My Hugo Votes: Best Novella 2014

[sierra_le_oli]

Once again, Novella = 17,500 to 40,000 words and Novelette = 7,500 to 17,500 words. Does anyone actually care about the distinction? Maybe it would be better to fold the two categories into one and open up the remaining space to Best YA Novel.

That said, the first two novellas were very worthwhile.

(1) Six-Gun Snow White - Catherynne M. Valente A

Comments

[silly_swordsman]

I think Tarzan is SF in the same way "The Handmaid's Tale" isn't - the author is/isn't a SF author.

[sierra_le_oli]

Ah ok. I know nothing about Tarzan beyond the fact that he yells, so I was starting to wonder what SF I was missing in Wakulla Springs.

(It took me a while to unpack your sentence because Atwood has actually said she writes SF.)

[silly_swordsman]

Oh, I didn't know that. Or maybe I should have written the acronym out - I thought Atwood had said she doesn't want her work to be described as "science fiction", and prefers to call it "speculative fiction".

Mind you, I don't think Edgar Rice Burroughs necessarily was a "science fiction" author, as I think the term was invented long after he began writing about John Carter, Warlord of Mars, and all his other pulp adventures.

[sierra_le_oli]

It's funny. All I hear is people getting cross with Atwood because she (allegedly) doesn't want to be called science fiction, but then she doesn't get credit for what she does say in its favour. When I saw Margaret Atwood in Paris (8 years ago, admittedly!), she talked about, "...two sorts of science fiction, one not based on real stuff (e.g., talking squid on other planets) and one that was. "Oryx and Crake" fell into the second category and she also applied the tag of speculative fiction to it."

It's been hard for me to tease out where she might have changed her position or where the SF mob are misinterpreting her words, but that was straight from the horse's mouth, at least.

[silly_swordsman]

I did not rely on first-hand information, I must confess. It was only at the forefront of my thoughts because I read Ursula LeGuin's review of The Year of the Flood just a couple of days ago, and in that she repeated the myth.