Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

In a landscape so rumpled the light can suddenly jump the eastern horizon and leap west to strike some distant prominence.  Everyone walking the land has to attend to this possibility, know when and where the longest sunreaches occur – and where they can run for shade if they happen to be caught out.

Or if they stay on purpose.  Because many of them pause in their walkabouts on certain cliffs and crater rims, at places marked by stupas, cairns, petroglyphs, inuksuit, mirrors, walls, goldsworthies.  The sunwalkers stand by these, facing east, waiting.

The horizon they watch is black space over black rock.  The superthin neon-argon atmosphere, created by sunlight smashing rock, holds only the faintest predawn glow.  But the sunwalkers know the time, so they wait and watch – until – 

   a flick of orange fire dolphins over the horizon

   and their blood leaps inside them.  More brief banners follow, flicking up, arcing in loops, breaking off and floating free in the sky.  Star oh star, about to break on them!  Already their faceplates have darkened and polarized to protect their eyes. (Prologue, p. 3 e-book edition)

Nature, whether it be found on Earth or elsewhere, can be so beautifully enticing precisely because of its perilous qualities.  The loping of a wolf, the grin of a great cat, the tremendous thunder claps that follow in the wake of devastating lightning – yes, nature is something that we humans may try to tame and understand, yet it is the sheer beauty of its ultimately incomprehensible awe-inspiring wonders that suck us in.  Often one might encounter science fiction fans rhapsodize over this "sense of wonder," but too frequently whatever marvels that might be present in those tales are muted by pedestrian prose or tinny PoVs.  So in reading this opening section to Kim Stanley Robinson's 2012 Nebula, Hugo, and Clarke Award-nominated 2312, I was struck by just how well he captures this dual beautiful/perilous quality of an alien landscape (Mercury in this particular case, although similarly evocative prose is used later to describe other solar landscapes).

2312 is an extremely ambitious novel and at times some of its ambitions are thwarted or at least reduced in power due largely to its own complex narrative structure.  It certainly is not a novel that can be summed up with a few pithy sentences.  Some readers may find 2312's core to be its two main human characters, Swan Er Hong (a sort of futuristic renaissance woman who is equally an artist, a biosphere designer, and a quasi-provocateur) and diplomat Fitz Wahram, and their unraveling of a series of terroristic events that threaten the fragile stability of the various human communities spread throughout most of the solar system.  Others may find themselves more fascinated by the snippets of the novel's invented past and the commentaries embedded within them on ecology, human belief systems, gender/sex issues, and political forms of government.  Still others may find themselves most enjoying the descriptions of various terraforming activities that take place throughout the novel.  Yet 2312 aims to be more than the sum of its many fascinating parts but ultimately fails to achieve this, leaving behind a flawed work whose components merely serve as glimmers of greatness, as if they were shards of a large and perfectly cut gem whose shattering has dimmed its interior light.

By themselves, each component part tells a gripping story.  In particular, Swan and Fitz's relationship, which is filled with peaks and valleys of love and frustration with each other, is a perfectly fine story, one that benefits from Robinson's excellent prose.  Yet their story is stretched too thinly in places, as the two move from extraterrestrial locale to terrestrial locale and back again, with the sense that the story's momentum, like a pinball pinging against multiple walls and flippers, is uneven and subject to entropy.  The Extracts and associated lists, which serve to make deeper thematic commentaries on a possible path that humanity may be on here in the early 21st century, are perhaps too interesting, as they had the effect of making me pause to think of issues that Robinson didn't necessarily intend to address, even in passing, in 2312.  Some great stories work because the setting is so realized and predominant that the characters work to reinforce the tensions present within the setting itself.  Other stories succeed because the characterizations are so well-drawn that the setting and local color blend in with the characterizations and the narrative themes to create an excellent work.  2312 suffers at times because the setting, intriguing as it is, and the characterizations, which are gripping in their own right, do not mesh together seamlessly.  At times, there is a dissonance between the two, as though Robinson were dithering between which should be the central focus of the tale, with the result being a narrative that flies (and crashes) like Icarus.

This is not to say that 2312 is a "poor" novel.  It is far from that.  Most of its individual elements (leaving aside questionable extrapolations of human societal evolution that may leave this work feeling dated within a decade) on their own realize their potential.  Certainly 2312 has some thematic "heft" to it, as the questions it raises about our own contemporary socio-economic and political inclinations are thought provoking.  Yet these disparate elements frequently fail to achieve full cohesion; the narrative weld spots are often visible.  The result is a flawed yet ambitious work of literary SF in which the frustrations do not undercut the novel's successes as much as they reveal the limits to the literary scope that Robinson employs.  As a semi-"failure," 2312 still is one of SF/F's better novels of the past year and it is easy to understand why it has made three recent genre (industry, fan, juried) shortlists.  Even its "weaknesses," minor as they may be when considered in isolation, serve to create a spectacle-filled novel whose likes are increasingly rare in SF/F novels these days.  If only more "failures" could "fail" in this fashion.

2012 Clarke Award winner: Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb

I used to be as aimless as a feather in the wind.  I thought stuff on the news and in the papers was for grownups.  It was part of their stupid miserable complicated world.

This year's Arthur C. Clarke Award generated quite a bit of discussion, much of it about the perceived deficiencies in the shortlist.  Without repeating all of the rhetoric that has been proclaimed regarding the list, it should suffice to note that the one novel that received the least amount of criticism, the one that some perhaps view as the "default" option for the award, the one that actually won the award, was Jane Rogers' The Testament of Jessie Lamb (which also appeared on the longlist for last year's Man Booker Prize).  After reading five of the six shortlisted titles (minus the Stross entry), it is easy to see what the judges saw in Rogers' novel that was mostly lacking in the others:  a story that is not incoherent, a tale that does not contradict itself at the narrative level, a narrative that does not plod nor threaten to disintegrate due to its haphazard construction.

Yet this is ultimately defining The Testament of Jessie Lamb in negative terms.  Because it does not offend reader sensibilities in regard to structure as did Sherri Tepper's The Waters Rising or contain narrative conceits that buckle under the weight of its pretensions, as did China Miéville's Embassytown, there is the sense that The Testament of Jessie Lamb is more the least-flawed novel on the shortlist rather than a particularly outstanding work of fiction published in the UK last year.  That impression only deepened as I read the novel last week.  The Testament of Jessie Lamb is not a "bad" novel; it does not contain multiple forehead-smacking moments that make the reader want to throttle the writer, yet it also contains little that makes this reader at least want to commend the author for her vision and execution. 

The novel begins with a biological disaster, one whose root causes are in question throughout the novel.  A sort of mash-up analogue of HPV, HIV, and Mad Cow Disease has been released into the population.  This disease, Maternal Death Syndrome (MDS), targets women who get pregnant.  Their brains begin an irreversible march toward a vegetative state and then ultimately death once the embryo begins to develop.  There is no cure, despite the frantic efforts of scientists.  There is only the sense of two ticking time bombs, one for women who might potentially become pregnant, the other for humanity as a whole.

The basic premise has the potential to be thought provoking, yet Rogers manages to make a dog's supper out of it.  The mechanisms for this disease are ill-conceived and harken back too much to 1950s and early 1960s SF, where radiation/gamma rays/atomic warfare served as the trigger for similar threats to humanity's survival (One such example of this, albeit a well-conceived one, is Brian Aldiss' Greybeard).  Even taking into account the probability that Rogers purposely left this trigger event nebulous in order to explore divers reactions to this development, the execution is sloppy.  It is very difficult to take seriously any truly pandemic, sudden development that causes 100% infection (and one that continues to show apparent effects into the second and perhaps even third generations) rates.  Questioning the validity of the premise so early into the novel does place a damper on later narrative events.

The titular character, the sixteen year-old Jessie Lamb, almost manages to make this questionable premise work.  Daughter of one of the prominent scientists working on a potential cure, she is bright, inquisitive, and not ready to settle for whatever explanation or premise is presented to her.  She is our lens into this world in which problematic gender relations have crystallized around the matter of MDS.  Why does this disease directly affect only women?  Why were men only carriers?  If this was a carefully-crafted disease, then what does this say about how women were viewed?

These are important questions, yet Rogers' treatment of them feels facile, as if she decided to go down the rabbit hole only so far.  Female agency lies at the heart of Jessie Lamb's story, or rather the seeming denial of it.  Yet Rogers risks diluting this by presenting a rather strange argument when Jessie attends a FLAME (Feminist Link Against MEn) meeting.  The initial depiction of this organization is rather telling:

There were about 20 women there.  Everyone was older than me and some looked older than Mum.  They were all a bit hippy-ish, with layers of old clothes and shrunken cardigans or ponchos on top.  I wished I'd had another layer, it was freezing.

Compared to YOFI, it felt serious.  There was something almost deadly about it.  The woman running the meeting was called Gina, she was quick and fierce and she never smiled once.  She talked about the war against women.  She said the introduction of MDS is the logical outcome of thousands of years of men's oppression and abuse of women.  Women's sexuality disgusts men and they're jealous of a mother's ownership of an unborn child.  That's why they want to marry virgins and keep women subservient, because they can never be certain that a child is their own.

This is, as far as I can remember, the only feminist organization that Jessie Lamb encounters.  It reads like a propaganda account of Indigo Girl-listening, layered clothes-wearing, men haters.  There is no subtlety to this, nothing to hint that this portrayal is ironic.  It serves only to present a radical view as a normative one.  Jessie does not react against the more strident, less logical claims (such as the one quoted below) but instead compares them to her own recent experiences.  This only serves to throw the narrative off-track, especially with this bit:

I glanced at Sal but she was intent on every word.  Another woman talked about sex, and how men prefer to have sex with other men but they were obliged to have sex with women in order to make children.  She said that was at the root of religious laws against homosexuality,  because it was in the interests of religion to create as many new babies as possible, to boost membership.  But now sexual reproduction was over, all those old commandments against homosexuality were melting away and millions more men were coming out.

***

I sat there with these awful things swirling round in my head like leaves in a storm.  I couldn't quiet it.  What they said about men preferring to be gay reminded me of college.

The thing is, there was a change.  Back before MDS, if you said a boy was gay, it was an insult.  Everyone knew there were gay people, and that it was legal and everything, there were loads of gay celebrities on TV.  If they met a gay couple in real life of course they'd be fine and act normally, but still in school it was an insult.  If they called a boy gay it meant he was pathetic.  And the boys and girls who really were gay kept it hidden.  In fact, you wouldn't have known that anybody was.  But in the months after MDS, that changed.  It happened so gradually you almost didn't notice.

Boys started to cluster together with boys, and girls with girls.  Some girls became frightened of boys – even though we were all on Implanon it was still a terrible thought, especially for those girls who knew a woman who'd died.  Sex didn't seem worth the risk.  And the boys – well, I didn't really know what they were thinking, but the atmosphere changed.  They got more involved in their own conversations, and less interested in trying to make us laugh.  In a way they were more shy with us.  It wasn't everybody; there were people who behaved exactly opposite.  Like the gangs, where you often saw boys and girls together – or even, like Sal and Damien had been at the beginning.  People bounced from one extreme to another, as if we couldn't find out the proper way to behave.

Rogers perhaps intended this passage to serve as a commentary on the swift, dramatic changes caused by the spread of MDS, but it comes out wrong, as if sexuality were more of a sociological rather than a biological orientation.  There are no nuances to this, nothing to indicate a variety of responses.  Instead, Rogers chooses the quick and easy route of presenting in passing a revolutionary behavioral change without ever really exploring the ramifications of it.

That perhaps is the main charge that can be presented against The Testament of Jessie Lamb.  Throughout the novel, Rogers takes the shorter path, neglecting to develop the overarching premise and the ways in which the characters react to them.  Jessie Lamb feels like a cipher, like that symbolic lamb being led to the slaughter, yet it appears she (and perhaps Rogers) view it as making a dramatic statement regarding female agency and the right to choose what to do with one's own body, even if it means certain and inevitable death.  These little creeping moments of dramatic decisions, culminating in Jessie's decision to be a surrogate mother for an uninfected fetus, are lessened because Rogers has not followed through with the development of these situations, leaving instead a novel that is defined by its gestures and not by the import of its actions.  The Testament of Jessie Lamb had the potential to be a great, award-worthy novel.  It instead compromised itself at critical narrative junctures, settling instead to be a flawed work that was perhaps merely the least-flawed in a subpar award finalist cohort.

2012 Clarke Award finalist: Sherri S. Tepper, The Waters Rising

"Neigh, neigh," offered the horse, "ti-i-idewise."

Out of the six finalists for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award for SF published in the UK, Sherri S. Tepper's The Waters Rising perhaps has drawn the most flak.  Beginning with Christopher Priest's succinct dismissal of the novel's qualification to be considered a SF novel, "For fuck’s sake, it is a quest saga and it has a talking horse. There are puns on the word ‘neigh.'", most of the discussion revolving around The Waters Rising have dealt with that issue of what precisely is a "SF" novel in relation to what constitutes a quest or epic fantasy.  The novel certainly supports interpretations of both, although the far future, nanotechnology-based underpinning of a post-apocalyptic, quasi-medieval society is largely subsumed by the traditional characteristics of a quest story, replete with what some might pejoratively label as "travel porn," as well as cartoonishly-evil antagonists.  It is only near the end of the novel that the quest narrative fades into a slightly more plausible SF plot, with a strong emphasis on "slightly." 

The Waters Rising is a sequel to Tepper's 1993 novel, A Plague of Angels, which I have not read.  Apparently all the two novels share in common is a single human character, Abasio, and his talking horse, Big Blue.  Why Big Blue is a talking horse, I have no clue, except maybe he exists to make horrid puns such as the one quoted at the beginning of this review.  If Big Blue were the only talking animal in this novel, perhaps I could dismiss it as an anomaly, but the later addition of a talking chipmunk (even if the reason for its talking is explained within a quasi-mystical origin) makes it difficult to not parse this novel as a straight-up quest fantasy.

The story's plot is relatively straightforward.  There are a group of people, including Abasio and a seemingly young "soul bearer" named Xulai, are charged with returning to Xulai's eastern homeland of Tingawa (apparently a vague amalgamation of China and Japan), ostensibly to bear the soul of a dead Tingawan princess to her resting place.  Yet along the way, after numerous pages devoted to the niceties of travel and legendary quasi-histories, the troupe struggles against the wicked Duchess Alicia, who unleashes remnants of long-lost machines to try and end their quest.  All of this is standard-issue Quest 101 plot, with very little in the way of narrative innovation to keep this from devolving into a turgid, plodding affair.

The characterizations are very shallow, as most of the characters remain relatively static, with very little development in terms of motivation or reaction to plot developments.  Tepper has divided her characters into nice, neat "good" and "evil" sections, with virtually no hint as to why either should remain so.  Although there certainly can be well-constructed fictions that possess such stark contrasts between "good' and "evil" personages, The Waters Rising lacks any sense of real depth.  Perhaps part of the problem lies in how characters such as Xulai are portrayed:

Xulai set her feet on the path, noticing with some surprise that she was not trembling.  Her feet moved solidly and steadily.  Indeed, she felt...what?  not quite cheerfulness.  But the stone had been approving!  Approval was good.  Even better was being reminded of Precious Wind!  No one in the whole world was more calm and poised and well mannered than Precious Wind.  And, thinking about it, as the wagon man had bid her, if the stone knew Precious Wind, then the stone knew about Princess Xu-i-lok, who had advised her to make the obeisance but had forgotten to say anything about stones that talked, though, again, if Xulai had thought about it at the time, she would have noticed that she was to ask permission.  Well, if one asked permission, presumably permission would have to be granted, and if not in speech, then how?  So it was clear, if one thought about it, that the Woman Upstairs had implied that the stones would speak.

Faulknerian prose this passage most certainly is not.  In most novels, there are passages that when taken out of context can mislead readers into thinking that the entire work is clunky.  In this case, however, that is a representative passage.  Leaving aside the "precious" nomenclature for a moment, the internal monologue feels stilted, artificial; I suspect very few people think in such a fashion.  In her attempt to flesh out the characters' thoughts, Tepper has only succeeding to reducing them to mere vehicles of expression, devoid of anything that feels "human."  Tepper's tendency to force issues can be seen in another passage, where Abasio is conversing with Xulai:

"Will I be homesick?"  he had repeated in a thoughtful voice.  Well, would he?  "Home was a farm I had been eager to leave from the time I was old enough to walk.  Home was a city so filthy, so violent, and so torture ridden that I sometimes shudder when I remember it.  Home was a few good friends or, rather, good fellows who could be depended upon if one were under attack, though – for the most part – if they had shared one thoughtful new idea among them, it would have surprised me greatly.  Home was a long journey into new lands to the south while people died all around me, cut down like a harvest of grain.  Home was one woman, one woman I loved, love, gone now, leaving only her speaking, thinking spirit behind.  Home held another woman I had been with but never met, but who, I was assured, would raise my son to heroic stature by sheer force of will.  Home was that son, not yet born when I left, a son I unintentionally fathered though I was unconscious before, during, and for some time after the act.  Home was a war in which too many good men and creatures died, irreplaceable men, irreplaceable creatures, irreplaceable love."

Although admittedly, such sentiments are often expressed in such a fashion in many speculative fictions, it is a laborious effort that attempts to provide a backstory for readers who have not read the earlier novel in lieu of actually writing dialogue that sounds "natural."  The entire middle portions of the novel contain dialogue that is similarly stilted, making it difficult to do a close reading, since the entire affair bogs down into a series of narrations of past and current threatening events, such as the one that gives rise to the true conflict of the novel, that of humanity versus nature:

Abasio shrugged, "The Edgers told me the waters will keep coming.  They said that when the earth was formed, the aggregation included several huge ice comets.  They were mixed and surrounded by a lot of stone, so there were reservoirs of water deep inside the planet that nobody knew were there.  Recently, they've found a way out.  There's a country called Artemisia, south of the mountains.  The Big River used to run through there and the land went on south a long way before it came to a part of the ocean they called the Gulf.  Now over half that land is gone.  Of course, it was lowland to begin with.  I haven't been to the East End of this continent, but I've heard about it.  All the cities that used to be along the eastern shore are underwater now, or with their tops sticking out.  There's people living in the tops of the old buildings.  They go back and forth in boats.  Down below, in the parts below water, they farm oysters and mussels."

This premise is hard to buy, especially if anyone knows much about the Earth's geology.  With global warming, yes, some lowlands can be flooded, but to have this concept of having a vast subterranean waterworks main bursting and sending sea waters high enough to overtop lands thousands of feet above current sea level?  It is preposterous.  Leaving aside the unnecessary repetition ("down below, in the parts below water"), the amount of info-dumping would perhaps give even WoT fans pause.

Tepper certainly is not subtle in discussing gender issues.  Although her Sleeping Beauty tale, Beauty, had detractors noting its stark depiction of gender inequalities, it is much more subtle in comparison to The Waters Rising, where, for some unknown reason, post-disaster Earth has somehow reverted back to a near-exact analogue of the European Middle Ages, including even the issue of dowries:

"On Wold's side:  dowry.  On Tingawa's side:  wife-price.  That's another of our differences.  In Norland, women are so little valued, a man must be paid to take a wife; in Tingawa, women are so greatly treasured, a man must pay dearly to get one, as I have good reason to know!"  Bear still owed a large part of the bride-price for his own betrothed, and getting it by wagering had proven unprofitable.

As a discussion of gender issues, this scene felt shoehorned in, as Tepper is not as much deconstructing the very real and problematic issue of gender portrayals in epic fantasies as she is bolting this onto a narrative without integrating it in a suitable fashion into the narrative world.  The overall effect is diversion from narrative development rather than deepening it, as perhaps could have been the case. 

After hundreds of pages wasted in following a travelogue/quest, The Waters Rising finally reaches the end game, when the troupe reaches the cephalopod Sea King.  Tepper arrives at a magico-mystical solution to the inexplicable water increase by having the terrestrial species, humans included, be genetically altered so they could be hybrid cephalopod/human, etc. species that would live underwater.  Of course, permission would need to be sought from the various animals, some of which seem to have been altered to permit human-style speech.  This concluding section felt so hippy-drippy that I thought I was experiencing one of those old environmentalist commercials where a mute Native American was looking forlornly at forest/environmental damage and pollution.  When this is contrasted with a fuller explanation as to what caused a long-ago disaster (hint:  "Oog" equals the Abrahamic faiths), Tepper could not telegraph her eco-religious beliefs in a more bald fashion.

Tepper's refusal to be subtle or at least nuanced in presenting these elements makes it difficult to take anything away from her thematic treatments other than "she makes a strong case for the opposing side to her views."  When viewed as a whole, the constituent elements, especially concerning the environmental factors, are risible.  The humans feel like constructs, the talking animals seem like stereotypical stand-ins for "pure," "more primitive" human societies, and when this is introduced to a setting that has a questionable cause of crisis in the first place, it makes the resulting novel a dull, dreary mess.  While I could (eventually) see how The Waters Rising could be considered "science fiction," I still am baffled how this very weak and disjointed novel was chosen by a panel of judges to be the "best" SF published in the UK in 2011.  It easily is the worst of the four Clarke Award nominees that I have read to date.

Christopher Priest's recent post on the 2012 Clarke Award shortlist serves as a reminder why strong, snark dissension has its place in literary discussion

Yesterday, there was somewhat of an uproar from some SF bloggers and critics on Twitter (and maybe on their own blogs; I haven't checked) regarding what author Christopher Priest wrote on his site about the recently-announced Clarke Award shortlist.  Take a few minutes to read carefully what he wrote there, as there is a lot to unpack.

When the shortlist was announced earlier this week, my initial reaction was mild dismay.  I saw there a heterogeneous listing of works that few could ever justify as being the best works of two-thirds of the authors on the shortlist.  I was disappointed to see that there were few "new" names (with the exception of debut novelist Drew Magary's The Postmortal/The End Specialist and the initial SFish novel by Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb – it was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, incidentally) on this shortlist.  Instead, we see the appearance of a relatively weak novel by China Miéville (Embassytown), yet another Charles Stross novel (Rule 34), and works by Greg Bear (Hull Zero Three) and Sheri Tepper (The Waters Rising) that have attracted relatively little attention and about as much praise from the SF blogosphere.  This year's shortlist did not spark any outrage from me, however.  It felt like a safe, stolid affair, as if one had put a damper on any potential sparks that could arise from reading the works in question (I will read and possibly review all but the Stross – I detest his prose so heartily that I cannot stomach the thought of trying to read another novel of his – and Rogers – her novel will not be released in the US until May 15, although I will read it soon after – before May 2; Miéville I reviewed last year).

That is about all I could say at the time about the books because I had so little invested in this award that is based in a country whose general tastes in literature, speculative and realist modes alike, differ in some degree from North American preferences.  Yet Priest is perturbed, if not outright outraged, by what the Clarke Award judges chose.  Although the fact that his novel, The Islanders, being snubbed may be a factor (he discounts this), I think what is important about his screed is that in discussing the deficiencies of the novels in question (as well as praising the merits of three novels he believes are superior – having read Lavie Tidhar's excellent Osama, I agree that it would have made for a really good alt-shortlist entry), he is participating in a discourse on SF works and their awards that too often SF fans are reluctant to engage.

To me, the true worth of an award, especially if it is chosen by a panel of judges or by peers, is how well the titles in question can withstanding the rigors of dissenting criticism.  When Miéville's Embassytown was published a year ago, the majority of the initial reactions, particularly from UK bloggers/reviewers, was more akin to a treacly squee! than to any real substantive engagement with the novel.  When I read it, I had problems with the central premise and how the language conceit was Swiss cheese-like with all of its holes and inconsistencies.  Priest touches upon the vagaries of characterization and particular character/environment interaction, which I didn't mention in my review last year, but with which I agree.  These are not momentary or occasional issues with Miéville's writings; they are a recurring flaw that negatively impacts the quality of his stories.  Like many, I think Miéville is capable of writing much better, but if he (or any writer) hears 95% uncritical praise, then who but the most demanding of self-critics is going to strive to improve those weak, sloppy areas?

That is why it can be refreshing to read such bracing criticism about works, particularly those that garner fairly prestigious awards nomination.  Question Priest's motives all you want (there may be ulterior motives that are uglier than critiquing the quality of the actual shortlisted titles; I think it was hyberbole at best and pettiness at worst when it comes to the issue of the judges, although they too should not be immune from criticism), but I do believe he does raise issues about this particular shortlist that should be considered.  As I said above, I am reading the majority of the shortlisted titles.  If I have the time, I may review them here before May 2 on this blog (I also have the Tiptree Award winner Andrea Hairston's Redwood and Wildfire and the remaining Nebula Award novel nominees to read/review here, along with several other reviews and commentaries at Gogol's Overcoat and Weird Fiction Review).  When I am done reading all but one of them (again, I highly doubt Stross could ever make a positive impression on me after I've suffered through a few of his earlier novels, so it is pointless to read something that already suffers the burden of such antipathy), I may write a short post listing my thoughts about the quality of the shortlist after having read most of the works in question.  My opinion may change from my initial one; it may grow even more negative.  But if I do so, it too will be an engagement with the meanings associated with this particular award.  Hopefully others will do the same if they intend on reading some or all of the shortlisted titles.  To do otherwise would demean the intent behind having literary awards much more than any negative blasting of the books/judges ever could.