Status Quo, by Mack Reynolds

Status Quo is a Hugo award nominated story for 1962, available on Project Gutenberg. Lots of great material there. This story is something of a sleeper. I had not heard of the author. The theme of the tale is keeping up with the Joneses, with a vengeance. The protagonist is Lawrence Woolford, a CIA man trying to rise in the organization by doing all the right things--drinking the right drink, reading the right books, driving the right car. Fads gone wild. If you don't try to keep up, you are "weird", next best thing to a Commie. So far, a pretty heavy-handed tale on the dangers of judging by superficial titles.

The story turns self-referential--there is a Movement afoot to fight such faddism, marked by extreme technical competence and political naivete. Our protagonist fights, and fights being seduced by, this group.

And so it goes, rolling along pretty well. But a good 2 star becomes a 3 star in the last 2 paragraphs. The ending is truly worthy.

The Love We Share Without Knowing, by Christopher Barzak

I recently finished The Love We Share Without Knowing, a 2009 Nebula award nominee. I wish I had better things to say about it.

The "novel" is a series of very loosely connected vignettes about expatriate Americans teaching english in Japan. The Japan of this novel is a brooding, elegiac place, where the weight of collectivism and general decline literally squeezes the life out of people. You are told right at the start that there is no happy ending or redeeming value, which leads one to believe that tragedy is immanent. Not really. Just lots of sadness.

The author is a decent writer, so the tales are crafted well. But they have a very dated flavor--from the main subject (Japan) through the subtext (9-11) and even the slang, the book seems like it sat for a long time on the author's computer before finally emerging.

Overall, slightly stale croutons--decent flavor but dated, and not at all filling. 2 stars, just.

The Lost Kafoozalum, by Pauline Ashwell

Occasionally I go back and pick up old award nominees off of Free SF Online. Just finished The Lost Kafoozalum, a Hugo award nominee from 1961. I had never heard of Pauline Ashwell, she was not prolific though was nominated for three awards.

The Lost Kafoozalum is written in a unique voice, which made it sort of interesting to read. But she took a social engineering premise (averting a war by creating a common enemy) and then put it in the background, making it mostly an action story. The hero is a heroine, which is ahead of its time. But the story didn't age that well.

WWW:Wake, by Robert Sawyer

A few days, ago, I finished WWW: Wake, a Hugo-nominated novel for 2010. The novel is the first in a trilogy about the awakening of the world-wide web. I use the old-fashioned terminology purposely--this novel is reasonably well executed, but reads like yesterday's news all the way through. Really, we've seen this before. And nowhere better than Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

The plot is suitably ordinary--a young girl, blind from birth, gets a chance to try a treatment to correct the "coding error" between her eyes and her brain. Instead of seeing the normal world, she sees a visualization of the Web. And detects something else out there.

Sawyer is a veteran writer, and the execution kept me reading and entertained. But it has a flavor of someone's grandpa explaining new technology. Cute, sort of. It is flawed in other ways--there is a subplot on a smart chimp that never ties back in this novel. It's obviously intended for the sequel. Just a little sad that this sort of ordinary effort makes it onto a list of bests of the year.

The Moment, by Lawrence M. Schoen

This story started out in a way that made me think it was going to be silly. The aliens in it were sort of whacked. But as it went on, it grew on me. In the end, it has a message and a grip.

The problem here is, I think the message is incorrect. Spoiler Alert: The story ends with aliens in the far future visiting the Moon, viewing Neil Armstrong's boot print. "This is where humans jumped off".

I think not. I watched the Moon landing in 1969. I took it for granted that we would be going into space, in numbers, in the near future. Instead we got the space shuttle. And with the troubles we have, and the troubles coming, I see no way we will be leaving this planet's gravity well in my lifetime. It is a truly sad state of affairs.

3 stars for the story.

The Bride of Frankenstein, by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick has a Hugo-nominated story this year, which, according to the introduction to The Bride of Frankenstein is no surprise. He is the most award-nominated writer ever. And this story is a good example of why. He is a great craftsman, making most any theme worth reading. This story in most people's hands would be a dull rehash. He lifts it with his understanding of people. I can't give this more than 2 stars, but it's a decent read.

The Island, by Peter Watts

The Island by Peter Watts, a Hugo finalist, tells a really interesting story about a deep time colonization project. Peter Watts specializes in horror, so of course this has a dark turn. The human crew are creating colonization star gates for a completely post-human humanity. They live in tension with the AI guiding the ship. The protagonist has to work and contend with a human co-opted by the AI--her son. They encounter a large distributed intelligence encompassing a star. Their gate will destroy some part of it. Which part?

These kinds of stories aren't too common, but they are some of my favorites. I give this one 3 stars.