The Comeback Trail/Still Going Then?: Ozzy Osbourne – Patient Number 9

When last I wrote about Ozzy in this space, for the Comeback Trail post about Ordinary Man, his immediate pre-pando record (it came out on February 21, 2020) with all the rappers on it, I was baffled by what seemed to be a Santana-esque turn in the work of Ozzy, and wrote about it as such. Two and a half years on, here, I find myself less baffled by it, although, admittedly, it’s not something I would have thought much about if I didn’t have space here to do so.

What we have here isn’t really a comeback – there’s not really a gap, and it’s made under basically the same conditions, with the same producer. Some of the names have changed¹, but the idea seems to remain intact. Where this strays from the previous record is less a gap in time or a change in approach, and more just that they decided to focus on the things that were liable to be more successful for an Ozzy audience – playing to his strengths rather than playing to his novelty. 

¹ although not all of them – Chad Smith and Duff McKagan are both still in there

It follows, basically, the same template – Ozzy with some other people who are not always associated with Ozzy, but it’s almost as though the ideas they chased down were more in the “Tom Morello/Elton John” lane than the “Post Malone/Travis Scott” one. Which, you know, I don’t want to try to be an edgelord here, but I’m going to say that more things should avoid “the Travis Scott lane”. 

Anyway, because this isn’t quite a comeback trail, this is the opportunity to introduce A New Feature, and one that I’ve sort of been kicking around for awhile. As it stands, the only sort of “record-review” situations I put myself in in this space are for comebacks (The Comeback Trail) and bafflement (Who the Fuck Listens to This). Mostly, this is because those are the only times, really, when the previous popularity of something comes most directly to bear on the existence of the thing², but occasionally something just…continues. In those cases, there’ll be Still Going Then?, a feature where I talk about people that haven’t taken a break and havent’ done anything particularly confusing but just…still exist. 

² that’s also why I don’t write one for every reunion/baffling record that comes down the pike – sometimes there are reasons that seem like good ones for coming back, and sometimes the reasons for a record to exist don’t beg the question.

It’s pretty well within the “things that have been popular and/or are manipulated into being popular now” scope that I’ve carved out here, and you can see, if you read the opening paragraph of the previous Ozzy thing, that it’s something I’ve been figuring out a way to seque into for awhile here:  “There’s a thing that happens to vintage-y acts after a while, where their career becomes less about the albums as such, and more about their continued existence.” So, here we have it. 

It also takes the necessary fact of surprise out of it because, really, we’re dealing here with a deathless former reality star who ended his first retirement several decades ago because he didn’t know how to not go about making records. We shouldn’t be surprised that he’s still going, or that linking up with an enthusiastic relatively-young producer fellow wouldn’t give him a new lease on life. It’s also encouraging that he’s willing to exert enough of himself to bring things further into his orbit. 

Whereas for Ordinary Man, the surprise burst of notoriety (from the Post Malone single that kicked all of this off) led to an album where the creative edict seemed to be “more of that stuff” in order to sell, this seems more situated to take advantage of Ozzy’s fanbase – it’s more likely to deliver what’s expected. Zakk Wylde is back, for crying out loud. 

In a way, that expectation³ is an inevitable, or at least extraordinarily common, part of the sort of career that Ozzy has managed for himself. Increasingly commonly (and this happens across genres, and has for a long time), the way to signify that someone, decades into their career⁴, should appeal to a new audience has been to bring avatars of that younger audience into the fold⁵. While Ordinary Man largely worked that way, there’s a somewhat less-direct approach here, and the general philosophy seems to be “what if these people did Ozzy stuf”? 

³ and, fine, the associated pandering
⁴ and, if we’re being honest, well after the point at which their music itself provides a reason to listen to their music 
⁵ call it the Santana model, but that’s just to name the most prominent example, it’s been happening for a long long time

So what if these people did Ozzy stuff? Well, we sort of have to take that premise. For example, one of the most highly-touted features of this album was that there are two songs with Tony Iommi, marking the first time that Tony Iommi ever appeared on an Ozzy solo record⁶. The extent to which this has anything to do with Ozzy seems extremely specious – according to Chad Smith “Tony [Iommi] sent us some riffs on some files…It’s got all the stuff that you would want and Ozzy loves it, and so he’s on that track.” That’s not exactly the spirit of collaboration, although, admittedly, even Tony Iommi’s spare parts are better than most people’s anything. I would assume that Eric Clapton’s⁷ contributions were even lazier, given that Eric Clapton’s entire career is marked by an almost-profound laziness. Actually, given that there was a pandemic for most of this album, probably everybody did it that way, but the Josh Homme and Mike McCready contributions seem a little more organically-formed, like maybe there were a couple of rounds of back and forth at least. I’m speculating, and also if you read this very closely you can see that I actively admire three guitar players in this paragraph, and hate Eric Clapton. No clues about which ones, though. 

⁶ Ozzy has appeared on a Tony Iommi solo record, back in 2000
⁷ long may he burn

Special attention should probably be paid, furthermore, to Zakk Wylde, who remains person alive who is the best in the world at being Ozzy’s guitarist⁸, and who came back to do so. His absence from Ordinary Man was regrettable (if unsurprising – I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with it, either), and the songs he’s on on this one are a reminder that, first and foremost, Ozzy came up singing in bands, and having someone that knows what he’s doing to work with is extremely helpful. 

⁸ by which I mean precisely what I say. Ozzy, you see, is the best at being Tony Iommi’s singer

The songs, in general, live and die on their collaborators. This has, as I sort of alluded to in my previous Ozzy writeup, basically always been the case, and it’s part of the fundamental problem with the collaboration here. Ozzy doesn’t really write much of his own material – lyrics, generally, and he’s credited with music mostly, although how much of that is his own merit and how much of that is his famously credit-hungry and cutthroat wifeager⁹, but the primary songwriter is generally the primary collaborator and, in this case, it’s Andrew Watt.

⁹ look, I’m not shitting on the idea of a wife being a manager here, nor do I think that Sharon Osbourne is a cartoon supervillain, nor am I engaging in the habit, common over the internet, of finding a woman to blame for something being bad. I am, however, pointing out that a woman raised by Don Arden (look him up and prepare to be shocked) that spends an enormous amount of time in litigation is, perhaps, not the most open and honest source about labor division when her financial well-being is at stake, that’s all. 

Some of the guitar players can bear up. Josh Homme playing on a power-ballad is a fun new twist, and “God Only Knows”¹⁰ is better for it. Tony Iommi, leftovers or tossed-off or whatever, contributes really effectively to “Degradation Rules”¹¹ (and somewhat less so on “No Escape From Now”). Zakk Wylde comports himself well on “Parasite” (despite its chorus) and “Evil Shuffle”. Mike McCready is, unfortunately, not terribly recognizable, Jeff Beck does more-or-less exactly what you’d expect (and your enjoyment of it is likely to be exactly how much you think you’d enjoy it), and none for Eric Clapton bye. 

¹⁰ which also has no relation to the Beach Boys song
¹¹ which also features Ozzy Osbourne’s beloved harmonica, playing that one riff he ever plays on it

But you buy an Ozzy Osbourne record because you want to know what Ozzy is doing, right? Well, he’s doing the same stuff he always does. One of the reasons for the very-common “old guy and some special guests” record in the late-career is because, while some old dogs do learn new tricks, many don’t, and the Ozzyisms are pretty much the same as they’ve been. His lyrics vacillate between being funny and terrible¹². At one point he unleashes a full on Jim Carrey-style “Somebody stop me!”, which manages to be both funny and terrible. Good job, Ozzy.  

¹² and, in true ONAT fashion, I didn’t write any of them down, except the one I’m about to mention, so I don’t remember them.

So, in short, there is no verdict here¹³. If this sounds like something you’d like to listen to, then by jove, you’ll harm no one in doing so, but you probably already knew about it anyway. As an entry in Ozzy’s discography, it’s charmingly inessential, but, you know, that’s what most things are. It doesn’t really rise above the level of quality that would give someone not-invested in the work of Ozzy Osbourne a reason to listen to it, and even fans of the guitar players involved are generally going to get a sort of bottom-level, most-basic version of that. 

¹³ that is, if I’m being honest, why the “Still Going” feature hasn’t gotten started before now: I’m not sure about the dismount. 

But, you know, not everything is special, and sometimes that’s what you want. 

A Considered Look at the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Part 20

So, an ongoing feature of the site for the last few years has been a series of posts taking a Considered Look at various and sundry lists of things, and in this particular instance, Rolling Stone has delivered unto me A List, and the prospect of sinking the ol’ chompers into an arbitrary list of a once-dominant institution’s picks for greatness is simply too much to bear.

The list is exactly the sort of high-minded ridiculousness that I’m deeply enthralled by. They touted that they had 300 people vote in a staggered points-assigning system, with several thousand albums in consideration, and tabulated it numerically. 

So does this mean it’s a reasonable version of a consensus list? Do they succeed? Does what they’re doing even make sense? Let’s find out!

I’ll be evaluating every album – all 500 of them – to let you all know exactly how right or wrong the folks that return Rolling Stone’s calls are

Links to the previous sections are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9,  Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18 and Part 19. Previous Considered Looks can be found starting here and here.

In further news: this is it for this version of this feature. This is the final installment. Instead of what I usually do, which is to rank all the things I’ve considered, I will instead, in the coming month-ish or so, be publishing the Ohioneedsatrain 500, so that y’all can see where I stand on the most important issues. To wit: what did I think the 318th best album was on that one particular day.

I think it’s going to come out in Rocktober. Fingers crossed.

Carole King – Tapestry
WHAT IT IS: Did you know that I know people that like this album that could not possibly have had sex with Carole King?

WHY IT’S HERE: Fuck if I know. Bad songs, bad singer, bad dated production. I will say, in favor of Tapestry, that some of the songs on it are better than any of the nonsense she wrote as a hired gun¹. Also, in the opposite of favor of Tapestry, she somehow needed James Taylor to help her finish it. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Reader, it’s not even listenable. 

¹ “Natural Woman” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” were such songs, but the latter is probably the only good song she ever wrote, so I’ll allow it. 

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
WHAT IT IS: It’s probably fair to say here that up this high – and it’s been the case for a couple of these installments – that we’re just mostly reshuffling the same candidates. This is a little less the case here – you have to throw some bombs out there to justify republishing. It’s probably easy to drop Sgt Peppers here, because this is still way too high and everybody knows it. 

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s always here. Its presence on these lists is basically eternal. It’s almost Lovecraftian. That said, the album before it and the album after it are both higher on the list, which is somewhat gratifying. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: It probably is, really, but also not as great as the establishment has plumped for awhile. 

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground and Nico
WHAT IT IS: An album that, despite having all of the truly annoying signifiers of an overblown boondoggle, is pretty much impossible to overrate

WHY IT’S HERE: It is, genuinely, an amazing and unique expression of at least two geniuses, and creates a kind of rock music that has never really been duplicated. Basically every sweaty, overblown thing anyone has ever said about this record is true, and I’m not going to rehash it here, but I’m always happy to talk about it if you run into me in person. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: It’s probably too low, if we’re all being honest with ourselves. 

The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die
WHAT IT IS: The only album Biggie released during his lifetime

WHY IT’S HERE: He did a whole damn lot with this one album, and the fact that there’s one follow-up makes him one of the greatest what-ifs in hip-hop history, which makes a lot of people spend a lot of time listening to and thinking about this album. Also, it really is very impressive.

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yes

Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
WHAT IT IS: If nothing else, it’s Springsteen at his Springsteeniest.

WHY IT’S HERE: Springsteen means an almost incalculable amount to people², in a way that I never really managed to engage with meaningfully, but the title track from this album gives me a glimpse into how it might work. I mean, I can’t tell you the last time I listened to a song from this album of my own accord, but I like “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road”. It’s like a weird shadow world where I feel about something the way that other people feel about all the stuff I’m super-into³. It’s neat. 

² generally people several decades older than me
³ this exact thing – someone I think is mostly fine and occasionally very good that has a rabid and undying fanbase – also happens to me with David Bowie, Tupac and Elvis. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: The title song is great, certainly. The problem with the album is that there’s too much of it. Any time someone tries to copy Phil Spector, they’re probably not getting it right, and this is no exception. 

Radiohead – Kid A
WHAT IT IS: The penultimate top-flight Radiohead album⁴

⁴ Their hot streak ends with Amnesiac

WHY IT’S HERE: Somehow there’s a bunch of people that like Kid A more than OK Computer, but those people are weird perverts. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Oh, it’s super-great, but it’s not as good as OK Computer, that’s all. 

Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
WHAT IT IS: One of the things that I find most interesting in the sort of talking-about-things media landscape, and one of the reasons that I am largely interested in things that have been, at one time, popular, is the album that got weird, muddled reviews at first, and then turned around and, say, just grabbing a random example from my head here, end up the nineteenth-best album ever according to people polled by Rolling Stone.

WHY IT’S HERE: I mean, it’s amazing from front to back and top to bottom. Kendrick Lamar is the rarest of people that, given the attention and go-ahead of the mainstream, uses it to continue down his own path as far as it will take him. This is probably the high point, although I’m surprised it’s so much higher than DAMN..⁵

⁵ that double period is going to make me lose my mind

BUT IS IT GREAT: It sure is

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
WHAT IT IS: It’s been a couple of years since the list came out, and I haven’t revisited the actual magazine copy since then, but I wonder if RS is still insisting that they aren’t named after the Bob Dylan song (which appears on this album). That always made me laugh.

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s got a bunch of great lore associated with it⁶, it gave the magazine its title no matter what they claimed in the nineties⁷, it’s Bob. It’s also a perennial appearer on lists such as this one. 

⁶ my favorites are that Al Kooper wrote the riff to the title song on the spot, and had never played organ before, and that in the middle of the recording session Dylan played the Newport set where he played an electric guitar and people got mad at him 
⁷ No Depression did basically the same thing with a different song

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yep

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
WHAT IT IS: Fucking sigh. 

WHY IT’S HERE: In a lot of ways, MBDTF, whatever one thinks of it as the greatest or whatever, is probably the most emblematic of the tens from the vantage point of the twenties. It’s too long, tons of it is deeply regrettable now, some of it is wildly impressive, it can be a lot of fun to visit, but it’s hard not to notice the things that are wrong with it, and there’s WAY too much Bon Iver.

BUT IS IT GREAT: Look, I’ve never made any bones about the fact that there may very well come a day when I like Kanye’s music again, and if that day comes, this will pretty much be at the top of the pile. Maybe after he’s dead. 

The Clash – London Calling
WHAT IT IS: Probably punk’s first double-album

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s always here. I mean, it’s a thing I’m going to say a bunch more times as we’re at the top here because, as I keep interrupting to say, there isn’t much left to say about some of these. This has been on greatest albums lists for as long as I’ve been reading them, and for probably about a decade before that as well. It seems immaterial that it’s the third-best Clash album, and that the parts people always call out as liking are absolutely not the best parts, but there you have it. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yes, but not as great as all that

Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
WHAT IT IS: Public Enemy’s second album

WHY IT’S HERE: Last time I talked at length about how cool the Bomb Squad were, and how just about anyone who rapped over them would have sounded amazing⁸, but it’s also worth noting that Chuck D and Flavor Flav were, basically, the platonic ideal of the rapping duo. It’s true that PE isn’t my favorite or whatever, but it’s worth pointing out that, during the original phase of their career, they basically did nothing wrong. A bunch of nonsense did come later, but that’s not on this album. 

⁸ I am often surprised/lamentatious that more people don’t make hip-hop records that way. It seems like such a great way to do it! You get all the energy of a performance but all the sonic experimentation of pre-recorded material! I’ve seen rappers do it live, but never on record. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: It sure is

The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
WHAT IT IS: An album that got grandfathered into these lists so long ago, I can’t imagine anyone has actually listened to it in forever. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Well, it’s very long, and the story of its recording is the story of how a bunch of terminally lazy rich people undertook a massive boondoggle. Did you know that a bunch of the songs do not, actually, feature most of the Rolling Stones? Did you know that this album has songs on it that aren’t “Tumblin’ Dice”? I bet you didn’t, and here’s why: this album is bad. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: I like the Rolling Stones fine, in the main – you can find my praise for most of the other of their albums that appear on this list in previous writeups – but man, this album sucks, and I will never understand what people are thinking. 

Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
WHAT IT IS: The one with “Respect” on it

WHY IT’S HERE: There are a lot of folks on this list that were not what you’d traditionally think of as “albums” people – I like Aretha Franklin fine, but she came from a mien and an era where the singles were predominantly what was expected to work⁹, and so it stands to reason that the one of her albums that makes it the highest is the one with the biggest hit on it. I guess. I am, in the interest of full disclosure, the most casual Aretha Franklin fan, and have never made much of a study of her work, aside of reading half of her biography and listening to the stuff that made this list. 

⁹ there’s a lot of historical data here that I cut out – if you want to know what it was, I can tell you, but, like, I’m keeping the word count down here

BUT IS IT GREAT: Sure. “Respect” and the title track are fantastic, and the rest of the album is at least well-performed. 

Michael Jackson – Thriller
WHAT IT IS: Michael Jackson’s Michael Jacksonest album

WHY IT’S HERE: It was all over mtv in the eighties, Michael Jackson is the most famous person ever, he knew how to hire good musicians, and people must really, really like all the excesses of eighties production piled into one place.

BUT IS IT GREAT: No. I will have to go through the archives and see if that’s a reversal of opinion but man, I have no patience for Michael Jackson today. 

The Beatles – Revolver
WHAT IT IS: The one with the song about how much George hates paying taxes on it. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Because it’s the turning point, the dividing line between old Beatles and new Beatles. It’s easy to talk about and easy to vote for. It also has my favorite Beatles song on it¹⁰. So that’s nice. 

¹⁰ “And Your Bird Can Sing”

BUT IS IT GREAT: It is

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
WHAT IT IS: The only solo studio album by the star of Sister Act 2. 

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s really great, but also there’s something about the fact that there has never been a studio follow-up¹¹ make it really stick in the mind. Jennifer Love Hewitt (who was also in Sister Act 2) has released more albums under her own name than Lauryn Hill has. It’s weird. 

¹¹ there’s an also-great MTV Unplugged album, which is why I keep using the word “studio”

BUT IS IT GREAT: It sure is

Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
WHAT IT IS: An album that RS hated when it came out. Mid-seventies Bob is, generally, a case of a deeply rehabilitated reception.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because even though people wanted Bob Dylan to stay as stuck in the sixties as they were¹², Bob is, for all of his Bob-ness, Bob, so he didn’t do that. He would go forward from this record to try on a bunch of different things, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t, but man, this is the time that he stepped in, did what absolutely no one wanted him to do, and made everybody love it anyway. 

¹² in, I feel compelled to point out, nineteen seventy goddamn five

BUT IS IT GREAT: Emphatically yes

Prince and the Revolution – Purple Rain
WHAT IT IS: Dearly beloved, we are here today to get through this thing called “list”

WHY IT’S HERE: Because everyone loves Prince. I will say, I like Prince but I like Prince way less than other people, so it always makes me feel a little weird. But, you know, the odds are that if you’re reading this, you know more about Prince and why people like him than I do. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: It is, but it’s way too high. 

Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
WHAT IT IS: I would rather dive nose-first into a compost heap than listen to this album ever again.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because everybody likes to talk about the fact that everybody broke up. It’s a real underwear gnomes argument, here. I say “but why is it good” and they say “did you know they all divorced” and I say “but…” and they say ‘THE PASSION” and then I fall asleep. In the interest of full disclosure, it also contains something like the only five minutes of music that I like: the guitar-playing part of “Secondhand News”¹³, and most of “The Chain” (which I like better as a Silkworm song)

¹³ I’m baffled by the response to Fleetwood Mac generally, but have only good things to say about Lindsey Buckingham as a guitar player, except for the fact that he chose to use his talents to make some of the worst music I can imagine

BUT IS IT GREAT: Would you believe that I don’t, in fact, think it’s great? 

Nirvana – Nevermind
WHAT IT IS: I tried, for a long time, to think of a joke that would run through the end of this. Here’s why: I have nothing to say about these albums, mostly, except my own opinion. In the case of something like Nirvana, I’ve fucking said it. So, you know, this is the Nirvana album you’ve probably heard the most songs on. 

WHY IT’S HERE: If you’re Of a Certain Age, this album is an inextricable part of your musical firmament, whether in alliance or opposition¹⁴, and for a lot of people, it’s sort of ground zero for rock music. In a self-definition/opinion sense, not a historical sense, but surely if you’ve read this far you don’t think I meant historically. 

¹⁴ either opposition out of alliance with the wave of rock music before it, or the non-rock music after it

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yes. Moving on. 

The Beatles – Abbey Road
WHAT IT IS: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because that’s how the Beatles did it. 

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s their last album (recorded, not released). The songs at the end of each side – “I Want You (She’s so Heavy)” and “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End”¹⁵ are in the running for the rarely-considered “best end-of-side tracks”, the George songs are the best George songs¹⁶, “Octopus’s Garden” is….better than “Good Night,” certainly. It’s probably the most fun Beatles album to listen to, even if “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is unforgivable. I mean, there are a lot of unforgivable Paul songs, is what I’m saying. 

¹⁵ I swear to kevin if you were just considering telling me that “Actually the last song on Abbey Road is ‘Her Majesty’.” I will throw a live cat at you. The spirit of the sentence, not the letter. Jesus.
¹⁶ somehow neither of them manages to be about how he wants to keep his money and never get rid of any of his money. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yes. Except for the two bad songs. 

Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
WHAT IT IS: You know, often people talk about how impressive it is that Stevie Wonder made records by playing all the instruments himself. And that’s true! It’s super-impressive! I mentioned it at the time. But hear me out: his best album, the best album ever made for Motown, possibly the best Rhythm & Blues album ever made, and the best double album ever made, were made by like seven thousand people in marathon sessions under the direction of Stevie Wonder. That’s this album. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Because every song on it is better than any song almost anyone else has ever written. The end. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Yes. 

Joni Mitchell – Blue
WHAT IT IS: It’s everyone’s favorite Joni Mitchell album.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because everyone but me has a favorite Joni Mitchell album. And it’s usually this one. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: I admit that its charms are lost on me, but sure. 

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
WHAT IT IS: I feel like Pet Sounds is always in the top ten of these lists – for RS or elsewhere – and never at the top. I cannot explain that, but it seems to be the way it goes. 

WHY IT’S HERE: You probably already know the answer, so I will point out that, in the use of the studio as a tool, rather than the medium through which the instruments are recorded, and in the use of non-musical sounds, Pet Sounds ended up influencing a bunch of people, especially in noise and dub circles (albeit often by two or three removes), whose records I have enjoyed a lot. That’s cool. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: As with Rumours, I don’t like it at all. But “God Only Knows” and “Sloop John B” are pretty good

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
WHAT IT IS: You already know what this is, so I’d like to draw attention to the fact that I 

WHY IT’S HERE: Look, everybody loves this album. I love this album, you love this album, your mom loves this album, that guy who cut you off in traffic today loves this album, that guy’s dog loves this album. Everybody loves this album. HOWEVER. I bet there’s a non-zero number of voters who voted because it’s RELEVANT. Like, if you really think about it, it still asks the same questions in these troubled  gfvtbnhjufvgtr. 

Sorry, I fell asleep at my keyboard just typing that. Anyway. Great record, probably a lot of silly self-congratulation after voting for it, probably fine. 

BUT IS IT GREAT: Of course it is 

Shamelessly Punting: 25 Things that Turn 50 in 2022

Guys, I don’t know, I’ve never had to make up this many posts before. Things are somewhat difficult from a scheduling perspective! It’s Wild! I have something cool planned for Rocktober, and that’ll kick off here soon enough, but until then: here’s this thing. Enjoy the hits of 1972.

Can – Ege Bamyasi

The Meters – Cabbage Alley

John Prine – Diamonds in the Rough

Big Star – No. 1 Record

Black Sabbath – Vol 4

Silent Running

Randy Newman – Sail Away

John Brunner – The Sheep Look Up

Roxy Music – Roxy Music

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Al Green – Let’s Stay Together

Pink Flamingos

Townes Van Zant – The Late, Great Townes Van Zant

Ursula K. LeGuin – The Word for World is Forest

Swamp Thing (Len Wein’s version)

Neil Young – Harvest

Lou Reed – Transformer

Wimmen’s Comix

The Godfather

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

The Hot Rock

David Ackles – American Gothic

Tales From the Crypt

Fritz the Cat

Gene Wolfe – The Fifth Head of Cerberus

The Best Records of August 2022

Boy howdy, this is LATE! it’s been a busy month. Next month’s will probably also be late. This is how it goes sometimes.

Boris – Heavy Rocks (2022) (Every Boris album called Heavy Rocks is great. I mean, almost every Boris album is great, but this one, especially so. It’s also extremely accurately-titled.)

Kyle Kidd – Soothsayer (The biggest voice in Mourning [a] Blkstar makes a gauzy, gorgeous record)

Nikki Sudden – The Truth Doesn’t Matter (The reissue of Sudden’s final album. You should already own it, but, you know, I’ll understand if you don’t, and this has even more material that’s excellent)

Diamanda Galas – Broken Gargoyles (It’s been a real month for consistency. As with most of this, you probably know what Diamanda Galas does, and if you’re into it or not. Obviously, I’m into it)

Mdou Moctar – Niger EP Vol 1 (half live, half demo, all bangers, no clangers)

The 74th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

Hey everybody! It’s Emmy’s time! Specifically, it’s Primetime Emmys Time¹ which is, as you know, where all of the shows that people are agog about or whatever are honored with, you know, a televised award show. 

¹ in contrast, with the help of some changes made to the program in general, with the Daytime Emmys, which are a different thing. It’s also different from the Creative Arts Emmy Awards which, hand to god, I try to write about every year, and make it about one in every three. This year the Hugos were too close. Anyway. 

They’re trying to modernize the format², which means streamlining the categories presented here and redrawing the lines that mark the differences between the different Emmy ceremonies. 

² although, this close to me writing about awards shows generally, it’s hard not to laugh a little bit that one of the factors that has this airing on a Monday is that it’s during football season, and they didn’t want to preempt Sunday Night Football

I’m sure that’ll help. Don’t you just feel like you want to run out and watch it? I know I do. Hoo boy, that’s some exciting stuff. 

Anyway, television is dumb well past the point of parody, most of htis is awful, we all have things to do, let’s get into it. 

Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special
A true story: the first show I attended, post-pando (or, well, amid the pando, really) was Nicole Byer’s show that was working out the material that would make up BBW, nominated here. It was great. Not as great as the memory and final words of Norm MacDonald but, you know, that’s the way it is sometimes.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Norm MacDonald, Norm MacDonald: Nothing Special

Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Before The White Lotus was the awards sensation it would become there is the fact that I watched it because Mike White is one of the most reliable writers of visual entertainment going, and I’m very glad to see him back in top form.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Mike White, The White Lotus. Do you suppose if his name had been Mike Brown it would’ve been called The Brown Lotus? 

Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
Man, this category is polite. What a set of reliable serious television dramas we’re looking at here. Truly it’s all just so. Anyway, Squid Game. What a thing.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game (“One Lucky Day”) 

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series
There are a lot of really good candidates here, and, truly, some of this is really a triumph of comedy writing. But it’s a comedy-writing category, first and foremost, and so while some of the more dramatically successful episodes in this category definitely deserve praise, I’m inclined to give it to the episode that is outright funniest, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an episode of What We Do in the Shadows.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: What We Do in the Shadows “The Wellness Center”

Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Handily enough, all that stuff I said about Mike White is also still basically true down here, with some apologies to Station Eleven, whose only real crime was failing to be the book.³

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Mike White, The White Lotus

³ well, and casting Mackenzie Davis, but I seem to be alone in that fight.

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
Dude, I’m only half-kidding when I say that the day Succssion is off the air, I’m throwing a fucking party. You’d think I’d have more time in my life for a show whose central ideological stance is that rich people are awful⁴, but then you’d be overestimating my tolerance for all that fucking acting. Anyway, more on the acting later. This is about directing, but the non-Succession parts aren’t so bad. Severance, for example, is the opposite of bad!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ben Stiller, Severance (“The We We Are”) 

⁴ they are!

Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series
All of this⁵ is much closer to my wheelhouse and several of these are things I genuinely enjoy. Since the directing is responsible, generally, for less comedy than the writing or the acting, I’m comfortable giving this one to Ted Lasso, which is my favorite of these, although not always the funniest.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ted Lasso, “No Weddings and a Funeral”

⁵ well almost all of this

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Two shows are represented here – five from The White Lotus and two from Dopesick. Obviously one of these shows is good and the other execrable, so narrowing it down from among the White Lotus women is the hard part. I think that Alexandra Dadarrio did the best job, by having to play, essentially, the most different aspects of a character over the course of the show, although Mrs. Coach was a delight also. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Alexandra Dadarrio, The White Lotus

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Only three from The White Lotus here, but since Dopesick hasn’t gotten any better since I called it “execrable” a minute ago, and Pam & Tommy isn’t actually much better, it’s down to those three again. Once again, everyone did a good job, so I’m going with the person who did the most of it. Including pretending to poop in a suitcase.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Murray Bartlett, The White Lotus

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Now it behooves me to mention something I had not previously mentioned: the categories now are enormous. There are so many goddamn fucking people in each of these categories. And now we’re well and truly into the acting categories⁶, and, well, it’s miserable. Look at that list of dramas. Look at all the tasteful, high-qualtiy acting that we’re confronted with. One of the reasons that I haven’t been able to bitch about Squid Game⁷ to the extent I’d like is that, even as a bastardized form of horror (or dystopian science fiction, I don’t really care about the specific label), it’s still some of the best work here, and everything else is just. so. terrible. I feel like I’m staring into the abyss trying ot figure out which of the people that did which of the Serious Acting deserves an award. It’s exhausting. Anyway.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Christina Ricci, Yellowjackets

⁶ formerly they’d give away at least some of the technical awards or whatever in this space, but we’re not doing that anymore, we’re all in on the acting at this point. Ratings, babyyyyyy.
⁷ or possibly, to a lesser extent, Yellowjackets

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
That said, I’m not going to be the guy who says anything bad about Severance, so don’t expect me to. So there.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: John Turturro, Severance

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
So the Independent Spirit Awards recently became my favorite awards show by announcing that they’re doing away with gender distinctions in award categories, because everyone is doing the same job. I think that’s great, and I also think that the particular set of comedy Emmys is really showing why that should be the case: as things get more and more ensemble-heavy, the traditional gendered performance is less and less common. Anyway, Ted Lasso is great, and his therapist was the greatest.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Sarah Niles, Ted Lasso

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
It’s still great down here (although it does have competition in this category from Barry, which it doesn’t in “supporting actress”, which is fucking weird), but it’s more of a shoo-in in the “supporting actor” category.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Brett Goldstein, Ted Lasso

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
I didn’t make it very far into Pam & Tommy before I gave up on it⁸, but I was inclined to like Lily James, despite my usual protestations about people who play real people. Then I remembered the work Amanda Seyfried did on an even worse show, and decided that was better. That’s how it goes sometimes I guess.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Amanda Seyfried, Pam & Tommy

⁸ because it is very bad

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
I have the same basic complaints about this category, but I like Sebastian Stan a lot, so I’m going to declare it for him and then stop thinking about all of these shows forever. Well, until the series categories, but you know what I mean.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Sebastian Stan, Pam & Tommy

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
In practical reality, where I live most of my life, Zendaya is going to win this category. But, you know, let’s go ahead and light the lamp for the wonderful Melanie Lynskey anyway. As long as it isn’t the Killing Eve folks, we’ll all be fine.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Melanie Lynskey, Yellowjackets

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
I want to appreciate that Bob Odenkirk has layered in a performance based on a character that he’s been playing for a whole bunch of years, but, well, we all know my rule about that. Ah, well, nevertheless.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Adam Scott, Severance

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
I was surprised that they figured out a way to get a second season out of The Flight Attendant, but I’m not sure how much of that has to do with Kaley Cuoco. I’m less surprised they got a second season out of The Great, but much of its success has to do with the cast. It’s math, really. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Elle Fanning, The Great

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
This might be the first time in Emmy history that I’ve felt good about every single performance in this category. I want to say “Everybody all the time”, but, you know, Jason Sudeikis has had an interesting last several months, and his awards show speeches are, historically, great, so I think he should win this one.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series
I mean, there’s a non-SNL option, so let’s go with the non-SNL option.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: A Black Lady Sketch Show

Outstanding Variety Talk Series
It’s funny to me that this is called “Variety” when actually four of them are utterly interchangeable. This is the sort of joke that keeps me out of the late-night writing rooms. Trenchant. Incisive. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Outstanding Competition Program
I pretty much always call this one for Top Chef, and Top Chef has been on a real tear lately, and, frankly, as has probably been made obvious, I don’t have a tonne of time to keep writing this thing, so I see no reason to deviate from my established norm. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Top Chef

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series
My goodness, it turns out it’s The White Lotus. Who reading this far down would have guessed?!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The White Lotus

Outstanding Drama Series
I mean, I really thought going into this that this would be the year for Squid Game, but then, you know, Severance.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Severance

Outstanding Comedy Series
This one comes down, as always, to What We Do in the Shadows and Ted Lasso. I give it to Ted Lasso at all sorts of awards, and season 3 of WWDitS isn’t as good as season 4, but I’m still inclined to say that. For variety’s sake, if nothing else.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: What We Do in the Shadows

The 2022 Hugo Awards (or: a six-thousand word sigh)

Welp, it’s time for the fucking Hugos again. Here we are.

I used to not write about them at all! Some of you might even remember that I once said I had no intention of ever writing about them! This is because they were, for most of my awareness of them, silly in a way that wasn’t interesting. They were long accompanied by more storm and stress than I thought entirely necessary, and, frankly, I found it best to stay away from all of it, and peek curiously at the winners, and move on with my life. 

¹ it’s also entirely possible to remember the last time I said that very thing, also

But then, as previously much discussed², a bad-faith group of dogs decided to try to remake the Hugos in their own image³, and the reflex against that action – the statement, affirmatively, among the Hugotariat that they were uninterested in the retrograde definitions and ideas that grounded even the least-objectionable of the Hugo Objectors – gave the awards a bit more grounding from which I could appreciate them. 

² here, there, everywhere, and including but not limited to one of the actual Hugo-nominated works itself
³ unless you give credence to their post-loss idea of what happened, which is, you know, patent nonsense, but which I acknowledge does present their goal differently than it’s stated in that sentence. 

For the last several years I have, in addition to doing what I usually do here, even voted in the dang things⁴ but, of course, doing so requires purchasing a supporting membership and now, as it happens, there’s precious little going on in the Hugos that I can support. Other than, you know, the nominated works themselves. 

⁴ not terribly successfully, and, of course, I always write these things too close to the date for these particular writeups to have anything to do with the voting – the date to do so has long since passed

So, anyway, they decided at the last minute last year that they needed to take money – with no discussion or warning – from Raytheon to cover part of the ceremony, which is, you know, bad. I’m not going to relitigate all of it, but it did yield what seemed to be the one hundredth sincere public apology from Mary Robinette Kowal, who took over Worldcon at a late date because of the nonsense associated with it before that point (about which you can, if you’re curious, read in last year’s writeup). After all that had died down, it also turned out to be the case that, perhaps due in part to some deeply irregular decisions about counting Worldcon location ballots⁵, the 2023 WorldCon will be held in China, which is, you know, difficult to justify for a con that is trying to position themselves, after many false starts and missteps, as being accepting to all members. 

⁵ having largely to do with there being a bunch of ballots that would have seemed to be without the requisite amount/pieces of information on them

I’m saying it’s difficult to accept everyone that wants to go to your convention when you’re holding it in a country where, for many of the people involved, merely being there constitutes a crime. 

Anyway, that’s next year. This year is also chockablock with the usual selection of business meeting handwringing, and is one of the most infuriating awards programs I’ve ever had to write about. That’s part of why I’m keeping all of this brief – this isn’t entertaining or edifying drama. This is, in several different cases, reminders and/or examples of the idea that there really isn’t any consideration of human decency or having standards, but of an organization that is more than happy, continually, to apologize rather than ask permission, and to undergo a Goethean relationship to forgiveness that is, frankly, disappointing at very best.

That said, I read the books and whatnot, so I’m going to write about it. My low opinion of the proceedings should in no way reflect upon my feelings about the work itself, which is part of what also makes this so infuriating – there’s some truly excellent work here, work that represents all the sorts of things that the world should be – empathy, caringness, not doing whatever the fuck you want and then pretending that it’s someone’s fault for, say, not wanting to be associated with missiles. You know, that sort of thing. 

And so, to guide you through to the best of it, here’s me! If I don’t do this next year, you’ll know why. 

I’m skipping the editorial awards (because I don’t know what I’m looking at when I look at them), the fan awards (because i’m not versed in nearly enough of all of it – I only know the bits of it that I follow myself), and the artist awards (because, really, I have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about art), all of which is as-usual, because some things should be consistent. 

Onward. 

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines)
This is a pretty good field, although it almost always is. I confess to not yet having read much AK Larkwood or Everina Maxwell, beyond excerpts, although I’ll probably get around to at least The Unspoken Name before too long here. They both seem to be doing fine work rather outside my areas of interest. Micaiah Johnson was my choice last year, and while she definitely hasn’t gotten less-great, I’m more into a couple of the other options this year. All three of the remaining categories wrote things that genuinely surprised me. Shelley Parker-Chan’s fantasy-inflected historical epic, She Who Became the Sun, will come up later, but I liked it a great deal more than I expected to. Tracy Deonn spliced together a bunch of ideas, centering primarily on some genuinely interesting Arthurian business, for Legendborn and its sequel. Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow managed a similar feat, although I have a much softer spot for revolutionaries and mecha, so it didn’t have as far to go and, thus, renders Zhao the rightful winner.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Xiran Jay Zhao

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
This was a mostly-fine category. I’m never the easiest sell when it comes to YA stuff, and while most of this is praise-worthy, a lot of it would probably work better if I were, in fact, a young adult, rather than a very old one. I’ve already mentioned that I loved Iron Widow, and look forward to seeing where it all goes, but I don’t think it’s quite the best thing here. I enjoyed reading Chaos on CatNET, mainly because I love CheshireCat a great deal⁶, but the vagaries of it weren’t really up to the level of the previous book, and it was plagued by middle-book syndrome, with a lot of wheels spinning and not a lot of self-contained satisfaction. It was fine. Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth has stretches that are wonderful, and it closes strong, but it’s a bit too long, and it drags through the parts that aren’t working in a way that made it feel like a slog to get through. Charlie Jane Anders’s Victories Greater Than Death has sort of the opposite problem, whereby it’s extremely exciting and moves very quickly, but doesn’t always earn its big moments. Naomi Novik’s The Last Graduate is as surprising as anything in the previous category, in that she’s managing to make a school fantasy⁷ compelling and interesting, and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing how it ends. That said, Jordan Ifueko’s Redemptor is, in fact, the end of a story, and it’s a wonderful, satisfying, complete end that perfectly matched the first book, and deserves all the awards that can be thrown at it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jordan Ifueko, Redemptor

⁶ somewhere on this site you can read my effusive praise for “Cat Pictures, Please”, so this one goes all the way back
⁷ of all damn things! In 2022!

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
I liked The Wheel of Time, and I really liked Loki, and both of those episodes are good and worthy of praise, but “wej Duj” manages to both be an extremely funny episode of Lower Decks and a twisty-reveal situation, setting up the dramatic stakes that continue into the third season, and it’s the most impressive thing here. Especially for a comedy cartoon about Star Trek.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Lower Decks, “wej Duj”

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
I want to be contrarian enough to not say Dune, but I’m afraid that I’m just the wrong kind of contrarian.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Dune

Best Related Work
This category remains something of a mess. Over the years it’s drifted into a sort of “miscellany” category⁸ that has, over time, also come to include a large segment of metacommentary. This year the metacommentary comes from a couple of places. Emily St James’s very interesting “How Twitter Can Ruin a Life” is a longish piece about the former Isabel Fall, who wrote the much-discussed “Helicopter Story” last year⁹, and who was roundly beaten back into hiding by, frankly, some people who should have done a lot better than that. It’s a sad but illuminating piece of journalism. 

Joining it in the meta section is Camestros Felapton’s Debarkle, which is a history of the way that the Hugos dealt with the rise and fall of the Puppies, as well as tying it to rise of that same set of impulses in virulent right wing figures at the same time in the broader culture. It’s good, and it definitely has its place on the shelf of anyone interested in the Hugos. 

Charlie Jane Anders’s Never Say You Can’t Survive is also a collected series of blog posts and, while it was written to be a book in the end, it also reads like something that was originally published serially – there’s a tonne of repetition, and a whole lot of terminology that is used over and over again, which makes the whole thing kind of difficult to read. I’m disappointed to have missed CJA twice as a reader, given how reliably excellent her other work remains. 

Abraham Riesman’s True Believer takes on a big task (the life and legacy of Stan Lee), and manages to do a pretty good job of, if not making it all make sense, then at least putting all of the facts on the board. Lee, an inveterate fabulist, made it very difficult to pick out what things were actually happening in his life, and the order in which they happened, and the extent to which they happened to him or because of him or around him, and while Riesman doesn’t have the answers, she certainly does have the questions. 

Andrew Nette is pretty reliable as a collector of academic or semi-academic essays about science fiction, and Dangerous Visions and New Worlds is a lot like Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats in that regard, only it’s focused more tightly on my wheelhouse. Bits of it are illuminating (there’s a chapter on the gay science ficiton of the sixties that I had no idea about, and loved), some of it is well-worn ground (there really is not very much left to say about Philip K. Dick, it seems), but it’s all worth an examination. 

Elsa Sjunneson’s Being Seen is, if nothing else, the book that I think about aspects of the most, presumably because for all that I think of myself as an inclusive thinker there are always going to be places where I, an able-boded person (especially an able-bodied cis white man) am just not going to consider the reality of not being that. It’s hard not to notice that it’s here, nominated for a Hugo, after years of the Hugos having to reformulate panels and plans and everything else because they’re unable to consider the reality of other people’s existences, but, you know, I suppose it’s not surprising. Anyway, Sjunneson does a great job of combining her own experiences with her point of view on various depictions or non-depictions of things in pop culture, and while I can’t say it’s quite as fun to read as, say, True Believer, it’s definitely more illuminating and useful. I would prefer, as a reader, maybe a 25% reduction in the number of times Sjunneson tells me that I must most assuredly be shocked by the thing she just wrote, but that’s a minor quibble, given how much it’s stuck around in my head since reading it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Elsa Sjunneson, Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism

⁸ the winner last year was Maria Dahvana Headley’s wonderful Beowulf translation, for example, which is “related” by some pretty loose thread. NB that also I called it the rightful winner here and voted for it at the time, because I was still voting last year
⁹ for more about which you can see last year’s piece

Best Graphic Story
You know, I often feel like things are going pretty well in terms of the field of nominees when I’m actually doing the reading, and then, in hindsight, I discover that, actually, there was a bunch of stuff there I wasn’t as into as all that. This category (and, to a lesser extent, the field generally) features some major let-downs. Interestingly, all of these books deal explicitly with the mythology of the worlds in which they exist – Lore Olympus perhaps most obviously, but storytelling is a feature of the narrative in both Monstress and Strange Adventures, Far Sector deals with the character’s place specifically in the mythology around the Green Lantern Crop (this one is, perhaps, the least mythologically-connected), Once and Future deals with stories made actual, literal flesh, and Die is, of course, about shared storytelling and the nature of reality. 

Rachel Smythe’s Lore Olympus is a genuine sensation, putting WebToons on the map and drawing in an audience of squillions for her “Greek Mythology as Teen Evening Soap Opera” comic story. It gets Serious in all the ways you’d expect, funny ina ll the ways you’d expect, and dramatic in all the ways you’d expect. What I’m saying is, if somehow you’re the person who hasn’t read any of this, you probably still no what to expect. It’s not my thing. It’s mostly fine. Some of the art is ok. 

Speaking of ok stories with better art, Monstress continues to be the reigning champ of books that I read to look at the pictures. That said, I do keep reading it, so it fares better than Lore Olympus, but I’ve also said so much about it in the past¹⁰ that I don’t have much left for this one here.

I’m an avowed Tom King fan, and I think Strange Adventures does some interesting work with a character that had largely been consigned to a pile of leftover DC lore¹¹. I’m not certain that it succeeds with everything that it tries (this is another one of the books I was looking very much forward to that turned out to be kind of a let-down), but it does take some big swings, and more of them connect than not. I’d rather have something fail at being ambitious than succeed at being easy-to-digest, is what I’m saying here. That said, I found the beginning of it really hard to engage with (chalk it up to not really having much history with the milieu, I suppose), and it dragged a bit through the middle.

Doing much better by deep DC lore is N.K. Jemisin’s Far Sector, about an underprivileged Green Lantern (specifically one whose ring isn’t very powerful) out in the, well, titular far sector. Jemisin did something that no one has ever done before by making me actually care about a Green Lantern story, which I appreciate. 

The last two remain Kieron Gillen’s, which surprises the hell out of me¹². Once and Future continues to, at least, be a lot of fun. I’m not sure what we’re doing, story-wise, but I do appreciate the ways in which the rules of the world (specifically the idea that once a story is initiated it has to go all the way through its motions) are enacted upon the characters. It’s probably not actually better than Far Sector, but any book with Beowulf in it is better than any book with a Green Lantern in it, and I’m not going to be moved from that position.

Die Vol 4, then, is the clear winner here, by not only wrapping up an excellent series, but by doing so relatively-succinctly, and by not sparing the world of the story, or the characters therein, the absolutely bleak ending that it should have had coming. Excellent work, K-Gil. Do more stuff like this, please.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kieron Gillen, Die Vol 4: Bleed

¹⁰ on account of it being nominated every single year without fail
¹¹ at least as far as I, a person who does not read many DC comics, can tell. It could be entirely possible that I’m entirely wrong, in which case: ah, well
¹² I did not, as longtime readers and/or people that talk to me about comics may remember, like Wicked + Divine very much

Best Series
This is the category that’s causing the most problems, mostly because of a rule that a work can’t be nominated in more than one Hugo category¹³. It’s a whole thing that I’m sure will end, somehow, in a metaphorical face-punch to the audience, and then probably a think piece about it that will, in turn, be nominated for a Best Related Work Hugo in the future. Anyway. I’m being needlessly silly to the Hugos, which is sad because there is stuff that I quite like in this category. I’ve read some of each of the series, but bailed fairly early on the Green Bone Saga because I felt it had too many storylines that I didn’t like, and therefore didn’t spend enough time on the ones I did like. Charlie Stross’s Merchant Princes is the series of his I’ve made it through the most of, although it remains deep on the list of “things I keep meaning to go back to”, and I keep, you know, not getting back to it. C.L. Polk’s Kingston Cycle is, by contrast, wildly not my thing, although you can read me saying some nice things about Witchmark at the time it came out, in one of these very writeups. I’m sad that T. Kingfisher’s excellent World of the White Rat books aren’t at the top of the heap here – they’re very good, but they don’t have quite the same draw as some of the others. Seanan Maguire’s Wayward Children books remain one of my favorite ongoing series, and her ability to continue to create interesting worlds with which to populate her portal-going children is top-notch. But, really, this category is crushed and buried by how good Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series is. It’s one of my favorite series of the last several years¹⁴, and it remains, every time I revisit a part of it, surprising and revealing. Its scope and ambition (there’s that word again) would probably be more ostentatious if she wasn’t so damn good at actually meeting the challenges she sets out for herself. Terra Ignota is really some all-timer work, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ada Palmer, Terra Ignota

¹³ a thing that would ordinarily be very difficult to call into action, given how much of the things involved are nominated for their medium or length, but which also is the justification for why the Lodestar award isn’t actually a Hugo
¹⁴ only time and decorum are preventing me from calling it one of my favorite series ever

Best Short Story
My goodness, these writeups do get long. Ok, anyway. Short story is always my favorite category, and while this category was also not without its (albeit mild) disappointments, this mostly all worked for me.

Seanan Maguire’s “Tangles” is, at minimum, quite possibly only the second piece of tie-in fiction ever nominated for a Hugo¹⁵, and is probably the best Magic: The Gathering tie-in fiction I’ve ever read¹⁶. If it relies somewhat on its world, then that’s to be expected, but I don’t think it actually does the story any major favors. This was fine, but it was probably the first time I had to force myself through a Maguire story. 

There’s nothing wrong, as such, with Alex E. Harrow’s “Mr Death.” I wrote about it back at the Nebulas, and it remains the case that It’s nice to read, and the fuel that it runs on is pure sentimentality. If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s probably the best thing here¹⁷. Harrow’s prose is, as always, great. 

José Pablo Iriarte’s “Proof By Induction” shares part of its title with its clearest antecedent, David Auburn’s Proof (I assume this is intentional, and that I’m not saying anything particularly insightful here), which is also about a mathematician grappling with his father’s legacy, but appends to that the idea of being able to continue to talk to the father in a limited capacity. It’s a cool idea that plays out well, and I’m a big fan of the ambivalence in the ending. I also think it jumbles around in the middle in a way I didn’t like.

Catherynne M. Valente’s “The Sin of America” takes a while to reveal what it’s doing, and, once it does, works like a magic trick – all of a sudden, the whole story was, in fact, there the whole time. It’s a little tough to get to that point – I got there by having enormous faith in Valente that she would bring it all back around, but if you don’t have that faith, or if you don’t like Valente’s writing as much as I do, I can imagine there would be a real hill to climb – and it really is a story that exists to prop up its ending, but I enjoyed it anyway. 

Blue Neustifter’s “Unknown Number” was published as a series of images of a text message exchange, on Neustifter’s twitter. That, in and of itself, is really cool. It’s the only sort of story I can imagine being told that way, but it’s well done. There’s some especially good work done in the characterization of the “two” characters (who are actually one character across multiple dimensions or timelines or whatever), and it definitely has a lot of heart. I recommend it as reading to anyone, and, well, you all know what’s coming next.

Sarah Pinsker wrote a story called “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather.” I love it as much as I love all the other things that Sarah Pinsker writes, and I may, in fact, never shut up about it. It’s about a folk song, it’s about a wiki-style set of comments on the lyrics to a folk song, and it’s about folk horror and, oh god, just go read it already. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Sarah Pinsker, “Where Oaken Hearts do Gather” 

¹⁵ Dan Wells’ “The Butcher of Khardov” takes place in the world of Iron Kingdoms. 
¹⁶ for reasons I’ll not be getting into, there are more works under consideration in that list than you might think 
¹⁷ Although even then you might be better served by “Unknown Number”

Best Novelette
True story: my misgivings about the length aside¹⁸, this is the category with the highest percentage of personal disappointments, so, you know, proceed with caution.

Fran Wilde’s “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” is fine. I quite like the ending. I do, as one might surmise, find it hard to have much else to say about it. I bounced off of it pretty hard, and had to brute-force my way through it (at one point I read it out loud to my cat so it would hold my attention better. If it matters, William seemed to like it. Maybe that should be a concern). I think of Fran Wilde as someone that I generally like, but in this case I’m afraid I’m going to have to recuse myself from stating further my opinions. Really, though, it’s got a good ending. 

Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Colors of the Immortal Palette” is, if disappointing, not surprisingly so – my connection rate with Yoachim is very all-or-nothing and my response to “Colors” is, well, nothing. There are things that make it interesting²⁰, and the central character (who is, in fact, a real person) is somewhat fascinating as portrayed in the story, but it never really got its claws in. So to speak. I’d like to blame being color blind, but the words were the same black as they always are, so I don’t think I can get away with that, and just have to admit that the charms of the story were lost to me. I think I didn’t think of the color-blind thing when I wrote about it for the Nebulas, but when I re-read it here, I noticed a lot more going on with the colors. 

Catherynne M. Valente’s “L’Esprit de L’Escalier” is a modernized retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s considerably better than, say, Lore Olympus, but I found that my favorite bits were connecting up who everyone was, and how their relationships had changed and shifted over the years, rather than the central story of a dissolving marriage. I like the way Eurydice is written, I liked some of the plot elements, I’ll probably never read it again. 

Suzanne Palmer’s “Bots of the Lost Ark” is a sequel (which I did not expect) to my favorite Suzanne Palmer story, “The Secret Life of Bots”. It’s a lively story about the ways in which the humans of the story and robots of the story still have no ability to understand each other. Where “Bots of Lost Ark” succeeds is in being genuinely funny – there’s humans, a ship, robots, and an alien race who all have to figure out how to interact, and beneath the humor, the story itself is driven pretty well. If it isn’t the best novelette here (which I’m saying it wasn’t), it was the most fun to read.

So, back at Nebula time I liked John Wiswell’s “That Story Isn’t the Story” the most – I still like its main character, and what it has to say about the nature of interpersonal power and addiction and codependency, but upon re-reading Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s “O2 Arena” I’ve come to the opinion that what I read before as “too long” was actually laying the road for the desperation and tragedy that come to define the story. I have, thus, reversed my opinion of them, and am giving this one to Ekpeki. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s “O2 Arena”

¹⁸ about which you can see a whole bunch of stuff I’ve written previously, but the upshot of which being that, while I know that nobody actually sets out to hit a word count, a novelette is almost always something that could have been carved down further, or expanded on more
¹⁹ and, given that I write about a bunch of genre awards every year, I sure damn am going to read a faerie story
²⁰ I didn’t have to read any of it to my cat, for example.

Novella
And finally, as things get longer, we come to things that are not, in fact, disappointing. THe Hugos are, perhaps, more prone as an organizational body to the sort of “disappointing nominee”, given that there tends to be less cohesion – the nominating body is “the set of people who paid for a membership and can be bothered to do so”, which tends to attract the sort of work about which people feel passionately – even in the above categories, most of the stuff I don’t like, I can see why someone would. As things get longer, though, I feel like a lot of the ability for it to be quite as wild and wooly drops off a bit. It’s easy enough to create webspace for something strange that works very specifically, but once you’re running off print runs of the thing²¹, there’s probably likely to be somewhat broader appeal. So this is more consistent, if missing some of the magic of the truly out-there. Anyway.

You know, if in the Novelette category²² I ended up having some stuff rise to the top after living with it for awhile, in the Novella category, I had a couple of things deflate from my estimation of them at the Nebulas. Aliette de Bodard’s Fireheart Tiger is one of those. The time-skip-y aspects of the narrative didn’t really hold up to thinking about them. The problem might be that I didn’t re-read it (a thing I often do in the shorter categories), so de Bodard’s prose – the primary selling point of de Bodard’s work – wasn’t as fresh in my mind, and I was left with the plot, which contains basically zero elements that I remember with particular fondness. It was fun to read, I remember. I don’t like much about it as it exists in my memory.

The rest of this field is incredibly successful, and I give all of them a hearty recommendation. Furthermore, you can go on up there and read my praise of the Wayward Children series before I say that Across the Green Grass Fields is maybe my least-favorite of the series so far²³. It’s got a lot of it that works int he same way as the rest of it, but a lot of the middle parts seem a little bit more peripatetic than directed. Read it, by all means, but, you know, it’s not the best one here.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race is a genuinely wonderful book. Tchaikovsky is a little under-represented in my reading history, and I don’t have a good reason for that – I’ve read short things, but don’t think I’ve ever tackled his highly-recommended and decorated novels – but after this book, which is gorgeous and surprising, I’ll be getting into them. A curious villager, a space anthropologist, and a really incredible climax combine into something way more fun than I was expecting. It’s not the best thing here, but it’s definitely the sort of thing I can see rising in my estimation over time.

This year, and especially this category, however, were for optimism and, to a lesser extent, sentimentality.

Alix E. Harrow’s The Spindle Splintered finds a way to retell a fairy tale²⁴, or at least to reshuffle the elements of a fairy tale, in a way that makes me happy, and excited to read more. A sleeping beauty deals with the fact of her cursed existence by working to make the world (multiverse? Parallel worlds?) a better place for other Sleeping Beauties. It’s kind, and humanist, and manages to walk the line between a strong protagonist and any kind of real vengefulness, which is basically what I need out of my fairy tale retellings. The next one is about the wicked queen from Snow White. Can’t wait. 

Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild Built was my pick for the Nebulas, and it’s still great – I’m glad there’s going to be more Monk and Robot books – but it wasn’t the best one here, not because of any failing on its part (I still like it just as much as I did then), but because there’s a book that does an even better job with outlining empathy and the importance of kindness. 

Catherynne²⁵ M. Valente’s The Past is Red is a novella-length expansion of “The Past is Blue,” which is 1) the first part of the book and 2) one of my favorite stories of the past few years. The rest of the book continues on from the first, with Tetley Abednego navigating an extremely fraught journey through the trash island that she lives on – made more fraught by a series of perilous social relationships, which I’ll not get into here. The twists of the story come more or less as they would seem, although I must point out that, toward the ended, Tetley comes to a philosophical conclusion that proceeds accurately from what we already knew about her, and avoids any kind of easy resolution, and shows that, as with Harrow, kindness and optimism do can be concomitant with an unbendable spine. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Catherynne M. Valente, The Past is Red

²¹ everything in this category appears in physical print, which is, I acknowledge, not always the case
²² and, while unwritten, this is also true for the Related Work category, which I really thought I was going to give to Andrew Nette until I realized how much of Sjunneson’s book had seeped into the way I was thinking about things
²³ although – and this is, I suppose, a minor spoiler – the character comes back in the next one and it’s pretty satisfying. The next one’s a doozy, y’all. 
²⁴ a thing I came down on pretty hard back at the nebulas, which is an opinion that I mostly stand by, but its nice to see something come out and make it work
²⁵ one of the lesser benefits to her being nominated so many times is that, between this piece and my notes for this piece, I can finally spell her first name right on the first try. 

Best Novel
And, at long last, we come to the novel category, the one that people are most liable to remember going forward, the one that directly increases sales²⁶ and all that. This was a weird roller-coaster of a year, in terms of quality – each of the above categories has basically a hard line where my interest in the works drops off, and the Novel category is, in fact, no different. As with the novella category, it’s hard to say that any of these are bad – even the ones that I don’t rate highly were still fun to read²⁷.

Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary is sort of the most typical representative of that idea – it was a good read, it was surprising, I liked its all-killer-no-filler approach, I’m glad that it wasn’t as much of “The Bourne Identity in Space” as the early reviews made it sound. Weir’s stories of highly competent individuals in extremely fraught situations are the sort of thing I’m probably going to read every time for as long as he keeps making them. It’s not the thing I think is the best here, but I certainly wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of enjoying it. 

Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun is…not fun. Well, I mean, there are clearly people who are in the audience for this kind of “overcoming tragedy but first: tragedy porn” storytelling, and some of them probably think it’s fun. I am not among them. It was, however, a compelling read. It avoided most fantasy devices – there’s a little magic in there, but it’s mostly an alternate history drama, in which there’s most of a triumph over adversity. I say most of because there’s more to come in the story, and it also loses points for not really having an ending. The actual writing is very good, and, as first noted, it’s definitely easy to keep reading, if not, you know, hard to deal with the constant besiegement of tragedy that befalls the main character.

I didn’t reread all of P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn for this – it’s too long, which was my complaint back at the Nebulas, and remains my complaint now. It, at least, isn’t torturing its main characters too badly. 

As usual with the Wayfarers books, Becky Chambers’s The Galaxy, and the Ground Within delivers the goods. It’s got people trying to empathize with each other, people asking leading questions that lead to excellent alien-life-form explanations, a surprise return character, some shockingly bleak background events, and a touching, emotional resolution. It, in short, rules. If this is indeed the last Wayfarer book, then this is the best send-off it could have had. 

Similarly, here’s what I wrote about Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace back in May: “It was good, although a lot of its goodness felt pretty specific to my tastes and interests, which might be why I’m backing away from it a bit.” All of this is still true, and I suppose there’s something to consider in terms of the way that I evaluate these things: I’m often quick to point out that, even when I didn’t actually like something, there are things to enjoy about it, but when a book is entirely composed of things that I enjoy, I tend to not trust that reaction. I’m kind of a rube, and therefore easy to manipulate, and have, as a result, grown to acknowledge that if something seems like it was made for me, I’m probably not engaging that part of my brain. Luckily, in this case, there’s something I liked even more than Desolation, which obviates me having to consider it any further. 

Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars is the best book about a trans-woman violinist who gets involved with a demon’s curse while the demon is distracted by alien donuts that I will ever read in my life. I was expecting to enjoy it a lot, and instead I enjoyed it consumptively, and very briefly considered writing fanfiction about it²⁸. It’s funny in that it packs a lot of stuff into its narrative, but not in a way that seems overstuffed, or even teeming – it’s all in there, and it all makes sense. The two main stories wrap around themselves in such a way that I keep having to prevent myself from making musical similes. Primarily, and, you know, it might well be why I’m here, it’s about the power of music, and also the power of doughnuts. I’m not that into doughnuts, but I can appreciate the sentiment. This is the best book here, in any category. Go read it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ryka Aoki, Light From Uncommon Stars

²⁶ or so they say
²⁷ although the top ones are, in fact, more fun than the bottom ones. Anyway. 
²⁸ the mentor lady’s boss is terrible, and I love him