Natterings From Nepantla

The Seiun finalists have been announced.

After last year's Seiun administrators included a complete translation/transliteration for English speakers, I was thinking I'd never need to do this again, but I guess that was a one-off. Here are the categories of main interest to those of us in the West. Once again, Tokyo Sogensha is my lifeline for name pronunciations, excepting one that wasn't findable there.

Best Foreign Novel

• Mecha Samurai Empire, Peter Tieryas, tr. Naoya Nagahara


• Artemis, Andy Weir, tr. Kazuko Onoda


• We Are Legion, Dennis E. Taylor, tr. Hiroshi Kaneko


• Provenance, Ann Leckie, tr. Hideko Akao


• Waking Gods, Sylvain Neuvel, tr. Chiori Sada


• Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty, tr. Takeshi Mogi


• Seveneves, Neal Stephenson, tr. Masamichi Higurashi

Best Foreign Short Story

• "The Circle", Liu Cixin, tr. Naoya Nagahara


• "The Martian Obelisk", Linda Nagata, tr. Naoya Nagahara


• "Liar's House", Lucius Shepard, tr. Masayuki Uchida


• "A Monster in the Midst", Julio Toro San Martin, tr. Yoshio Nomura [Title misspelled on Seiun page]


• "převychování", Jan Barda, tr. Kiyomi Hirano [Original Czech title, since it hasn't been translated into English.]


• "Between Nine and Eleven", Adam Roberts, tr. Masayuki Uchida


• "Cybertank vs. Mechazillus", Timothy J. Gawne, tr. Akinobu Sakai

Best Media

• SSSS.Gridman


• Ready Player One


• Cells at Work!


• Beatless


• Dragon Pilot: Hisone & Masotan


• Planet With


• Penguin Highway


• Bahubali: King's Triumph Complete Edition [Combo release of Bahubali 1 & 2?]


• Pacific Rim: Uprising

[Grumpy anime critic notes: Two shows marred by the inability of the camera to stay away from underpants and cleavage, one that was just bad, one I didn't get to see because Netflix hasn't figured out simulcasts, one charming show that I hope wins, and a movie that's only just now getting to the US. Harrumph.]

Best Comic

[English title for the one which has been translated, transliterations for the rest. Yes, I know Kanata no Astra claims to have an English title for its anime, but it hasn't been licensed yet.]

• Kyomu o Yuku


• Rainman (complete series)


• Girls' Last Tour (complete series)


• Kanata no Astra (complete series)


• Martian Dice (complete series)


• Hitoribocchi no Chikyū Shinryaku (complete series)


• Jabberwocky 1914 (complete series)

• Season preview


• Premieres part 1


• Premieres part 2


• And one straggler

The shows I chose to follow were unusually stratified this season. Once everything got going, kemurikusa. and Mob Psycho 100 were routinely the class of the field, Dororo was a steady midlist title with a pretty face, and The Promised Neverland and Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, once they started disappointing, never stopped.

Critical consensus is solidly around Mob Psycho 100 II being the winner of the season, and I won't deny that it has all-around terrific writing and production values, and would be an excellent use of your viewing time. But kemurikusa.! kemurikusa. is that special treasure that I come to anime for as an sf fan. kemurikusa. has a spot reserved for it on my Hugo ballot next year. Okay, so Mob Psycho 100 II is probably on there as well.

"we did it folks"

(But hopefully doesn't declare victory and go home, because I still want to see those last few States of McMansion Hell.)

My top sf anime of 2018 and other thoughts are here. There really was no competition once Megalobox showed up. It's probably the only anime going on my Hugo ballot this year. Everyone watch that one, please.

It's hard to say how I line up with the critical consensus this year because there isn't one. Megalobox shows up on almost everyone's list, but doesn't take a majority of the top spots. Same for Devilman Crybaby (distributed by Netflix, so outside my beat) and Planet With. Including non-sf shows, A Place Further Than the Universe, Golden Kamuy, and Aggretsuko are in much the same situation.

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to shift to using Dreamwidth more, so let's start with this.

8:01 am: Dude, that is not how you use a piano.

8:06 am: Announcers note all the volunteers involved in making this event possible. I wonder how many volunteers they're down this year because they're working extra hours at JPL for the Ultima Thule flyby.

8:08 am: First float of the day: Honda has managed some spectacular ones in the past but is phoning it in with this one.

8:09 am: First band of the day has gone for "sexy superheroes" with its majorettes.

8:12 am: Okay, can't comment on every single thing. They're really moving it along this year.

8:16 am: Street reporter doing a fairly good job of explaining laminar flow.

8:17 am: ...but the much-ballyhooed water feature doesn't appear to have worked. Cal Poly float still looks terrific with astronauts and aliens rocking out.

8:18 am: They don't get any college credit for this? Outrage!

8:22 am: Most Oustanding Float Design given to a float advocating organ design with an amazing rendering of traditional African woodcraft. ...Slightly awkward that it's covered with white people.

8:29: Farmer's Insurance has won an award for best use of roses on its float inspired by interesting disasters it has paid claims for. Announcers struggle to identify all the animals involved.

8:34: The first out Rose Parade queen. Also the first Jewish one and the first to wear glasses, in case you were thinking the Rose Parade has a history of being progressive.

8:37: A look at the job of driving floats, which despite modern technology still consists of "squint out a tiny window and follow that line painted down the street".

8:43: I do agree that steampunk could use some more color but I think the Trader Joe's entry has gone too far. Much too far.

8:45: "Celebration" is one of those songs you'll hear every year at some point in this parade but not usually because someone has put Kool & the Gang on a float to perform it live.

8:47: Appropriately followed by a band arrangement of "Get Ready for This" (that thing they play at sporting events everywhere and no one knows the name of).

8:54: My team! My team! Quit talking, street reporter, and pay attention to that float behind you! (Someone close to me grew up working on the La Cañada Flintridge float.)

8:59: No TV time for the LCF float this year, at least not on ABC. Phooey. But there is some consolation in looking up the list of winners and seeing that they bagged the Founder's Trophy.

9:02: 24-Hour Fitness hopes to inspire you to get in shape with a huge semi-decayed zombie. No, wait, it's supposed to be a cutaway of a healthy athlete. No, it's definitely the centerpiece of some eldritch ritual.

9:04: I don't think I knew that Pop Warner is an actual person.

9:05: "Books Keep Us On Our Toes" is a theme I can make no sense of, but that truly is a spectacular ostrich. Well done, UPS.

9:12: China Airlines can aways be counted on for something beautiful. The techno mix of traditional music is a new spin.

9:19: Hawaii has produced easily the most colorful band in the parade.

9:20: Dole has chosen to enhance its plant-covered float with tiki torches. How could this possibly go wrong?

9:23: Most exhausting-looking job in the parade: those two guys on the Carnival float having to do trampoline acrobatics for the whole route.

9:29: Segment spotlighting a little-known problem of float design: Getting your theme to work with the parade theme. (Some floats are actually started being constructed before the parade theme is even chosen.)

9:31: Chipotle's solution was to fill the bed of its float tractor with musicians.

9:32: Next up is the All-Izumo Green Band, which is of course wearing blue and black.

9:33: Sierra Madre, a city of 11,000 people, has produced an amazing Japanese garden complete with simulated stonework and aged statues.

9:37: OMG Pern! No, it's Universal/Dreamworks advertising the next How to Train Your Dragon movie.

9:40: The Calgary Stampede Showband is, disappointingly, not stampeding.

9:43: The Cavalcade of Bands Honor band has the slowest, most mournful arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" I've ever heard.

9:45: To commemorate a project in which countless Chinese laborers were worked to death, the Chinese-American Heritage Association has assembled and decorated an entire float, which is usually the work of months, in two weeks.

9:48: I've been staring at this mochi since Christmas and it's finally time to eat some.



9:50: It is not entirely surprising that the float assembled in a mere two weeks has caught fire trying to make a corner.

9:54: Of course it's the biggest float in the parade that has broken down, necessitating bringing out the biggest tow truck in existence.

9:56: ABC gives up and starts rolling the credits.

May 2019 go slightly better than this.

After two days to read Salvation and another to mull it over, some miscellaneous neural firings:

• As usual with Hamilton these days, there are more ideas by page 30 than most authors have in an entire series. And not just random stuff thrown at the wall, either; an early mention of life-extension technologies, for instance, sketches out a whole hierarchy of prejudices about the different options available.


• The real technological star of the show, though, is portals that, constructed in pairs, allow you to pass from one point to another instantaneously. In fact, this book might as well have been called 101 Fun Things To Do With Portals Once You Can Manufacture Them At Scale.


• Speaking of prejudices, capitalism vs. techno-utopian socialism have a running argument throughout the book. The author doesn't seem very excited about either of them.


• Also as usual with Hamilton, characters may wander away from the main plotline for the duration of entire novellas. This is one of the things I love about his work. (This is also one of the things many people hate about his work.)


• Yay, non-binary people! Not so yay, a society which decides to synthesize binary soldiers because they're "better". Although we do get a hint here and there that these are not exactly the genders we know ("Now that the girls had molted...") so I'll wait and see.


• The book concludes with the revelation of a grand plan that cannot possibly work as stated. I will just say it made me think of a famous quote from classic Doctor Who: "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." Yes, that's an awfully big fact that needs altering, but given enough time and sufficiently advanced technology...