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Hugo Nominations Announced
Embedded Geek writes "With the 2004 Nebula Awards being awarded this weekend, the Hugo nominations have been announced. As usual, the field is packed with lots of deserving entries, although I'm sure everyone has a favorite that was missed. I was particularly interested in the Short Form Drama, though, with Joss Wheadon getting three nominations for canceled shows (two Firefly, one Buffy) and Gollum's Acceptance Speech at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards getting a nod. Also of interest are the Retro Hugos, an effort to look back and recognize SF published before anyone thought to hand out awards for it. Retro nominees include such greats as Childhood's End, Fahrenheit 451, and Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 th Century (no, really!). You have until 31 July, 2004 to join Noreascon Four and vote for your favorites!"
I was always a bit disappointed in the Fahrenheit 451 movie. I mean, the book is one of my favorites of all time, but I just don't think it did it justice. Same with Catch-22. I mean, they were good movies, but not the calibur of the books.
I think a Fahrenheit 451 remake has a lot of potential too, with all the modern camera and computer technology today, they could really recreat the world of Guy Montag to such a degree. (And perhaps show all the parallels between it and our own which is ever growing closer IMO.)
Once again, we see Stargate SG-1 ingnored by the parasite-infested dweebs of worldcon, whose real objection is that SG-SG1 always keeps Amanda Tapping covered up under BDUs. And O'Neill is so better than captain kirk.
So it's science fiction because that movie features obviously genetically engineered fish?
The Dramatic Presentation Hugo is the most popular Hugo but by many of the standards that go into the award, the least important. It is one that used to be so bad that "No Award" was a serious contender and always the category where it does best. An award means there should be in every year many fine contenders, from which 5 nominees that are worthy can be chosen, of which one will be deemed excellent. Quite often the DP Hugo has not met this standard.
Of all the Hugos, it was the one least in need of duplicating. It was a popular choice nonetheless (though still controversial) because people just like to give awards, and some people really enjoy their TV SF.
The DP award was also notorious for being the one the recipient often cared nothing for, the nominees coming rarely if at all to get the award. In some years the winner was told in advance they won (in violation of the principles for all the other awards) just to get them to show up.
Again, not what was needed to be duplicated. TV fans tend to be fans of series, and though this is an episode award, you can be sure voters will vote for their favourite series, even if another series had an episode better than the best episode of their series.
The Retros were written in in the 90s and tried in 1996. Participation was low, and voting was clearly based in some cases on the historical reputation of the authors rather than the works, or simply who was alive to receive or who it would be cute to receive in one category. The later worldcons entitled to give retro hugos deemed them a mistake and didn't do them again, but they were not removed from the rules so this con did them. Doesn't alter it.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I'd have to go with More Than Human for the retro novel award.
I did give the show a fair chance, but the whole "Freak of the Week" theme got old real fast, especially when Kryptonite became the universal widget to make strange things happen or be part of an evil technology.
And when they weren't doing that, they were doing things that reminded me of the commercials for that Everwood show. It became pretty clear that Smallville is nothing but another WB teen angst show with a teen age Superman as the gimmick to keep it on the air.
And the sad thing is, the premise they set up had a lot of promise. Lex Luthor starting off as a good guy living in Smallville (Even managed a decent explanation for that one, even if the mansion was way over the top) A young Superman still learning about his powers. His powers developing from the ground up. The episode where he first developed heat vision, while ultimately botched due to the absurd "B" plots, had a good start for dealing with a teenager who suddenly found heat rays streaming from his eyes.
They even had some fun twists on the traditional tellings of the Superman saga, such as the changes they made in the motivations for Superman's biological Father selecting Earth as the destination for his son's space capsule.
All told, the show had promise, but what hope there was was killed off by forcing the show to become just another WB melodrama. They should have hired some decent sci-fi / comic writers instead of the hacks they ended up using.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...find it a tad disturbing that pretty much all of the discussion in this thread is about movies and TV shows? People! The shite that Hollywood cranks out is not good SF! Read a good book. Sheesh.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
TV is vapid crap used to brainwash people into mindless consumerism and follow-the-herd politics.
By your logic you should also not have internet access, because its full of the same mindless crap.
TV is also a source of humour, educational documentaries, and the occasionnal morcel of wonder such as Firefly.
Just because it has a high crap content doesn't mean its ALL crap.
You can't take the sky from me...
if it were popular Fox would have kept it.
Fox made damn sure it couldn't have the chance to become popular.
They aired it at a random timeslot, not everyweek, and not at the time they said the night before that it would air.
Some episodes played on fridays at 8, one played at 12:05 AM, another around 12:20 AM, they played out of order...
I think Fox wanted Joss to make another teen-hit, but in space. And when he showed up with the best sci-fi show ever shown on TV, the execs freaked because that was not what they wanted. They didn't want innovative, or smart, they wanted bland and dumb, like them.
The show wasn't watched, but not because it wasn't good, only because it was sabotaged by its cruel Fox masters.
You can't take the sky from me...
Since Hubbard never won any serious award, I imagine that they'll really pull out the stops for this effort, including retro-history about how great a Golden-Age author he was. (He was never more than a B-list writer at best.)
Not posted anonymously because they can kiss my shiny SP ass.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
As far as I know, Joss ended Buffy because he felt it had run its course. The network didn't cancel it. Am I wrong?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Picking either Childhood's End or Fahrenheit 451 is really not possible, IMO - both are equally deserving of the award. Give it to both of them.