The 2007 Hugo Awards.

Rejoice Brethren!  The Time is at hand!  The Cows have come home to roost and the children are nearly plump enough to eat!  That's right, it is nearly Worldcon time and that means that it's also nearly time for the yearly cavalcade of bitterness and misanthropy that are the Hugo awards.

I was planning on writing a long piece about the Best Dramatic Feature, Long Form award for Strange Horzons but despite trying a couple of times I have come to realise that I really do have better things to do that force myself to rewatch V for Vendetta and A Scanner Darkly, so instead I shall limit myself to a quick post on who I think is going to win and who I think should be winning.

For the record, I did not nominate anyone.  Nor did I vote.  I didn't vote because I have no intention of going to Worldcon, nor do I have any intention of paying for membership of Worldcon , which is the only way to get a vote.  In fact, if I was a member of Worldcon I still probably wouldn't vote and despite all of these salient facts I have every intention of bitching and moaning when SF fans give the awards to the wrong people (and they will give them to the wrong people).  It's a bit like when the American people chose TWICE to elect an imbecile and his cadre of evil advisors to run the country.  I'm interested enough in the outcome to point and laugh at you but I'm not interested enough to go out and campaign for the other guy.

Anyway, such matters dealt with.  On with the show...

Best Novel

• Michael F. Flynn, Eifelheim
• Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon/Temeraire
• Charles Stross, Glasshouse
• Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
• Peter Watts, Blindsight

Frankly, I think Novik's going to walk it.  Her books have been quite successful on both sides of the Atlantic and, for the same reason that Harry Potter once walked it, I think Novik will walk it this year despite the fact that the book is tedious fantasy pablum.  I think the battle should be between Stross' elegant post-Singularity spy story Glasshouse and Peter Watts' superb blending of literary SF and hard SF Blindsight.  I think Watts' is the standout book on the list.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Children of Man
• Pan's Labyrinth
• The Prestige
• A Scanner Darkly
• V for Vendetta

 

When this award was initially announced, Pan's Labyrinth was not on the list but special effects shitsack Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was.  Mercifully that omission (due entirely to how late and badly rolled out the US release of Pan's Labyrinth was) was rectified leaving me in the happy position of being able to identify the most likely winner and the most deserved winner as being the same person.  Pan's Labyrinth was one of last year's standout films regardless of genre and I think that by now the word of mouth and the DVD release will have allowed lots of US SF fans to get off their complacent arses and watch a foreign-language film.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded"
• Doctor Who, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday"
• Doctor Who, "Girl in the Fireplace"
• Doctor Who, "School Reunion"

I think that "Girl in the Fireplace" is one of the best written pieces of genre TV to appear in the last 10 years.  In fact, if I had to pick my favourite single episode of genre TV it would probably be a toss up between "Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink", the episode from the last season of Doctor Who that was also written by Steven Moffat.  I also think that Moffat's writing is accessible enough to land him a large chunk of the vote.  After all, he did win in 2006 for "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".  The issue here is whether Battlestar Galactica reached a sufficient level of mainstream appeal to allow it to beat Doctor Who on name recognition alone.  While I think that BSG had a good year, I do not think that it had a good enough year compared to last year to allow it to get revenge on Who and beat Moffat in the way it failed to last year.

Best Semiprozine

• Ansible
• Interzone
• Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
• Locus
• The New York Review of Science Fiction

As I've said before, I have an issue with the zine categories in the Hugo.  My main issue is that I feel that online zines are under-represented and I think this is a result of the names of the awards.  I mean, I've never even heard of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and that means that not only have I never seen a copy of it or read a review of an issue, I've never seen anyone write "Hey, I read something really interesting in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet the other day...".  However, despite this, LCRW is on the ballot and Strange Horizons isn't.  This is also despite the fact that a lot of dead tree 'zines do generate discussion that carries even if, like me, you're not all that interest in short fiction.  As I said when the nominations were first made, I think that this is because most people hear the hideous neologism "Semiprozine" and think of a physical magazine rather than a website.  I think if the award was titled "semi-professional magazine or website" you'd get a completely different field next year.

The beef in this award  is whether anyone can unseat Locus despite the fact that Locus continues to be an ugly and expensive magazine that is choked with adverts and eerie pictures of people you've never heard of at conventions in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the society pages in the Tatler.  Only with more fatbeards in hawaiian shirts and squirrelly-looking chicks with unflattering hair-styles.  The only thing it really has going for it is its ability to churn out good intelligent reviews before a book is published (which is quite an accomplishment it has to be said).  The central question here is whether any of the nominees have improved sufficiently to unseat Locus when they have failed to do so in the past.  The answer, I suspect will be no.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo)

• Scott Lynch
• Sarah Monette
• Naomi Novik
• Brandon Sanderson
• Lawrence M. Schoen

The battle here is going to be between Naomi Novik and Scott Lynch.  Up until last week, I would have told you that Lynch had a chance but then I was informed of how, actually, The Lies of Locke Lamora isn't exactly selling gangbusters compared to a lot of fantasy and seeing as Novik is undeniably successful, I think she'll walk away with this and the Best Novel Hugo stashed in her carry-on.  Seeing as Novik's book annoyed me so much I threw it out the window of my kitchen (accidentally... I was aiming for the bin), I should be arguing for Lynch but in truth I thought that The Lies of Locke Lamora was a book that took 540 pages to tell a story that should have taken 300 but managed to feel like 800 in the process.  I also have it on good authority that Lynch's follow-up Red Seas Under Red Skies is more of the same only less good.  This is not in itself problematic but I'm thinking of the fact that there are supposed to be another 4 or 5 books in the Gentleman Bastards series and if the first book only limps over the finishing line then book seven in the series will mostly likely be the literary equivalent of having a crazy homeless person lurch out of the darkness and stick a suspicious looking hypodermic in your thigh.  If Lynch wins a Campbell then his editor will have less leverage and I feel the need to save the urban fantasy sub-genre from the depredations of the Gentlemen Bastards.  I haven't read any of the others' novels but Sarah Monette has always struck me as a good egg so I hope she gets it (hey, it's either that or roll a D6 and divide by two... give me a break!).

Comments

[Steve]

Just the other day I was wondering if the Hugo would go to an unworthy "best novel" ...

I hated Girl in the Fireplace. Who would call a freaking starship Madame de Pompadour anyway?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Somebody who is either quite camp or is fed up with the traditional macho name conventions on starships.

How can you not like Girl in the Fireplace? it was gloriously good.

[Patrick H]

Spot on about Locus. Everytime I look at it, I lose the will to live. What is it with their cover photos? Surely not ALL sf writers look like child molesters?

Putting aside the hiseous 1970s look of the thing, every issue has, perhaps, just three pages of useful/interesting content unless you are an autistic OCD reading machine in an iron lung, with nothing to do in your life but read the latest volume of some milSF/epic fantasy coil of turd or attend TwitCon 07, the con for 37 readers of sub-literate drek held at a mustard coloured chain hotel somewhere in the middle of the USA with special guest Dork McHack, author of the Small Dick Picked On At High School Compensation Series who will belittle some spotty, stinking autistic spectrum pus-oozing grease spot and try to cop a feel from his fat-thighed pig-faced girlfriend, leading him to write his OWN Small Dick Compensation series while he's studying for his MSC in chemistry and so the cycle of abuse will go one forever...

Charlie Stross once told me (online) quite forcefully that if one wants a professional career in SF, one MUST read Locus, and I am sure that his is right. It's about then I decided that I didn't really want a professional career in SF. (A position I have since recanted and re-affirmed numerous times in the intervening years - a flip-flopping pattern that I expect will continue until I die. *sigh*)

That aside, though, it's a terrific read!

On the longer form dramatic presentation, I'd say that A Scanner Darkly has a chance if the Old Man vote can muster around PKD done right.

Patrick H

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I think Locus is largely of interest to the circle of people that are interested in SF criticism: Critics, publishers, authors and a minor in the people who religiously travel half-way round the world to go to conventions. The fact that it wins every year is a testament to how many of those people vote. Much is the same with Peter Watts' Blindsight being on the shortlist, despite it being essentially impossible to find in the shops at this point.

I'm not particularly fussy when it comes to layout and photographs and I roll my eyes at the SFX readers who seem incapable of doing without the glossy but Christ I wish that someone would do something about the look of Locus (and NYRSF to a lesser extent).

The covers always look to me like the kind of images you get of people on the news around the time the news reader says "the trial continues" or "before turning the gun on himself".

[A.R.Yngve]

I find some comfort in the fact that I'll never appear on the cover of Locus Magazine.
;-P

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I don't know... if you have a beard and a Hawaiian shirt you never know.

Weirdly, I wrote about beards and Hawaiian shirts without having seen the current cover of Locus. Apparently it features Peter S. Beagle sporting... a beard and a Hawaiian shirt.

Is that an American thing? I don't know anyone who has a beard and a Hawaiian shirt but apparently most men involved in SF (and to a lesser extent gaming) seem to favour this style of dress.

[Steve]

I think fireplace girl's concept was better than the execution. I mean the whole literal-minded robots thing is so hackneyed.

I really have to stop watching Doctor Who as science fiction and start watching it as fantasy, then hopefully the cliche would become delightfully mythopoeic ...

[Patrick H]

I'm ashamed to admit, I have two (although I bought one in Fiji, so... no that's not going to fly). They were quite trendy a few years ago, but I think their popularity among geeks has little to do with fashion, and more to do with "Check it out, I'm whacky!"

They're also a little more forgiving on large tummies than a cotton t-shirt (cos of the pattern), and a little less staid than a polo or business shirt. In the UK I'd say they are enormously outnumbered by heavy-metal themed t-shirts.

I don't have a beard, though. Hate the things.

P

[Steve]

I have one Hawaiian shirt, that I wear on Fridays to work, in accordance with local custom.

This discussion reminds me of the scene in The Simpsons, where Martin's Hawaiian shirt is torn off, and someone cries out "Hey, you're not fun - you're fat!"

[Nic]

LCRW is highly recommended, if you like Kelly Link-type short fiction (it's mostly magical realist and surrealist). Which I do!