Nebula Awards 2009: Winners announced

Official announcement & complete list.

1. [novel] Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl"; download.
2. [novella] Kage Baker's "The Women of Nell Gwynne’s"; all nominees.
3. [novelette] Eugie Foster's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast"; download text/audio; all nominees.
4. [ss] Kij Johnson's "Spar"; download text/audio; all nominees.

Kage Baker's "The Bohemian Astrobleme" (novelette, steampunk, free): Discovery of a new kind of battery

Fast moving & easy read.

Title comes from a meteor impact site ("Astrobleme" or "star wound") in Bohemia that plays a key role in the story.

Story summary.

Gentlemen's Speculative Society is an ancient secret society developing gadgets way ahead of its time. Now, in this year 1845, one of its London establishments has accidentally discovered a new way of making an electric battery - by bring in contact a gemstone, a kind of glass called tektite, with acetic acid.

They'll soon find that this specific kind of tektite is a very rare material, & comes from Budweis in Bohemia. So four agents set out to locate & secure their supply...

Fact sheet.

First published: Subterranean Online, Winter 2010 (January-March 2010).
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Kage Baker.

RIP: Kage Baker

From SFWA: "Kage Baker has passed away this morning after a fierce struggle with cancer."

I initially fell in love with her work because of lovely language she uses, though later it got a bit repetitive. Could be because English is not even my second language, let alone first - I may be easier to impress with skills in English than its natives.

I've not read any of her novels, but she was probably among the more readable authors at short fiction length.

Related: Stories of Kage Baker.

Kage Baker's "The Empress of Mars": A woman of grit refuses to be cowed down by powerful establishment

If it were not set on Mars, I would have called this novella length story non-genre.

I found the first quarter a bit tedious (took me nearly a week); rest was single sitting thing. But there is nothing really outstanding about it; it's one of those "ok while you read it" stories.

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.

British Empire is the dominant colonizer of Mars - through the "British Arean Company" (BAC); people from Celtic Federation are low cost labor imported when needed by BAC, & dumped when their job is done. Heroine comes from the later group.

Mary Griffith, with a "doctorate in xenobotany", is a woman with many kids. She is hired by BAC for work on Mars - "to discover about useful lichens on Mars". She runs out of her usefulness in 5 years, & is fired - with no money to buy a passage back to earth. As part of severance package, she receives a small patch of land in Celtic areas - kind of slums of the colony. This Mars appears to have a lot of fertile land; only she has got the worst of it.

To make a living, she begins brewing beer & sets up a restaurant. "Empress" of title is the name of this restaurant.

When going through a particularly bad patch, she happens to dig out a big & very rare "red diamond" from her land! This will make her very rich.

As the news spreads, she has gold diggers raiding her land & ruining things. And finally the lawyer of BAC visits, claiming small print of her land bequeathal contract that lets BAC take back the land when it pleases, & that she is now under notice to vacate in 30 days!

End is sort of indeterminate where she has decided to fight off the claim of BAC in courts.

Fact sheet.

"The Empress of Mars", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2003.
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Award 2004 in novella category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2003 in novella category.

Kage Baker's "The Hotel at Harlan’s Landing": Outstanding

There is not much sf in this story, but it's outstanding nevertheless - primarily because of lazy & easy language. My grandmother would have loved it, if she could read English. And I do too. That should tell something about it's appeal!

Story summary.
This story is a first person reminiscence by a very practical woman who ran a little hotel in a nearly dead logging town somewhere on the sea side of California. Story begins in 1934, describes the old ways, & then the transformation of town into a modern one when the woman is old.

Briefly, in the middle of the story, some humanoid aliens appear. A gang that doesn't think well of humans, other that does. But that is just to spice up the story, & get it classified as sf. And they don't really steal the rythm of the tale.

Her command over language is outstanding - gives just the right touch. Sample these:

1. "Uncle Jacques brought me a radio he’d tinkered with, he called it a wireless, and I don’t know if it ran on a battery or what it had in it, but we set it behind the bar and we could get it to pull in music and shows."
2. "I wondered how the radio had switched itself over to the marine band, but it was Uncle Jacques’s radio so I guess it might have done anything."

Fact sheet.
The Hotel at Harlan's Landing, short story, review
Author: Kage Baker
First published: 2002 in her short story collection "Black Projects, White Knights"
Genre: Reminiscence
Rating: A
Publication history.

This story is included in the following collections.

1. "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection". Anthology edited by Gardner Dozois.