Hugo: Novelettess
May. 19th, 2010 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo! I didn't really like any of the short stories that much (though some were ok) but have genuinely enjoyed most of the novelettes, I think the extra length gives space for actual characterisation and plot.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky: a lyrical medication on the nature of love through the lens of a human/robot relationship. I believed the characters but didn't entirely believe the world, it felt like a (quite effective) metaphor about people rather than a real attempt to think about how sentient robots would work in society. Still, I really liked it.
“It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith: Hard to say what this is about without spoiling it, but while I found it felt a little padded out for it's substance (mostly with gratuitous cultural appropriation and descriptions of boobs) I liked the characters (lesbian protagonist ftw!) ideas and plot well enough. I think it would have worked better s a short story.
“One of Our Bastards is Missing” by Paul Cornell: I enjoyed this well enough, but it's a perfect example of what annoys me about a lot of sf: this was a VERY old fashioned story, if you strip off the (quite clever and well done) Diamond-Age-ish nouveau-Victorian veneer the basic plot and characters could be straight out of a fairly good 1930s royal-scandal-mystery-spy-thriller (ok, I'm not sure any books with that exact type of plot existed. But they could have!). I thought maybe that was just the setup and he'd go somewhere interesting with it, but he didn't.
“Overtime” by Charles Stross: A christmas story set in his "Laundry" universe, about civil servants defeating Lovecraftian horrors with computational mathematics (no maths in this one though). Not deep but fun, and just the right length :)
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster: Meh. I'm sure this was a metaphor for something, and it mostly worked as magical realism surreal fantasy, but I didn't like or care about the protagonist and the gender politics skeeved me.
“The Island” by Peter Watts: This a rather emotionally distant dark story of a terraformer on a very, very long mission. It left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth but was intelligent and engaging.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky: a lyrical medication on the nature of love through the lens of a human/robot relationship. I believed the characters but didn't entirely believe the world, it felt like a (quite effective) metaphor about people rather than a real attempt to think about how sentient robots would work in society. Still, I really liked it.
“It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith: Hard to say what this is about without spoiling it, but while I found it felt a little padded out for it's substance (mostly with gratuitous cultural appropriation and descriptions of boobs) I liked the characters (lesbian protagonist ftw!) ideas and plot well enough. I think it would have worked better s a short story.
“One of Our Bastards is Missing” by Paul Cornell: I enjoyed this well enough, but it's a perfect example of what annoys me about a lot of sf: this was a VERY old fashioned story, if you strip off the (quite clever and well done) Diamond-Age-ish nouveau-Victorian veneer the basic plot and characters could be straight out of a fairly good 1930s royal-scandal-mystery-spy-thriller (ok, I'm not sure any books with that exact type of plot existed. But they could have!). I thought maybe that was just the setup and he'd go somewhere interesting with it, but he didn't.
“Overtime” by Charles Stross: A christmas story set in his "Laundry" universe, about civil servants defeating Lovecraftian horrors with computational mathematics (no maths in this one though). Not deep but fun, and just the right length :)
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster: Meh. I'm sure this was a metaphor for something, and it mostly worked as magical realism surreal fantasy, but I didn't like or care about the protagonist and the gender politics skeeved me.
“The Island” by Peter Watts: This a rather emotionally distant dark story of a terraformer on a very, very long mission. It left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth but was intelligent and engaging.
