Hugo Aftermath 2011

Once again my Hugo predictions were wrong, wrong, horribly wrong. I did get Novella right, but that was a bit of a runaway. I could claim to have called Long Form Drama but Inception was a shoe-in if ever there was one. Obviously the buzz I was hearing was not coming from the right sources. But just like any sporting event, we don’t really know what we’ve seen until we go INSIDE THE NUMBERS (cue sports highlight show music). So here we go.

Just in case you don’t trust me, the link to the ballot statistics is on the Renovation home page. Also, just to be clear, I am not accusing anyone of stuffing the ballot box or any other unethical activity. I believe the voters honestly voted for what they liked best, and the winners are worthy. For any other discussion of what deserved to win, go back to my previous post to get my opinions. Still, in any voting situation, part of winning is getting your supporters motivated to get out and cast their votes. So my question here is what, besides writing good stories, did our winners do to get their trophies.

In the novel category, I mentioned that Connie Willis had momentum from the Nebulas, so I was on the right track there. I also said Feed was unlikely to win, which was completely wrong. I wondered where all of the new Hugo voters came from, and it looks like a good chunk of them came from the Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant fan club. Feed got the most first place votes, but as the field got whittled down Blackout/All Clear moved ahead. There seems to be a bit of an old school/new school split also, where most of the Jemisin voters landed in Grant’s camp, but the McDonald and Bujold voters leaned towards Willis.

This was the first time since I started this blog that I attended the Hugo ceremony in person (I attended in 2008 also, but the blog was in extra-silent mode back then). So I can add to my analysis the fact that Feed got the biggest crowd response when the nominees were read. On the last day of the convention, Seanan McGuire was at the autographing table at the same time as George R. R. Martin, and her line was nearly as long as his. Feed may not have been my favorite book, but obviously in the wider fan community she’s got quite a following, and since all of those readers will have nomination votes next year, I won’t be surprised if she ends up on the Hugo shortlist again.

In Novella, I don’t think there were any surprises in either the votes or the nominations. Chiang has established himself as a master of the short forms so he probably benefits from the fact that voters will seek out his work when choosing nominees. And since he puts out relatively few stories, he doesn’t have to worry about his votes getting split between several different nominees. Swirsky is starting to get the same kind of attention but she still has some catching up to do.

In Novelette, my pick of “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” came in a solid last place. On one of the panels that I went to at the convention, there was a discussion suggesting that it’s harder to sell stories based around “alien” cultures, whether it’s actual aliens in a science fiction story or non-western-derived cultures in fantasy. The Novella vote may be evidence to support that theory, and I wonder if that also contributed to The Dervish House coming up short among the novels.

In Short Story, “The Things” dominated the nomination votes while “For Want of a Nail” barely qualified. On the final ballot, however, the numbers switched around and “Nail” won fairly easily. So maybe another chunk of those new Hugo voters were Kowal fans. A couple of other possible factors are the fact that Kowal is a past winner of the Campbell award, so she’s established a degree of popularity with Hugo voters, and the fact that she’s from Oregon so this was as close to a home-court convention as she’s likely to get (both of those factors may have benefited Seanan McGuire also, with her being from northern California).

The other interesting aspect of the Short Story vote is that only four nominees reached the threshold of being on 5% of the nominating ballots. I heard some talk that the 5% rule may need some revision, and I think I agree with that. It seems like there are more short stories being published these days across a wide variety of outlets. My understanding is that the rule came about when there were fewer nominating ballots, and there was a chance something could get on the shortlist with only a few votes. But this year, for Short Story the 5% threshold was 26 votes, and the fifth place story that didn’t make it had 25. You could argue that it probably didn’t make much difference in the final vote, but the Hugo winner only got 29 nominations. The bigger issue is that if four votes were taken away from two nominees, then only two stories would have been eligible. I don’t know exactly what the best formula would be, but I think they need to make sure they keep at least four stories on the shortlist so the voters have a good selection to choose from.

Around this time of year the people who didn’t like the winners tend to speak up, and a common complaint is that the Hugo voters are a small, closed, old boy’s network that always votes the same way and is behind the times. But I don’t think you can make that case this year, even though the results did give us several repeat winners. With such a high number of ballots submitted, maybe it’s largely the same convention attendees but there have to be some new voters in the pool. And the votes were hardly unanimous, every candidate had support. It would only have taken a couple hundred more voters to turn any of the results around.

That said, I’m going to make a couple of predictions for next year based solely on fanbases and early buzz, even though I haven’t ready anything yet that will be eligible for 2012. I’m predicting that John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation and China Mieville’s Embassytown wil be on the shortlist. A Dance with Dragons seems like it will probably get votes too, but I think I saw that Martin declined a nomination in the past so he might keep himself off the shortlist. It could be a tight race for the last couple of slots on the ballot, so hopefully this year’s voters will be paying attention when next year’s nomination deadline rolls around.

My 2011 Hugo Ballot

Yes, it’s Hugo time once again, and once again I offer my opinions and predictions. Beware of spoilers.

Best Novel

1 – The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

2 – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin

3 – Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

4 – Feed, Mira Grant

no vote – Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold

I didn’t read Cryoburn because I didn’t want to pay for a hardcover when I haven’t read previous books in the series, I couldn’t get it in paperback before the voting deadline, and I couldn’t bring myself to read the electronic version on my computer. I haven’t heard any buzz that suggested it was a top contender though. Feed was kind of interesting for how it explained the zombies but a lot of the other stuff I didn’t fully buy in to, and I didn’t really connect with the characters. Blackout and All Clear I enjoyed the characters and the setting but I felt like the plot started to drag towards the end and I knew what was going to happen. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I thought had great world building, I was just a little disappointed in the resolution. The Dervish House, I liked everything about it. I thought all of the characters were interesting and I was impressed with how he pulled all of the plot threads together and resolved them. I also thought this was more accessible than some of McDonald’s other books, for those that aren’t long-time fans like me.

I also nominated Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay, if that had made the final ballot I probably would have voted it 3^rd. Similar to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, I thought it had excellent world building but the ending didn’t pay off as well as I would have liked.

Prediction-wise, I think Feed is unlikely to win. Blackout/All Clear won the Nebula so it probably has some momentum, and Willis clearly has a strong fan base. Bujold supposedly has a strong fan base too, but I really haven’t heard anything else to support Cryoburn‘s case. The Dervish House has had the most buzz that I’ve seen, but I don’t know if that will translate into votes. But I’m going to make Dervish House my prediction and hope it’s not a jinx.

Best Novella

1 – “Troika”, Alastair Reynolds

2 – “The Sultan of the Clouds”, Geoffrey A. Landis

3 – “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window”, Rachel Swirsky

4 – “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon”, Elizabeth Hand

no vote – The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang

I was running up against the deadline reading these, so I decided to skip the longest one. That was a mistake. If I had read The Lifecycle of Software Objects I would definitely have voted it first. It was a really interesting look at people developing emotional attachments to digital characters. The other stories were reasonably good but none really struck me as outstanding. “Troika” and “The Sultan of Clouds” I thought ended well. “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers” had an interesting idea but I felt like it could have gone in more interesting places. “Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” never really got me interested.

I nominated “A History of Terraforming” by Robert Reed, and I would have voted for that ahead of all of these except Lifecycle of Software Objects.

I’m not sure if any of these have a lot of buzz, so I guess anything is possible. “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers” took the Nebula, but to me just based on what was most entertaining to read, Chiang seems like the most likely winner.

Best Novellete

1 – “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, Aliette de Bodard

2 – “Eight Miles”, Sean McMullen

3 – “The Emperor of Mars”, Allen M. Steele

4 – “Plus or Minus”, James Patrick Kelly

5 – “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made”, Eric James Stone

I guess de Bodard has developed a world, which she used for at least one novel so far, based on modern day civilization but with Chinese and Aztecs as the dominant civilization. “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” comes from that world, although I don’t know how closely it ties into anything else she’s written. However it’s a good story and it stands on its own just fine. I liked the way she flashed back and forth in time to set up all of the elements for the final resolution. “Eight Miles” was also good but I thought the ending came a little to easily for the main character. “The Emperor of Mars” and “Plus or Minus” I thought were not bad but they didn’t wow me. I’m willing to read stories where religion is a theme, where it turns out that God in some form exists, but “That Leviathan” I felt like didn’t give any real justification for why aliens would find anything to believe in an earth religion.

I’m guessing that Kelly will have a strong showing due to name recognition but I think de Bodard is the most likely winner here. I have to admit I was surprised to see that “That Leviathan” won the Nebula.

Best Short Story

1 –” The Things”, Peter Watts

2 – “Ponies”, Kij Johnson

3 – “Amaryllis”, Carrie Vaughn

4 – “For Want of a Nail”, Mary Robinette Kowal

“The Things” is a retelling of The Thing (specifically the 1982 movie, the messy one) from the alien’s perspective. Retelling well-known stories from different points of view has become a fairly standard device, although this seems like an unexpected story to apply that device to. But what makes this story interesting is how well he portrays the alien point of view, the way he sees humans through the alien’s eyes and tries to understand them. Although, working against it is the fact that a reader who doesn’t have that movie as a background will miss a lot of what’s going on. “Ponies” is hard to summarize, you might as well just read it. It distills down to just a few basic elements, but it still manages to pull of a twist with some bite. “Amaryllis” did a good job of implying a larger world while showing only a tiny slice, but I didn’t feel like it had as much drama as the others. “For Want of a Nail” also had an interesting scenario and I thought it was well written, but my complaint was that the story didn’t fit the title, at least as I understand the proverb.

“Ponies” won a Nebula (in a tie). I think Watts has a slight advantage in name recognition and voter goodwill, but that may be neutralized by voters who haven’t seen the movie his story is based on. I guess I’m still going to pick Watts as the winner.

I may do a second post specifically about the nomination of a certain music video in the Short Form Drama category. But this is getting long, so for now I will just say that I voted for Inception as best Long Form Drama and Vincent and the Doctor in Short Form.

One last hedge on all of my predictions: apparently this year pulled in a record number of ballots, more than twice as many as any of the past three years. My question is, where did those voters come from? If they are some kind of coordinated block, they could definitely swing any category they focused on. So there’s definitely a sense that anything could happen and no favorite is safe. But I’m going to assume that they are all unbiased, objective readers, and therefore naturally they will have come to the same conclusions and voted the same as me.

Losing Touch

The Facebook minions are stepping up their campaign to assimilate me. Not sure how much longer I can hold out.

It occurs to me that for anyone over 20 now, Facebook etc. are letting people get back in touch with people they knew in college, high school, a town they used to live in, an old job, all of those kinds of things. But for kids growing up now, the whole idea of losing touch with someone in the first place is going to become meaningless. It will be almost impossible for them to grow up without some kind of online presence. The only way they’ll be able to lose contact with someone is if they do it intentionally.

Or maybe I’m underestimating the power of lazy. Maybe with ubiquitous connectivity the kids will find new ways to waste time and still manage to forget about all those real humans they used to know.

Playoffs vs. Bowls

Here’s a subject I’ve been thinking about, but it had to wait for the right time of year to get posted. Guess what, now is the time.

 

I consider myself a college football fan. I watch a lot of different sports, but college football is one of my favorites. So it tends to surprise people when I say that I prefer the current BCS (“Bowl Championship Series” for those that don’t follow it) over any system of playoffs for determining a national champion.

 

The argument for a playoff basically comes down to “settle it on the field.” There are 120 Division I teams, and they only play 12-14 games a year. This creates a situation where most of the best teams don’t play each other during a season, and all that’s left is for fans to argue about whose team is better. Playoffs would theoretically settle some of those debates, and at the very least would make sure that every deserving team would have an opportunity to play for the championship.

 

But while that might create a couple of dramatic games at the end of the season, it would take away all the drama from the regular season, and the regular season is what sets college football apart from other sports. Under the current system, a team basically has to go undefeated to be elligible for the championship. That means that every game is an elimination game, from the beginning of the season to the end. Every game has that playoff drama.

 

What’s the quintessential image of a college football game? The students rushing on to the field after a big win. What inspires them to do that? When an underdog school happens to knock off a powerhouse, on that day the underdog matters. They had an impact on the championship picture and ruined the powerhouse school’s season. If there was a playoff, then the game is much less significant. The powerhouse school probably just gets a lower seed. That’s hardly worth celebrating.

 

I could also argue that college football doesn’t need a national champion at all. That kind of contradicts the idea that you have to go undefeated to qualify for the championship, and that being the foundation of the drama of the regular season. But college football is structured to create plenty of other things for teams to play for, with conference championships and different bowl games. As I said before, it’s impossible for all the teams to play each other to really determine who’s best, so does it really matter if one team is declared champion at the end of the year?

 

Pro football is strictly an entertainment business, and as such it makes sense for them to have a playoff structure and a championship to play for. College football is supposed to be an activity that complements a student’s education, and maybe an opportunity to get that education for some who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Those would be good things in theory, but in practice too many schools are putting football first and education second. Not that that’s likely to change any time soon, but pro-style playoffs would only make it worse. I think we’d all be better off if colleges kept education as their top priority. Tuitions have been rising at a ridiculous rate lately, and I have to believe that the costs of college sports are playing a role in that.

 

College football isn’t perfect, but it’s plenty entertaining the way it is. If we want to address its problems, address them in the classroom first. Trying to add a playoff system would just make everything worse.

Hugo Follow-up and Other Book Items

One thing I like about the Hugo awards is that they release the complete voting and nomination results–see them here. This particular year I think it’s interesting to see that the top two novels started out in a tie, shifted around a little bit as others were eliminated, and then ended in a tie again. It felt like justice was done, as both The City & The City and The Windup Girl are deserving winners.

(If you haven’t looked at the process before, basically each round the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and the votes are recounted for the ones that are left, until one gets over 50%)

I think you can also see fan-base voting in the numbers. Sawyer, for example, got a lot of first-place votes, but he didn’t go up very much in the subsequent rounds, meaning that he didn’t get as many high rankings from the other voters. There’s kind of a similar effect for Scalzi in the novella category and for Stross in novelette. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t good, just that opinions are divided on them.

Also, I said something about Dr. Who splitting votes in the short-form drama category, but in this voting system, as long as the Dr. Who fans vote all three of their choices on top, the split doesn’t hurt them and they still win.

Nomination counts I think also give an indicator of fan-base and of what people were reading when there wasn’t an award at stake.

Last week I went to a reading/book signing by William Gibson, for his new novel Zero History, and he made one comment that I thought was very interesting. Since he is known for predicting the effects of new technologies, someone asked him about the future of books, reading and writing. His answer was that when the Internet and HTML started to get popular, people predicted stories full of hyperlinks which would either take you to definitions and explanations of what you were reading, or would allow you to take multiple paths through the story. Nothing like that really caught on, but what did happen was the advent of search engines. Search engines have affected books because now there’s no terminology, idiom, landmark, or anything else so obscure that you can’t look it up on line. So books being written now tend to have less explanations of things because they assume that curious readers can Google. But what’s really interesting is that this affects all books retroactively, so older books are being looked at in new ways. And going forward, we can’t assume that some unknown future technology won’t affect books being written today.

And although Gibson didn’t pursue this idea any farther, the Internet also serves as a platform for fan sites which can also affect the understanding of a book. You can find interactive maps of Middle Earth, class schedules for Hogwarts, and just about any moderately popular book probably has some kind of fan site somewhere. So even writers working with completely made-up material can have their work fully analyzed and annotated on-line, and I wouldn’t be suprised if sometimes the fan’s version could become more “canonical” than the author’s.

To bring this back to the topic of Hugo voting, you also have the effect of on-line criticism. Between blogs, Amazon reviews, and who knows what else, there are lots of recommendations and reviews to be found on-line. Some are well thought-out, but many are just fans expressing their fan-hood, and some are amateur reviewers trying to be “right”, basically agreeing with the majority as a way to demonstrate that they are discerning reviewers (or along the same lines, the derisive trolls who go against the majority as a way to convince themselves that they are smarter than everyone else). The question is, do the same symptoms affect award voters? Do they form opinions based on whose fans shout the loudest? Do they vote for a candidate perceived to be a front-runner, just so they can say they picked the winner? Or maybe they vote more fairly because there’s more information about all of the nominees.

This year, I think all of the Hugo winners are deserving. Next year, who knows? Although even if there is an occasional glitch, I don’t think it will diminish the award overall. But I think the increased availability of information does impact the votes in ways we haven’t figured out how to measure yet.

A New Hugo Ballot

Last year I offered my “virtual” Hugo ballot since I failed to read everything before the voting deadline. But this year I did all the reading so this is my actual ballot. Although the importance of the award is debatable, for me the value of voting is that it makes me read new books & new authors (although lately I’ve been buying more books than I have time to read). So, lets see what we have.

Short Story

1. “The Moment” by Lawrence M. Schoen

2. “Spar” by Kij Johnson

3. “Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh

4. “Non-Zero Probabilities” by N. K. Jemisin

5. “The Bride of Frankenstein” by Mike Resnick

These were generally good stories but very dissimilar so it was hard to choose. I went with “The Moment” because I thought it was an interesting take on how aliens might perceive human history. “Spar” was pretty powerful, though, if a bit disturbing. And “Bridesicle” could turn out to be the one I remember best of those three. Also, a story I would have like to see nominated was “The Consciousness Problem” by Mary Robinette Kowal. “Spar” won the Nebula so I suspect it’s the frontrunner here, but you can make a case for all of them to win.

Novellete

1. “Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky

2. “One of Our Bastards Is Missing” by Paul Cornell

3. “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster

4. “It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith

5. “The Island” by Peter Watts

6. “Overtime” by Charles Stross

“Eros, Philia, Agape” was definitely my favorite out of this group. The rest had some interesting ideas but also some flaws, or just lacked the same impact. One story that I really liked that didn’t get on the ballot was “This Wind Blowing and This Tide” by Damien Broderick. “Sinner, Baker…” won the Nebula, but I think “The Island” is the favorite here. Not that the story wouldn’t be worthy otherwise, but I think Watts is going to pick up some sentimental votes due to his misadventure with U.S. Homeland Security.

Novella

1. Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow

2. “The Women of Nell Gwynne’s” by Kage Baker

3. “Palimpsest” by Charles Stross

4. “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” by Ian McDonald

5. “Act One” by Nancy Kress

6. The God Engines by John Scalzi

I changed my mind several times on this group, and I would probably change it again if there was another vote tomorrow. Shambling Towards Hiroshima and “The Women of Nell Gwynne’s” I thought were more entertaining, but “Palimpsest” probably had the biggest impact for me, closely followed by “Vishnu at the Cat Circus.” I think Scalzi has the biggest fan base, but Baker has the sentimental vote, and Kress surprised me by winning last year, so I am not going to attempt to predict this category.

Novel

1. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

2. The City & The City by China Mieville

3. Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

4. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

5. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson

6. WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

Last year I thought the Best Novel nominees were easily predictable and I read most of them well in advance. This year I thought there were only two sure things, so I had more reading to do after nominations were announced. The two sure things are at the top of my list, but I’ll start at the bottom.

WWW: Wake revolves around two things, a blind girl gaining sight through technology and the Internet becoming sentient. The blind girl’s storyline was powerful and well done, but the webmind piece I didn’t buy, not that it couldn’t happen but that it wouldn’t happen like that. Julian Comstock also had some interesting characters, but the idea of post-oil society reverting to a Civil War-era aristocracy was another thing that I didn’t buy. Boneshaker was a cool combination of ideas: steampunk, zombies, and the American West. I liked it a lot except that the reveal at the end seemed a little unfair. One character knew the truth all along and just didn’t share it. Palimpsest is worth reading just for the way Valente uses language, creating vivid images of her strange city. The story is interesting but the characters are so obsessive and odd that they are a little hard to relate to.

Those four novels all have some good things about them, but to me the last two separated themselves from the others. I’ll be surprised if one of these two doesn’t win. The City & The City has a totally unique setting, two cities occupying the same physical space. Mieville gets away with never explaining how this happened by doing a great job of making it part of the character’s daily lives. On top of this he sets a pretty good murder mystery, but he structures it so that it couldn’t happen anywhere but this particular pair of cities. The Windup Girl considers at a post-oil world where food becomes the most important resource and power source. Bacigalupi follows several characters from different backgrounds to explore the issues in his world, but he manages to tie the threads together for a powerful ending. You could argue that I’m being a homer by voting for Bacigalupi, since he lives in the same state and usually comes to our local SF convention, but I though The Windup Girl had the biggest impact of any of the novels so I voted it first by a slim margin.

Although it didn’t make the shortlist, I thought Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress was another very good novel from 2009. I probably would have put it 3rd or 4th if it had been nominated.

For movies (“Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form”), I’m guessing that Hugo voters are the type of people who would say Avatar was unoriginal. Moon would by my first choice, but since it had a pretty limited release I think Up or District 9 are more likely to win.

I think the TV show category (“Best Dramatic Presentaiton, Short Form”) is interesting because of what it seems to say about the Hugo voting community. I’ve started to get the impression that there is an American bloc, a British bloc, and a Canadian bloc, with each group tending to favor authors and works from their country. The Canadian bloc may be smaller but they also have fewer candidates to support so they still have an impact. Robert Sawyer (Canadian) tends to get a lot of nominations, and then has a lot of critics saying he’s not deserving. I think most voters do vote honestly based on their opinion of the works, but when they haven’t read everything in a particular category it would not be surprising if they showed a little favoritism.

For this particular year, I think Sawyer’s best novel nomination is reasonable. What’s less reasonable is the nomination of Flash Forward the TV series. When Lost, Fringe, and Battlestar Galactica got no nominations, it’s hard to call Flash Forward deserving. But it’s based on a Sawyer novel so it seems to be a strong indicator of the bloc effect. Then you also have Dr. Who, the favorite of the British bloc. This particular year only three new episodes were shown, and all three were nominated. One nomination would be expected, two would be understandable, three seems excessive since none of them were really outstanding. But with only three to choose from, the British bloc must have been pretty unified in their voting. However it could work against them in the final vote since now the American bloc has only Dollhouse now to focus on, while the British bloc may be splitting their vote three ways. We shall see.

The Hugos will be awarded sometime this weekend, but since Worldcon is in Australia I have no idea exactly when it will be. But good luck to all the nominees.

Clash of the Machina

I saw Clash of the Titans last week. Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you that it’s not particularly great. It has a few moments that are kind of fun but that was about it. One thing in particular that bugged me was all the Deus ex Machina, people showing up out of nowhere to save the day and battles turning on a bit of luck. Given that this is sort of based on Greek mythology, and Deus ex Machina is a staple of Greek mythology, you might think that would be all right. Except that the theme of this movie is something about men being self-reliant, not asking the gods to save them. So the self-reliance idea is pretty well undermined at every turn, and when it’s over all you can do is wonder what the point was.

At least I didn’t have to watch it in 3D.

How Not to Blog

I need to give myself permission to write short blog posts. Not everything has to be a cogent, weighty, detailed, insightful essay (thank you thesaurus.com). Nor does everything have to fit into a tweet. I have a bad habit of overanalyzing whatever the subject is to the point where when I’m ready to blog about it, everyone else has moved on to something new. So no more of that. Let’s not let this site go to waste.

Maybe I Don’t Want the Game to Change

“Game-changer” seems to be the favorite term to describe Avatar. Will this usher in a new era of moviemaking? Seamless integration of live actors and digital scenery, anything the director can imagine, and all of it jumping off the screen and right into your lap in three totally realistic dimensions? Maybe so, but the question I have to ask is, do we really want that?

Don’t get all up-in-arms, Avatar fans. I’m not saying it was a bad movie or that I didn’t like it. There were pieces of the story I could quibble with, but I still enjoyed it. For me personally, special effects are about the last reason to see a movie, but I won’t deny that this was an impressive visual experience. I just don’t necessarily want other movies to try to imitate it.

My two favorite movies of 2009 were Moon and The Hurt Locker, which were both fairly low-budget and limited-release. I’m not seriously worried that the independent filmmakers will totally disappear, but I do think that as Hollywood budgets go up, it gets harder for the small studios to reach an audience. This also impacts the independent theaters where those smaller films tend to live. Those theaters tend not to have the state-of-the-art projectors and sound that the multiplex chains use, so the risk is that the independent theaters and films become sort of ghetto-ized (if they aren’t already).

Ironically, I think there’s a parallel to be drawn between Avatar and the low-budget A Scanner Darkly, in terms of how the technology links to the story. A Scanner Darkly was filmed using rotoscope animation so it has a distinctive look to it. But the director didn’t use that technique just for the heck of it. The main characters are all basically on drugs, so everything they see is distorted and doesn’t quite look real. The animation gives the audience that same sensation, helping them identify with the uncertainties the characters face. Similarly, Avatar is about characters getting immersed in an alien world, and the 3D effects let the audience share that experience. You could frame the movie as being about how the avatar “pilots” who go out and experience the planet appreciate it more than the people who stay locked up inside and only watch out the window. In that way, the 3D basically tells the audience who the good guys are. Thus the technology has a valid purpose in this movie. That doesn’t mean that it would be valid, useful, or even desirable in most other movies.

The biggest argument against changing the game actually came during the previews before I saw Avatar. Every 3D movie I guess is obligated to have previews of upcoming 3D movies no matter what, but apparently the pickings were slim this time. After a couple of fairly benign animated movies for kids, they previewed a horror movie about piranhas. This thing looked spectacularly bad. The whole audience was basically laughing at it, although I don’t think it was a parody (and even if it was, it was more stupid than actually funny). But on top of that, the 3D effects were really poorly done, with stuff just floating all over the place instead of creating a true sense of depth. So what I’m afraid of is that the next wave of movies is going to have more piranhas than avatars.

This is not to say that no one should try to do what Avatar did. It’s good for artists to take risks and try new things, even if they don’t always pay off. It’s also not to say that we would be better off without an Avatar to raise the bar. I’m sure Michael Bay and friends are planning new extravaganzas to inflict on the viewing public, but they would be doing that regardless. Where the risk lies is with the Hollywood bigwigs who just have to make their mark on a project, who end up wrecking a perfectly good movie because they insisted that the director make it more like Avatar. That’s what I’m not looking forward to. So it’s not so much that the game is changing, it’s that new games are being added to the menu, and you need to recognize what game you should be playing.

As if anyone in Hollywood would ever listen to me.

Doing the Meme Thing

Let me get this out of the way first: you should not tag me with memes. I’ll only do the ones I find interesting anyway, and I’ll take my own sweet time doing them. Of course it’s pretty optimistic on my part to think anyone would consider tagging me, but now I’ve got the official disclaimer, just in case.

Now that’s out of the way, the meme was to think of 15 books in 15 minutes that “will always stick with you.” Officially I think you were supposed to list your favorites first, but I’m not doing that. I didn’t cheat, didn’t look at any bookshelves or websites or anything, it was strictly from memory. I didn’t use a stopwatch but I think I came up with most of them pretty quickly. So let’s go to the scoreboard:

Desolation Road, Ian McDonald

The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander

The Final Encyclopedia, Gordon R. Dickson

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Hayao Miyazaki

American Gods, Neil Gaiman

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkein

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card

Dune, Frank Herbert

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Nation, Terry Pratchett

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein

The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons

But we can’t just list them without comments, can we? Desolation Road was the second book I read by Ian McDonald, but it was the one that really blew me away with his unique ideas and writing style. The Book of Three could be a stand-in for Alexander’s whole Chronicles of Prydain, but it was the first of the series and the one that got me interested in that world. Nausicaa is a manga, but that hasn’t stopped Nausicaa the character from becoming one of my all-time favorites. To Kill a Mockingbird seems a bit obvious, and maybe the movie is influencing me a bit, but I also didn’t want the list to be all SciFi/Fantasy. I picked The Hobbit over Lord of the Rings not because I think it’s better, but because it “sticks with me” more according to the meme. The Hobbit has more of a sense of fun, where LotR just has a sense of impending doom, so I think that’s why The Hobbit came to mind first. Along the same lines, most people wouldn’t say Speaker for the Dead or Rise of Endymion are the best books by those authors (especially Simmons), but the themes in those books resonated more for me than Ender’s Game or Hyperion, respectively. Nation is the most recent book on the list, so maybe it benefits from being fresh in my mind, but I think it fits in pretty well. I guess I’ll have to do this exercise again in a few years to see how it holds up.

If you were counting, you may have noticed that’s only 14 books. I spent most of the time trying to decide what should be #15, but since nothing really stood out I felt like I had to just stop at 14.

Books I considered for #15:

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis

Only Begotten Daughter, James Morrow

The Elfstones of Shannara, Terry Brooks

When I finally did start looking at my bookshelves and such, I also came up with

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Battle Angel Alita (series), Yukito Kishiro

Phantom Tollbooth probably would have joined that group that was just out of the top 15. Battle Angel Alita seems too long to call one story, and no single volume stands out enough to make it.

But then I thought of one more book that really could make the cut: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. When I was a kid I was a big fan of Baum’s whole Oz series, and I suspect that influenced me in favor of SciFi and Fantasy later on. I still have good memories of reading those books. I need to get new copies since I don’t seem to have them now. The kids today can have their Harry Potter, I’ll take my Dorothy Gale every time.

Except…

One more book just occurred to me as I was writing this. Something you probably haven’t heard of:

There’s a Marmot on the Telephone by Joe Van Wormer

Joe Van Wormer wrote a number of books featuring his wildlife photography, discussing the characteristics of the animals in his pictures and the photographic techniques he was using. Marmot is a little bit different in that it tells the story of a marmot that he and his family kept as a pet. If you were to read it, I’d like to think you’d find it entertaining, but probably not mind-blowing. What sets it apart for me is that Joe Van Wormer was my grandfather, and one of the people in the books is my mother when she was a teenager. To have that little piece of family history preserved like that is just the coolest thing you can imagine. If any book could be said to “stick with me” it would be that.