Reading roundup, Hugo homework, Worldcon plans
55. Ursula Vernon, Whiskerella (Hamster Princess 5) -- the last of the Hamster Princess books currently out, so there will be no more sparkly hamsters for me until October (which is fine, as I'm ready to take a break; binging these is probably not what one should do, anyway). This one was also pretty cute, with the Cinderella story subversion spoilers! (the fairy godmother is actually the antagonist, and Whiskerella ends up happy with a quail groom called Ralph). A few too many pee jokes for my taste, but, well, target audience. I did really enjoy the bat ambassador, Harriet's moments bonding with her dad at the end, and the hamster king proclaiming, "No one is harassing the citizens of my kingdom with unwanted footwear!" in response to the fairy godmother's glass slipper plan.
Meanwhile, I'm absolutely getting a couple of these books for Princess A's birthday in July.
56. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, The Discworld Companion -- the new-to-me Pratchett book which lived in the Pratchett apartment in Varna and was thus my Bulgaria vacation reading. It's not the kind of book one can write about coherently, so here are some tidbits/observations/quotes:
- I really don't remember much from Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, and I'm OK with that XD
- I'd also completely forgotten there was a mention of Maurice (of the Educated Rodents) in Reaper Man
- The Discworld calendar is way more complex than I ever realized, with its doubled year. I never noticed that!
- I had known about the flushing toilet (in the Roundworld) being invented by a Thomas Crapper, but didn't realize that "crapper" was used as a word for toilet predating that by some three centuries.
- The Librarian doesn't have the cheek pouches because he is not the dominant male -- he believed the Archchancellor to be that, despite a difference in species.
- So this is where "a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read" quote comes from; I've seen it around, of course, and always wondered.
- from the entry on Vetinari: "His genius lies in the realization that everyone craves stability even more than they hunger after justice or truth. Even revolutionary anarchists want stability, so that they have
breathing space to fight their real enemies, i.e. those higher than themselves in the revolutionary anarchist council, and those heretics whose definition of revolutionary anarchy differs from their own by about half a sentence in paragraph 97 of the charter."
- The book is from 1994, so before the Industrial Revolution books, but it's neat to see that he was clearly thinking about The Truth already, and probably as far out as Raising Steam, from a throwaway comment.
- At that point, PTerry thought he would be done with DW within 5 years, because it was getting "filled up". I'm definitely glad we got another 15+ years beyond that, and I hope it's because he found that it grew, and not just because his publisher wanted him to keep going.
- PTerry (at the time, anyway) tried to answer all his fanmail, because when he was younger, he'd written to Tolkien and gotten a reply. This fills me with so much heartwarmth, you don't even know!
- Also, this book earnestly explains what the internet is, which I found adorable (see above about how it's from 1994 XP)
So, I did complete my self-imposed Hugo homework before the voting deadline, more or less. I read all of the things I intended to read in full, and enough of all the nominees that I was planning to check out to feel confident in my rankings, even though I browsed rather than read the Strahan collections (editor, short form) and read only part of the first Divine Cities books (rather than the whole thing) when I cast my vote. I did finish The Stone Sky at like 9 p.m. the night Hugo voting closed, but it did happen (oh ye of little faith!)
So here's the final Hugo homework report:
[spoiler-cut for your convenience on LJ]
- Novel: done
- Novella: done
- Novelette: done
- Short story: done
- Best related work: done
- Editor, long form: 3/6
- Editor, short form: done
- Fan writer: done
- Fan artist: done
- Fancast: done
- Fanzine: done
- Semiprozine: done
- Pro artist: done
- Dramatic long form: done
- Dramatic short form: 4/6 (the remaining two things are ST:Disco and Doctor Who) h
- Series: done
- YA book: done
- Campbell: done
57. N.K.Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate (Broken Earth 2) -- It took me well over a year to read this book, not because it wasn't good, but because I found Nassun's POV early on so painful to read. It took Hugo deadline pressure to push me through the last 60%, where I'd stalled out, in the last week of July, and then I continued to The Stone Sky right away. I was really impressed by Nassun's POV here, Essun settling into Castrima, her relationship with Alabaster and Ykka, and Tonkee continued to be a delight. I honestly preferred orogeny before all this magic stuff entered the picture, and I feel like the structure of the first book was so powerful and neat and clever that this one doesn't quite live up to that, so The Fifth Season is definitely still my favorite -- this one didn't blow me away like the first book did. But it was still a damn good book and a worthy continuation. (But if I were voting in the 2017 Hugos, based on the books I've read, I would've ranked Too Like the Lightning and Ninefox Gambit ahead of this one.)
Spoilers from here! Everything that happens with Nassun was amazing, and so painful to read -- her learning to manipulate and still loving Jija, after everything (and learning the reason he hates and fears orogenes as much as he does), her complicated feelings when it comes to Essun, and her feelings for Schaffa, which are not nearly complicated ENOUGH, knowing what we know of him from Damaya's POV in book 1. Nassun learning magic by accident and killing, first accidentally, then on purpose -- her whole arc. A lot of other interesting things, too, like Essun realizing that her Fulcrum-trained way of judging ferals is incomplete and Ykka can do things she doesn't know how to, and Ykka leading Castrima through the difficult times (like quelling the would-be lynch mob by killing Cutter herself), Essun reacting to a woman striking an orogene child with killing.
Quotes:
Essun: "You've never taught anyone anything, have you?"
Alabaster: "I taught you.
Essun: "No, Alabaster. Back then you did impossible things and I just watched you and tried not to die when I imitated you. But you've never tried to intentionally disseminate information to another adult, have you?"
"A girl whose mother never loved her, only refined her."
"Once, as you trained Nassun, you told yourself that it did not matter if she hated you by the end of it; she would know your love by her own survival."
On the color of warnings: "Red is the color of lava pools. It is the color of a lake when everthing in it has died except toxic algae: one warning sign of an impending blow. Some things do not change with time or culture, you feel certain. (You are wrong, generally speaking. But in this specific case, you're quite right.)"
"She needs someone to blame for the loss of that perfect love. She knows her mother can bear it. You should have had us with someone stronger, she thinks at Essun, wherever she is."
Essun: "No voting on who gets to be people."
"You will not allow Alabaster to have died saving these people from you for nothing."
58. N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky (Broken Earth 3) -- I'm a bit conflicted about this one, honestly... There are things I absolutely loved about it -- SPOILERS! everything to do with Essun and Nassun's feelings about each other, before and after they finally meet; Castrima on the move, the sacrifices big and small, Ykka as headwoman and others coming into their own, the changes, the logistics, from cannibalism to goat-milking; the revelation behind the second-person narration of the trilogy, which is beatufully built up throughout the series and cinched here. Oh, and Danel was a great addition to the cast, and Tonkee continued to be entertainingly herself. Other things worked for me less well.
I didn't think the structure here was as taut -- I liked the Syl Anagist countdown (structurally, I mean; plot-wise, I'm kind of meh on those reveals), and was completely engrossed in Essun's story, but Nassun's storyline dragged for me -- there was a lot of worldbuilding, which was OK but not emotionally gripping, and I had a hard time believing she'd really want to destroy the world, as a mercy kill, even with Steel manipulating her -- so that felt more like an artificial way to create tension and conflict, in a way nothing else in these books has. And there is a lot of great conflict for Nassun and Essun already -- it's just personal (Uche, Jija, Schaffa) rather than planetary in impact, and I understand why there needed to be something like that for plot resolution, but it felt narratively convenient more than lived. (I can totally see other characters may want to destroy the world -- I buy it of Steel, and of Alabaster being tempted and settling for destroying the Equatorials, consciously making that deliberated choice to create the Rift with its monstrous loss of life, when he could've done it on the other side of the world with a lot fewer casualties. And, as I mentioned under book 2, I preferred orogeny when it had less overt magic in it (though I do find Nassun's ability to blend the two neat), and I have a really hard time buying Earth as a genuine sentient antagonist, even with the explanation of anything containing life/magic eventually achieving sentience. And while it was interesting to learn the whole backstory behind the origin of orogeny, Guardians, stone eaters, obelisks, what happened to the Moon... I found the explanation too pat. And honestly a bit moralistic in a way the earlier books never felt to me, despite treading some ground where it would've been really easy to slip into that mode. Now, granted, this is the one section in the entire trilogy that's in first person, so you get Hoa's anger and sense of injustice unfiltered through a layer of another narrator, but I thought the other POVs were stronger for that. And while I liked reading the stories of the unsung orogene heroes, who mostly got lynched for their trouble in saving their comms or preventing greater disasters, I felt like these interludes, too, were a bit to facile and straightforward, the way they were presented, less nuanced than a lot of other things in the trilogy.
I mean, it's a non-disappointing conclusion to a powerful trilogy that started off with an AMAZING first book -- I wasn't really expecting the sequels to impact me as much as the first one, but... the first book had the awesome worldbuilding and unique setting and clever structure; book 2 had the heartbreaking Nassun arc with Jija and Schaffa and coming into her own as an orogene. This book has an ending I respect the hell out of -- Nassun losing her entire remaining support system and her orogeny and her arm but choosing to try to fix the world like her mother wanted, Essun's sacrifice (and ~rebirth), the refusal to flinch away from the difficulty of the setting -- 20% of Castrima perishes in the desert, even resorting to cannibalism, and comes to live in a city of jeweled corpses; the child orogenes of Found Moon are turned loose to try to take over a comm with violence and both Nassun and Schaffa realize it would have been better to kill them outright; Lerna dies suddenly and Essun makes the choice to sacrifice her unborn child (as well as herself) so that Nassun can have a chance; there is strong likelihood that bringing the Moon back in orbit will make this particular Season worse (even though there will not be new Seasons, per the truce with Earth) -- but my enjoyment of the worldbuilding and respect for... I guess for being willing to let the world and characters speak for themselves was diminished a little bit by the new things. I still think it's a worthy book... but NGL, there were times when I was reading through the middle sections of Nassun's journey and wondering if I should rank this above The Collapsing Empire (a book which I found half-fun but not terribly worthy of respect) or below, which I definitely hadn't expected, after the first two books.
But there are neat small things and awesome quotes throughout this I still loved: Ykka giving Essun a nickname she hates and Essun calling her "Yeek" before the end, which it turns out Ykka hates, too; the way everything is so grounded and... you know, tangible, earthy -- people in a coma need diapers, flesh turned stone obeys the laws of physics and leaches heat and deforms bones.
There was one unusual thing I noticed, and I don't think it's intentional, but it distracted me, and I don't remember it being the case in the earlier books -- there are phrases that sound like references to our literature/culture, and so feel out of place in the Stillness, which NKJ has said is not our Earth -- "This is the sacrifice demanded by the obelisks. This is the pound of flesh you must pay" -- I mean, it works literally here, but since when do these people (including Hoa) have Shakespeare?; and "He refused to suffer an orogene to live", which seems to pretty clearly be a Biblical allusion. This was a dilution of POV/worldbuilding for me, and it's not like NKJ has trouble coming up with incredibly powerful phrases that aren't allusions to Earth classics, so I'm not sure why these are here... I'm also not sure what to make of Alabaster's scribbled and misspelled journals that Nassun finds. I mean, I really enjoyed getting a bit of Alabaster in this book, too -- he is one of my very favorite characters in the trilogy -- and I get the cross-outs and stream-of-consciousness stuff, but the misspellings I found distracting and wasn't sure how to read that. Just a sign he's going mad?
On a random note, I guessed that Remwha was Steel pretty much as soon as Remwha started getting a distinct personality and it was clear that Hoa disliked him from pretty much the start of the Syl Anagist flashbacks -- but definitely did not guess that Antimony was Gaewha. (Oh, and speaking of the tuners, it was interesting that one of them is non-binary. I believe the first such character in the trilogy?)
Quotes:
"When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place."
"Life endures. It doesn't need to do so enthusiastically."
"You can't take away people's homes and sense of security in such an immediate, dramatic way, and expect them to consider extended chains of culpability before they get angry about it."
"There was no malice in either of them in that final moment, only the grim violence of inevitability."
Ykka hunkers down to a crouch besides Danel, to your surprise. "So, how's the food?"
Danel shrugs, still eating. "Better than starving."
Essun to Danel (abut Ykka): "She dies, you die."
Danel: Tht's true whether you threaten me or not."
Nassun: "There should be a -a fix. It isn't right that there's no end to it."
Schaffa: "But do you mean to impose a fix, little one? Or an end?"
"You were fond of Jija, after all, to the degree that your secrets allowed. You thought the loved you -- and he did, to the degree that your secrets allowed."
"But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them -- even if, in truth, their victims couldn't care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky."
"[Gallat] is also the cruelest. We don't think he means it. It's just that he does not seem to understand that cruelty is possible. with us."
"That's why the Fulcrum decided to breed you. Half-decent orogeny, and good Midlatter hips."
Alabaster's motivation: "What follows won't be good, but it'll be bad for everyone. [...] now theyll all know. Every season is the Season for us."
"Life is sacred in Syl Anagist -- sacred, and lucrative, and useful."
"Gallat introduces me as 'Houwha, our finest tuner.' [...] Maybe that's what Gallat really means: I'm the tuner who is best at pretending that he cares about conductor nonsense."
I find this one too didactic for fiction/this series, but still like the phrasing a lot: "But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. [...] Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subroupings and create reasons for conflict among them."
"She [Nassun] can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn't her fault that so many of that so many of those experiences have been terrible."
"Now it's not just a caravan. It's a rusting quest."
"What? You can't."
You're thinking: It will kill you.
She's thinking: I don't need your permission.
"She [Nassun] is wiser than you, and does not balk at the notion of forcing people to be decent to each other. Only the methodology is the problem."
Hugos tally (novel): 6/6 (done!) Raven Stratagem (still my favorite; I was rooting for Ninefox Gambit last year, and this one's even better), Provenance (I feel like it's different enough from the Radch books to be truly its own thing, and it's fun and understatedly powerful, too), The Stone Sky (it's not The Fifth Season, but it's still part of a masterwork), Collapsing Empire (at a remove, I'm fonder of it, as the boring-to-me bits -- everything but Kivan and Ghreni, basically -- have faded), Six Wakes (still so bitter this awesome idea didn't play out better!), New York 2140 (making it through 35 pages made me want to chew my leg off...)
Book #59 will be Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs, which I am reading -- read half of in time for voting closing -- for the series Hugo. (That was enough to form an opinion, and I mean to finish before Worldcon, so write-up in the next post. But I'm really enjoying the worldbuilding and the themes, reasonably enjoying the characters, and am a bit mixed on the prose.
I also read the self-assigned 50 pages of The Way of Kings so that I could rank the Stormlight Archive in the series category. I have a bad track record with Sanderson -- I bounced off Elantris, made it through but was irked more than entertained by Mistborn, and never managed to get into his kidlit Librarians books, either, even though the rodents were both fans for a while. I was expecting it would be like KSR -- I would force myself through the minimum number of pages and close the book with a sense of relief. Instead I... almost enjoyed some parts of the couple of chapters I read (prologue through chapter 3). Not MAJOR parts, mind you. Like, I find the broad-strokes worldbuilding with the combed back eyebrows and the Void-spawned ancient powerful foe and the magic armor and the sprite-things, and especially the mechanics of the Lashing, almost caricature-like in its epic fantasy-ness (I kept thinking of this XKCD, like, constantly) -- and, I mean, I actually love epic fantasy still [DW link], even if it's probably no longer my very favorite genre, and the characterization very... earnest, and the prose really unnecessarily drawn out -- just, a lot of extraneous information plunked down in the middle of action and character scenes in a way that just bogs everything down -- and I note Sanderson is still doing that stuff which was the final straw that made me give up on Elantris, which is to signal very, very diligently that his characters are being clever and funny, without them being actually funny or verbally clever, which is one of my pet peeves. Also, this very transparent alluding to Past Things of Great Import which I guess are supposed to intrigue and build tension, and yet just leave me thinking, "I know what you're trying to do here, and it's not working, because I know I would have to wade through a zillion pages of largely unnecessary words to get to the answer, and I'm really not that desperate to know!". And yet... there were tiny bits of worldbuilding I was actually intrigued by -- the concept of practices around "safehand", the relative worth of gemstones for their light properties, the dying words collected in the epigraphs of the chapters. At some point, I actually started highlighting passages, because I realized there was actually some possibility I would continue reading. I don't think I'm sufficiently invested in any of those bits to read another 950 pages for it, let alone 3000, let alone the planned 10,000 -- and ikel89 is wisely advising me to stay away, for my own good, despite being a Sanderson fan herself. Anyway, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting -- or, rather, it had some redeeming features for me personally rather than for the fantasy-reading public, so... Imma count that as a partial win?
Hugos tally (series) Five Gods [based on 3 novels and 3 novellas -- I'm behind on my Penrics], Cloud Roads [based on 1 novel that I liked a lot and plans to read more], Divine Cities [based on half the first novel, with plans to finish and vague plans to read more] / Memoirs of Lady Trent [based on 2 books and some possibility of reading more, though book 3 went back to the library unread] -- I kept going back and forth on the order of these, because I do really love the worldbuilding of the Natural History of Dragons books, but not the characters, alas..., Stormlight Archive, InCryptid [based on making it through like 100 pages of the first book before admitting that even the mice couldn't save this for me]
Editor short form:
- John Joseph Adams -- provided 800+ pages of Lightspeed magazine, of which I browsed about 300. "The Whole Crew Hates Me" was facile and I guessed the 'twist' early on and "Death Every Seventy Two Minutes" had a neat premise, but I didn't really enjoy the 'deaths' taking up so much pagetime, though I concede it was a necessary approach, and I did quite like the way the story ended -- it both surprised me and felt inevitable; Molly Tanzer alien bodyswap porn got too tedious after a while. It turned out that I'd actually already read an A. Merc Rustad story with "Later, Let's Tear Up the Inner Sanctum" and hadn't thought much of it -- I forget what I had read it FOR, but it was the superhero story I remembered disliking. (I've now read/listened to a couple of other stories by them, and liked all of them more than this.) "Seven Permutations of My Daughter" by Lina Rather was the first story I really liked -- a mother's search for her daughter through a quantum multiverse. "This Is for You" by Bruce McAllister is creepy, but short. "The Heart's Cartography" by Susan Jane Bigelow is a really sweet story of a trans girl and her new time-traveling friend; at some point I started wondering why it worked for me so much better than "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time" -- I don't think it's just the lack of vampires and sex, but there's actually some back-and-forth, some humanity and growth in this story. "Love Engine Optimization" by Matthew Kressel barely even reads like sci-fi, because the creepy Google/smartphone/wearable tech pretty much exists, but I really liked it, because on the one hand Sam is this amazing hacker, and on the other hand, she is a super-creepy manipulative stalker; my favorite part, though, is that just as the VP of business development in her bank assumed over email she had to be a dude because of being sysadmin, I had assumed Sam was a dude because of the manipulative stalker thing. "The Law of Conservation of Data", about a sort of far future space Vegas, held my attention for a while, but not nearly long enough. The E. Catherine Tobler story had pretty writing but didn't grab me. "Tongue" by Ashkok K Banker was short but clever (if rather gallows humour) and I really enjoyed the use of dialect. "And Ever-Expanding Flash of Light" by Timothy Mudie is a lovely and sad story of the twin paradox and illness and love. "What I Told My Little Girl About the Aliens Preparing to Grind Us Into Hamburgers" was also fairly enjoyable. The Indra Das, Jack Skillingstead, Violet Allen, Scott Dalrymple, Christopher East, Giovanni De Feo didn't grab me at all, so I skipped them.
- Jonathan Strahan -- was an editor I nominated, because I tend to like his work. He edited "Extracurricular Activities" (the young Jedao novelette), of stuff I'd already read, and I downloaded both of his anthologies, the Best SF&F of the Year and Infinity Wars and looked through the introductions to both. I ran out of time to read everything in the "best" anthology, though I did like the stories I read -- including one from Cat Valente (who tends to be a pretty consistent miss for me) and one from Paolo Bacigalupi (whose style doesn't seem to work for me), so I was fairly impressed. I do want to read the Infinity Wars collection eventually, but I found I wasn't in the mood for it right now, and wanted to savor rather than rush through the 'year's best' stories.
- Lee Harris -- edited All Systems Red, Down Among the Sticks and Bones (plus another Seanan McGuire novella), and Binti: Home -- and honestly I'm going to hold Binti: Home against Harris, because I firmly believe it was the editor's job to tell Nnedi Okorafor that was only half a book, dammit! and also I have some quibbles on the Jack and Jill novella front, too.
- Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Thomas -- for Uncanny Magazine, edited my favorite novella ("And Then There Were (N-One)"), the lovely "Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon, but also "Small Changes Over Long Period of Time" and "Fandom for Robots", and "Children of Thorns", all of which I was meh to negative on.
- Neil Clarke -- Clarkesworld Magazine, "The Secret Life of Bots," "A Series of Steaks". The selection of stories feels a bit... I dunno. A little twee, a little too much trying for high concept. I did like the story "Bonding with Morry" by Tom Purdom, though I wish it had more of a payoff.
- Sheila Williams (Asimov's) -- including "Wind Will Rove" (my Hugo favorite novelette). But as a magazine I'm just kind of not feeling it. And while I appreciate the fact that there are poems, I don't actually like any of them at all.
Hugos tally (editor, short form): tier 1 (positive): Strahan and JJA, tough call but I think in that order; tier 2 (mixed): Thomases, tier 3: (meh) Clarke and Sheila Williams (waffling on order); tier 4: Lee Harris
Rounding out my Campbell Award reading, I gave up on Jeannette Ng's Under the Pendulum Sun once I got past the halfway point of the sample, figuring that was about equivalent to the pagetime I'd given to Sarah Kuhn. It's a really interesting setting which SHOULD have worked for me -- Regency-ish England with magic and faeries, but it just utterly failed to grab me, which is a pity.
Hugos tally (Campbell): This one's a tough category for me, because it involves comparing different things -- novels and short stories. Or, rather, the tail end of the distribution is easy, but much harder to order the three authors who produced stories I was impressed by. Roanhorse's short story is one I have no complaints about, and I really hope it wins the Hugo in that category -- but it's hard to compare in scope with the two novels I liked, The Bear and the Nightingale and An Unkindness of Ghosts. (And I know she has a novel out this year, which I'm looking forward to reading, but it wouldn't count for 2017.) Arden's was the book I enjoyed more out of the two, and I was impressed by the Russia research and how it was transmitted to a Western audience. I had more quibbles about the Rivers Solomon books, but was also impressed by Astrid's POV, and some of the other things the book was doing. But ultimately it was the less satisfying book... So I think my final tally stands at: Arden, Solomon, Roanhorse, Prasad, Ng, Kuhn
**
Final Hugo ballot:
- Novel: Raven Stratagem, Provenance, Stone Sky, Collapsing Empire, Six Wakes, New York 2140
- Novella: "And Then There Were (N-One)", All Systems Red, The Black Tides of Heaven, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, NO AWARD*, Binti: Home, River of Teeth
- Novelette: "Wind Will Rove", "A Series of Steaks", "Extracurricular Activities", "Secret Life of Bots", NO AWARD, "Children of Thorns", "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time"
- Short story: "Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience", "Carnival Nine", "Sun, Moon, and Dust", "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand", "Fandom fr Robots", NO AWARD, "The Martian Obelisk"
- Series: Five Gods, Raksura, Divine Cities, Lady Trent, Stormlight Archive, InCryptid
- Related work: LeGuin essays, Harlan Ellison bio, Octavia Butler connections, Crash Override, Sleeping with Monsters, Iain M Banks bio
- Graphic: Paper Girls v3, Saga v7, Monstress v2, Bitch Planet v2, Black Bolt v1, NO AWARD, My Favorite Thing is Monsters
- Dramatic, long form: Thor 3, The Last Jedi, Get Out, Shape of Water, Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman
- Dramatic, short form: "Michael's Gambit", "USS Callister", "The Trolley Problem", "The Deep"
- Editor, long form: Joe Monti, Navah Wolfe, Devi Pillai
- Editor, short form: Jonathan Strahan, John Joseph Adams, Lynne and Michael Thomas, Sheila Williams, Neil Clarke, Lee Harris
- Pro artist: Sana Takeda, John Picacio, Kathleen Jennings, Galen Dara, Victo Ngai, Bastien Lecouffe Deharme
- Semiprozine: Escape Pod, Fireside Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, The Book Smugglers
- Fanzine: Rocket Stack Rank, File 770, Galactic Journeys, Journey Planet, nerds of a feather, SF Bluestocking
- Fancast: Verit!, Galactic Suburbia, Coode Street Podcast, Ditch Diggers, Sword and Laser, Fangirl Happy Hour
- Fan Writer: Mike Glyer, Bogi Takacs, Foz Meadows, Charles Payseur, Camestros Felapton, Sarah Gailey
- Fan Artist: Spring Schoenhuth, Likhain (M.Sereno), Steve Stiles, Maya Hahto, Geneva Benton, Grace P. Fong
- YA book: Skinful of Shadows, In Other Lands, Art of Starving, Summer in Orcus, Book of Dust, Akata Warrior
- Campbell: Katherine Arden, Rivers Solomon, Rebeca Roanhorse, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Jeannette Ng, Sarah Kuhn
*It took me a while, but I ultimately decided that I would only use "No Award" in those cases where I'd 1) read the nominated thing all the way through, and 2) read ALL of the nominated things in that category all the way through. Because it may take me only 50 pages or whatever to decide whether to kick something to the bottom of the pile with no interest in continuing, but if I haven't read the whole thing, then I didn't feel that I was sufficiently informed to judge whether it deserved trying to block an award for it -- I mean, what if it became amazing at the end or something? Similarly, I didn't feel comfortable ranking nominees about which I thought "this has merit but is not for me, so I won't finish reading it" above No Award where I was ranking something below -- what if that second half of that thing I didn't finish turned out to be worse than my No Award picks? (I might've felt differently if there were bad faith or trolly nominees, but since there didn't seem to be any this year, this seemed reasonable.) This meant that some nominees I wanted to rank below No Award, in the series or Campbell or so on category, I wasn't able to do so, but it felt fairer this way, even if less emotionally satisfying.
I didn't end up voting for any of the 1943 Hugos, but I really don't have much interest in work that old, so, no real loss to me or to the Hugos.
Related Hugo tallying:
- Fully evaluated categories (i.e. I read/consumed all the nominated entities in their entirety): 5 (novella, novelette, short story, graphic novel, YA; this would've been 6 if I'd bothered to finish the Wonder Woman movie, but, meh, or if I'd made it through New York 2140, but, lol, no)
- Categories where I consumed (at least skimmed) everything in the provided (significant) voter packet: 6 (editor short, pro artist, fan artist, fan writer, fanzine, semiprozine)
- Categories where I consumed all nominees to at least a minimum self-imposed standard (50 pages / 30 min of audio/video <-- or less if I really couldn't stand it, so this ended up being 35 pages and 10 min in one cast): 7 (novel, series, related work, dramatic long, fancast, Campbell)
- Incomplete ranking (i.e. there were nominees I did not consume even in limited fashion so as to be able to form an opinion): 2 (dramatic short, editor long)
- Blank categories: 0
Hugo homework tally: I read/consumed, specifically for the Hugos:
- 6-8 novels: The Collapsing Empire, Six Wakes, City of Stairs, Akata Warrior, The Art of Starving, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and maybe the Book of Dust and The Bear and the Nightingale, which I may or may not have read otherwise [Provenance, Raven Stratagem, In Other Lands, A Skinful of Shadows, and Summer in Orcus I'd read before the noms, and was always going to read The Stone Sky eventually]
- 5 novellas [Murderbot I'd read beforehand]
- 5 novelettes [having already read "Extracurricular Activities" before noms, and without realizing it qualified as a novelette, oops] -- actually more like 7, I think, as some of the short fiction included in the zine or editor packets were novelette length
- ~49 short stories [5 of the nominated short stories, but really 6, because I'd read "Carnival Nine" purely to have something to nominate) + 1 anthology and several magazine compillations totaling 43 stories I read in full (18 + 6 + 1 + + 2 + 4 + 10 + 2), two of which were actually novelette length, and a bunch more I skimmed
- 5 audio short stories)
- a whole bunch of essays of various length
- 5 graphic novels [I was going to catch up on Saga anyway]
- 3 movies (I had already watched 2)
- 3 TV episodes [which turned into two full seasons of The Good Place, but that's on me XP]
- 1 song
- ~3 hours of podcasts
- assorted art pieces
New-to-me authors discovered via Hugos:
- That I plan to read more of: John Scalzi, Sarah Pinsker, JY Yang, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Rebecca Roanhorse, Caroline M. Yoachim, Robert Jackson Bennett, Sam J. Miller, Katherine Arden, Rivers Solomon; via short stories encountered in the zines and related compilations, Alex Yuschik, A. Merc Rustad, Ashok K Banker, and (indirectly, via fancasts and related work, but now I'm curious to read her fiction) Tansy Rayner Roberts [x14]
- That I plan to stay away from: Sarah Gailey, Aliette de Bodard, Linda Nagata, Sarah Kuhn [x4]
- That jury's still out on: Mur Lafferty, Suzanne Palmer, Fran Wilde, K.M.Szpara, Emil Feris, Jeannette Ng [x6]
New-to-me non-fiction things(/people) discovered via Hugos that I plan to consume more of or am just happy to know about that I wouldn't have consumed otherwise: Escape Pod, Rocket Stack Rank, The Good Place, Black Mirror, Get Out, Paper Girls graphic novel, Bogi Takacs's and Dimal Ilaw's fan writing, Navah Wolfe's short story collections, and I have a resumed interest in trying to read some Octavia Butler
So, definitely a worthwhile investment of my time, I think, even if it would've been nicer if it hadn't been so intense -- it really did take over my life -- or at least all my leisure reading/media consumption -- for 4 months...
**
While I was traveling, the Locus results came out, so I wanted to think through those, too, like I did with the Nebulas.
Novel -- Locus actually splits SF and fantasy novels into two separate categories. The Stone Sky won for fantasy, unsurprisingly, but none of the other fantasy nominees are on the Hugo shortlist, so it doesn't help triangulate much. All of the other Hugo nominees are on the sci-fi side, and Collapsing Empire won (Provenance, Raven Stratagem, Seven Surrenders, and New York 2140 were also nominated). Collapsing Empire is solidly at the middle of the sci-fi pack for me, well behind RS and Provenance, so if this is a predictor of Hugo results I would be disappointed but not TOO annoyed -- but I do think the point is likely moot, and The Stone Sky will just continue to sweep everything, probably...
YA book -- Akata Witch won (which is at the bottom of the list for me). In Other Lands, Skinful of Shadows, and Book of Dust were also nominated (The Art of Starving was not in this category but shows up under first novel (which it also didn't win.)
Speaking of first novel, Campbell nominees' The Bear and the Nightingale and An Unkindness of Ghosts are also nominated, but what won was Theodora Goss's The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (of course, first novel vs new writer are very different playing fields...)
Novella -- Murderbot won, which I'm at peace with if (as seems likely) that's the direction Hugos will go too. (All the other Hugo-nominated novellas are also on the list, since it's a longer shortlist for the Locus.)
Novelette -- a Samuel R Delaney novelette won. The surprising thing to me was that there was so little overlap between the Locus shortlist and the Hugo one, compared to the longer categories, and what those points of overlap were. "Wind Will Rove" (which is my Hugo favorite) was on the list, as was the Hexarchate story (which I also liked), and "Children of Thorns" (which I found very weak). One thing that was nominated here was "The Worshipful Society of Glovers", which I read after nominations were done, but liked enough that I would've nominated it, and would rank above several of the novelettes that made the Hugo list (one of which I was happy to see did not make the Locus short list).
Short story -- this is the one category where the results both baffle and really annoy me. There isn't too much overlap with the Hugo shortlist either (although more than in the novelette category). And the winner is "The Martian Obelisk" -- which was, hands down, my least favorite story on the Hugo list, and the only one I felt like ranking below No Award (which I'm even firmer in my intentions to do so now that it appears it may actually be a serious contender...) Also nominated are "Fandom for Robots", "Carnival Nine", and the Rebecca Roanhorse story I want to win the Hugo and which actually won the Nebula. How did the boring sentimental pap that is "The Martian Obelisk" win over that?
Non-fiction -- Luminescent Threads (the Octavia Butler book) won over the Iain M Banks, Harlan Ellison, and Sleeping with Monsters books). Of course, my top pick for the Hugos in the roughly equivalent Related Work category is the Le Guin essays which didn't make the Locus list, but Luminescent Threads was one of the books I enjoyed reading parts of, so I'd be happy to see it win, too.
The other categories are too different from the Hugos or the nominee lists are too convoluted in their overlap for me to really have anything to say (e.g. the editors and artists are all lumped together and the winners in each case weren't on the short list for the Hugos).
And more recently, the World Fantasy Award shortlist came out, and huh. There's no overlap with the Hugos in the novel shortlist at all (which I suppose is not too surprising given that at least 5 of the Hugo novels are sci-fi and even The Stone Sky feels more sci-fi than fantasy to me (though, obviously, Locus disagrees) -- but still weird not to have it on there since both Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate had made the short list in their years. Not much overlap in the novella/novelette category either -- just The Black Tides of Heaven -- but most of the novellas and novelettes from the Hugo ballot (and all the ones that I would consider stronger than 'Tides') were sci-fi as well. Finally some overlap on the short stories -- my two favorites "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" and "Carnival Nine" as well as "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" (most of the "omissions" are sci-fi, the only one that's not is Vernon's story). Some limited overlap on artist nominations (Victo Ngai) and (non-professional) editors, but hard to compare those categories in a meaningful way.
And speaking of the SFF community, this article on the epic ongoing flame war/roasting competition between Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke was a delight!
*
And on a different medium note: Episode 13 of the Be the Serpent podcast is SO MUCH FUN! They talked about A Civil Campaign (aka, my favorite Vorkosiverse book), and Vetinari and Granny Wetherwax (aka, not only my favorite characters in Pratchett, but probably my favorite male and female characters OF ALL TIME), and delightful "Miles vs Vetinari, who would win" (I completely agree with the answers they came up with), and interesting comparisons to Kushiel's Legacy, and Captive Prince (which took a lot longer than I was expecting XP), and really fun discussion of Machievellian chessmasters' pet Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors (I agree with Alex that Ekaterin is a 'Puff).
*
Worldcon program is FINALLY live! (I know they had to revise it at the last minute because of various controversies.) So now I need to actually try to figure out what-all I'm doing...
[People and panels I'm interested in, spoiler-cut for your convenience on LJ] Peter Beagle (Sunday panel), EBear (Sunday panel on horses), Robert Jackson Bennett (Friday panel on architecture), SRB (!!! Sunday panel on YA), Gail Carriger (Thursday and Sunday), Becky Chambers (Thursday and Friday), Ellen Datlow (Friday kaffeeklatsch, Sunday horror, Monday autographs), Kate Elliott (Sat kaffeeklatsch and Sunday), Robin Hobb (Saturday on series), Greg Hullender (Friday, Sat, Sunday), Joe Haldeman (Sat on milSF), MRKowal (Fri/Sat/Sun), Ann Leckie (Friday on pronouns, kaffeeklatsch and autographs, Sat reading), GRRM (Thurs fandom history, Fri and autographs), Foz Meadows (Fri/Sat/Sun), SMG (Sat series and other stuff), PNH (Sat on Tor), Garth Nix (Fri/Mon 10:30 a.m.), Ada Palmer (Sat kaffeeklastch and autographs, Sun panels), Sarah Pinsker (Friday reading, Sat autographs, Sunday horse panel), Mike Resnik (Thur/Fri/Sun panels), Rebecca Roanhorse (Friday panel/reading, Sut, Sun), Alex Rowland (Fri, Mon), Brandon Sanderson (Sat auto, long series), John Scalzi (Sat, Sun auto), Nat Segaloff (Ellison Sat 2pm), Bob Silverberg (Ellison memorial), Rivers Solomon (Thurs, Fri panel, Sun auto), Harry Turtledove ( ), Ursula Vernon (Sat/Sun panels), Greg van Eekhout (Sat panel, Mon auto), Boki Takacs (Fri panel, Sun, Mon auto), Tad Williams (Sun autographs), Navah Wolfe (Sun 3p.m. Judaism panel), Martha Wells (Fri reading, Sat fantasy aliens panel, Mon auto 2p.m.), Jo Walton (Thurs/Fri, Sat auto), JY Yang (Fri), Caroline Yoachim (Fri, Sat (fantasy aliens), Sun reading),
THURSDAY:
- 2p.m.
[Scurrilous History of Fandom (Mike Resnick, GRRM)]
[alt: Dystopia vs Utopia]
- 3 p.m. - ?
[historical fencing? Dude where's my Ray Gun?]
- 4pm.
[Afrofuturism w/ Rivers Solomon?]
[Iron Bardic w. Jennifer Tifft (90 min)]
- 5 p.m. -- Opening ceremonies (90 min)
- 7:30 pm. -- Retro Hugos red carpet
FRIDAY:
- 10 a.m.
[Fireside magazine -- Rowland]
[Art and Craft of anthology creation -- Lynne Thomas, Ellen Datlow]
[Ray gun target practice]
- 11 a.m.
[collab w/ science expert, Becky Chambers]
[astronauts w/ MRK]
[names, including Marie Brennan]
- 12 p.m.
GRRM autographs (elsewhere, Yoachim)
[Prose polishing -- Rowland, Solomon]
[alt food panel w/ Rose Lemberg]
- 1pm.
[Ancestral myths -- Roanhorse, Jeannette Ng, Picacio]
[Jo Walton reading]
[Ann Leckie caffeeklatsch]
[Queer families in SFF -- Foz Meadows, Bogi Takacs, Rivers Solomon]
[Becky Chambers autographs]
- 2p.m.
[Campbell reading -- Roanhorse, Ng, Kuhn]
[Magicon timecapsule]
[Autographs -- Chambers, Haldman, Silverberg]
- 3 p.m.
[Novelette reading -- Pinsker, Palmer, Szpara]
[Autographs -- Leckie]
- 4p.m.
[Queer Joy in SFF -- Takacs, Solomon]
[architecture -- w/ RJBennett]
[novella reading -- Wells, Yang, Gailey, SMG]
[Beagle autograpjs -- 30 min]
- 5 p.m.
[Hugo short story -- Yoachim, Wilde, Nagata]
[Garth Nix autographs]
[Frankenstein panel w/ Palmer]
- 6 p.m.
[Non-hugo nominated novels -- Walton, Fran Wilde]
- 7 p.m.
[Book Smugglers -- Kate Elliott, Foz Meadows]
SATURDAY
- 10 a.m.
[Research rabbit holes -- Pinsker]
[Escape pod (90 min)
[fanfic panel]
[Kate Elliott kaffeeklatsch]
[historical swordfighting demo, including longsword lesson]
- 11 a.m.
[Writing the epic -- Roanhorse, Elliott]
[Kaffeeklatsch w/ MRK and Kjell Lindgren]
- 12 p.m.
[25 years of B5]
[Raising kids in fandom]
[Punday -- 2 hrs]
- 1 p.m.
[Kaffeeklatch -- Ada Palmer]
[Hugo novel -- Leckie, Scalzi, Lafferty]
- 2 p.m.
[Harlan Ellison -- Silverberg, Gerrold, Segaloff]
[Best series -- Sanderson, Wells, Brennan]
[Autographs -- Palmer]
- 3 pm.
[Near future fiction -- Scalzi, Pinsker, Newitz, Nagata]
[LeGuin legacy]
[Autographs, Sanderson, MRK]
- 4 p.m.
[Beagle Kaffeeklatsch]
[Autographs -- Pinsker, Turtledove]
- 5 p.m.
[Fantasy Aliens -- Wells, Yoachim, Ng]
[Author vs fan ownership -- Scalzi, Hullender, Foz Meadows]
[Midgrade -- Vernon, Eekhout]
[Autographs -- Walton]
- 8 p.m. -- Masquerade
SUNDAY:
- 9 a.m. [Stroll w/ the stars -- MRK]
- 10 a.m.
[Horse panel -- Pinsker, EBear]
[Myth panel -- Tad Williams, Foz Meadows]
[Ceaseless skies -- Lemberg, Yoachim]
[Autographs -- Roanhorse]
- 11 a.m.
[Fandom as Cultural Adaptation -- Takacs]
[Dressed those girls -- Kate Elliott, Ng]
[Kafeeklatch -- Carriger]
[Autographs -- Tad Williams]
- 12 p.m.
[Autographs -- Solomon, Gailey]
- 1 p.m.
[Coode Street Live -- Strahan, Wolfe]
[Autographs -- Martin]
- 2 p.m.
[YA vs Adult -- SRB]
[Autographs -- Scalzi]
- 3 p.m.
[Judaism and sci-fi -- Kinney, Navah Wolfe]
[Diversity in post-apocalyptic -- Roanhorse]
- 4 p.m.
[Why do writers kill a character -- Palmer, Beagle]
[Recommended reading in webcomincs -- Vernon, Meadows]
- 5 p.m.
[Disability in the future -- Palmer]
- 8 p.m. -- HUGOS! :D
MONDAY:
- 11 a.m.
[Bringing up geek -- Lafferty]
[Autographs -- Datlow, Takacs, Lemberg]
- 12 p.m.
[You do deserve to be here -- Alex Rowland]
- 2p.m.
[Autographs -- Martha Wells]
[Kaffeeklatch -- Mur Lafferty]
- 3 p.m. -- Closing ceremonies
Folks who've been to Worldcons (or similar cons) and have advice on which of the people listed above that I'm interested in are fun or not fun to see in person, in panel, etc. -- your experiences are very welcome, as I've never done this sort of thing before!
Also, I have some con noob questions...
- Is it feasible to try to both get an autograph and attend (part of) a panel in the same timeslot, or is sneaking into/out of panels Not Done?
- If I'm trying to decide between a kaffeeklatch and an autograph session of the same author -- would one be able to actually get books signed at a kaffeeklatch?
- Does one have to line up like a zillion hours in advance for autograph sessions? What about with bigger names like Peter Beagle or GRRM?
- If an author I want an autograph from does not have an autograph session, can one corner them before/after a panel, or is that rude? What about an artist if one finds them at their art dealer booth?
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1085185.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
Meanwhile, I'm absolutely getting a couple of these books for Princess A's birthday in July.
56. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, The Discworld Companion -- the new-to-me Pratchett book which lived in the Pratchett apartment in Varna and was thus my Bulgaria vacation reading. It's not the kind of book one can write about coherently, so here are some tidbits/observations/quotes:
- I really don't remember much from Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, and I'm OK with that XD
- I'd also completely forgotten there was a mention of Maurice (of the Educated Rodents) in Reaper Man
- The Discworld calendar is way more complex than I ever realized, with its doubled year. I never noticed that!
- I had known about the flushing toilet (in the Roundworld) being invented by a Thomas Crapper, but didn't realize that "crapper" was used as a word for toilet predating that by some three centuries.
- The Librarian doesn't have the cheek pouches because he is not the dominant male -- he believed the Archchancellor to be that, despite a difference in species.
- So this is where "a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read" quote comes from; I've seen it around, of course, and always wondered.
- from the entry on Vetinari: "His genius lies in the realization that everyone craves stability even more than they hunger after justice or truth. Even revolutionary anarchists want stability, so that they have
breathing space to fight their real enemies, i.e. those higher than themselves in the revolutionary anarchist council, and those heretics whose definition of revolutionary anarchy differs from their own by about half a sentence in paragraph 97 of the charter."
- The book is from 1994, so before the Industrial Revolution books, but it's neat to see that he was clearly thinking about The Truth already, and probably as far out as Raising Steam, from a throwaway comment.
- At that point, PTerry thought he would be done with DW within 5 years, because it was getting "filled up". I'm definitely glad we got another 15+ years beyond that, and I hope it's because he found that it grew, and not just because his publisher wanted him to keep going.
- PTerry (at the time, anyway) tried to answer all his fanmail, because when he was younger, he'd written to Tolkien and gotten a reply. This fills me with so much heartwarmth, you don't even know!
- Also, this book earnestly explains what the internet is, which I found adorable (see above about how it's from 1994 XP)
So, I did complete my self-imposed Hugo homework before the voting deadline, more or less. I read all of the things I intended to read in full, and enough of all the nominees that I was planning to check out to feel confident in my rankings, even though I browsed rather than read the Strahan collections (editor, short form) and read only part of the first Divine Cities books (rather than the whole thing) when I cast my vote. I did finish The Stone Sky at like 9 p.m. the night Hugo voting closed, but it did happen (oh ye of little faith!)
So here's the final Hugo homework report:
[spoiler-cut for your convenience on LJ]
- Novel: done
- Novella: done
- Novelette: done
- Short story: done
- Best related work: done
- Editor, long form: 3/6
- Editor, short form: done
- Fan writer: done
- Fan artist: done
- Fancast: done
- Fanzine: done
- Semiprozine: done
- Pro artist: done
- Dramatic long form: done
- Dramatic short form: 4/6 (the remaining two things are ST:Disco and Doctor Who) h
- Series: done
- YA book: done
- Campbell: done
57. N.K.Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate (Broken Earth 2) -- It took me well over a year to read this book, not because it wasn't good, but because I found Nassun's POV early on so painful to read. It took Hugo deadline pressure to push me through the last 60%, where I'd stalled out, in the last week of July, and then I continued to The Stone Sky right away. I was really impressed by Nassun's POV here, Essun settling into Castrima, her relationship with Alabaster and Ykka, and Tonkee continued to be a delight. I honestly preferred orogeny before all this magic stuff entered the picture, and I feel like the structure of the first book was so powerful and neat and clever that this one doesn't quite live up to that, so The Fifth Season is definitely still my favorite -- this one didn't blow me away like the first book did. But it was still a damn good book and a worthy continuation. (But if I were voting in the 2017 Hugos, based on the books I've read, I would've ranked Too Like the Lightning and Ninefox Gambit ahead of this one.)
Spoilers from here! Everything that happens with Nassun was amazing, and so painful to read -- her learning to manipulate and still loving Jija, after everything (and learning the reason he hates and fears orogenes as much as he does), her complicated feelings when it comes to Essun, and her feelings for Schaffa, which are not nearly complicated ENOUGH, knowing what we know of him from Damaya's POV in book 1. Nassun learning magic by accident and killing, first accidentally, then on purpose -- her whole arc. A lot of other interesting things, too, like Essun realizing that her Fulcrum-trained way of judging ferals is incomplete and Ykka can do things she doesn't know how to, and Ykka leading Castrima through the difficult times (like quelling the would-be lynch mob by killing Cutter herself), Essun reacting to a woman striking an orogene child with killing.
Quotes:
Essun: "You've never taught anyone anything, have you?"
Alabaster: "I taught you.
Essun: "No, Alabaster. Back then you did impossible things and I just watched you and tried not to die when I imitated you. But you've never tried to intentionally disseminate information to another adult, have you?"
"A girl whose mother never loved her, only refined her."
"Once, as you trained Nassun, you told yourself that it did not matter if she hated you by the end of it; she would know your love by her own survival."
On the color of warnings: "Red is the color of lava pools. It is the color of a lake when everthing in it has died except toxic algae: one warning sign of an impending blow. Some things do not change with time or culture, you feel certain. (You are wrong, generally speaking. But in this specific case, you're quite right.)"
"She needs someone to blame for the loss of that perfect love. She knows her mother can bear it. You should have had us with someone stronger, she thinks at Essun, wherever she is."
Essun: "No voting on who gets to be people."
"You will not allow Alabaster to have died saving these people from you for nothing."
58. N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky (Broken Earth 3) -- I'm a bit conflicted about this one, honestly... There are things I absolutely loved about it -- SPOILERS! everything to do with Essun and Nassun's feelings about each other, before and after they finally meet; Castrima on the move, the sacrifices big and small, Ykka as headwoman and others coming into their own, the changes, the logistics, from cannibalism to goat-milking; the revelation behind the second-person narration of the trilogy, which is beatufully built up throughout the series and cinched here. Oh, and Danel was a great addition to the cast, and Tonkee continued to be entertainingly herself. Other things worked for me less well.
I didn't think the structure here was as taut -- I liked the Syl Anagist countdown (structurally, I mean; plot-wise, I'm kind of meh on those reveals), and was completely engrossed in Essun's story, but Nassun's storyline dragged for me -- there was a lot of worldbuilding, which was OK but not emotionally gripping, and I had a hard time believing she'd really want to destroy the world, as a mercy kill, even with Steel manipulating her -- so that felt more like an artificial way to create tension and conflict, in a way nothing else in these books has. And there is a lot of great conflict for Nassun and Essun already -- it's just personal (Uche, Jija, Schaffa) rather than planetary in impact, and I understand why there needed to be something like that for plot resolution, but it felt narratively convenient more than lived. (I can totally see other characters may want to destroy the world -- I buy it of Steel, and of Alabaster being tempted and settling for destroying the Equatorials, consciously making that deliberated choice to create the Rift with its monstrous loss of life, when he could've done it on the other side of the world with a lot fewer casualties. And, as I mentioned under book 2, I preferred orogeny when it had less overt magic in it (though I do find Nassun's ability to blend the two neat), and I have a really hard time buying Earth as a genuine sentient antagonist, even with the explanation of anything containing life/magic eventually achieving sentience. And while it was interesting to learn the whole backstory behind the origin of orogeny, Guardians, stone eaters, obelisks, what happened to the Moon... I found the explanation too pat. And honestly a bit moralistic in a way the earlier books never felt to me, despite treading some ground where it would've been really easy to slip into that mode. Now, granted, this is the one section in the entire trilogy that's in first person, so you get Hoa's anger and sense of injustice unfiltered through a layer of another narrator, but I thought the other POVs were stronger for that. And while I liked reading the stories of the unsung orogene heroes, who mostly got lynched for their trouble in saving their comms or preventing greater disasters, I felt like these interludes, too, were a bit to facile and straightforward, the way they were presented, less nuanced than a lot of other things in the trilogy.
I mean, it's a non-disappointing conclusion to a powerful trilogy that started off with an AMAZING first book -- I wasn't really expecting the sequels to impact me as much as the first one, but... the first book had the awesome worldbuilding and unique setting and clever structure; book 2 had the heartbreaking Nassun arc with Jija and Schaffa and coming into her own as an orogene. This book has an ending I respect the hell out of -- Nassun losing her entire remaining support system and her orogeny and her arm but choosing to try to fix the world like her mother wanted, Essun's sacrifice (and ~rebirth), the refusal to flinch away from the difficulty of the setting -- 20% of Castrima perishes in the desert, even resorting to cannibalism, and comes to live in a city of jeweled corpses; the child orogenes of Found Moon are turned loose to try to take over a comm with violence and both Nassun and Schaffa realize it would have been better to kill them outright; Lerna dies suddenly and Essun makes the choice to sacrifice her unborn child (as well as herself) so that Nassun can have a chance; there is strong likelihood that bringing the Moon back in orbit will make this particular Season worse (even though there will not be new Seasons, per the truce with Earth) -- but my enjoyment of the worldbuilding and respect for... I guess for being willing to let the world and characters speak for themselves was diminished a little bit by the new things. I still think it's a worthy book... but NGL, there were times when I was reading through the middle sections of Nassun's journey and wondering if I should rank this above The Collapsing Empire (a book which I found half-fun but not terribly worthy of respect) or below, which I definitely hadn't expected, after the first two books.
But there are neat small things and awesome quotes throughout this I still loved: Ykka giving Essun a nickname she hates and Essun calling her "Yeek" before the end, which it turns out Ykka hates, too; the way everything is so grounded and... you know, tangible, earthy -- people in a coma need diapers, flesh turned stone obeys the laws of physics and leaches heat and deforms bones.
There was one unusual thing I noticed, and I don't think it's intentional, but it distracted me, and I don't remember it being the case in the earlier books -- there are phrases that sound like references to our literature/culture, and so feel out of place in the Stillness, which NKJ has said is not our Earth -- "This is the sacrifice demanded by the obelisks. This is the pound of flesh you must pay" -- I mean, it works literally here, but since when do these people (including Hoa) have Shakespeare?; and "He refused to suffer an orogene to live", which seems to pretty clearly be a Biblical allusion. This was a dilution of POV/worldbuilding for me, and it's not like NKJ has trouble coming up with incredibly powerful phrases that aren't allusions to Earth classics, so I'm not sure why these are here... I'm also not sure what to make of Alabaster's scribbled and misspelled journals that Nassun finds. I mean, I really enjoyed getting a bit of Alabaster in this book, too -- he is one of my very favorite characters in the trilogy -- and I get the cross-outs and stream-of-consciousness stuff, but the misspellings I found distracting and wasn't sure how to read that. Just a sign he's going mad?
On a random note, I guessed that Remwha was Steel pretty much as soon as Remwha started getting a distinct personality and it was clear that Hoa disliked him from pretty much the start of the Syl Anagist flashbacks -- but definitely did not guess that Antimony was Gaewha. (Oh, and speaking of the tuners, it was interesting that one of them is non-binary. I believe the first such character in the trilogy?)
Quotes:
"When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place."
"Life endures. It doesn't need to do so enthusiastically."
"You can't take away people's homes and sense of security in such an immediate, dramatic way, and expect them to consider extended chains of culpability before they get angry about it."
"There was no malice in either of them in that final moment, only the grim violence of inevitability."
Ykka hunkers down to a crouch besides Danel, to your surprise. "So, how's the food?"
Danel shrugs, still eating. "Better than starving."
Essun to Danel (abut Ykka): "She dies, you die."
Danel: Tht's true whether you threaten me or not."
Nassun: "There should be a -a fix. It isn't right that there's no end to it."
Schaffa: "But do you mean to impose a fix, little one? Or an end?"
"You were fond of Jija, after all, to the degree that your secrets allowed. You thought the loved you -- and he did, to the degree that your secrets allowed."
"But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them -- even if, in truth, their victims couldn't care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky."
"[Gallat] is also the cruelest. We don't think he means it. It's just that he does not seem to understand that cruelty is possible. with us."
"That's why the Fulcrum decided to breed you. Half-decent orogeny, and good Midlatter hips."
Alabaster's motivation: "What follows won't be good, but it'll be bad for everyone. [...] now theyll all know. Every season is the Season for us."
"Life is sacred in Syl Anagist -- sacred, and lucrative, and useful."
"Gallat introduces me as 'Houwha, our finest tuner.' [...] Maybe that's what Gallat really means: I'm the tuner who is best at pretending that he cares about conductor nonsense."
I find this one too didactic for fiction/this series, but still like the phrasing a lot: "But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. [...] Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subroupings and create reasons for conflict among them."
"She [Nassun] can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn't her fault that so many of that so many of those experiences have been terrible."
"Now it's not just a caravan. It's a rusting quest."
"What? You can't."
You're thinking: It will kill you.
She's thinking: I don't need your permission.
"She [Nassun] is wiser than you, and does not balk at the notion of forcing people to be decent to each other. Only the methodology is the problem."
Hugos tally (novel): 6/6 (done!) Raven Stratagem (still my favorite; I was rooting for Ninefox Gambit last year, and this one's even better), Provenance (I feel like it's different enough from the Radch books to be truly its own thing, and it's fun and understatedly powerful, too), The Stone Sky (it's not The Fifth Season, but it's still part of a masterwork), Collapsing Empire (at a remove, I'm fonder of it, as the boring-to-me bits -- everything but Kivan and Ghreni, basically -- have faded), Six Wakes (still so bitter this awesome idea didn't play out better!), New York 2140 (making it through 35 pages made me want to chew my leg off...)
Book #59 will be Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs, which I am reading -- read half of in time for voting closing -- for the series Hugo. (That was enough to form an opinion, and I mean to finish before Worldcon, so write-up in the next post. But I'm really enjoying the worldbuilding and the themes, reasonably enjoying the characters, and am a bit mixed on the prose.
I also read the self-assigned 50 pages of The Way of Kings so that I could rank the Stormlight Archive in the series category. I have a bad track record with Sanderson -- I bounced off Elantris, made it through but was irked more than entertained by Mistborn, and never managed to get into his kidlit Librarians books, either, even though the rodents were both fans for a while. I was expecting it would be like KSR -- I would force myself through the minimum number of pages and close the book with a sense of relief. Instead I... almost enjoyed some parts of the couple of chapters I read (prologue through chapter 3). Not MAJOR parts, mind you. Like, I find the broad-strokes worldbuilding with the combed back eyebrows and the Void-spawned ancient powerful foe and the magic armor and the sprite-things, and especially the mechanics of the Lashing, almost caricature-like in its epic fantasy-ness (I kept thinking of this XKCD, like, constantly) -- and, I mean, I actually love epic fantasy still [DW link], even if it's probably no longer my very favorite genre, and the characterization very... earnest, and the prose really unnecessarily drawn out -- just, a lot of extraneous information plunked down in the middle of action and character scenes in a way that just bogs everything down -- and I note Sanderson is still doing that stuff which was the final straw that made me give up on Elantris, which is to signal very, very diligently that his characters are being clever and funny, without them being actually funny or verbally clever, which is one of my pet peeves. Also, this very transparent alluding to Past Things of Great Import which I guess are supposed to intrigue and build tension, and yet just leave me thinking, "I know what you're trying to do here, and it's not working, because I know I would have to wade through a zillion pages of largely unnecessary words to get to the answer, and I'm really not that desperate to know!". And yet... there were tiny bits of worldbuilding I was actually intrigued by -- the concept of practices around "safehand", the relative worth of gemstones for their light properties, the dying words collected in the epigraphs of the chapters. At some point, I actually started highlighting passages, because I realized there was actually some possibility I would continue reading. I don't think I'm sufficiently invested in any of those bits to read another 950 pages for it, let alone 3000, let alone the planned 10,000 -- and ikel89 is wisely advising me to stay away, for my own good, despite being a Sanderson fan herself. Anyway, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting -- or, rather, it had some redeeming features for me personally rather than for the fantasy-reading public, so... Imma count that as a partial win?
Hugos tally (series) Five Gods [based on 3 novels and 3 novellas -- I'm behind on my Penrics], Cloud Roads [based on 1 novel that I liked a lot and plans to read more], Divine Cities [based on half the first novel, with plans to finish and vague plans to read more] / Memoirs of Lady Trent [based on 2 books and some possibility of reading more, though book 3 went back to the library unread] -- I kept going back and forth on the order of these, because I do really love the worldbuilding of the Natural History of Dragons books, but not the characters, alas..., Stormlight Archive, InCryptid [based on making it through like 100 pages of the first book before admitting that even the mice couldn't save this for me]
Editor short form:
- John Joseph Adams -- provided 800+ pages of Lightspeed magazine, of which I browsed about 300. "The Whole Crew Hates Me" was facile and I guessed the 'twist' early on and "Death Every Seventy Two Minutes" had a neat premise, but I didn't really enjoy the 'deaths' taking up so much pagetime, though I concede it was a necessary approach, and I did quite like the way the story ended -- it both surprised me and felt inevitable; Molly Tanzer alien bodyswap porn got too tedious after a while. It turned out that I'd actually already read an A. Merc Rustad story with "Later, Let's Tear Up the Inner Sanctum" and hadn't thought much of it -- I forget what I had read it FOR, but it was the superhero story I remembered disliking. (I've now read/listened to a couple of other stories by them, and liked all of them more than this.) "Seven Permutations of My Daughter" by Lina Rather was the first story I really liked -- a mother's search for her daughter through a quantum multiverse. "This Is for You" by Bruce McAllister is creepy, but short. "The Heart's Cartography" by Susan Jane Bigelow is a really sweet story of a trans girl and her new time-traveling friend; at some point I started wondering why it worked for me so much better than "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time" -- I don't think it's just the lack of vampires and sex, but there's actually some back-and-forth, some humanity and growth in this story. "Love Engine Optimization" by Matthew Kressel barely even reads like sci-fi, because the creepy Google/smartphone/wearable tech pretty much exists, but I really liked it, because on the one hand Sam is this amazing hacker, and on the other hand, she is a super-creepy manipulative stalker; my favorite part, though, is that just as the VP of business development in her bank assumed over email she had to be a dude because of being sysadmin, I had assumed Sam was a dude because of the manipulative stalker thing. "The Law of Conservation of Data", about a sort of far future space Vegas, held my attention for a while, but not nearly long enough. The E. Catherine Tobler story had pretty writing but didn't grab me. "Tongue" by Ashkok K Banker was short but clever (if rather gallows humour) and I really enjoyed the use of dialect. "And Ever-Expanding Flash of Light" by Timothy Mudie is a lovely and sad story of the twin paradox and illness and love. "What I Told My Little Girl About the Aliens Preparing to Grind Us Into Hamburgers" was also fairly enjoyable. The Indra Das, Jack Skillingstead, Violet Allen, Scott Dalrymple, Christopher East, Giovanni De Feo didn't grab me at all, so I skipped them.
- Jonathan Strahan -- was an editor I nominated, because I tend to like his work. He edited "Extracurricular Activities" (the young Jedao novelette), of stuff I'd already read, and I downloaded both of his anthologies, the Best SF&F of the Year and Infinity Wars and looked through the introductions to both. I ran out of time to read everything in the "best" anthology, though I did like the stories I read -- including one from Cat Valente (who tends to be a pretty consistent miss for me) and one from Paolo Bacigalupi (whose style doesn't seem to work for me), so I was fairly impressed. I do want to read the Infinity Wars collection eventually, but I found I wasn't in the mood for it right now, and wanted to savor rather than rush through the 'year's best' stories.
- Lee Harris -- edited All Systems Red, Down Among the Sticks and Bones (plus another Seanan McGuire novella), and Binti: Home -- and honestly I'm going to hold Binti: Home against Harris, because I firmly believe it was the editor's job to tell Nnedi Okorafor that was only half a book, dammit! and also I have some quibbles on the Jack and Jill novella front, too.
- Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Thomas -- for Uncanny Magazine, edited my favorite novella ("And Then There Were (N-One)"), the lovely "Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon, but also "Small Changes Over Long Period of Time" and "Fandom for Robots", and "Children of Thorns", all of which I was meh to negative on.
- Neil Clarke -- Clarkesworld Magazine, "The Secret Life of Bots," "A Series of Steaks". The selection of stories feels a bit... I dunno. A little twee, a little too much trying for high concept. I did like the story "Bonding with Morry" by Tom Purdom, though I wish it had more of a payoff.
- Sheila Williams (Asimov's) -- including "Wind Will Rove" (my Hugo favorite novelette). But as a magazine I'm just kind of not feeling it. And while I appreciate the fact that there are poems, I don't actually like any of them at all.
Hugos tally (editor, short form): tier 1 (positive): Strahan and JJA, tough call but I think in that order; tier 2 (mixed): Thomases, tier 3: (meh) Clarke and Sheila Williams (waffling on order); tier 4: Lee Harris
Rounding out my Campbell Award reading, I gave up on Jeannette Ng's Under the Pendulum Sun once I got past the halfway point of the sample, figuring that was about equivalent to the pagetime I'd given to Sarah Kuhn. It's a really interesting setting which SHOULD have worked for me -- Regency-ish England with magic and faeries, but it just utterly failed to grab me, which is a pity.
Hugos tally (Campbell): This one's a tough category for me, because it involves comparing different things -- novels and short stories. Or, rather, the tail end of the distribution is easy, but much harder to order the three authors who produced stories I was impressed by. Roanhorse's short story is one I have no complaints about, and I really hope it wins the Hugo in that category -- but it's hard to compare in scope with the two novels I liked, The Bear and the Nightingale and An Unkindness of Ghosts. (And I know she has a novel out this year, which I'm looking forward to reading, but it wouldn't count for 2017.) Arden's was the book I enjoyed more out of the two, and I was impressed by the Russia research and how it was transmitted to a Western audience. I had more quibbles about the Rivers Solomon books, but was also impressed by Astrid's POV, and some of the other things the book was doing. But ultimately it was the less satisfying book... So I think my final tally stands at: Arden, Solomon, Roanhorse, Prasad, Ng, Kuhn
**
Final Hugo ballot:
- Novel: Raven Stratagem, Provenance, Stone Sky, Collapsing Empire, Six Wakes, New York 2140
- Novella: "And Then There Were (N-One)", All Systems Red, The Black Tides of Heaven, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, NO AWARD*, Binti: Home, River of Teeth
- Novelette: "Wind Will Rove", "A Series of Steaks", "Extracurricular Activities", "Secret Life of Bots", NO AWARD, "Children of Thorns", "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time"
- Short story: "Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience", "Carnival Nine", "Sun, Moon, and Dust", "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand", "Fandom fr Robots", NO AWARD, "The Martian Obelisk"
- Series: Five Gods, Raksura, Divine Cities, Lady Trent, Stormlight Archive, InCryptid
- Related work: LeGuin essays, Harlan Ellison bio, Octavia Butler connections, Crash Override, Sleeping with Monsters, Iain M Banks bio
- Graphic: Paper Girls v3, Saga v7, Monstress v2, Bitch Planet v2, Black Bolt v1, NO AWARD, My Favorite Thing is Monsters
- Dramatic, long form: Thor 3, The Last Jedi, Get Out, Shape of Water, Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman
- Dramatic, short form: "Michael's Gambit", "USS Callister", "The Trolley Problem", "The Deep"
- Editor, long form: Joe Monti, Navah Wolfe, Devi Pillai
- Editor, short form: Jonathan Strahan, John Joseph Adams, Lynne and Michael Thomas, Sheila Williams, Neil Clarke, Lee Harris
- Pro artist: Sana Takeda, John Picacio, Kathleen Jennings, Galen Dara, Victo Ngai, Bastien Lecouffe Deharme
- Semiprozine: Escape Pod, Fireside Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, The Book Smugglers
- Fanzine: Rocket Stack Rank, File 770, Galactic Journeys, Journey Planet, nerds of a feather, SF Bluestocking
- Fancast: Verit!, Galactic Suburbia, Coode Street Podcast, Ditch Diggers, Sword and Laser, Fangirl Happy Hour
- Fan Writer: Mike Glyer, Bogi Takacs, Foz Meadows, Charles Payseur, Camestros Felapton, Sarah Gailey
- Fan Artist: Spring Schoenhuth, Likhain (M.Sereno), Steve Stiles, Maya Hahto, Geneva Benton, Grace P. Fong
- YA book: Skinful of Shadows, In Other Lands, Art of Starving, Summer in Orcus, Book of Dust, Akata Warrior
- Campbell: Katherine Arden, Rivers Solomon, Rebeca Roanhorse, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Jeannette Ng, Sarah Kuhn
*It took me a while, but I ultimately decided that I would only use "No Award" in those cases where I'd 1) read the nominated thing all the way through, and 2) read ALL of the nominated things in that category all the way through. Because it may take me only 50 pages or whatever to decide whether to kick something to the bottom of the pile with no interest in continuing, but if I haven't read the whole thing, then I didn't feel that I was sufficiently informed to judge whether it deserved trying to block an award for it -- I mean, what if it became amazing at the end or something? Similarly, I didn't feel comfortable ranking nominees about which I thought "this has merit but is not for me, so I won't finish reading it" above No Award where I was ranking something below -- what if that second half of that thing I didn't finish turned out to be worse than my No Award picks? (I might've felt differently if there were bad faith or trolly nominees, but since there didn't seem to be any this year, this seemed reasonable.) This meant that some nominees I wanted to rank below No Award, in the series or Campbell or so on category, I wasn't able to do so, but it felt fairer this way, even if less emotionally satisfying.
I didn't end up voting for any of the 1943 Hugos, but I really don't have much interest in work that old, so, no real loss to me or to the Hugos.
Related Hugo tallying:
- Fully evaluated categories (i.e. I read/consumed all the nominated entities in their entirety): 5 (novella, novelette, short story, graphic novel, YA; this would've been 6 if I'd bothered to finish the Wonder Woman movie, but, meh, or if I'd made it through New York 2140, but, lol, no)
- Categories where I consumed (at least skimmed) everything in the provided (significant) voter packet: 6 (editor short, pro artist, fan artist, fan writer, fanzine, semiprozine)
- Categories where I consumed all nominees to at least a minimum self-imposed standard (50 pages / 30 min of audio/video <-- or less if I really couldn't stand it, so this ended up being 35 pages and 10 min in one cast): 7 (novel, series, related work, dramatic long, fancast, Campbell)
- Incomplete ranking (i.e. there were nominees I did not consume even in limited fashion so as to be able to form an opinion): 2 (dramatic short, editor long)
- Blank categories: 0
Hugo homework tally: I read/consumed, specifically for the Hugos:
- 6-8 novels: The Collapsing Empire, Six Wakes, City of Stairs, Akata Warrior, The Art of Starving, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and maybe the Book of Dust and The Bear and the Nightingale, which I may or may not have read otherwise [Provenance, Raven Stratagem, In Other Lands, A Skinful of Shadows, and Summer in Orcus I'd read before the noms, and was always going to read The Stone Sky eventually]
- 5 novellas [Murderbot I'd read beforehand]
- 5 novelettes [having already read "Extracurricular Activities" before noms, and without realizing it qualified as a novelette, oops] -- actually more like 7, I think, as some of the short fiction included in the zine or editor packets were novelette length
- ~49 short stories [5 of the nominated short stories, but really 6, because I'd read "Carnival Nine" purely to have something to nominate) + 1 anthology and several magazine compillations totaling 43 stories I read in full (18 + 6 + 1 + + 2 + 4 + 10 + 2), two of which were actually novelette length, and a bunch more I skimmed
- 5 audio short stories)
- a whole bunch of essays of various length
- 5 graphic novels [I was going to catch up on Saga anyway]
- 3 movies (I had already watched 2)
- 3 TV episodes [which turned into two full seasons of The Good Place, but that's on me XP]
- 1 song
- ~3 hours of podcasts
- assorted art pieces
New-to-me authors discovered via Hugos:
- That I plan to read more of: John Scalzi, Sarah Pinsker, JY Yang, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Rebecca Roanhorse, Caroline M. Yoachim, Robert Jackson Bennett, Sam J. Miller, Katherine Arden, Rivers Solomon; via short stories encountered in the zines and related compilations, Alex Yuschik, A. Merc Rustad, Ashok K Banker, and (indirectly, via fancasts and related work, but now I'm curious to read her fiction) Tansy Rayner Roberts [x14]
- That I plan to stay away from: Sarah Gailey, Aliette de Bodard, Linda Nagata, Sarah Kuhn [x4]
- That jury's still out on: Mur Lafferty, Suzanne Palmer, Fran Wilde, K.M.Szpara, Emil Feris, Jeannette Ng [x6]
New-to-me non-fiction things(/people) discovered via Hugos that I plan to consume more of or am just happy to know about that I wouldn't have consumed otherwise: Escape Pod, Rocket Stack Rank, The Good Place, Black Mirror, Get Out, Paper Girls graphic novel, Bogi Takacs's and Dimal Ilaw's fan writing, Navah Wolfe's short story collections, and I have a resumed interest in trying to read some Octavia Butler
So, definitely a worthwhile investment of my time, I think, even if it would've been nicer if it hadn't been so intense -- it really did take over my life -- or at least all my leisure reading/media consumption -- for 4 months...
**
While I was traveling, the Locus results came out, so I wanted to think through those, too, like I did with the Nebulas.
Novel -- Locus actually splits SF and fantasy novels into two separate categories. The Stone Sky won for fantasy, unsurprisingly, but none of the other fantasy nominees are on the Hugo shortlist, so it doesn't help triangulate much. All of the other Hugo nominees are on the sci-fi side, and Collapsing Empire won (Provenance, Raven Stratagem, Seven Surrenders, and New York 2140 were also nominated). Collapsing Empire is solidly at the middle of the sci-fi pack for me, well behind RS and Provenance, so if this is a predictor of Hugo results I would be disappointed but not TOO annoyed -- but I do think the point is likely moot, and The Stone Sky will just continue to sweep everything, probably...
YA book -- Akata Witch won (which is at the bottom of the list for me). In Other Lands, Skinful of Shadows, and Book of Dust were also nominated (The Art of Starving was not in this category but shows up under first novel (which it also didn't win.)
Speaking of first novel, Campbell nominees' The Bear and the Nightingale and An Unkindness of Ghosts are also nominated, but what won was Theodora Goss's The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (of course, first novel vs new writer are very different playing fields...)
Novella -- Murderbot won, which I'm at peace with if (as seems likely) that's the direction Hugos will go too. (All the other Hugo-nominated novellas are also on the list, since it's a longer shortlist for the Locus.)
Novelette -- a Samuel R Delaney novelette won. The surprising thing to me was that there was so little overlap between the Locus shortlist and the Hugo one, compared to the longer categories, and what those points of overlap were. "Wind Will Rove" (which is my Hugo favorite) was on the list, as was the Hexarchate story (which I also liked), and "Children of Thorns" (which I found very weak). One thing that was nominated here was "The Worshipful Society of Glovers", which I read after nominations were done, but liked enough that I would've nominated it, and would rank above several of the novelettes that made the Hugo list (one of which I was happy to see did not make the Locus short list).
Short story -- this is the one category where the results both baffle and really annoy me. There isn't too much overlap with the Hugo shortlist either (although more than in the novelette category). And the winner is "The Martian Obelisk" -- which was, hands down, my least favorite story on the Hugo list, and the only one I felt like ranking below No Award (which I'm even firmer in my intentions to do so now that it appears it may actually be a serious contender...) Also nominated are "Fandom for Robots", "Carnival Nine", and the Rebecca Roanhorse story I want to win the Hugo and which actually won the Nebula. How did the boring sentimental pap that is "The Martian Obelisk" win over that?
Non-fiction -- Luminescent Threads (the Octavia Butler book) won over the Iain M Banks, Harlan Ellison, and Sleeping with Monsters books). Of course, my top pick for the Hugos in the roughly equivalent Related Work category is the Le Guin essays which didn't make the Locus list, but Luminescent Threads was one of the books I enjoyed reading parts of, so I'd be happy to see it win, too.
The other categories are too different from the Hugos or the nominee lists are too convoluted in their overlap for me to really have anything to say (e.g. the editors and artists are all lumped together and the winners in each case weren't on the short list for the Hugos).
And more recently, the World Fantasy Award shortlist came out, and huh. There's no overlap with the Hugos in the novel shortlist at all (which I suppose is not too surprising given that at least 5 of the Hugo novels are sci-fi and even The Stone Sky feels more sci-fi than fantasy to me (though, obviously, Locus disagrees) -- but still weird not to have it on there since both Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate had made the short list in their years. Not much overlap in the novella/novelette category either -- just The Black Tides of Heaven -- but most of the novellas and novelettes from the Hugo ballot (and all the ones that I would consider stronger than 'Tides') were sci-fi as well. Finally some overlap on the short stories -- my two favorites "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" and "Carnival Nine" as well as "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" (most of the "omissions" are sci-fi, the only one that's not is Vernon's story). Some limited overlap on artist nominations (Victo Ngai) and (non-professional) editors, but hard to compare those categories in a meaningful way.
And speaking of the SFF community, this article on the epic ongoing flame war/roasting competition between Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke was a delight!
*
And on a different medium note: Episode 13 of the Be the Serpent podcast is SO MUCH FUN! They talked about A Civil Campaign (aka, my favorite Vorkosiverse book), and Vetinari and Granny Wetherwax (aka, not only my favorite characters in Pratchett, but probably my favorite male and female characters OF ALL TIME), and delightful "Miles vs Vetinari, who would win" (I completely agree with the answers they came up with), and interesting comparisons to Kushiel's Legacy, and Captive Prince (which took a lot longer than I was expecting XP), and really fun discussion of Machievellian chessmasters' pet Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors (I agree with Alex that Ekaterin is a 'Puff).
*
Worldcon program is FINALLY live! (I know they had to revise it at the last minute because of various controversies.) So now I need to actually try to figure out what-all I'm doing...
[People and panels I'm interested in, spoiler-cut for your convenience on LJ] Peter Beagle (Sunday panel), EBear (Sunday panel on horses), Robert Jackson Bennett (Friday panel on architecture), SRB (!!! Sunday panel on YA), Gail Carriger (Thursday and Sunday), Becky Chambers (Thursday and Friday), Ellen Datlow (Friday kaffeeklatsch, Sunday horror, Monday autographs), Kate Elliott (Sat kaffeeklatsch and Sunday), Robin Hobb (Saturday on series), Greg Hullender (Friday, Sat, Sunday), Joe Haldeman (Sat on milSF), MRKowal (Fri/Sat/Sun), Ann Leckie (Friday on pronouns, kaffeeklatsch and autographs, Sat reading), GRRM (Thurs fandom history, Fri and autographs), Foz Meadows (Fri/Sat/Sun), SMG (Sat series and other stuff), PNH (Sat on Tor), Garth Nix (Fri/Mon 10:30 a.m.), Ada Palmer (Sat kaffeeklastch and autographs, Sun panels), Sarah Pinsker (Friday reading, Sat autographs, Sunday horse panel), Mike Resnik (Thur/Fri/Sun panels), Rebecca Roanhorse (Friday panel/reading, Sut, Sun), Alex Rowland (Fri, Mon), Brandon Sanderson (Sat auto, long series), John Scalzi (Sat, Sun auto), Nat Segaloff (Ellison Sat 2pm), Bob Silverberg (Ellison memorial), Rivers Solomon (Thurs, Fri panel, Sun auto), Harry Turtledove ( ), Ursula Vernon (Sat/Sun panels), Greg van Eekhout (Sat panel, Mon auto), Boki Takacs (Fri panel, Sun, Mon auto), Tad Williams (Sun autographs), Navah Wolfe (Sun 3p.m. Judaism panel), Martha Wells (Fri reading, Sat fantasy aliens panel, Mon auto 2p.m.), Jo Walton (Thurs/Fri, Sat auto), JY Yang (Fri), Caroline Yoachim (Fri, Sat (fantasy aliens), Sun reading),
THURSDAY:
- 2p.m.
[Scurrilous History of Fandom (Mike Resnick, GRRM)]
[alt: Dystopia vs Utopia]
- 3 p.m. - ?
[historical fencing? Dude where's my Ray Gun?]
- 4pm.
[Afrofuturism w/ Rivers Solomon?]
[Iron Bardic w. Jennifer Tifft (90 min)]
- 5 p.m. -- Opening ceremonies (90 min)
- 7:30 pm. -- Retro Hugos red carpet
FRIDAY:
- 10 a.m.
[Fireside magazine -- Rowland]
[Art and Craft of anthology creation -- Lynne Thomas, Ellen Datlow]
[Ray gun target practice]
- 11 a.m.
[collab w/ science expert, Becky Chambers]
[astronauts w/ MRK]
[names, including Marie Brennan]
- 12 p.m.
GRRM autographs (elsewhere, Yoachim)
[Prose polishing -- Rowland, Solomon]
[alt food panel w/ Rose Lemberg]
- 1pm.
[Ancestral myths -- Roanhorse, Jeannette Ng, Picacio]
[Jo Walton reading]
[Ann Leckie caffeeklatsch]
[Queer families in SFF -- Foz Meadows, Bogi Takacs, Rivers Solomon]
[Becky Chambers autographs]
- 2p.m.
[Campbell reading -- Roanhorse, Ng, Kuhn]
[Magicon timecapsule]
[Autographs -- Chambers, Haldman, Silverberg]
- 3 p.m.
[Novelette reading -- Pinsker, Palmer, Szpara]
[Autographs -- Leckie]
- 4p.m.
[Queer Joy in SFF -- Takacs, Solomon]
[architecture -- w/ RJBennett]
[novella reading -- Wells, Yang, Gailey, SMG]
[Beagle autograpjs -- 30 min]
- 5 p.m.
[Hugo short story -- Yoachim, Wilde, Nagata]
[Garth Nix autographs]
[Frankenstein panel w/ Palmer]
- 6 p.m.
[Non-hugo nominated novels -- Walton, Fran Wilde]
- 7 p.m.
[Book Smugglers -- Kate Elliott, Foz Meadows]
SATURDAY
- 10 a.m.
[Research rabbit holes -- Pinsker]
[Escape pod (90 min)
[fanfic panel]
[Kate Elliott kaffeeklatsch]
[historical swordfighting demo, including longsword lesson]
- 11 a.m.
[Writing the epic -- Roanhorse, Elliott]
[Kaffeeklatsch w/ MRK and Kjell Lindgren]
- 12 p.m.
[25 years of B5]
[Raising kids in fandom]
[Punday -- 2 hrs]
- 1 p.m.
[Kaffeeklatch -- Ada Palmer]
[Hugo novel -- Leckie, Scalzi, Lafferty]
- 2 p.m.
[Harlan Ellison -- Silverberg, Gerrold, Segaloff]
[Best series -- Sanderson, Wells, Brennan]
[Autographs -- Palmer]
- 3 pm.
[Near future fiction -- Scalzi, Pinsker, Newitz, Nagata]
[LeGuin legacy]
[Autographs, Sanderson, MRK]
- 4 p.m.
[Beagle Kaffeeklatsch]
[Autographs -- Pinsker, Turtledove]
- 5 p.m.
[Fantasy Aliens -- Wells, Yoachim, Ng]
[Author vs fan ownership -- Scalzi, Hullender, Foz Meadows]
[Midgrade -- Vernon, Eekhout]
[Autographs -- Walton]
- 8 p.m. -- Masquerade
SUNDAY:
- 9 a.m. [Stroll w/ the stars -- MRK]
- 10 a.m.
[Horse panel -- Pinsker, EBear]
[Myth panel -- Tad Williams, Foz Meadows]
[Ceaseless skies -- Lemberg, Yoachim]
[Autographs -- Roanhorse]
- 11 a.m.
[Fandom as Cultural Adaptation -- Takacs]
[Dressed those girls -- Kate Elliott, Ng]
[Kafeeklatch -- Carriger]
[Autographs -- Tad Williams]
- 12 p.m.
[Autographs -- Solomon, Gailey]
- 1 p.m.
[Coode Street Live -- Strahan, Wolfe]
[Autographs -- Martin]
- 2 p.m.
[YA vs Adult -- SRB]
[Autographs -- Scalzi]
- 3 p.m.
[Judaism and sci-fi -- Kinney, Navah Wolfe]
[Diversity in post-apocalyptic -- Roanhorse]
- 4 p.m.
[Why do writers kill a character -- Palmer, Beagle]
[Recommended reading in webcomincs -- Vernon, Meadows]
- 5 p.m.
[Disability in the future -- Palmer]
- 8 p.m. -- HUGOS! :D
MONDAY:
- 11 a.m.
[Bringing up geek -- Lafferty]
[Autographs -- Datlow, Takacs, Lemberg]
- 12 p.m.
[You do deserve to be here -- Alex Rowland]
- 2p.m.
[Autographs -- Martha Wells]
[Kaffeeklatch -- Mur Lafferty]
- 3 p.m. -- Closing ceremonies
Folks who've been to Worldcons (or similar cons) and have advice on which of the people listed above that I'm interested in are fun or not fun to see in person, in panel, etc. -- your experiences are very welcome, as I've never done this sort of thing before!
Also, I have some con noob questions...
- Is it feasible to try to both get an autograph and attend (part of) a panel in the same timeslot, or is sneaking into/out of panels Not Done?
- If I'm trying to decide between a kaffeeklatch and an autograph session of the same author -- would one be able to actually get books signed at a kaffeeklatch?
- Does one have to line up like a zillion hours in advance for autograph sessions? What about with bigger names like Peter Beagle or GRRM?
- If an author I want an autograph from does not have an autograph session, can one corner them before/after a panel, or is that rude? What about an artist if one finds them at their art dealer booth?
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1085185.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).