SFF Hugo Award Winner - NK Jemison

[Rhea]

A book club friend posted this link and since I love Science Fiction Fantasy, I immediately went to read it. It sounds so exciting, love the idea of a SFF book that works to get the social psychology of the underdog actually right. I love books by female and minority authors because their perspective includes important story lines that white males often (but not always) just leave out. Leaving me to ask as I read, "wait, they wouldn't do that. You don't do that when you've been legally oppressed for generations!" So I'm excited to explore this author and this book...

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/09/nk-jemisin-hugo-award-conversation/498497/

Last week, the World Science Fiction society named N.K. Jemisin the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, perhaps the highest honor for science-fiction and fantasy novels. Her winning work, The Fifth Season, has also been nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award, and it joins Jemisin’s collection of feted novels in the speculative fiction super-genre. Even among the titans of black science-fiction and fantasy writers, including the greats Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Jemisin’s achievement is singular in the 60-plus years of the Hugos.

The Fifth Season is a stunning piece of speculative-fiction work, and it accomplishes the one thing that is so difficult in a field dominated by tropes: innovation, in spades. A rich tale of earth-moving superhumans set in a dystopian world of regular disasters, The Fifth Season manages to incorporate the deep internal cosmologies, mythologies, and complex magic systems that genre readers have come to expect, in a framework that also asks thoroughly modern questions about oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Its characters are a slate of people of different colors and motivations who don’t often appear in a field still dominated by white men and their protagonist avatars. The Fifth Season’s sequel, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, continues its dive into magic, science, and the depths of humanity.

 

[purple_kathryn]

the sad and rabid puppies will be even sadder & rabider

On a book forum I visit i saw a sad puppy supporter lamenting that there wasn't any sci-fi/fantasy for white conservative males any more

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Thanks for this tip. I've just asked the library to put a copy on hold for me.

 

[tantric]

N.K. Jemisin is the first black woman to get this award because Octavia Butler was *wronged*. Her Lilith's Brood trilogy was much more powerful and politically relevant, without being even slightly preachy.

Throughout the Xenogenesis series themes of sexuality, gender, race, and species are explored. The Oankali believe that humans have an inevitable self-destructive conflict between their high intelligence and their hierarchical natures. According to the Oankali this is what caused the war that almost ended the human race and this is why they cannot leave the humans alone. Lilith and the Oankali-human hybrids are constantly battling with this inner conflict. According to TOR.com's Erika Nelson[2] the trilogy parallels the story of African slaves in America and the conflict that latter generations of African Americans feel regarding their integration into American society. The human-oankali hybrids feel that they have somehow betrayed their human side by integrating into Oankali society, but at the same time, because of the vast power imbalance, they never really had another viable option. This theme is again acknowledged by Timothy Laurie of the University of Melbourne, who contrasts the common nurturing image of womanhood with Lilith's drive to survive at any cost, even if it mean sacrificing some of what she believes it means to be human

 

[spikepipsqueak]

A book club friend posted this link and since I love Science Fiction Fantasy, I immediately went to read it. It sounds so exciting, love the idea of a SFF book that works to get the social psychology of the underdog actually right. I love books by female and minority authors because their perspective includes important story lines that white males often (but not always) just leave out. Leaving me to ask as I read, "wait, they wouldn't do that. You don't do that when you've been legally oppressed for generations!" So I'm excited to explore this author and this book...

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/09/nk-jemisin-hugo-award-conversation/498497/

Last week, the World Science Fiction society named N.K. Jemisin the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, perhaps the highest honor for science-fiction and fantasy novels. Her winning work, The Fifth Season, has also been nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award, and it joins Jemisin’s collection of feted novels in the speculative fiction super-genre. Even among the titans of black science-fiction and fantasy writers, including the greats Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Jemisin’s achievement is singular in the 60-plus years of the Hugos.

The Fifth Season is a stunning piece of speculative-fiction work, and it accomplishes the one thing that is so difficult in a field dominated by tropes: innovation, in spades. A rich tale of earth-moving superhumans set in a dystopian world of regular disasters, The Fifth Season manages to incorporate the deep internal cosmologies, mythologies, and complex magic systems that genre readers have come to expect, in a framework that also asks thoroughly modern questions about oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Its characters are a slate of people of different colors and motivations who don’t often appear in a field still dominated by white men and their protagonist avatars. The Fifth Season’s sequel, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, continues its dive into magic, science, and the depths of humanity.

Just read it. Thanks again for the tip.

There had BETTER be a sequel.