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."

Comments

Hugo Lowdown.

[sanityspeech]

The Hugo Award® is the leading award for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. The Hugos are awarded each year by the World Science Fiction Society, at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). All members are entitled to make nominations and to vote on who receives the Awards, which are presented in a public ceremony which is always one of the highlights of the Worldcon.

Re:Hugo Lowdown.

[rapidweather]

At one of the web sites awarded a Hugo, there are some images of the actual award, sort of like an Oscar, but shaped like a V2 Rocket.

Re:Hugo Lowdown.

[mbrother]

The basic design is a rocketship, but the details change from year to year. Different artists, materials, and different designs, so each year is unique.

Re:Hugo Lowdown.

[arwel]

It's the base of the Hugo which changes every year, e.g. the one produced for the last Anaheim Worldcon (seen in the final episode of Babylon 5) was based on a film reel case. The actual rocketships have been produced to the same design by Peter Weston in Birmingham, UK, for the last few decades...

Re:There should be more online awards given.......

[AJWM]

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.

Re:A Hugo First: The British Invasion

[nomadic]

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.

Re:A Hugo First: The British Invasion

[Malfourmed]

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? ;-)

Scratch Monkey

[quokkapox]

I also thoroughly enjoyed Stross' Scratch Monkey which I read on the web about six or seven years ago. Quality hard nanotech scifi.

And there's more speculative future history by J.R. Mooneyham.

Re:At last, Iain M Banks gets a bit of recognition

[drxray]

Banks is my favourite author, but I don't think his treatment of the super-intelligent AI characters is that impressive. To me they often come across somewhat like teenagers (they're always plotting and acting fairly immaturely) with minds that operate much faster rather than any smarter or wiser.

I don't think this is Bank's fault... for quite a few reasons actually. Firstly, writing someone significantly smarter than you is close to impossible.

He also postulates in one of his books that all intelligence past a certain level is equivalent with only differences in speed and capacity (a kind of Turing principle for sentience), which doesn't seem unreasonable. But his AIs should be at that level, whereas I often felt that they didn't have the situational mastery that you might expect - they sometimes completely understand a situation before it's even begun, but they can also act on crazy impulses and be singleminded. I would expect they would always be on perfect form.

Finally, he says that AIs are coloured by the people who create them... and the people of the Culture are pretty immature. Perhaps he's saying something about them.

Anyway, I understand that The Algebraist isn't a Culture novel, so perhaps Banks will get his Hugo since he doesn't have to write in the minefield that is super-intelligences.

Actually it would be the 2004 Hugo nominations ...

[cool_st_elizabeth]

They are nominated & voted on in 2005, but the award is for works published in 2004.

science fiction artwork

[valdean]

Science fiction artwork has always thrilled me, and the Hugo awards are one of the few instances where it is given the recognition it deserves. Often we only see such artists' work on book covers and magazine covers, where it is obscured by lots of type. However, if you ever see these pieces in a frame or as a poster, you can't help but be impressive by the artists' imagination and skill.

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.

Re:There should be more online awards given.......

[mbrother]

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.