Wild Life, Ash: A Secret History, Perdido Street Station
Having decided that I'll review the winners of the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke Awards of a give year together, the turn of the century provided me with a massive reading project. I think I started Wild Life on 17 October, and finished Perdido Street Station on 23 December. Together they are 2249 pages in length.
Ash: A Secret History and Perdido Street Station were on all three shortlists/final ballots. Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds, was on both the Clarke and BSFA lists. Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson, was on the Tiptree shortlist and also the Hugo and Nebula final ballots. This was the year that the Hugo went to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling, and the next year's Nebula went to The Quantum Rose, by Catherine Asaro, which was published in 2000, two of the less defensible results in either award's history. By contrast, the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke processes came out with good answers.
Wild Life by Molly Gloss, which won the James Tiptree Jr Award for the year, was the one I had not read before. The second paragraph of the third diary entry is:We raised the sail on Otto’s fine little skiff so as to catch a following air, and coasted upriver into the Elochoman Slough, then George and the twins rowed turn and turn about, a winding course amongst the tiny clay-bank islands of the river delta until we had agreed on a mote of prairie fletched with red huckleberry bushes and bare legs of viny willow. The ground was soft and wet, the grasses laid flat by the months of rain, but we overspread a tarpaulin before putting out the picnic cloth, and built a fire up from driftwood and dead clumps of alder thicket, and were comfortable lying about in the thin sunlight munching roast beef sandwiches and sour cream cookies. The boys disappeared into the bushes as soon as the food was eaten, and the men cast their fishhooks into the river; Edith and I lay on the picnic cloth with our shoes off and our belts unbuckled and put the whip of gossip to various and sundry Skamokawans.
This is set in early 20th century Washington State, the central character Charlotte being a pulp writer with five young sons who heads off into the wilderness to join a search for a missing girl. She is sidetracked and joins a tribe of woodland primates (the words Bigfoot and Sasquatch are not used), and makes discoveries about herself, gender and humanity. It is told in the form of Charlotte's diary, interspersed with other material. The style is very immersive and convincing. I was not quite so convinced about the story itself, but this was a good read. You can get it here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle, winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel, is:By the age of nine she had a mass of curls that she kept long, halfway to her waist, and washed once a month. Her silver hair had the grey shine of grease. No one in a soldiers' camp could notice the smell. She never showed her ears. She learned to keep dressing in cut-down hose and doublet, often with an adult's jerkin over them. Something in the too-large clothing made her look even more of a little child.
At first sight this appears to be set in the fifteenth century of our own era. Ash, a teenage mercenary commander, has taken strategic advice for years from voices in her head and as a result is one of the most successful mercenaries in Western Europe. But the near-future (ie early 2000's) researchers who are trying to compose a new biography gradually realise that her history is not their history, and the two realities begin to leach into each other. This book gave me very strange dreams when I first read it; my dreams have generally been strange this year so I didn't notice any difference this time. Admittedly the history and presentation are dodgy - I doubt that any of the female mercenary commanders of the fifteen century were still teenagers, and the whole thing is presented as a translation, complete with scholarly footnotes for difficult bits, from a manuscript which is not written in the style of any medieval text. I'm also a bit better informed about medieval Burgundy than I was twenty years ago, thanks to Van Loo and Dunnett. But in the end I love the intensity of description and the leakage between realities. It's awfully long, but I found myself thinking at one point, oh no, there's only 250 pages left to go. It's also rather an adventurous choice by BSFA voters, which is not a bad thing. You can get it here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is:Her father was whispering to her, entertaining her with prestidigitation. He gave her a pebble to hold, then spat on it quickly. It became a frog. The girl squealed with delight at the slimy thing and glanced shyly up at Isaac. He opened his eyes and mouth wide, mumming astonishment as he left his seat. She was still watching him as he opened the door of the train and stepped out onto Sly Station. He made his way down and onto the streets, wound through the traffic for Brock Marsh.
Another big long but excellent book. The Clarke judges gave themselves a tough choice here, the other shortlisted novels being Ash and Revelation Space, as already noted, and Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod, Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler and Salt by Adam Roberts. Perdido Street Station is set in New Crobuzon, a city with elements of London in it, a melting pot of all races - and races in this world include many who we would regard as hybrids; the protagonist's girlfriend has the head of an insect, for instance, and cactus-people and frog-like vodyanoi feature too. The protagonist, an inventor named Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin (clearly meant to evoke Isaac Newton), acquires a larva which grows up to become a deadly slake moth, hypnotising its victims with their wings and then drinking their souls, and our hero and his friends then need to deal with the situation, not especially helped by New Crobuzon's power structures, both formal and informal. There's a lot of vivid baroque description, and yet I also felt that Miéville kept control of the plot with a bit more discipline than in some of his later books. In particular he helps the reader distinguish between what seems bizarre to us but normal to his characters, and what is horrific and supernatural for both. You can get it here.
Anyway, there were two great rereads and a good first read. Next up: The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto, Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones and Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.
Ash: A Secret History and Perdido Street Station were on all three shortlists/final ballots. Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds, was on both the Clarke and BSFA lists. Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson, was on the Tiptree shortlist and also the Hugo and Nebula final ballots. This was the year that the Hugo went to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling, and the next year's Nebula went to The Quantum Rose, by Catherine Asaro, which was published in 2000, two of the less defensible results in either award's history. By contrast, the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke processes came out with good answers.
Wild Life by Molly Gloss, which won the James Tiptree Jr Award for the year, was the one I had not read before. The second paragraph of the third diary entry is:We raised the sail on Otto’s fine little skiff so as to catch a following air, and coasted upriver into the Elochoman Slough, then George and the twins rowed turn and turn about, a winding course amongst the tiny clay-bank islands of the river delta until we had agreed on a mote of prairie fletched with red huckleberry bushes and bare legs of viny willow. The ground was soft and wet, the grasses laid flat by the months of rain, but we overspread a tarpaulin before putting out the picnic cloth, and built a fire up from driftwood and dead clumps of alder thicket, and were comfortable lying about in the thin sunlight munching roast beef sandwiches and sour cream cookies. The boys disappeared into the bushes as soon as the food was eaten, and the men cast their fishhooks into the river; Edith and I lay on the picnic cloth with our shoes off and our belts unbuckled and put the whip of gossip to various and sundry Skamokawans.
This is set in early 20th century Washington State, the central character Charlotte being a pulp writer with five young sons who heads off into the wilderness to join a search for a missing girl. She is sidetracked and joins a tribe of woodland primates (the words Bigfoot and Sasquatch are not used), and makes discoveries about herself, gender and humanity. It is told in the form of Charlotte's diary, interspersed with other material. The style is very immersive and convincing. I was not quite so convinced about the story itself, but this was a good read. You can get it here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle, winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel, is:By the age of nine she had a mass of curls that she kept long, halfway to her waist, and washed once a month. Her silver hair had the grey shine of grease. No one in a soldiers' camp could notice the smell. She never showed her ears. She learned to keep dressing in cut-down hose and doublet, often with an adult's jerkin over them. Something in the too-large clothing made her look even more of a little child.
At first sight this appears to be set in the fifteenth century of our own era. Ash, a teenage mercenary commander, has taken strategic advice for years from voices in her head and as a result is one of the most successful mercenaries in Western Europe. But the near-future (ie early 2000's) researchers who are trying to compose a new biography gradually realise that her history is not their history, and the two realities begin to leach into each other. This book gave me very strange dreams when I first read it; my dreams have generally been strange this year so I didn't notice any difference this time. Admittedly the history and presentation are dodgy - I doubt that any of the female mercenary commanders of the fifteen century were still teenagers, and the whole thing is presented as a translation, complete with scholarly footnotes for difficult bits, from a manuscript which is not written in the style of any medieval text. I'm also a bit better informed about medieval Burgundy than I was twenty years ago, thanks to Van Loo and Dunnett. But in the end I love the intensity of description and the leakage between realities. It's awfully long, but I found myself thinking at one point, oh no, there's only 250 pages left to go. It's also rather an adventurous choice by BSFA voters, which is not a bad thing. You can get it here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is:Her father was whispering to her, entertaining her with prestidigitation. He gave her a pebble to hold, then spat on it quickly. It became a frog. The girl squealed with delight at the slimy thing and glanced shyly up at Isaac. He opened his eyes and mouth wide, mumming astonishment as he left his seat. She was still watching him as he opened the door of the train and stepped out onto Sly Station. He made his way down and onto the streets, wound through the traffic for Brock Marsh.
Another big long but excellent book. The Clarke judges gave themselves a tough choice here, the other shortlisted novels being Ash and Revelation Space, as already noted, and Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod, Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler and Salt by Adam Roberts. Perdido Street Station is set in New Crobuzon, a city with elements of London in it, a melting pot of all races - and races in this world include many who we would regard as hybrids; the protagonist's girlfriend has the head of an insect, for instance, and cactus-people and frog-like vodyanoi feature too. The protagonist, an inventor named Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin (clearly meant to evoke Isaac Newton), acquires a larva which grows up to become a deadly slake moth, hypnotising its victims with their wings and then drinking their souls, and our hero and his friends then need to deal with the situation, not especially helped by New Crobuzon's power structures, both formal and informal. There's a lot of vivid baroque description, and yet I also felt that Miéville kept control of the plot with a bit more discipline than in some of his later books. In particular he helps the reader distinguish between what seems bizarre to us but normal to his characters, and what is horrific and supernatural for both. You can get it here.
Anyway, there were two great rereads and a good first read. Next up: The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto, Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones and Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.