Trial of the Century, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Trial of the Century is a tale for fans of old-school John W. Campbell style science fiction in the Analog days.  It is a novella bridging the first and second of Schoen's Amazing Conroy/Buffalito stories, though this one is very much Conroy's story.  Since the first novel wasn't award nominated and isn't in our local library, I've never read it.  This always puts me on the spot because it's hard to be fair to the work.  But since this novella recaps some of the early history in order to tell the story, I feel like I've caught up with the series better than when I read last year's award nominated novel.

Campbell was the first editor in SF to try to bend storytellers away from tales where aliens came in and killed/dominated earthlings wholesale.  Campbell wanted humans to be able to outsmart more technologically advanced species with local knowledge.  Schoen's novella delivers on this front in Conroy's unfortunate delivery back into the hands of the Arconi he stole Reggie the Buffalito from.  It's a successful story in that vein, so I'll not spoil it further.  But it's a good chance to go back in time and enjoy SF the way it was. Three stars from me

Burning Girls, by Veronica Schanoes

I enjoy a good culturally grounded magic story--all cultures with any history have a culture of "witch" magical lore, and Burning Girls delivers a fine example.  The magic delivered here is Jewish, from the 1800s in Poland.  Pogroms against Jews were a regular feature of Polish history, and one of them drives the survivors to America..  But first we have the training of the witch--she learns the lore from her bubbe in rural Poland.  She then must face a lilit, an apparently high-level demon quite close to Satan. 

I can find no fault and a lot of good.  I have read stories like this before so it wasn't something fresh for me, but would make an impression if you haven't read much of Jewish lore before.  It's not going to turn the world upside down for originality, but that's asking a lot.  Three stars from me.

The Weight of the Sunrise, by Vylar Kaftan

The Weight of the Sunrise is the second story I've read by Vylar Kaftan, and since I seem to only have time for award nominees these days that means he's pretty good.  I certainly enjoyed this one--it's a solid alternative history.  What if the Incas had held off Pizarro's initial Conquistador attack (he only had 168 men), and figured out how to hold off smallpox through public health and hygiene measures?  In this story, they would have been able to sort out how to hold on to their empire in the face of European imperialism.  That makes for many changes in the Western world--the Americans come to visit in 1806 with a proposal to sell them the technique of vaccination.  And so hangs the tale.  We get a good exposition of Incan culture as Kaftan speculates it would develop.  It's not a whitewash--it has plenty to say about the shortcomings of both Incan and American culture.  Not quite in the spectacular category, but I was glad of the time spent reading it.  I give it three stars.

Wakulla Springs, by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages

With this review I open my 2014 award nominated story and novel reading.  Only a so-so start.  No objection to the writing--Wakulla Springs is a nice story in the Nebula novella category.  It's a personal history, following a few highly varied characters (Johnny Weismuller and several impoverished black people from central Florida), giving vignettes of their lives from the late forties through recent times.  We see integration struggles, discrimination, and the ennui of stars.  What we don't see is much actual speculation.  We have exactly one page where an animal might have talked.

As stories go, it's sort of several related stories put together.  But really only juxtaposed.  I didn't mind reading it, but this isn't what I read speculative fiction for.  Hopefully the stories in the novella category get better from here. Two stars from me.

A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

The Wheel of Time series was 23 years old when it concluded last year.  I did not start reading the series when it first came out, though I did hear about it--I began it around the turn of the millenium, and then purchased the books as they came out.  So partly free.  And I am part of a legion of fantasy SF readers for whom the series has been part of life, for 14 years now.

It was never a compulsive part, as even when I am not a free SF reader, I am a cheap one. I got the final volume, A Memory of Light, for Christmas this year and spent close to three months reading it.  Coming to the end of such a series, I was bracing for disappointment.  Bringing a series to a close is a truly difficult affair.  So many classic works have ended poorly.  Brandon Sanderson had done a very good job of getting the series from the death of Jordan to the ending, but still...

Not this time, though.  A major series spanning many years comes to a full and satisfying conclusion.  Jordan gets only partial credit, since he didn't manage to conclude it in his own lifetime.  But it was really good to see such a fine strong ending.  Sanderson says Jordan had most of the ending written, and I can buy that, since it's heavy on battle scenes.  Those were his strength before he undertook this series.  But the pacing is definitely Sanderson.

Really, in the end it delivers what was promised all the way at the start.  Rand Al'Thor leads the forces of the Light into the Last Battle, as promised.  All the major characters are there, and get their say one way or another.  Rand becomes rather larger than human, even as he tries to hold on to his humanity--pretty much what you would expect of the Savior.

But while this, like so many of its kind, bears a resemblance to the Bible, this isn't really a Christ allegory.  In the end, Rand is still human, with some special power.  The ending underlines this well. 

No tricks or gimmicks here.  The heroes of the end of the Third Age step up and play their part, as do the villains.  The series never was about complex personalities, though they do have flavor.  If you have never picked it up, I would say it's worthwhile to spend a year (or however long it takes you to read 14,000 pages) and read it.  It sets a good expectation for what a fantasy series can deliver.  I give this one my rare Five Stars, in the special category of Long Series With A Real Ending.

And I Awoke and Found Me Here On the Cold Hill's Side, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Back just briefly--after today I am diving into another very long book so will be awhile.  Tonight I went back to 1972 and reread a story I've read a few times before.  And I Awoke and Found Me Here On the Cold Hill's Side had Hugo and Nebula nominations for best short story in that year.  Tiptree's fiction mostly explores sexuality, and this one is a fine example.  We might think it a little naïve now to think that alien life would resemble us enough to be an object of sexual desire--and yet, people are attracted to the very strangest of things, most anything at all might work.  The speculation here is that our fascination with glamorous strangers would lead us to ruin (a very direct analogy is drawn to the early Polynesians).  And I'd have to say Tiptree is probably right--if aliens were anything like us at all and not lethal to us, we would think they are glamorous, at first at least.  Unless they were refugees, per District 9.  I enjoyed this as much now as I did then, and give it three stars with a recommendation to go try it, now that it's available free online.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games had been on my list for awhile, just because of its cultural significance--it seems to be the biggest thing in reading to come along since Harry Potter.  It is the biggest hit I can recall that has a female protagonist action hero, though those are becoming more common.  There's plenty of analysis out there for the series--with Mockingjay finished I now add my own small bit.

The series is a pretty trenchant critique of a current societal trend and its biggest side effect.  The societal trend is unequal economic opportunity, and the closely related symptom of blood sport.  Games for blood are as old as human society--the Roman gladiators being the most famous early example, but people have probably been paying to watch fights since long before any form of literacy existed.  And the contestants in these fights are always some form of oppressed group--the poor, prisoners and other powerless folk are the ones risking their lives, willingly, forcibly, or somewhere in between.

The modern twist on this is the female perspective, of course.  We have the uplifting message that women can be action heroes and win in combat--which means they end up being participants.  But what Suzanne Collins really brings out and properly emphasizes is the spectacle of it all.  One of Katniss' most important, and definitely most forthright, allies is her stylist.  What we end up with is Survivor for the highest stakes, complete with all the reality-tv tropes of elaborate massaging of the games to keep them competitive (the GameMaster is another very important character) and audience involvement.  In Mockingjay, though, Katniss goes beyond the arena and takes it to the streets.  Her leadership is figurative and her conscience is conflicted, but in the end she brings it all off.

A couple of issues, at least one being kind of minor and definitely un-PC:

1. For the 75th games, they brought back 24 former winners, two from each district, male and female.  With 12 districts participating (we don't know when 13 dropped out), that would mean there were at least 12 female winners.  That is a stretch, unpopular as it is to say.  I am in favor of women as combat soldiers, mostly because I harbor the belief that war is somehow less physical than it used to be, based more on stamina than raw hand-to-hand combat strength.  And teamwork is more important, where women excel.  But one-on-one, where strength or spatial ability is any factor--you'd be lucky to have one or two.  Women can compete, but in just about any sport the men separate themselves significantly at the top end.  That shapes relationships in ways that pretend equality ignores.
2. More importantly, while some find the ending to be a game-changer, I think it's a bit pat.  Katniss the conflicted hero takes out the scheming rebel leader who was looking only to be the evil President's replacement.  A decent human being gets elected instead.  It happens, but not without even more blood and tears than we see here, and that's the best case scenario.  Far more often in revolutions no heroes emerge at all.  For every Aung San Suu Kyi or Nelson Mandela, you have ten Nouri Al-Malikis or Thabo Mbekis.  Less often a Fidel Castro or Vladimir Lenin, who can lead and bring order but at a terrible price.  George Washingtons and Confucians are pretty rare.

It's easy to read more than is warranted into the series.  It's a powerful critique, but firmly rooted in the present, even though the themes are timeless.  The beauty of simple storytelling and well-represented emotions gives way to oversimplified solutions.  We see plenty of the simple banal evil of Coriolanus Snow.  Katniss is emotionally complex enough to see the way forward, but then hands off the resolution.  It's still a fine read, and a must if you want to be culturally literate.  Four stars.