Reviewing Pains
Posted by: danhartland on: April 26, 2010
- In: Books | science fiction
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My review of this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist begins at Strange Horizons today. The second and concluding part, in which I pick my preferred winner, will go online on Wednesday.
Even more difficult than that decision, was the one – made in today’s installment – to exclude Adam Roberts’s Yellow Blue Tibia from the running. I enjoyed it greatly and think highly of it and its author – and start his new novel this week with more excitement than I have for the next work of any of the other shortlisted authors. But I have a kink for unity – not, naturally, the same thing as completeness – and, well … go read the review.
And on Wednesday, Part Two will make things ever clearer. He says.
2 Responses to "Reviewing Pains"
April 27, 2010 at 11:37 pm
The thing is, Adam, part of me suspects you’re right – and that you should add ‘dishonest’ to that list of adjectives. But the kink remains: what struck me reading the shortlist was how well, or not, each novel supported itself, or spread its weight evenly across its various surfaces. I’m still not sure I’m right about YBT – of the six novels, it is the one which most troubles my final reading of the shortlist.
Anyway. As I promise Mr Hubble in the comments to Review Part The First, more thoughts along these lines in tomorrow’s installment. Thanks for reading so far…
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‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
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Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
Sounds We Like
Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
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April 27, 2010 at 10:25 pm
V. interesting piece.
You’re quite right to exclude me if ‘unity’ is your criterion. I have a deeprooted suspicion of unity (it’s not, I agree, the same thing as completeness), which seems to me — increasingly, as I get older — oppressive and pernicious in almost all its incarnations.