- Pirates are out, Fauns are in: Pan’s Labyrinth replaces The Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on the Hugo ballot
- Two views of The Road at Strange Horizons, by Victoria Hoyle and Paul Kincaid. And a third, dissenting view by Levi Asher (via)
- Not unrelatedly, “In my eyes, the [Clarke Award has lost its] credibility this year, and I would encourage those interested to boycott the award“. Martin asks if Oprah now has more credibility than the Clarke. Tony has another response.
- Nic reviews River of Gods and inadvertently starts a slapfight about Ian McDonald’s portrayal of India
- Abigail on the Battlestar Galactica season finale (which I haven’t seen yet)
- Nicholas Whyte rounds up reactions to the first episode of Doctor Who‘s third season
- Faren Miller on The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
- Scott Esposito on The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and other Jewish alternate histories (via)
- An early review of Sunshine in The Scotsman
- Jeff VanderMeer interviews Jonathan Strahan
- And I’m not going to claim it’s the best April’s Fool I saw yesterday, but as an old Angel fan, this gave me a nostalgic glow. (via)
(One day there will be substantive content here again. But probably not this week, alas.)
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I think Asher is far too harsh on The Road – at the very least it is a beautiful exercise in sparse writing that creates a genuinely uncomfortable sense of dread in many passages. His complaint about crimes against the English language borders on the perverse – and I think he’s wrong too to say that the book portrays a bleak view of human nature. Actually the boy and his father are beacons of decency in an unbearably harsh world and, not to spoil the ending, the conclusion is hopeful.
But I also think that other reviewers have over-rated the book – perhaps they’ve been dazzled by McCarthy’s style and standing and ignored the fundamental weaknesses of The Road
The story doesn’t actually move forward. Despite all their plodding, the journey doesn’t take the boy or his father anywhere or appear to enlighten them in any way and the thing that presses them on from the comfort they find in various locations is never convincingly explained.
And the religious subtext borders on the cliched (there were moments that had me thinking of Waterworld, and that’s not a good thing) and serves no purpose within the story other than to give English Literature undergraduates the chance to mutter about subtext and rub their chins… (g!).
I ended up on the fence about The Road. It has moments of genuine power, but as a whole it wasn’t satisfying. I enjoyed the process of reading it but at the end wasn’t sure what, if anything, I’d been left with – as if the story crumbled to ash in my hands like the scorched trees and leaves McCarthy spends so much time writing about.
That said, The Road is easily superior to three of the five ACCA shortlisted books I’ve read so far (only Hav and Nova Swing are in a similar class – I’ve still to read Streaking, it is next in my pile then I’m going to attempt an ascent of Mount Pynchon) and it’s a shame that publishing politics have kept it off the shortlist.
That’s not a reason to boycott the ACCAs – but it does reflect poorly on the awards and perhaps our genre’s standing outside our sometimes closed circles. In an era when some “awards” charge publishers a huge sum just to have books considered, it is very disappointing that the publishers couldn’t supply an established genre award with copies of their manuscripts even though, I’d concede, in marketing terms a listing on the ACCAs (or even a win) is unlikely to add significantly to the sales of a Pynchon or McCarthy.