Given that you haven’t read the books, perhaps it would be telling to consider what others who have actually read the books have to say on the matter. As it turns out, the Broken Earth trilogy is being almost universally hailed as not just great literature, but the kind of work that will actually change a genre in the long term. Seriously - when I google “Broken Earth review”, here’s some of the results:
…Basically, people absolutely love these books. Almost every review is positive, it’s sitting at a Goodreads rating of 4.3, and people are talking about it not just as a great set of novels, but as a legitimate game-changer in the genre.
It’s fine if the short excerpt you read didn’t blow you away (I found it fascinating, but wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style), but maybe, instead of positing a shadowy cabal of politically correct people, to mirror the known bad actors of the Sad Puppies, you could instead consider that maybe, what we’re dealing with is a legitimately huge event in literature. Maybe this really is the new Aasimov, LeGuin, or Rowling. Fears about “affirmative action” hugos because you personally didn’t like a short excerpt of her book are, at the very least, completely nonsensical. Even if you don’t like the writing style - it took me several tries to get into A Clockwork Orange, and I recognize that as my fault, not the author’s.
You can hate the writing style in Clockwork (or Ulysses, or Moby Dick, even Shakespeare) and still see the genius in it. Same with LeGuin or Atwood, for that matter. I don’t see that here.
There is a cabal. They have nicer motives than the reactionary insurgency they have been fighting. But “not as bad as others” is the closest I can come to a ringing endorsement.
You read what amounts to a few pages from the prologue of a book series with near-universal acclaim and did not like the writing style. From this, you are concluding that the support is factional, the writing is objectively bad, and she only won three Hugos because of people playing identity politics.
If you can’t see how ridiculous that sounds, I’m not sure I can help you. This would be a contrarian take if you had read the book and didn’t like it (kinda like that jerk who slagged off Toy Story 3 as all about product placement); as is it’s really kinda awful.
(Also just so we’re clear I’m not saying you’re a jerk for having a contrarian take. It’s entirely possible to go against a firm consensus on the value of a work of art. It’s still advisable to do so in a way that makes some kind of sense, i.e. Moviebob liking The Happytown Murders because he legitimately found the one-note humor funny.)
—2011: Iain McDonald’s lofty stylings are miles ahead of Connie Willis’s leaden prose, the latter reminiscent of 1950s juvenile sci-fi.
—2012:
Leviathan Wakes is not as literary as Dervish, but that’s some great hard SF. And it got beat by some fairy shit? Bleah. Don’t the fantasy people have their own convention?
2014:
Leckie’s writing is very absorbing, but so is Stross’s. Close one!
“From this”? Why do you assume I haven’t been following this factionalism for years, predating any of Jemisin’s three wins? I had not read any of her prose until this week, but the political struggle over Worldcon has been on my radar for the better part of a decade.
If you cannot detect wide disparities in merit from the first few pages, you are not much of a reader.
There are two basic parameters I judge SF by:
Literary quality (as I would judge non-genre fiction like Doerr’s)
How interesting and original the premise and setting are, and how well they are fleshed out via world building.
When #1 is weak, it is apparent within a few sentences at most. #2 should come into focus within a few paragraphs (if it doesn’t, that is itself a weakness).
These are not random excerpts, but rather attempts by the author and publisher to put their best foot forward. If they seem good, the entire book could turn out to be less satisfying than their original promise seemed to suggest. But if they start out weak, abandon all hope: they are only likely to get worse. Not that I would stick around to find out! (Whereas the ones I highlighted with positivity, I have added all of them to my Wishlist.)
Anyone want to insist, with a straight face, that all the WorldCon members who voted for Jemisin read everything nominated, cover to cover? How many of them even read every word of her entire trilogy? :dubious:
Ah, okay. So your position is basically, “these widely acclaimed, award-winning books I did not read are crap/substantially worse than their competitors, and I can tell based on short excerpts.” That’s a… novel take. It’s like looking at the trailers for a movie and deciding ahead of time that it’s definitely going to be shit, then after the movie comes out to rave reviews, whining about affirmative action because the director isn’t a white guy.
Say what you will about contrarian reviewers, most of them at least take the time to read/watch/play the piece they offer a bizarrely offbeat opinion on. They typically don’t just watch the trailer before deciding their score.
So what is that “fairy crap”? 5/10? 3/10? How undeserving of a Hugo do you think this book you never read is?
Very. Same goes for GRR Martin, BTW. Get your own awards, fantasy writers!
ETA: A trailer is generally not edited by the filmmaker. If I see the first few uninterrupted minutes of a movie, you bet I can tell which ones are bad right away.
Okay, sure. But then you have lots of people who actually did read it who aren’t just saying “this is good”, they’re saying “this is amazing, game-changing, likely to be one of the most important literary works of the decade”. At that point your opinion is firmly in the minority even among snobby literature critics, except you don’t even have the claim of having read the book! You’re going off your prejudices from a short excerpt.
Does any of this sound horribly arrogant to you? Even without getting into the politics of what you seem to think are affirmative action Hugos.
You can tell what’s crap within the length of those excerpts. To differentiate between “very good” and “great” would absolutely require reading the whole thing (and why would I not want to?). So I can’t say, for instance, that 2014 awarded the wrong author. I have to reserve judgement. So actually, the two years right before Jemisin’s threepeat look fine.
But the ones I did talk shit about? They have problems that were immediate and obvious.
Let me ask you this: would the Pulitzer judges not agree about the problems with the ones I dragged? (They might also not love the hard SF novels that I liked mostly for premise/worldbuilding, admittedly; but at least that is achieving a purpose that is central to the genre.)
Relatedly, do people really buy novels without reading the first few pages first? (Hmm…I think that question deserves its own thread, coming soon!)
It’s easy to cite examples that have nothing to do with the affirmative action issue. The one that comes to mind most easily is Tree of Life. What a ridiculous joke that movie is. Incredibly overrated. And I did not watch the whole thing, but am confident in that proclamation.
Is it arrogant? I suppose. There are worse things.
I haven’t read the books yet, but it seems to me that one major difference between Jemisin and Le Guin is that the latter didn’t try to hide her gender behind initials.
As for the SlackerInc show, I think I know the plot well enough to be totally uninterested; I only wish everyone else remembered the last episode as well, and were willing to change the channel.
I’m exaggerating, of course; it’s just a pet peeve of mine. My issue is mostly with the publishers who insist on it rather than the actual authors, anyway.
That said, thanks for the recommendation. I’ve definitely put her on my list.
