This will be a weekly feature from here on - a playlist of songs centered around a theme. This week includes ten songs from One to Ten. Artists include Metallica, Slackjaw, Astronaut, Miles Davis, Chab, Rhythm Pigs, Darling New Neighbors, The Scooters, Black Eye and Mobtown.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the 2005 Nebula Awards Final Ballot. The awards will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet to be held at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Arizona on Saturday, May 6, 2006.
Nominated novels for 2005 include:
Air: Or, Have, Not Have - Geoff Ryman (St. Martin’s Press, Sep04)
When the citizens of Kizuldah, a village in Karzistan (as well as the rest of the world) are subjected to the testing of Air, a highly experimental communications system that uses quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone’s mind, Chung Mae, the illiterate local fashion expert in the 30-family fishing village, is accidentally trapped in the system, her mind meshed with that of a dying woman. Left half insane, she now has the ability to see through the quantum realm into both the past and the future. Mae soon sets out on a desperate quest to prepare her village for the impending, potentially disastrous establishment of the Air network.
Ryman was also nominated for his novellas The Undiscovered Country in 1997 and Fan in 1994.
Camouflage - Joe Haldeman (Analog, Mar-May 04, also Ace book Aug 2004)
In 2019, a mysterious, egg-shaped artifact is discovered on the ocean floor off the coast of Samoa. Denser than any known material, the object defies all attempts to either break through or communicate with it. Marine biologist Russell Sutton, whose last major feat was raising the Titanic, takes charge of the excavation, hoping to make a fortune by capitalizing on the artifact’s probable extraterrestrial origin. Sutton little suspects that his destiny will soon intertwine with a pair of shape-shifting–and apparently immortal–aliens. One, known as the changeling, has been on Earth millions of years, assuming every identity from shark to human being, and slowly learning to love. The other, called the chameleon, has excelled in warlike roles and delights in killing. Neither knows of the other’s existence, but their slowly merging paths will meet in a stunning climax that determines their ultimate fates–and that of the artifact.
Haldeman was nominated eight previous times, for his novels The Forever War (1974) and Forever Peace (1998), his novella The Hemingway Hoax (1990), and his short stories Tricentennial (1976), High Steel (1982), More Than the Sum of His Parts (1985), Graves (1993) and None So Blind (1994). He won Nebulas for The Forever War, The Hemingway Hoax, graves and Forever Peace.
Going Postal (Discworld, Book 29)- Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, Oct04)
Soon after Moist von Lipwig (aka Alfred Spangler), Pratchett’s not-quite-hapless, accidental hero, barely avoids hanging, Lord Havelock Vetinari, the despotic but pretty cool ruler of Ankh-Morpork, makes him a job offer he can’t refuse—postmaster general of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office. The post office hasn’t been open for 20 years since the advent of the Internet-like clacks communication system. Moist’s first impulse is to try to escape, but Mr. Pump, his golem parole officer, quickly catches him. Moist must then deal with the musty mounds of undelivered mail that fill every room of the decaying Post Office building maintained by ancient and smelly Junior Postman Groat and his callow assistant, Apprentice Postman Stanley. The place is also haunted by dead postmen and guarded by Mr. Tiddles, a crafty cat.
This is Pratchett’s first appearance on a Nebula final ballot.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury, Sep04)
Gentlemen scholars pore over the magical history of England, which is dominated by the Raven King, a human who mastered magic from the lands of faerie. The study is purely theoretical until Mr. Norrell, a reclusive, mistrustful bookworm, reveals that he is capable of producing magic and becomes the toast of London society, while an impetuous young aristocrat named Jonathan Strange tumbles into the practice, too, and finds himself quickly mastering it. Though irritated by the reticent Norrell, Strange becomes the magician’s first pupil, and the British government is soon using their skills. Mr. Strange serves under Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars (in a series of wonderful historical scenes), but afterward the younger magician finds himself unable to accept Norrell’s restrictive views of magic’s proper place and sets out to create a new age of magic by himself.
This is the only novel on the Nebula ballot that I’ve actually read, and it’s fantastic. It’s fantasy, but more of an “alternate history where magic actually existed” than over-the-top invented magical society. Napoleon plays a big part, as do Lord Wellington, the Duke of York, even the King. It’s alternately light and funny and dark and menacing (the faerie are not of childhood fantasy here).
This is Clarke’s debut novel and first Nebula nomination.
Polaris - Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov04)
McDevitt returns to the lead characters of his second novel, A Talent for War (1988): antiquarian entrepreneur Alex Benedict and his beautiful assistant, Chase Kolpath. Decades earlier, in a future version of the Marie Celeste incident, the spaceship Polaris was discovered drifting and empty, its captain and passengers apparently vanished in an instant. Now, Alex and Chase realize that someone is tracking down relics of the Polaris and is willing to kill anyone who gets in the way. Alex is first of all a businessman, but he becomes stubbornly fascinated with the impossible puzzle. While Chase saves Alex’s neck from increasingly ingenious attacks, he untangles a complex plot. The real problem turns out to be not how the mass disappearance was done but the tangled motives behind it.
McDevitt was previously nominated for his novels Ancient Shores (1997), Moonfall (1998), Infinity Beach (2000), Chindi (2003) and Omega (2004), his novella Time Travellers Never Die (1996), his novelette Good Intentions (1999, with Stanley Schmidt), and his short stories Cryptic (1983), The Fort Moxie Branch (1988), and Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City (2002). He’s 0-for-10 so far.
Orphans of Chaos - John C. Wright (Tor, Nov05)
In the first installment of the Chronicles of Chaos series, common associations of high school with prison prove spectacularly well founded. The five teen protagonists are hostages in a British boarding school run by pagan gods. Sustaining themes of lost identity from Wright’s respected Golden Age trilogy and heavily borrowing from the work of Roger Zelazny, the narrative charts the teens’ discovery of their true identities–they’re shape-shifters who hail from Chaos–then pits their budding powers against school authorities who have proceeded from acting in loco parentis to being ominous and occasionally lascivious oppressors. Phaethusa, who goes by Amelia after her aviatrix role model, narrates the rich and frequently comic intrigue, which takes full advantage of the alluring juxtapositions that arise when the soul of a “montrosity from beyond the edge of space and time” is trapped in a nubile teen’s heaving breast.
Orphans of Chaos is Wright’s first Nebula nomination. He faces an uphill battle, as series have not traditionally done well.
[via Boing Boing]
Kevin Kelley’s Cool Tools today features an UnCool Tool: TV-B-Gone. This is a keyfob-like device that operates as a universal remote with a single button. Push it, and it sends 200 power signals for the most popular TV models in rapid succession, so you can turn off any nearby sets. Old news, but it still makes me really mad, so I’ll renew my objection. Hey, annoying TV moralist — don’t like the TV in you local pub or restaurant? Leave. Just because something annoys you does not mean you get to make choices for other people about what they can do with their personal property.
Shame on you, Kevin Kelley.
