Hugo Nominees: The Sad Puppy-ing of 2015

Every year, people nominate things I think are horrible for the Hugo Awards, and sometimes those things win. Every year, other people hate the things I nominate for the Hugos (or would nominate, since I've gotten out of the habit), and sometimes loathe the winners.

That's pretty much what a popular vote does.

But this year, there's a new wrinkle: there was an organized slate of nominees, more or less from a cluster of affinities around space opera, he-man stories, libertarians, hatred for fancy writing and an even greater hatred for "social justice" (which seems to mean allowing people that aren't bland white men to do interesting things in a story). It's the grumpy right wing of SF, basically -- though that's hugely reductive -- and, like all grumpy right wings, it thinks the world has been going to hell ever since they started losing hold on control of everything.

Since that slate was coherent, disciplined and widely circulated among people willing to pay $50 to annoy "liberals" -- it's darkly amusing to see how much of American conservatism these days is based on that premise: spend money now, because it will annoy/defeat Al Gore or Hillary or Eric Holder and support good 'ol white Christians [1] -- it had greater strength this year than the previous two times it was tried. And so the final list of Hugo nominees is very close to the Sad Puppies slate, which they are of course claiming as a victory. (And it is a victory: they wanted to achieve something, and did it.)

The nominees were announced yesterday -- right in the middle of a holiday weekend, in yet another example of how fandom organizes things to flatter itself even when that goes against what they claim are their goals -- and the wailing and gnashing of teeth (on one side) and the gleeful gloating (on the other) have already begun.

Several people are already darkly noting that "No Award" is always a choice for the final Hugo ballot, and I'd like to say a few quick things to Hugo voters. (I'm not expecting to be one myself this year, but who knows?):

• You don't have to vote. But if you don't vote, you lose the right to complain.
• You should honestly judge all of the works as best you can. Sometimes, though, it only takes a page or two to honestly judge something.
• Your ballot should include only things that you would be happy to see win. If you list something, you're saying you want to give it some points. If you hate everything in a category, you are entirely legitimate in putting down just No Award. (I've done that, many times, for the Dramatic Presentation categories, which I hate.)
• To repeat that, since it's the most important thing: only list things you want to win. Put them in the order you prefer. Always remember No Award is an equal choice. 
• Other people have opinions which are different from yours. This does not make them wrong. Sometimes they present those opinions in ways that are obnoxious or cruel, which is not the same thing.
• Arguing about literary merit is useless without solid ground rules that all disputants agree on -- and there are none in SFF.

Irony #1: Hugo administrators have been trying, with real success, to increase the number of nominating ballots in recent years. The idea was that this would get more voices into the process, and have a wider variety of works considered. Unfortunately, they didn't count on the willingness of right-wingers to use left-wing tactics to get what they want, so the result was even more ballots but some unknown proportion of them voting a straight list made up by other people.

And that leads to...

Irony #2: (I'm grinning as I type this) It is really remarkable that such declaredly libertarian, free-market types have gotten their greatest success from what are traditional union-organizing tactics. They maintained internal discipline, roused anger against the system, got some number of people [2] to pay their union dues and sign the card, and elected nearly a straight union slate. I wonder if any of the folks behind the slate have made any attempts to wave away the cognitive dissonance.

I do honestly say congratulations to all nominees: they did work in SFF or related fields, doing things they thought were important and working hard, and SFF fans have rewarded them. To be a Hugo Nominee is an awesome thing, and the circumstances of this year's list in no way change that.

Let me underline that: no fans are better than other fans. You're not better because you've been to more Worldcons, or get invited to the good room parties, or have your own mimeozine, or toe the correct political line (whichever one that is.) A fan is a fan is a fan, and the people who only watch Doctor Who, sad though they are, are as worthy as the enlightened folks who agree with me on everything.

Sad Puppy voters did engage in a tactic corrosive to the process, but they did it out of love for their favorite stories and writers. I hope they will stop, or things will change enough, that it won't irreparably damage the Hugos, but that's not up to me. Right now, it does look entirely possible that the Sad Puppies will manage to "love" the Hugos to death, but things end all of the time. (If they didn't end, I'd still be working in SFF, wouldn't I?)

Anyway, here are the nominees. This is already a long post, but I think I'll be commenting on at least some categories along the way.

Best Novel (1827 nominating ballots)

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• Lines of Departure by Marco Kloos (47North)
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

I've heard good things about both Goblin Emperor and Ancillary Sword from people I trust, and I do have Skin Game on my shelf to read. (Though I don't know if I think of the Dresden books as Hugo-worthy, generally -- maybe this one is a giant leap forward.) Anderson is a dependably entertaining writer of a certain kind of story that I generally haven't though of in Hugo contexts. I'm not familiar with Kloos.

Sad Puppy tally: three of their five suggestions -- Anderson, Butcher, Kloos -- made it on.

Best Novella (1083 nominating ballots)

• Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)
• “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)
• One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
• “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House) 

Wright has written at least one story I absolutely loved, which is more than a lot of people in SFF. (It was from the first anthology riffing on Hodgson's The Night Land, about ten years ago -- I think it's called "Awake in the Night.") He's a writer who I think has been very ill-served by airing his opinions in public; he could have had a more Heinleinian career if he had been equally Heinleinianly reticent to write long online essays about things he hates. (Wright is a world-class hater, I can tell you that much: he could hate for his country if it was an Olympic event.)


But I didn't expect to recognize the nominees in short fiction categories anyway. Instead of seeing one set of stories I haven't read, it's a different set of stories I haven't read.

And I do wonder at the depth of the Sad Puppy bench when Wright gets three-fifths of the nominees in the category.


Sad Puppy tally: all three of their suggestions -- Kratman, Andrews, and One Bright Star, plus two extra Wrights that were not on the official list.

Best Novelette (1031 nominating ballots)

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014)
• “Championship B'tok” by Edward M. Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014)
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014)
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014)
• “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)

Michael Flynn has also written some great stories. And the other guys I don't think I've read at all -- though Lerner's name is very familiar. These could be awesome stories, for all I know. (I hope at least a couple of them are, and not just point-making exercises.)

Sad Puppy tally: four for four, with Wright not on the official list.

Best Short Story (1174 nominating ballots)

• “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet (The End is Now (Apocalypse Triptych Book 2), Broad Reach Publishing)
• “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014)
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “Totaled” by Kary English (Galaxy's Edge Magazine, July 2014)
• “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)

Nothing at all to say about this category. But, then, I haven't had much insight into short fiction since I left the clubs -- I don't have the chance to read much of it now.

Sad Puppy tally: three of the five official suggestions --Bellet, Antonelli, and English, plus the ubiquitous Wright and another writer from Castalia House, which seems closely associated with Sad Puppy-dom. Tough luck for the other two official Sad Puppy stories, from Megan Grey and Steve Diamond. Even tougher luck for everyone else with a SFF short story last year, who hoped people would vote based on their own reading.

Best Related Work (1150 nominating ballots)

• “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF” by Ken Burnside (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
• Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli (The Merry Blacksmith Press)
• Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
• “Why Science is Never Settled” by Tedd Roberts (Baen.com)
• Wisdom from My Internet by Michael Z. Williamson (Patriarchy Press)

I'm possibly most annoyed at the Sad Puppies for ruining one of my dependable rules-of-thumb about the Hugos: that the Related Work about or by the oldest, best-loved writer always wins. 

Although...if I applied that rule this year, then Antonelli would have a lock on it.

Sad Puppy tally: five for five. No surprise they were able to dominate this usually thinly-nominated category.

Best Graphic Story (785 nominating ballots)

• Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt (Marvel Comics)
• Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)
• Saga Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
• The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate by Carter Reid (The Zombie Nation)

This is easily the least Sad Puppy category, with several avowed feminist heroines and a Muslim teenager.


Sad Puppy tally: and that's because they only recommended one thing, the Carter Reid.

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) (1285 nominating ballots)

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, concept and story by Ed Brubaker, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Entertainment, Perception, Sony Pictures Imageworks)
• Edge of Tomorrow screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, directed by Doug Liman (Village Roadshow, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, 3 Arts Entertainment; Viz Productions)
• Guardians of the Galaxy written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, directed by James Gunn (Marvel Studios, Moving Picture Company)
• Interstellar screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy)
• The Lego Movie written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LEGO Systems A/S Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation (as Warner Animation Group))

This is the category that looks, to me, exactly like a regular Hugo year.

Sad Puppy tally: three of their four nominees made it on: Guardians, Interstellar, and Lego. Maze Runner did not make it, and I'm surprised to see the SPs didn't like Captain America. Was it too '70s-style bleak for them?

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (938 nominating ballots)

• Doctor Who: “Listen” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
• The Flash: “Pilot” teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW) (Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television)
• Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper” written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”, written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC) (GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV)
• Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)

Again, this looks a lot to me like what would have been nominated anyway, probably because nearly every regular nominator hits this category. (They all watch TV, you can say that for them.)

Sad Puppy tally: two for four, in Grimm and Flash. They also wanted episodes of Adventure Time and Regular Show, which I find slightly surprising and encouraging. (I'm beginning to think the actual "Sad Puppy slate" was more diverse and interesting than the actual block-voting turned out, which is of course how the world always works.)

Best Editor (Short Form) (870 nominating ballots)

• Jennifer Brozek
• Vox Day
• Mike Resnick
• Edmund R. Schubert
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt

A very different list from what we usually see, with only Resnick having a Hugo history. Whether the Hugo nomination lists of the past few years map well to the current explosion of smaller presses and online publications is a separate but not unrelated question.

Sad Puppy tally: all four of their suggestions won out, plus the stick-the-liberal's-noses-in-it choice of Day, clearly added in somewhere along the line to the final block vote.

Best Editor (Long Form) (712 nominating ballots)

• Vox Day
• Sheila Gilbert
• Jim Minz
• Anne Sowards
• Toni Weisskopf

It's unfortunate that excellent editors like Gilbert, Minz, Sowards, and Weisskopf are likely to get tarred by the anti-SP backlash, but that's what happens when your politics gets into your SFF awards. I personally will be pulling for Minz, an old SF buddy who deserves a rocketship for his mantle as much as anybody.

The good news is that this category will definitely go to someone new this year, which is a bright side for an area that has often gone to the same person for years at a stretch.


Sad Puppy tally: like the previous category, all four of their suggestions made it on, plus the pseudonymous Day.

Best Professional Artist (753 nominating ballots)

• Julie Dillon
• Jon Eno
• Nick Greenwood
• Alan Pollack
• Carter Reid

Sad Puppy tally: all four of their suggestions made it on, plus last year's winner, Dillon.

Since Dillon is best known for her DeviantArt work -- which is magnificent -- rather than book covers -- I think this category has been changing in exciting ways over the past few years when I wasn't paying much attention. I have no idea how SP-dom will affect that change.

Best Semiprozine (660 nominating ballots)

• Abyss & Apex Wendy Delmater editor and publisher
• Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Association Incorporated, 2014 editors David Kernot and Sue Burtsztynski
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
• Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant
• Strange Horizons Niall Harrison Editor-in-Chief

Even though the number of ballots are on the low end, this one doesn't look terribly different from past years to my eye. But I don't read a lot of short fiction, so I'm not as plugged into what's missing. (I notice Clarkesworld isn't there, but I'm not 100% sure what qualifies as a semiprozine these days.)

Sad Puppy tally: two of their three suggestions -- Abyss and Andromeda -- made it in; Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show didn't. (That last point makes me think there was a supplementary SP slate, possibly without Medicine Show and with added Vox Day and John Wright, which was the source of the real block votes.)

Best Fanzine (576 nominating ballots)

• Black Gate, edited by John O’Neill
• Elitist Book Reviews edited by Steven Diamond
• Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Colin Harris, and Helen Montgomery
• The Revenge of Hump Day edited by Tim Bolgeo
• Tangent SF Online, edited by Dave Truesdale

Quite different from past years, with some perennials left off. I'm ambivalent about this end of fandom, so I find it hard to muster an argument either way.

Sad Puppy tally: all three suggestions -- Elitist, Hump Day, and Tangent -- made it on.

Best Fancast (668 nominating ballots)

• Adventures in SF Publishing Brent Bower (Executive Producer), Kristi Charish, Timothy C. Ward & Moses Siregar III (Co-Hosts, Interviewers and Producers)
• Dungeon Crawlers Radio Daniel Swenson (Producer/Host), Travis Alexander & Scott Tomlin (Hosts), Dale Newton (Host/Tech), Damien Swenson (Audio/Video Tech)
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)
• The Sci Phi Show Jason Rennie
• Tea and Jeopardy Emma Newman and Peter Newman

Again, I'm not really good at talking about really faanish stuff. And I hate listening to spoken-word to begin with. So this is a category I look at with mild personal distaste, though I don't mind that it exists for people that like it.

Sad Puppy tally: all three suggestions (Adventures, Crawlers, and Sci Phi) made it on.

Best Fan Writer (777 nominating ballots)

• Dave Freer
• Amanda S. Green
• Jeffro Johnson
• Laura J. Mixon
• Cedar Sanderson

Sad Puppy tally: They went four-for five on the official list, with only Mixon coming on in place of Matthew David Sturridge. Since Mixon is married to current SFWA President Steven Gould, I'm pretty sure she wasn't on any schismatic SP list, either.

EDIT: Sturridge has posted that he declined a nomination, so the SPs were actually five-for-five. (Also, I recommend reading his post, which I'm going to go back and finish when I'm done typing this sentence: it's dense and smart and informed.)

Best Fan Artist (296 nominating ballots)

• Ninni Aalto
• Brad Foster
• Elizabeth Leggett
• Spring Schoenhuth
• Steve Stiles

Note the vastly lower number of ballots? That's because the Sad Puppies didn't nominate anyone in this category, so their block voters had no guidance. (And hardly anyone besides fanartists really care about fan art to begin with.)

I am always happy to see names I don't recognize in this category, though, especially interesting names like Ninni Aalto and Spring Schoenhuth.

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (851 nominating ballots)

Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2013 or 2014, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

• Wesley Chu*
• Jason Cordova
• Kary English*
• Rolf Nelson
• Eric S. Raymond

*Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.

Sad Puppy tally: They suggested Cordova, English, and Raymond, and got all three on the list.


Final Thoughts: Well, it doesn't look nearly as bad as the doom-sayers might make you think. If I was going to vote this year, I'm sure I could find something to root for in every category, and would be able to list a lot of things on my ballot. (And I've always left off some nominees and used No Award strategically -- that's just part of Hugo voting.) People with particular favorites that missed the ballot may feel differently, but we won't have the detailed nomination voting until after the actual Hugos are announced at Sasquan.

But Hugo season has been getting more and more contentious in recent years, and this one looks like the crescendo. I almost wish I was going to Worldcon to be there when it all comes together.


EDIT: See the first comment (from the estimable Kevin Standlee) for background and a link to one of the places the vitriol is flowing freely. Most importantly, he notes there was also a Rabid Puppies slate, which partially overlapped with the merely Sad Puppies, and the existence of which makes things even more complicated than I have noted here.

The Rabid slate seems to be to have been focused on "let's get back at those evil liberals from Tor who rule the Hugos," while the Sad slate is more reality-based and aimed at bringing a different type of work (adventure-focused, with a lot of strong-thewed white guys, as of old) back into Hugo contention. But the two slates are in something like a coalition status, like Israeli political parties.



[1] The online fundraiser for that Indiana pizza parlor is only the most current example: it's very easy to raise money for that side of the culture war.

[2] There were 2122 total nominating ballots received, continuing the trend of increase from last year's 1923 and 2013's 1848. But it's not a huge increase, so I suspect the number of block voters is only around five hundred, at best. If everyone eligible to nominate -- all members of the 2014-2016 Worldcons -- each nominated two or three works in every category, block nomination would not work at all, this year or ever.

Hugo 2012 Nominations Open

Yes, indeedy, they are.

Last year, I grumped about forgetting to nominate, and grumped nearly as much about forgetting to urge anyone within the sound of my voice to nominate (preferably things I like, but, what the hell, you can use your nomination power for anything you enjoyed, I suppose).

I will nominate, but, even more, I'm going to list things I'm considering nominating here -- and hope you folks will chime in on the comments. This might keep going up until the March 11th deadline; we'll see.

Locus typically has an exhaustive -- really, it contains pretty much everything that anyone might consider eligible and worthy -- list of Recommended Works every year, but that comes out in the February issue, which is still a couple of weeks away as I write this. I'll add a link, assuming I remember, once that list is up.

Categories are, with what I'm thinking about nominating as of the last time I updated this post:

Best Novel (40,000 words or more)

• Among Others by Jo Walton (my review)
• Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal -- oops, originally published in 2010, so ineligible (my review)
• One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde (my review)
• A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin 
• Circle of Enemies by Harry Connolly (my review)
• The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (my review)

Best Novella (17,500 to 40,000 words)

• haven't read any yet

Best Novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words)

• haven't read any yet

Best Short Story (up to 7,500 words)

• haven't read any yet

Best Related Work

• nothing comes to mind at the moment

Best Graphic Story

• Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch -- Oops again! Another 2010 book. (my review)
• E.C. Segar's Popeye, Vol. 5: "Wha's a Jeep?" (my review)
• Hera: The Goddess and her Glory by George O'Connor (my review)
• Dear Creature by Jonathan Case (my review)

Best Dramatic Presentation "Long Form" (more than 90 minutes)

• Geez. Maybe Paul?

Best Dramatic Presentation "Short Form" (less than 90 minutes)

• I was going to nominate Cloud Cult's excellent album Light Chasers, which is both SFnal and not a big dumb Hollywood movie (of the kind that usually dominates this category), but I just checked, and it came out in 2010. Wah-wah.
• I would like to nominate things, both here and in the "long form" category, that aren't just big famous movies & TV shows, since the original aim of the DP awards was to honor all kinds of dramatic works -- convention speeches, concept albums, radio plays, and so on. It's become a tedious "what's your favorite Doctor Who episode this year?" category purely because of inertia. 

Best Editor Short Form

• Haven't been reading short stuff this year, so I'll pass for now.

Best Editor Long Form

• I hope someone does the "who edited what novels" for 2011, since otherwise this is a tough category for all of us. I'll need to think about it before I nominate.
• But let me mention Jeremy Lassen, Editor-in-Chief of Night Shade Books -- I'm not sure (see above) which Night Shade titles are his hands-on books, and which belong to others, but NS has a great, quirky list and I haven't seen Jer called out in this category so far. 

Best Professional Artist

• I don't see as many covers as closely as I did in my SFBC days, but I still want to personally nominate in this category based on actual covers published in the calendar year 2011, and urge everyone else to do the same.
• John Picacio continues to do great work, such as the cover of Ian McDonald's Planesrunner
• Other people who've done some neat stuff this year on the few books I actually have on hand here: Victor Koen, Michael Komarck, Jon Sullivan, Sam Weber, John Harris 

Best Semiprozine

• I'm not even sure what's eligible, so I think I'm waiting until the more faanish types -- maybe NESFA -- get their rec lists together.

Best Fanzine

• I really don't read fanzines, so I probably won't nominate in this category. That's an important point: it's perfectly fine to skip entire categories, or only nominate one or two things. But, if you're eligible to nominate, you really should nominate something -- whatever things you thought were really impressive about the SFnal stuff of 2011.

Best Fan Writer

• I'm eligible -- practically anyone who glancingly mentions SF once in a while is eligible, actually -- and I might just be self-centered enough to nominate myself this time around. If I do that, though,  I really need to nominate other people as well -- otherwise, that's terribly rude.

Best Fan Artist

• I almost certainly will not nominate in this category, unless I think of someone on the webcomics side who should be here (and most of them aren't "fan artists" in the conventional sense).

Best Fancast

• Putting them all into orbit would be a good start.
• I kid, I kid.
• I hate podcasts, so I'm not going to nominate here, either.

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

• This is another category where it's vital to know who is eligible. Luckily, there's a standard reference for that at Writertopia. I'm not familiar with any of those names -- I haven't been reading much short fiction lately -- but it's a great place to check before finalizing your nominations.

I do expect to update this -- assuming I do manage to see/read/think about other Hugo-eligible stuff in the next two months -- but I also hope whoever is reading this will comment here and/or post on their own blogs/social media accounts to talk about the SF/Fantasy stuff from 2011 that they think is worthy of a Hugo.

The more people nominate, the better the process is -- so get to it!

I Have Just Voted for the Hugos

...and those of you who have been following these "Hugo Thoughts" posts probably have a decent idea of how that ballot went.

I will say that I left off something in every single category -- admittedly, it was "No Award" a couple of times, but I did deliberately not list nominees in most of the major categories, and I recommend that other voters do the same, whenever there's a nominee you really would not like to see win. (It will win, of course -- that's how popular-vote awards work: the things you hate the most win out over the things you love.)

The important thing, though, is that there's less than nine hours left to vote. (The Hugo Packet will also only be available for about that time, as well -- so download it now, if you're eligible to get it, since there's a lot of stuff in there, and you'll probably enjoy some of it.) If you're a member of Renovation, vote at least in those categories you feel comfortable making value judgements -- you don't have to vote in every category, but you really should vote if you're eligible.

What I Would Have Nominated for the Hugos If I Weren't Such a Goober

I was lazy and disorganized this year, and didn't nominate for the Hugos. (If I had known then that I'd be spending this much time examining and criticizing the nominees, I would have done it differently.)

So this post is pointless -- more than most of mine, I mean. But it's what I would have nominated, if I'd been smarter and more thoughtful and less crazed at the beginning of this year.

Novels:

• I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
• Kraken by China Mieville
• Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
• Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis
• The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
  

Links are to my reviews, which detail much more fully the strengths of these books than I have room for here.

I'm particularly disappointed not to see Shades of Grey nominated; it's a big, biting novel that both creates an amazingly new and intricately imagined world and tells an intensely human story. (It was published right as 2009 turned into 2010, but I think there's enough wiggle room that it would have been a valid nominee -- and it would have been a damn good one.)

And Bitter Seeds is the best first novel I've read in about a decade: tough, clear-eyed, and deeply knowledgeable about both humanity and history. (The other three books, I expect, will already be well-known to the genre audience, so my special pleading is probably unnecessary.)

Graphic Novels:
 
Here I have a much longer list, in part because I read more graphic novels than I do SFF novels, and in part because I think the Hugo-nominating audience could use a wider view of what's out there. (And I'm arrogant enough to think that some of them might be reading this.)

First -- and, again, these are linked to my original, longer reviews -- are the books that I considered but didn't, in the end, make it to my shortlist. They all have definite strengths, and others might find them easily Hugo-quality.

• The Good Neighbors: Kind by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh. It's the third in a contemporary fantasy series about a half-faerie teenage girl and how she deals with the two sides of her family. The trilogy gets a bit teen-drama at times, but the art is razor-sharp and Black is great at getting right into the minds of teens.
• B.P.R.D.: King of Fear by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Guy Davis. The latest in a long-running supernatural thriller series; possibly not as accessible to new readers, but part of a grand, intricate, compelling world.
• Castle Waiting, Vol. II by Linda Medley. Quiet, nice stories set in a kind of medieval never-never land; Linda Medley's stories are just lovely and sweet, but never too much so.
• X'ed Out by Charles Burns. This loses points for being only a piece of story -- like so many similar "trade paperbacks" from the big comics publishers -- but it's a piece of the latest darkly enthralling story from master-of-the-unsettling Burns.
• Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love by Chris Roberson & Shawn McManus. It's not deep, but I thought this was a great adventure story, and it's complete in itself, unlike the available bits of the parent book (Fables).
• Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. It's somewhat high concept -- housepets, who secretly talk among themselves, solve supernatural problems -- but Thompson's art is utterly lovely and Dorkin isn't capable of ever being twee, so it all works much better than you'd expect.
• The Unsinkable Walker Bean by Aaron Renier. Renier's art is amazing, particularly when he lets loose his really unlikely gigantic supernatural creatures late in the book, and his sad-sack kid protagonist is more interesting, and has more depth, than a thousand chipper can-do kids of lesser books.
• Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso. It's probably a formal allegory -- and not a subtle one -- but Kelso is amazingly good at writing about people and their emotional entanglements in a society torn apart by a bad war -- and her drawing is just as good at expressing what her people are feeling. (I reviewed this for Realms of Fantasy, so, sadly, there's no link.)

In the end, though, these five books below are the ones I should have nominated, and, in some better world, I have to hope that I actually did so. Some are pretty obscure, but all are distinctive, powerful works of imagination that both entertain and provoke thought, and all are, in my humble opinion, entirely worthy of the Hugo award: 

• Meanwhile by Jason Shiga. Published as a graphic novel for young readers, this complex, multiplex story of alternate worlds, branching timelines, and doomsdays is a brilliant, touching web of stories that demands to be re-read and completely understood in all of its amazing parts.
• Werewolves of Montpelier by Jason. The latest deadpan slice-of-oddball-life story from the  master Norwegian cartoonist is just as skewed and thought-provoking as his best previous work, and that's very good indeed.
• Trese: Mass Murders by Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo. Yes, I know that it's probably impossible to find in North America, and that it could never have gotten on the ballot. But it's some of the very best urban fantasy I've ever seen, set in a distinctive culture I don't already know everything about, with wonderfully atmospheric art from Baldisimo.
• BodyWorld by Dash Shaw. A real near-future SF story in comics form, without jokes or space opera or any of the usual "comics" trappings, something like a late '60s Robert Silverberg novel done in phantasmagorical full color.
• Revolver by Matt Kindt. And this one is another excellent real SF story with echoes of a great prose writer: a Phildickian journey through two alternate worlds, one going along blandly and the other getting worse and worse in every possible way, through the eyes of one "normal" man who lives in both of them.

I didn't nominate any of those works, and so I now can't vote for them. (Then again, there's no reason to believe my single nomination would have lifted any of them to the final ballot.) Next year, though, I'm going to be more organized earlier, and both nominate for the Hugos and talk up my nominations here, for whatever good that does.

(Or, at least, I'm going to intend to do so. We'll see how it comes out in practice.)

Hugo Thoughts: Related to What, Exactly?

This is the last of my "official" Hugo Thoughts posts, since I've now covered every Hugo category. (Plus the Campbell, which we are all obliged to point out is not a Hugo, even though it's nominated with, voted with, and administrated with the Hugos.)

As before, I must warn those of more sensitive dispositions that I am exceptionally cynical after a couple of decades of Hugo-watching, and that my tastes are often both odd and inexplicable. I try to be as factual as possible in these posts, but I'm also hoping to be entertaining along the way -- and the way I'm most entertaining, as has become clear over the last five years of blogging, is when I'm honest about the things that annoy me the most.

Today's very last category is Best Related Work, the portmanteau container that has been tampered with over the years without essentially changing its place as the spot to reward something that a lot of Hugo voters like but which doesn't fit into any regular category. (In my observation, it typically goes to a work by or about the oldest and best-liked fiction writer available, with pauses to honor really, really popular art books once or twice a decade and the occasional super-magisterial reference work.)

As usual, this year's crop of nominees mixes apples, oranges, crescent wrenches, and shades of the color mauve -- but, then, that's the whole point of this category:

Best Related Work

• Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001, by Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon)
• The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing, by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg (McFarland) 
• Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian) 
• Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1: (1907–1948): Learning Curve, by William H. Patterson, Jr. (Tor) 
• Writing Excuses, Season 4, by Brandon Sanderson, Jordan Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells

Wolfe's Bearings is a large book, containing nearly all of his collected reviews from Locus for those five years, and follows the similar Soundings, which collected reviews from 1992 to 1996 and was nominated for this category in 2006. I read Wolfe's Locus reviews for that entire stretch -- I fell out of the habit of reading Locus in the last few years, mostly because I'm reading very different trade magazines these days -- but did not re-read them in book form. Wolfe is a smart, interesting reviewer, and only slightly hampered by Locus's general habit of never running reviews that don't contain some positive mixed in with the negative. He's certainly a worthy nominee here, though this is the kind of work that -- in my experience -- never actually wins this category.

The Business of Science Fiction is another book, reprinting a very long-running series of essays in which Resnick and Malzberg entertainingly (and generally informatively) puzzle through various aspects of the publishing world, from their own inimitable points of view. As far as I know, those essays have all appeared in the Science Fiction (and Fantasy) Writers of America's house organ, the Bulletin, so this is probably the first time they're available to a non-SFWAn audience. (Though there are plenty of affiliate SFWA member and some pass-along readership as well, so I expect plenty of would-be writers have already read and gotten good advice from those essays.) I don't always agree with either Resnick or Malzberg -- in fact, I'd have to say that, at least half of the time, I thought that they seriously misunderstood the situation they were writing about -- but, since I was on the editorial side, I didn't expect to agree with writers talking about their end of the business. More serious, though, is the timeliness of the advice -- I haven't read the whole book (which was included in the Hugo Packet as a Word document, without any prior publication information), but, as I've poked through it, I've found a number of direct references to the late '90s. So I suspect that this book reprints their earliest essays, starting around 1998, and that's a big problem -- the field has changed so radically since then (particularly in the last two-three years) that professional advice for writers from 1998 is less than useless; it's likely to be actively pernicious.

Chicks Dig Time Lords, a book of essays by various women writers about Doctor Who, is a deeply fannish publication, in the best and worst senses of the word: it's informed by a vast and deep enthusiasm, which will leave cold anyone who does not share that enthusiasm. For example, I do not share that enthusiasm; I haven't watched Doctor Who since the early '80s, and I lack the gene for deep fannish enthusiasm to begin with. So all I really can do is point at this and say "these women really really like Doctor Who, and have taken a lot of time and effort to explain why," without entirely understanding their love.

I'm reading the Heinlein biography right now; I don't expect to get it done before the deadline, but I do want to have a sense of it before I have to vote. So far, I'm dubious about Patterson's incredibly expansive introduction, which claims responsibility in the name of Heinlein for nearly everything Patterson believes was good and right in the last fifty years of history. And I have noticed that his footnotes, so far, are entirely rooted in Heinlein's papers and in the recollections of his widow, Virginia Heinlein. (I trust I don't have to explain why a biographer, working up his subject's childhood, should cast his net wider than the memory of the man's third wife, who married him at the age of forty-one.) So the early tests of scholarship are not as promising as I might hope. But I can't say anything definitive from such small a sample, and this clearly is a big book about a major SF figure. If you're voting, take a close look at this book, and think about Patterson's work, rather than your opinion of Heinlein's writing, or his place in the SFnal canon.

Writing Excuses is the shade of mauve this year -- it's not a book; it's not even anything written. It is, instead, a free audio podcast, available on these here Interwebs. I break out in hives whenever I try to listen to spoken-word audio -- seriously; I can't stand podcasts, or books-on-tape, and I don't even like talking to people on the phone all that much -- so I can't evaluate this in any way whatsoever. I'm sure it's a really wonderful podcast, full of great writing advice, but I could only stand to listen to about five minutes of one episode, and even that was while doing something else.


And if you can judge among those five very unlike things, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Good luck putting them into a coherent list -- though, again, I'll note that if you don't think something should get a Hugo at all, don't put it on your ballot.

Hugo voting closes at midnight (Pacific time) on this coming Sunday, July 31st, so you have just over 72 hours to decide and vote as I type this now. Please do vote, if you're eligible.

Hugo Thoughts: The Big One

I've been blogging about this year's Hugo nominees for the last couple of weeks, under the heading "Hugo Thoughts," in partial penance for failing to nominate for the award this year. (That means that I still can complain about the nominees -- there's no action or lack of action that can stop SF fans from complaining about things -- but that I feel deeply guilty whenever I do so.)

Today's category is the big kahuna, the one that makes strong men say "Fuck" unexpectedly in public. If any Hugo category is "the" Hugo, it's this one. And so this category should, by all rights, be the strongest and most impressive. Sadly, this year that's not the case:

Best Novel

• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) 
• Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) 
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

I think I've made my feelings on Blackout and All Clear utterly crystalline through my many dismissive comments whenever those books come up, but I'll direct you to my long review for the full explication of my disappointment. Connie Willis already has ten Hugos, including two in this category for the much better earlier books in this series (Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog).

Similarly, Cryoburn is a late minor book in a series essentially finished by its author nearly a decade ago. Folks, Lois Bujold said she was out of stories to tell about Miles -- you should have believed her! (I was substantially kinder when I reviewed it a few months ago.) Bujold also already has five Hugos, including four in this category, three of those for previous Vorkosigan novels.

(This is the point at which I would accuse Hugo nominators of being lazy, and only thinking of new books by their long-time favorite writers, if I was to be as uncouth as to do something like that.)

I wanted to love The Dervish House, since it's the kind of book I usually enjoy -- a big, meaty, complicated sprawl of a story, full of unexpected connections and action that circles uneasily before rising into a big crescendo at the end -- but I admired it more than I actually liked it, in the end. (See my review for slightly more on the subject.) McDonald has been nominated for the Hugo six times before -- twice in this category -- and has won once, for a novelette in 2007.

There's nothing wrong with Feed that admitting that it's a particularly manipulative YA-tinged urban fantasy wouldn't set right, but, unfortunately, it keeps insisting that it's science fiction, despite the fact that it has some of the worst science committed in a major fan-favorite since When Worlds Collide. I will admit that I seem to entirely lack the gene that makes people enjoy zombie stories, which perhaps explains part of my reaction, but I just didn't believe in any part of this novel for a moment -- not the supposedly hard-SF zombies, not the amazingly futuristic blogging culture that's behind what actually happened in the 2008 presidential campaign, not the tired old political-SF tropes that Grant mines for her slow, limping plot, not a word of it. (I'm still working on my review, which I'll link here once I'm done.) "Mira Grant" hasn't been nominated for a Hugo before, but her other writing name, Seanan McGuire, won the Campbell last year as best new writer.

By contrast, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms looks very strong: the author knows what genre she's writing in, does it well, and even has interesting twists on some of the standard genre tropes along the way. I wouldn't have nominated it for the Hugo myself -- it's not really inventive or original enough for that, to my eye -- but I definitely wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers. I read it happily because it was nominated for this award, and reviewed it a couple of weeks ago. It's Jemisin's first novel; she was previously nominated for a Hugo only once: last year for a short story, "Non-Zero Probabilities."


I think this is a particularly weak list of nominees, though one could easily argue that's because of my particular tastes.

Hugo award voting closes at the end of this coming weekend, at midnight Pacific time on Sunday, July 31st. If you're eligible to vote, please do -- and please do so thoughtfully, picking the works you really think worthy of the honor.

If you are voting for the Hugos, please look long and hard at what you're voting for, and, in particular, vote for the work rather than the writer.

Remember, in any categories where you're unhappy with the choices, that "No Award" is always an option, and that you shouldn't list at all any works/persons that you don't think worthy of a Hugo at all -- the instant-runoff balloting otherwise will reapportion your vote to a lower-level choice, and you may thus see a work you don't like winning. If you don't think it should get a Hugo, it shouldn't go on your ballot at all.

Hugo Thoughts: Shiny New Campbellian Writers

I've been running through the nominees for the various 2011 Hugo categories over the past couple of weeks, in hopes that this -- coupled with the magnificent Hugo Packet, which has nearly all of the nominated works, as well as many works by nominated individuals in the "people" categories -- will help us all make more informed and smart voting decisions. (That's the dream, at least -- I've spent more than a decade complaining that Hugo voters pick their favorites every year in a thoughtless manner, and decided it was finally time to try to do something about it.)

Today I will not be writing about a Hugo category. I will instead be writing about the Not-a-Hugo category, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which is administered and voted with the Hugos but is sponsored by Dell Magazines, and has always been officially Not a Hugo.

This is yet another "person" award, given to a new writer -- in the field less than two eligible years -- for the body of work produced to date. The definition of "in the field" has typically been very parochial, allowing (for example) David Anthony Durham to win in 2009 even though he'd published five novels over eight years by that point. (So there may be a competitive advantage to making your reputation somewhere else and then coming into SFF, if you really want a Campbell tiara.)

All of this year's nominees are in their second year of eligibility, and they are:

• Saladin Ahmed
• Lauren Beukes
• Larry Correia
• Lev Grossman
• Dan Wells

Saladin Ahmed has been a short-story writer so far -- a novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, is forthcoming -- which puts him in select company in this category. (It used to go more often to short fiction writers, back in the early days of the award in the 1970s, but only a few winners recently -- most notably Mary Robinette Kowal in 2008, Jay Lake in 2004, [1] and Michael A. Burstein in 1997 -- had only short fiction out at the time of their wins.) As one might guess from his name, he's of Arab descent, and has worked from that culture for most (maybe all?) of his published work to date. From his stories in the Packet, he still has a new writer's energy and focus, which makes up for the occasional new writer's shakiness. I think I've met him, actually -- SFF is a small world.

Lauren Beukes is a South African writer (journalist and editor, as well as genre fiction) with two novels out so far -- Moxyland and Zoo City -- and one major award under her belt already (the Arthur C. Clarke, for Zoo City). I've got both of those novels around here somewhere -- or maybe just the sampler for Zoo City in the packet and two copies of Moxyland -- but I haven't read her work yet. I'm pretty sure I've met her, too, at the Angry Robot party at the Montreal Worldcon.

Larry Correia is a writer I don't know; his first book is Monster Hunter International, and it looks like he's setting up his turf on the opposite (masculine) side of the territory defined by urban fantasy at their end. (And that novel is also in the big Packet.) Two Monster Hunter sequels are now out, and another series, "The Grimnoir Chronicles," is also starting up -- all from Baen, the SF publisher that really knows how to do books about guys shooting up monsters of all kinds.


Lev Grossman is what I think of as this year's ringer; he's been Time magazine's book critic for a number of years and his first novel, Warp, was published back in 1997. Yes, his first fantasy novel, The Magicians, only came out in 2009 (when I reviewed it), but why should that be the determining factor? If the Campbell Award already pits novelists against short-story writers, can't we at least insist that none of them have been publishing stuff for a decade already? In any case, Grossman's work is definitely strong, and he's otherwise a very strong candidate for the Campbell.

Dan Wells is another novelist; his first book, I Am Not a Serial Killer, is in the Packet. (It's a book I do want to read -- in part because my old bookclub friend Moshe Feder is his editor -- but I haven't gotten to it yet, either; I do hope to at least read some Campbell first chapters before I have to vote.) Two more novels have followed.


This is always a tough category to vote for, since it's the most difficult to read for -- to be really conscientious, a voter should find and read everything eligible that the nominees have published, and then try to decide which of them is "best." Add to that the question of predictive accuracy of this award for a writer's future career -- are you voting for the writer that's best right now, or the writer you expect to have the biggest, most impressive career later? -- and it's a real tangle. But, if you do get the Packet, you can at least read some prose by each of these writers, which can't hurt in your voting decision.

And, remember: the Hugo voting deadline is the end of this month, a minute before midnight, Pacific Time, on July 31st. If you're eligible to vote, please do so -- and spend some time this week thinking about what works and people are most deserving of your vote.

[1] Added a day later; see comment from Jay Lake for the reason why.

(And, once again, it serves me right for not checking things -- I have a copy of Rocket Science, which I just now checked to see it has a publication date of August 2005, though my fallible memory had it published before his Campbell win. He is another recent winner who notably did so despite the handicap of not having published any novels yet.)

Hugo Thoughts: Stories That Are Also Graphic

This is the latest in a series of blog posts examining the nominees for the various categories of the 2011 Hugo Awards; I'm not in favor of most of them, as you might have noticed by now.

This is one of the newest categories in the Hugo armamentarium; it was instituted three years ago, and has had a rocky road since. (There are lots of great comics/graphic novels/manga out there, and even plenty that have clearly SFF content in them, but the people who nominate for the Hugos have had trouble finding those works, and there's a general feeling that this category is either still finding its feet or not long for this world.)

Even its name is a bit ungainly -- "comics" completely covers any of the things that could possibly be nominated here, but that, one presumes, was too down-market for we connoisseurs of the graphic story. (Pauses to look down his nose, over the pince-nez.)

And these are the very varied nominees for 2011:

Best Graphic Story

• Fables: Witches, written by Bill Willingham; illustrated by Mark Buckingham (Vertigo) 
• Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
• Grandville Mon Amour, by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse) 
• Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, written and illustrated by Howard Tayler; colors by Howard Tayler and Travis Walton (Hypernode)
• The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man, written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Witches is the fourteenth volume in a long-running series that has had great heights, but the current stretch is clearly middle, the kind of vamping that serial stories engage in as they work their way around to the next big story. It's smart and entertaining, but I have to assume this nomination is for Fables as a whole rather than for the bit of it that's actually eligible this year. And I do wonder why the volume number is not part of the title here and for Schlock Mercenary, when it is part of the title for Girl Genius and Unwritten Man. (I also reviewed Witches a few months back.) Volumes of Fables have been nominated in this category the past two years as well; it appears to be one of the few comics that Hugo nominators read regularly.

On Girl Genius, I have only one thing to say to Hugo voters: if you'd like to see this category continue, it's not in your best interests to vote for Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse. The last two Girl Genius collections have won Best Graphic Story, and, if that happens for a third time, it's quite likely that the category for "Best Phil Foglio Steampunk Comic" will be quietly shelved. A Hugo category has to go to different projects to remain viable. If it turns out that the only comic that Hugo voters read is this one, this category shouldn't continue to exist -- and probably won't. (That point is entirely orthogonal to its quality, and to my personal tastes, by the way -- though I did review this in a round-up last week.)

Grandville Mon Amour is the second book in a frankly entertaining -- rather than aiming any higher, I mean -- alternate history high adventure series full of derring-do, steampunk gadgetry, and dashing anthropomorphic badger detectives. I reviewed it earlier this year, and quite liked it -- but everything that is good and exciting in Mon Amour was equally good, just as exciting, and substantially newer in the first book, Grandville (which I also reviewed). On the positive side, this is one of the nominees that isn't coming back for a third go-round, implying that Hugo nominators may be widening their horizons. If this were prose, though, I wouldn't think it would be considered Hugo-worthy. (But I think that's the case for most, if not all, of the nominees in this category for its three-year history.)

Shlock Mercenary is an on-line comic, which is free to read right here; it's been nominated in this category for the last two years as well. Interestingly, the "book" nominated this year hasn't been published as an actual volume yet, though the storyline is all available starting here. (I reviewed this piece of Schlock Mercenary in that round-up last week.) The story is sturdy space adventure, seriocomic division, mercenary sub-division, of the kind most lovingly published by Baen these days -- again, not the kind of thing that typically gets nominated for the Hugo in prose categories.

The Unwritten is a smart, thoughtful piece of fantasy meta-fiction -- aside from a certain coyness about its premise that's an artifact of its serialized nature, it is the kind of thing that I could easily see being nominated for the Hugo in prose categories. (It, too, turned up in last week's round-up.) I don't love this comic, but I respect it, and I can see it being Hugo-worthy, which is good enough for me.


Graphic Story, if it's to last, really has to expand its nomination pool beyond the same things every year, but there are signs that this is already happening. I'd particularly like to see printed-comics nominees that don't come from the biggest publishers -- and I have a post in process about the things I would have nominated for this category this year, if I'd been more organized -- but, if it manages to go to something other than Girl Genius this year, it could well continue and blossom and even, if I'm being ridiculously and uncharacteristically optimistic, introduce prose SFF readers to more and more comics that they'll really like.

For those of you voting for the Hugos, you now have Six Days as I type this -- voting closes at midnight (Pacific time) on July 31st. So grab the Hugo Packet if you don't already have it and start frantically reading.

Hugo Thoughts: Dirty Pros (Artists)

Today in "Hugo Thoughts," I'll look at the Best Professional Artist category, another one based on vague body of work (supposedly in the given year, but, in actual voting practice, usually not). Since I worked in the SFF field myself, once upon a time [1], I know several of these artists and have worked, at least through an art director, with nearly all of them. And thus I'll probably be less sarcastic and dismissive than I am in categories filled with people I don't know; it's probably not my most attractive feature, but it is true.

Best Professional Artist

• Daniel Dos Santos
• Bob Eggleton
• Stephan Martiniere
• John Picacio
• Shaun Tan

Dan Dos Santos did some great work for "me" back in my SFBC days -- "me" being in quotes, because he always dealt with our wonderful art director, Toby Schwartz, and I was just some editor he met once or twice. He's an excellent commercial artist, greatly in demand because he's really good at capturing the essence of a book in one of his luminous, energetic paintings. So, as a guy who sells books, I love his work. But in this category, with this competition, he comes off as the most conventional -- he does tightly realistic work in the post-Whelan manner, and I've never seen him do anything more impressionistic or painterly. He does have a sly sense of humor (in covers like Alien Tango, in this year's packet) and a fine design sense (as seen in Butcher Bird, an older cover), but the other covers chosen for the packet this year all looked like excellent illustrative work -- Dos Santos is particularly good, as Whelan and Don Maitz before him have been, with painting light effects -- but didn't, for me, transcend that category in those works, which is what I hope for in a Hugo winner. He's been nominated twice before without winning.


Bob Eggleton, on the other hand, has been nominated in this category twenty-two times before, and has won nine times. (He was what I think of as the default winner -- this is one of the categories, like Semiprozine, Fan Writer, and the old Professional Editor, that tend to stick to one person for decades at a time -- for much of the '90s.) He also sometimes does work more loosely, and I like his stuff best when he's smearing paint around, seemingly without thought, and really going to town. But his most popular work, inevitably, is the carefully-detailed retro space rockets and equally detailed dragons; the work in the packet is mostly in that vein.

Stephan Martiniere is something like the default "digital artist" for Hugo voters -- well, nearly all artists do some work digitally, but his work looks digital, slick, and utterly modern in a very influential way, and he's become quite popular as a SF artist along the way. He's been nominated in this category four times before in the past decade, winning once. Even his most representational scenes have a slight shimmer, as if of unreality, that I find deeply appealing and utterly science fictional.

John Picacio has been nominated six times before in this category without winning, but I'm sure he'll have a rocket before long; he's definitely qualified, and I think he's got the "fan-favorite" thing coming along as well. (The dirty secret of all popular-vote awards is that they're, in large part, about popularity rather than the best work, but John is a great guy and often seen at conventions, which I'm sure will put him over the top one of these years.) He's also got a great, distinctive, instantly recognizable style, which hearkens back much more to Paul Lehr, Richard Powers, and other artists of that era rather than the ultra-realistic School of Whelan. His Elric work, one painting of which was in the packet, particularly shows his strengths -- he's great with dynamics and stark, limited palettes.

And Shaun Tan is the most interesting nominee, since -- unlike the other four nominees, and unlike the vast majority of nominees in the history of the award -- he doesn't do covers for other people's books. Instead, he's a graphic novelist (or the writer/artist of books for readers of many ages, depending on how you look at it), who produced such excellent books as The Arrival (my review) and the omnibus Lost & Found (my review). I'm definitely in favor of having this category consider other "professional artists" outside the very narrow field of SFF cover art, as long as their work is clearly fantastic, and Tan's work clearly qualifies. Unfortunately, the only major work that would qualify him for this award that actually came out in 2010 -- the year in question -- is, as far as I can tell, the short film The Lost Thing (based on his book of the same name). And that movie may be totally awesome -- I assume so, but I haven't seen it yet -- but it's also already nominated itself in Short Dramatic Presentation. So I feel a little odd considering it as the reason Tan is nominated in this category. Still, I'd like to see Tan, or someone like him, win this category at some point.


All the nominees are clearly worthy, though my rooting instinct in this category is always to pull for someone who doesn't already have a Hugo rocket on the mantelpiece. If you are voting for the Hugos this year, please take a look at the actual works these five artists produced last year, and compare their actual eligible work rather than your default mental image of good skiffy art. (I'm particularly talking to you, the people who keep nominating Michael Whelan in this category a good decade after he retired from illustration.)


[1] And I'm still very willing to talk to anyone who wants to drag me back in.

Comics Round-Up: Hugo Nominated

I recently read three graphic novels primarily because they were nominated for the Hugo in the Best Graphic Story category -- and I had them available to read entirely because of those nominations, since I read them electronically from editions provided in the awesomely complete Hugo Packet -- and here's what I thought about them:

First: I've tried to read Girl Genius several times before, and never quite connected with it. This is incredibly frustrating, since I've been a Phil Foglio fan for decades now -- I've got the full run of xXxenophile, every bit of Buck Godot that ever appeared (and I keep wishing he'd do more), the collected What's New?, and even his great Angel and the Ape and Stanley and His Monster comics from DC -- but it's true. And jumping into volume ten, as I did with Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, didn't make the situation any better. (And I really don't want to blame Foglio's wife/collaborator, Kaja; it's probably just one of my blind spots.)

Girl Genius is fast-paced and packed full of characters, and smart creators know better than to slow down the action to re-introduce their characters all the time -- all admirable things, but taken together it means that this book is a whirlwind of people whom the new reader has no clue about, all running around, fighting and emoting at top volume, in pursuit of aims this reader is entirely confused about. It also often tries to be both serious and slapstick at the same time, which I didn't find worked terribly well.

In any case: in an alternate steampunk world with the usual vaguely 19th century feel, a young woman with the requisite Mysterious Heritage and Vast Latent Powers is wandering about, having adventures and trying to Learn More About Her Past. At this point, she's reached her ancestral home, trailed and/or accompanied by a vast array of villains, scoundrels, dashing adventurers, hangers-on, spies, henchmen, minions, ghosts, and other less definable entities. It does try to be both deeply silly and essentially serious at nearly every moment, which trick Fandom Assembled clearly believes to be more successful than I do.

Second: I've also read Unwritten -- a contemporary fantasy series written by Mike Carey with art by Peter Gross -- before, having read and reviewed the first collection, Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity, last year. I didn't love it, but it had some strengths, so I was happy to jump into the second volume, Inside Man, for Hugo consideration.

Carey still hasn't quite articulated the essential premise of Unwritten yet, which is annoying in large part because it clearly is a premise: Carey must have pitched this series to DC, and he did so with, presumably, a paragraph of Neat Stuff that still, after a year of comics, isn't clear to the reader. It has something to do with fiction bleeding into reality, or perhaps that some people (like the Literals in Fables) can create worlds through fiction, but the peek-a-boo nature of the reveal is all-too-common in modern serialized comics, which always want to have one more shocking reveal up their sleeves for next month's solicitation, to keep the Wednesday Crowd coming back again and again.

But: Tommy Taylor is the namesake of the hero of a ridiculously popular -- and not at all reminiscent of Harry Potter, oh no -- series of fantasy novels by his father, and has been trying to live a normal life since his father's mysterious disappearance. But, of course, there is Something Special -- or perhaps just Something Not Right -- about him, and someday we'll actually learn that he's really fictional, or some variation on that. Right now, he's in a French prison, having been framed for a horrible mass murder by the Shadowy Forces That Don't Want Him To Learn of His True Power.

Unwritten is well-written and illustrated with verve, and, at some point, it will stop the tease and actually tell its audience what its story is. Until that point, it will continue to be somewhat annoying as well as being entertaining.

Third: I read a lot of webcomics, but I tend to gravitate more to gag-a-day strips than to long continuities -- with some exceptions -- and I haven't really gotten into the standard fannish genre favorites, like Gunnerkrigg Court or Schlock Mercenary. But I like to try new things, so I grabbed the just-nominated tenth collection of Schlock Mercenary, Massively Parallel, and dove into this incredibly long story. (Seriously: this took as long to read as all four of the other nominees in this category put together, if not longer; it's a dense, long, intricate story.) Schlock Mercenary was created and is still primarily by Howard Tayler, though he has some (unspecified) help from Travis Walton on this volume.

I don't know if it's Walton's influence, or if Schlock Mercenary was always that way, but this comic is a very close approximation in words-and-pictures form to a midlist Baen space opera novel, complete with tough-but-loveable mercenaries, a vaguely SFnal background that feels "hard SF" without ever actually having any science in it, a kind of we'd-be-rich-if-not-for-those-damn-bureaucrats libertarianism baked deeply into its bones, and damn-the-torpedoes plotting. There's a mercenary company in the kind of lazy pan-galactic medium future that you hardly see anymore in written SF, but they're fun, lovable mercenaries, the kind who presumably hardly ever take jobs to maintain order on company-run manufacturing planets or conquer small mineral-rich worlds in the name of their greedy neighbors. (And they're close buddies with the weakly godlike entities that rule the center of the galaxy, which is always handy.)

As the book begins, their ship breaks in half due to damages and stresses put on it in a previous story, and so they have to put into port to have it repaired. (No one is killed, of course, and hardly anyone is seriously inconvenienced.) Since relatable mercenary companies are always low on cash, they have to scrounge new jobs to pay for those repairs, and so they split the party into several groups to do several jobs. Tayler (and Walton?) structure the story so that each of those sub-stories is told separately, and an intrusive narrator continually gives us the ticking clock counting down to the moment when those weakly godlike entities will once again interfere in the lives of Tagon and his merry band of blaster-bearers, sending them into the final section of the story, in which all the groups meet up at the Gates of Doom to chuck a ring into a volcano (or something like that).

Tayler's art (once again, I'm assuming it's all his, and that Walton helped on the writing side) is serviceable but unspectacular, solid storytelling stuff with a slightly cartoony line but no real energy or verve. So the appeal of Schlock Mercenary rests on the story, and primarily on the characters. The title character -- a protoplasmic blog of something-or-other that looks like an ambulatory turd and has the most popular fictional mercenary character traits: supposedly ultra-violent and gonzo, but actually sweet, soft-hearted, and goofy -- is the best of this lot; the rest tend to have one trait which is endlessly reinforced. Again, it's professional and serviceable, and it probably all reads better daily in single-strip installments than it does all at once.


In sum: none of these three books particularly impressed me, though all are reasonably entertaining and all are clearly quite popular with specific subsets of SF fandom. Since I don't like them on a Hugo level, I clearly should have nominated different things myself -- and advocated for those books as well. (It's too late now, but I may still work up what I think should have been nominated.)