Hugo Season

The Hugo nominations are also out this week, somewhat sooner than I had expected. In all the fun and exasperation of trying to figure out what my own nominees were going to be, I sort of lost sight of the fact that the shortlist would be what it has always been--stodgy, middle-of-the-road, and old-fashioned. So I'm probably a little more disappointed than I ought to be by a ballot that does include a sizable proportion of stories I liked. Niall has the whole ballot, but here are my thoughts on the categories I can speak knowledgeably on (by the way, I note that Niall reprints the nominations in the order listed on the Anticipation website, which is not alphabetical by either title or author's name; should we draw conclusions from this about the number of nominations received by each work?):

Best Novel:

• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson
• Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi
• Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

It was pretty obvious that this year's shortlist was going to be dominated by YA and YA-tinged fiction, and I had resigned myself to Little Brother being on it (I'm being a little unfair--I haven't read the book yet--but everything I've heard leads to believe I'm going to hate it) as well as The Graveyard Book (though I thought there was a chance that Gaiman might refuse the nomination as he did for the vastly superior Anansi Boys). I was hoping, however, that some of the more impressive genre YA novels of the year--Nation, Tender Morsels, by all accounts The Knife of Never Letting Go and Hunger Games--might get in as well.

Best Novella:

• "True Names" by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum (Fast Forward 2)
• "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF, August 2008)
• "The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's, October/November 2008)
• "The Tear" by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
• "Truth" by Robert Reed (Asimov's, October/November 2008)

I was unimpressed by both the Finlay and Kress (what is it with her nursing home novellas and their inexplicable popularity?) when I read them for my Hugo ballot, but "True Names" and "Truth" were the two best novellas on it, and I've heard good things about "The Tear," so all told this is a strong ballot.

Best Novelette:

• "The Gambler" by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
  
• "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's, March 2008)
• "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's, February 2008)
• "Pride and Prometheus" by John Kessel (F&SF, January 2008)
• "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's, January 2008)

With the exception of the Resnick (sigh) all of these stories were on my second tier of potential nominees. So while it certainly can't be said that this is a bad list, I am disappointed that none of the more exciting stories I read are on it. I'm particularly baffled by the love for Gardner's story, an enjoyable piece which has nevertheless been wildly overpraised.

Best Short Story:

• "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)
• "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson (Asimov's, July 2008)
• "Evil Robot Monkey" by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
• "Article of Faith" by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe, October 2008)
• "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled" by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's, February 2008)

Hurray, more Resnick. The Johnson is another story that readership seems to have gone crazy over this year. I liked it better than the Gardner, but still not enough to understand what the fuss is over (I had a similar reaction to Johnson's similarly well received "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" last year). Of the remaining nominees I've only read the Chiang, so it's too soon to say whether this is a strong ballot or not. I was hoping Margo Lanagan's "The Goosle" would get in, but I think its popularity might have been blown out of proportion by the crush to stomp on Dave Truesdale's wrongheaded criticism of it.

I note, by the way, that it's been a very good year for Asimov's, and somewhat less so for original story anthologies, but not such a good year for the other print magazines. This despite the fact that Asimov's was the most wildly inconsistent market I read in 2008--quite a few outstanding stories, lots of terrible ones, and very little in between.

The Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form ballot is too boring to discuss except for the presence of the audiobook METAtropolis, though I suspect that's mainly due to the Scalzi effect.

Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form:

• Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations"
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
• Doctor Who, "Silence in the Library"/"The Forests of the Dead"
• Doctor Who, "Turn Left"
• Lost, "The Constant"

Not terribly exciting, but pretty much as I expected. I'm a little surprised to see the wildly divisive "Revelations" up here as the Galactica nomination, but I suppose the show didn't have many standout individual episodes in 2008. "The Constant" was a shoo-in given the enthusiasm for it, and the Doctor Who contingent is still out in force--I'm more pleased by the "Turn Left" nomination than the underwhelming library two-parter, though I still wish "Midnight" had gotten a nod. And, of course, Dr. Horrible is going to take the award in a walk.

Rather shockingly, no one seems to have done this yet: in the fiction categories, there are 21 19 nominees, of which 4, or 19% 21%, are women (UPDATE: fixed because I can't count). Not as bad as recent years, but still not very good. There's also only one woman on the Campbell ballot.

I'll probably wait until all the nominated stories are online before I start posting my shortlist reviews. I think I need a short Hugo break right now.