Saturday, March 29, 2014

Hugo Nominations

Because all the cool kids have put their nominations up...

For these categories, I've actually read the title listed or read enough of the person's "body of work" to have made a decision. Alas, you know my mantra: "So many books, so little time, so many ex-lover's to bury." That goes doubly so for shorter works. If you're bored, if you think there is nothing to read, you are not subscribing to the vast number of electronic periodicals out there. This era mirrors the 1930's onwards; we may not have physical newsstands in our cities anymore, but you have a electronic newsstand with a metric ton of written or spoken fiction to choose from every month.

Novel:

Charles E. Gannon, Fire with Fire, Baen Books
John Lambshead, Wolf in Shadow, Baen Books
Linda Nagata, The Red: First Light, Mythic Island Press
Chuck Wendig, The Cormorant, Angry Robot Books
Django Wexler, The Thousand Names, Roc

Novella:

Neal Asher, The Other Gun, Asimov's
Beth Bernobich, Thief of War, Tor Dot Com
Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages, Wakulla Springs, Tor Dot Com
Mary Anne Mohanraj, The Stars Change, Circlet Press
Charles Stross, Equoid, Tor Dot Com

Novelette:

David D. Levine, Wreck of the Mars Adventure, Old Mars (edited by Dozois & Martin)
Ken Liu, The Litigation Monster and the Monkey King, Lightspeed
Will McIntosh, Over There, Asimov's
Ian Tregillis, What Doctor Ivanovich Saw, Subterranean
Carrie Vaughn, Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege in Paris, Lightspeed

Short Story:

Maurice Broaddus, Ebony Paradox, Punchels Magazine
Carrie Cuinn, About the Mirror and Its Pieces, Woman and Other Constructs (anthology)
Tim Maughan, Collison DetectionFutures Exchange
Ramez Naam, Water, Institute for the Future (website)
E. Lily Yu, The Pilgrim and the AngelMcSweeny's Quarterly

Best Related Work:

Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column (ongoing series of columns and podcasts)
David Langford, Benchmarks Revisited and Benchmarks Concluded, Ansible Editions
Stanislaw Lem, Summa Technologiae, University of Minnesota Press
Andrew Liptak, SF History Column at Kirkus Reviews (ongoing series of articles)
David Portree, Beyond Apollo, Popular Science (web series of articles)

Best Graphic Story:

Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton, The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, IDW
Harlan Ellison & Paul Chadwick, Seven Against Chaos, DC Comics
Matt Fraction & David Aja & Javier Pulido, Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon, Marvel
Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, Saga, Image Comics
Jim Zub, Skull Kickers: Eighty Eyes on Evil Island, Image Comics

I regret only being able to make four nominations here, but despite the best machinations of my fellow Three Hoarsemen, Jeff Patterson and John Stevens, I am still sadly lacking in knowledge of this part of the field!

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form):

An Adventure in Space and Time, Mart Gatiss
Gravity, Alfonso CuarĂ³n
Orphan Black, Season One, Graeme Manson and John Fawcett (creators)
Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro (director)
World's End, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form):

The Day of the Doctor, Steven Moffat
The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, Peter Davison
The Name of the Doctor, Steven Moffat
Natural Selection, Orphan Black, John Fawcett and Graeme Manson
The Night of the Doctor, Steven Moffat

Best Editor (Short Form):

John Joseph Adams, Lightspeed
Neil Clarke, Clarkesworld
Ellen Datlow, Tor Dot Com
Irene Gallo, Tor Dot Com
Jonathan Strahan, Subterranean

Take note: I nominated these as much for their online work (more so, pretty much) than print work. The field is shifting the center of gravity.

Best Editor (Long Form):

Lou Anders (Pyr)
Ginger Buchanan (Ace)
Lee Harris, Angry Robot
William Schafer (Subterranean)
Betsy Wollheim (DAW)

This probably was the hardest category to fill. The requirement is that the person edited four books during the period. Can I name four titles that each of these edited? Absolutely not. I went with people who worked at publishing houses where I buy a steady stream of titles. You'd think that editors would do a better job of promoting themselves, or publishers would do a better job of making it easy to reward their staff with a nomination, but not so, it seems.

Professional Artist:

Dalve Halverson (a.k.a., "Joey HiFi")
John Harris
Gregory Manchess 
John Picacio
Jon Sullivan

Best Semiprozine:

Apex Magazine
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Bull Spec
Crossed Genres
Interzone

I read all of these electronically, again that center of gravity shifting. Also, what the hell is a "semiprozine". Do we have too many award categories, or what?

Best Fanzine:

Stainless Steel Droppings, Carl V. Anderson
My Bookish Ways, Kristin Centorcelli
Bookworm Blues, Sarah Chorn
The Functional Nerds, Patrick Hester and John Anealio
Sci-Fi Fan Letter, Jessica Strider

All online sites. The fanzine is dead. Long live the alternate form. Do mimeograph machines even exist anymore? It also struck me that I don't really consult any site (other than SF Signal) on a regular basis. I stated (on Twitter) that "Twitter was my fanzine". Several people either agreed, or said that they had thought the same thing recently. That gravity...it continues to shift.

Best Fancast:

The Coode Street Podcast, Gary K. Wolfe, Jonathan Strahan
Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Alex Pierce
SF Crossing the Gulf, Karen Burnham and Karen Lord
The SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester
The Three Hoarsemen, Fred Kiesche, John Stevens and Jeff Patterson

Well, d'oh, when it comes to The Three Hoarsemen! Overall, these are the podcasts that caused me to acquire books or caused me to think the most in 2013.

Best Fan Writer:

Carrie Cuinn
Kameron Hurley
Stina Leicht
John Stevens
Paul Weimer

Best Fan Artist:

Patrick Hester
Mandie Manzano
Jeff Patterson
Allie Strom
Sarah Webb

Next to Best Editor (Long Form), the hardest category to fill. Given that I don't read paper fanzines and most sites use cover art or film or television stills and the like as "illustration" it was hard to find names (other that two friends)!

John W. Campbell Award (Not A Hugo):

Adam Christopher
John Chu
Wesley Chu
Tim Maughan
Ramez Naam

And there we are!


5 comments:

  1. I'm flabbergasted to be on the list

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  2. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

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  3. Great list, Fred. I got my final list posted today (after voting yesterday). We've got a few duplicates:

    Equoid
    The Other Gun
    About the Mirror and Its Pieces
    Over There
    Gravity
    The Day of the Doctor

    We've got all but one of the same editors for Best Editor, Short Form. Boy, Ellen Datlow acquired and edited some great stories for Tor.com this past year.

    I only put two editors on my Long Form list, and you have both: Anders and Shafer.

    Three professional artist overlaps: The two John's and Gregory Manchess.

    Again I appreciate the nod for Fanzine. Thank you!

    I have Carrie Cuinn and Paul Weimer on my best Fan Writer list too.

    Would love to see Coode Street Podcast get some love this year, and I'll be adding Three Hoarsemen to my list of podcasts so hopefully I can add it to my nomination list next year.

    Also have Chu and Christopher on my Campbell list.

    Was fun seeing who you voted for.

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  4. As I said in the blog post itself, Best Editor (Long Form) was the hardest to figure, so I wonder if you only had two candidates for a similar reason (lack of publishers trying to get their folks kudos).

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    Replies
    1. Yes indeed. In fact, your list made me aware of the two I voted for, and I limited it to those two simply because I am very familiar with their work and feel confident in nominating them.

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