With the Arthur C Clarke Award to be announced this evening at the opening night of the Sci-Fi London film festival, it's time to collect my thoughts on this year's shortlist. Unfortunately, while I've read the whole list, I do have one more book still to write about in full - something I aim to do over the weekend.
I was going to do this like the annual Not The Clarke Award panel at Eastercon (as Niall and David have done), and throw the books out of my Alexandria hot-air balloon until I'm left with my preference to win. But this year it's too hard to call; I know my pick for the prize (for those with short attention spans, it's Far North), I know which one I'd ditch first (Retribution Falls), but how do I place the rest? Thus, in alphabetical order by author surname (I'm such a ditherer, I know), with links to my reviews...
This is the one that is most hazy in my memory, since I read it over a year ahead of everything else, and some of the lukewarm reactions to it since then have at times made me doubt myself. But I stand by my enjoyment and admiration of it. The early sections are a bit of a slog: there's a lot going on, and it's difficult to know what you should be concentrating on because it isn't obvious what is important, and why. But it sparks into life with the tense trip to the lightning-blasted landscape of Sigurt's World, and then really becomes something special during central character Bibi's long, sanity-troubling incarceration. The novel is at its best when exploring Bibi's interiority, and more particularly the relationship between her interiority and the strange aetiolated life she has lived as a woman in a reactionary society. Finally, Bibi's transformation into an avenger - albeit one who is somewhat ambivalent about revenge - raises all sorts of interesting issues about the transgressiveness of female anger and aggression. Looking back, I think it doesn't hang together as well as it might - its sprawling scope ultimately becomes unwieldy - but I still like it a lot.
China Miéville - The City & the CityLong tipped as the favourite to win - correctly, I suspect - Miéville's entry on this list is, as has been observed by several reviewers, more thought experiment than novel. But what a thought experiment: the sort of bold exploration of genre, society and psychology that Miéville is making his own. Niall makes the excellent point that one of the things that is most interesting (and subversive) about The City & the City is the way it works off the expectations with which you approach it. Read with a genre frame in mind, for example, the mechanism by which the two 'cities' are kept separate appears fantastical - until it become uncontrovertibly clear that there is nothing more fantastical at work than layer upon layer of tradition and taboo and learned response. Nothing more fantastical is needed; human society can divide itself. A shame, then, that both plot and character never meet the standards of the rest.
Adam Roberts - Yellow Blue TibiaForget Wooding's adventure story; this is the most fun 9and funny) read on the shortlist. Science fiction novelists create an imaginary alien threat to help unite Soviet Russia, which then starts to come true; science fictional conceits of alternate timelines and changing the world simply by imagining it are brought to bear upon the workings of a totalitarian regime and one smart-arse author's dysfunctional love life. Plus it's got meta commentary on how sf is read and written - and a Robot Stalin. What's not to like?
Kim Stanley Robinson - Galileo's Dream
I'm starting to run short on time, now - have to catch a train to London for the ceremony in half an hour, so I'll reserve my main commentary on this book for the post at the weekend. Like Spirit, it's another book that feels unwieldy next to some of the shorter and more perfectly-formed entries on the list (Yellow Blue Tibia, Far North), but it strives for - and achieves - a lot across its nearly 600 pages. It explores a dazzling array of the ways in which we see and present the world: social history, the life of an individual, personal memory, imagination of the future and, most centrally, the experimental observation and theorising of science. Sometimes infuriating, but it does all add up to a book that you feel you've lived through.
My personal favourite of the shortlist, and you'll have to read my review to find out why because I'm running out of time rapidly. Argh! Atmospheric, starkly beautiful, and brimming over with humanity. Makepeace is a wonderful central character, complex and flawed and weathered and wise.
Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls
The romp that runs out of juice, alas. Plenty of fun early on, but the main character, who initially seems interestingly callous and feral, turns out to be just a whiny boy with committment issues (yawn), and he doesn't even have the decency to grow up a bit over the course of the novel. Love the setting, but even the always-on-the-run plot couldn't distract me from how much I disliked the characters, by the end. Entertaining, but not Clarke material, I reckon.
~~Nic