San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats

Another of Seanan McGuire's Hugo nominations, this time in her guise as Mira Grant, in the form of her excellent novella San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats. Set in the Newsflesh universe thirty years after the Rising, it follows Mahir Gowda as he tries to uncover the truth of the Kellis-Amberlee outbreak at the last ever Comic-Con. The story combines some clever fan jokes and a note perfect sense of place but never allows this to undermine sympathy for the central characters.

The story of the Comic-Con outbreak is framed and set in context by Mahir's conversation with Lorelei Tutt, eighteen at the time of the Rising and one of the very few survivors of the convention. Lorelei's reluctant relocations are padded out with Mahir's fictionalised version of events based on the electronic accounts left by the other attendees.

Thus, we get to know Lorelei's parents, Shawn and Lynn, as they mobilise the rest of the California Browncoats to keep as many people safe as possible. We get to know the spear-wielding Kelly and store owner Stuart as they try to find a way out. Kelly, aware that things are unlikely to end well for everyone, tries to keep an emotional distance from everyone while kindly, open Stuart always wants to offer help to and befriend that poor doomed people he meets on the convention floor. We also meet Elle Riley, star of a TV show about time travelling cops, reluctantly en route to a panel when the outbreak hits. Finding herself holed up in a replica of her character's office with a couple of newlyweds, Patty & Matt, Elle finds herself forced to acknowledge some facts about her life that she's been keeping under wraps for the sake of her career.

For all that it sounds like it might be a gimmick, San Diego 2014 really works. The characters are sympathetic, well drawn, easy to identify with — making you ask yourself how you'd behave if you were caught up in the end of the world — and ultimately, despite feeling of doom given by Mahir's framing conversation with Lorelei, you come to hope that they'll somehow get out alive and be given a chance to make good on the things they've learned about themselves & their lives during their brush with flesh-eating monsters.

It's not hard to see why McGuire has quite so many things on the Hugos shortlist this year...