After taking a year or so off, I am going to participate in the Hugo Awards again this year. So, this post is the first of several which will allow me to publicly work through my thoughts on who I would like to nominate for a Hugo Award. Unlike previous years I have nominated, I have been much less involved in the short fiction scene, so I'm going to actively seek out recommendations for the short fiction categories.
This is a start and is currently in no particular order. My next post on this will start to narrow. This is just what I am thinking about right now before doing more serious work to narrow down the categories.
Novel
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Mirror Empire, by Kameron Hurley
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
The Eternal Sky Trilogy, by Elizabeth Bear
Graphic Story
Saga, Vol 3
Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega
Related Work
Rocket Talk Podcast
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Mockingjay: Part I
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Fanzine
A Dribble of Ink
Lady Business
SF Mistressworks
Chaos Horizon
The Wertzone
Fan Writer
Justin Landon
Abigail Nussbaum
Brandon Kempner
Adam Whitehead
Categories I just have no idea about yet but will do research to feel good about.
Novella / Novelette / Short Story
Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Semiprozine
Fancast
Professional Artist (there is a great Hugo Eligible Artists blog to help me out)
Editor: Short Form / Long Form
Fan Artist
John W. Campbell Award
13 comments:
I tend to agree with your opinions, definitely with you on Ancillary Sword and Eternal Sky! I'll have to check out some of the others.
Thanks, Joe. As the reigning fanzine winner, it can be tough to garner up nominations, as the call for diversity on the ballot is being embraced by many people, so I appreciate the support. I'm very curious to see what happens in the category this year now that Pornokitsch and The Book Smugglers are gone. Do new blogs replace them? Or do we go back to the familiar lists of yore that are filled mostly with traditional fanzines?
Also, our "Best Novel" lists are basically identical. Best taste on the 'net? I think so.
I need to winnow the novels, and we'll see if anything new jumps out at me.
Aidan: I'm also curious about the fanzine category. I'd have to look at last year's voting to get a sense of who just missed the ballot. I'd really love to see Chaos Horizon make the ballot, which would be intensely meta, given the Hugo / Nebula statistical focus.
I'm still not a reader of traditional fanzines, and I'm a touch out of the blog scene, but there are still some that I've discovered that I really like.
And right on about Best Novel. We recognize the good stuff.
I know my own eligible novel, The Immortality Game, simply isn't well-known enough to have a chance at nomination, but if you think it looks interesting, I'd be glad to send you a copy. Anyhow, I'm pushing for Stephan Martiniere to get nominated for Best Pro Artist, since his work this year was so amazing. Check out his work on Shield and Crocus as well as on my own book, if you care to.
One of the short stories that really rang a bell for me this year was Toad Words by Ursula Vernon.
I'm still looking for others.
I'll look at that one. I was rather fond of "Mrs Sorensen and the Sasquatch", by Kelly Barnhill.
Nice lists for best novel and graphic story. I agree with most.
For the other categories:
Milan Jaram for best artist
The Quantum Tree for short form dramatic
Coherence is worth a look for long form dramatic if you haven't seen it
If you haven't read "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell, that's my primary recommendation in the novels this year. Mitchell is mainstream, English author, best known for "Cloud Atlas," but he's playing in our back yard on this one, and unlike some pretentious literary writers who have condescendingly produced sf works (*cough*cough*MargaretAtwood), he likes the tropes of sf, and uses them well.
Hank Graham
Thanks for the recommendations!
I'm not sure if I'll make it to The Bone Clocks before the nomination period closes, but we'll see. I'm doing a lot of shorter fiction reading since I read so few stories last year. I'm halfway through Yesterday's Kin (Nancy Kress) and that's fixing to get a spot on my Novella list.
Somehow I can't get on the City of Stairs bus or The Goblin Emperor train. I attempted both books in January and DID NOT FINISH.
This has been happening increasingly often to me, I think I am becoming less patient with books when I know there is so much good stuff out there waiting, why waste time on the stuff that just doesn't resonate for me?
I liked Ancillary Sword but haven't read Eternal sky.
I've got The Bone Clocks on my TBR list, since I really loved Cloud Atlas (even the movie adaptation!).
I just started Annihilation but I don't think I'mg gonna stick with that one either. Sigh.
Did you read Peter Hamilton's The Abyss Beyond Dreams? One of my faves of 2014 for sure!
Ron: I've read some Hamilton, but I'm several books behind on getting to The Abyss Beyond Dreams (The Temporal Void is next, assuming I can still remember anything that happened in The Dreaming Void).
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