2018 Hugo Recommendations: Novelette

Novelette

This is my long list of novelettes I’ve considered for nomination, largely the list of those I put in the Recommended Reading section of my Locus reviews (with a few additions).

Daniel Abraham, “The Mocking Tower” (The Book of Swords)  

Nina Allan, “Neptune’s Trident” (Clarkesworld, 6/17)

Charlie Jane Anders, “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime” (Cosmic Powers) 

G. V. Anderson, “I Am Not I” (F&SF, 7-8/17)

Dale Bailey, “Come As You Are” (Asimov’s, 5-6/1)

R. S. Benedict, “My English Name” (F&SF, 5-6/17)

Maggie Clark, “Belly Up” (Analog, 7-8/17)

Samuel R. Delany, “The Hermit of Houston” (F&SF, 9-10/17)

Christopher East, “An Inflexible Truth” (Lightspeed, 8/17)

Greg Egan, “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine” (Asimov’s, 11-12/17)

Greg Egan, “Uncanny Valley” (Tor.com, 8-17)

Kate Elliott, “’I am a Handsome Man’ said Apollo Crow” (The Book of Swords)  

Max Gladstone, “Crispin’s Model” (Tor.com, 10/17)

Theodora Goss, “Come See the Living Dryad” (Tor.com, 3/17)

Robert Grossbach, “Driverless” (F&SF, 3-4/17)

Austen Habershaw, “The Masochist's Assistant” (F&SF, 7-8/17)

Maria Dahvana Headley, “Black Powder” (The Djinn Falls in Love)  

Simone Heller, “How Bees Fly” (Clarkesworld, 2/17)

Chi Hui, “Rain Ship” (Clarkesworld, 2/17)

Xia Jia, “Goodnight Melancholy” (Clarkesworld, 3/17)

Mary Robinette Kowal, “The Worshipful Society of Glovers” (Uncanny, 7-8/17)

Yoon Ha Lee, “Extracurricular Activities” (Tor.com, 2/17)

Yoon Ha Lee, “The Chameleon’s Gloves” (Cosmic Powers)
Will McIntosh, “Soulmates.com” (Asimov’s, 3-4/17)

Sean McMullen, “The Influence Machine” (Interzone, 3-4/17)

David Erik Nelson, “Whatever Comes After Calcutta” (F&SF, 11-12/17)

Suzanne Palmer, “Books of the Risen Sea” (Asimov’s, 9-10/17)

Suzanne Palmer, “The Secret Life of Bots” (Clarkesworld, 9/17)

Susan Palwick, “Remote Presence” (Lightspeed, 4/17)

K. J. Parker, “Message in a Bottle” (The Djinn Falls in Love)  

Tony Pi, “That Lingering Sweetness” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 4/27/17)

Sarah Pinsker, “Wind Will Rove” (Asimov’s, 9-10/17)

Vina Jie-Min Prasad, “A Series of Steaks” (Clarkesworld, 1/17)

Robert Reed, “Leash on a Man” (F&SF, 9-10/17)

Robert Reed, “Dunnage of the Soul” (F&SF, 1-2/17)

Alastair Reynolds, “Night Passage” (Infinite Stars)

Kenneth Schneyer, “Keepsakes” (Analog, 11-12/17)

Hanus Seiner, “Hexagrammaton” (Tor.com, 5/17)

Lavie Tidhar, “Waterfalling” (The Book of Swords)  

Genevieve Valentine, “Intro to Prom” (Clarkesworld, 10/17)

Will Waller, “Phantom Architecture” (Rivet Journal, Fall/17)

Peter Watts, “ZeroS” (Infinity Wars)

Alex Wells, “Angel of the Blockade” (Tor.com, 9/17)

The top candidates for my ballot are:

1.       Yoon Ha Lee, “Extracurricular Activities” (Tor.com, 2/17) – a quite funny, and quite clever, story concerning the earlier life of a very significant character in Lee’s first novel, Ninefox Gambit. Shuos Jedao is an undercover operative for the Heptarchate, assigned to infiltrate a space station controlled by another polity, and to rescue the crew of a merchanter ship that had really been heptarchate spies, including an old classmate.

2.       Suzanne Palmer, “The Secret Life of Bots” (Clarkesworld, 9/17) – a very old bot on a battered Ship trying to stop an alien attack on Earth. It shows a surprising amount of initiative – even, one might say, imagination – in dealing with the Incidental. Might that not be useful in dealing with the aliens? Or might bots have their own ideas about their own place?

3.       Samuel R. Delany, “The Hermit of Houston” (F&SF, 9-10/17) – This is set some time in the future, in a strange future, hard to get a grip on (the best kind), from one angle seeming sort of pastoral utopia, from other angles utterly horrifying. It’s mostly about the narrator’s long-time lover, an older man named Cellibrex (sometimes), and about the hints he lets drop of some of the true nature of this future. There is extremely interesting treatment of gender, and of politics, and of law and custom and memory – and I don’t get everything that’s going on in the story, in a good way.

4.       Will McIntosh, “Soulmates.com” (Asimov’s, 3-4/17) -- The story is scary, and morally provocative, and resolved with honesty. It’s about a man using an AI service to meet potential partners, and finding a really interesting woman – but somehow she never wants to meet in real life. Of course, she’s an AI – and the protagonist doesn’t react very well to that revelation.

5.       Peter Watts, “ZeroS” (Infinity Wars) -- posits a technology that turns soldiers into non-conscious actors – for it turns out the unconscious has spooky abilities. Which are pretty scary for the humans who end up sort of “riding” their unconscious – especially when they learn what their “zombie” selves are capable of. For an extra fillip of spookiness, the story is told from the POV of a soldier who actually died, and who has been resurrected by this particular technology – at an increasingly horrible price.

6.       Hanus Seiner, “Hexagrammaton” (Tor.com, 5/17) –  A man serves as a sort of intermediary to Europans who have survived an alien virus, guiding a young woman to visit her father when he realizes she is infected with the virus – and with a purpose. Another thread shows a man – the same man? – in prison – and somehow both these threads seem to turn on understanding the alien language, and its multiple meanings for the same sentence. The linguistic weirdness reminded me of Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”, and though it’s not THAT good, it’s pretty weird cool stuff.

The other stories on the verge are Kenneth Schneyer’s “Keepsakes”, Alastair Reynolds’ “Night Passage”, Daniel Abraham’s “The Mocking Tower”, and Kate Elliott’s , “’I am a Handsome Man’ said Apollo Crow”.

My Recommendation Posts:
Best Novel, Series, YA
Best Editor, Campbell Award

Short Story
Novelette

Novella

Dramatic Presentation, Fan Writer, Fanzine
Other Hugos

Two of Ursula K. Le Guin's Lesser Known Novels

Two of Ursula K. Le Guin's Lesser Known Novels: The Beginning Place and Very Far Away From Anywhere Else

a review by Rich Horton

I wanted to take another look at some of the work of the great Ursula K. Le Guin, who died January 22, and in particular I wanted to write about a couple of less celebrated novels. So I chose two books I read when they came out, and enjoyed, but hadn't thought of much since then. The more significant of these is The Beginning Place, from 1980. This is an adult novel, though its protagonists are young (20), and I suspect when I first encountered it, when I was the same age as they, I thought of it as YA. The other book is a shortish novella, about 20,000 words, and undeniably YA, and also non-fantastical. This is Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, about two high achieving but lonely high school seniors falling in love, or at least in friendship. (I was also about the same age as the protagonists when I first read it.)

The covers shown are from the Bantam editions. I'm pretty sure I read Very Far Away From Anywhere Else first in the Atheneum edition, borrowed from the library, however. (The Beginning Place was also been published under the title Threshold in the UK.) (N.B. That is supposed to be Hugh on the cover of The Beginning Place but it doesn't look anything like him.)

The two books resemble each other in one quite significant way: both are stories about relatively young people, social misfits to some degree or other, who meet and fall in love. That is, I suppose, hardly an unusual plot -- indeed, stated that baldly, it approaches cliché. That said, the four main characters are each quite different to each other -- and The Beginning Place, not surprisingly, is a more complex novel, and is doing some interesting things with the classic portal fantasy structure. (Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, as noted, is not Fantasy at all.)

(Cover by Elizabeth Malczynski)

I'll note right here that I'll essentially be describing much of the plot of each book. I don't think that "spoiling" like this harms the books at all, but I know many people disagree. As a quick summary I can say that I enjoyed both books, though The Beginning Place is the better and more interesting book, and uses its fairly traditional portal fantasy plot very well in service of a story about people of our own world, who must ultimately make their home in our world.

So, then, the earlier and shorter book. Very Far Away From Anywhere Else is, unusually for Le Guin as far as I can recall, told in the first person, though the narrator, Owen Griffiths, makes sure to tell us that he's transcribing an oral account he recorded. Le Guin's care in acknowledging the narration is evident. This is something of a classical convention, I think. Owen is 17 at the time of the story's events, and a senior in High School, in a town on the Pacific Coast. (He notes that he is a year younger than his classmates, having got into school early. I found this a little odd because I was 17 until October of my Freshman year in college, and I never skipped a grade or anything, though Owen turns 17 in November, so he'd have been a month younger than me.)

Owen is, basically, a nerd, and the smartest kid in class, and he doesn't have any real friends. He loves his parents, but they clearly don't get him either. He wants to go to MIT (or maybe Cal Tech) and study the physiological basis of psychology, but his mother wants him to go to "State", which happens to be in town. He doesn't like sports, except he used to enjoy touch football. He's frustrated when his Dad buys him a car ... he doesn't want a car, he wants to be able to afford to go to MIT. (All this makes him sympathetic, perhaps particularly to someone like me, who was in a similar boat, though I've always liked sports -- but I think Le Guin stomps her feet a bit on what she thinks is virtue and what she thinks is wrongness.)

He happens to stumble into conversation on the bus one day with a classmate, and as it happens a neighbor, another senior, Natalie Field. Natalie is like Owen, except her obsession is not science but music. Specifically composition. Before long he and Natalie are close friends, willing to talk to each other about anything. Until Owen spoils it when he gets it into his head that he ought to want to have sex with her. And Natalie isn't ready. This all makes a lot of emotional sense. The resolution turns on a car crash, and the question of Owen attending MIT, and Owen's decision to see Natalie's songs performed even after they have drifted apart.

It's really a pretty simple novel -- not surprising at its length. I thought it a bit overdetermined at times -- the main characters a bit too too special -- aspects a bit unfairly moralizing. But it's still intensely enjoyable, and the final 10 or 20 pages are pretty powerful in their way. Not a great work -- but Le Guin at less than her best was still an effective writer.

The Beginning Place is an altogether more interesting novel. It is a pure portal fantasy, with a plot that at its most basic level is very traditional: a couple of characters, misfits to some extent in our world, find their ways (through a Portal) into another world, where it turns out they are the people needed to go on a Quest and Right a Wrong that threatens that world. But the novel is ultimately more interested in the two characters growing to realize that the true desolation they must resolve is that blighting their lives, in our world.

It alternates its viewpoint between the two main characters, each about 20. Hugh Rogers is working as a checker at a supermarket in an unnamed town. He lives with his mother, who is needy and controlling. He want to study library science and be a librarian, but he's constrained to follow his mother, who has moved multiple times since his father left them. He's stuck, and, worse, stuck in a lifeless and corrupted landscape. And one evening he just runs -- runs through his neighborhood and others and to a wooded area near a paint factory, and finds himself by a creek -- and drinks the water and feels, somehow, home.

Irene Pannis shares an apartment with a not terribly stable young couple. Her father has died, and her stepfather is both feckless and sexually threatening. She wants her own place, but seems destined to have to deal with life at her mother's. But, since she was 13 she has been able to find occasional refuge in another place -- beyond the same creek Hugh has found, in a land where time runs more quickly than in our world, where it is always twilight, and where she finds a town where she is welcome, where she makes friends, and feels at peace.

Irene discovers Hugh while he is sleeping by the creek, and resents what she considers an incursion. But the town -- Mountain Town, or Tembreabrezi, is threatened -- the roads cannot be traveled, and so they don't get the food they need, and can't sell what they make. It seems that Hugh is, in the classical portal fantasy sense, the hero who is needed, and Irene angrily brings him to Tembreabrezi. And they learn that Hugh can always get in to this world, and Irene can always get out. Hugh is enchanted by the Lord of the place, and his lovely blond daughter Allia, while Irene feels closer to the Mayor, or Master, a dark man.

As the home life of both Irene and Hugh gets worse -- Irene is forced to return to her mother and her grabby stepfather, and Hugh's mother is still colder to him -- they decide to spend the time in Tembreabrezi needed to satisfy whatever quest is called for. There is some resistance -- the Master's grandfather, at some cost (the whole nature not revealed) -- had saved the town long before. However, in the end it is Irene and Hugh alone who travel up the mountain, and we get hints of what prior sacrifice was required -- but the two force a different resolution. (There are reminders of the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice story, and, too, Hugh remarks once, that with his father dead and his mother rejecting him, that he is a man without parents -- a significant remark, I thought.) The ultimate resolution of the main quest is, in an oddly appropriate way, a bit anticlimactic (though a true climax follows). And while Tembreabrezi is presumably restored, that's not what seems to matter. What matters is Hugh and Irene coming to realize that their true home is in our world -- and that they must make their own way there (together, as it happens).

2018 Hugo Recommendations: Novella

Novella

I thought this was a strong year for novellas, and the following is my long list of potential nominees:

Peter Beagle, In Calabria (Tachyon)

Damien Broderick, “Tao Zero”, (Asimov’s, 3-4/17)

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos (Spectrum)

Jaime Fenn, The Martian Job (NewCon Press)    

Michael F. Flynn, “Nexus” (Analog, 3-4/17)          

Kathleen Ann Goonan, “The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse”, (Extrasolar)

Karen Heuler, In Search of Lost Time (Aqueduct)

Dave Hutchinson, Acadie (Tor.com Publishing)

Alexander Jablokov, “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry” (Asimov’s, 7-8/17)

Marc Laidlaw, “Stillborne”, (F&SF, 11-12/17)       

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Prime Meridian (Innsmouth Free Press)

David Erik Nelson, “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House”, (F&SF, 7-8/17)         

Alec Nevala-Lee , “The Proving Ground” (Analog, 1-2/17)

K. J. Parker, Mightier Than the Sword (Subterranean)    

Sarah Pinsker, “And Then There Were N – One”, (Uncanny, 3-4/17)          

Rachel Pollack, “Homecoming”, (F&SF, 1-2/17)

R. Garcia y Robertson, “The Girl Who Stole Herself”, (Asimov’s, 7-8/17)

Christopher Rowe, “The Border State” (Telling the Map)

Sofia Samatar, “Fallow" (Tender)

Jeremiah Tolbert, “The Dragon of Dread Peak”, (Lightspeed, 10/17)          

Cynthia Ward, ”The Adventure of the Incognita Countess” (Aqueduct)

Martha Wells, All Systems Red (Tor.com Publishing)

Of these stories – none of which would disappoint me if they won the Hugo – my four favorites, in no particular order, are:

1.       Sofia Samatar, “Fallow” – Samatar’s debut collection, Tender (Small Beer Press), is absolutely essential.  There are two new stories, this novella, and a short story, “An Account of the Land of Witches”, and both are outstanding. "Fallow" is the story of three different sort of rebels on a struggling colony, apparently inhabited by an Amish-like sect, trying to maintain their identity while hoping for a return to an ecologically ruined Earth when it becomes potentially re-inhabitable. But that doesn't get at what's so cool about it -- beautiful writing, haunting characters, and a real sense of mystery and strangeness.

2.       Sarah Pinsker, “And Then There Were (N – One)” – A story about a convention of alternate Sarah Pinskers, complete with a murder. It is warmly told – funny at time, certainly the milieu is familiar to any SF con-goer. But it’s dark as well – after, there’s a murder – and it intelligently deals with issue of identity and contingency.

3.       Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Prime Meridian – This story came kind of out of left field – not exactly so, as Moreno-Garcia has certainly done some first-rate writing, but this was published to begin with as an ebook available to supporters of an Indiegogo campaign. It will be more generally available in 2018 (including in at least one Best of the Year volume). And it’s tremendous work, mixing a convincing portrayal of near future Mexico City with dreams of trips to Mars – both the protagonist’s hopes to be an actual colonist, and a fading movie star’s memories of a movie she made about Mars.

4.       Kathleen Ann Goonan – “The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse” – just to prove you don’t have to be a woman whose first name starts with S! This is an ambitious and moving story of the first starship, which ends up crewed by a group of super-intelligent children and an older woman.

The current leaders for the fifth position on my ballot are Broderick’s “Tao Zero”, a rather crazy sort of superscientific tale, lots of fun; Hutchinson’s Acadie, a twisty story of the true nature of an utopian seeming space habitat; Tolbert’s “The Dragon of Dread Peak”, also lots of fun, about a group of teens exploring a dangerous magical rift in their city; and Wells’ All Systems Red, an often funny, and quite action-filled, story of an AI security android who really doesn’t like humans all that much.

My Recommendation Posts:
Best Novel, Series, YA
Best Editor, Campbell Award

Short Story
Novelette

Novella

Dramatic Presentation, Fan Writer, Fanzine
Other Hugos

First Hugo Recommendations: Dramatic Presentation, Fan Writer, Fanzine

Dramatic Presentation

I think this was a pretty strong year for SF movies – at any rate, there are five movies I can nominate without feeling bad. And, I should add, I don’t watch enough movies to say that there aren’t some even better ones out there. Ask Matthew Foster! (But don’t ask him about Logan – he’s just wrong about that! <g>)

My five nominees:

1.       The Shape of Water – clearly, of those I’ve seen, the best SF/Fantasy movie of the year. (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is the best movie of the year, if you’re asking.) This is a delicious hommage to – and improvement on – The Creature From the Black Lagoon and its sequels. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Sally Hawkins as a janitor who encounters the creature in a military installation, and falls in love with him. It’s a visually impressive film, and a very moving film. Some of the plot machinations are a bit creaky, sure, but the whole thing hangs together and comes to a powerful conclusion. Also features strong performances from Richard Jenkins, Olivia Spencer, and Michael Shannon.

2.       Logan – Possibly my favorite superhero movie ever, but I’ll concede that’s not my favorite genre. Kind of a passing the torch movie, from the “original” X-Men to a new and different generation, and with a really powerful ending. Stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen and more …

3.       Blade Runner 2049 – I thought this movie was a really strong sequel to a truly great original. The future seemed a plausible future to Blade Runner, and the story was – with a couple of bumps – exciting and affecting. Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ryan Gosling, etc.

4.       Wonder Woman – Hey, I liked this movie. It was fun. It was cool to have a female superhero as the lead, and Gal Gadot did a good job. But it also had the things that annoy me about superhero movies – the abilities that always seem to scale to just what the plot requires at a given time – the exaggerated plot with exaggerated sneering villains (and, yes, Michael Shannon’s character was a bit of an exaggerated sneering villain in The Shape of Water, but his performance, and the way his character was written, transcended that) … So, fun, fine, but it’s really getting overpraised. Also starred Robin Wright (again), Chris Pine, etc …

5.       The Last Jedi – Fun as well, but, well, I recommend Adam Roberts’ review in Strange Horizons, which details pretty convincingly the overly silly aspects that make it just a bit too stupid. I did like Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, and Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo – it also features, of course, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, etc. etc. – and some cute aliens.

I think The Shape of Water very clearly the best of these. There’s a gulf after that, and then Logan and Blade Runner 2049, then another gulf, and Wonder Woman and The Last Jedi. I saw a few more that weren’t as good (Guardians of the Galaxy 2, for example, was disappointing though not awful), but I’m certain I missed some interesting stuff.

As for Short Form, I watch relatively little TV. I did see the Black Mirror episode “U. S. S. Callister”, and I think it is definitely worthy of a Hugo nomination. I'm still on Season 1 of Stranger Things, so I don't yet have a 2017 nominee.

Best Fan Writer

The two fan writers I want to promote the most this year are a couple I mentioned last year as well: John Boston and John O’Neill. John Boston’s most publicly available recent stuff is at Galactic Journey, where he reviews issues of Amazing from 55 years ago, month by month. (It will be noted, perhaps, that I also review issues of Amazing from the same period, at Black Gate.) John’s work there is linked by this tag: http://galacticjourney.org/tag/john-boston/.

As for John O’Neill, of course his central contribution is as editor of Black Gate, for which he writes a great deal of the content, often about “vintage” books he’s found on Ebay or at conventions, and also about upcoming fantasy books.

Time for just a bit of obligatory self-promotion. I am a fan writer (at least my blog writing and my stuff for Black Gate qualifies, if perhaps not my work for Locus, which I guess is now officially professional). I would note in particular my reviews of old magazines at Black Gate, particularly Amazing and Fantastic in the Cele Goldsmith Lalli era, and my various reviews of Ace Doubles (and other SF) at my blog Strange at Ecbatan (rrhorton.blogspot.com) (and often linked from Black Gate.) My blog also includes the occasional Convention Report (I did a long one on this year’s World Fantasy), and other newsy things such this exact article!  I also contributed a piece to the special Journey Planet Programmatic (http://journeyplanet.weebly.com/journey-planet/issue-35-programatic) issue guest-edited by Steven Silver. I would be greatly honored if anyone thought my work worthy of a Best Fan Writer nomination.

Best Fanzine

As I did last year, I plan to nominate Black Gate, Galactic Journey, and Rocket Stack Rank for the Best Fanzine Hugo. I’m particularly partial in this context to Black Gate, primarily of course because I have been a contributor since the print days (issue #2 and most of the subsequent issues). Black Gate is notable for publishing a lot of content on a very wide variety of topics, from promoting new book releases to publishing occasional original and reprinted fiction to reviewing old issues of Galaxy (Matthew Wuertz) and Amazing/Fantastic/etc. (me) to intriguing posts about travel and architecture by Sean MacLachlan. Rocket Stack Rank and Galactic Journey are a bit more tightly focused: the former primarily reviews and rates short fiction, as well as assembling statistics about other reviewers (myself included) and their reactions to the stories; while the latter, as I mentioned above, is reviewing old SF magazines from 55 years past.

Finally, I’ll mention the other SF-oriented site I read and enjoy regularly – File 770 (http://file770.com/ ), which is (deservedly) very well known, having been nominated for the Best Fanzine Hugo numerous times and having won some as well. 2018 is their 40^th Anniversary! Happy Birthday!

It's worth noting that there are a ton of other fanzines/blogs out there, and I know a lot of them are excellent. I just don't have time to check them out regularly.

My Recommendation Posts:

Best Novel, Series, YA
Best Editor, Campbell Award

Short Story
Novelette

Novella

Dramatic Presentation, Fan Writer, Fanzine
Other Hugos

The Last Novel by a Master: Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Last Novel by a Master: Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin

A review by Rich Horton

Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the greatest SF/Fantasy writers of all time (arguably the greatest), indeed one of the greatest American writers of her generation, died this week, aged 88. Le Guin was a favorite of mine since I first encountered her work in the early 1970s. She was best known for her SF novels The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, and for her fantasy trilogy for young adults, The Earthsea Trilogy (later extended with two more books). I loved those books, but also her first written novel, Malafrena, and her last novel, Lavinia, and most everything she published in between, including any number of remarkable short stories. (My favorite is "The Stars Below".) I wrote an appreciation here. 

This review of Lavinia was published in Fantasy Magazine in 2009. I reprint it here in her memory. I am planning another review next week, of one of her lesser known novels, The Beginning Place, from 1980.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s newest novel, now out in a handsome trade paperback edition, is quite simply described as a retelling of the last six books of the Aeneid. In a sense, Le Guin shows her age there: the Aeneid was once quite central to a classical education. Virgil’s poem is the great Latin epic, to compare with Homer’s Greek epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. At one time almost any educated person would have learned Greek and Latin, and in the process read these poems. More recently, familiarity with at least translations of these works was common. But nowadays the best we can hope for is that most people know of these works, and probably know the basic outline of the story.

I’m as guilty as anyone here. I’ve read a prose translation (much abridged, I believe) of the Odyssey, but I know of the Iliad and the Aeneid only in summary, and by having read derivative works. I do know the basic story—the three poems are closely related, telling first (in the Iliad) of the Trojan War, in which an assembly of Greek city-states besieged Troy for ten years in an attempt to reclaim Helen, the wife of Menelaus who had been kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris. The other two poems both tell of long journeys: the Odyssey of the Greek strategist Odysseus’s ten year journey home to Ithaca, and the Aeneid of the Trojan hero Aeneas’s similarly long journey to what would become Rome, to found a new nation. (Aeneas is regarded as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus.)

The Aeneid differs from Homer’s poems in being a self-conscious work of literature, indisputably by a single man, Publius Vergilius Maro, who lived in the first century BCE. By contrast, it is not at all clear that a poet named Homer existed – at any rate the two Greek epics attributed to him are surely at least in part the product of a considerable oral tradition. Virgil, writing centuries later, was in a sense writing historical fiction, and also explicitly writing in support of his people’s sense of their own roots. He also famously left the Aeneid unfinished, and only the intervention of the Emperor, Augustus, saved the poem from burning.

What does all this have to do with Lavinia? The novel is, as I said, a retelling of the final books of Virgil’s epic. Lavinia is the name of the Latin woman that Aeneas married, and the conclusion to Vergil’s story turns on this: Lavinia, daughter of the king of Latium, had been promised to another local king, Turnus, and when instead she is betrothed to the foreigner Aeneas, Turnus makes war on Latium, leading to a climactic battle with Aeneas. Lavinia has a very small part in Virgil’s poem. Le Guin’s goal here is to flesh out her life.

Lavinia tells her own story, beginning in her youth. Her father is a wise king named Latinus. Her mother, Amata, is from a nearby kingdom, and has been driven mad after Lavinia’s two brothers both died. This sets up a dynamic that drives some of the later action: her mother resents, even hates, Lavinia, and wants nothing to do with Latinus, but both of them are too dutiful to put Amata in her place. As Lavinia grows older she grows spiritually—she communes with the local gods much as her father does—and of course physically, and, as with any royal woman, the question of her marriage becomes politically charged. Many prominent local men are interested, but, naturally, it is the kings and kings’ sons who are most eligible. The clear leader is Turnus, who is handsome and charismatic, and who is also Amata’s nephew. (Thus he and Lavinia are first cousins, but of course in royal marriages such consanguinity was often no bar.) Unfortunately, Turnus’s character is in question—and, indeed, Lavinia cannot respect or love him.

This sets her up against her mother’s wishes. Things are complicated when an oracle declares that Lavinia must not marry a local man. And then the Trojans arrive, wishing merely to settle peacefully in the area. Alas, with fault on both sides, war results, leading to the climax of the Aeneid, Aeneas’s defeat and killing of Turnus. And Lavinia, who truly loves Aeneas, marries him and bears him a son. The novel continues with an interesting account of Lavinia’s life after Aeneas’s death, particularly her struggle to raise her son free from the influence of Aeneas’s elder son (child of his dead Trojan wife Creusa), who in Le Guin’s telling has grievous character faults of his own.

All this is quite a fascinating tale. It is a cliché to say it, but it is fair also—this is a woman’s tale, told from a woman’s point of view, and thus we see much of the effects of war on noncombatants, of the importance of family life in forming character, of the labor of maintaining a household. And all this is greatly involving, much deepening the “male” story Virgil told. (To be sure, Le Guin’s modern viewpoint in and of itself deepens the story, at least for contemporary readers.) And the quotidian details of life in Italy in the 12th Century BCE are very nicely presented—though Le Guin is careful to remind us in an afterword that her version of that life is rather idealized. In addition, as we surely expect, the prose is lovely—graceful and firm, musical, clear—Le Guin is ever a joy to read.

Lavinia is, by any measure, one of the best fantastical novels of 2008. Yet it has to some extent been slighted on awards lists. (It did win the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel, and appeared on the Tiptree honor list, but otherwise is appeared on none of the major shortlists. [Though Le Guin did actually win the Nebula for Best Novel, with Powers, from 2007.]) I suspect this is in part because at first glance it may not appear like a fantasy. The novel is suffused with fantastical elements: the gods are real and present, the future is foretold, oracles are consulted and answer. But nonetheless, the status of the Aeneid as a form of Roman history—and as an established “classic” basis of the novel—gives the impression that this is historical fiction. Le Guin’s novel is fantastical in another, rather metafictional sense. Lavinia, in telling the story, is aware that she is a fictional character, and she continues in a sort of “bardo”, not able to die because she did not die in the poem. (She even has conversations with Virgil, and is vouchsafed visions of Rome’s future.) But even this, though clearly fantastical, does not necessarily “feel” like genre fantasy. (Indeed it is a device not dissimilar to ones used in many mainstream novels.) Be all that as it may, for me this is the best fantasy novel of 2008—a lovely novel that stands as yet another landmark in a remarkable career.

Old Bestseller: Rainbow's End, by Vivian Radcliffe

Old Bestseller: Rainbow's End, by Vivian Radcliffe

a review by Rich Horton

This was not, to be sure, a bestseller. But it represents a genre I take an interest in -- popular romance. Romance novels as a separate genre seem to have started around 1920. Some cite E. M. Hull's The Sheik. Right around the same time Georgette Heyer began to publish. Really, the "genrefication" of fiction was just beginning at that time -- that is, the establishment of magazines and publishing lines devoted to a specific category. Famously, of course, the first Science Fiction magazine appeared in 1926. Other magazine categories were established at around that time as well. Juvenile fiction as a category appeared a bit later -- in the '30s. Mills and Boon began concentrating on category romance in the 1930s. (Harlequin, which now owns Mills and Boon, was founded in Canada in 1949.)

This novel, Rainbow's End, was published in 1936 by Phoenix Press. They seem to have been a firm that specialized in rather lurid fiction in several categories. They've been called "Depression Era Pulp". By all accounts they didn't pay well -- and they got what they paid for, if this book is any indication. I can't find any information about the author, Vivian Radcliffe (which certainly might be a pseudonym, though I don't know that for sure).

As for the book itself, it's rather absurd. Marianne Cutting is a young woman working in New York. Her parents died a year or two before -- her father was a Professor at an upstate university. She is just getting by financially, while carrying on a secret relationship with Avery Pratt, a prat (we learn eventually) studying at West Point. He's a rich prat, though. then one day someone slips her a package. It has a ticket on a round the world cruise, and a couple of thousand dollars for expenses, and a passport in the name "Ann Lewell". She tries to find "Ann Lewell" but can't find any evidence she exists. Desperate for adventure, she decides to take a chance and take the cruise.

Once on board she meets a woman who darkly hints that she knows what's going on, and who insists that Marianne give her any cables they receive addressed to Ann Lewell. She also meets a handsome lawyer named Garth Cameron -- and before long they are in love. But will Marianne confess to Garth her real name?

More to the point, we learn, will Garth confess his role in this whole thing? For he it was who arranged for Marianne's trip. His law firm was engaged by Avery Pratt's mother to bribe Marianne to drop Avery -- she is totally unsuitable, at least in Mrs. Pratt's eyes. But Garth, on seeing Marianne dancing with Avery, fell immediately in love with her. He wants to pry her away from Avery, so uses the Pratt bribe to buy her this ticket ...

Well, some problems intervene. There is the mysterious girl who wants all "Ann Lewell's" cables, for example. And there's another guy who falls for Ann Lewell -- and a woman who loves that guy and who befriends "Ann". And there's discord between Garth and Marianne when each learns just a portion of the other's real story ...

Well, it's all really stupid. And it's dreadfully written. And there's no chemistry between the main characters, and ... well, I could go on. The book is what it is -- a bad example of a genre that is indeed much disparaged, but which can be quite enjoyable at its best. However, books like Rainbow's End are the reason the genre is so much disparaged.

(This week I also review the late Ursula K. Le Guin's last novel, Lavinia.)

True Journey is Return: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)

True Journey is Return: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)

Like all of us, I think, I’m stunned and saddened to hear of Ursula Le Guin’s death. She was one of the greatest writers in the world. A writer central to my reading from my teens.

I say stunned and the news is stunning, but we must remember that Ursula Le Guin was 88, and had a remarkably full life, active in the mind until the end. (It does appear she had been in failing health for some months.) So I hope this can be seen as more a celebration of a great life – from the only point of view I can take myself, that of a lover of her writing.

I can still easily call up in my mind the cover of The Dispossessed, in front of me on the cafeteria table at Naperville Central High School some time in 1975, as I read it during lunch hour. Malafrena was a gift from a friend – I read it eagerly, and loved it – it’s a young person’s book, I think, an ardent book – I understand it was her earliest written novel to see publication, and that shows, but it is still one of my favorites. And her last novel, Lavinia, from 2008, is also one of my favorites, a beautifully written and moving and involving story of the wife of Aeneas. I read the Earthsea books in high school as well, and wrote a term paper on them, despite my teacher’s skepticism about Fantasy. Her prose was truly elegant, truly lovely. Her speculation was rigorous and honest and fruitful in itself. Even from the earliest she was striking – the story “Semley’s Necklace” (the opening segment of Rocannon's World, her first published novel) is heartbreaking and powerful. And her first story in an SF magazine, “April in Paris”, is sweet and lovely and romantic … I don’t know how it was received at the time but to me it must have seemed an announcement: “This is special. This is a Writer.”

So many of her short stories are special to me … “Winter’s King”, “Nine Lives”, “The Stars Below”, “Another Story”, “Imaginary Countries”, the Yeowe/Werel stories, all the fables of Changing Planes. Some 20 years ago an online discussion group asked what was the greatest single author story collection in SF (not counting Collected Stories books or Best Of books), and my choice was then, and remains now, without question, The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

I never met Le Guin. I reprinted one of her stories, “Elementals”, in the 2013 edition of my Best of the Year book. And I feel particularly fortunate to have written her towards the middle of 2017, asking her about Cele Goldsmith. I didn’t expect a response, but she sent one, absolutely helpful and gracious. I had mentioned I was working on a long piece about Goldsmith – I still am! – and she said she hoped she would be able to read it. I promised to send it to her and I feel particularly sad that she will not see it – though the loss is mine, not hers.

I am an emotional reader at times, and one thing Le Guin could do, repeatedly, was bring me to tears – tears of awe and wonder, tears of sadness, tears of love. I leave with some of my favorite quotes:

“Kaph looked at him and saw the thing he had never seen before, saw him: Owen Pugh, the other, the stranger who held his hand out in the dark.” (I tear up just typing this.)

“Stars and gatherings of stars, depth below depth without end, the light.”

“But all this happened a long time ago, nearly forty years ago; I do not know if it happens now, even in imaginary countries.”

And, of course, as Le Guin’s journey on this Earth has ended, we remember, from The Dispossessed: “True journey is return”.