Re: 2025 Hugo Awards Homework - The Novels

On 30/05/25 16:38, Robert Woodward wrote:
snippage

The second novel I read was _The Ministry of Time_ by Kaliane Bradley
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/full-time-help).
one). The ministry of time has yanked five people from the past who were
doomed to die; the most prominent (e.g., there is a Wikipedia article
for him) was Commander Graham Gore from the Franklin Expedition. The
unnamed principal narrator (while many conversations are given verbatim,
the ones where her name is mentioned are merely summarized) is hired to
be the ³bridge² for Graham Gore to the modern world.

He is a militarist Victorian and she has Cambodian parents. Both are
refugees, he from an earlier culture, she from a foreign culture and to
me, this was the emphasis in the book with only handwavium attention
paid to the rules and science of time travel. I enjoyed it and recommend
it though would not vote it for an award.
Further to James' review, I have read the five star The Terror by Dan
Simmons which details the plight of a ship's crew experiencing the same
situation and choosing the same options as the Franklin Expedition. That
was the whole book, a horror story. At the conclusion, I decided that
the "Terror" was a product of delusion caused by starvation and cold and
that there was no supernatural element but Simmons left that open.

On 30/05/25 16:38, Robert Woodward wrote:
"The third novel I read was _Alien Clay_ by Adrian Tchaikovsky (James
Nicoll¹s review can be found at
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/always-burning

To begin with I thought there was too much time spent on exposition and
musings on ecology and biology but became fascinated with the latter.
The best of the Novels. (I haven't read the Vernon, Bennet nor the other
Tchaikovsky.)