The 2010 Hugo Awards: The Hugo Nominees
Coming to you straight from Eastercon 2010, piping hot Hugo nominations--unless you've already got them from one of the people who were tweeting or liveblogging or webcasting the event, which I considered doing before deciding that that would just not be the AtWQ thing, and that I'd much rather add my thoughts about the nominees to the lists.
It has been confirmed that there will be a Hugo voter packet again this year, but I promised myself to cut back on my emotional involvement with this award, and decided I'd only purchase a supporting membership of Aussiecon if there were nominees I truly wanted to see win. As you'll see in a moment, this has not been the case. As usual, I will review the short fiction nominees (assuming the ones I haven't read are made generally available).
For those keeping track, there are eight female nominees out of 23 nominated works in the four fiction categories.
Best Novel:
Best Related Work:
Best Graphic Story:
It has been confirmed that there will be a Hugo voter packet again this year, but I promised myself to cut back on my emotional involvement with this award, and decided I'd only purchase a supporting membership of Aussiecon if there were nominees I truly wanted to see win. As you'll see in a moment, this has not been the case. As usual, I will review the short fiction nominees (assuming the ones I haven't read are made generally available).
For those keeping track, there are eight female nominees out of 23 nominated works in the four fiction categories.
Best Novel:
- Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
- The City & The City by China MiƩville
- Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson
- Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
- Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
- "Act One" (PDF) by Nancy Kress (Asimov's, March 2009)
- The God Engines by John Scalzi
- "Palimpsest" by Charles Stross (Wireless)
- Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow
- "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
- The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker
- "Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com)
- "The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
- "It Takes Two" be Nicola Griffith (Eclipse 3)
- "One of Our Bastards is Missing" (PDF) by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3)
- "Overtime" by Charles Stross (Tor.com)
- "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest, Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone 220)
- "The Bride of Frankenstein" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's, December 2009)
- "Bridesicle" (PDF) by Will McIntosh (Asimov's, January 2009)
- "The Moment" by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints)
- "Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld)
- "Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld)
- Doctor Who, "The Next Doctor"
- Doctor Who, "Planet of the Dead"
- Doctor Who, "The Waters of Mars"
- Dollhouse, "Epitaph One"
- FlashForward, "No More Good Days"
- Avatar
- District 9
- Moon
- Star Trek
- Up
Best Related Work:
- Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute
- Hope-in-the-Mist by Michael Swanwick
- The Intergalactic Playground by Farah Mendlesohn
- On Joanna Russ, edited by Farah Mendlesohn
- The Secret Feminist Cabal by Helen Merrick
- This is Me, Jack Vance by Jack Vance
This is quite a remarkable slate of nominees. I haven't read any, though several intrigue me, but what's fascinating about it is that after several years of leaning in this direction the category has shifted entirely into non-fiction writing, with no art books in sight. There's also a dominance of critical work (and I suspect that Michael Swanwick's Mirrlees biography also shades into critical writing). Which is exactly what I'd like this category to be--a place for non-fiction about the field, and an opportunity to recognize excellent critical writing about the genre.
- Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
- Captain Britain and MI3 Volume 3: Vampire State
- Fables Volume 12: The Dark Ages
- Girl Genius Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm
- Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse
- Daniel Dos Santos
- Bob Eggleton
- Stephen MartiniĆØre
- John Picacio
- Shaun Tan
- Ansible
- Clarkesworld
- Interzone
- Locus
- Weird Tales
- Argentus
- Banana Wings
- CHALLENGER
- Drink Tank
- File 770
- StarshipSofa
- Clare Brialey
- Christopher J. Garcia
- James Nicoll
- Lloyd Penney
- Frederick Pohl
- Brad W. Foster
- Dave Howell
- Sue Mason
- Steve Stiles
- Taral Wayne
- Lou Anders
- Ginjer Buchanan
- Liz Gorinsky
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
- Juliet Ulman
- Ellen Datlow
- Stanley Schmidt
- Jonathan Strahan
- Gordon Van Gelder
- Sheila Williams
- Saladin Ahmed
- Gail Carriger
- Felix Gilman
- Seanan McGuire
- Lezli Robyn
Comments
I wonder if C & C will win the Neb and Hugo though, given how non-genre it really is, and the popularity of Wilson, Priest, and Bacigalupi. I couldn't call a winner right now.
Concerning the novelist shortlist it's one of the stronger years--Mieville's, Bacigalupi's and Valente's, the last of which is a surprise to see here. For the others I was a bit underwhelmed by Julian Comstock, though Boneshaker was quite formulaic and found Wake simply terrible, the worst in a long line of simplistic Sawyer productions. Yet still, a decently strong year.
For the Dramatic Presentation short form---yes, that is a uniquely poor list. I don't regard Epitaph One as being bad, but the Dr. Who struggled at subpar. I'm also surprised that, quality aside, Flashforward got in, I didn't think that had nearly enough popularity. I would have thought Caprica or Stargate Universe were more unlikely, and both would be about as unexciting.
And another Resnick piece. Sigh. And "Bride of Frankenstein" no less. If this is as unironic and uncreative as is his norm, this is going to be painful.
Beneath the lack of structure and the juvenile obscenity there lurks a meditation on the tail end of a physical relationship and relationships as a whole : The point at which you ask yourself "Why am I even doing this?" but sadly it contains no real insight or commentary on that subject matter so what you have is a rather crude literalisation of some rather pedestrian ideas. In a word : Sophomoric.
don't you know Boneshaker has girl cooties on it?
Yes, but it's gotten so much attention that I think that might counteract these. I just can't imagine Bacigalupi having a serious chance of winning.
Silly, Abigail -there's no cure for girl cooties. I do find it interesting that two of Campbell nominees are writers of girl-cootie fiction. Perhaps girl cooties are poised to take over the Hugos (and thus, ruin SF forever.)
In other matters, why did you find 'The Next Doctor' even faintly enjoyable while Waters of Mars wasn't? Clearly they were both weak even by the standards of RTD Specials, but I saw the last as at least doing something new and sort of interesting, while The Next Doctor had such a sloppy plot I couldn't put down disbelief for any period. Plus all the issues with gender and its main villain....At least Waters of Mars just had slow moving monsters that were far less scary than the script thought they were.
The less said about Planet of the Dead the better.
Jonathan: Concering Spar--Juvenile obscenity? Really? It's certainly a graphic exploration of the theme, but given that theme the language plays out the main premise. It's an engaging piece of writing, deals with a cliched and apparently prurient concept in a unique way, it does what a genre story should.
Not a story I'm completely enthusiastic about, and not one I voted for, but it's somewhat deserving. Certainly a lot more substantive than Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" from last year. Personally I'm a lot more bummed that "The Island" made it, although I seem to be about the only person familiar with the Watts that didn't love it.
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