The 2019 Hugo Awards: My Hugo Ballot, Publishing and Fan Categories

With only a few days left to nominate for the Hugos, we come to our third batch of categories.  One thing they all have in common is that they I tend to nominate the same things here each year.  Partly this is a function of the limitations of my perspective (I don't always, for example, have time to follow a new short fiction venue that might make it onto the semiprozine ballot), but partly it's a way of recognizing people and organizations that have been doing great work for years, without nearly enough recognition.  (Another thing this group of categories has in common?  It's also the one where I tend to leave more categories blank: once again, I won't be nominating in the best editor, best fancast, or best fanzine categories.)

Previous posts in this series:

• The Short Fiction Categories
  
  
• The Media Categories

Best Semiprozine

• GigaNotoSaurus - this little magazine that could continued plugging away in 2018, publishing one story per month and finding interesting new voices to highlight.  It featured one of my favorite stories of the year, Adrian Simmons's "The Wait is Longer Than You Think", and in fact it's unusual for there not to be at least one GigaNotoSaurus story on my short fiction ballot.  Which, when you consider they only publish twelve pieces a year, is an impressive hit rate.
  
  
• Strange Horizons - Are you aware that Strange Horizons has never won a Hugo?  Isn't it time we changed that?  This fantastic magazine has been around for nearly two decades, publishing boundary-pushing fiction and non-fiction, and providing platforms for pieces that simply wouldn't have a home anywhere else on the internet.  Who else would have published Erin Horáková's "Erin Groans", a book-length essay about obscure Gormenghast adaptations that is both delightful and enlightening?  The magazine also publishes an ongoing project, 100 African Writers of SFF, that explores the continent and its regions to find the speculative work being created there, and its sister magazine, Samovar, publishes fiction in translation.  And this is all happening with an all-volunteer staff.  Strange Horizons gets nominated every year, and always ends up an also-ran.  Let's make 2019 the year we finally give them a Hugo.
  
  
• Uncanny - This relatively new magazine had another strong year in 2018.  Their fiction department ran an interesting project in the middle of the year, in which several authors wrote stories about present-day dinosaurs, which produced some very strong pieces.  But I was more strongly struck by the fiction department's focus on featuring stories with disabled protagonists, which dealt with their struggles to deal with a world that doesn't value them and doesn't make the space that will allow them to participate and contribute to society.  It's an important topic, and it's good to see editors exercising their judgment to promote discussions of it.

Best Professional Artist:

• Tracy J. Lee - Lee is a commercial artist with a wide-ranging portfolio, but in the last year she illustrated several genre-related projects.  Chiefly, she designed the GIF animations for Wired's The Future of Work series, which featured short stories by several writers about the changing face of labor.
  
  
• Paul Lewin - Lewin draws amazing Afrofuturist illustrations, and in 2018 he came to my attention for his gorgeous covers for the reprint editions of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.  In a few months we'll also be able to see his cover for The Dark Fantastic, an essay collection by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.
  
  
• Victo Ngai - I've been nominating Ngai for this award for years, and there's really not much I can add to the praise I've already heaped on her.  If there's a better or more distinctive illustrator working in genre right now, I don't know who they are.  Her most prominent genre-related work in 2018 is the cover for Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology.
  
  
• Del Samatar - I haven't read Monster Portraits, Del and Sofia Samatar's hybrid study of monstrousness, but the pictures I've seen of Del's illustrations for the book are simply stunning.
  
  
• Yuko Shimizu - Shimizu had a great year in 2018.  She continued to create covers for JY Yang's Tensorate novellas, giving them one of the most distinctive (and appealing) looks in the business.  And she single-handedly sold me on Mike Carey's new fantasy comic The Highest House with her dreamy covers.

Best Fan Artist:

• Vandy Hall - Hall creates strange blown glass and mixed media sculptures of fantasy creatures.  I particularly like her bird-like creatures.
  
  
• Likhain - In 2018, Likhain continued to produce colorful, almost overpowering illustrations that draw on Philippine tradition and folklore to create a completely unique style.
  
  
• Keith Newstead - I became aware of Newstead and his automata through "Erin Groans", which is another reason to reward that article and its author.  His "Gormenghast Castle Automata" is one of the most unusual and remarkable pieces of fan art I've ever seen, a gorgeous approach to the book that captures its core theme of inescapable, repeating patterns perfectly.
  
  
• vacuumslayer - These Alice in Wonderland-ish photo manipulations continue to delight, with a definite political undertone.

Best Fan Writer:

This is exactly the same lineup I nominated last year, so instead of repeating myself too much, I'm just going to highlight some of the great work these writers did in 2018.  And, if a lot of that work happens to have been published at Strange Horizons, maybe that's more proof that it's time to give them a Hugo?

• Nina Allan - As well as her wonderful blog (where she's been doing a lot of writing about crime and horror fiction recently), Nina continued reviewing for Strange Horizons.  Her review of Jac Jemc's horror novel The Grip of It sent me racing to find a copy of the book, and her thoughts on the miniseries version of Picnic at Hanging Rock, especially as compared to the 1975 movie, were extremely illuminating.
  
  
• Vajra Chandrasekera - Most of Vajra's focus in 2018 seems to have gone to his fiction writing, as well as editing the Strange Horizons fiction department.  But his mega-review of last year's Clarke Award shortlist, "Rupture & Complicity" (part 1 and 2) is a master-class in how to combine reviews of individual works with a panoramic view of the state of the field, and provides an important tool for analyzing the currents running through the genre.
  
  
• Erin Horáková - "Erin Groans", of course, but Erin had a fantastic writing year in 2018.  Some of my favorites of her pieces are her reviews of Paddington 2 and The Worst Witch.
  
  
• Samira Nadkarni - For her monumental, leave-no-stone-unturned review of Venom alone, Samira deserves to be on this list.  And, though it is a 2019 publication, I'd be remiss not to mention her thought-provoking, eyebrow-raising review of the third season of Wynona Earp.