My Picks for the Philip K. Dick Award

The nominees for this year's Philip K. Dick Award are:

• A Soldier's Duty by Jean Johnson (Ace Books)
• After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh (Small BeerPress)
• Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)
• The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
• The Other by Matthew Hughes (Underland Press)
• The Postmortal by Drew Magary (Penguin Books)
• The Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy by Simon Morden (Orbit)

For my process, I requested everything from interlibrary loan, except The Postmortal, which appeared at the public library before I had seen the nominees list.  I will fully admit here that I did not read all the books in their entirety.  This is largely because a few of them are so far from my tastes that I couldn't force myself past the first 50 pages.

My favorite is easily After the Apocalypse: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh.  I had run across the title story in the Strahan I got to review earlier this year, and was excited to read the rest.  McHugh is an author I am eager to read more of - she has some unique perspectives, and throws some sarcasm and humor in there, which I always appreciate.

My second tier would go to The Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy (which I read only the first book of), and The Postmortal.  Both of these take place in somewhat dystopian futures, and had interesting concepts driving them forward.  Both had a lot of science and math, and even just as a setting, this will rate more highly for me.

A Soldier's Duty had an interesting concept of a young female precog but it was so pro-military and full of dutyspeak that I was unwilling to overlook it to get through it.  The Other is third in a trilogy, and this volume didn't make me very interested in the main character.  The world seems to be an interesting blend of fantasy and science fiction - imagine characters from Rothfuss combined with interstellar travel.  I'd read the first Mira Grant and liked it better than the second, and I had a hard time sticking to this one.  Plus, zombies.  I'm just not a big zombie fan.  The Company Man is more of a detective novel, and is full of noir cliche.  This is someone's thing, just not mine!

Some authors have had careers defined by the Philip K. Dick Award, and if I wanted to grant that distinction to one of these authors, I'd go with Maureen McHugh or DOCTOR Simon Morden.

The award will be announced April 6, 2012, at Norwescon 35.