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Category: Culture

Rip tear

And the Hugo envelope please…

Best Novel: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Best Novella: “The Concrete Jungle” by Charles Stross

Best Novelette: “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link

Best Short Story: “Travels with My Cats” by Mike Resnick

Best Related Book: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: The Incredibles, written & directed by Brad Bird

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: “33” — Battlestar Galactica, written by Ronald D. Moore and Directed by Michael Rymer.

Best Professional Editor: Ellen Datlow

Best Professional Artist: Jim Burns

Best Semiprozine: Ansible, edited by David Langford

Best Fanzine: Plokta, edited by Alison Scott, Steve Davies and Mike Scott

Best Fan Writer: David Langford

Best Fan Artist: Sue Mason

Best Web Site: SciFiction, edited by Ellen Datlow. Craig Engler, general manager

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not a Hugo Award): Elizabeth Bear

Special Interaction Committee Award (not a Hugo Award): David Pringle

And the full nominee list, for the curious and nitpickers. Also with links to many of the nominees online. I don’t think the big British book with faeries in it deserved to win against Banks and Mieville, but that’s me. Wow, and that’s an amazingly tough field for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Heh. Mike Resnick has five Hugos. The record for Hugos for fictional writing is Connie Willis, with eight. More here, not updated with this years wins as of the time of this writing.

Great silver north

Take one on a possible Fantasia schedule. Times are rough and not completely accurate. The 5:20 Sunday slot is probably a rest slot, since my tolerance for goofy doesn’t necessarily extend to bad Turkish movies… although damn. Tempting. Note that I’m also assuming a Thursday arrival, since I’m thinking about that, but the two Thursday movies aren’t essential.

7/21

7:30 El Lobo
9:30 Ghost House

7/22

5:00 All Babes Want To Kill Me
7:30 Spider Forest
9:45 Some
11:45 Three… Extremes

7/23

12:30 Ghost Talker’s Daydream
2:45 Ultraman: The Next
5:15 Spin Kick
7:20 Night of the Living Dorks
9:20 Survive Style 5+
11:40 Shadow: Dead Riot

7/24

12:00 White Dragon
3:00 Heroes of the East
5:20 G.O.R.A.
8:00 One Nite in Mongkok

Stay-at-home

Blah.

To my infinite annoyance (and resigned acceptance), I find that I am unable to attend FanTasia this year in the manner I had hoped. We have a product launch the second week of the festival, and I can neither be out the week before that launch or the week after.

I may be able to make a long weekend of it again. I’m a touch dejected just now. We’ll see what the schedule looks like.

Smoke break

Hey, look, A Feast for Crows is done. By which we mean that the massively huge tome Martin was writing has been split into two parts, geographically, due to the physical limits of book side. The first part is complete and going into production.

Well, hey, I’ll take that.

Places to talk

Announcement: C. E. Murphy Fans is now open for business. C. E. Murphy is a dear, dear friend of mine who has just broken into publishing in a fairly big way, with six books sold over the course of the last year or so. Her first book, Urban Shaman, just hit the shelves. I’m running her unofficial forums.

Where it's due

Much of my Count Dooku opinion was shaped by Sean Stewart’s Yoda — Dark Rendevous. Sean Stewart is one of the best fantasists working today; his Star Wars novel rises way above the pack. It’s all about the relationship between Dooku and Yoda and Stewart knows how to write about mentor/student relationships.

He’s also got a surprisingly good knack for writing lightsaber battles; or maybe not so surprising when you consider the swordplay in Night Watch. The… second to last? I think so. The second to last time I saw Stewart read, he read that portion of Night Watch and it was clear he loved writing it, but he hasn’t returned to any action to speak of since.

Yes, fanfic, fine

In my Episode III, Palpatine’s temptation of Anakin is mirrored by Count Dooku’s struggle with his own desire for redemption. As Palpatine is to young Anakin, so Yoda is to his best student, Count Dooku. Count Dooku is the man he pretended to be in Episode II.

The movie has a tighter focus: Obi-Wan and Anakin pursuing Dooku against the backdrop of the Clone Wars. (None of this nigh-instantaneous transport between star systems.) This, too, is a mirror: this time we’re reflecting the pursuit of Luke and Leia. Dooku moves from system to system, just ahead of the Jedi, directing his grand strategy from behind the scenes. He is still Palpatine’s creature; the Clone Wars are still orchestrated. But he has potential.

Somewhere along the line, and it’s part of Palpatine’s temptation, Anakin dons the armor. It’s not because he’s horribly scarred, although he knows that use of the armor will scar him as it draws upon his life force. It’s because he can’t catch Dooku without it. He needs this crutch before he can fulfill the orders of the Jedi Council. Obi-Wan is outraged. Palpatine is smiling.

In the third act, Obi-Wan and Anakin catch up with the Count. He disarms Obi-Wan with ludicrous ease. Dooku is the best Jedi duellist of his generation, and he has a real claim to the title of the single best lightsaber duellist ever to pass through this galaxy. Obi-Wan watches, pinned, while Dooku and Anakin duel. Anakin is almost up to the task. But not quite. Anakin reaches to the Dark Side, finally, his final surrender in the face of certain death. Dooku cannot allow this: he cannot allow another Jedi to go down the path he foolishly chose. It’s the moment of Anakin’s failure and the moment of Dooku’s redemption and there is no turning back. Dooku slays Anakin rather than allow him to become a monster.

But what now? Dooku could perhaps win the Clone Wars. If he does that, he shatters the Republic. He could allow himself to be defeated, but then Palpatine wins. He cannot return to the Jedi Council, because there is no turning away from the Dark Side.

He makes the only choice. He dons the armor; he seals himself into it, knowing that he cannot be released short of death. He turns back to Palpatine, with another name. He’s the only person who could carry out such a deception; had he not already turned to the Dark Side, living such a lie would surely bring him there.

Decades later, he will gently tease Luke, the son he never had, into reaching his potential. He will, in the end, see the Emperor killed. Nobody will ever know who he was, and he can’t admit it even at the end: to do so would be to shatter Luke, after all. Yoda will die thinking that Dooku was never redeemed.

The real Episode III was pretty good. There’s one scene made up completely of cut shots, back and forth between two principles, that works amazingly well. (Then Lucas reuses the technique and drains the life of it, but oh well.) The lightsaber duels are very good. The dialogue is laughably bad, worse than anything in any other Star Wars movie. Best of the prequel trilogy by a long shot and possibly better than Return of the Jedi.

Above the main

A Sundial In A Grave: 1610 is what the Kushiel books wanted to be, but less gilded. Late Renaissance, swordplay, espionage, desperate adventure, and dominance/submission games? Check. It’s possible there’s even a Mary Sue character, depending on how you look at things.

And yet A Sundial In A Grave does not over-enthuse about the joys of pain in the bedroom, it does not linger endlessly on the prowess of the hero, and it is not a morass of angst. It swashbuckles, all the while aware of the contradictions that lie at the heart of the protagonist. He is a duellist: he is a man who desires — but that would be telling.

It doesn’t quite so much beat the living crap out of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, but if you were wanting plot with your mock historical, well, this would be the appropriate port of call. The territory is similar, if more mystical. Where one plot is driven by the wisdom of Isaac Newton, the other is driven by Giordano Bruno.

I loved it.