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I’ve never read any Connie Willis before, although I’ve actually been introduced to her and seen her on panels several times. She’s definitely one of the Grand Ol’ Dames of the SF community, at this point, having won a goodly number of Hugos, including one for Best Novel with Doomsday Book (which I own but, as mentioned, have not yet read) in 1993. Like (apparently) Doomsday Book, this novel tells the story of time-traveling historians from the latter half of the twenty-first century, and as you might guess from the title, the place and period to which they are traveling in this particular book is England during World War II, and primarily the Blitz of London.

So as I may have mentioned before, I’m terribly picky about my time-travel stories, but in some ways this does it right. The theorists who have enabled and study the time travel process itself have, for decades in Willis’ universe, believed that time-travelers cannot alter events in such a way that it would cause a paradox that would invalidate their own timeline. This effect is apparently accomplished by time travel flatly not being “allowed” by the universe if the presence of the traveler there at that time would have that effect. So time-travelers cannot affect the past in ways that will affect their own future, but the events of the past can totally affect them, even kill them. So of course time travel is strictly regulated, and only individuals who’ve shown remarkable confidence and flexibility to the situations they find themselves in are allowed to travel through time…oh, I’m sorry, I started writing there about the characters I wish were in this book, and not the incompetent ninnies that actually populate it.

I constantly got the impression while reading this that Willis intended these people and events to be funny, and just failed. It’s like, she has everything set up with the timing of a slapstick comedy of errors (and/or manners), but the actual events are tragic instead of humorously off-expectation, and the people are dull, sad, annoying, or all of the above. Outside of the failed comedy, you have an obviously extremely thoroughly researched tale of the everyday sort of men and women who did their best to live their lives through a horrible time, and did their part for their country as a matter of course when they were called upon to do so, edited into a never-ending series of cliffhangers that certainly generate a “just one more chapter” frisson. I quite enjoyed the depth of detail that you get into the period and its events…but I came away not sure why it was necessary for this to be a genre story at all. It seems like 95% of the novel and its plot could have been told without involving time travel whatsoever. I might have enjoyed that story more, really…it certainly would have made more sense than sending young and ignorant grad students into horribly dangerous periods of history with almost no procedural oversight! At any rate, I didn’t put this novel below “No Award” on my Hugo ballot, although I certainly was tempted to.

Somehow, in all my years of reading The Vorkosigan Saga, this is the first I’ve written a review for. That puts me in a bit of a tricky situation; namely, how do you review a series you’re more than a dozen books into? Do I tell you about Miles and how he is irrepressibly awesome? Do I explain how Bujold has taken one universe and one set of characters and branched out into almost every sub-genre of speculative fiction within it? Do I tell you about that universe, and its complexities, gifts and foibles?

No, I don’t think so. I really don’t think I need to tell you anything more than that I really do highly recommend this series for nearly all readers, and then we’ll talk about this book, shall we? This book is set as Miles is reaching a new stability, at least as compared to his remarkable, turbulent, and ever-aspiring-for-more youth. Imperial Auditor, family man, diplomat…these are elements of his life he seems to be reaching a comfortableness in…which puts him a bit out of sorts when the events that open this book put him injured, drugged, hallucinating, and lost in a light-less catacomb on an unfamiliar world. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I get it. I do. People like zombies. Lots and lots of people. Enough people that they can get zombie fiction nominated for the Hugo? Apparently. Mira Grant’s debut novel is set a generation after the zombie apocalypse happens in our near future. Most survivors are shut-ins, who rely on the internet for almost all their interpersonal needs. In Feed we are given the story of Georgia and Shaun, adoptive siblings raised by parents who are the equivalent of Reality TV stars, and who are trying to make a name for themselves in the highly competitive world of blogging. The crux of the story occurs when they are picked from the many applicants to be the only bloggers accompanying the likely frontrunner in the next presidential election on his campaign.

Because blogging is soooo controversial, 35 years from now, that having bloggers accompany you instead of “mainstream media” types is a huge deal. Yeah, sure.

OK, fine, it’s zombie fiction, and zombies don’t make sense, so it’s hard to be too surprised when something based on that as a central premise doesn’t make sense…but I just can’t help myself. I was completely unable to maintain a functional Suspension of Disbelief while reading this book. It was fine as long as there was action going on; Ms. Grant has a knack for writing action narrative, and I enjoyed it when things were moving. But the massive, awkward info-dumps were a pain, and the implied “are they or aren’t they” between the two siblings was way too squicky for me. The combination of a strange variety of short-sightedness regarding the future and all too frequent call-backs to the fiction and events of our recent past was just way too jarring. I can’t recommend this book, and I would rather no Hugo be presented than for this to win.

I expect much from Robert Charles Wilson. I was deeply impressed by Spin, which is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the past decade, or ever; and although Axis disappointed somewhat, I thought the idea behind Julian Comstock was an exciting and interesting one. Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate how much of a downer it would be.

He returned to the formula of Spin, somewhat, where we read the account of the man at the side of a truly great man, which is something he knows how to do well. This story’s setting, however, is the true main character of the book. It is the 22nd century, and sometime in our own century, we run out of oil at the same time that climate change is having really colossally noticeable effect, and our civilization is unable to keep up with the rapid changes and a collapse (called “The False Tribulation”) occurs. Conjoined with a conservative religious movement gaining primacy, we are reverted to an America that holds the 19th century to be its ideal. Victorian cultural elements are resurrected as being right and proper, Christianity is embedded deeply in the functioning of the State, and a strict class system (and hereditary “Presidency”) rules the day.

This is a neat idea, probably even a Big Idea, but it doesn’t work terribly well (at least, not for me) in the larger picture. Even if one grants that all the elements for Wilson’s proposed decline are in place in our society today and could see such a thing coming to pass…that says nothing about the rest of the world. And neither does Wilson, really. Oh, America is at war with “The Dutch,” and the Chinese are mentioned as suppliers of arms…but why would all these powers seem to be reduced to roughly similar levels of ignorance and technological backwardness, all simultaneously? It just doesn’t track well. There’s too much information out there for *everybody* to lose the key bits that seem to have been lost.

So as a warning of where our society’s current flaws could someday take us, it does pretty well. As an exercise in worldbuilding, it was too farcical to buy. The characters were likable, though, and the unreliability of the narrator was done well and playfully enough that interpreting what the truth behind his hints and misdirections might be was often amusing. It was still a picture of a world in decline, though, which I can only enjoy for so long, and this book was a bit longer than that.