By Nina Allan
To begin with, here is a reminder of the books we will be discussing:
My personal shortlist:
The Destructives by Matthew De Abaitua
Zero K by Don DeLillo
A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna
Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes
The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo
Fair Rebel by Steph Swainston
The Sharke shortlist:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna
Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley
The Clarke shortlist:
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
After Atlas by Emma Newman
Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
In terms of a reading experience, the past six months has been unusual, to say the least. Between the publication of the Clarke submissions list in mid February, and the imminent announcement of the winner in late July, I have read and reviewed not only the titles on my personal shortlist and the official Clarke shortlist, but also as many of other Sharkes’ personal choices and interesting outliers as time has allowed. I don’t think I’ve ever consumed so much science fiction in a single stretch – a chastening experience in and of itself – and I have learned plenty along the way, not least how misguided some of my own initial choices turned out to be, how much we all – as readers, writers and critics – tend to fall back on untested assumptions. I have learned more than a little about the difficulties and compromises involved in serving on an award jury, how every argument provides a counter-argument, how every book selected will point to three that are lost, how it is impossible to arrive at a meaningful decision without reading or at least sampling every submission.
Most of all, I have been reminded of how multifarious and diverse is the art of criticism. When it comes to assessing works of literature, there is no universal standard for excellence, no unified ideological approach, no such thing as objectivity. We each come to the process heavily laden with baggage, some of which we cannot set aside because it is enshrined in who we are and where we come from, some of which we cling to out of habit. Part of our job as critics lies not so much in relinquishing our baggage but in acknowledging that it exists.
Being a Sharke has meant a considerable investment in terms of time and mental energy, but the rewards have been substantial, a more than adequate compensation for effort expended. I emerge from the process renewed as a reader, more aware as a critic and reinvigorated as a writer of fiction. My gratitude to my fellow Sharkes, not just for the sheer amount of hard graft they have put in but also for the delight and stimulation they have provided in terms of conversation, intellectual empathy and plain good humour along the way cannot be overstated. The group dynamic could not have been better and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. I can only hope that others, reading along, might feel sufficiently inspired by our experiment to keep the Sharke swimming into 2018 and beyond. Personally, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.
And so on with the motley. First question: of my personal shortlist, which of the six books originally chosen would I consider to be keepers? The answer to that one is easy: Martin MacInnes’s Infinite Ground and Don DeLillo’s Zero K. Infinite Ground, if you remember, was the only one of my six that I’d read prior to taking part in the Sharke project, and rereading it and reconsidering it has only raised it higher in my estimation. Zero K – much as Infinite Ground did on first acquaintance – has remained with me, thrumming away in my imagination like a small but very perfect, finely calibrated machine. I know I would gain a great deal more from this novel on a second reading and my longstanding hunch that DeLillo is a writer I need to get to know a whole lot better than I do at present has been further confirmed. Both Zero K and Infinite Ground are fully achieved, powerful and timely works of literature that would grace any prize shortlist and I remain proud to fight their corner as alternate-world Clarke shortlistees.
My other choices have not fared so well. I like the idea of A Field Guide to Reality more than I enjoyed the book itself. I’d still have been happy to see it shortlisted – especially given the books that actually were – but I would have been a supporting rather than an instigating member of that particular faction.
My hands-down least-favourite remains Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun, a novel whose particular spot on my shortlist – what the Sharkes have taken to calling the Atwood spot – might better have been awarded to Naomi Alderman’s The Power. I hadn’t yet read The Power when we chose our Sharke Six, but I tackled it soon afterwards, and although I ended up disliking it fairly intensely I am still OK with it being on our shortlist because in contrast with the Sinisalo it does at least feel contemporary and worthy of discussion. The first third of The Power is actually very enjoyable and, well, empowering in a manner reminiscent of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. As AJ hints at what it might feel like to live in a society where gender is simply not an issue, so The Power asks us to imagine how it might be for women to exist without the constant background anxiety over being physically attacked and all the million-and-one knock-on anxieties and oppressions that come with that. I for one don’t mind admitting that it felt pretty good. However, the novel’s unconvincing characterisation, weirdly formulaic treatment of non-Western cultures and predictable ‘bad messiah’ storyline made me lose interest well before the end. Like The Core of the Sun, The Power is no match for its earlier avatar, The Handmaid’s Tale, but at least it kicks some arse.
Similarly, the place I awarded to Steph Swainston’s Fair Rebel might have been more usefully filled by N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, a not dissimilar politically astute secondary world fantasy but one that goes that extra mile in terms of variety of voice, metafictional inventiveness and powerful expression of its core ideas. Again, it simply feels more contemporary and more substantial.
My biggest disappointment came in the form of Matthew De Abaitua’s The Destructives. Had this book fulfilled the promise of its predecessor If Then, not to mention the glassy horror of its own first third, I would undoubtedly have been putting it forward as a potential winner. As things stand, if you’re into crazy stuff happening in space I would vote for Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit as a more consistent and original example of the form.
Put these together with the DeLillo and the MacInnes and you certainly end up with an interesting shortlist:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Zero K by Don DeLillo
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes
That’s two core genre favourites, one high-flying crossover and three fascinating outliers from mainstream-published writers at very different stages in their careers. Left to my own devices, there’s no way I would have come up with this particular shortlist, but had this been the official jury’s final cut I would have felt more than satisfied.
Having now read the official shortlist in its entirety – a shortlist that did not include a single title from my personal shortlist – how do I now feel about it, as a group of novels? The answer is: confused, if not more confused than I was when it was first announced. Let us turn first to Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, the novel from the official shortlist I came closest to picking for my personal shortlist and conversely the only one of the six that I have not reviewed in depth. The reason for this is simple: my fellow Sharkes have already said everything that might possibly be said about it, and said it brilliantly. The only thing I have to add is a slight reservation – that the language of Central Station owes a little too much to M. John Harrison’s Kefahuchi Tract trilogy – which, given the breadth of imagination and technical ability on display here, feels too nit-picky to be a sensible contribution. Any argument that Central Station might be more accurately described as a collection of short stories rather than a novel seems entirely spurious to me. The individual chapters – as I prefer to call them – were clearly written with the intention that they be read together and form a striking and cohesive whole. The shifting of viewpoint, the recurrence of themes and characters, the unifying sense of place create a tantalising mosaic effect that is vibrant and also inclusive – we are invited into the city as fellow citizens, as participants rather than onlookers. This novel is entertaining, clever, poignant, inventive, prescient and beautifully written. Central Station thoroughly deserves its place on the shortlist and I would be more than happy to see it go on to win the award.
Similarly with Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. This book has never been top of my list of favourites, but that doesn’t prevent me from appreciating it for what it did do, which was to never be boring and to stimulate a sizeable quantity of intelligent debate. The commentary of my fellow Sharkes in particular has made me more enthusiastic about Whitehead’s ingenious use of speculative materials. The Underground Railroad has won formidable favour across a wide swathe of several interlocking reading communities, and including it on the shortlist constituted a positive statement from the official jury. Whilst I can never see myself actively campaigning for it, as with the Kavenna earlier I would not feel justified in voting against it either. It would make a worthy winner, if a slightly dull and predictable one.
The biggest surprise for me was delivered by Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit. I’ve enjoyed and admired Lee’s short fiction for its mathematical weirdness and densely textured language, and my initial reaction to his debut novel was one of disappointment. Ninefox felt more conventional than Lee’s short stories, more content to exist within the parameters set down by the dozens of military space operas that are its natural predecessors. Whilst I wouldn’t exactly say I have reneged on that opinion – it is just a space opera, it isn’t doing anything markedly different from Ancillary Justice – I have come to feel more in sympathy with it than I ever thought I would. Is it the odd flashes of humour, the core concept of calendrical rot (it’s madness but I like it), Lee’s adroit use of language, the continuing proof that words are more to him than simply blunt instruments for telling a story? Whatever, I admire this book’s ambition and it has stayed with me. As an example of this kind of science fiction – action, tech, armies – it is a well achieved one and in hindsight I can see why the jury selected it.
So that’s the first half of the shortlist – one good pick and two acceptable ones. Unfortunately it goes downhill from there. Although they are two very different novels – one near-future Earthbound, the other far-future space-set – for me, Ninefox Gambit and Occupy Me fulfil the same remit on the shortlist. They could equally be described as the ‘tech-y, slightly gonzo one’ and as such I can’t see any good reason for including them both. As I marginally prefer Ninefox Gambit, that’s the one I’m keeping. And just for the record? I happen to think that swapping either of those two out for M. Suddain’s rambunctious and linguistically divine Hunters & Collectors would have made for a more interesting statement by the jury.
The jury’s selection of After Atlas is mysterious to me. As a novel it is straightforward, solidly commercial, an enjoyable read. But where is that extra dimension that marks it out as ‘best’? It’s not in the language, it’s not in the form, there are some interesting ideas about a near-future society but for me these were cut off at the knees by the imposition of a resolution that owed more to melodrama than the gritty realism that characterises the core of the action. It seems illogical to me that a book like After Atlas be selected over novels such as Don DeLillo’s Zero K or even Naomi Alderman’s The Power, a book I have no brief for personally but that is at least contentious and assertive enough to provoke serious debate.
As previously discussed, a novel like Becky Chambers’s A Closed and Common Orbit has no place on the Clarke Award shortlist, full stop.
When the shortlist was announced on May 6th, my gut reaction was one of disappointment and a familiar sort of gloom. Having only read three of the shortlisted titles at the time, I did not feel qualified to elaborate on those first impressions in any detail. Having now read all six, I feel still further disappointed in having my initial response confirmed. The 2017 Clarke Award shortlist is a mixed bag, and whilst most science fiction readers will find something there they can get behind, given some of the other options on offer, the selection as a whole feels like a missed opportunity.
Which book will win? My head says Whitehead, my heart says Tidhar, my secret inner Joker says Yoon Ha Lee.
Moving on to that final battle between Sharke and Clarke, I thought it might be interesting to consider each shortlist in the light of what the opposing jury might most roundly criticise about it then see what we end up with. Looking at the Sharke shortlist from the point of view of the Clarke jury, the first thing to notice is that we have two titles in common, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, which logically suggests that both of these should stay. Of the remaining titles, I would guess the Clarkes would dismiss A Field Guide to Reality and Infinite Ground more or less immediately as being ‘not SF enough’. They would probably also dismiss the novella-length The Arrival of Missives as having insufficient heft to go up against some of its own big beasts. On the other hand, the Sharkes would fire the Chambers on the spot for being trite and derivative, and whilst the Sullivan has one key Sharke on its side, some of the others would not be exactly sorry to say goodbye to it. As for After Atlas, although most of us found it to be an enjoyable reading experience, we can’t understand what led the Clarke jury to single it out for special attention.
Which leaves us with four books jointly selected by both Clarke and Sharke – Alderman, Lee, Tidhar, Whitehead – and two tantalising free spaces remaining. An interesting thing to notice about almost all Clarke Award shortlists is that it is often those last two places that make or break the list as a whole. It is very rare to find a shortlist that has nothing of worth on it – indeed this has never happened – but it is depressingly common to find lists that appear if not random then stymied by a couple of nonsense choices filling spaces that might have gone to more interesting books.
With juries made up of six individuals, all with competing assumptions, tastes, expectations, reading experience and of course baggage, this is inevitable. One might even argue that it is desirable – as a metric of what science fiction is doing and where it is at, we could do a lot worse than the baffling contradictions presented to us annually in the shape of the Clarke Award shortlist.
Which does not offset the fact that it can still be depressing.
Just for fun – and whilst stressing that this thought experiment is mine alone and other Sharkes should not be held accountable for my choices here – I have filled those remaining spaces with two books that by my personal reckoning have the potential to satisfy all parties whilst rendering the selection as a whole more challenging in terms of its ambition and closer to a coherent picture of what might be termed ‘best’.
After a great deal of thought and some compromise, not to mention the rejection of my own favourite candidate, here is what I came up with, the Schlarke shortlist, being a representative selection of the best science fiction published in the UK in 2017:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Zero K by Don DeLillo
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Looks good, doesn’t it? Makes you think.
And my own preferred winner? Infinite Ground, by Martin MacInnes, knocking it over the boundary and into the stands.
*
Nina Allan is a writer and critic. Her debut novel The Race was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle. Her second novel The Rift will be published by Titan Books in July 2017. She enjoys arguing about books in general and science fiction literature in particular, and makes these arguments public from time to time at her blog, The Spider’s House. Nina lives and works in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute.
>> Read Nina’s introduction and shortlist.