Read the 2011 Hugo Nominees

[J-Sun]

There's not a great place to post this but, if they were collected, they'd be a book, so here are some blurbs and links to the Hugo nominees in the following categories:

Short stories
Novelettes
Novellas

I have yet to read any of them but they should at least theoretically be good and I'm especially looking forward to the Chiang and Landis.

I would be looking forward to the Reynolds, too. Someone needs to yell at Reynolds or his publisher for not playing well with others.

 

[jojajihisc]

I've read Amaryllis and Ponies in the short story category. Didn't think the first was that great and but the second is a solid, if brief, pick. I thought The Lifecycle of Software Objects was great and probably one of the best longer pieces of short fiction I've read in the last couple years. I'll definitely get to The Things by Peter Watts real soon. I'll probably also read The Jaguar House and Plus or Minus

 

[Kierkegaurdian]

I thought Ponies was awful. I read it without realizing it was a Hugo nominee, and it felt like I was reading some middle school student's first short story after learning about using symbolism in stories. It was so obviously beating you over the head with its "message" that you could barely keep track of the pop culture references!

 

[jojajihisc]

This is how I'd rank the ones I've read.

S.S.

1. The Things - Peter Watts (by a large margin)
2. For Want of a Nail - Mary Robinette Kowal
3. Ponies - Kij Johnson
4. Amaryllis - Carrie Vaughn

Novelette (much closer grouping of good stories in my opinion)

1. The Emperor of Mars - Allen Steele
2. That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made - Eric James Stone
3. Eight Miles - Sean McMullen
4. The Jaguar House in Shadow - Aliette de Bodard
5. Plus or Minus - James Patrick Kelly

In the novella category I've only read Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects but I may yet read one or two of the other's before the awards are handed out.

 

[J-Sun]

For me:

S.S. (this is a 1-2-1 pattern for me)

1. The Things - Peter Watts (also by a large margin - this may even win, as it should)
2. Amaryllis - Carrie Vaughn
3. For Want of a Nail - Mary Robinette Kowal
4. Ponies - Kij Johnson (I totally agree with you, Kierkegaurdian - I liked her "26 Monkeys" awhile back, though)

Novelette (these break into a 2-2-1 pattern for me)

1. Eight Miles - Sean McMullen (barely - and I generally hate retro-stuff)
2. The Emperor of Mars - Allen Steele (I'd be happy if this won, too, and I think it will)
3. Plus or Minus - James Patrick Kelly
4. The Jaguar House in Shadow - Aliette de Bodard
5. That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made - Eric James Stone (by a large margin - I thought this was even worse than "Ponies")

I also have only read one novella nominee - in my case, Landis' "The Sultan of the Clouds" and that's definitely one to beat. I actually liked "Return to Titan" and maybe "Chicken Little" better but they weren't even nominated. But "Sultan" is award-worthy. My aim is to read them before the awards are given - I'm starting the Swirsky now.

-- Oh yeah: I forgot to mention that the award ceremony will apparently be "televised": http://www.thehugoawards.org/2011/08/hugo-awards-ceremony-to-be-streamed-live/

 

[Connavar]

Arent there some yearly collection for the stories nominated for this kind of award ?

I dont really care for the two popular awards of SF but i would like to read the new stories in book form.

 

[J-Sun]

Isaac Asimov used to collect and introduce the Hugo Awards collections on a semi-random basis. Then they started a thing called "The New Hugo Awards" which, like Asimov's last (Vol.5) came out every three years but they discontinued it. All those only included the winners. I think a small press may have started up a new annual collection which includes some nominees, but I don't know. [Ed.: yeah, Prime Press has The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume. 2nd Ed.: totally bizarre: it's edited by Kowal and, according to the ISFDB, she includes her own nominated losing short story, but not the winner by Chiang. Don't think I'd be buying that one.]

The Nebulas have always been annual, though the name has changed a couple-three times. I think it's currently called "The Nebula Awards Showcase" or something like. They have the winners, some nominees, and usually an article or two.

I haven't kept up with either awards' books because the awards have gotten pretty bad overall, IMO, but I have about all the ones from the 50s to the 80s. So far, if this was a book, I wouldn't be really thrilled with it (Dozois' annual only picked three of the nominees, but is better) but some of the nominees are pretty good and it would make a decent anthology overall. I'd definitely rather read them in book form myself. I've had to edit the html of a couple of them to make them even minimally readable and, no matter what, it's still a freakin' screen I'm reading them on.

 

[GOLLUM]

I previously posted a detailed history of the Nebulas at one stage...as usual when I now look for it I can't find it....

Basically the Nebula Awards did not start before 1965. What they did in the early 1970s to rectify this was to publish a series of excellent anthologies selected by the SFWA for authors prior to 1965.

Whilst in more recent times the Nebulas have showcased more fantasy than before it is still traditionally thought of as an SF award.

The books and I have them and strongly recommend them, in more recent republication formats for pre 1965 stories are:

SF Hall Of Fame - Vol I 1929 - 1964 *collects the greatest short stories
SF Hall Of Fame - Vols IIA and IIB *collects the greatest novellas of all time pre 1965.

Then to confuse us even more they published two more spin-offs that I have:

SF Hall Of Fame - Vol III *1965 - 1969
SF Hall Of Fame - Vol IV *1970 - 1974

Now while that was going on the Nebula annual awards books known as Nebula Awards started up at the time of the Nebulas ONE PER YEAR which seems logical enough. I don't have these. They are:

Nebula Awards Stories 1 (1965) - Nebula Award Stories 33 (1999)

The current run of Nebula Awards is indeed called The Nebula Awards Showcase J-Sun. They began in 2000 to the current day.

I've collected them since 2006 - current and they are well worth a read.

Also while we're at it, The Hugos have not had nearly as much of a treatment as their cousins The Nebulas. Last year they released the ...wait for it... Hugo Award Showcase 2010 volume which actually collect stories from the past decade. I have that and it's quite good. Actually there are previous antecedents to this for the Hugos but that's enough of a history lesson for now I'm sure...Lol!

Also about 4 years ago I started a series of stickied threads in the Classic SF & F subforum http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/classic-sf-and-f/ that contain a list of all key winner categories for all years that the following 'awards' have been established that at least one new member appears to have recently stumbled across....

Hugo Awards
Nebula Awards
SFWA Grandmaster Award
World Fantasy Award

Cheers.

 

[J-Sun]

Continuing the ratings, "Troika" isn't available, AFAIK, and I gave up on the Swirsky at the end of the first section as it seems like precisely the kind of fantasy I don't like and I still think Hugos and Nebulas are for SF, anyway. If it wants to be nominated for a WFA, fine. (Of course, it could turn into something else, but that's how it seemed to me. I may yet read it, but I don't see it factoring into my award opinions.)

That leaves:

Novella (very 1-2)

1. The Sultan of the Clouds - Geoffrey A. Landis (by a large margin)
2. The Lifecycle of Software Objects - Ted Chiang
3. The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon - Elizabeth Hand

The Hand was too slipstreamish for me, but was good slipstream, I guess. I enjoyed the reading of it but was left feeling fairly empty, which definitely does not seem to be its intent.

I was really disappointed in the Chiang (because I have such high expectations). I'm not spoiling anything here, but covering a lot of general stuff in it. The biggest problems were that it was told in the present tense for no discernible reason and was too long, yet skipped over large timespans and was generally pretty dull and depressing and all these worked together, reinforcing each other to cast a sort of leadenness over the whole thing. Also, it bugged me that his digients couldn't come close to speaking properly. This is like Data's inability to use contractions, which was just ridiculous. And, while Chiang's usual great touch with humanity and inhumanity and philosophy was still present (perhaps too present regarding the philosophy), it covered a lot of ground that certain Data-based (so to speak ) episodes of TNG covered. (Which is kind of weird - Chiang in competition with TNG?) Lastly, he's a brilliant SF author with a CS degree, yet seems to not entirely get open source (until near the end, I wasn't sure if he even knew of it) and his overall milieu has a tech spike. If we can do digients we aren't going to be playing in VR worlds on a screen and posting on message boards and just generally being the same old thing with digients. It's like having a tech spike of fabs without it changing the economy or something. So, while Landis' story isn't perfect, it is great and it's the winner for me - by a large margin - among the nominees.

 

[GOLLUM]

Thanks for those comments on Chaing's The Lifecycle Of Software Objects. I have that novella in fact his longest 'story' to date as I now recall it but it's still on the TBR pile. I'll keep your comments in mind when reading it....

 

[J-Sun]

Thanks for your thanks. Despite my complaints[1] and disappointment, it's definitely worth reading - I look forward to your impressions.

[1] And there's another I'm having a hard time articulating, regarding a sort of niche social isolation.

 

[blacknorth]

Unfortunately for me, the first story I read was Ponies; I decided not to venture any further.

 

[jojajihisc]

Most stories that short aren't worth remembering. Johnson actually has another recent one that was better called Names for Water, and it's also quite short. I definitely wouldn't give up on trying any others because of an impression from any single story though. The novelette nominees are much better overall.

I really liked the "sf as a means of therapy" theme in the Steele story in particular and I don't usually like a lot of steampunk but Eight Miles was exceptional; and the aliens in That Leviathan were original although I admit the message is a bit ordinary; Jaguar had a dense atmosphere that I liked and Plus or Minus is a classic space voyage story that I always like. All very good picks I think.

 

[J-Sun]

Winners:

SS Kowal - Nail
NE Steele - Emperor
NA Chiang - Lifecycle
NO Willis - Blackout/AC

The NE/NO don't surprise me at all but I have to confess to being kind of amazed by the SS/NA.

 

[iansales]

I'm pretty amazed that the Willis won, given that I've heard it's pretty poor.

I don't even know why we get excited about the Hugos any more. It's completely meaningless.

 

[GOLLUM]

In case those abbreviations are at all unclear NO = Novel, NE = Novellete, NA = Novella and SS = Short Story.

I'll need to update the Hugo thread in due course.

Cheers and thanks for the update J-Sun.

 

[Connavar]

I'm pretty amazed that the Willis won, given that I've heard it's pretty poor.

I don't even know why we get excited about the Hugos any more. It's completely meaningless.

Willis is one of those authors that make certain SFF awards look bad. They always win some authors no matter the quality of their books,stories.

Do you write blog Ian about newest short format stories? Im looking to find whats new and getting good acclaim and not meaningless popularity contest award.

 

[J-Sun]

In case those abbreviations are at all unclear NO = Novel, NE = Novellete, NA = Novella and SS = Short Story.

I'll need to update the Hugo thread in due course.

Cheers and thanks for the update J-Sun.

You're very welcome and thanks for the clarification.

I should have also been clearer on the reasons for my lack of surprise: the Steele was because it was good and just seemed like the kind of thing that would win a Hugo; the Willis was just because it was Willis. I don't like her stuff, myself, but everything she writes is nominated and everything nominated wins, as Connavar indicates. Apparently Chiang is now in that category, too. (Not that his was bad, but it was clearly a sub-Chiang work and clearly not the best in the category.) So that surprises me less than the Kowal, which is a total mystery. But, yeah, they're pretty much meaningless... but they shouldn't be. We should have an award to get excited about. At least the Hugos were better than the Nebulas - but it would be hard to be worse than they were.

 

[jojajihisc]

It's pretty hard to predict what a majority of voters will pick and so I don't find any picks surprising. I didn't read any of the novels either and probably won't, all Chiang does is short fiction and it's been really high quality stuff so far, Steele is and has been a popular author for a while now, I wouldn't have picked Kowal's story but it's not undeserving in my opinion.

 

[blacknorth]

I'm pretty amazed that the Willis won, given that I've heard it's pretty poor.

I don't even know why we get excited about the Hugos any more. It's completely meaningless.

I think all awards are pretty meaningless. But the Hugos and Nebulas seem to be particularly bad, by any standards. I mean, I'm a long term, dedicated sf reader, but I have learned not to waste my time with sf awards, on the whole. There are exceptions, of course, but not enough to make a difference.

I've read some stunning material in Interzone, Black Static and at StrangeHorizons over the past year, and none of that was represented. And Eight Miles was easily the best story in Analog this year.

Bah.