Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 9: The Diamond Age

Hugo winner: The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neil Stephenson, 1996

My view: Phyles! Nanites! A more successful look at slice-of-life Steampunk-ish culture (albeit based in the future instead of the past) than Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine! Although I didn't enjoy this as much as Stephenson's Snow Crash, the plot here is a lot easier to follow than the back-and-forth past/present-jumping one he tailored for Cryptonomicon. It also has two noticeable advantages over Cryptonomicon as well, namely comparative brevity (a 400-plus page difference in length makes that abundantly clear) and an ending that doesn't feel like all the air just went out of the novel you were enjoying up until then. More than deserving of the best novel award for that year, IMHO.

Nuggety? In some alternative reality, maybe. Otherwise, no.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 8: Hyperion

Hugo winner: Hyperion by Dan Simmons, 1990

My view: if you think that winning this award is going to sway my opinion as to whether or not I'm going to read the book, you're wrong. Actually, this is not the most recent winner for best novel I've read (my mistake, but at least I was close) as I originally stated. That's not so much a negative comment on my reading habits as it is on my apparent lack of need to read every last book that's won a Hugo. Be that as it may, I really enjoyed this. There are parts of the Canterbury Tales-based protagonist-by-chapter format that I liked a lot more than others, but there's no denying it deserved the award.

Nuggety? Far too literary a book for that, although the "Soldier's Tale" section concerning Fedmahn Kassad might keep a Puppies' attention for a while. The rest, though? Not really.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 7: Neuromancer

Hugo winner: Neuromancer by William Gibson, 1985

My view: For a book that was the first shot fired in arguably one of the biggest internal feuds over style and substance in the SF world since the New Age explosion of the late 60's, Neuromancer has more than a few problems for a book which I still consider one of my personal favorites. In my estimate, Case just isn't as interesting a protagonist as Turner was in Gibson's immediate follow-up Count Zero and Maelcum and his crew of spacefaring Rastas aren't quite as engrossing as characters as modern-day Vodou devotees Beauvoir and Lucas were in CZ, either. Then again, there's the breakneck-speed caper plot of the book, the tech that seems obscenely futuristic at times even today (and probably seemed utterly improbable to all but the most jaded SF readers when Neuromancer was first published) and side characters such as psychologically broken ex-special forces officer Armitage/Willis Corto and technologically enhanced sociopath Peter Riviera. And Molly Millions, who is anything but a mere "side character". Don't forget about her. Or else.

Nuggety? Nope. Not even close. Feel free to look up Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" in Burning Chrome as to why this isn't even a subject for debate.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 6: Gateway

Hugo winner: Gateway by Frederik Pohl, 1978

My view: I once made a statement on Facebook (go ahead and shudder freely at that fact, if you  wish) that veteran authors who successfully avoid Old Fogeyism - a tendency for writers to get cranky and start shouting "you damn kids get off of my lawn!" at new-fangled concepts that they don't like - is central to their continued relevance as authors even if they're pushing Who Knows What in terms of their actual chronological age.

Frederik Pohl is definitely one of those writers.

A Pohl work from the seventies is just as relevant to SF as a Pohl work from any other decade, and this story is no exception. Despite all of the futuristic trappings of the novel, Robinette Broadhead is exactly the sort of Everyman who'd be relevant regardless of whether or not he'd be alive during the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Era or Pohl's setting here. His neurotic quirks, desperation to make a better life for himself and the pain of losing a loved one and his crewmates to the same space travel phenomena that enabled him to become a rich man can be told in many ways and in many settings, but it's far too universal a story to merely be considered stilted BEM-fodder.

Nuggety? Probably not. Broadhead may be determined, grasping and capable of taking all sorts of crazy-ass risks in order to improve his meager lot in life, but he's no steely-eyed, iron-jawed alien-slaying type. Matter of fact, he's glaringly neurotic and emotionally vulnerable to his core. If what Brad Torgersen says is his idea of real SF is to be believed (my guess is that it's a huge mistake if you do), this doesn't qualify as real SF either - which is an entirely laughable view, IMHO. 

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 5: The Forever War

Hugo winner: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, 1976

My view: This is a novel that seems completely undated despite its publication back in 1974; given the post-Vietnam era politics of the time it's absurdly possible to draw parallels to that was and the unending, mainly futile conflict that William Mandella and his comrades are fighting, but it seems to be more of a meditation on the futility of all wars and what they end up doing to the common soldier. Which is why it's just as relevant now (especially now, considering how long Gulf War II and the conflict in Afghanistan have gone on) as it was in '74.

Nuggety? This is going to be a bit of a quandary. But only a bit.

Yes, this novel fully qualifies as military SF. Yes, it pulls no punches about organized military violence, is full of action and also doesn't make any overt or unsubtle pacifist statements in its text. The problem is that it also doesn't glorify a single thing about war, military life or the havoc it reeks on everything from romantic relationships to the lives of the draftees who are caught up in it. So despite all the carnage and military jargon, this isn't even close to Nuggety. Not by a long shot.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 4: Stand on Zanzibar

Hugo winner: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, 1969

My view: At this point - and this was a while ago, to say the least (at least twenty years, if not twenty-five) - this was the longest novel I had ever attempted to read. But read it I did, and if Brunner softened the blow of his overpopulation-as-hell on earth plot by resorting to a somewhat pat happy ending (a trait this book shares with The Jagged Orbit and The Shockwave Rider but not The Sheep Look Up) it's only because he was looking to find hope of escape out of the dystopian maze he expertly constructed. An incredibly solid work regardless of that fact, and a work that's almost impossible to adapt as a movie or even a miniseries because of its structure and refusal to pull its sociological punches.  

Nuggety? Nope. For one thing, it's constructed in a fashion largely inspired by John Dos Passos' USA trilogy, and that constitutes literature. For another, it's message fiction, but the big difference between this sort of message fiction and what the Sad/Rabid Puppies think constitute big-m Message Fiction is this: the message follows from the consequences of the plot and not the other way around. It's not a form of Stalinist Socialist Realism at work here but an Orwellian cautionary tale (although Brunner is much less of a pessimist than Orwell was), and anyone who can't tell the difference probably thinks that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was unduly didactic as well.  

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 3: The Man In The High Castle

Hugo winner: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, 1963

My view: It's not nearly as affecting to me - an old PKD fan if there ever was one - as either Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said or Ubik, but his alternate history version of a US occupied by a victorious Axis is both plausibly realized and suitably ominous, although the most important aspects of this novel (as with practically all of his work) are the disturbed inner psyches of the lead characters. It's a truism: the more deeply you read into a PKD novel, the more you get the sense that the workings of outward reality itself against those characters is the real enemy. This is a good place for a novice to start before heading off to even more challenging fare like the aforementioned novels and the likes of A Scanner Darkly, BTW.

Nuggety? Aw, c'mon. Not even close.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 2: The Big Time

Hugo winner: The Big Time by Fritz Leiber, 1958

My view: A war that runs through all of time and space as viewed through the setting of a futuristic USO station might have been a lousy idea in the hands of a lesser writer than Leiber, but although I don't like this nearly as much as his fantasy work he still pulls it off with a lot of flair and punchiness.

Nuggety? This is relatively close to what Brad Torgersen seems to prefer in terms of whiz-bang traditional (military) SF, but I doubt he'd find the moral ambiguity that underlies the plot and character motivation much of anything to write home about.

Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 1: The Demolished Man

So. I had this funny idea, and...

Yeah, yeah, I know - funny ideas are usually the death of good ones, but not in this case; what this idea was is to look through all of the Hugo Award-winning novels I've read (mere nominees will have to follow sometime later, but I'll get around to it) in order to see how they stack up both in terms of how I remember them and how they stack up to a certain Mr. Torgersen's ideal of breakfast cereal (pretty much beaten to death here by MD Lachlan). I know I have a tendency to overwrite introductions, so without further ado here's the first victim of this experiment:

Hugo winner: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, 1953

My view: It's been a good, long while since I've read this, and the one thing that's a drawback is that the dialogue even seemed dated to me when I read it in my late teens/early twenties. Then again, so what? TDM came out in 1952, which essentially means that it would seem dated in most contexts since this is over 60 years later. A fun romp of a book that can almost seem like a positively cheerful alternative version of Minority Report at times.

Nuggety? There's plenty of action, but somehow I don't think that this is quite the kind of book that Sad Puppies would go for since it has about as much to do with military SF as it does the Bolshoi Ballet.