28
Mar
The 2005 Hugo Awards shortlist was released over the weekend, and of the five nominated novels, I’ve read only one, China Mieville’s Iron Council. I was, as I’ve noted before, somewhat underwhelmed by Iron Council - I think The Scar was inferior to Perdido Street Station, and Iron Council was inferior to The Scar. Mieville’s a gifted writer, but I suspect that Iron Council wasn’t one of the best SF novels of the past year. Of course, I don’t really know, as the only titles from the SF section of the bookstore I’ve been reading are Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World), which aren’t really science fiction at all (I’m not sure what they are, other than fascinating). Obscure things to note:
- 2 of the 5 nominated novels have “Iron” in their title, including Iron Council and Charles Stross’ Iron Sunrise
- Perhaps not conincidentally, the nominated authors include Mieville, an outspoken socialist, and Stross, who Professor Bainbridge describes as “sort of a Trotskyite commie pinko neo-pagan or maybe something even worse.”
- I suppose I should succumb to peer pressure and read Old Man’s War, as every blogospheric discussion of the genre tells me I should.
