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primeidealI'm pretty sure I found this by scanning through past Hugo shortlists, got intrigued by "innings," saw that it indeed was in the baseball sense. Bishop is primarily a speculative fiction writer, but the speculative element in this one takes a while to be revealed fully, I won't give outright spoilers.
I will say, however, that while "Spinning Silver" does a good job of being "not a straight-up retelling, but an original story based on the Rumplestiltskin lore, albeit set in a world where the fairy tale of Rumplestiltskin already exists," Brittle Innings pushed my suspension of disbelief in terms of "it's based on the lore of X, but also, it's in a world where X exists as a fictional canon." I think it would have been more "plausible" as "1943 much like ours, except X does not exist as a fictional canon, and also oh bleep X is real."
The frame-story prologue sets up the premise: in the 1980s, Danny Boles is an accomplished baseball scout. A reporter wants to write a book about his scouting career, but Danny is more interested in writing a book about the 1943 season, when he played for the Phillies' class C affiliate in rural Georgia as a seventeen-year-old. (The farm system has been reorganized over time, so there's no such thing as Class C anymore.) The prologue gives away that he was called up to the Phillies, but suffered a career-ending injury at the end of the season before he could play in the majors. The reporter isn't really interested in this, but Danny insists that his story is important and needs to be told. The edition I read also had a foreword by Elizabeth Hand, which hints a little more at some of the somber themes ahead.
"Brittle Innings" is not an easy read. Here is a non-comprehensive list of some content notes that readers might want to be aware of, "arson murder and jaywalking" style:
rape, familial abuse, lots of racism (including instances of discriminatory, segregationist policies, as well as eg. epithets and racial slurs used for different nationalities and ethnicities), ableism, infidelity, child death, prostitution, underage sex, anti-gay slurs, humiliating a love interest to test their devotion, medical malpractice, dismemberment, graphic depictions of walrus sex, self-mutilation, suicide, eye dialect. Yeah.
Danny spends much of the early chapters of the book mute, and at other times, has a stammer. We know from the frame story that this won't last forever (although he does have an operation for cancer that gives him a "robot voice" instead). In part, this allows an effective contrast between young Danny, who can't speak but observes everything around him, and old Danny-as-narrator to namedrop his 1940s pop culture allusions. Sometimes, however, it turns into "does anyone really talk like this?" asides:
Some dramatic irony here, because at the time the book was written (and the frame story is set). the major league home run record was held by Henry "Hank" Aaron. Aaron, a black man, played much of his career in Atlanta, in the deep South. Which is a place that has historically not been welcoming to black people.
This brings us to Darius Satterfield, the bus driver/assistant coach of the Highbridge Hellbenders. Darius is much more skillful than any of the Class C players, but because of the racist policies of the league and society in general, he isn't allowed to play.
One of the common tropes associated with baseball is "fathers and sons"--think "Field of Dreams"--and that mythos is important here, when it comes to protagonists who have difficult relationships with their father figures. Danny's dad taught him how to play ball, so he's not completely irredeemable--but he causes a lot of trouble for Danny and his mom, even when he's not around. Henry's father figure is long-dead, but Henry still has lots of complicated feelings about him. Knowing that the foreword set up Darius as another tragic character gave me a sense of where his plotline was going, with these themes in mind. Actually, Darius' fate--while somewhat ambiguous--isn't as dire as you might guess from that. Yeah, there's a lot of arbitrary cruelty in the world, but also, it's 1943 and people were being killed all over the place. There is a different, less prominent character, who meets a more cruel fate, but it feels like overdramatic pathos at that point.
The ballplayers' and manager's voices can be very funny, especially when they're holding kangaroo court (which is a thing that real minor leaguers do: see "The Bullpen Gospels" by Dirk Hayhurst for a contemporary depiction) or composing doggerel on the fly. And the description of the promotions/discounts at the ballpark ("Kitchen Fats for Victory Night followed Friday’s Scrap Metal Collection Night") were also very amusing.
The saying goes that "living well is the best revenge." In the context of "fathers, sons, and baseball," and "people who have good reason to take violent revenge on those who have wronged them, even when it's not prudent to so do," you might wonder if any of these characters will become fathers or step-fathers in their own right, and try to be better fathers to the next generation than their fathers were to them. Maybe Danny's accomplishments as a scout are meant to show that he is paying it forward to the next generation. But we don't really see that. In fact, one of the sympathetic minor characters chose not to have kids because he didn't want to risk passing on a hereditary disease: ‘I’m here; I have to make do. The never-was aint, and don’t. Why take the never-was and afflict it?’ There's nothing wrong with choosing not to have kids, but this could have been a way to show Danny, or someone else, breaking the cycle.
Instead, while Jumbo is the protagonist of his own POV sections, the main narrative is more things happening to Danny than his own agency. Baseball can be fun; speculative fiction can be fun; but I'm not sure the fun aspects make up for the bleakness here.
Bingo: there's a lot! Dreams (creepy but mundane), Prologue, Character with a Disability, Published in the 1990s, Small Town. Arguably Multi-POV if you count the frame story.
I will say, however, that while "Spinning Silver" does a good job of being "not a straight-up retelling, but an original story based on the Rumplestiltskin lore, albeit set in a world where the fairy tale of Rumplestiltskin already exists," Brittle Innings pushed my suspension of disbelief in terms of "it's based on the lore of X, but also, it's in a world where X exists as a fictional canon." I think it would have been more "plausible" as "1943 much like ours, except X does not exist as a fictional canon, and also oh bleep X is real."
The frame-story prologue sets up the premise: in the 1980s, Danny Boles is an accomplished baseball scout. A reporter wants to write a book about his scouting career, but Danny is more interested in writing a book about the 1943 season, when he played for the Phillies' class C affiliate in rural Georgia as a seventeen-year-old. (The farm system has been reorganized over time, so there's no such thing as Class C anymore.) The prologue gives away that he was called up to the Phillies, but suffered a career-ending injury at the end of the season before he could play in the majors. The reporter isn't really interested in this, but Danny insists that his story is important and needs to be told. The edition I read also had a foreword by Elizabeth Hand, which hints a little more at some of the somber themes ahead.
"Brittle Innings" is not an easy read. Here is a non-comprehensive list of some content notes that readers might want to be aware of, "arson murder and jaywalking" style:
rape, familial abuse, lots of racism (including instances of discriminatory, segregationist policies, as well as eg. epithets and racial slurs used for different nationalities and ethnicities), ableism, infidelity, child death, prostitution, underage sex, anti-gay slurs, humiliating a love interest to test their devotion, medical malpractice, dismemberment, graphic depictions of walrus sex, self-mutilation, suicide, eye dialect. Yeah.
Danny spends much of the early chapters of the book mute, and at other times, has a stammer. We know from the frame story that this won't last forever (although he does have an operation for cancer that gives him a "robot voice" instead). In part, this allows an effective contrast between young Danny, who can't speak but observes everything around him, and old Danny-as-narrator to namedrop his 1940s pop culture allusions. Sometimes, however, it turns into "does anyone really talk like this?" asides:
That spring I had thirty-six bingers in seventy-five at bats, including a game against a semipro oil-company squad that didn’t count in our division standings. A .480 average, seventy points higher than Ted Williams hit when he became the first major leaguer since Rogers Hornsby to pass .400.
This is supposed to be Danny's teammate introducing "Jumbo" Hank Clerval, Danny's new roommate. I'd maybe buy it as Danny's reminiscences, but as dialogue?
“Yeah, he’s big. Six-ten, seven, maybe seven-two. Hard to say. He sort of slouches. Taller than Howie Schultz, though. Schultz, the kid who plays first for Brooklyn. Sportswriters call him The Steeple. Got nixed for military service for being too tall. S one reason Mister JayMac hurried to sign Clerval—the Army wouldn’t come calling. A better reason is, Clerval’s a good country player. A bit slow, not a lot of range, but a champ at digging out bad throws and snagging tosses that’d sail slap over anybody else’s head. He’s also good at catching darters right back at him and shots down the foul line that might drop in for extra-base hits.”
The name "Hank Clerval" didn't mean anything to me (but might to some genre-savvy readers). We'll come to learn more about him and later get some flashbacks from his POV, including some evocative descriptions about his earlier life in rural Alaska. Danny, however, has opinions:Henry didn’t strike me as a suitable name for a power-hitting ballplayer. Hank did, like in Hank Greenberg, but Jumbo hadn’t asked me to call him Hank.
Some dramatic irony here, because at the time the book was written (and the frame story is set). the major league home run record was held by Henry "Hank" Aaron. Aaron, a black man, played much of his career in Atlanta, in the deep South. Which is a place that has historically not been welcoming to black people.
This brings us to Darius Satterfield, the bus driver/assistant coach of the Highbridge Hellbenders. Darius is much more skillful than any of the Class C players, but because of the racist policies of the league and society in general, he isn't allowed to play.
One of the common tropes associated with baseball is "fathers and sons"--think "Field of Dreams"--and that mythos is important here, when it comes to protagonists who have difficult relationships with their father figures. Danny's dad taught him how to play ball, so he's not completely irredeemable--but he causes a lot of trouble for Danny and his mom, even when he's not around. Henry's father figure is long-dead, but Henry still has lots of complicated feelings about him. Knowing that the foreword set up Darius as another tragic character gave me a sense of where his plotline was going, with these themes in mind. Actually, Darius' fate--while somewhat ambiguous--isn't as dire as you might guess from that. Yeah, there's a lot of arbitrary cruelty in the world, but also, it's 1943 and people were being killed all over the place. There is a different, less prominent character, who meets a more cruel fate, but it feels like overdramatic pathos at that point.
The ballplayers' and manager's voices can be very funny, especially when they're holding kangaroo court (which is a thing that real minor leaguers do: see "The Bullpen Gospels" by Dirk Hayhurst for a contemporary depiction) or composing doggerel on the fly. And the description of the promotions/discounts at the ballpark ("Kitchen Fats for Victory Night followed Friday’s Scrap Metal Collection Night") were also very amusing.
The saying goes that "living well is the best revenge." In the context of "fathers, sons, and baseball," and "people who have good reason to take violent revenge on those who have wronged them, even when it's not prudent to so do," you might wonder if any of these characters will become fathers or step-fathers in their own right, and try to be better fathers to the next generation than their fathers were to them. Maybe Danny's accomplishments as a scout are meant to show that he is paying it forward to the next generation. But we don't really see that. In fact, one of the sympathetic minor characters chose not to have kids because he didn't want to risk passing on a hereditary disease: ‘I’m here; I have to make do. The never-was aint, and don’t. Why take the never-was and afflict it?’ There's nothing wrong with choosing not to have kids, but this could have been a way to show Danny, or someone else, breaking the cycle.
Instead, while Jumbo is the protagonist of his own POV sections, the main narrative is more things happening to Danny than his own agency. Baseball can be fun; speculative fiction can be fun; but I'm not sure the fun aspects make up for the bleakness here.
Bingo: there's a lot! Dreams (creepy but mundane), Prologue, Character with a Disability, Published in the 1990s, Small Town. Arguably Multi-POV if you count the frame story.
