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2003 Hugo Award Winners Announced
securitas writes "For those that follow these sorts of things, the 2003 Hugo Award Winners list has been released (PDF). Robert Sawyer's 'Homonids' won Best Novel, fan favorite Neil Gaiman won Best Novella for 'Coraline', Geoffery A. Landis won Best Short Story for 'Falling Onto Mars', Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'Conversations with Dead People' won Best Short Form Dramatic Presentation and predictably 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' won Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation. You can get all the details at the Torcon 2003 Hugo Awards section."
A lot of awards have overlooked the series in the past when they've been deserving.
Philip K. Dick's last winner:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html
And yet another year passes in which they fail to acknowledge the wonderous story that is Battlefield:Earth.
I find modern sci-fi to be incredibly boring. Even the second foundation trilogy reads like second rate cyberpunk. Most modern stuff is written like trash romance novels set with Sims and assorted other sci-fi elements.
Sci-Fi does advance science; where do you think scientists get ideas, most modern tech was first thought up in science fiction. My PDA looks a lot like a star trek PADD, my cell phone looks like a communicator.
That's not even taking into account all the kids who grow up reading sci-fi and grow up to be scientists because of it.
You're an idiot.
Winning an award after the show bows for an episode about ghosts of the past. :) Also note how Buffy creator Joss Whedon has three of the nominated episodes (for his other two shows, "Angel" and the late "Firefly") while the other two noms belong to "Enterprize". It's a small world these days.....
I've read a bunch of Sawyer's books (his present-day/near-present-day sci-fi) and they do not dissapoint. I found it funny that I spotted Hominids in the store the other day and picked it up, and now I hear it won the Hugo :)
Heh... he's also Canadian! Yay Canada!
Not everybody wants to be a scientist, especially when you get low pay, poor advancement and lousy job opportunities. And that's after you have spent 5-7 years slogging away as a slave in grad school....
On the other hand, doing science is the most rewarding experience I've ever had*.
Btw, Geoffery Landis is himself a scientist...
* Other than hot, steamy sex.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Nice to see the literary Hugos are going to actual SF again...two years of solid selections. I think it was 2001 when Harry Potter won best novel, and I just shook my head... I have nothing against HP, but it doesn't deserve a Hugo. It's not adult fiction, and it's not even science fiction (which is, of course, the focus of the Hugo... I disagree with the folks who keep saying SF is "incredibly boring" these days, though--it's just on a different tack.
Why are fantasy and horror works winning sci-fi awards?
The award will stop to have any meaning if they don't stick to its niche.
You can't take the sky from me...
Sci-Fi does advance science; where do you think scientists get ideas, most modern tech was first thought up in science fiction. No. In general, SF derives from existing scientfic concepts. It's not as if authors are sitting around and think "Hey, you know what'd be cool? Some kinda energy source from little tiny particles called atoms smashing into each other!" Enrico Fermi didn't learn how fission works from reading SF. Even pulling ideas from existing science, the genre has gotten it wrong plenty of times. It was Gibson (I think) that wrote a story where characters see all these bizarre rocketships and flying things in the sky, and strange vehicles on the ground...in the end, these crazy vehicles turn out to be all the pictures of silver ships and flying cars and nuclear thingamajigs from the 1950s pulp mags. Kim Stanley Robinson has written about a lot of prospective, uninvented things in his Mars series, but he didn't start from nothing--a lot of the ideas in those books was first proposed by NASA researchers and guys like Robert Zubrin. Hell, he even takes stuff from the 100 Day Plan. SF and science feed off each other, true...but SF != source of science.
I wrote an essay in HS english that basically said Science drives Sci-Fi forward and in turn Sci-Fi drive Science forware. Sci-Fi authors go a long way towards taking abstract concepts from the Scientists and proposing workable applications which the scientists then work out.
This is not a knock against either Buffy or Coraline - I have Buffy seasons 1-7 on my bookshelf, and my Neil Gaiman collection is probably worth about $1000. But neither of them are science fiction. Coraline is a children's horror novel. A wonderful children's horror novel, but a children's horror novel all the same.
Maybe a case can be made for Buffy, since it's at least had sci-fi moments in its series, but Conversations With Dead People was not one of them.
I mean, yeah, a case can be made that the Hugos need to start acknowledging things beyond straight sci-fi if they're going to survive as a relevent and interesting award. But if they're going to do that, they should stop calling themselves a science fiction award. And they should also pause to ask whether, with the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards around, such a move is really necessary.
Oh well. Grats to Gaiman and Whedon anyway. =)
Philip Sandifer's academic website
the appeal of Sawyer's work? Now, if you want good Canadian scifi, read some James Alan Gardner.
Yeah...'cause "conversations with dead people" was chuck full of science-fiction
In that case, I hearby nominate Jonathan Edwards for the 2004 Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It was indeed Gibson. The story was "The Gernsback Continuum". It was in his collection Burning Chrome and probably other places.
I don't think it's the same people giving themselves awards. The Hugos are awarded by the membership of the World Science-Fiction Convetion (http://www.worldcon.org/). Yes, many authors are members, but the bulk are just fen. So the awards are given by a few thousand people active in the SF fan community.
That said, yes, it's not particularly scientific or democratic. But that's what the award means - WorldCon thinks this book is the best. If you aren't happy with the selections, you can do what I did this year. I purchased a relatively inexpensive associate (non-attending) membership which allowed me to vote for the Hugos, and I'll be able to nominate for next year's awards too.
Of course none of the entries I voted for won. Too bad, because Kiln People rocked.
Sawyer deserves this. Nice to see recognition going to a writer who can build real stories around real characters.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
There is plenty of important value to be placed on science fiction without resorting to making things up. Science fiction does not drive science - one would be hard pressed to come up with an important scientific advance that would not have happened without science fiction.
No. If you want to justify science fiction, look at the ways in which the ability to create future worlds, or alien civilizations allows new ways to talk about problems that humans face today. Look at the metaphorical capabilities of it. Look at the simple fact that it entertains people - both geeks and "normal" people.
But don't delude yourself into thinking that science fiction is somehow necessary to science. If nothing else, the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment clearly did pretty well at science without science fiction.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Is it just the fact that locus is about the only quality entry in the category ? They seem to win every year.
Orson Scott Card? I don't read a lot of scifi but i randomly picked up enders game a few months ago and am now finishing the last book (so far) in the series. ender series is still definitely scifi, but in a more vague sense, like rand's 'atlas shrugged' was scifi. but it's still an excellent series, which will given a movie treatment (enders game and enders shadow combined in one film) and which won the hugo and nebula awards back in the mid 80's....
anyone still reading card?
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
Wow. Tinfoil-hat, black-helicopter grade paranoia and delusions of grandeur all in one post! That's gotta be some kind of new Slashdot record. If not in the absolute sense, at least in the disfunctionalities-per-word metric.
In general, SF derives from existing scientfic concepts. It's not as if authors are sitting around and think "Hey, you know what'd be cool? Some kinda energy source from little tiny particles called atoms smashing into each other!"
Nope. Instead they're sitting around thinking things like, "Hey, you know what'd be cool? Satellites that orbit the earth at such an altitude that they make one complete rotation per day. You could probably put a radio or TV transmitter on one of those and broadcast to half the globe!"
And voila, shortly thereafter we had communications satellites.
(The concept of the geosynchronous communications satellite was first invented by Arthur C. Clarke, famous science fiction author.)
Didn't you know? Everything that happens on Earth is planned and controlled by the Evil Minions of Emporer Ming.
I'm guessing your parents kept asking you "Is that really necessary?"
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Science fiction occasionally advances science, the communications satellite being the famous example, but the real idea is to advance society around science. As science overtakes science fiction (usually co-incidentally) society struggles to adapt. It's good that there are at least a few people who have already thought about how to respond to changes like those which happen!
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
People will eventually get bored not doing anything, so they'll pay to enter a theme park where they can have "immersive retro experiences" where the robots will let them join in flipping burgers or whatever, "just like they used to in the old days". The great grandparents (that's *you*) will think they're nuts.
Look here for a counter argument.
Help fight continental drift.
TORCON 3 The 61st World Science Fiction Convention August 28 to September 1, 2003 Metro Toronto Convention Centre
The 2003 Hugo Award Winners
PO Box 3, Station A, Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1A2, Canada info@ torcon3. on. ca www. torcon3. on. ca
Best Novel Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Analog 1-4/ 02; Tor)
Best Novella Coraline by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
Best Novelette "Slow Life" by Michael Swanwick (Analog 12/ 02)
Best Short Story "Falling Onto Mars" by Geoffrey A. Landis (Analog 7-8/ 02)
Best Related Book Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril
Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary (Between the Lines)
Best Short Form Dramatic Presentation Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Conversations With Dead People"
(20th Century Fox Television/ Mutant Enemy Inc.) Directed by Nick Marck; Teleplay by Jane Espenson & Drew Goddard
Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(New Line Cinema) Directed by Peter Jackson; Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Phillippa Boyens,
Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson; based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien
Best Professional Editor Gardner Dozois
Best Professional Artist Bob Eggleton
Best Semiprozine Locus
Charles N. Brown, Jennifer A. Hall, and Kirsten Gong-Wong, eds.
Best Fanzine Mimosa
Rich and Nicki Lynch, eds.
Best Fan Writer Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist Sue Mason
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (sponsored by Dell Magazines)
Wen Spencer 1
People may nominate works of science fiction or fantasy. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is on the Hugo Awards ballot because enough people felt it deserves a Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. The key word is "best" - we want the Hugo Awards to be given to the best works of the year. The Hugo Awards existed long before the World Fantasy Awards. Why should we limit ourselves to just science fiction?
Buffy is fantasy.
I think you mean "This is the web" or "This is the world wide web." The internet was around long before HTML.
>they do not dissapoint
That is, if you're not bothered by details like scientific plausability, plot, characterization, etc.
I have not read Hominids (although the reviews of it I have seen have not been promising), but I did read Starplex, which was a Hugo and Nebula finalist, and that was such a singularly wretched novel that I haven't read another Sawyer novel since.
This is clearly a case of "home cooking," since Worldcon was held in Sawyer's back yard. It's very sad that Sawyer won a Hugo before (and here's just a partial list) Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Pat Cadigan, China Mieville, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, John Kessel, Iain Banks, Michaael Bishop...
Well, the list of science fiction writers better than Robert J. Sayer who haven't won a Hugo just goes on and on, doesn't it?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
A lot of people seem to think that the Hugos are being lessened by being granted to works that aren't strictly sci-fi.
. htm
But these days there's very little sci-fi that's actually science fiction. Most of it is fantasy with computers.
China Mieville (one of the Hugo-nominated authors this year) has an excellent essay on the subject of what he calls "weird fiction" at his website, http://www.panmacmillan.com/features/china/debate
Orson Scott Card hasn't written any 'true' SF in a while. Unlike some, I enjoy all his stuff (not just the sci-fi, which is really just Ender's {Game | Shadow} and maybe Pastwatch), but he's mostly shifted into other genres.
_Hominids_ is the first book of a Neanderthal trilogy, where Neanderthals on an alternate earth, where Homo sapiens died out instead, use a quantum computer which opens a portal to our world.
The other two books, _Humans_ and _Hybrids_, are now both available. _Humans_ and _Hominids_ are paperbacks and _Hybrids_ *just* came out in hardcover.
If you enjoy good science fiction, read all three. And hopefully _Humans_ or _Hybrids_ makes the ballot again next year (both published first in 2003).
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I'm glad someone is finally making novels based on the Sliders TV show.
And winning awards for them, no less.
Just finished "Sarah" and "Rebekah". Neither are SF, of course.
:)
Oddly, he preaches less while writing about the Women of Genesis than he does in the Ender series
Tolkein's thesis (insofar as he even had one) was that the One Ring was a sort of technology, inasmuch as it was most definitely not a force of nature -- it was specifically a work of Sauron's artifice.
This is well-supported in his writings; I also ran across an essay on the subject recently.
DNA just wants to be free...
If you enjoy SF written by cultish wackjobs, you may enjoy Battlefield Earth (though arguably Hubbard was merely a calculating sociopath at the time he wrote it and not yet a cultish wackjob with a true-believer agenda to sell, unlike Card and Rand - any others I've missed in this "subgenre"? I'm seriously interested).
Interzone is excellent, and would get my vote if I were voting. NYRSF and Ansible are both excellent, as well, and I've heard good things about Speculations. Locus is excellent, too, of course, but at this point I think its wins are as much about the name recognition and momentum as because there aren't other great semiprozines.
I assume you mean Prince Xenu. Even a modern operating system controversy was engineered in advance, eons ago. Don't believe me? Turn the letters in "Unix" around. See?
You have the capacity, but not yet the ability, to see past deceptions even more mind-bogglingly devious and obscure than that. And for a small fee, that potential can be unlocked. And it all starts with a simple (free!) personality test.
'Homonids' - An epic story of the struggle for acceptance amongst ancient Neanderthal interior decorators.
Well, the cultish whackjob really crosses genres . . . .
Thing is Orson Scott Card may be a touch cultish - though frankly, the Christians have numbers over the Scientologists - but he ain't a whackjob. He doesn't live far from here, and comes up to read at the local bookstore everytime he publishes. He's really a nice guy, and unlike Hubbard, Orson Scott has written things worth reading. Ender's Game is one of the great SciFi novels, period in my opinion.
Ayn Rand is a whackjob with diareaha of the typewriter.
You are correct about Landis. I met him back in 1995 when I was a summer intern at NASA. He works in the Photovoltaic Branch in Cleveland's Glenn Research Center.
On the other hand, doing science is the most rewarding experience I've ever had*.
:)
* Other than hot, steamy sex.
So, would you recommend work as a porn star instead?
deus does not exist but if he does
Since when does a story like The Lord of the Ring fall intot the science fiction category? Magic doesn't cound as science people.
-bZj
.sig
I have to admit, homonids was a good book. I think this is the first time I've read a sci-fi book before it won a major award.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Just wait until they build a space elevator.
I have a strange feeling of deja vu here because I've just remembered I've posted almost the same comment before. Heh, heres another point I made then; be careful how you interpret the evidence for sci-fi's contribution. Thousands of writers, thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of speculations (some major = we will live on the moon, some minor = we will have portable computers). Each one of these writers is striving for some degree of originality or novelty (very much the raison d'etre of SF since pulp-sci fi bit the bullet). Would it not be incredibly strange if a handful of these hundreds of thousands of speculations didn't to some extent come true?
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Amusing that you would put Card alongside Rand like that. Rand has always been one of my favorite writers... Hubbard? *shudder*.
And what's cultish about Card? I don't know anything about him except that he's a 'Mormon' who doesn't seem very Mormon-ish and likes to use Catholicism as a tool to enable him to blather a bit every couple dozen pages in every book of his I've read. hehehe. *shrug*
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
While scientists and engineers typically push the world forward by scientific achievement, often they're not the best at either applying or marketing their work. And often the type of abilities that make one good at scientific type thinking are contrary to the creative outside the box thinking that science fiction and ultimately even tomorrow's reality. The big things most often come from some one asking "Why not?" rather than "Why?" Scientists and engineers are bound by (current) science. Writers have no boundaries and are free to come whatever they can imagine.
Ultimately I guess it's a matter of being a 'dreamer.' Certainly scientists can be dreamers but basically it's a major part of the job description for ficiton writers.
Vote Quimby.
Also at Torcon 3, we gave out the Prix Aurora Awards, where we acknowledge the contributions to the fields of SF and Fantasy by Canadians...and here are the winners:
Best Long-Form Work in English
Meilleur livre en anglais
* -- Permanence, Karl Schroeder (Tor) --
Meilleur livre en francais
Best Long-Form Work in French
* -- Le Revenant de Fomalhaut, Jean-Louis Trudel (Mediaspaul) --
Best Short-Form Work in English
Meilleure nouvelle en anglais
* -- "Ineluctable", Robert J. Sawyer (Analog Nov/2002) --
Meilleure nouvelle en francais
Best Short-Form Work in French
* -- La Guerre sans temps, Sylvie Berard (Solaris 143) --
Best Work in English (Other)
Meilleur ouvrage en anglais (Autre)
* -- Edo van Belkom, editing Be VERY Afraid! (Tundra Books) --
Artistic Achievement / Accomplissement artistique
* -- Mel Vavaroutsos --
Fan Achievement (Publication)
Accomplissement fanique (publication)
* -- Made in Canada Newsletter, Don Bassie, ed. [webzine] --
Fan Achievement (Organizational)
Accomplissement fanique (Organisation)
* -- Georgina Miles --
Fan Achievement (Other)
Accomplissement fanique (autre)
* -- Jason Taniguchi, one-man SF parody shows / presentations
individuelles de parodies SF --
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Except the scientists would probably have figured that out from his PATENT, not from reading his books. Anyway, one example does not mean much of anything. There may be some instances, but that doesn't mean that science would be nowhere without Sci-fi. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of scientific advances are not based on things in sci fi
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
or
Ice Station by Matthew Reilly [not strictly scifi, but as action goes, wow]
I love enders game, but there is more out there.
Yay me!
I've had similar experiences with Sayer.
I started of with Frameshift (hugo finalist). Which was rather confusing and pointless (or rather it had to may points for any of them to mean anything). Thinking that I might be missing something (with Sayer getting all those awards), I tried The Terminal Experiment (Nebula winner), which was even worse.
Both books suffer badly from Sayer inablility to stick with the topic or hold a logical plot together. His characters are annoying sons-of-hippies, who thinks unlike any real people. They mostly act like politically correct robots.
I'm never going to read another Sayer novel, no matter how may awards it gets.
I'm not sure about it and frankly I'm not going to spend the time checking on it, but I've this idea that all these awards corolate with him having been
President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc..
I'm not saying that there's a direct connecting, but he must have a lot of friends and be well connected. Probably a good guy to know and brown-nose, if you what a good quote on the back of your next novel...
TC - My Photos..
James P. Hogan is a Veliskovskian True Believer and this is showing through more and more in his newer writings. There are also quite a few believers in the Singularity (aka Rapture of the Nerds) who are writing SF and furthermore getting it published although since its the sort of thing Slashdot readers dream about it's probably not a cult but a "common interest".
For a bit of background there is a comparative review here of all the nominees for best novel.
would also be adult fiction for you right? Let's check with snow white as an example. It has murder (the witch trying to poison snow white), death (everyone thinks she is dead), destiny (Prince coming), revenge (the witch gets it in the end).
In fact children do like the same topics as adults, they just understand less, which is why HP and Grimm's fairy tales have simplistic plots and characters.
Moritz
I will admit that Hominids takes it a bit too far in making it clear that the story is taking place in some small towns in Ontario .
But before you come down on Canada for being parochial Nationalists, consider that every morning in schools that the first thing school children do is recite the Pledge of Allegiance and salute a flag. From where I stand, that seems damn near cultish.
If the only reason that you cannot stand the book is because it is blatently pro Canadian, then perhaps you were paying too much attention to the wrong bits. I liked Hominids a fair bit. The reason I liked it is because it is a story that takes a path much different then typical Sci-Fi. Not many Sci-Fi books manage to examine things like Religion and Violence in a primarily modern context.
END COMMUNICATION
Catherine Asaro, David Brin, Michael Flynn, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Wil McCarthy, Larry Niven, Neil Stephenson, John Varley, and Vernor Vinge all write hard SF. Two authors that I read regularly died last year: Robert L. Forward and Charles Sheffield, but there are still many good SF writers.
George R.R. Martin in his GoH speech said that this the new golden age of science fiction. I don't know if I would go that far but, while there is a lot of Star Trek, Babylon Five, and similar media-based material being pumped out, there is also a lot of good science fiction if you know where to look.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
* Other than hot, steamy sex.
You've had sex? What kind of a scientist are you!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If anyone's interested, Geoffrey's story is still up on the Analog website: Falling Onto Mars.
Alex.