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Gaiman's American Gods Wins Hugo

Posted by Hemos on from the winning-the-prizes dept.

H.I. McDonnough writes "Neil Gaiman won this year's Hugo for his novel American Gods. A much better choice than last year. " If you are a curious, check out the review I did on it.

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Audio Format by RWarrior(fobw) · · Score: 4, Informative
    American Gods is also available on audio cassette from Harper Audio. It runs unabridged at 20 hours in length on 14 cassettes. I do books by audio exclusively now (because of my work), and found this to be not only an excellent book, but also an excellent production.

    If you're not familiar with this book, I will make a suggestion: Make sure you get at least half way through before you decide to quit. You won't regret it.

    You can pick this up on Amazon, from your local library, or from your local audiobook store if you have one.

    --
    Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
  2. Magic Realism by ajs · · Score: 5, Informative

    Magic Realism is a sub-genre of both Fantasy and Science Fiction (though its roots are more firmly in Fantasy than Science Fiction) that was fist recognized in South America, but has spread across the globe. I consider much of Gaiman's work to be in this catagory, though others might argue. Certainly American Gods is part Magic Realism, though also part traditional Fantasy.

    It's nice to see Fantasy moving forward beyond the niches in which it had languished for so long. Not that there weren't brilliant Fantasy authors or stories that broke out of the standard molds of the genre, but let's face it: science fiction has roamed far and wide from hard science speculation to space opera to the new wave SF of the 60s to the alternate histories of the 90s. Fantasy has maintained a fairly narrow range during that time, focusing mostly on European mythology in various forms (here I include purists such as Tolkein and origial mythologies such as Moorecock's) and the Horror Fantasy that was pioneered in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Poe and Lovecraft among others.

    Fantasy is now re-discovering its vast potential, and I could not be more thrilled. Authors like Ian Banks, Jonathan Lethem and others of the genre are well worth checking out. Hopefully this is only the beginning, and we'll have another three or four sub-genres of Fantasy sprouting in the coming decades!

  3. Other awards by vandemar · · Score: 4, Informative
    This book is just racking up the awards. It has been nominated for the most prestigious award of each major genre. This may be the first time in history that something like this has happened (too lazy to verify it myself though). Check it out:

    In horror: Bram Stoker Award (winner)
    In fantasy: World Fantasy Award (nominated, the winner has not been decided yet)
    In sci-fi: Hugo Award (winner)

    Look at the tons of other awards in Neil Gaiman's collection.