Christmas and the Cold from Beyond the Edge of the World

Every year, I try to pick up a new Christmas album to add to my rotation. This year, spurred by a vague memory of a conversation with a friend, I chose Sting's 2009 Christmas album If on a Winter's Night... My wife was a bit skeptical: "Are you sure it was Sting he recommended!?" It doesn't have any of the Christmas standards on it: you'll find no "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" here, much less "Jingle Bells." Rather, it's mostly English folk songs and religious hymns, all Christmas- or winter-themed. 

Happily, I was right about my friend's recommendation, and happily also, it is a good album. It might lack those Christmassy standards, but it still feels like Christmas. For me, one of the key elements of Christmas is a feeling of cold and darkness, and Sting's album communicates that well with great tracks like "Balulalow." Christmas is the time of year when nights are at their longest, and the weather is at its coldest, and my favorite Christmas stories have a feeling of something dark and lonesome breaking through at the edge of the world. Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising is a good example of this: Christmas is the time when the world could be plunged into darkness and never emerge.

Yet it does always emerge. Of course, in a literal sense this is because the Earth keeps orbiting the sun, and the days gets longer and warmer. But it feels like it happens because of Christmas: we band together with our families and loved ones, and it pushed back the dark. That's what I like in Christmas stories, a sense that in coming together, we keep off the cold. It's the pleasure you get from wearing a heavy blanket in a cold room.

COVID is a long darkness if ever there was one within my lifetime. I keep thinking we're emerging from it, but it doesn't seem to be happening. In such a spirit of optimism, we're in Cleveland right now for the first time since Christmas 2019. Only, my wife's brother has been in and out of the ER for COVID, my wife's father and his wife have to isolate for COVID exposure and have shown symptoms, and one of my wife's other brothers tested positive... meaning we can't see him, nor his son—our newborn nephew.

It ought to be that in uniting with family we push back the darkness, but these days, uniting with family is the thing that can spread the darkness. In the horrible paradox of pandemic-era Christmas, I feel the threat uttered in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: always winter but never Christmas. I read that book many times as a child, but I don't think I really understood what it meant until now.

Review: Doctor Who: EarthWorld by Jacqueline Rayner

Originally published: 2001
Acquired: July 2021
Read: August 2021

Doctor Who: EarthWorld
by Jacqueline Rayner

 

This was a delight. EarthWorld is the first proper adventure for the new TARDIS team of the (amnesiac) Doctor, Fitz, and Anji following the trapped-on-Earth arc; Anji was introduced in the previous book, Escape Velocity (which I read back around the time it came out, in 2001), but this was her first trip in the TARDIS. I don't have much memory of Anji despite reading five novels featuring her back in the day, but she is great here. Rayner has an exceptional handle on her, much the same way she does Bernice Summerfield. She is real, funny, and inventive, and her internal monologue utterly convinces; much of the novel is told from her perspective, and the book works all the better for it. I liked the e-mails she writes her (dead) boyfriend sprinkled throughout the text; I liked her interactions with the three would-be rebels; I liked her solutions to the situations she ends up in. I have three more Eighth Doctor Adventures featuring Anji that I am slated to read in the coming year; I can only hope those writers measure up to Rayner.

At one point, I started to wonder if Fitz was a bit flanderized-- he seemed pretty pathetic. But I think Fitz actually kind of is pathetic, it's just that he's normally written by male authors who sympathize with his patheticness. And if he feels flanderized, well, that's because (as the novel delves into a bit) he was literally flanderized in the novel Interference. His existential crisis was well handled, and I liked his resolution at the novel's end.

The one weak point of characterization is the Doctor himself. I liked the slightly off-kilter Doctor we got in the Earth arc novels The Turing Test and Father Time, and here it seems that he knows a little too much about how he is "supposed" to act on an adventure considered it's his first one. But there is a neat moment at the end, where he does some stuff no other Doctor would do, and Rayner captures Paul McGann's performance as well.

All this, plus it's that rarest of things: a media tie-in with thematic depth! This is a story about memory, and the gap between what we remember and what actually was. The Doctor has lost him memories, Fitz is made up of memories, Anji struggles over her memories of Dave, the planet New Jupiter is in a war over to what extent their cultural memory of Earth should dominate them, the EarthWorld theme park is entirely made up of misremembered Earth history, the president of New Jupiter struggles with false memories he's invented. It all comes together quite nicely, without being ham-handed. Definitely one of the best EDAs, and a worthy choice for BBC Books's fiftieth anniversary reprint line.

I read an Eighth Doctor Adventure every three months. Next up in sequence: The Year of Intelligent Tigers

Review: Justice Society of America: Home Again! by Len Strazewski, Mike Parobeck, Mike Machlan, et al.

I guess The Demise of Justice (or Vengeance from the Stars!, as it was known back then) must have done well, because in short order, a few members of its creative team were reunited to put together the first-ever self-titled ongoing series for the JSA. Len Strazweski, writer, and Mike Parobeck, penciller on issues #3 and 5, were joined by Mike Machlan, who had JSA experience as an inker on All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. Alas, this "ongoing" lasted a mere two issues longer than the "mini" that birthed it!

It's not intuitive to me that because Len Strazewski had been a good writer of a retro-set JSA story that he would be the man to bring them back in the present day. It's a very different idea! But man, he sure was.

The series begins with a prologue set shortly after Armageddon: Inferno, with the JSA being heralded at a big event to welcome them home after their years fighting in the simulation of Ragnarok. (In a nice touch, Clark Kent is in the audience, and he is a total fanboy at getting to see the JSA again.) The series then jumps forward a couple months to let the JSA members settle into their lives again and pick up with what they're doing now. As the first present-day post-Crisis JSA ongoing, Justice Society vol. 2 can make use of a lot of the ideas Roy and Dann Thomas introduced in All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. for the first time. For example, A-SS's Johnny Quick reappears, and we learn that since we last saw him way back in 1942, he and Liberty Belle had a daughter and got divorced. This daughter, Jesse, is writing a dissertation on superheroes, and has inherited her father's super-speed (now revealed to be a consequence of Invasion!'s metagene); she quickly (ha!) becomes involved with the JSA as superheroine "Jesse Quick." (Plus Gernsback the robot is even installed in the JSA's new headquarters!) Infinc's Rick "Hourman II" Tyler reappears, now succumbing to Miraclo-induced cancer. The Hawks don't want to join a new JSA at first, being in mourning over the death of their son Hector in The Sandman. (On the other hand, it's a bit odd to read about this series's Wes "Sandman" Dodds, a rare appearance of his post-Crisis but pre-Sandman Mystery Theatre incarnation. This version of the character was being wiped out right as JSA vol. 2 drew to a close.)

from Justice Society of America vol. 2 #2
(art by Mike Parobeck & Mike Machlan)

The strengths of this series are many, but one of them is in carving out a place for the JSA in the present-day DC universe, the first time this had really been done post-Crisis. They fit into a heroic lineage now, in a way that Roy Thomas was beginning to exploit in Infinc but really comes into its own here. Bit by bit, we are seeing the way that the JSA was largely depicted in the 1990s and 2000s come into being. Wally West shows up for a bit, and is wowed by Jay Garrick; Guy Gardner has a showdown with Alan Scott while under the influence of an ancient Egyptian god's hate spell. But Strazewksi also has a light touch when it comes to continuity. Though some Infinc characters reappear, the series isn't bogged down in revisiting, say, Doctor Mid-Nite II, or in spending lots of time explaining what's up with Wildcat's legs.

Another of the series's strengths is its characterization. Strazewksi hits exactly the balance I like to see in a superhero comic. No issue ever lacks for a fight scene-- but each issue usually also finds time for an extended conversation. Strazewksi's writing is heart-warming without being saccharine, and he has a great handle on the present-day JSA members. My favorite touch is that of all the JSA, Al "the Atom" Pratt is the most like a grumpy old man. It's like, of course he is, because he had a chip on his shoulder since his college days... but he was also the youngest of the original JSA by far, so it's ironic, too! The interplay between him and Wildcat was especially great, but I loved seeing all of them in action: Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Charles McNider, Johnny Thunder, and so on.

In the lettercol to issue #10, Strazewski says he was inspired by seeing Buckminster Fuller and pre-WWII woman union members: "the senior heroes of my experience, folks [...] who had been making their statements and bucking conventional wisdom for decades[,] seemed to me, for want of a better word, secure." There's no angst here, just pleasure in a job they've always loved doing.

On top of that we have fun stories and good art. Mike Parobeck has a clean, heroic, retro style, perfectly suited to the world's first superhero team. You can tell all his characters apart even as civilians (not every superhero artist can do this); they have distinct builds and faces and hairstyles. The action is usually clear and clean. The plots are solid: the JSA battles evil experimenters (surprise, it's Ultra-Humanite), goes back to Badhnesia (where Johnny's powers come from) to find out what happened to its people, and stops a deadly hate plague spread by Spectre foe Kulak. I had a blast reading every single issue.

It's a shame, of course, that the series ended so soon; one senses that they were just getting started. Jesse Quick does a little, but not a lot; Kiku, the new ward for Johnny Thunder who gains some power over the Thunderbolt, hardly does anything. Future writers would pick up on Jesse, but I am pretty sure Kiku is forgotten. At the end of issue #10, Starman and the Sandman have only just got back into action. (Starman, by the way, clearly has one son, not two.) But even still, Strazewski, Parobeck, and Machlan carved out a way for the JSA to remain relevant in the 1990s and beyond; I think there's a direct line from what they did here to how David Goyer and James Robinson ultimately brought the JSA back in 1999. (But more on that later! Much later at the rate I am going.)

Justice Society of America vol. 2 was originally published in ten issues (Aug. 1992–May 1993). The series was written by Len Strazewski; pencilled by Mike Parobeck; inked by Mike Machlan (#1-10), Matt Banning (#5), Jeff Albrecht (#5), and Carlos Garzon (#6); lettered by Bob Pinaha; colored by Glenn Whitmore; and edited by Brian Augustyn.

 

This post is twenty-second in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers the Alan Scott stories in Green Lantern Corps Quarterly. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
    

The 2021 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Final Results

I could have watched this year's ceremony... except my wife and I were folding laundry, and for some reason she refused to watch an 120-minute award ceremony for a bunch of books she hadn't read! So we watched a James Bond movie instead (I guess she really does love me), and whenever she left the room to nurse our sick baby, I watched a little bit of the ceremony livestream. I liked what I saw, especially the commentary about the winners that was read as they walked up to the podium; I don't remember this from previous Hugo ceremonies, and it was a nice feature. Of the bits I saw, I did really like Martha Wells's speech for Best Series, and I also thought the Best Fan Writer winner (Elsa Sjunneson) had some good stuff to say. I am sorry to have missed Ursula Vernon's bits, by all accounts.

So what did I think of the results, and how did they compare to my own votes? Just some brief thoughts here:

Category	What Won	Where I Ranked It	What I Ranked #1	Where It Placed
Best Novel	Network Effect	4th	Piranesi	3rd
I am disappointed but not at all surprised by this outcome. It is, after all, the much beloved Murderbot. I wrote in my prediction post, "Clarke's book is good, but I think not quite in the core sensibility of the Hugo voter. So I will guess either Kowal or Wells." So I was right on that... thought Kowal's Relentless Moon was down in fifth, so I wasn't that accurate a predictor! Jemisin came in second, which kind of surprised me, but maybe shouldn't have. I had hoped Robinson's Ministry for the Future would make the ballot so I would have an excuse to read it, but looking at the nomination stats, it was down in ninth, and quite a ways off. Thankfully, we were spared Scalzi (down in eleventh). Novik's A Deadly Education (a finalist for the Lodestar) was twelfth for nominations in this category as well. In theory, a book can be a Lodestar finalist and a Hugo finalist, but it hasn't yet happened. Overall, I think it was kind of a weak year for Best Novel.
Best Novella	The Empress of Salt and Fortune	3rd	Riot Baby	6th
I wrote I would happy see Empress win, even though I had it in third, so this was a satisfactory result... but my preferred novella was all the way down in sixth! It figures that the finalist that most feels like an actual sf novella would be the one not to the taste of Hugo voters. Looking at the nomination data, it looks like Tor.com novellas dominate the long list, taking not only the top six slots, but also seventh, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth. None of the sixteen top finalists are from magazines (print or web) this year; they were all published as standalone books.
Best Novelette	"Two Truths and a Lie"	4th	"Helicopter Story"	5th
This was a strong category this year, so no complaints about the winner... except that the fate of "Helicopter Story" is a great example of instant runoff voting... unfortunately. It had more first-place votes than any other finalist, but as lower-ranked items were eliminated from the ballot, their votes went to pretty much anything other than "Helicopter Story" until "Two Truths" achieved a majority. This was repeated in every round of voting until the fifth, indicating the presence of both a strong pro-"Helicopter Story" bloc and a strong anti-"Helicopter Story" bloc. Alas. Looking at the nominations data, though, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise, as it was sixth for nominations, and only made it onto the ballot by ~4 votes. Good thing I nominated it!
Best Short Story	"Metal Like Blood in the Dark"	1st	"Metal Like Blood in the Dark"	1st
Happy with this outcome, of course! Also I wrote, "I would say that the Hugo electorate 1) always loves T. Kingfisher (justifiably) and 2) always loves self-serving stories about how great it is to be a fan (less justifiably). So I would guess either 'Metal Like Blood' or 'Little Free Library.'" And indeed, "Little Free Library" came in second.
Best Related Work	Beowulf: A New Translation	1st	Beowulf: A New Translation	1st
Whoo, two in a row! This category had three things I ranked below No Award: FIYAHCON (a convention), Natalie Luhrs's vitriolic blog entry about last year's Hugo ceremony, and the "CoNZealand Fringe" (supplemental programming to last year's Worldcon). FIYAHCON placed in third, but 257 voters ranked it below No Award; Luhrs placed in fourth (even though she had almost as many first-round votes as Beowulf), with 358 voters ranking it below No Award; and CoNZealand Fringe placed in sixth, with 265 voters ranking it below No Award. By contrast, fifth-place finisher The Last Bronycon had 211 voters rank No Award higher. This will have to wait until I do my No Award analysis for this year, but at first glance, it's probably the best showing for "Noah Ward" across all the categories. As I complained, there was only one book about science fiction finalist in the category, which is what I think the category ought to be for. Looking at the long list, there were some more of these, including Una McCormack's edited collection about Bujold (seventh, only ten nominations away from making the ballot), a book about Pratchett (eighth), and a book about disability in sf&f (twelfth). On the other hand, the long list also includes a facebook group and a spreadsheet. Let's just change this category back to "Best Nonfiction Book," please.
Best Graphic Story or Comic	Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation	4th	Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over	2nd
I never feel strongly about this category, so whatever. Ghost-Spider had the most first-round first-place votes, but fell to second on transfers: that reliable Seanan McGuire voting bloc always at it, but not quite making it here. Questionable Content was down in eleventh on the long list; I live in dread of it making the ballot someday.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)	The Old Guard	6th	Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga	5th
The hell!?
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)	The Good Place: "Whenever You're Ready"	1st	The Good Place: "Whenever You're Ready"	1st
Up to three categories where my top choice matched the voters'. I predicted Good Place would pick up its fourth (and, presumably, final) Hugo this year, and I was correct. The long list this year has a pretty good showing from Star Trek; the Picard episode "Nepenthe" was just two nominations away from making the final ballot, and there were also Discovery episodes in ninth and tenth, and another Picard episode in fifteenth. But where's Lower Decks?
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book	A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking	1st	A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking	1st
And now, four of my first place picks actually won, which is a good success rate for me, not achieved since 2017. (In 2018, 2019, and 2020, only one of my picks won.) As I wrote, "Kingfisher/Vernon has been a finalist in this category before, but I think it's her year to win it. If she doesn't, it'll be Novik." And, indeed, Novik's book came in second. Looking at the long list, thankfully we were spared Seanan McGuire's Victorian fairy tale pastiche, Over the Woodward Wall, languishing down in twelfth, thank goodness.

This was, of course, a pretty odd year for Hugo reading; with Worldcon postponed to December, I had six months instead of three... yet my reading was down to the wire more than I can remember ever happening before. I was just too leisurely early one, especially once the fall semester hit. Usually I don't read almost anything but Hugo finalists, but with the extra time, I also worked on my usual reading list. The other downside here is that I've only just finished... and in a couple months, it will be time to think about the 2022 Hugos!

This year was overall a weaker year, I think; not as many new, unexpected, interesting voices in Best Novel especially (everyone here was a repeat finalist), and the short fiction was its usual mixed bag. I think I need to be more selective with the Lodestar, and give up on books quicker that are not to my tastes. But as always I had fun, in what has turned out to be my fifth year of this!

 

The Incomplete Death's Head (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 17)

After his appearance in The Sensational She-Hulk, Death's Head was killed off in Marvel UK's Death's Head II miniseries—and as that title might imply, he was replaced by Death's Head II. DHII had the original Death's Head's memories, but was otherwise his own character. I am not so interested in pursuing the Death's Head strand that I would follow any of DHII's appearances. To my eyes, he has a very generic 1990s killer cyborg look, and none of the knowing humor that makes the original Death's Head work. 

However, Death's Head II was Marvel UK's smash hit, and an ongoing series was quickly commissioned, and DHII was dropped into every other Marvel UK book he could fit into. As I understand it, Marvel UK couldn't produce DHII content fast enough, and so they commissioned The Incomplete Death's Head, a twelve-issue reprint series. Its conceit was that DHII, along with his partner Tuck, ended up in an archive devoted to the original Death's Head, whose memories were replayed for them; each issue usually had one to two pages of new material framing an archival story. In addition to reprinting the original Death's Head vol. 1, it also reprinted Doctor Who Magazine #135, 140, and 173, Dragon's Claws #5, Marvel Comics Presents #76, and Sensational She-Hulk #24. (Death's Head doesn't appear in DWM #140, but the story features characters who reappear in Death's Head #5, reprinted in Incomplete Death's Head #6.) The major omissions are Fantastic Four #338, the The Body in Question graphic novel, and all of Death's Head Transformers appearances.

In the normal course of events, I wouldn't pick this up, but I had my reasons. The first is that it contains two stories Marvel didn't reprint in their 2019 Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent trade, one of which features the Doctor and DWM's Josiah W. Dogbolter. The other is that the frame story actually features both the Doctor and Hob, Dogbolter's robotic assistant from DWM. It's actually set during "Party Animals" (DWM #173), which was reprinted in The Good Soldier, so I read it after that collection, even though that's slightly out of publication sequence. I did dutifully read the whole thing, but in this write-up I am just going to focus on the three new-to-me stories. Just let me tell you that any story featuring Dragon's Claws does not get better on a second reading.

The first story I hadn't read before is a simple one-page tale just called "Death's Head!", though many people on the Internet call it "High Noon Tex." Basically, Death's Head goes and gets a guy with his usual style, the end. Cute but not essential. I have no idea what this wasn't reprinted in Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, given it's only a page and Marvel clearly ought to have the rights to it, given the story of its genesis.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #1
(script by Simon Furman, art by Bryan Hitch)

The oft-repeated story about it is that Marvel UK quickly had it made after Death's Head's first appearance in The Transformers #113 was written and drawn, but before it was published, and then published it in various Marvel UK titles before TF #113 actually appeared. Since it featured Death's Head but not the Transformers, that would make Death's Head a Marvel character who happened to appear in The Transformers (akin to Spider-Man), instead of a Transformers character, so Marvel UK would hold the copyright instead of Hasbro. They could tell he was going to be a breakout star and didn't want to be limited in what they could do with him.

I can find no evidence this actually happened. No one on the Internet provides any specific issues this strip supposedly appeared in. Indeed, most of the evidence I can find indicates this is not true. The notes in Incomplete Death's Head #1 say "the original appearance of Death's Head was a one page strip called High Noon Tex (reprinted this issue) which set the tone for the character. Originally, it had been intended as a one-off page to appear in a British comics fanzine, Scan." No mention of any Marvel UK title; indeed, the main thing we know is where it did not appear. As a Wikipedia sleuth drew my attention to, the strip is drawn by Bryan Hitch, who was not yet active as a comics artist when TF #113 came out in 1987... and indeed, it is clearly signed "Hitch '88" in its final panel. As far as I can tell, it actually originally debuted as a back-up strip in Transformers #167 in March 1988, the month before Death's Head made his first non-Transformers appearance in DWM #135's "The Crossroads of Time." So sure, Marvel UK was establishing Death's Head as a Marvel character... but seemingly retroactively and belatedly, no matter what has been claimed elsewhere.

The other omission from the FPA trade is much more understandable: Death's Head #8, "Time Bomb!", features the Doctor, Josiah W. Dogbolter, and Hob, and thus Marvel would need BBC permission to reprint. Unfortunately, it's a pivotal story for Death's Head, establishing how he went from 8162 in the Doctor Who universe to bouncing around in time in the Marvel universe. (It's also pivotal for DWM from a chronological perspective; because Dogbolter appears in it, it's the reason we know that a vast number of DWM characters including Frobisher, the Free-Fall Warriors, Sharon, and Olla the Heat Vampire reside in the 82nd century.)

It's been interesting to note in my DWM readthrough that the idea of a DWM universe hasn't really emerged yet; usually, writers do not reference the idea of previous eras of the strip. This is one of the first times something created for DWM has been brought back later; Dogbolter appeared in two fifth and sixth Doctor strips from 1984, five years before "Time Bomb!" (Abslom Daak was the first, back in Nemesis of the Daleks.) The reason he made a comeback is because "Time Bomb!" is the only Death's Head vol. 1 story (and, indeed, the first-ever Death's Head story) not written be Simon Furman; it's penned by Steve Parkhouse, regular DWM writer from 1981 to 1985, and creator of Dogbolter.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #9
(script by Steve Parkhouse,
art by Art Wetherell & Steve Parkhouse)

Thankfully, this isn't just a keystone story for both Death's Head and DWM, it's also very good. Dogbolter has created a time machine, and he hires Death's Head to kill the Doctor. What Death's Head doesn't know is that the time machine itself is a bomb, so the Doctor and Death's Head end up working together to turn the tables on Dogbolter. The previous Death's Head/Doctor Who team-up, "The Crossroads of Time," didn't work for me because it wasn't much of a story in general, and it wasn't a good Doctor Who story in specific. Despite the fact that this is a Death's Head story, it feels more like Death's Head turning up in a Doctor Who story than the other way around, and it's all the better for it. Parkhouse writes a good Death's Head, but there's a certain goofy charm that only Doctor Who can yield: Death's Head is initially lost in time when trying to find the Doctor, so we get some quick historical hijinks. (My favorite gag is when Death's Head thinks he's found his mother.) Then when he does find the Doctor, he's acting in a pantomime! The cuts between the Doctor and Death's Head in one strand, and Dogbolter and Hob in the other, are effectively done. Overall, this is a nice story, and I was glad I tracked down this series to read it.

As I said, the whole set of reprints has a frame. I think it runs about thirty pages in total across the twelve issues. In the first issue, it's called "Connections," in the second, "Mind Meet!", and after that it has no title. The credits are also inconsistent; how I've indicated them below is how they are given in the book.

Death's Head II and his sidekick Tuck are teleported to an unknown location; Tuck is attacked by robots while DHII is uploaded into cyberspace, and both watch memories of the original Death's Head. Eventually, the original Death's Head joins DHII in cyberspace.

Eventually, we learn a number of things:

• This is Maruthea, the planet at the heart of the space-time vortex from the DWM strip "Party Animals."
• This in fact is set during "Party Animals"; in the middle of its events, both the seventh Doctor and the original Death's Head come to aid DHII and Tuck.
• The archive was made by Hob, Dogbolter's assistant. Dogbolter was destroyed by the bomb in "Time Bomb!", but Hob was flung into the space-time vortex and eventually ended up on Maruthea.
• The Doctor has been manipulating Death's Head's life longer than we knew: he shrunk him down and sent him into the Transformers universe to begin with. He also wipes the original Death's Head's mind of the events of "Party Animals" and this story to maintain the timeline.
  

I mean, it's fine. It does what it needs to, I guess. Like I said, there's no Transformers content here; it's just called a "robot universe." I thought it was curious to establish that Death's Head didn't come from this universe, given that he himself is a robot, though now that I think about it, that might be consistent with what we learned about his origins in The Body in Question, so I guess I didn't think that through enough. I thought it was odd that the vague references to the robot universe aren't actually consistent with the Transformers comics, as it seems like it would have been easy to make them so.

What I don't understand is why this whole story takes place during a Doctor Who one, and why in the process of writing the Transformers out of Death's Head's backstory, they write the Doctor in. One would think that Marvel UK had just learned its lesson about incorporating licensed characters into the backstory of their original characters! Like, this story can never be reprinted now for the very same reason that the Transformers ones couldn't be at the time.

(For an archive on Death's Head's history, the events of The Body in Question seem like a staggering omission... but I imagine that the 1990 collection was still in print when this came out, so it wasn't needed here.)

I am not sure what I think about Hob becoming a gigantic death robot who is also insane. I don't exactly remember how Dogbolter and Hob return in DWM, but I feel pretty certain all this will be ignored.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #2
(script by Dan Abnett, art by Simon Coleby)

Nothing about this story made me rethink my preconceptions of Death's Head II. He is clearly the inferior character to the original, and I don't understand how anyone could think otherwise. His partner Tuck is all the worse thing about "strong female characters" of the 1990s. The bit where the Doctor suggests that maybe she could be a companion boggles the mind. What a clash of genres! I guess I could imagine her hanging out with New Adventures–era "Spacefleet" Ace, though.

Ultimately, I have enjoyed this weird side-step. The early 1990s were a weird, often bad time in comics, and the strange journey of Death's Head from The Transformers to Doctor Who to the Marvel universe embodies that. When the character is written well, he's fun, but I've come to realize he's one of those characters who's a better foil than a star. I'm not sure that Simon Furman, at least, ever figured out how to make him a main character.

Anyway, this was basically it for the original Death's Head at Marvel, until Kieron Gillen revived the character in his S.W.O.R.D., Iron Man and Spider-Man runs in the 2010s. Those, I am given to understand, actually take place before Death's Head's Transformers appearances, as he is still big but doesn't yet call himself a "freelance peacekeeping agent." I'm not so motivated as to track them down, but he did get a miniseries in 2019, which I'll read when I get up to that year in DWM. Until then, it's the end, yes?

“Death’s Head!” (also known as “High Noon Tex”) was reprinted in issue #1 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #167 of The Transformers (Mar. 1988), and was written by Simon Furman, illustrated by Bryan Hitch, and lettered by Richard Starkings. The reprint was edited by John Freeman.

“Time Bomb!” was reprinted in issue #9 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Sept. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #8 of Death’s Head vol. 1 (July 1989), and was written and inked by Steve Parkhouse, pencilled by Art Wetherell, lettered by Annie H, colored by Louise Cassell, and edited by Steve White.

“Connections” / “Mind Meet!” originally appeared in issues #1-12 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan.-Dec. 1993). The story was plotted by John Freeman (#1); scripted by Dan Abnett (#1-2, 5, 8-12); pencilled by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5, 8-12); inked by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5), Sean Hardy (#8-10), Niel Bushnell (#11-12), and Tim Perkins (#11); lettered by Annie Parkhouse (#2, 5) and Gary Gilbert (#8-12); colored by David Leach (#2, 5, 9-12) and David Boyle (#8); and edited by John Freeman (#1-2) and Tim Quinn (#5).

This post is the seventeenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Evening's Empire. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
    

Hugos 2021: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Originally published: 2020
Acquired: September 2021
Read: October 2021

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I do like books where the world itself is a mystery, and Piranesi is a great one. I also like books where both characters and reader have to piece together events from documents, and Piranesi does a lot of that, too. This was right up my alley, and I hugely enjoyed it, from Clarke's strange otherworld to her guileless narrator trying to see his way out of a trap to the glimpses of a strange, off-putting film project. I did want a little more out of it—the origin of the otherworld doesn't really matter in the end—but on the whole, this was a great little tale, well told.

(I did spend a lot of the book wondering if Clarke was a Doctor Who fan because I feel like the novel's villain was "played" by Roger Delgado... and then it turned out a character had published an academic paper on Steven Moffat!)

2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel Ballot

And here it is, my take on the best novels of the year. I did not nominate anything in this category, but then, I am very rarely that up to date on my sf novels. (As always, the links go to full write-ups of the novels, though at the time this is posted, not all of those will have gone up yet.)

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6. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I didn't care much for the first "Locked Tomb Trilogy" book (like so many of these things, it's now going to be four books) when it was a finalist last year, and as a result, I found it difficult to get into the sequel, which rather seemed to assume I remembered more about the first book than I actually did. Up until the last fifty pages or so, I was prepared to rank it above City We Became, since it seemed to me that Muir was trying to do something of more interest than Jemisin, but the last fifty pages are a huge number of speeches where characters explain to other characters their complicated plans, and I found it intensely amateurish and dull.

5. The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

As I said in my review, I was pretty dissatisfied by this novel, especially given the quality of Jemisin's other Hugo finalist novels. Surprisingly simple, and surprisingly little happens given it's a 400-page novel.

4. Network Effect by Martha Wells

I always struggle with where to rank things in the middle. I definitely enjoyed reading this more than The City We Became... did I like it more than Black Sun, though? They are both novels that began decently but didn't stick the landing for me. I eventually decided that I was engaged with the events of Black Sun throughout even though I think it made some weird character choices that lost me, but as always in Murderbot stories, I checked out when the action shifted into gear, so that gives a slight edge to Black Sun.

3. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

I was also not very much into this. But I ranked it above The City We Became for two reasons, one of which I think has merit, and one which perhaps does not. The first is that though by the end of this novel, it had lost me, it did have me at the beginning, which is more than one can say for The City We Became, which never really had me. The other is that Jemisin has won three times before, and I think is more likely to win than Roanhorse, so I am being a bit strategic in putting Roanhorse above her.

2. The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

This was the only one of these I read on my own initiative, prior to it becoming a Hugo finalist, and it is still one of the best. Like I said when I reviewed it, at first I struggled with it a bit, and I still have some plotting quibbles, but by the end I found it the best Lady Astronaut book thus far, gripping and moving in turn. I think a more focused plot has let Kowal say more with less than in the Elma-focused installments, and I would happily see her win again for this.

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I think you can tell that this isn't one of my favorite sets of Hugo finalists, as we only reach the "I would happily see it win" level with my second-ranked finalist. So I do wonder if Clarke's novel—which is quite good—would be my top choice in a year with a stronger set of finalists. It's highly enjoyable and well written and clearly by someone with a mastery of their craft... but does it represent the heart and the future of the genre in the way I think a Hugo Award winner ought to? That I'm less sure of. But it is the best of what we have here, and, as I said, I would gladly see it win.

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Overall Thoughts

As I said above, I think this is a somewhat weaker set of Best Novel finalists that we have had in other years. But as the Hugos are my way of staying on top of the genre, I can't point you toward a more deserving finalist!

I don't have a good sense of what will win this year. I don't think it will be Harrow, which I think has something of a vocal minority behind it; I also don't think it will be Black Sun. Jemisin, Kowal, and Clarke would all be repeat winners for this category, and we know the Hugos love those... that said, I don't think City We Became has been having the impact the Broken Earth trilogy did, so it's not going to be that, either. Wells has won Best Novella for Murderbot, too. Clarke's book is good, but I think not quite in the core sensibility of the Hugo voter. So I will guess either Kowal or Wells.

(I wonder how wrong I am going to be here!)

Hugos 2021: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Originally published: 2020
Acquired: November 2021
Read: December 2021

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I didn't care much for Gideon the Ninth, so I wasn't expecting much here... and I didn't get much, either. This is one of those books where the words seemed to roll over me. Who were all these characters? What were they trying to do? I couldn't tell you. I know from reading other reviews that this is one of those books designed to be confusing... but I was so lost, I wasn't even confused about the things I was supposed to be confused about; I didn't even remember the first book well enough to know that this book was deliberately contradicting that one.

Then at the end, there's like fifty pages where characters explain the plot to each other, which was sheer tedium. I really hope no more installments of this series get nominated for Best Novel.

Hugos 2021: Network Effect by Martha Wells

Originally published: 2020
Acquired: August 2021
Read: September 2021

Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel

by Martha Wells

Having caught up on my Murderbot novellas, it was finally time for me to dive into what was in publication order book 5, and in chronological order book 6, but the first novel in the series. Really, it shares all the strengths and weaknesses of the novellas. At first, when it's Murderbot straining against the strictures of people in authority, it's pretty enjoyable, and there are some good flashbacks showing Murderbot settling into its life on Preservation. I also liked the hook of how Asshole Research Transport returned; indeed, I liked it so much that I think I will steal it for the Star Trek RPG I am DMing. But as is almost always the case with this series, once it switched into action mode, I got bored, and unfortunately, the novel length means there is much more of this than there is in a novella. On the other hand, the action stuff is a bit more character-focused than in was in books 2 and 3 in particular, and Murderbot's character arc has some good moments... it's just that, thanks to the previous books, I'd kind of checked out of Murderbot's character arc by this point, and I find it hard to care again. I can see that if you are already a big fan of the series/character, you will surely love this one too, but if you are not, this one will not win you over.

I was quite pleased, though, that a worldbuilding thing I complained about as regards book 4 actually turns out to have a clever, character-based explanation. I don't know if this was a long-term plan or a clever retcon, but either way, well played, Martha Wells. Still too much damn CamelCase, though.

2021 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book Ballot

The Lodestar Award is the redheaded stepchild of the Hugos: like a Hugo, but not of them. What did I think of the best of YA sf&f? (I did not nominate anything in this category.)

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6. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

I acknowledge that a high school romance novel is very much Not For Me, but even allowing for that, I didn't enjoy that much. The central idea—about the secret brujx who can communicate with the dead, and the main character, a trans boy whose family won't let him be a brujo—is a good one, but this book just rambles with no purpose for a long time. Basically, the main character rescues a hot ghost who also goes (went, I guess) to his high school, and they are supposedly working together to figure out how he died, but they learn literally nothing of use after chapters and chapters of investigations. And then after that slow build-up, the murderer just reveals himself, and the action is over in a single chapter. Most of the focus is on the developing relationship, which is eminently predictable.

5. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

This started okay but didn't work for me. There are just a lot of elements jockeying for attention, and they ultimately don't cohere. The main character is a sixteen-year-old in an Early College program at UNC-Chapel Hill shortly after the death of her mother; she stumbles into a hidden world of Arthurian mythos. Only, it never felt very Arthurian, it just had Arthurian names grafted onto it. That she's sixteen feels like something the writer forgets about at times, and I'm not sure why it's there, except to make this squarely YA. Supposedly she's trying to undergo trials to join this secret order to figure out how they were involved in the death of her mother, but the trials feel like an afterthought, as does the fact that this all takes place at a college. Oh, and there's one of those generic YA romances: there's a hot dude she's into, but this other dude who's dark and seems to hate her but she gets this electric thrill whenever they touch... On top of all that, there's a ton of exposition; I felt like the second quarter of the novel was entirely people explaining things to Bree, much of which washed right over me; I never grokked the magic system, or what the difference between a Page and Vassal and a Scion and a Merlin and a Onceborn was. When another character tells Bree that no, there's an entirely different magic system out there, I sighed a bit, and wished she was learning some of this instead of being told it all. I think this novel is trying to do interesting things, but I did not find them interesting much of the time (things do pick up a bit here and there in the second half), and the thematic elements don't come off in the execution. So I can see why other people might like this, but it did not work for me. Marginally less interesting than Raybearer, really; I could have gone the other way, too.

4. Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

This secondary-world fantasy (one of only two this year, alas) was interesting, but never fully engaged me. I am not quite sure why. The main character is part of the council of the heir to the throne, who gains invincibility by bonding mentally with his councilors (one form of invulnerability per councilor); there's also some complicated stuff about a curse that the emperor can push off with his councilors' bloodlines. Only she's been raised by her mother to kill the heir apparent, and that command is buried deep within here. It felt to me like there was a lot going on, much of interesting, but in a way that didn't entirely cohere. There's a good story about memory (the main characters has the power to access and erase others' memories) and a good story about parenting here, but I think they struggle against the not terribly convincing geopolitical strand. I do like that the book takes place in an African-derived fantasy world, and unlike Children of Blood and Bone, that actually feels meaningful to the worldbuilding; it's not just Avatar: The Last Airbender with different names. I feel like the book, despite being told in the first person, is not quite reflective enough for the character stuff to land. So, definitely more interesting to me than Cemetery Boys, but not as successful as A Deadly Education.

3. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

This didn't seem to entirely delver on its potential; it felt like it ended when it was just getting underway. I think there's a 500-page version of this story that is better than Elatsoe; it's more ambitious and well put together. But I felt Elatsoe better accomplished what it set out to do than did A Deadly Education.

2. Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Like Cemetery Boys, this is about a high schooler who can talk to the dead investigating a murder with the aid of the murdered. Beyond that, though, it's very different, and much better. Though I am not entirely certain the worldbuilding hangs together in every detail, I really enjoyed all the ideas Little Badger worked in here, and some of them intersect in interesting ways, such as the use of vampires. I found the ghost dog pretty great, and the main character was a delight. The main thing that held me up was it felt like the writer's idea of her relationship with her best friend had changed during revisions and not been implemented consistently; there were things they didn't know about each other that didn't really make sense! But this is fun, and exactly the kind of thing I am glad the Lodestar Award exists to introduce me to.

1. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

Full write-up at the link, of course, but this was a blast. Neat concepts and lots of heart; everything I want out of a YA fantasy novel in general, and T. Kingfisher novel in particular. Even though I liked a lot of what I read for the Lodestar, this is the one I loved.

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Final Thoughts

The thing about the YA category is it's a really mixed bag. When I like something in it, I tend to really like it... but when I don't like something, it becomes tedious in a way that's not true of a piece of adult fiction not to my taste. I think I just don't find the current generic conventions very interesting as a 36-year-old male adult. The thing is, if the point of reading for these awards is to expose me to stuff I don't know already but might like, a lot of the time, my favorite stuff in the YA category is something I already know: I already like Urusula Vernon (a.k.a. T. Kingfisher). Usually, there is one totally-new-to-me book and author that really does it for me, and justifies the whole endeavour: Riverland in 2020, Tess of the Road in 2019, In Other Lands in 2018. This year, alas, Elatsoe was pretty good but not great, and then there were three books I found vaguely sloggish. So then I wonder if I should stop voting in this category, but I'd scarcely like to live in a world where I never discovered Riverland or In Other Lands.

Kingfisher/Vernon has been a finalist in this category before, but I think it's her year to win it. If she doesn't, it'll be Novik. The other books, I think, skew toward the tastes of YA Twitter, I think, not the stereotypical Hugo voter.

Hugos 2021: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

Published: 2020
Acquired and read: August 2021

The Great Cities Trilogy, Book One: The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

I enjoyed Jemisin's previous fantasy trilogy, The Broken Earth, a lot, particularly its first volume. Despite being fantasy, I felt it had the doubling effect that for me makes the best science fiction: it had a rigorously extrapolated secondary world, but it was also a metaphor for our world. This new novel is, as far as I know, the first book by Jemisin that falls into the Mendlesohn category of "intrusion fantasy" rather than "immersive fantasy," and perhaps for that reason, I found the commentary much less interesting. The basic premise is that when they reach certain levels of complexity, cities are "born" and acquire living avatars, but there are dark forces out there willing to destroy cities to stop this from happening. New York City is undergoing that process during the course of this novel, but because it has multiple boroughs, it has multiple avatars, who must find each other and learn to work together.

I had a number of problems with the book. It drags. As a friend of mine also pointed out, the reader understands what its going on by the end of the prologue, but it takes the characters over four hundred pages to figure it out for themselves, and to undertake the pretty mundane task of finding one another. And while the orogenes in The Broken Earth were potent metaphors for various aspects of chattel slavery, I felt like The City We Became didn't really engage with the potential complexities of its premise. The city avatars are basically all good, and the city is coming to life is a good thing, and they are a charming team of ethnically diverse heroes; the bad guys are all evil racists. But surely cities—and here my thoughts are influenced by James Scott's Seeing Like a State—are born of the push and pull between complexity and simplification. Cities are diverse places, but they are also always trying to contain and stamp out and systematize their own diversity in order to make it legible and therefore controllable. Without this, I would argue, you have no city. A city planner wants things in neat grids, and is willing to smash those who gets in their way; an American city in particular, is born of stolen land. I feel like some of this is touched on vaguely, but not really dealt with. I feel like there's another version of this book that's about cities coming to life in all their mess just being a thing that is, rather than a thing that's good, and I think that book is probably more interesting than this one.

This is made worse by the fact that the social commentary in The City We Became ranges from the obvious to the banal. It felt to me like it was written by Twitter: the villain is clearly a Karen, and there are definite echoes of the Chris Cooper birdwatching incident (though that actually happened after the book was written). Jemisin's book doesn't have anything new or interesting to say about those topics; it's pretty much all the exact same way you would get people snarkily commenting on it online. There's a particularly risible subplot about evil bro fascist racist progressive artists which completely failed to convince me that its villains were real people; again, it felt like an online stereotype of a category of person I'm not completely convinced actually exists. On top of that, this subplot is resolved stupidly easy; basically someone tweets "help out our art gallery," and it's all taken care of in a couple paragraphs.

Anyway, overall I found this pretty disappointing considering the strength of Jemisin's other work, and I imagine I will only read future installments if "forced" to do so by them being Hugo finalists in future years.

Hugos 2021: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2020
Acquired and read: June 2021

A Deadly Education: Lesson One of The Scholomance

by Naomi Novik

This reads like Naomi Novik started with Harry Potter and worked backward to justify it: why would you send your child to a magic school where it seems like immensely dangerous things are always happening? Then she worked forward from those justifications and built up a world and story around them. I found that quite clever. The main character is fun, and so is her place in the world; Novik does some great worldbuilding here. I'm sure she is a Harry Potter fan, but it does feel a bit like "Harry Potter done right."

One hundred and fifty pages in, though, and I felt like we were just getting started, still building the world, and what this book was actually about was unclear to me. I didn't feel like a central conflict had been introduced that this book would resolve; we just had the general premise of the whole series. Then, suddenly, it was, and the book quickly ran to its ending. I get that it's meant to be sudden in the narrative, too, but the only previous Novik I've read is Spinning Silver, which was over double the length of this book, and used its length highly effectively. Without having actually read the next book yet, it felt like this one had been arbitrarily cut off for reasons I don't really understand, when really this book should have kept on developing for some time. (If it's because of length and genre—unlike Novik's other work, this seems to be marketed as YA, albeit half-heartedly—then why is literally every Lodestar finalist longer?)

So as a 500-page book, I think this could have been great, but it resolves at the point it ought to have been complicating.

2021 Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation Ballots

Best Dramatic Presentation is technically two categories, but I will write up both Long Form and Short Form in a single post.

Things I Nominated

I nominated one thing in each category this year. I decided to nominate a Big Finish audio drama, so I looked back over the 2020 releases that I had actually listened to in 2020 (I range from a little behind to a lot behind with my Big Finish at the best of times) and ended up picking Torchwood Soho: Parasite, which covers shenanigans at Torchwood in the 1950s, fronted by the delightful Norton Folgate, and also featuring good old PC Andy, plucked out of time. (As it's six half-hour episodes, I nominated it under long form.) My guess is that no Big Finish release will ever be a Hugo finalist, though; even if there are a lot of Hugo nominators listening to Big Finish (which I doubt), they put out so much content, it's hard to imagine any single release getting enough nominations to make the ballot.

The only 2020 tv I watched during 2020 was Doctor Who series 12, Star Trek: Picard season 1, (some of) Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, and (some of) Star Trek: Discovery season 3. I didn't like Picard season 1 or Discovery season 3 much, and none of the episodes of Lower Decks that I saw in time spoke much to me. (I could see myself nominating "Crisis Point," but I got to it too late.)

So I ended up nominating what I thought was a pretty decent episode of a pretty dull series of Doctor Who, "Can You Hear Me?", which was probably the only episode both trying to do something interesting and almost pulling it off. It did not make the ballot, however, though a different episode did, and that one wasn't bad either.

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6. The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, written by Greg Rucka

This movie is about a group of four immortals who get in a lot of fight scenes. I fell asleep about halfway through; I don't think this is entirely the film's fault (I was very tired) but what is the film's fault is that I was at no point motivated to resume watching it.

5. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, directed by Cathy Yan, written by Christina Hodson

This wasn't very to my taste. I love the Birds of Prey comics, but this isn't really a Birds of Prey film, it's a Harley Quinn film... though as my wife pointed out, it's probably the most enjoyable a Harley Quinn film could be. I did laugh couple times. I liked the performances of the actors playing both Black Canary and Huntress, so maybe I will like them better in some other, Harley-free, film. Plus... this isn't really sf&f, is it? One scene of Dinah using her sonic scream doesn't really count.

4. Tenet, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

At first, this felt to me like Nolan's take on James Bond, plus some sf elements. Our protagonist travels to exotic locations, each with a suitable set piece; what stopped it from being fully Bondian is that Bond would have slept with Elizabeth Debicki's character. The central idea is pretty neat, and the story does some cool stuff with it; by the climax, though, I will admit that I was confused. Robert Pattinson was a delightful surprise, and I also thought Debicki and Kenneth Branagh did great work. It felt to me like something Steven Moffat would have done... but once I realized that, I also realized that he would have put in more jokes! And of course I have to take points off for that. This movie takes itself very seriously... and also I'm not really sure what it was about beyond the sfnal idea; it's very sterile.

3. Soul; directed by Peter Docter; written by Peter Docter, Mike Jones, and Kemp Powers 

I feel like I always understimate Pixar. I'm like, "oh yeah they're pretty good movies," but then I watch a Pixar film and realize they always have a heft and a design sense to them that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary animation. Things here move and live and breathe and shine. I enjoyed this a lot. I think it's not groundbreaking (it's very It's a Wonderful Life, isn't it?) but I don't know that that matters: good jokes, good performances, good score by Reznor and Ross, and great visuals. I particularly loved the way the afterlife creatures moved through the real world, and the climax with Joe and 22 plunging to Earth was glorious.

2. Palm Springs, directed by Max Barbakow, written by Andy Siara

I would have vacillated a lot on where to place this, but I watched it the day ballots were due, so I didn't have the time to dither a whole lot. Give me twenty-four hours to reflect and I might have placed it on top, who knows. This is a time loop film; I must be a sucker for these things, because in 2020 and 2018, I gave top spots to a time loop story. The time loop is a genre of its own these days, and we're surely in its decadent phase (as Joanna Russ would say) and all the better for it. This is a comedy that opens with a guy already trapped in the time loop for so long he can't remember; he inadvertently brings a woman into it alongside him. You'll know some beats from other time loop stories, but it's very original in other ways and has a good emotional core. Some great laughs, but also some really strong, thoughtful character stuff.

1. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, directed by David Dobkin, written by Will Ferrell & Andrew Steele

I really debated on where to place this. It's about an Icelandic duo with middling talent trying to make it in Eurovision; Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams feature, and Pierce Brosnan plays Will Ferrell's dad. They have to overcome parental doubt, evil bankers, and Dan Stevens's obviously gay Russian in order to persevere and fulfill their childhood dreams. I had a blast watching this: it has fun music and a keen sense of the ridiculous that plays straight into my sensibilities. You have to take this movie intensely seriously and not at all seriously at the same time. I laughed a lot. But, you know, the sfnal content probably amounts to about 120 seconds of run time! Is it consistent of me to ding Birds of Prey but place this so high? So I was prepared to place it below Soul; Soul would be meaningless without its sf&fnal conceit, but Story of Fire Saga would honestly work just fine. But then I was like, "what would I be more excited to see win?" And it's not like Pixar films lack for acclaim. And though I think Soul is good, this was a blast. So here it is.

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6. The Expanse 5x04: "Gaugamela", written by Dan Nowak, directed by Nick Gomez

I have stalled out somewhere back in season 3 of The Expanse, but I have read all the books, and this one is adapted from book five, Nemesis Games, so I had enough context to follow. In isolation, though, it comes across as one of those episodes that's more noteworthy for what happens than how. Big events, but outside of that, there was little that grabbed me here other than the chance to see one of my less-favorite books in one of my favorite series on screen.

5. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 13: "The Jedi", written and directed by Dave Filoni

I am sure this is quite exciting if you've been following both The Mandalorian in particular and Star Wars on tv more broadly: we learn key information about baby Yoda, and a character from the Clone Wars cartoon appeares in live action. I've been doing none of these things, so it's all kind of wasted on me. Still, it works well enough as a piece of standalone tv, just without the bigger emotional/dramatic hook one might want. I do quite like Ludwig Göransson's score.

4. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 5x12/13: "Heart", written by Josie Campbell and Noelle Stevenson, directed by Jen Bennett and Kiki Manrique

This is the series finale to a five-season show. It seems like the kind of show I would like very much, along the lines of some of the favorites of my youth (and adulthood): big battles of good and evil, colorful characters, angsty side-switching, epic confrontations. But watching the series finale on its own is difficult to appreciate. I feel as though I am watching something that could be quite interesting, but I don't have the ability to appreciate it.

3. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 16: "The Rescue", written by Jon Favreau, directed by Peyton Reed

Despite this being only my third episode of The Mandalorian, I was quickly able to grasp the mechanics of what was going on here and why I should care. Despite me knowing what the big surprise was going to be, I still got chills. I did have to pause at one point and look up who all the returning characters were at the beginning, but on the other hand, the emotion of the ending succeeded entirely on its own terms. Maybe someday I will watch this show, but I have been enjoying these dribs and drabs of it.

2. Doctor Who 12x05: "Fugitive of the Judoon", written by Vinay Patel and Chris Chibnall, directed by Nida Manzoor

This wasn't the episode I nominated, but it was one of the better episodes of series 12 of Doctor Who, with some dramatic reveals, cracking direction, and sharp scenes featuring Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and the mysterious Ruth. (What brings it down for me are the weirdly shot and pointless scenes with Captain Jack; one assumes they couldn't get Barrowman on the same day as any of the rest of the cast.) This has an impact, but it's also an enjoyable and entertaining episode on top of that.

1. The Good Place: The Final Chapter: "Whenever You're Ready", written and directed by Michael Schur

At last our long national nightmare is over. In honor of that, I give The Good Place my vote.

In all seriousness... I really liked this? My only previous episodes of The Good Place have been those five nominated as Hugo finalists, which long-time readers know I have found more miss than hit, but this seemed to me—based on that weird sampling anyway—to be a charming, effective, and occasionally moving finale. All the characters get good final moments... plus lots of great jokes (of course I was a sucker for the Radiolab one) and a cameo from Nick Offerman playing Nick Offerman teaching someone how to make a chair. This gave me the purest enjoyment of anything on this list.

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Overall Thoughts

Long Form was a more interesting category than usual this year; I suspect this is down to the pandemic delaying any blockbuster originally scheduled for March 2020 or later to 2021. No Marvel movies; the closest we get to a big franchise film is Birds of Prey. This allows for some more offbeat stuff to rise to the top, which is one of the things I like about this category. Seems unlike I ever would have even heard of Palm Springs without the Hugos, much less seen it.

Short Form is tougher than normal. It usually has a few things that work reasonably well as standalones, but this year literally every finalist is a pivotal moment in an ongoing story! This makes them hard to assess as an outsider; I feel like if I'd seen any other She-Ra, for example, I might have ranked "Heart" at the top, but I'll never know. I am loathe to add more Hugo categories, but I do wonder if Short Form and Long Form need to be split yet again: I don't know what I would call the categories, but with spans of something like 0-90 minutes, 90-180, and 180+, so you get individual episodes, films, and seasons each evaluated on their own terms. Though, if all of these seasons make it into the 180+ category, will there be anything left for the 0-90 one given how serialized televised sf&f is at the moment?

I feel fairly comfortable in saying that The Good Place will take home its fourth and final Hugo. The long-form category is much less obvious to me. None of them strike me as having the "it factor" that will win over (after a number of rounds) the majority of Hugo voters. I don't think it will be The Story of Fire Saga—too weird—nor Tenet—not good enough—nor Birds of Prey—too over-the-top—nor Old Guard—too boring—nor Palm Springs—too comedic. Which I guess means Soul? Pixar films have won twice before, The Incredibles and WALL-E, though both of those seem closer to the sf fan's sensibilities. So who knows.

I might be unsure about this year, but I will go out on a limb and tell you right now that the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) is going to go to Dune.