2008 Hugo Award Results
These results are a few days old, but that’s only old in internet time. Like usual, I haven’t read most of the finalists. I’m pleased to see some winners I have read, though. Ted Chiang’s excellent The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate won the category for best novelette. I wrote about Chiang in May; at that time, his winning story was available online, although now it appears to have been removed. Some other stories of his are online still, though: Understand, Story of Your Life, Division by Zero, Seventy-Two Letters and What’s Expected of Us. They’re worth checking out.
Back in March I linked to an interview with Michael Chabon entitled “Arctic Jews” (also that down now, unfortunately), about his book The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which now has won the Hugo for Best Novel. The premise intrigued me: in 1946, the US Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes’s insane plan to temporarily relocate landless Jews to Alaska passes, Israel loses its war for independence, and Jews emigrate to the Sitka colony en masse; now, sixty years on, Reversion — the moment when the land is to be handed back and many of the Jews in Sitka will have to leave — is just six weeks away. Enter Meyer Landsman, a shabby noir detective, who wants to solve his last case, a junkie found dead in a room at his hotel, before his time’s up.
It’s a story about a murder, but it’s not really a crime story; rather, it explores identity, and uses Landsman as a tour guide into the Jewish land Chabon has envisioned. (I remember thinking KosherMart was a clever invention, but when I googled it, it appears there really is such a thing.)
Though it took some pages to hook me, the middle portion of this book is gold. Sitka, a Jewish metropolis in the middle of Alaska, is just as awesome as it sounds like, and the prose is delightful. Towards the end, the book veers too much into conspiracy theories: the book is part satire, but if you accept the crazy premises the rest seems to be not altogether too implausible — until you get to the end, when the plot culminates in a full-on conspiracy that doesn’t work as humor, satire, or serious commentary. But overall, the book is awesome, you should read it, and it probably deserves its award.
Also, did I mention that it’s set to become a 2010 film, reportedly directed by the Coen brothers? Just another reason for you to read it now. Chabon’s prose practically screams to be turned into film. (But if/when the movie turns out to suck, remember: you heard it here first.)
