[I'm not sure whether this can be refined and worked into a Woodworks review?]

There wasn't much I could do during the weekend, and I don't really have much to do with the severly outdated iMac after work every night, so I just sat down and read every single 2004 Hugo fiction available online. It's quite a lineup - all of them are extremely entertaining, one or two had too much jargon at certain points to be readable (it's sci-fi, anyway), and a few touch certain cliches a tad too close to home. Bolded entries are my favourite entry in each category.

Best Novella
Vernor Vinge, "The Cookie Monster" (Analog Oct 2003)
Kage Baker, "The Empress of Mars" (Asimov's Jul 2003)
Walter Jon Williams, "The Green Leopard Plague" (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2003)
Connie Willis, "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know" (Asimov's Dec 2003)
Catherine Asaro, "Walk in Silence" (Analog Apr 2003)


One of the thing about the nominations for this year's Hugo is that they all start off in a very innocent, familiar background, then push in the sci-fi/horror element into the story a few paragraphs later. The Cookie Monster is one of those that falls into this vein, where the main character Dixie-May is just starting her first day of her new job in customer support. There is a little Matrix feel to this story, but it's done a lot better (with much more accurate, and true-to-life analogy on the human battery concept) and somehow more realistic. It's one of the creepier stories with an ending that is not entirely hopeless, but still not entirely hopeful either.

The Empress of Mars is a very "feel-good" space drama, which (to be cruel) is essentially Mel Gibson's The River set in the Red Planet. A family of poor refugees put up against the odds (weather, evil enforcers, government officials) to build, well, the best bar in the whole planet. It's a tad more complicated than that, but it has a lot of interesting characters and enough background for this to be a novel. Just reading about how the people are stranded in Mars is fun enough.

I think the best is The Green Leopard Plague because of the number of layers in the story. There are two seperate storylines set in both the future and the present, which are seemingly only connected by the future protagonist's research into the past, but actually is more than just that. This is one of those stories with a bright future - genetics have advanced so well that people can change into chimeras or apes just for the experience, longevity is so common that death is passe, and there is no starvation. The future strand basically builds on a mermaid trying to discover what exactly happened to two weeks in a person's life in the 21st century, which goes into the second strand detailing how a university professor gets involve in a biochemical espionage mission, and how it evolved into the world it is now. It's a truly great read (even though they could have used seperators at parts), and I would really recommend this is you are just going to read one of them.

The only "everything is normal except for just one very strange thing happening" belongs to Just Like the Ones We Used to Know (I'm surprised she didn't name it "White Christmas"). which is just about a huge snowstorm in Christmas eve. That's basically it, but there are a lot of stories inside, including a widow coping with her husband's death by going to Santa Fe (because she couldn't stand a snowy christmas without him - bad timing), a wedding with a bride in denial, a scientist trying to convince investors to participate in his global warming project and etc. All the stories come to a very satisfying conclusion - the good guys win, and the bad guys - well, they probably lose. It's very fun, and I particularly enjoyed the one where a young man cooks his goose trying to prepare Christmas dinner for his family.

Walk in Silence is the second space drama among the novellas. It's, again, one of those with a rich history which would work just as well in a novel (but not quite as rich as Mars). The premise of the alien race reminds me greatly of Homeworld, since they started off with humans off earth who got transported into an alien planet, and were forced to advance in genetic and space travel technologies in order to find their old home. Unfortunately, they all look like four-armed yetis to accomplish that so the bigots we are immediately distrust them. The initial storyline is of the female space captain's relationship with the ambasaddor of the alien race, which is quite telling because whatever happens is not as important as their relation towards each other. There's a very romantic line at the end which wouldn't have the same effect if you didn't read the story, which I really really like for no reason other than for being sappy.



Best Novelette
James Patrick Kelly, "Bernardo's House" (Asimov's Jun 2003)
Jeffrey Ford, "The Empire of Ice Cream" (Sci Fiction 02.26.03)
Robert Reed, "Hexagons" (Asimov's Jul 2003)
Jay Lake, "Into the Gardens of Sweet Night" (Writers of the Future XIX)
Michael Swanwick, "Legions in Time" (Asimov's Apr 2003)
Charles Stross, "Nightfall" (Asimov's Apr 2003)


There's a feeling I have read the story of Bernardo's House somewhere but I can't quite remember. It's basically about one of those House Of The Future those old retro stories used to talk about... automated air-conditioning! Warm greetings! Instant security! Voice-activated robots! And then it turns into a Weapon of Massive Destruction when it gets jealous over you bringing over a hot beautiful fiancee to visit. Well, it doesn't turn into a WMD here, so no worries about that cliche there. The House is also a female robot unit which controls the whole thing (which gets a bit confusing if you weren't aware of this fact upon reading the first few paragraphs), so Bernardo being the macho man he is makes her wear skimpy outfits and have hot sex with her. The story is about a House's loneliness when her master no longer visits her anymore, and it has an ending that isn't too much of a surprise, but still quite satisfying.

The Empire of Ice Cream is really the best one here. It's about synaesthesia, a mental condition where a patient experiences different senses when exposed to different things. For example, seeing the colour purple may cause the person to hear a Bach symphony, or touching rough fabric would effect the smell of oranges. The story goes on about a boy who suffers from synaesthesia, about how he copes with it until one day he tastes coffee ice cream and a girl appears before him. It's a little of a love story, where he drinks numerous cups of coffee just to chat with her, and ends magnificently as the boy accepts his fate.

Another one that starts innocently enough, Hexagons is set in a world where the Western-Christian civilization didn't exactly triumph over other nations, but rather became a close-knit country which refuses outside communication (a tad like the early years of communist China). It starts off in a Norman Rockwell-ish American neighbourhood, and there's a little political story thrown in to state on how different the world is and how it ends up as. It's simple, but there's some great concept involving the character's best friend's grandfather, who has a little simulation game that depicts how a world will be born by various different actions.

Into the Gardens of Sweet Night is something like a Puss in Boots gone the other way round, where the animal is the master and the human is the servant. There's some ongoing conversation about the freedom of a person which becomes the theme, and ultimately, the ending of the story. The environment is set in the present except with, well, talking animals and more advanced technology, and a very biblical Garden with a person who's almost the equilavent of God. It's a quite all right story, although the religious nature of the main character gets a bit too much at times, but still a good read. (You need to register an account to get the pdf file, which is free so there's no worry)

Legions in Time starts off very well. It's set in Depression era Manhattan, with a little old lady who works by just staring at a closet door everyday (which reminds me of a character in Grant Morrisson's The Invisibles). She has a nasty boss who can actually command her to do things she doesn't want to, but she's a very stoic girl and she opens the door anyway, which goes off in a tangent involving time machines and evil entities without personalities out to enslave the world. This is one of those with a LOT of technical jargon which I really didn't bother to pick up, so I didn't really like it. The ending was a bit eh after all the jargon, so I left it indifferent.

Nightfall also has bunches of technical jargon, which is not quite my forte really. It's a space drama depicting an invasion of an alien in a space ship, where things aren't quite what it seems and memories of characters are altered to fit the intruder/alien/character's purposes. The background history here isn't as strong as, say, Mars or Silent, but it's still quite interesting and a bit like what Warren Ellis would write. There's a very funny part where one of the characters, a Muslim, falls into a fantasy dreamworld of the Islamic heaven (i.e. in a beautiful palace straight from Arabian Nights with two-and-seventy virgins to deflower), and deciding he is too sinful to go to heaven and thus sit in meditation everyday. There's also a nice talking cat with a particularly cute line about how copyright protection could save our identities.



Best Short Story
Joe Haldeman, "Four Short Novels" (F&SF Oct/Nov 2003)
Michael A. Burstein, "Paying it Forward" (Analog Sep 2003)
Mike Resnick, "Robots Don't Cry" (Asimov's Jul 2003)
Neil Gaiman, "A Study in Emerald" (Shadows Over Baker Street)
David D. Levine, "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" (F&SF Jun 2003)


OK, I know I love Neil Gaiman's writing and that's why I pick him, but really.

I like Four Short Novels, which is four premises on how people can live forever - money, crime, motivation and love. Obviously Love Conquers All (!), but all of them are fun to read, and I especially enjoyed money (but Love Conquers All!), where to be immortal you need to have one million dollars, but you could trade in your talent and sell it to get the money. Crime is pretty good too, with a premise on longevity simiilar to the one in Leopard, Motivation is a bit pat, but Love Conquers All!

Paying it Forward is purpoted to be a sci-fi writer's last message, on how, when he was still struggling as a young author, he managed to contact his favourite sci-fi author after his death through e-mail. It's a serious and sad story, and with an explanation which is verily science fiction, touching on multiverses and the alternate self. I suppose if they want it to be campy Burstein would name it "The EMAIL from the GRAVE!", since the title doesn't really have much significance until the last few lines, which doesn't have a resonance as strong as that shown in Leopard and Silence. Otherwise, quite good.

Robots Don't Cry reminds me too strongly of The Iron Giant. Robot with humanity is a bit on the cliched side of sci-fi, but this one works only because of the human protagonist's sardonic remarks to both his and the robot's prediacament, and the insectoid alien companion's emotional comments after he declared himself to be "emotionless and driven by logic and logic only". It's not much, but it's a touching read.

Originally in Shadows Over Baker Street, an anthology of Sherlock Holmes pastiches with various Lovecraftian elements, A Study in Emerald is one of the best in that collection, and it's probably the best here. It's set in an alternate world where the Old Ones rule over Britian (and probably the world), where a very different Sherlock and Watson embark on a mission to discover the identity of the murderer of a crown prince. There are a lot of good things in here, like how the Queen heals Watson's war scar using her tentacles, and a very bizarre play going on in the background of one of their ventures.

I'm not really sure about The Tale of the Golden Eagle, which is something like a very bedtime story with themes that strike me as a bit akin to that of the King with the mechanical singing bird (which of course can't compare to the real thing). The premise of how Golden Eagle spacecrafts are made is a good one, and the story details on how events led to the last one being built. The writing style is definitely like one of Schrezenade's stories, although too melancholy at some point.

I'll probably update these when the results are announced,