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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."
I haven't read Coraline yet (it's on my list, which is kind of long right now), but there's a strong case to be made that Buffy is science fiction, not fantasy. I'd say The Two Towers, and all of LOTR, is definitely fantasy. But you don't need gadgets and flying cars to be science fiction.
I've had this conversation with some other SF authors (yeah, I have pretentions), and it seems the big distinction between SF and fantasy isn't the way the world differs from our own (high-tech vs. magic), but how the characters relate to it. In SF, technology is external and understandable. In fantasy, magic is beyond understanding, and it's a mostly internal thing. Being able to do spells and make potions is just a different flavor of technology. But the One Ring isn't technology, it's a force of nature, and thus magic.
The supernatural in Buffy is very much magical technology. Anyone, even Xander, can pick up a stake and nail a vamp. Even the Slayer is technology - the Shadow Men just bound the essence of a demon to the slayer line and presto!, superchicks to fight vampires.
>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
Day of the Minotaur (1967)
Too Many Magicians (1967)
Goblin Reservation (1969)
Harpist in the Wind (1980)
Little, Big (1982)
Tea With the Black Dragon (1984)
Seventh Son (1988)
Red Prophet (1989)
Prentice Alvin (1990)
Towing Jehovah (1995)
By the way, Hominids is a dreadful book, and there's a coincidence in its win that Slashdot readers may not know about: the author couldn't possibly be more active in promoting himself as Canada's big-time SF writer, and all the Hugo voters this year were necessarily paid members of a convention taking place in Canada--in fact, Toronto where the winning author lives. Are Canadian SF fans really such parochial nationalist boosters that they would vote for a bad book just because it's Canadian? I wouldn't have thought so before yesterday.
You should read Hominids, The Scar, Bones of the Earth, Kiln People, and The Years of Rice and Salt if you'd like to judge for yourself. I'd have voted for any of them and even "no award" before I would have voted for Hominids.