Slashdot Mirror
2005 Hugo Nominations
COBOLgrrl writes " The 2005 Hugo Nominations have been announced. Books up for Best Novel include The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, Iron Council by China Miéville , Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and River of Gods by Ian McDonald."
Maybe I'm just not, "in the loop", but I don't know of many online awards given. I don't like the concept of afew select people voting on who to give the prize to, I'd rather have open online voting. I'd also like to see more writing contests (again maybe I just missed them). By the way Ian McDonald is amazing.
Remember, popularity != quality. Just because something is popular doesn't prevent it from being, for example, pandering tripe.
And you know how english majors are.
I really recommend it. I haven't read any of the others, so my vote for Mr. Stross' book is a bit biased, but I definitely think it deserves a Hugo.
In my opinion, China Melville is overrated as an author. His Perdido Street Station was the "it" book of 2001, but after I finished reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what the big deal was.
Granted, he has an excellent sense of the phantasmagoric and his worldbuilding skills are certainly impressive, but as an author, he just doesn't have the chops. His characters are almost too angst-ridden to move in a forward direction, and his plots read like a bad slasher flicks.
Take away his word processor and give him a job as a conceptual designer. Everyone will be happier in the long run.
*cough* da vinci code *cough*
English majors are the picky ones who want that e of yours to be an E.
All members of WorldCon are entitled to make nominations and to vote on who receives the Hugo Awards. That's pretty open.
Open online voting would create huge headaches and would be very hard to secure (people could easily vote more than once). If online polls at CNN, MSNBC and other news sites are to be believed, George W. Bush trounced John Kerry in November's elections. The reason most online polls are 90 percent inaccurate is because they're self-selected and do not accurately represent the whole population.
Everybody who likes SciFi should read a bit of Iain M Banks (Iain Banks (same author without the 'M') writes pretty dark, non-genre books, very good, but nothing compared to his SciFi).
Most of his SciFi books are based on 'The Culture' which is basically the human race in a few thousand years. VCool tech. and Uber-Cool Space Ship names ('Meat Fucker') is the nick-name other ships have given to one particular ship, 'cause it likes to read the minds of humans.
If you're going to read any of his books, read 'The Player of Games'. Amazing read. (Tiny spoiler...) There is a bit where the lead finds out about a very dark side to the race who he is 'Playing' with. From that point, he stops talking. Then only when he has taken apart the next few players does he speak. Iain M Banks is truely a very great under-appreciated author. READ HIM.
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
Amazon Link
Iron Council by China Mieville
Amazon Link
Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross
Amazon Link
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke
Amazon Link
River of Gods by Ian McDonald
Amazon Link
True, I understand that it would result in alot of bias and I'm not suggesting that the Hugo awards go to an online voting system. But the topic made me consider something along the lines of a web books site, some place where the online community could log on and review/vote for books and then at the end of the year you could send an award to the most popular books, saying, "You book was selected as one of the best by the readers at the site....". Just a way for the average readers to let an author know we apprecite their works even if some snobby panel doesn't.
From last summer's reading list
Finished:
Perdido Street Station - China Melville
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Golden Age - John C. Wright
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Manifold Series - Stephen Baxtor
Currently Reading:
King Rat - Neil Gaiman
Still to Go:
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Some other Authors I follow
David Bin, Ben Bova, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Frederik Pohl.
I find the quality of my reading much better on average following Slashdot suggestions rather than randomly picking books by title and pretty covers at Barnes & Noble.
Didn't quite care for Pattern Recognition, so just one clunker for me -- maybe I just didn't get it, I wanted more of a well defined plot.
Taking inordinate pride in making through all 1130 pages of Cyrptonomicon, but after you make it past the first 300 pages you'll find yourself screaming through it.
Letter To Iran
To drastically increase your changes it seems you need only be named Ian and write a book with "Iron" in the title.
I'm not done with Iron Sunrise yet, so I'll refrain (but it is really really good so far). I did finish Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and found the core story was imaginative and the characters were pretty engaging. I thought Strange was actually more distant in terms of visualization than Norrell - for some reason I could picture the latter and hear his voice much more readily than the supposedly more approachable and contemporary Strange. She didn't rush the story (even at page 800) and there were not any useless passages: everything had a bearing on at least one aspect of each storyline.
One book that is not mentioned here that I highly recommend is Dan Simmons' Ilium. This was a 12-hour read - problem was, it was 12 straight hours because I couldn't put the damn thing down!!
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
As an English major, I agree. With everything. Blindly. Because I have no idea what I'm talking about. But as a pretentious snob, if it's popular I say it has to be pandering tripe. I mean, most people want their books to be like TV. They want it to be a sort of entertainment that's passive; that is, they don't have to engage themselves with the work. Good books, independent of genre, are often overlooked because they don't appeal to a wide audience. Now, this isn't completely true. There are a lot of great books that are widely read and enjoyed, but for the msot part, the publishing industry is an entertainment industry no different from all the others. Now, since I've been repetitive and offtopic, I'll go RTFA.
I believe this year marks a significant milestone in SF history. Unless I am very mistaken, this is the very first year that none of the Best Novel nominees are American. All of them are from the UK and we have representatives from Scotland, England, and Ireland. I'd vote for either Susanna Clarke or China Mieville but any of those novels are more deserving than some of the garbage that has won in recent years. I'm looking at you, "Hominids".
This just reinforces my impression that American SF is stagnant while all the real action these days is taking place across the pond. Great stuff, and I hope American authors take this as a kick in the pants to stop rehashing the same old material and start showing a little imagination.
Silly rabbit - Bruce Springsteen doesn't write Science Fiction.
I'm a big fan of Iain Banks, but I'm surprised to hear that The Algebraist has been nominated. Although it's well written technically, it's hardly as innovative as his Culture novels. It's a very poor book in terms of plot on the whole unlike his other sci-fi and fiction work.
I found myself questioning the space opera characters very early on. I mean a baddie with diamond teeth and red eyes! I mean really! Surely an author of his calibre can make a villain despicable beyond the all too familar plot abbreviations.
I'm disappointed that Richard Morgan didn't get a mention for Market Forces.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Will somebody atleast now start selling 'The Algebraist' in the US??
I've been waiting to get my hands on that book for a long time.
just give the foundation series another Hugo!
I also predict that the winner won't be American. Yeah, this is the first year that no American was nominated for best novel. Note that the Hugo is voted on by Worldcon members, and Worldcon is in Scotland this year. So a substantial portion of the voters will be able to travel to Scotland for the con, and I believe several of these nominees are more well-known in the UK. They're all really good--don't get me wrong--but location is probably a factor in this list.
Incidentally, here's a really good round-up of the best SF/Fantasy novels published last year: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.wr itten/msg/4ab6c83b0b234305
I second that. My sleep schedule was ruined because of that book. It's a must read.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
we have representatives from Scotland, England, and Ireland.
All of those in one entrant: Ian McDonald. From his web site:
born in 1960 in Manchester, England by an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland
Hearts, Hand and Voices (his second novel?) was one of my favourite sci-fi novels.
Couldn't agree more. US science fiction has degenerated into a set of seemingly endless soap operas. A good idea and some strong characters which are maybe good for three books are recycled again and again, each installment written to the same formula, each incidental character getting their own sub-plot, each story line stretched out endlessly with no conclusion in sight.
I'm not going to name names but, apropos of nothing, I miss the days when Weber was a type of carburettor, not an anti-insomnia treatment.
Compare with the 'Culture' novels; they might all be set in the same universe, but they can stand on their own and are all very different novels.
And how about the politics? If US writers are to be believed the only choice is between high-frontier Libertidiotanism or tree-hugging eco-bleeding-heartedness. Read some Iain Banks or Ken MacLeod and you'll see more political variety than just about all US science fiction put together.
It's a real shame, because US science fiction used to be the best in the world.
No surprises here, if you ask me. It would have been nice to see a quirky choice or two IMO.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Sometimes it's not clear that the Hugos are for sci-fi in all forms, not just the written form. For example take the category Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Nominated are: Heroes Part 1 & 2 - Stargate SG-1 Not Fade Away - Angel Pilot Episode - Lost Smile Time - Angel 33 - Battlestar Galactica And of course, 33 will win, but don't get me started on being off topic.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits
The people who vote on the Hugos are self-selected. If you want to vote, all you need to do is buy a membership in that year's WorldCon (World Science Fiction Convention). No restrictions, other than coming up with the membership fee (cheaper if you're not actually attending the con).
Compare this with the Nebula, voted and awarded by members of SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), which requires proof that you've made paid sales of SF (or F). That's closer to the Oscars, which is nominated and voted on by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures.
What's the point of online awards? It's too easy to rig the voting, or for the utterly unqualified to vote.
-- Alastair
I agree, but I don't think American authors are to blame. I think that it is the publishers. In the past publishers would print the drek in order to support the printing of good literature. Now like much of the entertainment industry the book publishers are not interested in anything other then a solid money maker.
I think Excession was the last really good Iain M Banks book I read. His sci-fi seems to have gone the same way as his mainstream fiction: it all became a bit samey after a while. Excession was excellent, though.
Well Sawyer is Canadian so don't blame the US.
I don't really think American SF is stagnant; there are several brilliant writers here (John C. Wright comes to mind), just because in one year it's non-US nominees doesn't necessarily mean anything. And I think a lot of the best work coming out of the US is in short stories and novellas; check out the year's best collections edited by Hartwell if you don't believe me.
Not necessarily refuting your point, but I think that the Worldcon being held in the UK this year has contributed to the Anglo-centric slant of the nominations.
;-)
Incidentally, anybody else think that the convention venue looks like a low-budget Sydney Opera House?
a world in progress...
And there's more speculative future history by J.R. Mooneyham.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The HUGO awards are meaningless if they exclude authors such as Travis Tea, simply because they write in the "wrong" genre.
Yes, you are correct.
However, remember to extend this logic and not discount the quality of something just because it is popular. It's funny that a sibling post mentions The Da Vinci Code, because as soon as I had finished reading your post, I thought to myself "Someone's gonna say 'yeah like The Da Vinci code!'".
FWIW, I thought that The Da Vinci Code was a good book. Not because I believed that most of presented conspiracies and other 'facts' were true, but because, well, it's a damn good story, pure fiction or not. The current religious controversy is irrelevant as far as the story itself is concerned. Reading it was reminiscient of 'reading time' at junior school, when the teacher would relay a great adventure about a detective or similar character that was filled with excitement and danger. I read the book when it was popular yet still nothing out of the ordinary in terms of sales (i.e. before the sales explosion and the related newspaper articles, religious outcries etc.). It felt like reading a film script throughout, and I was not at all surprised when I heard Hollywood got its paws on it.
Sure, The 'Code is no Dickens, but then again I don't need to read the entire works of Shakespeare to validate my personal literary insecurities, like those cunts who love telling people that they've read War And Peace.
To regress back to the original point, people who automatically turn their noses up at popularity annoy me just as much as those who blindly follow it. Like everything in life, it's all about balance (see my sig). And to the AC sibling: I wasn't trying to make an accusation, if you read TDVC and genuinely thought it sucked, good for you.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
It'll be interesting to watch the difference between Hugo and Nebula this year then. As has been pointed out, none of the nominees for Hugo are american, and you say that Nebula is voted on by an association of american writers.
What are the odds that no american will be nominated for the Nebula awards?
They are nominated & voted on in 2005, but the award is for works published in 2004.
Can I get these books on eDonkey yet?
Lest someone else think there was an Angel episode called "Lost Smile Time," here is a possibly less inept method for listing the nominees: "Heroes" Part 1 & 2, Stargate SG-1; "Not Fade Away," Angel; Pilot Episode, Lost; "Smile Time," Angel; and "33," Battlestar Galactica.
I was able to find nice galleries online for nominees John Picacio, Fred Gambino, Bob Eggleton, and Donato Giancola. They are definitely worth checking out. You'll probably even recognize some of their work.
Frank Kelly Freas, one of the other nominees, died in January. The Guardian has a nice obituary about his life and work here. It looks like his homepage is down now, but you may be able to find examples of his work elsewhere. He did some of the covers of those great old school scifi books you see in 2nd-hand book shops.
Interesting that a book not even for sale in America was nominated. It's also interesting that the best contemporary SF is coming out of the UK these days. I hate it though because for most of these great authors you have to wait a year+ for their books to get released in the US (unless you want to go through the hassle of Amazon.co.uk. I think Ken MacLeod and Charlie Stross are the only exceptions to this in that they get published in the US first or within a month or so of coming out in the eU...but Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Ian Banks, etc... they come out at least a year earlier in the UK and then when they are released in the US you can never find them in any local bookstore - you have to order online. Why is it so hard to release a book simultaneously around the world? They're in the same damn language. Additionally, why do bookstores insist on carrying so much BAD SF. You can find 100 different books by L.Ron Hubbard, but not a single copy of anything by Alastair Reynolds. I enjoyed LOTR when I first read it, but do they really need an entire bookshelf full of 5 different editions of each book and a dozen other books analysing each book or character or whatever? Do they really need to carry everything Asimov or Clarke ever published? Do they really need to carry 5 copies each of book 1 through 57 of Wheel of Time? The SF section in bookstores is already so tiny and filled with way too much crappy fantasy, why do they cary so much shit when there is so much good SF around? I've been in several bookstores over the past few weeks - not a single copy of Ilium by Dan Simmons, not a single copy of Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod, not a single copy of The Family Trade by Charlie Stross, etc..... It just doesn't make any sense at all.
FWIW, I thought that The Da Vinci Code was a good book. Not because I believed that most of presented conspiracies and other 'facts' were true, but because, well, it's a damn good story, pure fiction or not.
You are as entitled to that opinion as I am to the opinion that it was less well-crafted than a mediocre Michael Crichton book. The only reason it caused more stir than, say, Disclosure is that the subject matter got the Christians all riled up.
Actually, I don't know that we disagree. The Da Vinci Code was at least entertaining for a few hours, though it isn't a book I'd ever consider reading again.
While popularity and excellence are not mutually exclusive, neither are they kissing cousins.
"American SF is stagnant while all the real action these days is taking place across the pond. Great stuff, and I hope American authors take this as a kick in the pants to stop rehashing the same old material and start showing a little imagination."
The problem with American SF is that it has become too commercialized. Example? Easy one. I give you "Star Trek" under Roddenberry. And then Star Trek under Berman.
The publishers have the whip hand. This has gone back at least a double decade. If trilogys are the "in", thing this year, the thing seen as marketable, then that's what they'll try to squeeze out of you. Are dragons "in". Then write about dragons.
The result is McBooks. What do you expect?
To get out from under this, you need to have made your bones. You need to be a Harry Turtledove, or an S.F. Stirling, or an author of similar stature.
The only publisher I know who doesn't stoop to this is Baen. Which is one reason Baen has developed a stable of some of the best writers in the business. Dave Drake and Eric Flint are two cases very much in point.
As for the Hugos, I've ignored them for 20 years. The people who cast the votes are the ones condiotioned to swallow the sort of crap outfits like DelRey and Tor like to churn out. So the work that captures the plaudits tends to be garbage.
The Hugos usually aspire to be for SF (and fantasy) rather than sci-fi. That doesn't always happen, of course.
I don't think SFWA restricts its membership to Americans only.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Sure, The 'Code is no Dickens, but then again I don't need to read the entire works of Shakespeare to validate my personal literary insecurities, like those cunts who love telling people that they've read War And Peace.
I haven't yet read The Da Vinci Code, but it might interest you that both Dickens and Shakespeare wrote what amounts to pop culture in their time. They're considered classics because they were both great writers and their works have stood the test of time. But at the time that they wrote, they were both firmly a part of popular culture.
Without having read the 'Code, I'd take a wild guess that it's not destined to become a classic. But that doesn't matter if you enjoy it, nor if millions enjoy it. It is what it is, and after reading what you wrote, I'm actually interested in reading it.
BTW, I'm not the sort of cunt who loves telling people that I've read War And Peace. I look down on those cunts. I'm the sort of cunt that loves telling people I've read Gravity's Rainbow. But then there are the cunts who love to tell people they've read Ulysses, and they tend to look down on cunts like me.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Don't forget folks who read Infinite Jest and tell people about it. Especially if they've read it like 6 times now and the little companion book and still don't know what the hell is going on, other than satire on top of satire.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
They could call the award "The Amazon sponsored by Amazon".
I dunno. It sounds too much like "The People's Choice Awards."
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What a wonderful PC age we live in, when they pick boy-girl-boy-girl nominees for science fiction awards.
Lunchtime is set aside for reading nonfiction, mostly magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American from cover to cover. I really miss BYTE magazine from the '70s, '80s, and early '90s, I don't know of any computer magazine that currently fills the niche left behind. Yes I know BYTE lives on in BYTE.com, but for better or worse the Web has killed a lot of technical publications that use to exist. In fact BYTE.com purposely bought out BYTE magazine just to kill it. Maybe I should frequent the website, but I have never forgiven them.
Letter To Iran
Actually, it IS the 2005 Hugo awards.
The Nebula awards are dated based on the year of publication, but Hugo awards are dated for the year they are awarded (so Ender's Game, for example, took the 1985 Nebula and the 1986 Hugo.)
Yes, I was going to make the same point that Sawyer is Canadian.
And as an American SF writer, I'd like to point out that these generalities are incorrect or in bad taste. Science fiction is a case of small number statistics. If you think all "American" science fiction is bad, but like some of the British stuff, you've probably not read widely enough. There are differences in flavor, but it isn't a case of "good" vs. "bad."
I'll give my fellow British writers credit for spearheading the renaissance of space opera and the "new weird." My own work is more often compared to Reynolds, Stross, Banks, etc., than most current American writers.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Wil Wheaton.
I disagree and would turn your proposition on its head; If you *don't* think that British SF is currently where it's at in the SF world, you likely haven't read widely enough. I don't believe that all "American" SF is bad. Far from it, actually. But most of the truly new, truly imaginative stuff going on right now is happening in the U.K. and American SF is a bit in the doldrums.
looks like the grandparent could have used some [p] tags where ] is replaced by > and [ by
That said, while I like Morgan a lot, I think he really cripples himself in these sorts of awards with his sex scenes. (Haven't read MF yet- maybe he's stopped) To a 16-year-old boy, these are probably the coolest. To me, pushing 40, they're an embarrassment. "Gee, 2 pages of poorly written porn. Flip." I suspect I'm not exactly alone here. I always loved the way Zelanzy handled sex scenes- a bit of a leadup, then a comment along the lines of "You sophisticated readers aren't interested in the details"
I'm annoyed about The Algebraist- it's not coming out here in the US until *September*. WTF? I need my Banks fix, damnit.
And Dan Simmons? Please, please finish Olympos. It's almost cruel to make us wait so long- I need to know what our favorite Proust-quoting 8 ton armored semi-biological robot horseshoe crab is doing.
Oh, and Alastair Renyolds? Stop writing, please. Take a deep breath. You've got killer ideas and great talent, but speed is killing you. Redemption Ark sucked- please go back and write a *real* ending for the Revelation Space series. Check out Simmons- I'm pissed about the wait for Olympos, but I'll buy it.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Yeah just read any of Cory Doctorow's novels or short stories. They are just fannish rehashings of late and great scifi. How this guy gets off thinking he can satirize Card, Asimov, etc is beyond me. You usually have to be smarter, more talented or more original to pull off a satirie. Sadly, Cory Doctorow is none of those things.
Actually, the reason the novels are all from the UK is probably because this year's WorldCon is IN the UK, in August - so most of the members and thus most of the nominators are likely to BE from the UK.
It might not be a direct reflection of the quality of American SF
This is also why several of the nominated works haven't even been published yet here in the States.
Its interesting to hear you guys say that, because you know what other American media are lacking in creativity these days? Hollywood movies, network TV, most video games, talk radio, rock music, dance clubs, the newspaper, and a lot of magazines.
Now add sci fi to the list? Okay, no problem.
SFWA (pronounced "sif-oh-wa" I think) is an international organization, but the acronym does stand for "Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America." In order to vote for the Nebula Award, you have to be an Active member, not just an Associate member; the requirements include sales to qualifying professional markets, so not any sale will get you to that status. Thinking of the Nebula as an Oscar is not a bad idea.
If you look at the very good list of works that won both the Hugo and Nebula, you'll see there's reasonable correspondence between fan popularity and popularity among professional writers, especially when you consider how many works are worthy of the honors. Pros, just like fans, aren't immune to buzz or author reputation.
I didn't like EST much -- the beginning promised everything; the rest delivered nothing. Still, his recent short fiction ("Anda's Game" and "I Robot") is quite good. Also, he's not American.
Read my novel then, please -- it's old-fashioned in some ways, but also on the forefront in other ways. It's free on line, and it was published in both the US and the UK. Hugo nominations are made by the past worldcon attendees and members of the new worldcon...in Glasgow, Scottland. There's going to be a pro-Brit bias in the nominations this year.
And I like many of the newer Brit writers, but I would not call American Sf in the "doldrums."
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Robert Sawyer's HOMINIDS was nominated and won the Hugo when Worldcon was in Toronto (Sawyer is Canadia). Worldcon members nominate the Hugos, and there are a lot from the UK this year since the next Worldcon is in Scotland. There are many fine British writers, and probably all the novels nominated here deserve their nominations, but it doesn't mean British SF is better than American SF right now necessarily (a whole thread above). It means a few hundred people, with more UK people compared to Americans than usual, like these 5 books best. From what I've read of and about these authors, you can't go wrong here. If the next Worldcon was in the US, I'd expect several of these books to make it, but perhaps a few American books on the list -- somewhat a matter of different tastes and somewhat a matter of different distributions.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
I was eligible to nominate both for the Hugo and Nebula this year...but I only nominated a few stories from the preliminary Nebula ballot because I've been too busy to read much of the newer work. The Hugo and Nebula award periods are not exactly the same cycle. Here are the current Nebula best novel finalists:
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct 2003)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb 2003)
Omega, by Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov 2003)
Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by David Mitchell (Sceptre, Jan 2004)
Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart (link to Private Edition) (Small Beer Press, Jun 2004)
The Knight, by Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan 2004)
PALADIN OF SOULS won last year's Hugo, for instance.
SFWA also has a committee whose job is to read "less popular" books that may be great but overlooked and add one such book to the ballot. You don't get that with Hugos. I'm not sure such an added book has ever won, however, but I imagine it might helps sales a bit.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
And of course, 33 will win
That episode was the first time I saw a sci-fi show and didn't think "ehhh, Farscape was much better." Even though one of the main plot devices is essentially ripped off from Farscape, what they've done with it is very different but just as good. And although it's much more understated than Farscape, the show still occasionally delivers a total mindfuck. By the end of Season 1 I had no idea what was going to happen.
Of course, the real test is whether they'll kill off main characters and not resurrect them.
In 2001 there was no American SF on the final ballot; the only American was George R R Martin's A Storm of Swords.
With "open online voting", there's no way to stop someone from voting twice. Or a dozen times. Or tens of thousands of times, if they happen to 0wn a botnet.
I read it in its first presentation in Analog, and while it didn't blew me away, it was a decent enough story (if not overly original), with good presentation (and an acceptable end, rather than "lets keep the suckers waiting for the sequel to understand this").
It wasn't GREAT, but then again, 90% of everything...
True it is taking place in Glasgow but there is a but.
Iron Sunrise was only published in the UK this week. Anyone reading the UK edition would not have been able to nominate and I doubt that UK sales while nominations were open were in three figures.
How did it do?
I wish I knew WTF was taking him so long to get "A Feast of Crows" out already!
*Cough*Windows*Cough*
I'm the sort of cunt that loves telling people I've read Gravity's Rainbow.
Oh yeah? Well, I'm the sort of cunt who likes to tell people that I've read Go, Dog, Go! and Hop on Pop, in the same day no less...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
It could be because of the stagnation of American SF. I suppose.
Or it could be because you have to be a member of the World Science Fiction convention to vote, and this year's WorldCon is being held in Scotland.
to say for a while. Good on ya.
click me
am I the only one whose ever read King Rat? And yes- even after reading years of terrible fantasy, I think he's an over-rated hack as well. Why? Even though he is pushing boundries, that is all he's good at. He doesn't have the voice and the brilliant writing that a lot of modern fantasy writers have. I really don't think he has any lasting power. He's just there to tear down walls. And while this is necassary, it's not something that will last forever.
click me
There's TV and movie nominations as well. So feel free to discuss those too. =)
In the "Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form" (TV) category, the nominations were the pilot of Lost, two Angel episodes, as well as ones from Battlestar Galactica & StarGate SG-1. The SG-1 episode was the two parter "Heroes", which I for one loved immensely. The BSG nomination was for their first episode, "33". Definitely good, but I'm saddened at the lack of love for the BSG miniseries.
--LordPixie
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
A lot of people have said this but I'll simply reply to this one: The fact that the WorldCon will be in the UK this year is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon. Any member of LAST year's WorldCon was also eligible to nominate works. Noreascon 2004 was in Boston, not the UK. Secondly, the WorldCon has been in the UK before and there have been American works on the ballot.
Remember how huge Computer Shopper used to be? It was like a phone book every month. Now, it's smaller than PC Magazine. (Which they've probably renamed, who knows?) I know it's been largely replaced by Pricewatch, but I miss it in some weird way.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
>when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
Absolutely *love* the sig...
But not Troll.