The 2010 Hugo Awards: My Draft Hugo Ballot

The deadline for submitting Hugo nominations is still two weeks away, but following in Niall's footsteps I thought I'd put my preliminary choices up as a way of encouraging others to give them a try and maybe nominate them as well, or to try to talk me out of them and into others.  I'm not quite done with my reading yet: there are several novellas I still want to get to, and in the best related book category my reading has been as paltry as usual, though I'm hoping to manage Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.'s The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction and Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James's A Short History of Fantasy before the nominating deadline.  For other perspectives, you might want to take a look at ballots by Joe Sherry, Martin Lewis (1,2,3), Rich Horton, and Rachel Swirsky (1,2,3, though as these are Nebula nominations not all of her choices are eligible for the Hugo).

Best novel:

• The City & The City by China Miéville
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield
• Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
• Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Of these, I suspect that the Miéville is a lock, and wouldn't be surprised if the Bacigalupi gets a nomination as well.  The Whitfield, about which I hope to write a bit later this week, strikes me as a longer shot, which is a shame because it's one of the more enjoyable and inventive books I've read in some time, and should especially appeal to the contingent of Hugo voters who are crossover historical fiction fans.  I'm debating replacing either Palimpsest of Yellow Blue Tibia with Stephen Baxter's Flood, but I think that I will end up sticking with those two (somewhat amusingly, given Valente's recent comments on Roberts's novel).  I liked Flood, but in a chilly sort of way, and as I am planning to nominate Baxter in the novella category I feel OK about giving it a miss here.

Best novella:

• "To Kiss the Granite Choir" by Michael Anthony Ashley (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Oct 8-22, 2009)
• "Earth II" by Stephen Baxter (Asimov's, July 2009)

I've read very few prospective nominees in this category, hence the short ballot.  In the next two weeks I'm hoping to read another Baxter novella, "Starfall," as well "Sublimation Angels" (PDF) by Jason Sanford, "Wives" (PDF) by Paul Haines, "Horn" by Peter M. Ball, and "The Language of Dying" by Sarah Pinborough.  I'd like to read Ian McDonald's "Vishnu at the Cat Circus," from Cyberabad Days, but I doubt I'll be able to get my hands on it before the deadline.

Best novelette:

• "A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, DPhil, MSc; or, A Lullaby" by Helen Keeble (Strange Horizons, June 1-8, 2009)
• "It Takes Two" by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse 3)
• "The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
• "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone 220)
• "Blood Dauber" by Ted Kosmatka & Michael Poore (Asimov's, October/November 2009)

Novelette is the category in which one usually makes painful concessions, but startlingly I found myself falling short of five beloved nominees this year.  I've written already about the Keeble, Griffith and Watts stories, but I'd be open to replace Eugie Foster's Nebula-nominated novelette, or the Kosmatka/Poore.  Both are impressive but not quite on the level of the other three.  One prospective replacement is "The Armies of Elfland" by Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick, from the April/May 2009 Asimov's (Gunn and Swanwick seem to have hit on a winning formula--their collaboration in Tor.com, "Zeppelin City," was also quite successful).  Another is "Kreisler's Automata" by Matthew David Surridge, from Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Best short story:

• "Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld, September 2009)
• "The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall" by Jerome Stueart (Fantasy Magazine, September 7, 2009)
• "Hangman" by Erin Cashier (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 12, 2009)
• "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (Asimov's, January 2009)
• "Blue" by Derek Zumsteg (Asimov's, August 2009)

In this category, meanwhile, I'm pretty sure I have my final ballot.  I've written about the Stueart story already, and will have some more about the Jemisin and McIntosh next week in Strange Horizons.  Cashier had two interesting stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in 2009, but in the end I decided I liked "Hangman," a nicely done Western fantasy, the best of the two.  "Blue" is a darkly funny story about two astronauts on a dying ship, the last surviving members of their crew, who spend as much time sniping at each other as they do trying to keep from being swallowed by a black hole.  The personalities of the two characters are perfectly sketched.

Some thoughts on short fiction venues: Strange Horizons isn't as well-represented here as I would have liked, but for overall quality and breadth of genres and topics it remains the best magazine in the field, on- or offline.  Beneath Ceaseless Skies is nipping at its heels, though it's aided by its narrower focus on epic and secondary world fantasy.  I found Fantasy Magazine extremely variable--some of its stories were excellent, some barely publishable--and Clarkesworld, though a great deal more professional, not usually to my taste.  Tor.com is the big disappointment of the year.  I don't know whether the site reads slush or accepts unsolicited submissions, but there must be good money in publishing there, and yet the stories one offer are depressingly samey--literally so, as the site published its second Charles Stross Laundry story in two years in 2009, and two stories in a single year by Harry Turtledove, both about has-been baseball players in the first half of the 20th century.  So far its only real excuse for existing is having also published two Rachel Swirsky stories.  In print, Fantasy & Science Fiction did not have a good year.  The magazine switched to a bi-monthly format this year, and also, in celebration of its 60th anniversary, set aside a portion of each issue in order to reprint some of its editors' favorite stories.  A nice idea in theory, but in practice these stories tended to overshadow the already reduced original offerings.  Asimov's, meanwhile, improved on me quite a bit in 2009, with quite a few stories on my ballot and even more importantly, much higher overall quality.

Best dramatic presentation, long form:

• Moon
• Up

This is the category I'm least interested in because the ballot is already so easy to guess.  Avatar, Star Trek, District 9 and Coraline are locks.  The fifth slot could go to either Moon, Up, or Torchwood: Children of Earth.  None of which would be terrible choices, though I'd obviously prefer Moon, but as I'm already a little depressed at having to choose between them in order to make room for Star Trek and Avatar, I'm choosing to think about the category as little as possible.

Best dramatic presentation, short form:

• The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Born to Run"
• The Middleman, San Diego Comic Con table read
• Being Human, episode 1.3 (Annie learns the truth about her murder)
• Ashes to Ashes, episode 2.1
• Futurama, Into the Wild Green Yonder

Lots of people I know are nominating Dollhouse's "Epitaph One," but even before my crushing disappointment with the show's second season, and particularly with "Epitaph Two: The Return," I wasn't planning to do this--taken on its own it simply wasn't a very good hour of television.  Not that most of these are much better.  The Sarah Connor finale was magnificent and I loved the Middleman table read, but the other three are compromise choices.  It simply wasn't a very good year for individual TV episodes.

Campbell award:

• J.M. McDermott
• Felix Gilman
• Erin Cashier
• Alice Sola Kim
• Patrick Ness