The 2015 Hugo Awards are upon us! The nominees for this year
are listed here and as the deadline for voting
approaches I will be supplementing my usual reading and reviewing to specifically
review the 2015 Hugo nominees I have not yet covered.
“Championship B’tok”, Edward M. Lerner (Analog, 09-2014) (online)
Eligibility:
Eligible for 2015 Hugo in the category of Novelette
Status: Nominated
This is the editorial voice review. The reader's
voice review is forthcoming. (for info on what this means, see here)
First
Thoughts
This
is a story with potential set in a rich universe with a developed history and
clearly going somewhere. The action
itself is obviously set in the middle of larger events, and as a result suffers
a bit when read as a stand-alone piece. [1]
Taken for what it is, however, we get to see an interplanetary
(interstellar, really – but we don’t see that part here) intrigue unfold. This all takes place in what appears to be a
complex social and political background which is easy to imagine and this lends
the action a sense of authenticity.
Linked to the story’s place in the middle of a larger narrative,
however, there’s a sense of incompleteness here that I think goes beyond “open
ended” style where the reader gets to speculate about what came before and
after – rather than feeling open ended, it just feels as though not enough has
been resolved to make the story really end
– instead, it just seems to die. Now, as
a part of the whole that the author is writing here that’s not necessarily a
problem. However, it has been presented
to us as a stand-alone piece for consideration in the Hugos, and I think this
is a considerable weakness.
Ideas
The
ideas are mainly well realised in this story, and this is actually one of the
strengths of its place as a part of something larger. There is clearly a socio-political background
to the action, and the author doesn’t waste our time with lecturing about
government structure or the injustice of “alien reservations” – he just
presents it to us complete with warts and lets us interpret it as we will. This is the kind of rich background world
building I like. Part of this is because
any exposition needed has probably been done in previous work, and we are being
shown a snapshot of the ongoing development of a living universe. This sort of thing always seems richer than
completely stand-alone universes.
Likewise, he explores a few of the implications of technology – e.g. the
idea of enhancing human abilities with implanted electronics and the way in
which these are realised in the universe he is creating feels good and certainly
sparks interest. Unfortunately, he
touches on this only briefly, which would probably be good in a longer work but
in something this short feels inadequate to the potential. Also, this is one of the few areas in which
he resorts to clumsy exposition, with a couple of paragraphs lecturing the
reader on just who “the Augmented” are – this struck me as particularly odd,
since the effort that went into telling us all about the Augmented suggests
that they play an important part in the story, but in the end they’re involved
only to the degree that one of the people introduced happens to be one – and then
not only do we not meet her (she is just discussed) but the author kills her
off at the end. This is one idea that
could have been explored further, particularly in the context of the other idea
that left me deeply unsatisfied – the alien game. The eponymous game B’tok is another item that
the author takes time to provide a lecture on, and it seems clear that this
will be an important theme in the story.
And to be fair, the game is used as a way to frame the relationship between
the main protagonist and the alien administrator. However, the true potential of the game as a
background to what initially promises to be an intricate game of spy vs spy is
never realised, and the game recedes to be little more than stage
dressing. In fact, with the paragraph of
exposition explaining to us what this game is the lack of any meaningful
engagement with it makes me wonder if it was injected after the fact to justify
an exotic-sounding title.
Writing
The
writing here is strong. For the most
part it’s descriptive without being ponderous, clean without being too
spare. The dialogue feels realistic and
the way in which the author embeds much of the detail of the universe he is
building without belabouring us with encyclopedia entries is good. As mentioned, there are a few places where he
relies on this kind of lecture-style exposition, but in some ways this almost
feels as though he might be trying to get new readers up to speed without just
saying “read what’s already published” or otherwise struggling to shoehorn a
wealth of material into a smaller space.
The story doesn’t really suffer from these intrusions, but I think the
story would have been more satisfying if they had been written into the story
in the same way he handled everyday implant technology, the alien culture, bits
and pieces of history, the politics of the various societies. Sadly, there are areas in which the writing
stumbles, and these are again tied to the fact this is really part of a larger
whole rather than a stand-alone piece.
First of all, the author makes the unusual (for a work this short)
choice of switching points of view. He
sticks with the main protagonist for most of the story, but in some sections he
moves to the point of view of other characters.
I can see why he would do this, and it does work in this case, but it
also breaks us out of the mindset he’s put so much work into developing. This seems like a technique better suited for
a longer format. Another area in which
the story could be polished in terms of writing is in the plotting itself. Make no mistake, the story is well paced and
the author builds well toward the climax – there can be no complaint
there. However, there are two aspects of
the narrative that struck me as unsatisfying.
First, he builds toward action and intrigue, but somehow fails to
deliver them in anything but a cursory fashion.
Why not develop this more? Action
seems to be glossed rather than dealt with in the suspenseful way it deserved,
and the intrigue he so tantalisingly introduces with the idea of the game and
the alien administrator as an expert player turns out to manifest itself as a
mere shadow in the background. These
seemed to be destined to be big parts of the story, so it was unfortunate to
discover they didn’t really go anywhere.
Finally, there is the way in which plots and sub-plots seem to just…die. Many lines of the story we are introduced to
while they are in progress (not a problem, and a good technique in short
fiction) and in the end have no satisfying conclusion, or indeed any conclusion
at all. I can see the argument for
leaving things open for the reader to speculate and imagine on their own, but
this seems to be more than that – again a symptom of the fact this is part of a
longer project involving multiple stories.
This lack of resolution left me with a strange combination of wanting to
read more and just feeling like the story wasn’t finished properly, which I
know probably wasn’t what the author was shooting for.
Characterisation
As
a social SF (and yet pretty hard as SF goes – an interesting combination!)
characters are quite important to the story, and I thought the author did quite
well in realising them. The main
protagonist is quite well developed for us, complete with hints that he has a
full past that extends beyond the confines of the story. Likewise, the protagonist’s colleagues seem
like they are fully developed, as do his relationships with them. This is certainly one of the pluses of
coming to a story in the middle of a series, as the author has had the time to
develop characters more fully in his mind.
Unfortunately, the aliens seem a little shallow, and I would have liked
to see more development of them beyond the initial encyclopedia entries and a
handful of exchanges among them, but this is probably also a feature of the
story being part of a series – perhaps the administrator in particular would
seem richer if I had seen her development in previous works. As for the alien society itself, this is always
a difficult thing to get right without seeming to be parodying some real human
society, and in any case the aliens actually play a very much secondary role in
terms of being on stage, despite being an important dimension of the story. The tendency to push them into the background
a bit and focus on the human actors is understandable, and probably a good idea
when you have limited space to work with.
Verdict
Overall,
this seemed like a well written section of a larger work. I was left wanting to know more, and hoping
to see that this was an excerpt from a novel or something – and in fact I see
that there is a series of stories of various lengths, a couple of anthologies
and apparently a novel. It’s a shame
that the story suffers a bit as a stand-alone, because there does seem to be
some strong writing here, and all three critical elements – ideas, plot,
characters – seem to be developing in interesting ways. Unfortunately, though, for me the sense of
being thrust into the middle of something too complex to get a handle on that
never really resolves was an issue, and while I think there’s definitely
something to be said for leaving things open I think this particular story
could have benefited from more closure on some of the plot lines the author
was developing. No doubt he will work on
these in future stories, but as a stand-alone this just seems incomplete.
Readability:
Pass
Hugo
Quality: Pass
Notes:
1. This story is one of a series that appear
to be somewhere between Larry Niven’s Known Space world building (but seemingly
more local and realised in more detail) and a serialised novel like Perry
Rhodan (but better written and more coherent) – for those interested in seeing
some of the context, other stories, anthologies and novels can be seen at the
author’s blog here
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