Mad Max: Fury Road

I'd like to review Mad Max: Fury Road, but I can't. It's only been out a couple of days and most of the things I'm excited about would be spoilers.

All I can say at this time is: I loved it. It is Mad Max. It's not like it was with similarly many-years-late reboot Phantom Menace - which was oh, yeah, I'm briefly excited about this but after seeing it I have to cop to severely lowered expectations. On the contrary, it takes Mad Max: Road Warrior and doubles everything about it, without betraying or undermining any of it. Nobody's mystic union with the universe is ploddingly revealed to be something to do with their SMA-20 blood test here.

I'd like a whole movie about those Terry Gilliam-type things who lived in the swamp.  I want to know how the masses lived in Immortan Joe's world. I want to learn more about the mountain bikers who controlled the pass. I'd love to hear more about the old ladies who evidently had little problem, with, how shall I put this, with disposing of the bodies of those they kill in an ecologically sound and calorifically fulfilling manner. And the bad guys' pawns - the put-upon War Boys - might use those they catch alive as unwilling blood donors, but they're not unsalvageable monsters either. I want to know more about the seeds, about the baby, and about Imperatrix (not going to say Imperator) Furiosa's journey.

But what I got was a story that hinted at all of these things while charging forward inexorably. The bulk of the movie, as I'm sure you know, is a car chase. It's the ultimate car chase, as big, heavy and kinetic as any sequence of vehicles can be. You forget that there is such a thing as ground, as characters can not access it and have to get used to jumping from moving vehicle to moving vehicle in the deadly convoy. Killing, repairing, or even clinging to the hood to blow mouthfuls of fuel directly into the engine air intakes in order to max the revs, are all done at speed.

You may have heard that this is a "feminist" film. If that means women and men get equal shots at heroism, sure. It also has four damsels in distress - if feminism worries you, concentrate on their plight instead. They totally are in distress.

When I first saw The Road Warrior, or Mad Max II as it was then, in theaters, I wanted to live there. The whole world just seemed right. I'm much older now and would obviously prefer it if everybody would just get off my lawn but in Fury Road George Miller put in a biker gang of women at least my age who didn't give Fuck One, and that's inspiring.

Yes, I'd live there. Again.

Review: “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)

Review: “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House) RP 

This is a Rabid Puppy nomination, and is from Castalia House, the RP mastermind's own publishing house.

Spoilers: This story is the sort of short story I like, which is one with a punchline at the end. I'm going to discuss the story and give away the punchline. If you don't want that spoiled, read it first.

This is a short story told in the present tense ("Before I can adjust my thrusters to bring myself in line with the stricken Swiftsure, a coded call breaches my security"…etc). A machine intelligence in the form of a space ship is fighting a group of humans (The Ascendency) on behalf of uploaded ex-human machine intelligences. He – his name is Taren X 45 Delta – has a crew of augmented humans (think – skulljacks) which he thinks of as somewhere between gut bacteria and pets. His superior officer (they don't bother with ranks, but they all seem to know their place) is Alpha 7 Alpha, who used to be a human but has entirely dispensed with flesh. When he is told to demob his augmented human crew, he goes along with his orders and leaves them behind, but when it becomes clear that Alpha 7 Alpha is out to kill all the 'superannuated' mere humans of the Ascendancy, even civilian children, Taren X 45 Delta changes his mind. He reuploads himself into an Ascendancy battlecruiser, takes over its weapon systems, attempts to un-astonish the human crew, and defeats his old buddies.

Sample quote: The crew springs to life, excitedly shouting redundant verbal commands at each other. It is inefficient and annoying. I feel the surge of strength from the reactor, and kick our thrust up to the maximum acceleration of 20 gravities. My vision fills with crisscrossing approach vectors, extrapolating from the enemy vessel’s current course and velocity to pinpoint where they will be.

When I was at primary school, long ago and pre-computer games, there was a group of boys who would spend hours each day drawing a picture of fighters, bombers, tanks and battleships. When it was all arranged they would get 10B pencils and, shouting "Dakka dakka dakka vwooorm! Yeeeeeeeeeoung! Boom! Pow pow pow! Crash!" etc. they would draw fiery trails of flak, tracers, bullets, and bombs from various warcraft to various other warcraft until somebody 'won'. One of them must have grown up to be Steve Rzasa. It's not necessarily a bad thing that he spends so much time lovingly detailing armaments and space battles, but in such a short story, it means that the big idea – machine intelligence who works for post-humans decides he's happier with regular humans – gets shortchanged.

At first I got the feeling that having humans inside him was a bit like having a tapeworm. They don't do him any good – when he fights they are slower than he is and afraid, and he notices their sweat stinks. He does just as well after they're gone. But at some point he decided humans are better than his boss, who is, I have to say, a total dick. At first I thought that's what it was. If his boss had been charming, an uploaded Servalan instead of uploaded Tarkin, he would have been fine with it.

Then I looked over some of the other things Taren X 45 Delta says. For example he quotes Isaiah 29:16, which describes men inverting the natural order of the creator and created, by analogy with confusing a potter with the potter's clay.

So it seems to me that the AI has simply joined 'the natural order of things'. He served something repugnant – a posthuman – and considered himself to be one of them, although he was a machine intelligence. He came to realize that he was a machine, and as such his lot was to serve humans, because that's the way it's supposed to be.

So I quite liked this one, but nopes on the Hugs because too much naka naka naka kerpow, and also because there's a line after the punchline. Oh, and because the title gives the story away and eeeehhhh Benedict Arnold. I gather he did it for money, which is hardly comparable.

(A much funnier story on this theme is Brian Aldiss' But Who Can Replace a Man? And that, folks, was a Hugo-worthy story.)

The Sweet

At the time, I always hated The Sweet, who I regarded as pop puppets in the Chinnichap sway.  I'll never give up my Tyrannosaurus Rex/T. Rex fandom.  Even Bowie couldn't cut a dent in it at the time, so Sweet - and even more disliked rivals Slade - didn't have a chance.

But here's a short contemporary documentary on The Sweet and their own thoughts, which are, not surprisingly, that they didn't think of themselves as a bubblegum band.

Review: “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner

Review: “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014) SPRP

This is a Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy nominee.

After the end of this (I have learned to check for this first) Analog sez, "The earliest hints of an Intervener conspiracy emerged in “The Matthews Conundrum,” in the November 2013 issue. Expanded and novelized, earlier crises of the InterstellarNet era (several first seen in Analog) are available as InterstellarNet: Origins and InterstellarNet: New Order."

Gah! Again! It's not a novelette or novella, it's part of a longer story that takes place in various other publications. I'm not going to vote a piece as Hugo-worthy if you can't grok the damn thing by sitting down and reading it.

The setting is what I've called ever since reading Doon (the National Lampoon parody of Herbert's Dune) "They play a dangerous game!" This is the type of thriller, like Dune, where various spies, augmented people, aliens, AIs, et freakin' al intrigue the living shit out of some McGuffin. In this case, there's also a real game involved because "B'tok" is a multi-dimensional game played by the aliens (and picked up by the local humans) which entails both players only able to see part of the layout of the game, and as many diversions and interruptions as possible. I'd be a lousy player of B'tok because I didn't really follow the all twists and turns of the story so I'm an obvious candidate for B'tok championship runner-up due to being misled and sleight-of-handed by the sheer complications of the dangerous moves.

It's far too complicated to sum up, so straight to the discussion. This is definitely SF, what with it being set in space and on moons and having aliens and suchlike. The story moves briskly along and if it had a beginning and an end it could have been a contender. There are actual human women in it who behave like human women and live, conspire and die in a believable fashion. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, but it is pretty rare in SF.

On the down side, although aliens and humans have access to Helium-3, Deuterium and antimatter, and we get a mensh of accelerating at "two gees", I'm not sure how people get to the further parts of the Solar System as quickly as they do. I think the orbital mechanics are a bit cheated-on in order to have a fast story.

There's also a first chapter that concerns the accident investigations of someone called Lyle, which is a great name and I thoroughly approve. But at the end of the chapter Lyle feels something, presumably a blaster, against his back and someone says, "Do not move!" In the remaining 20 pages, Lyle is never mentioned again. Neither is his ship, his ship's AI, or the disabled ship he's investigating. What happened to Lyle? Why was what he was doing important? (He did play chess with his AI, so he was foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is good.)

The writing bears hints of haste.

"Even offloading much of the load to her implant" 

"Hunters evolved from pack-hunting carnivores" 

"What unusual had been received?" 

"three diners, deep in high-pitched, guttural conversation"

This remark isn't directed at Mr. Lerner, but rather at the sum of the stories I've read so far. Stories in Analog are exactly the same as they were decades ago. The one development is that writers now write trilogies, hexalogies and general set-in-the-universe-of-$novel_name stories in the form of novelettes, whereas previously they had limited that to the endless series of novels some of them produce. I've always preferred a new story myself, though I recognize readers sometimes like more of the same.

Review: “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr.

Review: “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014) SPRP

This is a Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy nomination.

Spoilers: I'm going to talk about the beginning, middle and end of this story. If you wish to remain unspoilt, read it first.

Analog sez up front, "Characters from “Flow” first appeared in “Thaw” [July/August 2013]." Bah. Not another one. Yep, once you get to the end, you quickly realize you've only gotten to the middle. This is not really a novella, but part of a longer story. It's not a novella or novelette if it's an installment.

In the story, a man from the cold lands helps to bring an iceberg to the warm lands for sale as refrigeration material.  The cold lands are very cold and misty, and so he has never seen the sun as a disc, or the moon or stars. He's longsighted, and I got the impression everybody in his tribe is, but he is still literate as his people write on cylinders they keep in their pockets by carving into them with a knife and reading with their fingers. Our man Rist must have the 80 gig equivalent, as he writes down everything that happens, which means he got about 25 pages on his cylinder.  In the warm lands, he hires a few prostitutes, drinks a lot, compares everything to the equivalent back home (which is invariably made from peat, excluding the prostitutes), marvels at the stone buildings, the sun, moon and the stars, and finally steals a piece of some monofilament-style rope the warmlanders dig up from deep mines that go all the way down to the layers where the gods used to live.

He's eventually chased off by a priest and, unable to rejoin his companions, he goes downriver instead, where he discovers a mighty waterfall that doesn't fall off the edge of the world – he can see fields down there. He signals with a mirror (a warmlander trick) and the inhabitants of the post end-of-the-world signal back with red dots that play on his body. Luckily, he knows where to find a long piece of rope.

Then it just ends.

The hardest part of the story to get through is that females – I won't call them women, because there aren't any women in the story – are called "wen".

To the shorter dic:

wen/noun
a boil or other swelling or growth on the skin, especially a sebaceous cyst.
   archaic 

an outstandingly large or overcrowded city. "the great wen of London"

I once gave up on a China Mieville novel partly because it had a wen in it. I was determined to be stronger this time, but when the moon, which is also female, appears, it also a "wen".

“Welcome to the Warm Lands, bird-rider!” his rough berg-companion Cruthar shouted back, also trying to be heard through the thunderous crashing, sharp creaks, and long groans as their shepherded small mountain of ice slid and pounded against river stones. “Down here, the Wen of the Mist and Pursuing Dimness, they lost a sky-war to the Shining One and the Pale Wen!” Cruthar stabbed a gnarled brown finger toward the blue bowl above them. “New gods in a new sky—all blue."

There are far too many exclamation marks.  The dialogue is in Hale'n'Hearty Barbarian speak, which gets wearing.  As for female humans, you must be joking. There are plenty of "wen" though.

 "It was a long night, and they both planned to sleep in the pub’s bedding rooms. But not until willing wen had bargained to escort them upstairs for other pleasures. His particular companion that dark, a very tall beauty with fiery copper hair and peat-green eyes— and a great heaviness of chest that was not muscle at all—was unforgettable."

Yes, the great thing about the women, I mean wen, they find in the warm lands – who are all prostitutes – is that they have tits, unlike the ones back home.

Non-dialogue is clunky.

"The bulk of the men began hammering long iron poles into the surface at the front of the berg, with large hammers."

We get bits like this:

"He carved his speculations on the wooden cylinder that Cruthar had left him, fortunately having stuffed it in his pants pocket during the long ride downriver from God’s Port."

There's a trick writers do, which is when your character suddenly needs something and you've forgotten to make sure he had it with him: You do a search for the passage where you last saw it, and write there, back in the past, that he hadn't, in fact, forgotten it. Something like this: 'He finished reading Cruthar's message, and put the wooden cylinder in his pocket, intending to discuss it with him when next they met.' Fast forward five pages: 'He took Cruthar's cylinder out of his pocket and carved his speculations upon it.'  It's not the world's best trick, but it's better than writing in a straight line and putting in a he-hadn't-forgotten-it-honest clause in the sentence when you need it again.  Arlen Andrews (or his editor) doesn't know this trick.  (And I'm not convinced the verb tenses are correct in the published version. 'Having stuffed it' is a finished action that took a small amount of time. 'During the long ride' is too long for the action. 'At some point during' or 'prior to the long ride' would be better.)

I don't read a lot of short fiction, except when I'm reading for the Hugos (which I mostly don't vote in, anyway). I'm only about halfway through. I have all the John C Wright still ahead of me. I'm already fed up of Men From the Badlands Find A Stone House And Marvel At It stories. Post apoc, in outer space, whatever, it's an old trope. Perhaps big hearty brutes in furs clapping you on the back and taking you for non-peat brewskis and easily-purchased female wens with bazooms is a fantasy that just won't die for some authors, but then again so is Harry/Draco fiction and dinosaur erotica, and they aren't up for Hugos.

I realize I'm generalizing from a small sample, but is the art of writing short stories dead? I mean the ones from the good old days that began with some initiating action, went through a complicating middle and ended when the action had resolved? (Preferably, at least for me, ending with an actual punchline?) 


Edit to add: I woke up this morning in a panic that I'd written "downriver" when obviously (to me) a calved piece of sea ice, a berg, must come into a river at a port and go "upriver". I reread the beginning, and "downriver" is correct. The berg starts at the riverhead.  I don't know how this could work, but maybe it's explained at the end of the previous installment, and another reason why this isn't a standalone Hugo-worthy piece. 

Review: “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn

Review: “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014) SPRP

Spoilers: This review does not avoid spoilers, so if you don't want to be spoiled, read it first.

This story is both a Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy pick.

This is very much an Old Skool skiffy tale. It's a Viking Planet adventure, but with multi-racial warriors rather than blond ones because 21st Century. Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand and Sammi o’ th’ Eagles are two companions who are of different peoples, requiring Sammi to speak to Teodorq in a sort of pidgin. They reminded me of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, in space. They are traveling on a mission given to them prior to the start of the story by a talking ghost called Jamly who lives in a crashed vessel from the sky, possibly from legendary Terra. Teodorq is also trying to keep ahead of Karakalan Vikeram (Kal), of the Serp tribe. Teodorq killed Kal's brother and Kal is determined to get his revenge. They come across a stone village and hunker down in hiding, wondering who the people are and how they build in stone. They hear the sound of a crossbow bolt being placed behind them, and surprise! They've been captured, by a princess (and her backup).

They're taken to the First's (King's) throne room, which is not unlike Jabba the Hutt's palace except they have a dancing "Fool" rather than a Twi'lek. Guess who's also here? Karakalan Vikeram, determined to avenge his brother. Diverse questionings and intrigues happen, they're shown an artifact from the sky (this one doesn't talk), and eventually sent to train in the First's army. There's a showdown between Karakalan Vikeram and Teodorq but both survive, and the First's odd wording as he tells them to cut it out leads Karakalan Vikeram to believe he must now forgive Teodorq and kill the First instead.

Then it just stops.

I'm an Old Skool person myself, and so I've read many iterations of these Old Skool stories before. I think early Poul Anderson could have written this one, with the only newish element being the talking Princess-Leia-Hologram Jamly who lives in the crashed space shuttle. (And she's completely off-stage anyway.) But my own cynicism isn't necessarily shared by everyone.

First sentence: "The Great Escarpment edged World along its northern marge, from the Hill Country in the far west to the eastern verge of the shortgrass prairie."

Got it. The world is called World, the escarpment physical feature is called the Great Escarpment and the hill country is called Hill Country.

"It was no great surprise to Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand…"

Oh, so that's where their stock of names got used up.

I couldn't help thinking that there must be more to the words they used than I was able to figure out. The pidgin is called "plavver" – evidently from 'palaver', and a kind of speech is called "Sprok" – either from German or the Yiddish 'shprakh' (language). (Or maybe Afrikaans, since people live in "kraals".) But on the other hand, the First's hammer is said to be full of "schmuck" (value). I don't think you can repurpose a word like 'schmuck' (Yiddish for 'a dick' or 'a fool') by accident, so is it a joke? Or has it been/will it be explained in another installment? The stringed instrument someone plays is called a "yuke". And the sky-artifact that the First kept in his local temple – I won't spoil what it seems to be (I can only read three out of four of the 'rune types') – certainly seemed planted to get a laugh out of we Terrans.

As for the story's treatment of women – or more precisely, the woman – the story definitely shows its pulp roots. Remember the woman who captured them is a princess, so the First evidently lets her go out soldiering, but once she's back in the palace, our heroes (even while captive) call her "babe" and she is at one point described thusly:

"The girl frowned and a small crease appeared in her brow just above her pert nose."

She doesn't do much else other than hang around being a girl/babe, occasionally prompting info-dumps in the grand skiffy tradition of the scientist's beautiful daughter, and watching the manly warriors at fight practice.

The story itself is quite interesting but as you approach the last paragraph you get the sinking feeling that it's not going to end at the end. After the last paragraph, Analog helpfully tells us that these characters have appeared in a story before. So, not so much a novelette as an installment. On his own site, Michael Flynn explains, "It is part of a series that began with "...On the Shortgrass Prairie" and continued in the issue after this one with "...Against the Green." Pending acceptance, it will continue next year with the recently submitted "...In the Great North Woods.""

I say "quite interesting" because the fight-training and fight scenes were real loooong. It's just not my kind of thing. I assume pages-long descriptions of two men taking up named fighting stances and getting under each other's guard and blocking each other's swords is gripping stuff for swordy types. Given that, it's not surprising that so many people hated If You Were a Dinosaur My Love. The difference between the two types of story make the difference between chalk and cheese look like the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Lastly: "Sammi mutter sotto voce, “That can’t be good.” Teodorq ignored him." 

Hello, editor?

I enjoyed this but it's not really standalone, and doesn’t break new ground, so I probably wouldn't vote this #1 in the Hugos. I may have to get those other installments, though, to find out what happens.

Review: “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014) SPRP 

This is subtitled "a golden age tale" so you're sure to have romps and aliens and a puzzle.  It's both a Sad Puppy and a Rabid Puppy nom.

In the high-tech future, three manly space marines – one of them is a woman, but you can't tell – get into fighty drunk trouble on earth, and as a punishment are sent by tough-talking superiors to a planet where the humans are just about to leave, having come up blank on communicating with the local probably-sapient fauna. One of the squad – not the narrator – is convinced he can break the impasse in communication and salvage the expense of the colony.  It turns out he can!

This definitely lives up to its "Golden Age" billing. Humans versus aliens on a newly discovered planet, the soldier who is on his or her last chance before he's kicked out of the service, great descriptions of lethal alien flora and mysterious fauna. Eventually, of course, one of the trio – but not the narrator – remembers an old proverb, and figures out how to communicate with the aliens and save the colony.

My main problem was not being able to pronounce the colony name.  "A breather"? "Ab re-ather?" Other? The second problem was the narrator/protagonist not being the actual agent of change, but hey I've written that before (but not been nommed for a Hugo for it).

I enjoyed reading this and think it's a solid story.  I'm not sure it's Hugo-worthy on its own merits, and of course being on a slate isn't helping. 

Edit to add: I saw it pointed out elsewhere that the lead character's name changes from Asgari to Asari half-way through. So it does. Another "Hello, Editor?" moment. 

Review: “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli

Review: “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014) SPRP 

Spoilers. I'm going to discuss the beginning, middle and end of the story, so if you don't want to be spoiled, read it first.

This is a Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy nomination. I've never read any Lou Antonelli before so I was looking forward to this one. It's a straightforward story and Antonelli is a good writer in the grammar/spelling/paragraph sense of the term.  His writing is quick, terse and easy to follow.

The plot concerns a human base on the planet Ymilas. The chaplain of the human party knows Ymilan beliefs well. One belief – well, not a belief, a known phenomenon – is that there's an electromagnetic imprint of a person that can continue after death and can hang around giving advice to family members. Due to the unusual electromagnetic field of Ymilas, these ghosts can persist for several generations. The chaplain is unlucky enough to be around when the first human dies, and the resulting ghost stops by to haunt him. He asks the Ymilans what to do, and of course they have already developed a remedy. You travel to one of the poles, where there's a structure that will allow the electromagnetic ghost to dissipate in the steep lines of magnetic force there. He puts together a travel party. Some Ymilans, with some of their older ghosts, along with the human and his ghost, travel to the pole (the human riding on a Segway). When they get there, off into infinity the deceased human's ghost goes.  Shortly after the chaplain gets back, another human dies, and he makes plans to travel back to the pole to release the new ghost.

I liked the breezy readability of this tale. I didn't get hung up on grammar or word choice or fail to figure out what some obfuscated point was. On the down side, there's a few problems with plotting and a bit of a problem with the philosophy that knocked it down a bit.

The philosophy behind the ghost makes its fate trivial. Before the plot (such as it is) kicks off, the chaplain already knows that the ghost-things are nothing much to be worried about.

"The Ymilans believe--as do many Terran religions--that each individual has a spark of an eternal extra-dimensional over-arching consciousness that is imbued in each of them at birth and ultimately returns to a higher dimensional plane when the physical form is no longer viable. 

I told him we call it the “soul”. 

They also know--I won’t say believe because the evidence was obvious on Ymilas--that while alive we develop an electromagnetic imprint as a result of the experiences of life that survives after death. I told Dergec an ancient Terran religion had the same belief, and in fact built elaborate pyramids and tombs filled with personal belongings to keep those spirits happy. 

The ancient Egyptians called that type of a spirit the “Ba”. The Ymilans call them Helpful Ancestors, and they are considered part of one’s extended family. 

I explained Earth’s weak magnetic field apparently allows most of our spirits to dissipate, “Although there were many cultures on Earth that believed their ancestors were a part of their everyday lives," I said."

Right there, up front, we learn that these electromagnetic things are not the immortal soul. The soul has already ascended to the higher plane. The ghosts are said to be the equivalent to the "Ba" of the ancient Egyptians, one minor belief of one minor long-gone sect.  This lowers the stakes of the story no end.  

So we're dealing with some sort of cast-off or shell that seems human but isn't. Like, for example, a corpse.  Getting a corpse out of the living's space is ringed with myth and ritual, but a funeral by itself, without additional elements of drama, is not a story. Getting the "Ba" to go away seems an equally important and yet ultimately trivial task. It could be said to be a McGuffin, and the thing with McGuffins is you need a rollicking good story to go around it. Weekend at Bernie's, for example. Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Also in terms of plot, I found the chaplain was not a "man who learned better" as Heinlein would put it. He already knew there were ghosts on the planet. When a human one showed up, he asked what to do about it, got a simple answer, and dealt with it exactly that way. When a similar problem showed up the next time, he said, "I got this." It didn't seem to trouble him much and there were no complications. It's neat, but not a gripping story.  More an anecdote.

This is the second puppy story I've read and the second one to deal with the more trivial aspects of what happens after death. Is this a theme with Christians?

Also Segways. There is a Segway in the story.

Review: “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt Translator

Review: “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt Translator (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014)

Spoilers. I'm going to discuss the beginning, middle and end. If you want to remain unspoiled, read it first.

This is a non-Sad Puppy nomination.  It's a translated work.

I'm not familiar with the original language and its idioms, but it reads exactly as if the writer's long term relationship broke up and he said to a friend, "My world has turned upside down!" and the friend replied, "She's not coming back. You have to let go," and he thought, "Hey, I can make a story out of those phrases!" Because that's it: He's lost his girl, the world turns upside down, and he's told he has to let go.

I've seen a few reviews of this one already, and they all mention that the protagonist of the story is a thoroughly unlikeable, self-centered git, and also that you can't keep a goldfish in soda pop when you run out of water. So take it as read that both of these things are true.

In the story, gravity reverses itself and no one knows why, but it's speculated that the Earth just got fed up. Many people died as they hit their ceilings; planes and satellites dropped away into space. Some things aren't quite as affected by the reversal which has led to some reviewers saying the story is inconsistent in its 'physics'. I say eeeehhhh so what.  In a world where gravity can turn upside down, physics has pretty much had it anyway. Also, I remember reading a story a long, long time ago, probably in Fantasy & Science Fiction in the 60's, where gravity reversed for just one person. His neighbors watch dumbfounded as he clutches at a tree screaming that it would be such a long way to fall. They try to pry him away from the tree, and he loses his grip, eventually falling up and away with his hands still clutching twigs and leaves, dwindling into the sky. I can't remember the author or the title, but the story stuck with me for fifty years, so I'll give another one of its ilk a chance.

In summary, the protagonist's girlfriend has broken off their relationship, and boy is he pissed. He's not a nice man and isn't very polite about it. She says she's coming to pick up her goldfish the next day, but by the time next day rolls around, everything's upside down. The man saves the goldfish, letting a nearby woman fall to her presumed death as he does so, and sets off, hand over hand on anything that will tether him, to get the fish back to his ex.  On the way, he meets two old ladies with saints' names who are spinning flax – which I think is a clue that we're not in the world of physics, but fairy tales here – and they tell him to let go. They themselves are planning to join the "falling stars" – people who have fallen off the earth.  He finds his ex – she's injured, and he learns she had a new boyfriend. Had – he died in the reversal. She doesn't want our man back, even though he's gone through hell to bring her the goldfish, and he throws a jealous fit. He's still not a nice man. He finally does let go – he lets Bubbles the fish go free in a lake, and realizes as he looks up at his reflection in the water that the world *is* the right way up. He's just looking at it the wrong way round. He goes back to the old ladies' now-empty place and climbs down their flaxen thread, into the sky.

This is a lovely story and is rich with metaphorical language and evocative descriptions, for which we can surely thank both the writer and the translator.

Sample quote: "Scientists lucky enough to survive the event said that it wasn’t so much that gravity had disappeared, but that it had flipped over, as if our planet had suddenly lost all of its mass and was surrounded by some colossal object. Religious people, unlucky enough to survive the miracle, said that life was give and take, and that God was now, after so many years of giving, finally taking. But there was no colossal object, and being taken by God is a dubious given."

It's a shame our man is such a shit but it takes all kinds. It's worth reading, maybe even worth a Hugo. We'll see how the others shake out.

Review: “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart

Review: “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014) SP 

A Sad Puppy, but not Rabid Puppy, nominee, AADDEA is the first Gray Rinehart story I've read.

Warning: There will be spoilers. Go read it first if you don't want to be spoiled.

The hardest part of this story to get through is the beginning, where the author describes going through a door into a roofless building. Rooflessness will become important later, but the aliens' door is only discussed once and I've literally spent an hour trying to work out how it must look.

"The door leading to the Tephrist's studio reminded Cerna of a clam's shell turned on its side, except it was grossly oversized, indigo-painted, and steel. […] As the door-halves swung apart on smooth tracks, Cerna resisted the urge to pull his friend away. The interlocking flutes were sharp edged and equipped with heavy-duty pins as long as his forearm that secured it in the off-hours."

Which part of a clam shell is its "side"? I think of them as sitting with their hinge on the sea floor, fluted jaws upwards so as to be able to grab frogmen by their flippers in 60's sci-fi shows, but I'm willing to contemplate that they could lie on one half of their shell, with the top half lifting upwards, as in the plastic bubbling clam shells you get for amusement in 20 gallon aquariums.  Assuming in either case that the bit that is on the bottom is the foot, which bit is its side? I can't visualize what a clam's "side" must be.

And the sentence "The interlocking flutes were sharp edged and equipped with heavy-duty pins as long as his forearm that secured it in the off-hours" boggled my mind. I guess the sudden appearance of an "it" must refer back to the singular door in the first sentence of the story, not "his forearm" which is the only singular thing in the sentence. I imagined it - the door- must be like the pods that revealed the band members in Spinal Tap (except for the luckless Derek Smalls), although I would say those clam shells were on their ends rather than their sides. But I couldn't make that image work. There's a room behind the door. How does a clam shell in any direction open to reveal a room behind it? I think it would have helped if Rinehart or his editor had gone over this description to fine tune it a little. Or a lot.

Anyway, letting that go, our heroes get into the room behind the door where they see:

"The ceiling was mostly open to the afternoon sky, typical of Peshari construction, but buttresses rose from the corners that were interconnected with steel bars."

Now – spoiler – the aliens, the Peshari, are afraid of things that might fall and bury them. This is the major plot point. I can see why the writer would want to stress their buildings have buttresses early in the story. I can't see, however, why the buttresses would be on the inside. They normally go on the outside of a building in order to hold the wall against the outward push of high or heavy ceilings, which this building doesn't even have.

And let's not get started on "but buttresses" which sounds like an Eminem mid-song ad-lib and now that it's stuck in my mind I keep blurting it out loud.

And once again, I'm not readily visualizing where the steel bars are supposed to fit in. 

The rest of the early descriptions don't get much clearer. 

"A few bricks were adorned with dead Peshari in miniature bas-relief."

'Adorn' doesn't just mean decorate, or ornament. It has a subtle hint of 'to make beautiful' which jars with the adjacent use of "dead Peshari".  And anyway, they aren't actual dead Peshari, they are sculptures of Peshari who have died, one per brick. "Bas-relief" eventually makes that clear but reading the words in the order they were written made me think of a Peshari Kali, adorned with a necklace of dead Peshari heads.

A couple of paragraphs later, Peshari is spelled "Pehsari".  Whoever edited this isn't getting my vote for Hugo best short-form editor, that's for sure.

After this it settles down a bit. The humans are part of a colony which was invaded a few years after its founding by the alien Peshari. The aliens are allowing the humans to live, barely, but are clamping down, year by year, on what tech the humans are allowed to use. There is an interesting and well-written middle describing the colonists, their lives in what amounts to a concentration camp, and their plans. The older man in the initial scenes is dying, since his access to medicine has been rescinded by the aliens. He went to the "Tephrist's Studio" to ask the Tephrist to make him one of those memorial bricks. But he does not want his cremains baked into the brick, as Peshari do. He wants what we later realize is a headstone. He does not tell the Tephrist this, but he wants to be buried, with a grave-marker.

He dies; he is buried. The aliens are so horrified that a supposedly sapient species can bear to be below a covering, especially of dirt, that it throws their whole human-management system into disarray. The story fades away at this point. The humans are gearing up to rebel, but they are going to do it after the story ends, and what part this confusion and repulsion in the minds of the Peshari plays in the rebellion, we never learn.  The last scene also makes it clear that the dying human took his own life near the end by an overdose of pain meds, but whether that engenders a John C Wright-level of revulsion on the narrator's part, I can't tell. 

Not being a co-religionist with a puppy is hard. What the doctor-assisted suicide of a dying man means to another colonist, we don't learn and I can't intuit. In addition, the narrator stresses:

"Phil told me he wanted to claim a plot of land all his own. And he believed in the resurrection of the body. I took that to mean that he wanted his body to inhabit his plot of land."

Is the aliens' reaction to the burial intensified because the man is not dead, but sleeping? I can see why that might horrify them, since they have that primal fear of enclosed spaces. Or are they terrified that when he wakes up he will fight them? It's hard to tell whether it's the misunderstanding of the Christian message(s) or something else that's bugging them.

Add that to the poor editing, the confusing descriptions, and the buried-lede rebellion, and this one doesn't rise to Hugo-worthy in my opinion, puppy or no puppy.

Uh,wrong: Chipotle can’t get rid of GMOs unless it stops selling corn

Quartz says,

Chipotle can’t get rid of GMOs unless it stops selling corn

In brief: maize has a hard time seeding itself naturally, so humans must have GENETICALLY ENGINEERED corn.

No.

This line of "We've been genetically modifying organisms for thousands of years... [implication that we know what we're doing and it's 100% safe goes here]" annoys the living fuck out of me.

Getting teosinte to become maize is very clever, but it isn't cutting genes out of other plants and inserting them into corn. It's not 'genetic engineering' any more than getting a wolf to become a chihuahua is genetic engineering. It's impressive, certainly, but it's not gene manipulation.

So maize had a hard time breeding without humans. Here's another example of a plant with breeding difficulties similar to maize: Avocados have huge seeds and tasty flesh. They used to be spread by South American megafauna - giant tree sloths, mammoths and gompotheres. These animals were large enough to eat avocados whole and defecate the seed well away from the parent tree. When the megafauna went extinct 13,000 years ago, avocado seeds had to germinate in the shadow of their parent trees. They must have struggled, but they hung on long enough that Homo sapiens began to breed them for fleshier and more edible (to us) fruit.

How avocado (and similar large-seeded fruits like cherimoya and papaya) survived is a bit of a mystery mixed with a lot of luck. Our ancestors picked the seeds they wanted and let the rest die. But this isn't "genetic engineering". It's just gardening.

I'm not saying genetically engineered food is harmful - obviously it isn't, so far - but making claims it can't be harmful because we've been doing this for thousands of years is dishonest. A lie. 

Did dad send cheek-swab DNA to an ancestry firm? Read this.

Remember when we used to say, "One day, the police will use genetic information to track people down. They could even use the guy's dad's genetic information," and people used to say, "Ha ha, you Sci-Fi fans. You need to spend some time in the real world not with all that escapist bullshit!"

And then later they said, "I'm going to send a sample to that gene-e-o-logical firm because Nate Blumenthal from accounts payable found out he was 3.76% Native American and that would be totes cool," or words to that effect.

Well, those gene chickens are coming home to roost.

The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com), which claims it’s “the foremost collection of genetic genealogy data in the world.” The reason the Sorenson Database can make such an audacious claim is because it has obtained its more than 100,000 DNA samples and documented multi-generational family histories from “volunteers in more than 100 countries around the world.” Some of these volunteers were encouraged by the Mormon Church—well-known for its interest in genealogy—to provide their genetic material to the database. Sorenson promised volunteers their genetic data would only be used for “genealogical services, including the determination of family migration patterns and geographic origins” and would not be shared outside Sorenson.

[...]

They called up Usry, told him they were investigating a hit-and-run, and asked him to meet with them. Usry thought he “had nothing to hide” and agreed to the meeting. They took him to an interrogation room, questioned him without a lawyer present, and eventually collected a DNA sample. Then Usry sat on pins & needles for a month waiting for the results.
When the results came in, it turned out Usry’s DNA didn’t match the crime scene sample—despite the close familial markers and other circumstantial evidence, he wasn’t the murderer.

Hugo Voting is open - where to find the noms and the Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy slate.

The good news: The Hugo voting is open, and there's a lot to read. The bad news: The Hugo voters' packet is not out yet and there's a lot to read.  

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of it out on the web, either.  Below is what I've found so far.  I'll probably have to buy The Goblin Emperor and The Three Body Problem soon if I'm going to read them in time to vote. I would buy the Ann Leckie, but I didn't read last year's Ancillary Justice, so I don't want to leap straight into Ancillary Sword. If it isn't in the voters' packet I'll have to reconsider whether to purchase both. Good for Analog making all their nominees available to everyone on the web.

I'll be reviewing what I read over the next few weeks here. There will be spoilers. 

In the list of nominations below, an SP after a name means it was on the Sad Puppy slate. An RP means it was on the Rabid Puppy slate. Underlined means it was not on either slate. A couple of works are withdrawn but still on the ballot, and those have been annotated as the nominees have said they don't want you to vote for them.

PLEASE CHECK MY WORK BEFORE VOTING. I would hate to label someone's nomination an SP and have a voter cast a vote for or against them on that basis only to find out later it was a typo. And I could have made any number of similar errors.

Here are the original listings so you can check for yourself:

The Sasquan 2015 Hugo finalists including notes on late withdrawals.

The Rabid Puppy slate.

The Sad Puppy slate.

Hugo finalists

If I've found them on the web, I've put the URL after their entry. The URL, the SP and the RP do not appear on the original text taken from the Sasquan site. Please check with your own sources that I'm correct before voting.

Best Novel 

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books) SPRP
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books) SPRP

Best Novella 

• Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House) SPRP
• “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014) SPRP https://www.analogsf.com/pdfs/Stories/Flow_ArlanAndrew-HUGO.pdf
• One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House) SPRP
• “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) RP
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy” by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House) RP http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/04/pale-realms-of-shade/

Best Novelette 

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014) SP http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i39&article=_005
• “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014) SPRP http://www.analogsf.com/pdfs/Stories/Championship_EdLerner-HUGO.pdf
• “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt Translator (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014) http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-day-the-world-turned-upside-down/
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014) SPRP https://www.analogsf.com/pdfs/Stories/Journeyman_Stone_House_%20MichaelFlynn-HUGO.pdf
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014) SPRP https://www.analogsf.com/pdfs/Stories/Triple_Sun_RajnarVajra-HUGO.pdf

Best Short Story 

• “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014) SPRP http://louantonelli.blogspot.com/2015/03/on-spiritual-plain.html
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) RP http://voxday.blogspot.ch/2014/12/the-parliament-of-beasts-and-birds.html
• “A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen) SP
• “Totaled” by Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, July 2014) SPRP http://www.galaxysedge.com/Hugo/Totaled.htm
• “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House) RP http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/08/turncoat.html

Best Related Work 

• “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF” by Ken Burnside (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House) SP
• Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli (The Merry Blacksmith Press) SP
• Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright (Castalia House) SP
• “Why Science is Never Settled” by Tedd Roberts (Baen.com) SP
• Wisdom from My Internet by Michael Z. Williamson (Patriarchy Press) SP

Best Graphic Story 

• Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt (Marvel Comics)
• Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)
• Saga Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
• The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate by Carter Reid (The Zombie Nation) SPRP

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) 

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, concept and story by Ed Brubaker, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Entertainment, Perception, Sony Pictures Imageworks)
• Edge of Tomorrow screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, directed by Doug Liman (Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, 3 Arts Entertainment; Viz Productions)
• Guardians of the Galaxy written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, directed by James Gunn (Marvel Studios, Moving Picture Company) SP
• Interstellar screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy) SP
• The Lego Movie written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LEGO Systems A/S Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation (as Warner Animation Group)) SP

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 

• Doctor Who: “Listen” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
• The Flash: “Pilot” teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW) (Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television) SPRP
• Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper” written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”, written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC) (GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV) SPRP
• Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)

Best Editor (Short Form) 

It's hard to evaluate editors unless you've read all the books they put out this year. If you haven't, Jim Hines has some thoughts here: http://www.jimchines.com/2015/05/hugo-thoughts-editors/

• Jennifer Brozek SPRP
• Vox Day RP
• Mike Resnick SPRP
• Edmund R. Schubert – WITHDRAWN BY EDITOR DO NOT VOTE
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt SPRP

Best Editor (Long Form) 

It's hard to evaluate editors unless you've read all the books they put out this year. If you haven't, Jim Hines has some thoughts here: http://www.jimchines.com/2015/05/hugo-thoughts-editors/

• Vox Day RP
• Sheila Gilbert SPRP
• Jim Minz SPRP
• Anne Sowards SPRP
• Toni Weisskopf SPRP

Best Professional Artist

• Julie Dillon
• Kirk DouPonce RP
• Nick Greenwood SPRP
• Alan Pollack SPRP
• Carter Reid SPRP

Best Semiprozine 

• Abyss & Apex Wendy Delmater editor and publisher SP
• Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Association Incorporated, 2014 editors David Kernot and Sue Burtsztynski SP
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
• Lightspeed Magazine edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant
• Strange Horizons Niall Harrison Editor-in-Chief

Best Fanzine 

• Black Gate edited by John O’Neill WITHDRAWN BY EDITOR DO NOT VOTE
• Elitist Book Reviews edited by Steven Diamond SPRP
• Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Colin Harris and Helen Montgomery
• The Revenge of Hump Day edited by Tim Bolgeo SPRP
• Tangent Online edited by Dave Truesdale SPRP

Best Fancast 

• Adventures in SciFi Publishing Brent Bower (Executive Producer), Kristi Charish, Timothy C. Ward, Shaun Ferrell & Moses Siregar III (Co-Hosts, Interviewers and Producers) SPRP
• Dungeon Crawlers Radio Daniel Swenson (Producer/Host), Travis Alexander & Scott SPRPTomlin (Hosts), Dale Newton (Host/Tech), Damien Swenson (Audio/Video Tech)
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)
• The Sci Phi Show Jason Rennie SPRP
• Tea and Jeopardy Emma Newman and Peter Newman

Best Fan Writer 

• Dave Freer SP
• Amanda S. GreenS PRP
• Jeffro Johnson SPRP
• Laura J. Mixon http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/
• Cedar Sanderson SPRP

Best Fan Artist 

Fan artists are also hard to evaluate unless you already know a lot of their work. Some examples of their works are below, but I've no idea if this is representative of the work that got them nominated. I nicked this off of a helpful person on this GRRM message board.

• Ninni Aalto http://ninni.sarjakuvablogit.com/tag/brief-in-english/
• Brad W. Foster http://www.jabberwockygraphix.com/printgallery.html
• Elizabeth Leggett http://www.archwayportico.com/
• Spring Schoenhuth http://www.springtimecreations.com/
• Steve Stiles http://stevestiles.com/fnart.htm

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer 
Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2013 or 2014, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

• Wesley Chu*
• Jason Cordova SPRP
• Kary English*SPRP
• Rolf Nelson RP
• Eric S. Raymond RP

*Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.