Kargadan

The story (see also the Torque Control take) of Titan’s Campbell Award win has made a little more headway. David Truesdale has a column for F&SF that includes the remarks of Elizabeth Hull announcing Bova’s victory. Until now we have had no insight into the reasoning of the Campbell jury in selecting Titan, so this is very interesting. At this point we have to assume the Campbell jury is deliberately avoiding public engagement on Titan’s merits. I’ll summarize and rebut Hull’s comments, and then mention a few other Campbell tidbits that have been kicking around. Spoilers for Titan as warranted.

After four paragraphs of biographical boilerplate, Hull makes her first claims about the novel proper. She states: “The complex plot is nearly perfect in creating suspense while Bova’s cool journalistic reportage avoids melodrama.” While multi-threaded, I find it hard to believe that any sophisticated reader considers Titan’s methodical meatgrinder of a plot to be complicated. Plot threads are played against one another with very nearly all the skill of a summer movie switching between climactic threads to generate additional tension. This does improve the novel’s readability, and it quickens the pulse at the end. However, Bova gives us nothing as payoff. Apparently Hull disagrees, as she calls the novel “compelling”. I powered through Titan while taking a break from Little, Big, so my own experience of the novel was ‘compelling’ as well, it is a quick read and there was a time there where I thought Bova would show an interest in accomplishing something with the science of Titan, but he never did.

When I first read the text of Hull’s remarks, I was struck by the strength with which she sung the virtues of Titan, much of which depends on her enthusiastic phrasing of banalities (half of the characters are female, the revolution is nigh), to absurd up-is-downism presented in a measured and comforting tone. The themes she praises so much are articulated only via the expediency of the author rendering his characters improbably stupid, and in so doing stereotyping at least some of them. She praises the fact that the story’s nominal bad actors have motivations which allow them to see themselves as acting properly. Weak. Surely we expect that hurdle to be cleared by any novel contending for the year’s best in the sf field? Hull concludes by relating an anecdote in which she reads some science articles about tholins on Titan, which she attributes to the motivating power of Titan. A novel which barely touches on science, and when it does presents cartoonish images in place of innovative imaginings.

I can see the novel Hull is praising, but her sketch of its merits exhausts the depth of Titan’s examination of the issues in just a handful of words. She’s praised all that can be, wrung the book dry of its merits as considered with a maximum of charity, and skated over ice well-cracked and buckling in the process. To anyone who has read widely in the sf novels of 2006, Titan remains a ludicrous choice.

In another Campbell update, I wrested some further administrative details from Chris McKitterick. It remains unclear who, if anyone, on the Campbell jury can step forward to make an argument for Titan with a straight face. One that does not treat the novel as an exceptionally precocious twelve year-old, carefully isolated from discussion of the competing adult works.

While poking around for more internet discussion of the Campbell, I found a post from SF Diplomat that makes mention of the controvery in his third point ‘Audiences’. While it is true that the sf community is fragmented, I made a concerted effort to find advocates for Titan. If someone else can find them, please let me know.

We remain now where we began since the announcement of the Campbell 2006 winner: awaiting some manner of explanation for a decision that seems to have destroyed the award’s credibility.