Secret Masters have their way. [Crotchety Old Fan via SF Awards Watch]