Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Carson of Venus" (novel, adventure, free): Hero helps win a war

This is #3 in author's Venus series. I've not read the earlier books, but it's pretty much an independent adventure. And very readable if you can keep plausibility aside.

Story summary.

Carson Napier, hero of the story, along with his ladylove Duare, is homeless & wanted in many jurisdictions on Venus. But he has an airplane he built that can stay up in the air without maintenance or refueling for 50 years! But he needs to land for food. The duo are seeking a home where they will be wanted.

They'll end up on a large island (Korva) with war going on - a common soldier has usurped power & has imprisoned the king. All of Korva has fallen except one holdout, the walled city of Sanara. The city is now under seize.

Carson will end up befriending the holdouts, & help them win the war by bombing enemy from his plane & by playing a spy in usurper's city.

Notes.

There is also an unrelated short story length adventure at the beginning of the novel - tribals kidnap Duare & Carson will rescue her.

Fact sheet.

First published: As a serial in 6 parts in Argosy, Jan 8, 15, 22, 29, & Feb 5 & 12 issues, 1938.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg of Australia or Feedbooks.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novel category.

Henry Kuttner's "The Time Trap" (novella, adventure, free)

This is readable enough, but in a mindless sort of way.

Story summary.

A disparate group of apparently good samaritans come together from several eras - hero from 1930s, heroine & hero's sidekick from 5000 years ago from what is now Arabia, & a friend from sometime in future. They're chasing two villains - both from future - through time. In the process, they'll have lot of adventures in exotic locales & among exotic species at different times in earth's history.

Two curious things stood out for me. One is a factual error - in the story, the moon has come much closer to earth in far future; I thought it is going away a few centimeters every year. Other is something you see a lot on pulp magazine covers but not in actual stories - here, heroine is nude at least a half dozen times - sometimes an object of lust, other times as part of torture, yet another time as part of worship! I haven't read many stories from Marvel, but I wonder if the magazine specialized in titillation?

Title refers a metallic device that looks like a pair of obelisks, planted in some remote corner of Arabia by the main villain. The device will live to the end of earth, & is a trap: whenever someone is within range of device &, simultaneously, lightening strikes the device, the person is sent to about 3000 BC!

Fact sheet.

First published: Marvel Science Stories, November 1938.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novella category.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

C L Moore's "Werewoman" (novelette, free)

Among the most boring of author's Northwest Smith series; I completed it only because it is C L Moore.

Northwest Smith, unarmed, hurt, & being chased by unnamed adversaries, walks into the cursed ruins of a long dead city, & will free it from its curse.

Fact sheet.

First published: Leaves #2, Winter 1938.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: C.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of C L Moore.

John W Campbell's "Dead Knowledge" (as by Don A Stuart) (novelette, alien invasion): "Molecular", microscopic, space traveling, light-eating alien invaders want to control us as tools!

Three human star travelers have arrived at a new world 27 light years from earth, only to find that it once harbored intelligent, highly developed, humanoid civilization that is now dead. And, curiously, it's long dead residents have their bodies well preserved & they all apparently committed suicide!!

It drags on for a while, until the visitors themselves start committing suicide - first one, then other. It's the final one who will enlighten us on the nature of infection before himself committing suicide.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, January 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Works of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart).

Clifford D Simak's "Rule 18" (novelette, humor): How earth won it's first football match against Martians in decades

Martians have been beating earth in annual football match for a long time. And the diagnosis is: earth-men have become soft because of too much automation here; they never get a chance to exercise their muscles. But things are about to change as a cool newly invented gadget, the earth team's coach sick of losing too long, & a betting syndicate come together...

Title comes from one of the rules of the game that requires a player of the team to not only be natives of his world, but his 9 preceding generations should have been native of this world too. Coach will twist this rule in a curious way to win.

Update 21 July 2014:  Marooned has a note on an Isaac Asimov connection to this story.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

H L Gold's "A Matter of Form" (novella, brain dump): When a man lived in a dog's body

A surgeon has discovered that the pineal gland at the brain's base is the source of an
animal's identity; surgically extract & transplant it in another animal's brain, & you've put the original in a new body. And he has a rich, old & seriously ill financier who wants a young man's body!

In one of the experiments, the surgeon exchanged the identity of a kidnapped man with a dog. Only the resulting man-in-dog's-body turned out to be more determined & resourceful than either the surgeon or his financier expected...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1938.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novella category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of H L Gold.

Robert E Howard's "Pigeons From Hell" (novelette, haunted house, free)

While I'm not a fan of haunted house tales, & the first of its 3 parts did bore me a bit, the later parts were generally quite readable.

Story summary.

An abandoned house in the US South is haunted by a "zuvembie", a "zuvembie" created by black voodoo in revenge for serious maltreatment of a "mulatto" maid by a former slave owner. Now the zuvembie targets whatever hapless human happens by the place, killing the victim. A lucky escaped victim & a policeman will join hands to kill the zuvembie.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, May 1938.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg of Australia.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Robert E Howard.

Lester Del Rey's "The Faithful" (short story, doomsday, free)

Uplifted dogs are taking over the civilization, as the last of the Man is dying following a war & then a plague...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1938.
Download full text from Chomikuj.pl (badly formatted HTML; I'd to edit it in a text editor on PC discarding entire HTML header & footer, & saving it as TXT file, before it would read correctly in Moon+ Reader on my tablet).
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in short story category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Lester del Rey.

Robert A Heinlein's "Double Star" (novel, politics): When an imposter became the ruler

This is a fast paced action story with a lot of election politics. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to because at some places the world view is too provincially Western; the thing that irritated me most was a small passage on the classification of world's languages - confidently told & totally bogus.

Story summary.

Here is a solar Empire spanning many worlds, dominated by humans though there are aliens on other worlds. It's a monarchy similar to British one - emperor is supreme but is a rubberstamp, & sits in a city on the moon. The parliament has the power & is elected; aliens can vote but must choose a human representative. Head of government is the "Supreme Minister", probably majority leader in Parliament.

Current ruling party has arranged the kidnapping of the leader of opposition at a time where he's absolutely required to be present at a Martian ceremony. So his underlings will recruit an actor, Lawrence Smith aka Lorenzo Smythe, to act as an imposter at the function. One thing will lead to another & new situations will keep coming up & the imposter will end up becoming the politician he's impersonating.

The story is, first & foremost, the character study of this actor, & evolution of his personality.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, Feb/Mar/Apr 1956.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Winner of Hugo Award 1957 in novel category.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Hugo awards 2013 winners

[via Twitter]. All stories originally published during 2012.

1. [ss] Ken Liu's "Mono No Aware"; download: A Japanese town reacts in a very orderly manner to news that earth is soon to be destroyed by an asteroid impact.
2. [novelette] Pat Cadigan's "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi".
3. [novella] Brandon Sanderson's "The Emperor's Soul".
4. [novel] John Scalzi's "Redshirts".

And among friends, SF Signal gets it for "Best Fanzine".

For other categories, see the twitter feed.

Related: Past & current nominees & winners.

John Varley's "Air Raid" (short story, doomsday, free)

I found it mostly uninteresting to wade through, & you will notice that author has consciously made it difficult for you to comprehend what is going on. But nice positive ending.

Story summary.

In a future where a deadly airborne virus has made earth uninhabitable & the few survivors immune to it have a highly withered body. But a group of these men of the future, with advanced technology including time travel, seem to be up to something nasty.

Much of the story appears to be body snatching raid of an airplane in the past, an airplane about to crash. But their intentions are honorable, as we'll discover in the end...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, Spring 1977.

Download full text from Baen eBooks.

This story was later expanded into a novel, a screenplay, & a movie, all titled "Millenium".

This story has also been published under the pseudonym Herb Boehm.
Rating: B.

Nominated for Hugo Award 1978 in short story category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1978 (or was it 1977) in short story category.

Related: : Stories of John Varley.

C J Cherryh's "The Pride Of Chanur" (novel, space opera): What if lions evolved into intelligence?

I won't call it a bad read, but I seem to no longer enjoy most space opera now-a-days. But this may be the first space opera I've seen that is almost entirely from aliens' point of view; humans play a very minor & junior role.

Story summary.

There is something called Compact - a region of space somewhere on the edge of human space. Many alien space traveling species live here, cooperating & fighting. One of the more villainous of them, "kif", had got hold of some human spacemen, whom they tortured to presumably get the coordinates of human homeworld. Three prisoners died, one escaped. The escaped one found sanctuary in a "hani" ship. Much of the story is the chase & fights across star systems to get hold of this human prisoner, sucking in other alien races in the fight too.

Hani look like intelligent lions. Through the story, I got an impression this was a feminist work because gender roles among Hani are reversed relative humans - females do outside work & earning, men keep homes. But a discussion at ClassicScienceFiction points out similarity of Hani culture with that of lions. In fact, the "Pride" of title might be a pun on pride of lions; "Chanur" is the hani clan to which the heroine, Pyanfar, belongs. Officially, "Pride of Chanur" is the name of the hani spaceship in the story.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1982.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1983 in novel category.

Hugo Awards 2013 - novelettes: nominees, my ranking, & winner

Five nominees, of which 3 are online. I finished 2 - ok reads, but I get a feeling there are better ways of spending my time. I left another one unfinished, & didn't bother to look up the remaining 2.

Caution: Both stories I finished involve homosexual love. Was that the flavor of the season?

List below is in order of my preference, best first, unread last. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "The Boy Who Cast No Shadow" (B); download: This is actually a several years old Dutch story, probably translated to English last year - hence eligible.
   
   Two teenage boys, bullied by their peers because they're "different", try coming to terms with their differences...
2. Seanan McGuire's "In Sea-Salt Tears" (B); download; fantasy: One of the many clans of Faeries living (among humans?) on US west coast is living a life of punishment for past hunting sins. This is a coming of age story of a girl from this clan.
3. Catherynne M Valente's "Fade To White": download text/audio; Clarkesworld, August 2012: It comprises of many vignette sized & independent sections. I gave up after may be 3 or 4 of them; just could not get into the story. Apparently describing a media-driven society.
4. Seanan McGuire's "Rat-Catcher"; Yanni Kuznia (ed)'s "A Fantasy Medley 2": Not read.
5. [winner] Pat Cadigan's "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Edge of Infinity": Not read.

Related.

1. Official announcement of 2013 nominees @The Hugo Awards.
2. My reading of Hugo awards 2013 nominees: short stories.
3. Other Hugo nominees & winners.
4. "best of" lists.

Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "The Boy Who Cast No Shadow" (novelette, free)

The best I've seen so far among this year's Hugo nominees, though still far short of being great. An easy read, but may be a bit too long.

Caution: There are a couple of episodes late in the story of homosexual encounters.

Story summary.

Two male teenagers with peculiar bodies - one who neither casts a shadow nor gets a reflection in the mirror, irrespective of lighting conditions; other made of glass! And they get bullied & teased by their peers because of their differences. This is the story of their coming to terms with their differences.

Fact sheet.

First published: ? (as "De jongen die geen schaduw wierp" in Dutch)
Online mobi copy of the story contains this note: "Winner of the €750 Paul Harland Award ’09 for best Dutch story of the Fantastic". So originally published no later than 2009.
Download full text of English translation by Laura Vroomen from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2013 in novelette category (perhaps the English translation was first published last year?)

Hugo Awards 2013 - short stories: nominees, my ranking & winner

Note 22 April 2013:  I'm not clear what happened. This article was posted yesterday & appeared ok. But I just noticed it stopped appearing at the site & Blogger had changed its status from Published to Draft! I'm just hitting the Publish button again.
---

Only 3 nominees this year, 2 online. All originally published during 2012.

None really worked for me, though Bodard's has an idea briefly taken up near the end of the story that I could identify with - intelligently adapting an artifact of an alien civilization isn't easy; for best results, you better be born in the culture that originated it! Artifacts carry around their cultural origins in many ways.

List below is in order of my preference. Links on author or publisher fetches more matching fiction.

1. Aliette de Bodard's "Immersion" (B); download text/audio; Clarkesworld, June 2012: Not sure what to think of it. And it certainly didn't touch me at any emotional level.
   
   There is a gadget - an "immerser". "Wear" it & you become someone else, whatever avatar you choose. And you can wear it at varying levels of power that determines how much you will be aware of you real self when wearing it.
   
   Set aboard a "station" that makes money from "Galactics", a technologically advanced stream of humanity that has split from earth.
   
   There is a minor side story of a woman who married to a different culture, felt completely lost, tried to fit in so much she lost her own original self.
2. Kij Johnson's "Mantis Wives" (B); download text/audio; Clarkesworld, August 2012; macabre: The story doesn't really say anything, but uses nice language & is comprised of many tiny episodes.
   
   Mantis, an insect whose female eats the male after copulation. Could the mantis develop this killing into an art? Story describes many ways the female could slowly torture & kill her mate!
3. [winner] Ken Liu's "Mono no Aware" (B); Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington (eds)' "The Future is Japanese"; apocalypse: Tries too hard to arouse your emotions. And too dramatic near end, for my taste.
   
   Life on earth is about to be destroyed by an asteroid(?) impact & the world knows it early enough. It's about reactions in a small Japanese town to this news, & later escape to a distant star in a solar-sail powered generation ship of the only human survivors - mostly Americans, plus a few others, among them a child from this Japanese town

Related.

1. Official announcement of 2013 nominees @The Hugo Awards.
2. Other Hugo nominees & winners.
3. "best of" lists.

Poul Anderson's "The Helping Hand" (novelette, diplomacy, free)

This one might be read differently in rich vs poor countries. It's about the real nature of the so called "aid" given by rich countries to poor ones. While the term has practically vanished from India during the last 2 decades, local readers should find a lot here that strikes a cord.

This story is about a rich & powerful country wanting, altruistically, it would seem, to give "aid" for reconstruction to two poor countries that have just been through a war & are both in bad shape. One country accepts it; other doesn't. Story looks at the evolution of these two countries - which one comes out better off 50 years down the line, one that accepts the aid or the one that refuses it.

Countries involved are actually star faring empires. Earth is the rich one. Two warring parties are the alien worlds of Cundaloa & Skontar.

See also.

1. L Sprague de Camp's "Finished" (download as part of a larger package): Another story that deals with a rich vs poor country issue that used to be an emotional one in India till 1980s, even a bit in 1990s, but is rarely heard of now - technology sanctions as a diplomatic policy tool.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1950.
Read online at BookReader, or download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British ed), June 1951.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Award in 2001.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

Frank Herbert's "Dune" (novel): Life on a parched desert world

This was my third attempt at reading this book. I distinctly remember that on each of the two earlier occasions, I gave up within first few dozen pages -  because I found names in the story impossible to spell! This time I had no such difficulty. Only difference between then & now is: I now have some experience reading sf; then I was new to the genre. So if you are a genre novice who discovered sf relatively late in life & cannot relate to the book everyone praises, may be try it a few years down the line. This also makes me wonder if I'll still like the stories I then loved!

While the story has a couple of scenes I found very silly (a completely unnecessary knife duel near the end, a 3-4 year old supremely endowed girl happily fighting on the battlefront of a dirty war), I generally liked the book.

While there are a lot of issues this book of epic scope deals with, one of the most memorable, if macabre, part for me was: the water is so precious & scarce on this desert world of Arrakis that a part of the funeral rituals for the dead involves extracting the water from the dead body for later community use!

There are any number of summaries of this book on the net; so I'll skip that part.

Fact sheet.

First published: (as novel) 1965.
This is a fix up novel, based on author's 2 earlier works: "Dune World" (Analog, December 1963 - February 1964 in 3 parts) & "The Prophet of Dune" (Analog, January-May 1965 in 5 parts).
Rating: A. 
Winner of Hugo Award 1966 in novel category.
Winner of Nebula Award 1965 in novel category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Frank Herbert.

Hugo awards 2012: winners announced

Link.

Barry B Longyear's "Enemy Mine" (novella): They're only different, not evil!

This often well regarded & widely anthologized story didn't work as well for me. It does have its moments, however.

Story is of two fighter pilots from a space war between humans & Dracs - one of each crash on a harsh uninhabited world, & are thus stranded. Initial hate soon gives way to friendship that will outlast even the death of one of them, even after their rescue at the end of war & the continuing mutual antagonism of two societies even in peacetime...

Notes.

* This story "seems likely to have a source from a late 1960s screenplay, this time the 1968 John Boorman film Hell in the Pacific, which starred Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune as two WW2 pilots, one American and one Japanese, crashed on a Pacific island, who have to co-operate to survive."

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, September 1979.
[via Bill Garthright @ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B. 
Winner of Hugo award 1980 in novella category.
Winner of Nebula award 1979 in novella category.
Movie of the same titled, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is based on this story.

Hugo awards 2012 - short stories: Nominees & my rankings

Official announcement.

Covers short stories originally published during 2011.

One of the stories is a novel excerpt rather than an independent story. I didn't read it. I was not even aware novel excerpts are eligible.
5 May 2012: OK - I now understand it's mean to an April Fool's joke - the prologue to an imaginary novel series.

Three of the stories were also on Nebula list this year.

List below is in order of my preference - best first, unread last. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. All stories are online, & I've included the links. Links on author or publisher fetch more matching fiction.

1. Mike Resnick's "The Homecoming" (B); download; Asimov's, April/May: Son is visiting parents after being away for over a decade, & he's a very changed man. Dad is very angry, mom is now amnesic. How will the reunion go?
   
   Decent read, if you are in the right mood. It's an emotional story.
2. Nancy Fulda's "Movement" (B); download text & audio; Asimov's, March: Life of a girl inflicted with "temporal autism".
   
   Nominated for Nebula award 2011 in short story category.
3. E Lily Yu's "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" (B); download text/audio; Clarkesworld, April: Wasps colonize bees territory. Imaginative but with lousy ending.
   
   Colorful, but I was very disappointed with the ending.
   
   Nominated for Nebula award 2011 in short story category. Collected in Rich Horton (ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012".
4. Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" (B); download; F&SF, March/April: Emotional & sad story of a Chinese peasant girl - losing her parents, being sold as a slave to a Hong Kong household, being sold as a "wife" to an American man, & finally being rejected by her American son who disliked his Chinese origins.
   
   Nominated for Nebula award 2011 in short story category.
5. John Scalzi's "Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue"; download; Tor.com: Not read.

Related.

1. All Hugo award winners & nominees.
2. Other awards for short fiction originally published during 2011: Nebula, BSFA.
3. Fiction originally published during 2011.
4. My "best of 2011".
5. "Best of" lists. 

Hugo awrads 2012: nominees announced

@Chicon 7.

Related: Past nominees & winners.

Pauline Whitby's "The Lost Kafoozalum" (as by Pauline Ashwell) (novella, free): To stop war, introduce a common menace

Bits of it are very good, particularly in the middle. But it starts off in a very tangent way & parts near end get draggy. Presentation is unusual for the period & refreshing.

Story summary.

An isolated human world somewhere has two factions near a war, so earth decides to help - in an indirect way. By faking a common menace so the two warring sides will be forced to join hands...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, October 1960.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, Internet Archive.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo award 1961 in short fiction category.
Among the stories in Astounding/Analog issues edited John Campbell. 

Jack Vance's "The Dragon Masters" (novella, alien invasion): Masters are also the slaves!

This is a fast-paced very-readable action story. I have a couple of nits, though:

1. Why would aliens bother to make interstellar raids to carry off a few humans each time as slaves? Particularly when they already have a large stock of human slaves, bred as beasts for specific desirable traits.
2. Aliens travel interstellar distances & have death rays, but bring with them beasts of burden for local land transport, rather than powered machinery!

Story summary.

Most of the story is about three human communities, living in close proximity, on a world called Aerlith. This world has long since lost all contact with rest of humanity. In fact, they may be the last remnants of humanity.

Two of the three communities are feudal: Banbeck Vale is ruled by Joaz Banbeck, & Happy Valley is ruled by Ervis Carcolo. Former is smart, progressive, & technically savvy. Later is a barbarian, never looking beyond the immediate. They also have a variety of pet "dragons" - used as beasts of burden & war animals.

Third community is "sacerdotes", mysterious hermits living in subterranean caves below the two feudals' lands. They appear to be technologically very competent, but they're secretive.

Much of the story is about interactions of these 3 communities. In the background of periodic raids, every few generations, of lizard-like aliens called "Basics" or "grephs". Joaz has recently discovered that these raids occur whenever a star called Coralyne of their local cluster makes the nearest approach. And it's approaching now...; alien slave takers could be
arriving any time.

Later parts are, of course, arrival of aliens. Only they'll meet resistance this time - all 3 human communities coming together will beat them.

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's "Diabologic": Only thing I remember about this story is that it's about carefully using language to drive other people nuts, & using it as a political tool. One of the interviews of Joaz & a sacerdote had this feel too.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, August 1962.
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo award 1963 in short fiction category.
Related: Stories of Jack Vance.

Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers" (short story, parallel universe, free): Got a traveling itch?

This has what some Westerners describe as the "homey" feel of some of the Clifford D Simak's fiction. And nice language.

Story summary.

A diner somewhere at the edge of a small town often receives some very weird crowd late night - travelers from other parallel universes. Their talk overs the years has ignited a traveling itch in the narrator, a teenager employee of the place.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, July 1987.
Read online at Google cache.
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1988.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1987.

Octavia E Butler's "Speech Sounds" (short story, post-apocalypse survival, free): What if people could no longer speak or read?

This is quite a dark story, but with a somewhat hopeful ending.

Story summary.

An unspecified "illness" swept through the world, killing many, & seriously paralyzing others. Paralysis not only of body, but of intellect too - some lost ability to speak, some lost ability to read or comprehend, ...

This is the story of a woman who, having lost everyone she loved, is looking
for some kind of companionship in this mad world.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, Mid-December 1983.
Download full text from Google cache.
Rating: B.
Winner of Hugo Award 1984 in short story category.

Piers Anthony's "Macroscope" (novel, space opera): Snakes & ladders for star travel

Going by the amount of praise it has received, you'll have to take my views with a pinch of salt. I found the later parts extremely tedious to wade through. Primarily because of many jarring diversions, most of which seem to be here to simply add pages rather than further the story. Early parts - about half the book or more - however, is very readable.

Story employs a variety of stock tropes, as you would expect in a space opera. There are a few things, however, that were new to me:

1. To be able to take shock of 10g acceleration during interplanetary travel, you "liquify" the human traveler! For star travel, you further "gassify" the protoplasm to better prepare for bigger shocks. And for inter-galactic travel, you further transform the gas into a living radiation being (radiation idea is, of course, quite old.)
2. An alien signal that hypnotizes the human receiver to use him as a zombie or interacts with him in an individual-specific way is quite old. Author, however, puts it to novel uses I'd not seen before.

Story summary.

A "macroscope" is two devices in one: a sort of infinite-resolution telescope with range across the galaxy; & a receiver of (alien) "broadcast" signals on various "macroscopic" bands. There are a variety of broadcasts available in aether, but two play a key role in the story:

1. "Destroyer" fries the brains of anyone smart enough to comprehend the broadcast!
2. "Traveler" seems to provide a lot of extremely useful information, provided you can get past "destroyer" (because "destroyer" signal is far too strong).

This story is of a quest - 4 individuals travel all over the galaxy, with the help of information provided by Traveler, to locate & disable the destroyer source. They'll eventually find the purposes of both destroyer & traveler, & get some enlightenment in the psychology of sentient beings.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1969.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1970 in novels category.
Related: Stories of Piers Anthony.

Cory Doctorow's "I, Robot" (novelette, free): When North America was a police state

This is may be the most readable short fiction I've seen from author so far. Suspension of belief becomes much harder towards later parts of the story, but first two thirds is great.

Story summary.

This is the story of Arturo, a policeman in North America ("UNATS"), & his difficult relationship with his teenager daughter Ada. As a consequence of their conflict, we get to see the police state of "UNATS" (North America).

Fact sheet.

First published: The Infinite Matrix, 15 February 2005.
Download full text from publisher's site, Feedbooks. [via John@ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2006 in novelette category.
Nominated for BSFA Award 2005 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Cory Doctorow.

Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" (short story, non-genre, free)

I don't really get what makes this story so famous. May be it touches some US specific cord, & has local appeal there.

It's not a bad story, though. A non-genre story about the life of a family with dying mother, with some interesting observations.

There is an attempt to make the clearly non-genre story genre that didn't really work for me. We're told in parts of US countryside, bears have discovered the secret of fire, & make campfires at night.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, August 1990.
Read full text at Scribd.
Rating: B.
Winner of 1991 Hugo Award in short story category.
Winner of 1990 Nebula Award in short story category.
Related: Stories of Terry Bisson.

Joe Haldeman's "None So Blind" (short story, superman, free): Redeploying the human visual cortex

This very amusing story has its technological parts premised on this: if more than a third of human brain is devoted to dealing with visual signals from the eyes, why aren't the blind people geniuses as a rule (since this much brain capacity is lying "unused" in them)?

That leads to actual technology that lets a surgeon tinker with the optic nerves to help brain rewire itself - so we get intellectual supermen off the operating table!

See also.

1. John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids": Is based on the antithesis: however big a brain, without eyes, it's not much use. If most of the world were to go blind suddenly, our large brains won't save us from even small-brained menaces.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, November 1994.
Download full text from one of the author's sites. [via an anonymous visitor of Variety SF]
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1995 in short story category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1995 in short story category.
Related: Stories of Joe Haldeman.

Hugo Awards 2011: Winners announced

Official announcement.

Short fiction winners:

1. [novella] Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (A); download; Subterranean Press (2010): Training AIs takes a lot of time & commitment.
2. [novelette] Allen M Steel's "The Emperor of Mars"; download; Asimov's, June 2010: A man copes with tragedy by escaping into fantasy.
3. [ss] Mary Robinette Kowal's "For Want of a Nail"; download; Asimov's, September 2010: A retiring computer operator bugs spaceship's AI to save himself from recycling. Everyone "useless" must be recycled (destroyed) to save ship's resources!

Sean McMullen's "Eight Miles" (novelette, free): Helping a Martian(?) warrior stranded on earth!

While there is not much new about the plot, I liked it for reasons I cannot explain - perhaps simply because it's a fast moving story that doesn't bore?

Story is set in 19th century London.

Story summary.

There are 3 main characters:

1. Angelica: A "deformed" "human" from "perhaps" a very high altitude unexplored place in Himalayas. She was on display as a freak in a circus from which Lord Gainsley purchased her.
2. Lord Cedric Gainsley: A very wealthy & ruthless individual who's learned a great secret about Angelica.
3. Harold Parkes: Narrator of the story. A balloonist hired by Gainsley to build machines that can ascent to unbelievable heights - heights where Angelica will be comfortable.

Parks will learn the intrigues of Gainsley, foil them, & hopes to have unbelievable adventures.

See also.

1. A E van Vogt's "Cataaa" (download): Intelligent alien exhibited as a freak in a human circus.
2. Eric Frank Russell & Maurice Hugi 's "Mechanical Mice": A man has found a way to tap the minds of those far more technologically advanced, so he can built their machines even if he doesn't understand first thing about those machines.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2010 in novelette category.

Allen M Steele's "The Emperor of Mars" (novelette, free): A man copes with tragedy by escaping into fantasy

It's occasionally humorous & generally quite readable story of young man on a Martian colony who's had to face extreme loss back on earth. He will escape into Martian science fiction & get hallucinations where he's the Emperor of a declining martian empire...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, June 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2011 in novelette category.

Eric James Stone's 'That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made' (novelette, religion, free)

In a very colorful background, a Christian missionary priest convinces a "god" to an elder star-traveling alien race to let its followers switch allegiance to Christian god.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 2010 in novelette category.

Fredric Brown's "The Waveries" (short story, alien invasion, free)

I'd read it long ago, in one of the "Isaac Asimov Presents Great SF Stories" books (I think), but found the online copy only recently.

It's supposed to be one of the better known stories of Brown. A light-hearted "apocalypse" where it has suddenly become impossible to use electricity in any kind of application!

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, January 1945.
Download full text from Grey Lodge Occult Review. [via David Mitchell @rasfw]
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Award 1996 in short story category.
Related: Stories of Fredric Brown.

Jerry Pournelle's "Extreme Prejudice" (novelette, extreme engineering, free): An ocean-based permanent habitat

What I read here is the description of a huge water-based human habitat. A little portion of it above surface, most of it subsurface. Located somewhere in the Pacific. Sea farming, sea-bed mining, generating electricity by exploiting the ocean's vertical thermal gradient, tame & talking dolphins, ...

What some others at ClassicScienceFiction seem to have read into it are contradictory & unsatisfactory behavior of key actors & background events. I liked it because I only noticed the engineering aspects; if you're more into characters, your mileage might well vary.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "The Deep Range": Similar sea-based setup.
   
   The novel is primarily about using whales as cattle - herding, pasturing, milking, & not insubstantial parts about butchering them for meat. Plus bits about deep-sea monster hunting & a bit of Buddhist ideology.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 1974.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1975 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Jerry Pournelle.

Lloyd Biggle, Jr's "Monument" (novelette, colonialism, free): Non-violent, non-Gandhian, resistance against colonialism

So far, the only stories of peacefully & successfully fighting off the far more militarily powerful alien colonists I've read have been Gandhian. This one is different. And beautiful resolution.

Story summary.

An unnamed alien world, later in the story named Langri - after the local name of a human who foresaw their doom & gave them tools to fight it. An idyllic world human colonists want to grab. A lot of things happen, many of them familiar ones, until the natives throw their masterstroke.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June 1961.
Download full text from Webscription. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo group].
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1962.
Related: Stories of Lloyd Biggle.

Harlan Ellison's "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (novelette, fantasy, free): Two friends from different backgrounds but with a common destiny

This is one of the rare Ellison stories I liked - first 80% of it anyway, before the really fantastic elements ruined it for me.

This is one of the "lost time" stories - because a few days were dropped from Julian calender in 16th century when it became Gregorian calender. In his non-fiction article, author tells us the story idea came from the hour "lost"/"recovered" when clocks are reset in countries that have daylight saving time concept.

Interesting parts relate to accidental friendship of two lonely men, one much older than the other. Only there is something mysterious about the old man, & he's carrying a weird gadget; we'll learn the secrets in the end. Story has black man/white man undertone that will likely mean something to US readers; also has loss of someone as a major sentimental element.

Fact sheet.

First published: Terry Carr (ed)'s "Universe 15" (anthology, 1985).
Download full text from Ellison Webderland. [via ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo group].
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1986 in novelette category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1985 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Harlan Ellison.

John Varley's "The Persistence of Vision" (novella, utopia, free): Physical misfits create a society where they're the norm

While there are multiple themes here, a substantial part of the story is devoted to language & communications. Say no one had eyes & ears. How would you communicate?

Ending is very abrupt & arbitrary.

Caution: Story includes some sexually explicit scenes.

Story summary.

An epidemic ("German measles, or rubella") left some 5000 children born blind & deaf in its wake. Society is generally caring - in its own way, but they'll always be misfits, & objects of pity. On reaching adulthood, a few dozen of them set out to build a community custom-built for them; one where being deaf & blind is the natural state of being.

Story is the description of their commune, seen from the eyes of a drifter who'll be a drifter no more.

Quotes.

1. "To protest, one must be aware of the possibility of something better. It helps to have a language, too."
2. "nothing is moral always, & anything is moral under the right circumstances."
3. "Why is it that once having decided what I must do, I'm afraid to reexamine my decision? Maybe because the original decision cost me so much that I didn't want to go through it again."

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, March 1978.
Download MP3 podcast of the story, read by Spider Robinson. [via Boing Boing]
Note: I've'nt personally heard this MP3; I've only read the original text version.
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo Award 1979 in novella category.
Winner of Nebula Award 1978 in novella category.
Related: Stories of John Varley.

Samuel R Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah" (short story, free): Fetish of sexually normal towards sexually abnormal

This is my second or third Delany story; none have worked for me so far. May be it will work better with readers familiar with US of 1960s? In any case, it appears to be among the better known stories of author.

I've no idea how the title relates to the story.

Story summary.

Maintenance of infrastructure on moon, Mars, & the satellites of Jupiter requires "altered" people ("Spacers"), because of long exposure to radiation. This alteration kills their sexual nature - they're now neither male nor female. The operation is done when they're still kids - "children whose sexual responses are hopelessly retarded at puberty."

Among the normal are "frelks", people with a sexual fetish for spacers. And spacers often oblige, for money.

This story is a collection of vignettes about these contacts - spacers vs frelks. Narrated by an unnamed spacer, part of a group on ground holidays.

Fact sheet.

First published: Harlan Ellison (ed)'s "Dangerous Visions" (1967).
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Rating: B.
Winner of Nebula Award 1967 in short story category.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1968 in short story category.
Among the Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction's classics.

Peter Watts' "The Island" (novelette, space opera, free): Life cannot be peaceful

I liked the punchline - about the motives of the alien. But most of it is a dark, though readable, cocktail of familiar tropes.

Caution:  Most Watts' fiction, including this story, liberally use swear words.

Story summary.

Life of an alien, in the shape of an enormous thin membrane fully enclosing its star, is threatened because a human ship going to lay a wormhole close to it. It will persuade the humans to lay it a little away, at safe coordinates it specifies, instead. Humans will learn its motives too late...

Much of the conflict in the story is, however, between the unnamed woman narrator aboard the ship, & the AI running the ship. AI has become mad, somewhat in the sense of HAL, from Arthur Clarke's "2001 A Space Odyssey".

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection" (2010, anthology).
2. David G Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Eds)' "Year's Best SF 15" (2010, anthology).
3. Rich Horton (ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition" (anthology).
4. Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year", Volume 4 (2010, anthology).

Fact sheet.

First published: Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds)' "The New Space Opera 2" (2009).
Download full text from author's site.
Read online at publisher's site.
Listen to audio as par of a longer podcast at StarShipSofa.
Rating: B.
Winner of Hugo award 2010 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Peter Watts.

Hugo awards 2010: winners announced

Nothing yet on official page, but here is the twitter stream.

Links on category go to all category nominees. Links on author or publisher find matching stories.

1. [ss] Will McIntosh's "Bridesicle" (B); download text/audio; Asimov's, January 2009.
2. [novelette] Peter Watts' "The Island"; download; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "The New Space Opera 2".
3. [novella] Charles Stross' "Palimpsest" (B); download (available for the duration of Hugo voting in 2010); Wireless (collection?).
4. [novel] Tie between Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl" (download) & China Miéville's "The City & The City".

Related: Past Hugo winners & nominees.

Joanna Russ' "When It Changed" (short story, free): It's a women's world!

Author introduces the key premise of this story in a note at the end of the copies linked below: "almost all the characterological sex differences we take for granted are in fact learned and not innate."

Story summary.

Human colonized world of Whileaway had a plague 600 years ago - an event that killed all men. Only women were spared. They figured out a way of breeding, & now have a normal all-women society.

Then come four men from long forgotten earth. And we get into serious (but sometimes funny) communications issues...

See also.

1. Alice Sheldon's "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?": Time traveling men who arrived from the past must be killed, but only after harvesting their semen, in the all women society right here on earth (men died out long ago).

Fact sheet.

First published: Harlan Ellison's "Again, Dangerous Visions" (anthology, 1972).
Download full text from Internet Archive or Scribd (both links were very slow when I checked just before posting).
Rating: B.
Winner of Nebula Award 1972 in short story category.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1973 in short story category.
Among the Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction's Classics.

Ursula K Le Guin's "The Word For World is Forest" (novella): Natives throw out ruthless & evil colonists

I'll put it among the essential reads of science fiction on colonialism.

In some sense, this is yet another precursor to Hollywood movie "Avatar". While Alan Dean Foster's "Midworld", often cited as the prototype after which Avatar is modeled, focuses more on world building, Le Guin's version has a more strongly demarcated conflict: human colonists ("yumens" to natives) are far more evil, natives (derisively called "creechies" by colonists) are able to repel them by themselves - making the reader root more strongly for the natives.

Story summary.

Colonists from earth want wood from the forest world of Athshe ("New Tahiti" to colonists). So they set about razing the local forests, destroying native cities & villages inside the
forest. There is general genocide of natives, taking some as slaves, routine rapes of their
women.

Natives finally wake up via the hero, Selver. He & his wife were taken slave, his wife
raped & killed by Captain Don Davidson - official villain & personification of the ultimate evil. From this point on, the days of humans on this world are numbered, with Selver organizing & leading the local military raids against colonist camps.

Another individual that is sketched in some detail is colonists' anthropologist, Captain Raj Lyubov - the "good" human.

Quotes.

1. "The world is always new, however old its roots."
2. "For four years they've behaved to us as they do to one another. Despite the physical differences, they recognized us as members of their species, as men. However, we have not responded as members of their species should respond... We have killed, raped, dispersed, & enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and & down their forests. It wouldn't be surprising if they'd decided that we are not human."
   
   "And therefore can be killed, like animals".
   
3. "The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest."
   "Athshe, which meant the Forest, & the World."
   
   This is where the title comes from.

Fact sheet.

First published: Harlan Ellison (ed)'s "Again, Dangerous Visions" (anthology, 1972).
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo award 1973 in novella category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1972 in novella category.
Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Free Fiction: Naomi Novik's "His Majesty's Dragon"

At Suvudu Free Library.

Actually, this has been on Suvudu in the past, but was probably taken off. Now back on, "for a limited time".

This novel was one of the Hugo award nominees 2 or 3 years ago.

Hugo Awards 2010 - novellas: Nominees & my rankings

Official announcement at AussieCon4. Covers fiction originally published anywhere in English during 2009.

I've read only one story so far - a very ordinary one.

Nominees (6 stories, best first, unread last)

If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For read stories, my rating is in brackets. Links on author, editor, or publisher fetch more fiction from source. Download links are included where I'm aware of an online copy.

1. Charles Stross' "Palimpsest" (B); download (available for the duration of Hugo voting in 2010); Wireless (collection?): There are "ideas" here for at least 2 dozen stories, & I don't mean that as compliment. I found it a confused jumble of ideas rather than a coherent story; finished it only because I was determined to finish at least one story from this list. Also, there are things here designed to shock the reader - for the sake of shocking rather than to further any goal of the story.
   
   There is some sort of society of time travelers that keeps reengineering things to the end of the universe - prolonging life of sun, making solar system go traveling through intergalactic void, reintroducing humans on earth every time they keep getting extinct (which they're very good at doing). Sometimes restarting life on earth at microbe level & let it evolve; I could not figure out how it always evolved to humans as smart species! Plus conflict within this society of time travelers - incumbents vs rebels, with a small thread on how organizations tend to become an end in themselves & lose sight of what they were created for.
2. Nancy Kress' "Act One"; download; Asimov's, March 2009: Not read.
3. John Scalzi's "The God Engines"; as an independent book by Subterranean: Not read.
4. James Morrow's "Shambling Towards Hiroshima; as an independent book by Tachyon: Not read.
5. Ian McDonald's "Vishnu at the Cat Circus"; Cyberabad Days (coll): Not read.
6. Kage Baker's "The Women of Nell Gwynne's"; as an independent book by Subterranean: Not read.

Related.

1. Other fiction categories in this year's Hugo awards: short stories, novelettes, novels.
2. Last year's Hugo awards: short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels.
   
3. Competing awards that recognize "best" fiction originally published in 2009: Nebula (US) - short stories, novelettes, novellas; Aurialis (Australian authors); BSFA (fiction published in UK); Prix/Aurora (Canada); Million Writers (global, online short fiction).
   
   Note the scope of Nebulas is 1.5 years - later half of 2008 & all of 2009. All other awards only care about 2009.
4. Anthologies that collect "best fiction originally published during 2009": Dozois', Hartwell/Cramer's, Horton's, Strahan's.
5. My "best fiction originally published during 2009, 2010" lists (also link others' best of relevant year lists at bottom).
6. "Best of" lists.
7. Fiction originally published in 2009, during 2000-2009.
   

Note: I normally update list posts like this when I read a story, find new links, etc. This post was last updated 1 May 2010.