Hugo Nominees: My Picks

Sadly, I won't be attending Renovation (Worldcon in Reno, NV, the king con of cons) this weekend so I will be unable to vote for the Hugo Awards - one of SF's most prestigious awards. Regardless, I intend to give you my picks in the categories where I'm familiar with the works or individuals nominated. You can find a full list of nominees here. I'll be attending next year's Worldcon in Chicago and I invite all of you to join in on the fun (and to read these books and magazines).

BEST NOVEL
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. The award will probably go to Connie Willis for Blackout/All Clear, but I'd choose Kingdoms any day over these two. I also find it kind of unfair that Willis has two books nominated as one; Jemisin's second book in her Inheritance Trilogy too and that book, The Broken Kingdoms, is also wonderful.

BEST NOVELLA
"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window" by Rachel Swirsky. Ted Chiang is a worthy adversary, but I believe Swirsky will take this one home. One of the best stories I've read in several years.

BEST NOVELLETE
"The Jaguar House, in Shadow" by Aliette de Bodard. This is a tough category. I really like James Patrick Kelly's "Plus or Minus," and Allen M. Steele's "The Emperor of Mars." Honestly, it's almost a toss-up between these three, but de Bodard's stands out a little more above the crowd.

BEST SHORT STORY
"The Things" by Peter Watts. Despite this story being based off John Carpenter's The Thing, it is amazing. Alas, it is also very tough to choose in this category. Both Kij Johnson's "Ponies," and Mary Robinette Kowal's "For Want of a Nail" are fantastic too.

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM
Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan. Despite its somewhat flawed conceit, this movie could've been a full-blown disaster and it wasn't. In fact, it was quite engaging. (Sidenote: I almost went with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but Scott didn't end up with Knives which was, to me, as infuriating as Duckie not ending up with Andie in Pretty in Pink. Come on, Knives is so cool!)

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM
John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazines publish some of the best SF out there today.

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM
Liz Gorinsky. I love Tor Books and Gorinsky is doing some amazing work there.

BEST SEMIPROZINE
Lightspeed Magazine. For the reasons stated in the Best Editor, Short Form section.

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (not a Hugo)
Lauren Beukes. One helluva writer. I'm curious as to why Zoo City wasn't nominated for best novel.

Apologies to the best fanzines and fan writers and graphic stories, et cetera, but if I didn't pick from your category it's because I'm not familiar with the nominees. Hopefully, by next year, I will have rectified this ignorance. In the meantime, good luck to all the nominees!

Are Email Lists at Rock Shows Ironic Yet?

Way back when (when being 2004-ish), email lists were all the rage at rock shows. It seemed every band had a bent-up, beer-stained spiral notebook with scribbled emails in blue ink in its pages next to whatever the band was selling at the merch table. Where did that notebook go? With the popularity of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others, the "email list" has become a thing of the past, a relic of times gone by.

So, how long then until it becomes ironic? Will email lists join the ranks of irony, along with PBR, trucker hats, handlebar mustaches, and cassette tapes? And what about the original email list - the snail mail list? What hell is that doomed to?

And: where have all the cowboys gone?

Music Review: Moonface: Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped

Finally, finally, finally, Spencer Krug (of Wolf Parade fame) gives into his carnivalesque leanings with wild abandon - and mixed results - on his latest project, Moonface's Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped. As Krug himself noted in the press release for the record: "It's music played with an organ, organ beats, organ beeps and bloops, and some digital drums. Music based on layers and loops, the hypnotizing sound of a Leslie speaker, and the onslaught of melody."

He's not wrong about the organ beats or the layers: this is dense and heady stuff. With only five songs and clocking in around 37 minutes, Organ Music still has that epic grandeur fans have come to expect from Krug record - only one song runs under seven minutes! He also continues expanding his personal mythology; various references to "idiot hearts," spirits, oceans, and, umm, running(?) populate the lyrics. However, middle sections of almost every song tend to drag and it's easy to get lost in the droning organs and constant repetition.

What's interesting to note about all of Krug's work - even with Wolf Parade - is that it sounds all part of one project. Part of that reason is because each record is so different from the last and yet all of them are exactly Spencer Krug. Organ Music is no different, except that it is, perhaps, much lonelier, more raw, and certainly more jangly.

Though Organ Music isn't as outright geeky and simultaneously accessible as the last Sunset Rubdown record, Dragonslayer, nor as tasteful as Wolf Parade's Expo 86, there are moment of pure Krugian brilliance here: when his voice cracks shouting the title of "Return to the Violence of the Ocean Floor"; in the tense refrain "Won't you win the race for me?" during "Fast Paster"; the entirety of the final track "Loose Heart = Loose Plan." Yet, each of these songs contains a listlessness, and a dangerous unhinging, that will either be endearing to fans or a turn-off. But that is what makes Krug such an interesting songwriter: his fearlessnes and willingness to take chances.

THE FIRST TIME I LISTENED TO THIS RECORD: I was driving to Chicago. It was dark with no stars. The highway was illuminated by streetlights and my one working headlight. Earlier in the evening it had rained a little and the interstate still had that glossy look. You could smell the pavement. I listened intensely to the record once through and then just let it roll on, over and over again, until I reached Tin Tin Can's practice space.

-Dustin Monk

Book Review: The Curfew by Jesse Ball

A father and daughter try to live a quiet life in a city broken by fear and random violence in Jesse Ball's understated and beautiful new novel, The Curfew. Ball's fiction has been compared to the films of David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock, and The Curfew proves no exception: it is an experimental, disjointed, and darkly-themed work. Indeed, Ball describes the "city and its occupants" early on as "a series of objects" connected by "violence," "pity, compassion," and "hope," yet are ultimately "hapless, benighted, discordant."

In this city called "C," a wrong look to the wrong person can mean death. The secret police are everywhere. Everyone lives in fear. William Drysdale - once a famous violinist - must put away his instrument after an uprising and subsequent crackdown on various freedoms, including artistic performances. He finds work as epitaphorist - writing the words on the recently deceased's tombstones; it's a very lucrative job. His daughter, Molly, who does not speak, goes to a school where she is "told repeatedly to repeat things." They live a mostly quiet life: William reads imaginary articles in the newspaper to Molly and plays riddle games with her in their house.

All they do, however, is overshadowed by the death of Louisa, William's wife, under mysterious circumstances four years earlier. In the city it is common for the dead to go missing and Louisa is one such case. Afraid of what might happen to himself and to Molly, William moves across town and quits his old friends. Ball's unadorned writing conveys William's helpnessness perfectly: "What does dying do to plans one makes with one's beloved? ...He sat in the stairwell. He went down the street and up again. He turned on the stove and turned it off."

On his way to an appointment, William meets a friend from his old life, who tells him there is a meeting later that night - a meeting of dissenters and revolutionaries - and that there is news of Louisa. Even though William knows he shouldn't go, he is determined to understand Louisa's disappearance, to put some kind of context around it. He leaves Molly with the neighbor, Mrs. Gibbons, who warns William about the dangers of being out after curfew. The curfew, however, is an unspecified time of night; indeed there is no official curfew except the government's "declaration: good citizens pass their nights abed."

The Curfew is told as a kind of three-act play, the first two acts being the events of the story itself, and the final act as a play within the narrative called "A Ladder of Rain and the Roof Beyond," written by Molly and Mrs. Gibbons' husband, a puppeteer (the play itself is reinacted by Mr. Gibbons' puppets). If there are issues with this novel, it's here. Molly's play reimagines the events of the story so far and, though there is enough invention to keep the reader interested, it can get fairly repetitive.

To Molly, her father - for all his solitude and unassuming-ness - is a puppet of his own making controlled by fear, subversion agents and dissenters, love for his daughter, the disappearance of his wife, the secret police, all of which is personified in her play. It is her attempt, in some small way, to understand her father, to also understand her mother and her death.

If the end is ambiguous, it is because some details are left out and some never fully explained; there is a certain beauty in mystery. Indeed, during the play, William drops Molly off at school and goes to sit by a lake where he sits "there for the entire day, staring into the water. There are figures in the water, but he cannot see them. He can only sense them. It is the same at the cemetery with all the bodies in the earth. One can feel them, but not see them. It is not that they are ghosts. It is not that impression. Simply that the center of so many worlds rest in one another's context." Herein lies the mystery and the beauty of The Curfew. Recommended; pairs well with a fine Pinot Grigio.

-Dustin Monk

Walking on My Back

And then this happened:

Not-Remotely-A-Review (Spoiler): A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin

Beware, Dear Reader: This is NOT a review of A Dance With Dragons. These are my thoughts after having just finished reading it. Spoilers most definitely follow. Take heed.

I've finished A Dance With Dragons, the fifth book of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and, as expected, I was engrossed, entertained, surprised, befuddled, and, perhaps most importantly, transported once again into Westeros and across the Narrow Sea. I tasted the dishes of the many feasts in Mereen; I smelled the piss and sweat of Old Volantis; I shivered in the snows outside Winterfell and along the Wall; my teeth chipped; my flesh was burned from dragon fire.

Yeah. I pretty much loved it.

Each book in the series opens with a viewpoint from a minor character who inevitably meets his death by prologue's end, but ADWD's prologue has stuck with me - I was fortunate to hear Martin read it at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego during Clarion - and, even now, after finally reading it in print, I still think it to be the best prologue he's written in the series thus far. The viewpoint is from Varamyr Sixskins - a skinchanger, a warg, a wildling. He is dark and sadistic and vengeful and must confront his own mortality and the dangers and madness skinchanging brings. The prologue is made all the more relevant as several of my favorite characters - Jon Snow, Arya Stark, and especially Bran Stark (all of which have viewpoints in the book) - have the potential to become skinchangers and face the same dangers as Varamyr.

Along with the aforementioned viewpoints, a lot of fans were also happy to see the return of Danaerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister. I was too, though to be fair, I didn't miss them all that much in the previous volume, A Feast for Crows. Without going off on a tangent and detailing the history of the previous books, let me just say that in the third volume a lot happened and some characters went off to do other things and, Martin realized writing the fourth volume, to encompass all of the storylines into one book would make for a tome the size of which would be encyclopedic; intsead, he cut the books in half - not by character arc, but by geography, so as to tell most of some of the character's stories in the fourth book and the rest in the fifth. Dance is the second half of that split (although the final third of the book moves past the events in Feast). Many readers were frustrated by the numerous minor character viewpoints that filled the brunt of the fourth volume; I, however, was fascinated by these characters - particularly the ironborn and the Dornishmen - and find AFFC to be an underrated affair.

It was quite enjoyable to catch up with Tyrion and Bran and Jon Snow and Dany, to be sure, but again I found myself rooting for and, just as much, against the various minor viewpoint characters in Dance. I have grown quite fond of Asha Greyjoy and still despise her brother, Theon, no matter how much sympathy Martin writes him with. Melisandre remains a mystery to me; I want to believe she is good, but even having read from her point-of-view, I'm still as confused as to her allegiance as I was before. Other viewpoint characters - Quentyn Martell and Ser Barristan Selmy, for instance - served to move the plot along in Mereen after Dany's disappearance and I suspect helped in untangling the "Mereenese knot" Martin had been stressing over.

Yet, perhaps the most surprisng and head-scratching part of Dance was the appearance of once-thought-dead Aegon Targaryen. According to Westerosi history, Aegeon - still a babe - was killed along with his sister and parents in the sack of King's Landing. In Dance, however, we learn that another child - a peasant babe - replaced Aegon and Aegon himself escaped in the care of Lord Jon Connington, former Hand of the King, and with the help of Varys, and has grown up across the Narrow Sea, taught about the Seven and other various Westerosi customs. Obviously, with Dany also vying for the Iron Throne (and taking her time about it, too, learning to rule in far away Mereen), Aegon complicates things heavily.

Already interwebbers are speculating that Aegon is a fake, a pretender to the thrown - a "mummer's dragon" - and that this is but a distraction, and though I too have my doubts as to Aegon's bloodline, I do wonder. To me, it doesn't seem very GeoRRge-like to throw up a fraudulant Targaryen at the last moment because it feels kind of "plot-y" and, if anything, "plot" in its typical sense is not central to A Song of Ice and Fire. Yet, Varys tells Ser Kevan Lannister in the epilogue that Aegon's arrival in Westeros couldn't be more perfectly timed - the unrest in the Seven Kingdoms was settling down and this is the very thing that will keep it alive - a Targaryen in the flesh, come to retake the Throne. As far as I'm concerned, however, the Aegon has Targaryan blood and that this one of Varys's plots - to have both Aegon and Dany take the Iron Throne. Targaryens did wed sister and brother, after all, and though a marriage between Dany and Aegon would be niece to nephew, they are near the same age. I'm probably wrong.

Many fans are also speculating on the fate of Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. In his final chapter he was betrayed by his own men and stabbed, presumably, to death with daggers. There is talk that Jon Snow is actually Azhor Azhai returned and not Stannis Baratheon, but I wonder about this too.

First of all, I think it likely Martin has killed off yet another main character. I don't want to believe that, but so many good people have died in this series, it's hard not to. If Snow is really dead, this also creates chaos at the Wall - just when order is needed most. Jon was, of course, settling the Gift with wildlings and manning many of the vacant castles along the Wall with them too to fight against the coming battle with the Others. With his death, the black brothers will fall into disorder and infighting. This will undoubtedly make it harder for Dany, once she arrives in Westeros with her dragons, to fight the Others.

Secondly, however, Jon Snow's death fits Martin's MO: that is, honor alone will not save you; you know, nobody likes do-gooders. The interwebbers have a good point though: there is still the mystery of Jon's mother and, though some if it was discussed in Dance, it's still as much a mystery as ever; and that Melisandre may bring him back through a sacrifice to the Lord of Light. There are also similarities between the end of Jon Snow's chapter and Arya's chapter in A Storm of Swords wherein "the axe took her in the back of head." No matter how it pans out, I was stunned when I read Jon Snow's final chapter, much how I felt when I read the Red Wedding in A Storm of Swords. I looked up and said, "No. No. No. What. No."

It seems, too, that Dany is finally going to make her way to Westeros. After having disappeared from Mereen riding her dragon Drogon, Dany, lost and hallucinating in the desert, comes across a khalasar led by Khal Jhago. Again, I can't say what will happen with this scenario with any certainty, but it seems as though Dany will lead this khalasar to Mereen, crush the Yunkai'i, and set forth for Westeros. Martin is a master at defying expectations, however, so we shall see. Regardless of where she goes, I found Dany's chapters to be some of the best in the book. She learns as much from her mistakes as her successes and though she confesses many times to her council that she is "but a young girl," she is far from it, the sarcasm of those words nearly spitting from her mouth. There is a part of me, however, that no longer even cares if she invades Westeros - to me, the story has always been more about the characters than any sort of over-arching end-of-the-world plot. I don't really care about the big fight between good and evil; I care about the little everyday fights within ourselves.

Which brings me to my concluding points about A Dance With Dragons. There has been some frustration from readers that "nothing happens" in this book. Well...they're right and they're wrong. If you want a big sea battle or a fight with the Others and Cersei to set King's Landing on fire, you'll be disappointed. Those things don't happen. What does happen, though, is all around character growth. Cersei is humiliated, Arya must put aside her past, Bran learns what he is and what he can be, and so on. The characters move through the world and the world is made richer. Not everything in this book advances the plot and, in some cases, even seems to stall it. As George himself said though, "My philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliff Notes."

News of the Day

I've finished reading George RR Martin's A Dance With Dragons a few days ago and I may do a post on my thoughts on the book tomorrow, but I wanted to give a heads-up as to what I'll be doing in August on this here blog. Essentially, I'll be playing catch-up on recent books I've read and haven't had time to do reviews on. Readers of this blog should expect these forthcoming reviews, though not necessarily in this order:

The Curfew by Jesse Ball

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (I'll try not to gush too much)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz


I'll also begin a new series of reviewing recent record releases, kicking off with the Spencer Krug's new project, Moonface, and debut album, Organ Music not Vibraphone like I'd Hoped later this week.

In the meantime, there is this: