2007 Hugo Award Winners Announced

jX writes "This year's Hugo Award Winners have been announced at the recently launched Hugo Award official website. Some winners that should be familiar to any well read/watched geek are Vernor Vinge for Best Novel, Doctor Who for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form), and last years hit movie Pan's Labyrinth for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Of course, a complete list of this year's nominees and winners is also available."

Comments

Pan's Labyrinth

[lastninja]

The Pale Man sequence in Pan's Labyrinth, scared the living shit out of me. A must see movie.

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[Briareos]

Am I the only one to think that every movie that was nominated besides Pan's Labyrinth was a lot better and should've won instead?

In my book, Pan's Labyrinth was a jumbled, incoherent mess of a story that ultimately went nowhere. Sorry, but WW2 war stories and that kind of fairy tale fantasy just don't mix well, and Pan's Labyrinth was hopping from being one to the other all the time and in the end fell flat on both accounts.

All the other movies at least told their story well, but when I watched Pan's Labyrinth in the cinema it was just one big "Huh?" distributed over 2 hours. Granted, it wasn't "Night Watch" *shudder* bad, but bad nonetheless... :(

(And scary? What the freak was scary about it?)

np: Señor Coconut Y Su Conjunto - Showroom Dummies (Cha-Cha-Cha) (El Baile Alemán)

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[Don_dumb]

British, as much as we scorn at American culture, we aren't much better. If at all.

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[Don_dumb]

Am I the only one to think that every movie that was nominated besides Pan's Labyrinth was a lot better and should've won instead?

In my book, Pan's Labyrinth was a jumbled, incoherent mess of a story that ultimately went nowhere. Sorry, but WW2 war stories and that kind of fairy tale fantasy just don't mix well, and Pan's Labyrinth was hopping from being one to the other all the time and in the end fell flat on both accounts.
You're not thinking at all, it was about the Spanish civil war, not WW2. So I would assert that the film was intellectually above you. I am not going to explain why the two stories make sense together because that would spoil the film for those who are just reading this thread. But I suggest you read the imdb.com summaries.

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[cygnusx]

> Spanish is my native language, maybe that's why I was able to follow the movie from beginning to end, it was like poetry.

I don't speak Spanish and my only other Spanish-language film has been Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I can tell you that you didn't need to understand Spanish to get the poetry of Pan's Labyrinth.

For the first ten minutes I thought it was going to be a Narnia-wannabe, and then I realized that this fairy-tale was fucked up, and I saw what the director was doing counterposing the equally fucked up real world against the fairy tale (note: this film doesn't do PG-13 action scenes. You *will* feel disturbed watching some of the real world action unless you are borderline psycho.) Still, it was a fairy tale, I reasoned, and happily waited for the happy ending. It never came. Or did it? The fairy tale did end happily after all -- the princess went back to her father and lived happily ever after. How the viewer chooses to understand this is his own business, but the cognitive dissonance created in this film is par excellence.

And oh -- the sparingly used monsters in this film are *way* more intense than the relatively bland CGI creatures being turned out by Hollywood (see for example Narnia and now The Golden Compass).

And this doesn't even begin to cover the talented actors, especially Ivana Baquero, and the excellent music.

I do realize this film isn't for everyone -- it requires the viewer to connect emotionally with the characters on-screen. But the director makes it really, really easy to do this given the quality of the work.

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[SETIGuy]

You're not thinking at all, it was about the Spanish civil war, not WW2.

I'm not sure what movie you were watching, but it was "about" the trauma women (or at least some of them) go through when losing their virginity. The whole Spanish civil war + mythical beings thing was there to make you think it was about something else.

Or did you miss the giant representation of the female reproductive system on the movie poster?

Although I can understand how the point might be lost on the slashdot crowd.

Re:Pan's Labyrinth

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess: You're a douchebag, right?

For those of you

[saibot834]

who did not know what the Hugo Award was (like myself): Wikipedia article.
Basically it is an award for the best science fiction or fantasy work.

Re:For those of you

[Anonymous Coward]

who did not know what Slashdot was (like myself): Wikipedia article.
Basically it is a website disseminating "News for nerds".

Re:For those of you

[gkhan1]

One should also mention the Nebula, which is the other major sci-fi-award. Winning both the Hugo and the Nebula is the grand slam of sci fi, and the list of those who did it is an austere one. Some novels go even further and wins the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K Dick Award. That's sci-fi royalty, that is.

Rainbows End

[savala]

I read Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End last year, and wrote the following about it:

I expected it to be good, but it's gone way far above and beyond any expectations I harboured. Everything it did, it did perfectly right. The people living this story have become gloriously real, the story captivated me more and more with each passing chapter (building up to an awesome conclusion), there were real emotions, chillingly shocking and yet hopeful visions of the future as it could be, and through it all, the sense that everything in this book was written by someone who really knows what he's talking about.

The technology predictions in this book won't stand the test of time. Two years from now they'll still be valid, but five years from now they'll already be decidedly quaint. Still, as someone very famous once said, science fiction isn't about the future, it's about the present. And I think there's very few people who understand the present as well as Vinge does. And I can pretty much guarantee that even when the technology predictions are considered not just quaint but hilariously outdated, this book will still be read and enjoyed - simply because it's an awesome book with an awesome story.

You're looking at the clear winner of next year's Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Ok, so I was wrong about the Nebula. Can't win them all. :)

I can also highly recommend this book to everyone here at slashdot. It's the kind of book most of us will be able to relate to. A book by a geek who understands not only technology, but also the social implications thereof.

Blink!

[radarsat1]

I thought "Blink" was by far the best Dr. Who episode this season.. can't believe it wasn't listed there.
Anyways, are they really canceling this show after next season?? I do hope it continues.

Re:Blink!

[Stephen Williams]

Anyways, are they really canceling this show after next season?

No, thank goodness! It's going on semi-hiatus in 2009, with three specials instead of a full season. No news as to whether David Tennant will return in 2010, though.

-Stephen

Re:Blink!

[SpooForBrains]

If you liked the episode, be sure to read "What I Did on My Holidays" by Sally Sparrow, the short story on which the episode was based. It was a favourite in our house before the episode was made - the kids really loved it.

Re:You mean...

[savala]

No. The 2007 Hugo is for a book published in 2006. (Although there's some leeway for which date to pick for books which were first published outside the USA.)

The Best Short Story Nominations are . . .

[Slithe]

Best Short Story

        * "Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt [Asimov's July 2006]
        * "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" by Neil Gaiman [Fragile Things, William Morrow 2006]
        * "Eight Episodes" by Robert Reed [Asimov's June 2006]
        * "Kin" by Bruce McAllister [Asimov's Feb 2006]
        * "The House Beyond Your Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum [Strange Horizons Sep 2006]

Best Related Non-Fiction Book Funny, I didn't know Slashdotters held that much power at Worldcon

Charles Stross

[grassy_knoll]

I'm disapointed that he didn't win the best novel category. I'm a huge fan of his Laundry books ( think HP Lovecraft + Dilbert in a spy novel ).

no online short story winners?

[sdedeo]

Curious to see that the print journals (and Asimov's in particular) still rule. I don't read SF as much as I used to, but I would assume that there is a lot of work online and probably a lot of good online magazines for it to appear in. At least, that's how it is in my own niche, poetry, where online journals these days publish a non-negligible fraction of the work that wins contemporary awards in the "industry."

Are the Hugo readers still a little too snobby for the web?

Is it too much to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it too much to ask that articles on a geek site have proper parenthesization? I going to have nightmares about the article not compiling for the rest of the day.

Blindsight should have won

[Viperion]

Not to take anything away from Vinge and Rainbows End, but Blindsight was just simply amazing. From the characters to the technology to the plotting style, it took everything good about a first contact story, and then added to it. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to (and the associated Vampire Domestication presentation.) Best of all, Peter Watts has made it, and his previous Rifters trilogy, available online under a Creative Commons license at his website, and it's well worth just downloading and checking it out. I read it CC, and then bought the book. Haven't bought the Rifters set yet, but I probably will my next Amazon order.

Seriously, Blindsight took vampires, transhumans, uploaded minds, and alien contact, and made it into something incredible with the narrative devices, character development, setting and dialog. You need to read the book, and since the first one is free, why not?

Re:Blindsight should have won

[QuantumET]

It was explained with plenty of hard science fiction - a human subspecies missing the ability to produce a key biological compound, leading to a host of other adaptations to allow the vampires to successfully hunt regular humans, including different brain wiring, hibernation ability, and an unfortunate mental glitch having to do with right angles, which lead to them going extinct way before modern times. They were then brought back through some genetic archeology work.

They need some new categories.

[foniksonik]

There should be:

Best Video Game - Console/PC

Best Video Game - Web

Best Machina - Short

Best Machina - Long

Best Interactive - Website

Best Interactive - Microsite

Essentially there are a lot more formats available for Sci-Fi/Fantasy creative works than there used to be. Let's give those people awards for their contributions.

Link to full text of fiction nominees

[fmackay]

Here.

Most of them anyway - the Stross is a link to buy the ebook for a silly price, so why not try Accelerando instead, which is free, or any of a bunch of stories on his site.

Re:Jim Baen's Universe

[Jardine]

Who is Jim Baen? He ain't Asimov, that's for sure! (And I believe Asimov had to be cajoled into letting his name be used as the magazine's title.)

Jim Baen is the publisher (or was, since he recently passed away). Baen Books is huge in their niche market of military science fiction and space opera. Many of the books they publish are also available as DRM-free ebooks. Quite a few are at the Baen Free Library for free and a lot of the newer hardcover books come with CDs containing other works by the author. These CDs can be freely distributed.

Re:The Girl In The Fireplace

[CharAznable]

OK I just watched "Blink" and I almost crapped my pants, from a combination of it being the best episode EVAR and the statues creeping me out. Pretty much best writing so far in Doctor Who, and by far the best episode of any sci fi show this year.