In the fiction categories: One woman out of four (on a par with Hugos in general, 41 of 201 Hugo awards (20%) in total, 9 out of 40 in the last ten years); three first-time winners, same as last year (though the year before, all winners already had at least two Hugos).

Details (thanks to despotliz for pointing me to the full stats):

Spin had a convincing ( Read more... )

You (may have) heard it here first (unless like me you got it from drewan who has photographs ( Read more... )

Just for completeness - as I guess the voting deadline has now passed - but Aaron Hughes has notified me of his reviews of the novella, novelette and short story categories. See also Tim Walters on all the fiction categories.

Christian Sauvé has done much the same, with one post calmly and soberly discussing the merits or otherwise of the short ( Read more... )

John Quiggin on the novels

John DeNardo on all the short fiction nominees

Anne K.G. Murphy/netmouse on the novelettes and short stories.

blairhippo and ase on the short stories, here and here respectively.

Have added notes of all these, and of the Locus and Sturgeon awards, to the web page.

In 2005, 2004 and 2003 I listed my preferences among the stories nominated for the Hugo Award, also including as many links as I could conveniently include to other people's thoughts on the nominees. It seems to have been a popular move, so I have repeated it this year and the results are below. (I also listed just my own preferences among the ( Read more... )

Continued from this post.

( Novellas, Novelettes and Short Stories )

6) Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

After reading Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, I declared that I knew which novel was getting the top vote in my Hugo ballot. I now know which of the nominees is getting the lowest vote, though the middle three will need a bit of sorting out ( Read more... )

2) Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson

I've read two of Wilson's previous novels, Hugo nominees Blind Lake and The Chronoliths, and based on that experience probably wouldn't have bothered reading this if it had not also been nominated for the Hugo this year. And that would have been a mistake: much as I have enjoyed reading the other Hugo nominees, ( Read more... )

Official shortlist. I know I am several days behind the curve here. Anyway, congratulations to autopope, ianmcdonald, shsilver, Ken, Paul and Cheryl all of whom I think do read me here from time to time (and apologies as well as congratulations to anyone else seeing this who I missed ( Read more... )

2) Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod

I don't plan to get into a habit of meta-reviewing, but I have read coalescent and immortalradical here, and ninebelow here, also greengolux's observations, and papersky's praise. I am much more towards the coalescent and papersky end of the spectrum. I really liked it. I thought that it does indeed add something new to the old sf theme of first contact between humans and aliens ( Read more... )