For the third year in a row I've read the latest volume of Tayler's webcomic about a group of interplanetary mercenaries because it's been nominated for the Hugo for Best Graphic Story, and for the third year in a row I think I will put it last on my ballot (it came fifth out of five in 2009 and 2010 when the votes had been counted as well). The ( Read more... )

I hadn't realised until just now that the Hugo Voter Package also contains electronic copies of four more novels:

Monster Hunter International, by Larry Correia,
I am not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells,
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, and
The Magicians by Lev Grossman ( Read more... )

Again, thanks to the Hugo shortlist I have tried one of the great graphic novel writers for the first time, and while I was not as blown away by this as I was by the first two volumes of Mike Carey's The Unwritten, I am realising that I should look out for more Talbot. Grandville Mon Amour is set in an alternate London and Paris, where all ( Read more... )

Really not difficult for me to rank these.

5) Blackout / All Clear, by Connie Willis. I have only read half of this but I find it hard to imagine that the second half will lift it off the end of my ballot - too padded and just not really very interesting. Alas, it will probably win the Hugo as it already (and inexplicably) has the Nebula.

4) The ( Read more... )

Having raved about the first volume of this series yesterday, I am equally glad about the second volume today, a collection of seven issues (I think), the first four taking Tom Taylor to a French prison where the governor reads Tommy Taylor books to his children and the Song of Roland makes an appearance, the next two taking Tom and his allies ( Read more... )

First half of the two-volume novel which won the Nebula last month and has been nominated for the Hugo. We are back in the time travel world of Fire Watch, Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, where near-future historians at Oxford send graduate students back to key points of British history (though their research methodology is never ( Read more... )

Making a start on the nominated works in this year's Best Graphic Story category of the Hugo Awards. As before, I think there is a valid question of eligibility given that the actual "Witches" storyline is bookended by two other stories between the same covers, and that it's not really completely resolved; but I think this is a case where the Hugo ( Read more... )

This was pretty much my first exposure to the zombie apocalypse sub-genre, but I must say I rather enjoyed it; set a quarter-century after the dead rose in 2014, it is the account of a group of newsbloggers who follow a presidential campaign in a much altered America. Good marks for a vivid depiction of a paranoid environment where everyone has to ( Read more... )

This year's list is a good one, none of the stories being as bad as the worst in the other fiction categories.

5) One has to start pruning somewhere though, and Elizabeth Hand's "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon", though itself a nice characterful story, is only barely sf; it's really about some present-day employees of the Smithsonian ( Read more... )

Hooray! The 2011 Hugo Voter Packet is out! For a mere US $50, you can get electronic copies of Blackout by Connie Willis, Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Dervish House by Ian McDonald, Feed by Mira Grant, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Chicks Dig Time Lords edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea, The Business of Science ( Read more... )