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ladybusinessI always go into Hugo voting with the best of intentions. I'm going to read all the things, view all the things, and not just get bogged down in the Novel category. 2017 is going to be different!
Yes. Well.
Appropriately for the Hugo Awards this optimistic view proved to be, as usual, pure fantasy. Still, I did pretty well for a lady with a long commute and limited data; particularly when it came to the Best Short Story category. I read four of the six stories nominated in this category for 2017. And what better way to get back into writing than to share all my thoughts with you?
“Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" by Amal El-Mohtar won this year's Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction. If you've been around a while you may know that I am a huge fan of El-Mohtar's work (fangirling exhibits A & B), and it should come as no surprise that this is the story I put in the top spot of my Hugo ballot. This. story. people. I loved it. Loved it! I was enthralled from the opening line to the eventual happy ever after. I wish there was a whole series of stories that followed these characters around, expanding the world they live in. Sadly, there isn't but at least we have this story.
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" is, fundamentally, a feminist response to fairytales. The story follows two fairy tale protagonists - Tabitha and Amira. Tabitha, the girl who 'walks, and thinks of shoes' must journey the world wearing down seven pairs of foot-breaking iron shoes in order to free her husband from a curse. Meanwhile, Amira sits on a hillside and 'makes an art of stillness'; preserving her life from her father's hand by never moving from an impenetrable fortress. Both are hapless characters; bound by sexist magical deals which have been forced on them by men. Yep, 'Magic is a Gendered Technology' alright, and "Seasons of Glass and Iron" is here to provide the receipts.
In the opening line of this story, El-Mohtar frames her story, very simply, as the story of a girl who 'walks and thinks of shoes', encouraging the reader to form a certain first impression of Tabitha. Then, by revealing the horrifying reason for Tabitha's wandering and preoccupation with shoes, she challenges the reader to examine their attitude to a story of women and shoes. With this opener, she shows that SFF can make twisted, interesting stories out of traditionally female topics, and asks readers to be careful about judging a story simply because it uses traditionally female imagery.
After introducing Tabitha, El-Mohtar has her character examine the cultural, and literary, problems associated with shoes. Tabitha muses on the fact that her brothers have worn 'a pair of seven–league boots, tooled in soft leather; winged sandals; satin slippers that turned one invisible.' and yet the shoes she must wear on her quest are iron monstrosities that must be worn down one painful step at a time:
It's a pretty smart 'have your cake and eat it' feminist beginning. On the one hand, El-Mohtar has created a story which encourages readers to examine their own sexist response to "a story about shoes". On the other, she has created a story which explains the sexist traditions of stories about magical shoes. It's a smart start that cleverly reveals the way feminism can both embrace traditional female culture and critique its problems. And the author is not done with this strain of thinking. While Tabitha openly examines the gendered double standard of magical shoes, she follows this reflection by continuing to walk in her godawful iron shoes: 'How strange, she thinks, and walks.' Here, Tabitha's actions reflect the dual reality that many feminists engage with - an ability to interrogate the culture around us, and an inability to opt out of that culture for many reasons. In Tabitha's case, she needs to keep wearing the shoes because she wants to free her husband from his supposed curse.
On her journey, Tabitha scales Amira's hillside and finds another woman trapped by magic. Amira must sit isolated on a throne on a glass hill holding an apple because her father deems her 'too beautiful', and can't work out how to deal with the political chaos various suitors would cause. Oh, except wait he did have this one brilliant idea. Now, what was it again? Oh, yeah - murdering his daughter. >.>
To save herself, Amira proposes an alternative:
The final line of that quote is important because both Tabitha and Amira feel they have chosen their fates. However, it's clear to the reader, once they know each woman's story, that they have been quite strongly coerced into "choosing" the paths they are on. Here, El-Mohtar introduces yet another feminist comment on the way stories are told and interpreted - the idea that choice is weaponized against women.
It seems like there is no hope that either Tabitha or Amira will ever be free of their hopeless, magical ordeals. But fear not a happily ever after is not far away. Tabitha stays on the hill to wear her current pair of shoes down on the glass, and slowly the two women become a great comfort to each other. Eventually, they carve out a way to rescue each other. Why, yes, this is a love story just by the way.
While this story's feminist take on fairytales is, as always, so interesting (really, sign me up for a zillion feminist fairytale retellings) "Seasons of Glass and Iron" is made by the growing relationship between Tabitha and Amira, and their individual voices. Add in El-Mohtar's light and effective touch with description, plus the gentle, natural humour that can be found in this story, and you've got a rich souffle of a story. Despite being wildly different in subject, this story reminded me very much of "Pockets", another story by the same author, because its different elements of charm and darkness are so well-balanced (although this story is much darker than "Pockets"). "Seasons of Glass and Iron" gladdens the heart with phrases like 'Tabitha feels a tangled warmth in her chest at the thought of having given her something.' before it chills your bones with sections such as '“Perhaps it’s like your feet,” says Amira, before she can stop herself. “They look broken, but you can still walk on them.”' It is a wonderfully pitch perfect story. Have I mentioned that I love it?
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong
OK, I have such mixed feelings about "A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" but in the end I think I am in love with it? Maybe?
Alyssa Wong always writes such powerful, political, twisted tales that it's difficult not to have an emotional reaction to them. However, because her stories are so sharp and violent, sometimes I find it hard to identify exactly what reaction I am having. I think my experience of reading Wong's work gives me a little flavour of how some people feel reading Kameron Hurley's work. There's very little downtime from the epic tragedy, and the breathing space that is provided is full of the small and personal tragedy. Maybe I'm just too much of a marshmallow to make it through Alyssa Wong's work without being knocked down a little. Still, there is so much craft and skill in her fiction that I'm drawn back to her material again and again. I just might need a big break in between her stories (which is why I didn't attempt to also read "You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay" during the Hugo voting period).
"A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" works best if you don't know a lot about its structure ahead of time so I'll just say there's something of Groundhog Day about it. Hannah and Melanie are magical weather-working sisters who can also see the future. Sort of. Over the course of this story Hannah works to prevent an apocalypse that is both worldwide and personal. Along the way she makes many changes that don't quite work out. Still, she won't accept her inability to stop the future from turning out poorly.
And that's really the main thrust of the plot. "A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" sounds quite a simple story but all of Alyssa Wong's choices - from structure to focus to the descriptive details she uses - make it into a small-scale epic about powerful women ripping the world apart because it doesn't work right. It's also about the difficulties of being a young transgender woman in a small, intolerant town. And on that note, I'll finish up with a quick warning that some readers may want to proceed with caution because the death of a transgender character is at the heart of this story. It's a really tough tale but a well written one.
“The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin
Amal El-Mohtar, Alyssa Wong, N.K. Jemisin - I really was blessed to have three of my favourite SFF writers on the short fiction ballot this year. It's just a bit of a shame I never fully clicked with Jemisin's short fiction offering, "The City Born Great".
From the very first, this story is full of fantastical grandeur deliberately undercut by urban practicality:
It offers an almost surreal twist on urban fantasy, and is a homage to cities and the magic within them made physical. It reminded me of a lot of work and commentary that I've enjoyed by authors like Lauren Beukes, Daniel Jose Older, China Mieville, and Nnedi Okorafor. However, this take on a personified magical city just didn't quite attract me once it hit its full on 'city coursing through my veins' flow. I was much more interested in the personal backstory of the narrator, and in their mentor Paulo. And in the later stage of the story all that detail gets washed aside by the action.
I'm so glad Jemisin won the category for Best Novel (run, don't walk, to your copy of The Obelisk Gate now) but I definitely felt less passionate about "The City Born Great" than her novels. Oh well - it's on to The Stone Sky for me!
“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander
"Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" was heavily hyped in my Twitter feed. Seriously, in the run up to nominations, it seemed like everyone I knew was in love with this story. In the end, I think I let the hype set me up with expectations that were just a little… off. Brooke Bolander's story centres around a great idea, and is a strong, solid execution of that idea. "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" is a really good story, and I have no complaints about its substance. It just didn't hit me as hard as it obviously hit its many fans.
Bolander's story is full of delicious fodder for the feminist critic. Right from the get go, it's a comment on our media's fetish for dead ladies, and the persistent choice to focus on the stories of male murderers:
Our narrator is then, thanks to magic and reincarnation, able to turn her story into a tale of revenge and female solidarity, which also prompts the reader to focus on the wider culture of storytelling:
It ends with a bunch of monstrous sisters singing their stories, and cruising in a '1967 Mercury Cougar'. It really, really should be my kind of deal.
However, for me, "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" felt a little slight. It's an outline story - one that deals in plot, action, and theory, while sparingly dropping in pertinent, juicy detailing to colour the story. And that's a very deliberate structural choice by the author. Perhaps most importantly, this structural choice (including the bullet points the main action is recounted in) complements the themes the story is engaged with: women's desire for control over their stories; the need to carefully think about which stories get told; how stories get told.
At the same time, the story doesn't engage with character creation at close quarters. The narrator is well created but not perhaps very personally created if that makes sense. Although that doesn't mean she is lacking in a serious level of emotional truth. And, again, that works for the story. The narrator is this unnamed rallying battle-cry creation of rage, sadness, and storytelling who stands up for all those other women whose stories are told for them instead of by them.
I guess I was just more in the mood for something a little more intimate. And, while I appreciate what "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" is doing, it didn't quite deliver the hammer blow of emotions that I expected from seeing the reactions of people online. Sometimes expectations suck. However, it's quite possible I'll come back to it in a year or so and be all over Bolander's story if I read it when I'm in a different kind of mood. And it's certainly a story I'll be referencing to reinforce feminist critical points.
So, fellow short fiction fans - did you read any of these stories? What did you think of them? As always the comments are open.
Yes. Well.
Appropriately for the Hugo Awards this optimistic view proved to be, as usual, pure fantasy. Still, I did pretty well for a lady with a long commute and limited data; particularly when it came to the Best Short Story category. I read four of the six stories nominated in this category for 2017. And what better way to get back into writing than to share all my thoughts with you?
“Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" by Amal El-Mohtar won this year's Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction. If you've been around a while you may know that I am a huge fan of El-Mohtar's work (fangirling exhibits A & B), and it should come as no surprise that this is the story I put in the top spot of my Hugo ballot. This. story. people. I loved it. Loved it! I was enthralled from the opening line to the eventual happy ever after. I wish there was a whole series of stories that followed these characters around, expanding the world they live in. Sadly, there isn't but at least we have this story.
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" is, fundamentally, a feminist response to fairytales. The story follows two fairy tale protagonists - Tabitha and Amira. Tabitha, the girl who 'walks, and thinks of shoes' must journey the world wearing down seven pairs of foot-breaking iron shoes in order to free her husband from a curse. Meanwhile, Amira sits on a hillside and 'makes an art of stillness'; preserving her life from her father's hand by never moving from an impenetrable fortress. Both are hapless characters; bound by sexist magical deals which have been forced on them by men. Yep, 'Magic is a Gendered Technology' alright, and "Seasons of Glass and Iron" is here to provide the receipts.
In the opening line of this story, El-Mohtar frames her story, very simply, as the story of a girl who 'walks and thinks of shoes', encouraging the reader to form a certain first impression of Tabitha. Then, by revealing the horrifying reason for Tabitha's wandering and preoccupation with shoes, she challenges the reader to examine their attitude to a story of women and shoes. With this opener, she shows that SFF can make twisted, interesting stories out of traditionally female topics, and asks readers to be careful about judging a story simply because it uses traditionally female imagery.
After introducing Tabitha, El-Mohtar has her character examine the cultural, and literary, problems associated with shoes. Tabitha muses on the fact that her brothers have worn 'a pair of seven–league boots, tooled in soft leather; winged sandals; satin slippers that turned one invisible.' and yet the shoes she must wear on her quest are iron monstrosities that must be worn down one painful step at a time:
How strange, she thinks, that her brothers had shoes that lightened their steps and tightened the world, made it small and easy to explore, discover.
Perhaps, she thinks, it isn’t strange at all: why shouldn’t shoes help their wearers travel? Perhaps, she thinks, what’s strange is the shoes women are made to wear: shoes of glass; shoes of paper; shoes of iron heated red–hot; shoes to dance to death in.
It's a pretty smart 'have your cake and eat it' feminist beginning. On the one hand, El-Mohtar has created a story which encourages readers to examine their own sexist response to "a story about shoes". On the other, she has created a story which explains the sexist traditions of stories about magical shoes. It's a smart start that cleverly reveals the way feminism can both embrace traditional female culture and critique its problems. And the author is not done with this strain of thinking. While Tabitha openly examines the gendered double standard of magical shoes, she follows this reflection by continuing to walk in her godawful iron shoes: 'How strange, she thinks, and walks.' Here, Tabitha's actions reflect the dual reality that many feminists engage with - an ability to interrogate the culture around us, and an inability to opt out of that culture for many reasons. In Tabitha's case, she needs to keep wearing the shoes because she wants to free her husband from his supposed curse.
On her journey, Tabitha scales Amira's hillside and finds another woman trapped by magic. Amira must sit isolated on a throne on a glass hill holding an apple because her father deems her 'too beautiful', and can't work out how to deal with the political chaos various suitors would cause. Oh, except wait he did have this one brilliant idea. Now, what was it again? Oh, yeah - murdering his daughter. >.>
To save herself, Amira proposes an alternative:
, Suppose you placed me atop a glass hill where none could reach me, and say that only the man who can ride up the hill in full armor may claim me as his bride?
But that is an impossible task, said the king, looking thoughtful.
Then you may keep your kingdom whole, and your eye on me, and men safe from me, said his daughter.
It was done just as she said, and by her will.
The final line of that quote is important because both Tabitha and Amira feel they have chosen their fates. However, it's clear to the reader, once they know each woman's story, that they have been quite strongly coerced into "choosing" the paths they are on. Here, El-Mohtar introduces yet another feminist comment on the way stories are told and interpreted - the idea that choice is weaponized against women.
It seems like there is no hope that either Tabitha or Amira will ever be free of their hopeless, magical ordeals. But fear not a happily ever after is not far away. Tabitha stays on the hill to wear her current pair of shoes down on the glass, and slowly the two women become a great comfort to each other. Eventually, they carve out a way to rescue each other. Why, yes, this is a love story just by the way.
While this story's feminist take on fairytales is, as always, so interesting (really, sign me up for a zillion feminist fairytale retellings) "Seasons of Glass and Iron" is made by the growing relationship between Tabitha and Amira, and their individual voices. Add in El-Mohtar's light and effective touch with description, plus the gentle, natural humour that can be found in this story, and you've got a rich souffle of a story. Despite being wildly different in subject, this story reminded me very much of "Pockets", another story by the same author, because its different elements of charm and darkness are so well-balanced (although this story is much darker than "Pockets"). "Seasons of Glass and Iron" gladdens the heart with phrases like 'Tabitha feels a tangled warmth in her chest at the thought of having given her something.' before it chills your bones with sections such as '“Perhaps it’s like your feet,” says Amira, before she can stop herself. “They look broken, but you can still walk on them.”' It is a wonderfully pitch perfect story. Have I mentioned that I love it?
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong
OK, I have such mixed feelings about "A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" but in the end I think I am in love with it? Maybe?
Alyssa Wong always writes such powerful, political, twisted tales that it's difficult not to have an emotional reaction to them. However, because her stories are so sharp and violent, sometimes I find it hard to identify exactly what reaction I am having. I think my experience of reading Wong's work gives me a little flavour of how some people feel reading Kameron Hurley's work. There's very little downtime from the epic tragedy, and the breathing space that is provided is full of the small and personal tragedy. Maybe I'm just too much of a marshmallow to make it through Alyssa Wong's work without being knocked down a little. Still, there is so much craft and skill in her fiction that I'm drawn back to her material again and again. I just might need a big break in between her stories (which is why I didn't attempt to also read "You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay" during the Hugo voting period).
"A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" works best if you don't know a lot about its structure ahead of time so I'll just say there's something of Groundhog Day about it. Hannah and Melanie are magical weather-working sisters who can also see the future. Sort of. Over the course of this story Hannah works to prevent an apocalypse that is both worldwide and personal. Along the way she makes many changes that don't quite work out. Still, she won't accept her inability to stop the future from turning out poorly.
And that's really the main thrust of the plot. "A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers" sounds quite a simple story but all of Alyssa Wong's choices - from structure to focus to the descriptive details she uses - make it into a small-scale epic about powerful women ripping the world apart because it doesn't work right. It's also about the difficulties of being a young transgender woman in a small, intolerant town. And on that note, I'll finish up with a quick warning that some readers may want to proceed with caution because the death of a transgender character is at the heart of this story. It's a really tough tale but a well written one.
“The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin
Amal El-Mohtar, Alyssa Wong, N.K. Jemisin - I really was blessed to have three of my favourite SFF writers on the short fiction ballot this year. It's just a bit of a shame I never fully clicked with Jemisin's short fiction offering, "The City Born Great".
From the very first, this story is full of fantastical grandeur deliberately undercut by urban practicality:
I sing the city.
Fucking city. I stand on the rooftop of a building I don’t live in and spread my arms and tighten my middle and yell nonsense ululations at the construction site that blocks my view. I’m really singing to the cityscape beyond. The city’ll figure it out.
It offers an almost surreal twist on urban fantasy, and is a homage to cities and the magic within them made physical. It reminded me of a lot of work and commentary that I've enjoyed by authors like Lauren Beukes, Daniel Jose Older, China Mieville, and Nnedi Okorafor. However, this take on a personified magical city just didn't quite attract me once it hit its full on 'city coursing through my veins' flow. I was much more interested in the personal backstory of the narrator, and in their mentor Paulo. And in the later stage of the story all that detail gets washed aside by the action.
I'm so glad Jemisin won the category for Best Novel (run, don't walk, to your copy of The Obelisk Gate now) but I definitely felt less passionate about "The City Born Great" than her novels. Oh well - it's on to The Stone Sky for me!
“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander
"Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" was heavily hyped in my Twitter feed. Seriously, in the run up to nominations, it seemed like everyone I knew was in love with this story. In the end, I think I let the hype set me up with expectations that were just a little… off. Brooke Bolander's story centres around a great idea, and is a strong, solid execution of that idea. "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" is a really good story, and I have no complaints about its substance. It just didn't hit me as hard as it obviously hit its many fans.
Bolander's story is full of delicious fodder for the feminist critic. Right from the get go, it's a comment on our media's fetish for dead ladies, and the persistent choice to focus on the stories of male murderers:
This is not the story of how he killed me, thank fuck.
You want that kind of horseshit, you don’t have to look far; half of modern human media revolves around it, lovingly detailed descriptions of sobbing women violated, victimized, left for the loam to cradle.
…
So, no. You don’t get a description of how he surprised me, where he did it, who may have fucked him up when he was a boy to lead to such horrors (no–one), or the increasingly unhinged behavior the cops had previously filed away as the mostly harmless eccentricities of a nice young man from a good family. No fighting in the woods, no blood under the fingernails, no rivers or locked trunks or calling cards in the throat.
Our narrator is then, thanks to magic and reincarnation, able to turn her story into a tale of revenge and female solidarity, which also prompts the reader to focus on the wider culture of storytelling:
The important thing is always the stories—which ones get told, which ones get co–opted, which ones get left in a ditch, overlooked and neglected. This is my story, not his. It belongs to me and is mine alone.
It ends with a bunch of monstrous sisters singing their stories, and cruising in a '1967 Mercury Cougar'. It really, really should be my kind of deal.
However, for me, "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" felt a little slight. It's an outline story - one that deals in plot, action, and theory, while sparingly dropping in pertinent, juicy detailing to colour the story. And that's a very deliberate structural choice by the author. Perhaps most importantly, this structural choice (including the bullet points the main action is recounted in) complements the themes the story is engaged with: women's desire for control over their stories; the need to carefully think about which stories get told; how stories get told.
At the same time, the story doesn't engage with character creation at close quarters. The narrator is well created but not perhaps very personally created if that makes sense. Although that doesn't mean she is lacking in a serious level of emotional truth. And, again, that works for the story. The narrator is this unnamed rallying battle-cry creation of rage, sadness, and storytelling who stands up for all those other women whose stories are told for them instead of by them.
I guess I was just more in the mood for something a little more intimate. And, while I appreciate what "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" is doing, it didn't quite deliver the hammer blow of emotions that I expected from seeing the reactions of people online. Sometimes expectations suck. However, it's quite possible I'll come back to it in a year or so and be all over Bolander's story if I read it when I'm in a different kind of mood. And it's certainly a story I'll be referencing to reinforce feminist critical points.
So, fellow short fiction fans - did you read any of these stories? What did you think of them? As always the comments are open.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-18 05:30 pm (UTC)A Fist... was my favourite of the bunch - but I connected with it very personally, as I lost a sibling less than a year ago, and reading this was like a punch in the gut, but also very respectful and feeling inredibly authentic. The device - repeating attempts to take things back, to turn back to a world that doesn't contain the same loss - was, to me, an insightful depiction of the state of mind that can follow such loss, endless repetition of self-blame and regret and what-ifs; this is how thoughts circle in the middle of the night. The pain felt real.
My second favourite was probably Game We Played - it was thoughtful, contemplative and well-written.
I'd put Amal El-Mohtar in third place, because while I appreciated both the style and the plot (yay queer happy endings!) I felt like she didn't make it as special as some of her other writing has seemed to me. It stopped half-way for me, taking deep breath without quite plunging. But it was still very good.
Fourth place would go to Bolander, whose short short story was actually very fun for me - it was like a shot of spirits, like a pop song you shout along to, but still, a little too little for a higher place on the list.
I liked Jemisin's story least; though I love her writing in general, her shorts in general tend to leave me colder, and this one was, in addition, kept in an urban aesthetic that, along with worldbuilding, reminded me of Neil Gaiman's writing, and that's not a compliment here - because it's a little dated for me, I suppose, or just not as good as Jemisin can do.
(On a personal note - I confess I find reading longer forms online difficult, so I now convert the stories from websites to a format my e-reader will accept and read there; I get so much more shorts reading done this way.)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-18 07:29 pm (UTC)That Game we Played came in as my second favorite. I think it was masterfully executed.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 11:10 am (UTC)With two recs I think I'm going to have to get on The Game We Played Soon.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 11:09 am (UTC)And thanks for sharing your thoughts on the stories, particularly on A Fist... First, my condolences on your loss. Second, I'm so glad you found this story and it connected with you. I agree about Bolander being like 'a pop song you shout along to' - what a great way of putting it!
I also struggle with reading longer stories online (it's why I skipped the novelette category this year). Good to hear an e-reader makes it easier. I am almost considering investing in one for next year & for longer stories but not sure I am justify it alongside quite a good phone.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 02:29 pm (UTC)For me, switching to an e-reader was a serious quality of life upgrade; it meant reading much more and being able to read much more easily (especially on the commute but I like to joke I read while brushing my teeth... and with the e-reader it's not entirely a joke), but it's true my phone doesn't really lend itself to reading.
Some of the novelettes were so awesome. I loved The Tomato Thief and The Art of Space Travel especially.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-23 03:03 am (UTC)I liked the Bolander one well enough, didn't really connect with the other two. I also read the Carrie Vaughn story on the list, which was actually my second favurite of the bunch.