Hugo Relateds and Hugo Series
Ok, I want to be done. And also we're well into the final countdown, so if I don't want to be poking my ballot at the last minute at the same time as everyone else, it seems like time. Behind the cut.
Relateds
Jeannette Ng speech - I decided before reading anything else in this category that unless I found something really outstanding, this would get my vote for historical significance.
Joanna Russ excerpt - I cannot find a throughline in this. The one time I tried reading a Gwyneth Jones novella, as I recall, I couldn't find a throughline in it either. Perhaps she doesn't believe in them.
Lady from the Black Lagoon excerpt - I am generally a fan of "recovering" the stories of lost/erased women, but this seems a little overstated - I'm pretty sure Ellen Klages and Andy Duncan talked about Milicent Patrick in "Wakulla Springs", and that was back in 2013. Still, cool project. I wish we got a little more of it to judge.
JMS autobio - Okay, I get that JMS has a really difficult family origin, but wow some of the language here feels so misogynistic. Ended up reading the whole thing, though. Last parts were unfortunately self-congratulatory. I was most interested in the parts about He-Man and She-Ra and B5 - big chunks of my childhood and young adulthood right there. The thing is, it's powerful on a personal level, but I'm not sure how much I think it adds to the genre? I guess personal stories of overcoming trauma and disadvantage are valuable? Heavy warnings for intimate partner violence, child death, child harm, child sexual abuse, Nazi war crimes, animal harm.
Heinlein book - So this is a literary study of Heinlein, not a bio. I read a big chunk of this, mostly in the second half, and thought it was pretty interesting stuff, although I've only read a few of the novels being discussed.
Le Guin documentary - I really enjoyed this. Already knew most of it, but not all of it - a couple of things I didn't know about Tehanu, including that it's apparently pronounced "Teh-hah-nu" not "Teh-hay-nu" like I've been saying it all these years. I wish they'd spent a little more time on the later works but I see why they focused on the most famous stuff. Some neat animations of covers and of moments from books. And it was just nice, to spend an hour with one of the people I admire most. I know last year I was like "we don't need to memorialize Le Guin in the Relateds every year!" and maybe it's a little hypocritical to now be like "we took a year off we can go back to memorializing Le Guin" but this was really nicely put together. You can picture students watching this as part of a unit on Left Hand and getting some idea what she means to us olds.
1 - Le Guin doc
2 - Ng speech
3 - Heinlein book
4 - JMS autobio
5 - Lady from the Black Lagoon
6 - Russ mess
Quite possibly if we'd had the whole Black Lagoon I would have ranked that higher. It's just so hard to say on an intro vs a whole book.
Series
Winternight - I've read all three of these and quite enjoyed them. Not without some problems (which I talked about here: 1, 2, 3) but super readable.
Wormwood - My hold on Rosewater Insurrection is unfortunately still a few weeks out (I have made it to third in line on one copy with a 14-day cycle), but I thought Rosewater was really interesting (here). Hard to say how they work as a series on the basis of one book. I can easily see myself finishing the series and wishing in retrospect I had given them my top vote... or not.
Planetfall - Discussed here. Frustrating, but maybe more unusual/original than what McDonald seems to be doing. No idea how they work as a series.
Luna - I have made it 40% of the way into this book and it seems to be Game of Thrones on the moon, with a possibility it could turn out to be more like mundane-SF Dune. I really like the way McDonald imagines the settings and culture of the moon and I really dislike the characters and the plot. Not living up to its fantastic opening scene so far. May or may not finish. [ETA: content note for ableism/fatphobia, bleah.]
InCryptid - I read the first one of these ages ago and wasn't into it at all.
The Expanse - I tried reading one of these for some previous ballot and it was, like, a really shitty ebook somehow, I don't remember how, maybe a watermarked pdf, and I got about a chapter in and was like too much male gaze fuck this, and that's as far as I ever got.
So that's the order, except I probably won't put the last two on the ballot. This entry was originally posted at https://psocoptera.dreamwidth.org/520280.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Relateds
Jeannette Ng speech - I decided before reading anything else in this category that unless I found something really outstanding, this would get my vote for historical significance.
Joanna Russ excerpt - I cannot find a throughline in this. The one time I tried reading a Gwyneth Jones novella, as I recall, I couldn't find a throughline in it either. Perhaps she doesn't believe in them.
Lady from the Black Lagoon excerpt - I am generally a fan of "recovering" the stories of lost/erased women, but this seems a little overstated - I'm pretty sure Ellen Klages and Andy Duncan talked about Milicent Patrick in "Wakulla Springs", and that was back in 2013. Still, cool project. I wish we got a little more of it to judge.
JMS autobio - Okay, I get that JMS has a really difficult family origin, but wow some of the language here feels so misogynistic. Ended up reading the whole thing, though. Last parts were unfortunately self-congratulatory. I was most interested in the parts about He-Man and She-Ra and B5 - big chunks of my childhood and young adulthood right there. The thing is, it's powerful on a personal level, but I'm not sure how much I think it adds to the genre? I guess personal stories of overcoming trauma and disadvantage are valuable? Heavy warnings for intimate partner violence, child death, child harm, child sexual abuse, Nazi war crimes, animal harm.
Heinlein book - So this is a literary study of Heinlein, not a bio. I read a big chunk of this, mostly in the second half, and thought it was pretty interesting stuff, although I've only read a few of the novels being discussed.
Le Guin documentary - I really enjoyed this. Already knew most of it, but not all of it - a couple of things I didn't know about Tehanu, including that it's apparently pronounced "Teh-hah-nu" not "Teh-hay-nu" like I've been saying it all these years. I wish they'd spent a little more time on the later works but I see why they focused on the most famous stuff. Some neat animations of covers and of moments from books. And it was just nice, to spend an hour with one of the people I admire most. I know last year I was like "we don't need to memorialize Le Guin in the Relateds every year!" and maybe it's a little hypocritical to now be like "we took a year off we can go back to memorializing Le Guin" but this was really nicely put together. You can picture students watching this as part of a unit on Left Hand and getting some idea what she means to us olds.
1 - Le Guin doc
2 - Ng speech
3 - Heinlein book
4 - JMS autobio
5 - Lady from the Black Lagoon
6 - Russ mess
Quite possibly if we'd had the whole Black Lagoon I would have ranked that higher. It's just so hard to say on an intro vs a whole book.
Series
Winternight - I've read all three of these and quite enjoyed them. Not without some problems (which I talked about here: 1, 2, 3) but super readable.
Wormwood - My hold on Rosewater Insurrection is unfortunately still a few weeks out (I have made it to third in line on one copy with a 14-day cycle), but I thought Rosewater was really interesting (here). Hard to say how they work as a series on the basis of one book. I can easily see myself finishing the series and wishing in retrospect I had given them my top vote... or not.
Planetfall - Discussed here. Frustrating, but maybe more unusual/original than what McDonald seems to be doing. No idea how they work as a series.
Luna - I have made it 40% of the way into this book and it seems to be Game of Thrones on the moon, with a possibility it could turn out to be more like mundane-SF Dune. I really like the way McDonald imagines the settings and culture of the moon and I really dislike the characters and the plot. Not living up to its fantastic opening scene so far. May or may not finish. [ETA: content note for ableism/fatphobia, bleah.]
InCryptid - I read the first one of these ages ago and wasn't into it at all.
The Expanse - I tried reading one of these for some previous ballot and it was, like, a really shitty ebook somehow, I don't remember how, maybe a watermarked pdf, and I got about a chapter in and was like too much male gaze fuck this, and that's as far as I ever got.
So that's the order, except I probably won't put the last two on the ballot. This entry was originally posted at https://psocoptera.dreamwidth.org/520280.html. Please comment there using OpenID.