Hugo Reading 2018: Best New Writer

This award is also called the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and is stubbornly, defiantly Not A Hugo. (It's just a quirk of the system. Roll with it.)

The nominees:

Katherine Arden
Sarah Kuhn
Jeannette Ng
Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Rebecca Roanhorse
Rivers Solomon

My ballot:



6) Sarah Kuhn

The first chapter of this almost read like a parody of urban fantasy, with an Asian-American superheroine fighting off fanged demon cupcakes. A bit too absurd for me, unfortunately.



5) Rivers Solomon

I didn't care for their book too much--a bridge too far on the handwavey science for me--but this author excelled with their characters, particularly the protagonist. A writer to keep an eye on.



4) Jeannette Ng

Now this is an intriguing book--a Fae gothic, the story of the first Christian missionaries to Arcadia, the lands of the Fae. It's an idea that's obvious and delightful, and made me wonder why on earth someone hadn't written this book before now. That I didn't rate the author higher testifies to the tough competition in this category.



3) Katherine Arden

I believe Arden was actually nominated on the strength of her first book, The Bear and the Nightingale, a Russian folklore fantasy. I preferred her second book, pictured here.



2) Rebecca Roanhorse

Roanhorse just won the Nebula for what I believe was her first published story, "Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience." I wouldn't be surprised, and would be delighted, if she duplicated that hat trick with the Hugos.



1) Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Prasad made quite a splash this year, with two stories on the Hugo and Nebula ballots. The story of hers that most impressed me, however, didn't make either ballot--it's the funny and surreal "Portrait of Skull With Man," from Fireside Fiction.

This one was tough. I would be happy with any of the top 4.

Hugo Reading 2018: Best Fan Writer

Fan Writer is kind of a catchall category: in it you find professional writers and reviewers and artful amateurs. Just about anyone can qualify if you can establish a voice and an audience, which is nice.

The nominees:

Camestros Felapton

Sarah Gailey

Mike Glyer

Foz Meadows

Charles Payseur

Bogi Takacs

My ballot:

6) Bogi Takacs

I'd never heard of or read em before, although e has been involved in the recent Worldcon kerfluffle (which I am not commenting on here). In checking out eir blog, I decided some of the pieces I read there worked better than the ones included in the packet. Still, in the overall scheme of things, I thought e was just so-so. 

5) Mike Glyer

Mike runs File 770, a place where I hang out regularly. Both Mike and File 770 have won this award in the past. However, I don't think last year was his strongest. 

4) Camestros Felapton

Cam is one of the "artful amateurs" I spoke of. I also hang out at his place, and read a lot of the pieces in his packet in their original form, on the blog. Cam tends towards humor and whimsy in his writing, which I enjoy, but his pieces aren't quite up to the quality of some of the others. 

3) Charles Payseur

Charles runs Quick Sip Reviews and also writes for the Book Smugglers. His packet entries go a little deeper into his subjects, in particular making me re-evaluate a book I didn't like at all when I first read it, Sam J. Miller's The Art of Starving. 

2) Sarah Gailey

Sarah takes a little different tack with her included pieces that is very interesting. In "This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017," she uses simple (but not simplistic) language to talk about the film. It's a marvelous review, and forces the reader to completely re-think the film, as well as the meanings of the words "empathy" and "human." Another piece, the riveting "City of Villains: Why I Don't Trust Batman," turns the character of Bruce Wayne inside out, showing that he is not the "hero" but is indeed a villain, this billionaire who has the money and power to make things better but throws it away with his vigilante's ego. It's really a flash story, Hugo-worthy in itself. 

1) Foz Meadows

This was a tough choice, picking Foz over Sarah. In the end, I went with Foz Meadows because of her gift for insightful and even-keeled analysis. This is shown in this lengthy article on HBO's Westworld, as well as this thorough deconstruction of Alien: Covenant. I love reviewers who can dig into theme and subtext and bring all sorts of interesting ideas to the light. Foz does this very well; her articles always make me think. 

Hugo Reading 2018: Best Graphic Novel

The nominees:

Bitch Planet, Volume 2: President Bitch, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, illustrated by Valentine De Landro and Taki Soma, colored by Kelly Fitzpatrick, lettered by Clayton Cowles (Image Comics)

Black Bolt, Volume 1: Hard Time, written by Saladin Ahmed, illustrated by Christian Ward, lettered by Clayton Cowles (Marvel)

Monstress, Volume 2: The Blood, written by Marjorie M. Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image Comics)

My Favorite Thing is Monsters, written and illustrated by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)

Paper Girls, Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher (Image Comics)

Saga, Volume 7, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)

My ballot:

6) My Favorite Thing is Monsters, written and illustrated by Emil Ferris

This made a pretty big splash last year (it also just won three Eisner Awards, the comics industry's Oscars), but I couldn't get into it. The story was too big, too slow, and too sprawling, and the page layout (lined notebook paper) while appropriate for the story, began to grate on me after a while. Nope, not for me. 

5) Black Bolt, Volume 1: Hard Time, written by Saladin Ahmed, illustrated by Christian Ward, lettered by Clayton Cowles

I know next to nothing about Marvel's Inhumans, and this volume did little to enlighten me. It was a pretty self-contained story, about the king of the Inhumans waking up on an interstellar prison, his powers stripped from him. The art was interesting, bordering on the surreal at times. Okay, but not outstanding. 

4) Bitch Planet, Volume 2: President Bitch, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, illustrated by Valentine De Landro and Taki Soma, colored by Kelly Fitzpatrick, lettered by Clayton Cowles

Now we get into the better stuff. I actually prefer (and have bought) the individual issues of these, as they have extra content that fleshes out the world and the story. Either way, this is a frightening portrait of a hyperpatriarchal future society that is unfortunately all-too-plausible. 

3) Paper Girls, Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher 

I call this the Little Series That Could. It surprised me last year when I first read it (never having heard of it until it appeared on the 2017 ballot) and it's still surprising me. This particular volume, with its time travel (back to 11,000 BC), is more firmly rooted in the SFF tradition. The characters are well developed and the unfolding mystery is fascinating. 

2) Saga, Volume 7, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples

For me, this series takes the biggest jump of all the finalists. The last time I tried to read this, I couldn't get into it at all. This time around, it impressed me greatly. The story made more sense (well, as much as this wacky, surreal universe ever does), and the greater emphasis on Hazel helped. The end is just chilling. 

1)  Monstress, Volume 2: The Blood, written by Marjorie M. Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda

Marjorie Liu just won an Eisner for Best Writer (tied with Tom King), and Sana Takeda won two Eisners (Cover Art and Best Painter/Multimedia Art) for this series, and for very good reason. This is a richly imagined and fascinating world, and the art is gorgeous. The first volume of this won the Hugo last year. I don't know if Liu and Takeda can pull off the hat trick again, but I certainly hope so. 

Hugo Reading 2018: Best Related Work

(Note: Some of these books were not available at my library, so I had to rely on the limited excerpts included in the Hugo packet. This is not ideal, obviously, but was the best basis for comparison I had.)

The nominees:

Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, Zoe Quinn (PublicAffairs)
Iain M. Banks (Modern Masters of Science Fiction), Paul Kincaid (University of Illinois Press)
A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, Nat Segaloff (NESFA Press)
Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal (Twelfth Planet Press)
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sleeping With Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Liz Bourke (Aqueduct Press)

My ballot:

6) Iain M. Banks (Modern Masters of Science Fiction), Paul Kincaid

This was, I gathered, intended to be a scholarly, academic study of the man and his books. Unfortunately, it was way too scholarly and academic for this reader. The excerpt was hard to get through, and I can't imagine slogging through the entire book.

5) A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, Nat Segaloff

Due to Ellison's recent death, I think this has a better chance of winning than it might otherwise have had. For me, it was just okay.

4) No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, Ursula K. Le Guin

I'll be honest: I liked this book, but I didn't think it was top-tier, and I hope it doesn't win. For one thing, Le Guin won this category last year with Words Are My Matter, which I think is the superior work. Also, we gave the award to her while she was still alive, which is the better thing in my book.

3) Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, Zoe Quinn

This was actually a pretty harrowing tale of Twitter mobs, harassment, and online hate. But Zoe Quinn is a survivor, and I liked how she came out on top, and used her experience to help other women.

2) Sleeping With Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Liz Bourke

One mark of a good book, for me, is if reading a sample or excerpt makes me want to own it. That's what happened with this book. I like Bourke's conversational writing style, and I appreciate that she states her viewpoints and biases up front. They happen to fairly mirror my own, but if they didn't, reading her reviews would still be rewarding, which is a mark of their quality.

1) Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal

I loved this. All those essays, from writers of many different backgrounds, expounding so eloquently on what Octavia Butler meant to them. It made me sad and angry all over again, knowing what we lost by her untimely death.

This is my last full weekend of reading (the voting deadline is Tuesday, July 31), so I may be throwing out quite a few entries over the next several days. I'll get through as much as I can. Onward.

Hugos 2018: Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

 

(Disclaimer: I couldn't watch the Doctor Who Christmas special, "Twice Upon a Time." Season 11 is available on Amazon Prime--all except the Christmas special, of course. I visited the BBC America website, but apparently that channel isn't carried by my cable provider, so I couldn't watch it there. I'm not willing to watch the episode illegally, so I suppose I'll have to leave it off my ballot.)

This category, to be frank, is pretty mediocre this year, with the exception of the Black Mirror episode. I watched it for a second time and it holds up better than I remembered, but it doesn't come close to the excellent Emmy winner from last year, "San Junipero."

The nominees:

The Good Place, "The Trolley Problem" and "Michael's Gambit"
Clipping, "The Deep"
Doctor Who, "Twice Upon a Time"
Black Mirror, "USS Callister"
Star Trek Discovery, "Magic To Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"

My ballot:

1) Black Mirror: "USS Callister." This is a deconstruction of toxic masculinity wrapped up in the persona of a sociopathic white male nerd. It's a takeoff of the original Star Trek, here called Space Fleet, with Robert Daly the Chief Technical Officer of Infinity, an online game. This turns dark very quickly, as the "Captain Daly" of Robert's private version of the game reveals him to be the tyrannical god of his own universe, complete with digital copies of his co-workers to manipulate and terrorize.

Watching this for the second time, I noticed that with the exception of Walton, his boss in the real-life version of Infinity who took over Daly's original concepts and didn't give him the credit he apparently did deserve, every one of the imprisoned co-workers is a woman and/or person of color. If that isn't a commentary on Silicon Valley nerd male entitlement, I don't know what is.

2) Star Trek Discovery: "Magic To Make the Sanest Man Go Mad." This would have taken the No. 1 spot, except for the terrible ending. This prequel to the original Star Trek used a technobabble time-loop plot to reveal a good deal about the characters and this iteration of the show. Unfortunately, they tried to update Harcourt Fenton Mudd by turning him into a nasty, murderous con man instead of the bumbling half-baked con artist of the original, only to attempt--and fail miserably--to revert the character to his original persona in the final scene. Since Harry Mudd murdered all the crewmembers of Discovery fifty-some times over in his attempt to hijack the starship's advanced drive and sell it to the Klingons (hence the 30-minute repeated time loop) he should have been tried for 20,000+ first-degree murder charges. And they just let him go? I'm sorry, but forcing him to stay with Stella, his wife--accompanied by her daddy--who have been pursuing him, is nowhere near the punishment he deserved. Come on, people.

3) Clipping, "The Deep" (song). Unfortunately, I'm just not a hip-hop person. This seemed to have a pretty SFnal concept, but I'm not enough into that kind of music for it to make much of an impression on me. However, as meh as this was, it's still better than 5) and 6), which I have deliberately placed below--

4) No Award

5) The Good Place, "The Trolley Problem" and 6) The Good Place, "Michael's Gambit."

Bah. I'm going to be a get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon about this, because I don't understand why this show is here at all. If I'm not a hip-hop person, I'm even more not a sitcom person, which is what The Good Place is. It doesn't have a laugh track, and it does have Ted Danson, who I will admit is quite good in his fallen-angel/Lucifer role. However, those are its only two redeeming qualities, as far as I am concerned. The other characters are so shrill and annoying they made my teeth ache. I am sobbing over episodes of The Expanse, The Handmaid's Tale, and Luke Cage, among others, that got passed over for this. Please, Hugo voters, let's not do this again.

Hugos 2018: My Ballot So Far

Best Novel

1) The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
2) Raven Stratagem, Yoon Ha Lee
3) Provenance, Ann Leckie
4) The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi
5) New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson
6) Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty

(Notes: The fantastic conclusion to the Broken Earth trilogy has been my No. 1 since I turned the last page. Since it just won the Nebula, I think Jemisin has a pretty good chance of making the sweep. I think her main competition will come from Six Wakes, a closed-room [or rather spaceship] murder mystery with clones that was not my cup of tea at all, but which a lot of people seemed to like.)

Best Novella

1) "All Systems Red," Martha Wells
2) "Down Among the Sticks and Bones," Seanan McGuire
3) "And Then There Were (N-One)," Sarah Pinsker
4) "The Black Tides of Heaven," JY Yang
5) "River of Teeth," Sarah Gailey
6) "Binti: Home," Nnedi Okorafor

(Notes: This category is very tight. I think Murderbot will come out on top--it just won the Nebula, and the character/voice is unforgettable--but if not, any one of the others could knock it off.)

Best Novelette

1) "The Secret Life of Bots," Suzanne Palmer
2) "Extracurricular Activities," Yoon Ha Lee
3) "Wind Will Rove," Sarah Pinsker
4) "A Series of Steaks," Vina Jie-Min Prasad
5) "Children of Thorns," Aliette de Bodard
6) "Small Changes Over Long Periods," K.M. Szpara

(Notes: This is another crapshoot. I personally loved "Bots," but if Vina Jie-Min Prasad wins the Campbell, as I suspect she will, that might bleed over into this category.)

Best Short Story

1) "The Martian Obelisk," Linda Nagata
2) "Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience™," Rebecca Roanhorse
3) "Sun, Moon, Dust," Ursula Vernon
4) "Fandom for Robots," Vina Jie-Min Prasad
5) "Carnival Nine," Caroline M. Yoachim
6) "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand," Fran Wilde

(Notes: This was the hardest decision, for me. I could have flipped a coin on any given day and placed any of the top 3 at No. 1. "The Martian Obelisk" finally squeaked through because I thought the ending was just perfect. But I would be happy if any of the top 3 won.)

Best Series

1) The Divine Cities, Robert Jackson Bennett
2) The Books of the Raksura, Martha Wells
3) InCryptid, Seanan McGuire
4) The Memoirs of Lady Trent, Marie Brennan
5) World of the Five Gods, Lois McMaster Bujold

(Notes: You'll notice Brandon Sanderson is missing. I've been putting him off and putting him off, and I think that's because I have a congenital aversion to ten-pound bricks masquerading as books. There's also the time factor to consider. In any case, I think the Divine Cities is the one to beat. Let's also remember that Lois McMaster Bujold already snagged this award last year, for the Vorkosigan Saga. Let's spread the love a bit, please.)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

1) Blade Runner 2049
2) Wonder Woman
3) The Shape of Water
4) Get Out
5) Thor: Ragnarok
6) Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(Notes: I do not expect Blade Runner 2049 to win, as much as I loved its deliberate pacing and gorgeous look. I think it will come down to either The Shape of Water or Get Out. Although there would be something to be said for giving The Last Jedi the trophy and thumbing our collective noses at the entitled little brats trolling Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran. Also remember that if Carrie Fisher was here [*sigh*], she would undoubtedly chime in with a loud "Fuck you.")

We're rounding the turn to the home stretch now. Onward.