World Fantasy Award 2010

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The World Fantasy Convention 2010 was held on the Weekend of October 28-31 in Columbus, Ohio.
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WINNERS of the Life Achievement Award

Brian Lumley
Terry Pratchett
Peter Straub

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Novel

Blood of Ambrose by James Enge (Pyr)
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Macmillan UK / Del Rey) winner
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Underland Press)
In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield (Jonathan Cape UK/Del Rey)
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Novella

The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker, Subterranean Press
"I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said," Richard Bowes, December 2009 F&SF
"The Lion's Den," Steve Duffy, Nemonymous Nine: Cern Zoo
The Night Cache , Andy Duncan, PS Publishing
"Sea-Hearts," Margo Lanagan, X 6, coeur de lion publishing winner
"Everland," Paul Witcover, Everland and Other Stories, PS Publishing
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Short Story

"The Pelican Bar," Karen Joy Fowler, Eclipse Three, Night Shade Books winner
"A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, DPhil, MSc, or, A Lullaby", Helen Keeble, June 2009 Strange Horizons
"Singing on a Star," Ellen Klages, Firebirds Soaring, Firebird
"The Persistence of Memory, or This Space for Sale " Paul Park, Postscripts 20/21: Edison 's Frankenstein , PS Publishing
"In Hiding," R.B. Russell, Putting the Pieces in Place, Ex Occidente Press
"Light on the Water," Genevieve Valentine, October 2009 Fantasy Magazine
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You can peruse all of the nominees and the winners on the official World Fantasy Award site.

2010 Hugo Award Winners

2009 Hugo Award Winners were presented at Aussiecon 4, in Melbourne, Australia, which was held from August 2-6, 2010.

The Winners:

• Best Novel (TIE!): The City & The City, China Miéville and The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi China Miéville

• Best Novella: “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross
  

• Best Novelette: “The Island”, Peter Watts
  

• Best Short Story: “Bridesicle”, Will McIntosh
  

• The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Seanan McGuire
  

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Congratulations to all the winners!

source (where you can find other Winners & Nominees as well): The Hugo Awards

China Miéville on J.R.R. Tolkien

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MIÉVILLE's derogatory opinion of J.R.R. TOLKIEN is pervasive and documented. His leftist criticism from a few years back denotes TOLKIEN as stultifying (i.e. tending to humiliate), reactionary, pompous, petty and in favour of status quo among other things. He consciously strived to move fantasy away from TOLKIEN's influence. In other words, MIÉVILLE's goal -- as I understand it -- was to make fantasy more aware of the problems of contemporary world, to make fantasy socialist, subversive and revolutionary, critical of the ruling elite and in favour of the common man. MIÉVILLE's position on the genre is, as he admitted himself, also indebted to MICHAEL MOORCOCK. MOORCOCK's highly critical and somewhat elitist position on the genre, or rather, the genre paradigm stemming directly from TOLKIEN is evident in the article titled "Epic Pooh", which is also well worth reading.

Now, "Lord of the Rings" was the first fantasy book I've read -- how cliched, I know :) -- and I don't, or rather, I won't, say a bad thing about it. Of course, I'm open to criticisms directed at "LOTR", as long as they are rational and constructive, and I wouldn't go out of my way to stubbornly defend it (I'm stallwart, but I'm not that rigid). But when it comes to me thinking about reviewing the trilogy, I wouldn't want to do it, because I don't feel that I'm grown up to the task. I'm positive that my attempts at impartiality would be utterly thwarted by my own feelings of affection and nostalgia. All this holds true only, if I wouldn't be completely disillusioned upon rereading "LOTR", but which I wasn't when I did reread it a couple of years ago, so it does, hold true that is.

In one of MIÉVILLE's latest entries as a guest blogger on Omnivoracious, he tempers his past commentaries on TOLKIEN with what could be called a praise or even a hommage -- he even mentiones the words grateful and rocks -- to the forefather of the large piece of contemporary epic fantasy, if only from the perspective of MIÉVILLE's past barrage of denunciation. Although he still acknowledges that even an author of TOLKIEN's fame can and -- exactly because of such high standing -- must be open to intellectual reproach, he nevertheless gives TOLKIEN credit for the achievments and contributions he's made to the genre, which, MIÉVILLE admits, were seminal and substantial. The essayistic manner in which MIÉVILLE wrote "There and Back Again: Five Reasons Tolkein Rocks" makes it for a dense, scholary read, but the five reasons can, basically, be boiled down to this:

1. TOLKIEN was responsible for a tectonic shift of focus in storytelling; a shift from Greco-Roman mythology to a more yeasty Norse Magic. Greco-Roman influence on fiction was run of the mill at that time and MIÉVILLE views it as "too clean," "overburdened with percision," and "as cold as Greek and Roman marble". Norse mythos is, on the other hand, more fleshy, anti-moralistic and, well...awesome.
2. TOLKIEN's vision is tragic. This is a noble trait that most of those who followed in his footsteps forgot -- intentionally or unintentionally -- to take over. The ending of "LOTR" is not happy, even though the good guys win. It is an end of a glorious age: the magic is going west with the elves, a premonition of a more mundane, and thus poorer future. The book ends with strong melancholia and nostalgia for times that are not quite gone yet, but are in passing. All this, argues MIÉVILLE, deserves celebrating and reclaiming.
3. TOLKIEN "...gives good monster. Shelob, Smaug, the Balrog...in their astounding names, the fearful verve of their descriptions, their various undomesticated malevolence, these creatures are utterly embedded in our world-view. No one can write giant spiders except through Shelob: all dragons are sidekicks now. And so on." All this, coming from a man with seemingly unfathomable imagination, means a lot.
4. "TOLKIEN explains that he has a 'cordial dislike of allegory'. Amen! Amen!" If "LOTR" would be allegorical, then it would, in one way or another, represent, reflect or suggest resemblance to reality. Metaphor on the other hand does not suggest any such thing. MIÉVILLE still cautions that TOLKIEN's work does "throw off metaphors" that do "all sort of things, wittingly or unwittingly, with ideas of society, of class, the war etc.", but where metaphors "evade stability", allegory, on the other hand, is, "in some reductive way, primarily, solely, or really 'about' something else, narrowly and precisely." An allegorical work of fiction gives promise to the reader that he can 'solve' it by finding a right key, by decoding it, and "TOLKIEN knows that that makes for both clumsy fiction and clunky code. His dissatisfaction with the Narnia books was in part precisely because they veered too close to allegory, and therefore did not believe in their own landscape." So, in MIÉVILLE's view, "LOTR" is worthwile, because it believes in itself and in the world created within. It is 'lartpourlart' in its true sense and whichever stereotypes it does reproduce and if it defends the status quo, it does so evasively and unintentionally. I'm curious though, how does MIÉVILLE's work relate to allegory? Isn't he guilty of the same thing he stands so firmly against in this treatise?
5. "Middle Earth was not the first invented world, of course. But in the way the world is envisaged and managed, it represents a revolution." Middle Earth was not the first, but definitely "an outstanding herald" of the fantasy worlds that are not secondary to the plot. TOLKIEN represents a paradigm shift which reverses the order of things: "the world comes first, and then, and only then, things happen--stories occur--within it." TOLKIEN calls this process 'subcreation' and it is now, probably, the default fantasy mode and an extremely potent literary approach, whether you denigrate or praise it. MIÉVILLE laments the fact that there is little to no theoretical work on this technique as of yet.

MIÉVILLE concludes his article in a lenient, mannerly way: "There are plenty of other reasons to be grateful to Tolkien, of course--and reasonable reasons to be ticked off at him, too: critique, after all has its place. But so does admiration..." You can read the article in its entirety here.

While MIÉVILLE doesn't recall his past harsh criticism of TOLKIEN, he nevertheless tempers and balances it out by complimenting the Professor and giving him acclaim, where acclaim is due. I'm just curious what brought him 'about'? Was the article written as a consequence of the process of MIÉVILLE's 'wising up' with age or is there a more pragmatic reason behind it? James takes an educated guess and speculates that MIÉVILLE's article comes as an indirect reposte to the RICHARD MORGAN's rant and I'm inclined to agree with him.

~ ThRiNiDiR ~

China Miéville - Un Lun Dun (Book Review)

"Un Lun Dun" (Amazon: UK, US)
by CHINA MIÉVILLE
Format: Paperback, 528/496 pages
Publisher: Pan Books/Del Rey (February 1, 2008/January 29, 2008)

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Un Lun Dun was recommended to me as a book I'd surely love, since it was 'a lot like Alice in Wonderland'. The part about me loving Un Lun Dun was completely right, the one about it being similar to Alice less so – there's so much more to Un Lun Dun than that. It's definitely a YA book, a very good one on top of that, and the illustrations are adorable, adding to the experience - but the book is written with so much imagination that you don't really need them.

Deeba and Zanna are best friends, who have lately noticed some very strange things going on around Zanna. When one night Zanna sleeps over at Deeba’s, they are awoken by a strange sound coming from outside. It turns out to be a broken umbrella, and when they follow it, they stumble straight into the strange world of UnLondon, made of garbage and facing a severe threat, an enemy named Smog. It was prophesied that Zanna is the Shwazzy, a hero who will save UnLondon, but things go badly wrong and the girls get sent back home. Zanna has no recollection of events in UnLondon whatsoever, so Deeba, still determined to stop Smog, decides to take things in her own hands – but she only has a limited number of days before everybody in London forget she ever existed.

At first, I had some suspicions that the morale of the story will be something about saving the environment, which would make the book a very annoying read (I don't like a too obvious morale to the story, be it on environment, family ties or respect to other people), so I was very relieved to find out that all the garbage in UnLondon plays a much simpler role – it makes a great setting for the story. The idea of a garbage world (or even better, an un-world) struck my imagination like a lit match strikes a barrel of gas. I was totally intrigued by the whole idea and I guess I even got carried away a bit – I imagined a dark, wicked place, a lost and morbid city instead of just, well, a garbage one, which (despite everything) never gets really scary or dark - Un Lun Dun is a YA novel and my imagined city could not exist in it by default. UnLondon makes for a fine substitute, though – it’s a place made with obvious precision and leaves more than enough space for a reader’s imagination to go rampant, being filled with wonders (mostly made of garbage) and a unique set of various characters. It is clear that MIÉVILLE is a master writer who enjoys his language – a lot of the aforementioned characters are, in fact, puns and various wordplays brought to life. Others are no less imaginative; my favourite was Curdle, a little carton of milk, which Deeba adopts as a kind of pet. It bothered me, though, that he was left forgotten at times – there were long spans of pages without him showing up at all.

The plot was no less enjoyable than the setting and the characters. I especially appreciated the fact that Mieville does not underestimate his (young) readers – the plot is far from naive, without major, unconvincing holes that too often appear in YA novels. It’s basically about The Chosen One’s best friend, which is uncommon enough, since we all too often get a tale of how The Chosen One saved the day (and, usually, also the known world) with a little help from a selfless best friend. While Deeba remains a bit idealised, she is still a far more realistic and plausible character than the heroes we usually meet in aforementioned tales. She doesn’t play by the rules – she starts her ‘quest’ right at its end and learns that saving the world is much harder – but not impossible – when people know you’re not the hero destined to help them.

Overall, Un Lun Dun is one of the best YA books I’ve ever read, including the ones I’ve read as a kid. In fact, I’m a bit sorry that I couldn’t read it when I was twelve or so, since I’m pretty sure I would adore it and sympathise with Deeba far easier than I do now. I’m content that I got to read it at all, though – it is a great book, and (as said before) perfect for people whose imagination runs on the wild side, regardless of their age.





~Trin~