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Gaiman's American Gods Wins Hugo
H.I. McDonnough writes "Neil Gaiman won this year's Hugo for his novel American Gods.
A much better choice than last year. " If you are a curious, check out the review I did on it.
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It amazes me how narrow-minded scifis are about what is pure and what is not.
American Gods is no closer to being "pure" science fiction (whatever that may be) than last year's winner, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So it's possible that he just thinks it's a better book, and isn't pursuing some purist political agenda.
Ralph 124C 41+, chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
If you're not familiar with this book, I will make a suggestion: Make sure you get at least half way through before you decide to quit. You won't regret it.
You can pick this up on Amazon, from your local library, or from your local audiobook store if you have one.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
I enjoyed "American Gods" well enough, but I thought it was not up to the par with his earlier work, "Neverwhere."
With the Norse pantheon and American tourist attraction motifs of "American Gods," I kept feeling like it was trying to be too serious for its airy fantasy blend of Douglas Adams' Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (the second Dirk Gently book), and LucasArt's Sam and Max Hit the Road graphical adventure game. The narrative is just disjoint enough that reading this book aloud would just lose some of the punch, I think.
Conversely, "Neverwhere" seemed to have fanciful influences from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, where the delusional whimsy was a cover for the sinister trappings of a far more grave underworld that is best kept out of view. The bounds of the action are easily tracked and scenes segue smoothly, making Neverwhere a great story to read aloud to an older child or a spouse.
But that's just my opinion, and surely, both are quite palatable, and congrats to Neil Gaiman on his well-deserved accolades.
[
Apt thread title. :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - according to Arthur C Clarke, anyway. The line dividing science fiction and fantasy is a *lot* narrower than some purists would like us to believe - while there are plenty of sci-fi books/shows in which the science is an integral part of the story, there are just as many where it really is indistinguishable from magic, and where you could substitute the rayguns and spacecraft with wands of lightning and flying ships without really affecting the story.
You've mentioned one example yourself, which you're trying to excuse just because it falls under the 'sci-fi' banner - Jedi have mystical powers. So why on earth is it fine when Luke summons his lightsaber to his hand, but evil when Harry Potter summons his broomstick to his? Jedi even experience a life-beyond-death that is firmly set outside the Christian world view - but that's okay because it's science fiction?
And frankly it's sheer arrogance to say that you haven't read a book and then try to make value judgements on it. You refuse to read Harry Potter books because they're fantasy? Fine, your loss. But don't go telling me whether they deserve a Hugo award, because you don't know.
Oh, and don't check out American Gods. It's full of terribly un-Christian things - gods from a variety of pantheons, magic, that sort of thing. I'm sure you'll be able to tell us how good it was without reading a single page anyway.
And while you're at it, you'd better steer clear of C S Lewis and his Narnia books, because fantasy is bad, right? Don't let the fact that he's probably one of the most convincing Christian authors of modern times get in your way.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Some definitions by the masters
:
:
Ben Bova
"1. Science fiction stories are those in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the stroy that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses...
2. Science fiction writers are free to extrapolate from today's knowledge and to invent anything they can imagine -- so long as no one can prove that what they have 'invented' is wrong."
Isaac Asimov
"In my view, the best science fiction, the only valid science fiction and the science fiction I try to write depends on legitimate science rationally extrapolated. If something is wrong, distored and illogical, it cannot be categorized as science fiction, any more than noise can be called music or a used paint rag a painting."
So by these definitions, Harry Potter ain't SF. Then again, neither is American Gods.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Now, ignoring the Usenet bit, tell me the poster wasn't trolling with this:
(Referring to Harry Potter).
Slashdot editors and story submitters really need to start restraining themselves from editorialising in the story itself. That's what the comment section is for. That's what would be professional.
This isn't intended to be a troll. Now mod me into oblivion.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
I've been a fan of Gaiman for a few years, and can remember being excited at finding Neverwhere ("a whole novel!") a few years back. But it just wasn't that good. The whole thing felt a little flat, and while it did seem to want to be a bit like Alice in Wonderland, it just didn't come close. See Coraline for a better attempt.
American Gods, on the other hand, was a fabulous book. Lots of Gaimanesque details and twists, but felt like it hung together much better. Anyhow, differences of opinion I suppose.
Congrats to Gaiman. It is well deserved.
While I am basically fond of American Gods, I did have a few quarrels with it. For those of you who haven't read the book, it's in the vein of the Odyssey in that you have a protagonist who is sent from one locale to another, dealing with gods and operating at their whim. The particular gods square off in two different camps - the modern gods and the old gods. The old gods are the standard mythological gods that we all know and love. The modern gods are the modern items we all need in our lives - television, the Internet, beauty, etc. My problem with it was that Gaimain seemed, at some points, to be making up rules for his world, not because they seemed like the way things would be in such a world, but because they were useful rules for him to have in order to advance the plot. In a word, some sections felt contrived. That being said, I thought the writing was superb and that not only was it an entertaining read, it also had very comedic moments. I also really enjoyed the ending [which I will not give away] but let me just say that it was a fun little twist that really wrapped things up nicely. And while I did enjoy the ending, that may have been partially responsible for my feeling that the book was a bit contrived. Oh, also look out for the inclusion of a dead woman walking the Earth. Clive Barker had a similar character in The Damnation Game and both texts do a nice job of showing just what problems someone who is dead runs into when they're not allowed to lie in the ground. All in all, it was one of the better books I've read in the previous year and would suggest you pick it up. After all, it's in paperback now and that's nearly free!
Magic Realism is a sub-genre of both Fantasy and Science Fiction (though its roots are more firmly in Fantasy than Science Fiction) that was fist recognized in South America, but has spread across the globe. I consider much of Gaiman's work to be in this catagory, though others might argue. Certainly American Gods is part Magic Realism, though also part traditional Fantasy.
It's nice to see Fantasy moving forward beyond the niches in which it had languished for so long. Not that there weren't brilliant Fantasy authors or stories that broke out of the standard molds of the genre, but let's face it: science fiction has roamed far and wide from hard science speculation to space opera to the new wave SF of the 60s to the alternate histories of the 90s. Fantasy has maintained a fairly narrow range during that time, focusing mostly on European mythology in various forms (here I include purists such as Tolkein and origial mythologies such as Moorecock's) and the Horror Fantasy that was pioneered in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Poe and Lovecraft among others.
Fantasy is now re-discovering its vast potential, and I could not be more thrilled. Authors like Ian Banks, Jonathan Lethem and others of the genre are well worth checking out. Hopefully this is only the beginning, and we'll have another three or four sub-genres of Fantasy sprouting in the coming decades!
Some people take their fun way too seriously. The hugos are a classic example of this. It's just a vote by a group of geeks attenting a yearly international party. Your local mayor probably gets more voter turnout in the local election.
See you at Torcon.
No Zen is good zen
In horror: Bram Stoker Award (winner)
In fantasy: World Fantasy Award (nominated, the winner has not been decided yet)
In sci-fi: Hugo Award (winner)
Look at the tons of other awards in Neil Gaiman's collection.
From Neil's weblog today:
Fortunately, we mere mortals aren't plauged by such concerns.