Monthly Archives: April 2026

by

My Read-Through of the Nebulas: 1974

I’ve finished reading all the Hugo nominees and winners, and decided to add on to that reading by also reading the Nebula winners and nominees, along with several other award categories. The Nebula Awards are given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, which means this is an award given by writers, not just readers. There’s often a different selection than the Hugos had, though there is also significant overlap. I’ll be showing which novel won each year and making my own choice for a winner each time.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (Winner, My Winner)- Grade: A+
Ursula K. Le Guin sketches out a remarkably detailed anarchist society, while pitting its pseudo-utopian problems alongside problems with capitalism and socialism. It’s really well done and incredibly deep. At no point does it seem like the society is merely a foil, except perhaps at times when questions of sexual relations is concerned. Even there, though, Le Guin has in-universe reasons for what is happening and ties it all into her detailed world-building. She also explores the question of how much our upbringing can cloud our thoughts regarding being self-critical and analyzing our own views. Why not the highest possible score? Because other than the main character, an intriguing scientist with a good amount of depth, every other character is exactly what you might expect. They’re created purely for the sake of the plot, but the plot is so intriguing that you don’t end up minding it as much as you probably should. So even the somewhat uneven characterization doesn’t take away from the glory of this novel. It certainly must stand as among the best science fiction novels ever written.

334 by Thomas M. Disch- Grade: A
Ostensibly, this is a collection of stories centered around inhabitants of a low income apartment building in the future (from the perspective of 1974). Such a description is to treat the novel very ill. On the covery, blurbs compared it to Charles Dickens. I think the comparison is apt in some ways–both Disch and Dickens see keenly into the human heart and condition and take a scalpel to that condition to cut away the fat–but in others it is very off. Dickens tended towards a moral and ethical core in his storytelling, and while an in-depth analysis of 334 might yield such a purpose in it, I would be hard pressed at what it might be, having read the novel. The stories here are largely about the everyday lives of these inhabitants of this housing and a future in which careless harm is the norm, whether intended or not. People are only allowed to have children if they score certain numbers on various aptitude tests. Even having a family history of conditions like diabetes can cause someone to lose points, and perhaps put them beneath an arbitrary threshold of having desirable genes. But this is only one of the many backgrounds of the novel.
The first story reads like a coming-of-age story as its main character, Birdie, chases the arbitrary number goal by retaking tests and, eventually attempting to write an essay. Classes are taught via video tapes of ancient lectures, most of which are not even understood by the people running the coursework. When Birdie finally goes to a library and discovers Plato, he undergoes an awakening to the world, seeing beauty in everyone and everything… only to give into the most hideous ugliness in the whole novel as his score ultimately does not satisfy him.
Other stories range from strange to disturbing. A woman takes a drug that has her oscillate between her “now” and the experience of being a woman during the fall of the Roman Empire. It makes sense in the story–I promise (maybe). A man working at a hospital robs the morgue to sell the bodies for unspeakable uses, only to discover one body he’s sold should have been left well enough alone. A man discovers that he desperately needs to be a mother in order to fulfill his humanity. These are just some of the many stories told here.
Every content warning possible should be caveated with this book. Casual use of extreme language, including racist language, is here. Sexual assault, eroticism, and violence of many kinds. If those content warnings don’t turn a reader off, and if one wants to endure–yes, endure–such a novel, this is as intense a look at the casual cruelty and strangeness of human nature I’ve ever read.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick- Grade: D
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a person wakes up in a world in which they don’t exist and has to navigate that. Now, granted, PKD might have done that in this novel before so many other iterations existed, but combine that with the extremely obvious and predictable answer to the plot being, once again, drugs, and I found this to be an absolute snoozefest. This is the second time I read it, and when I read it for the Hugo list, I was a little more gracious, scoring it as a C-. However, on a second go-round, hoping to find something that would really make me enjoy it or get it more, I found I liked it even less. The main character is an unlikable mess. The police state is so in the background that whatever alleged foreboding we’re supposed to experience is tangential. And because our main character is such an unsympathetic character, the novel almost makes you as the reader want him to get caught. Having PKD retroactively interpret the novel as a kind of retelling of the Ethiopian Eunuch in the Bible in Acts and seeing it as people in power having to beware of coming judgment is cool, but has absolutely no connection to the actual words on the page. There’s this movement to reinterpret so many of PKD’s works as so much better or more powerful than they actually are and while I think that’s a fun exercise, it honestly just makes me even more annoyed at the works themselves. The story of PKD running with this interpretation of Flow my Tears basically makes me think there is little, if any, thought put into the actual novel itself, and that once again the answer is just “drugs did it” and move on. Okay, we get it, that was the time period and the life he lived. I don’t have to like that or be even remotely interested in it. At least do something interesting with it. I could rant on, but I’m done.

The Godwhale by T.J. Bass- Grade: B+
The Godwhale is absolutely the kind of novel you finish reading and then set it down and think… What!? Seriously though, what even is this novel. It is so strange and so over-the-top weird, and yet, still very good. The story is vaguely related to Half Past Human but definitely stands alone without it. The setting is a post-apocalyptic Earth. The Godwhale itself is a massive, whale-like ship that was designed to comb the seas for resources. When humans ostensibly disappeared, its functionality came to an end and it awaits a reawakening from humanity’s return. Meanwhile, under the seas, a new humankind arises… It’s a very strange story that balances the oddness of a god-like machine hovering in the distance with Bass’s creation of an entire undersea culture. This story haunts you with its strangeness. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

1974- A strong slate, apart what I saw as another PKD dud (and I do like some of PKD’s works, mind you). 334 and The Godwhale buffet the reader with strangeness. The stories are written in such a way as to almost force readers to reorient their expectations and even concepts on the fly. I love science fiction that does that. Flow My Tears… seems to be an attempt in the same vein, but not nearly as successful. And of course, The Dispossessed is, in my opinion, one of the all-time greatest science fiction novels. It’s a great year, overall.

Links

Nebula Awards- check out my other posts on the Nebula nominees and winners here. (Scroll down for more).

Hugos– I have read every single Hugo-nominated novel. Click here to read through all my posts reviewing them (still in progress).

SDG.

by

My Read-Through of the Hugos: 2009

I embarked on a quest to read every Hugo-winning novel some years ago. I’ve finished that quest and am now reviewing every one of them. I’m also working on reading every Nebula, BSFA, and several other award category winners and nominations. Follow along with my quests and reviews! I’ll post a look back on each year after I’ve posted the reviews.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow- Grade: C+
A dystopic vision of the near future in which a group of teenagers involve themselves in events that result in a scorched earth police state policy. It reads about like that description makes it sound. Several plot points and decisions seem a bit immature. They’re like grandiose attempts to re-create some of the more fascinating dystopias while still being, at core, a story about teenagers in high school. I’ve read it twice now for different reasons, and each time I found different things I liked and disliked about it. Doctorow writes somewhat interesting voices, but the characters ultimately feel like tropes. The cyberpunk aspects of it are okay, but occasionally read as tacked on. It’s an average read that I could see having lots of fans because it has strong curb appeal.

Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross- Grade: C+
Stross is full of ideas, some of them are good, and some of them are maybe not so great. This book had a ton of those ideas, with a healthy sprinkling of “male gaze” moments in which readers are titillated by the sex robot. To be fair to Stross, I’m not sure that I disagree with the notion that human use of robots will dip into the obscene pretty swiftly, but it was still weird and kind of gross. Dealing with the struggles of interstellar commerce, trade, and exploration was fascinating. I’d love to see books about similar ideas with less of the weirdness.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (Winner)- Grade: C-
I think this is a case of not running into this book at the right time of life. It’s certainly not a bad book, and I can see why it won the awards it did. But it just felt like somewhat generic juvenile fiction to me. Honestly, I just haven’t really enjoyed anything by Neil Gaimon very much. To me, he reads like an ideas writer that doesn’t really have much depth behind the coolness of the ideas. The Graveyard Book is another one like that. The setup was great, but it just doesn’t really do much with it. *EDIT* I read the book and wrote this review before the allegations of sexual assault against Neil Gaiman came into the public eye. I’ve kept my policy of reading and reviewing the books whatever the creator says or does. However, Gaiman is absolutely persona non grata in my view.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (My Winner)- Grade: A-
A story of a monk in a future in which the intellectuals have fled from broader society so as not to lead to great wars. I enjoyed the look at the cloistered life, and though it was a slow burn, I felt the plot never really plodded along. The first and third thirds of the book are better than the middle third. The ideas contained in here, as usual with Stephenson’s fare, are exciting, different, strange, and alluring. It’s wacky and off-kilter, but the theme of the book reigns in Stephenson’s voice such that it doesn’t ever feel as zany as, say, Snow Crash. Instead, there is a somberness here that makes the whole book seem even more intense and epic that it may have otherwise. There is a steep learning curve with all the evented lingo, but the payoff is immense. Stephenson delivers yet another work of stunning imaginative achievement.

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi- Grade: B+
Scalzi steps back into the world of Old Man’s War with what is basically just a retelling of The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoe. It’s honestly a great read, with a strong lead voice in Zoe, more exploration of her mysterious alien companions, and powerfully written family drama. However, because it is, at its core, a retelling of the previous novel from another perspective, it offers very little by way of revelation or moving the plot forward. It’s the kind of story that huge fans of the series will enjoy–and I did, myself–but that doesn’t move it much in any direction. Yes, there are great scenes, yes Scalzi’s wit is on full display, but no, it doesn’t read like something that adds a lot to the series.

2009- There have been a lot of quite excellent years in a row, but 2009 feels like a bit of a letdown. Anathem is great, but niche in its appeal. That’s in part due to its somewhat excessive length. The Scalzi work is a fun read, but book 4 in a series, which demands reading the earlier novels. The other three are uneven. It’s not a terrible year, but the appeal here is limited. Searching online, I don’t see any egregious misses here. Maybe it was just a rough year for speculative fiction overall.

Links

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

SDG.

by

Indie Highlight: “The Last of the Wild Days: Spring” by Daniel J. Loney

I want to preface this that when I saw dark fantasy, I mean it. This is not a book for children. Lots of character death, lots of brutality. I say it is for fans of Redwall because I mean adult fans. As someone who grew up devouring Redwall, I’m always looking for another series to scratch that same itch. When I started reading The Last of the Wild Days: Spring, it drew me in quickly with excellent characters and compelling stakes.

The novel is filled with anthropomorphized creatures. Not all animals are the same level of human-like intelligence (again, like Redwall, where some creatures seem to just be animals). The characters features cross a broad range: squirrels, foxes, wildcats, stoats, badgers, etc. There’s not as much a sense of “all badgers are x” as there are in some anthropomorphic stories. Instead, they all seem to have a strong sense of personality and self, reflected in different ways of being and acting in the world.

It’s clear Loney knows how to write characters, and also clear he knows how to make an epic world. The novel is set across vistas of valleys, trees, marshes, and towns. The characters are across a wide range, and even some characters introduced late in the game quickly grew on me as the stakes were raised. One thing done masterfully throughout the novel is making a sense of urgency behind many of the tasks or scenes depicted. That, and the cruelty of some of the antagonists makes readers quickly sympathize with the “good guys.”

There are battles between the flesheaters and foragers; harrowing scenes of escape from what seems certain death, and as a reader I felt myself constantly rooting for the good guys and hoping things would turn out okay. Before I talk about the editing (see below), I do want to say that Loney’s writing, stylistically, is often quite strong. He has a knack for catching the details that matter, and doing so in a way that makes the read compelling. It feels like you’re in the middle of an epic fantasy, one that hearkens to several classics.

I do need to say that the book needs a somewhat heavy-handed round of editing. The use of the word ‘however’ was grammatically all over the board. Several sentences have weird structures. There was at least one sentence that just dangled into nothingness. It’s especially unfortunate because Loney often has this prose style that lends itself to epic descriptions and sweeping scenes that are occasionally derailed by some of the grammatical foibles. I’m recommending this book highly, but want readers to know that yes, there will be some frustrations with the editing.

I truly hope the author is out there, somewhere, finishing the series. I think there’s just one book left (of four). I am reading book two next.

The Last of the Wild Days: Spring is an excellent start to a fantasy series that reads like Redwall for grownups. The characters have impactful growth, the enemies are cruel and wily, and the conclusion is a shot to the gut. Highly recommended.

SDG.