Slashdot Mirror
The 2014 Hugo Awards
Dave Knott writes: WorldCon 2014 wrapped up in London this last weekend and this year's Hugo Award winners were announced. Notable award winners include:
Best Novel: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Best Novelette: "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal
Best Novella: "Equoid" by Charles Stross
Best Short Story: "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" by John Chu
Best Graphic Story: "Time" by Randall Munroe
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): Game of Thrones: "The Rains of Castamere" written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter
The results of this year's awards were awaited with some some trepidation in the SF community, due to well-documented attempts by some controversial authors to game the voting system. These tactics appear to have been largely unsuccessful, as this is the fourth major award for the Leckie novel, which had already won the 2013 BSFA, 2013 Nebula and 2014 Clarke awards.
Best Novel: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Best Novelette: "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal
Best Novella: "Equoid" by Charles Stross
Best Short Story: "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" by John Chu
Best Graphic Story: "Time" by Randall Munroe
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): Game of Thrones: "The Rains of Castamere" written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter
The results of this year's awards were awaited with some some trepidation in the SF community, due to well-documented attempts by some controversial authors to game the voting system. These tactics appear to have been largely unsuccessful, as this is the fourth major award for the Leckie novel, which had already won the 2013 BSFA, 2013 Nebula and 2014 Clarke awards.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
And that's where I knew to disregard the rest of the winners list as well. Thanks for the warning on rubbish to ignore.
I am disappointed that Asimov's didn't even run this year's short story winner. I feel like Sheila was out of it for the past couple issues.
Can believe they snubbed Doctor Who this year. There were at least 4 Doctor who stories in the running.
Um, what?
http://xkcd.com/1190/
It's a nice one panel comic but...huh? How did this win anything?
http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/
That Doctor Who reboot isn't scientific fiction. It's pure fantasy and Americanized Michael Bay actionexplosions(tm) . That "Doctor" deals with every problem by waving his magic wand like Harry Potter and yelling "RUN!".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe not. Maybe they're a front, and the real shenanigans are in fact hugely successful.
This is undoubtedly the first hugo award for a graphic story featuring stick figures.
Ancillary Justice has its merits but read like an first novelist's smart attempt at crossing Alistair Reynolds with Iain M. Banks. Indeed, all three can/could do with good editors to tidy the worst longeurs. There's a little too much fashion sometimes; I rate Phillip Mann's The Disestablishment of Paradise as the strongest sf novel I've read in the past year, stylistically, structurally, thematically and in its characterisation and humour; it betters the Leckie IMO but only made one of the shortlists.
[/. Member, AC due to travel]
...it's an attempt to protest the forces of political correctness (represented by Wiscon's radical feminist faction) who are attempting to get people fired for not toeing the line.
The link to the controversy is next to useless. I visited at least 6 of the downstream links and none of them gave a summary for people who haven't been following this story. Who has done what and why is it bad?
I like GOT as much as the next nerdish type dude, but how is it sci-fi?
Ancillary Justice was a good read, it had an interesting story and I much prefer it over Redshirts (previous year's best novel winner).
I don't know how Redshirts got to the very top though, when (also) Scalzi's "Old Man's War" books didn't, and were much better imho.
Of the Hugo Award winners however I consider that the absolute best in the past 20 years was Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" (2000) - really solid SF that one..
Gravity isn't science fiction. We actually do send people into space, and that kind of disaster could sort of happen. There's no speculative science, predictions of the future, or fantasy elements to it. And that's really cool--what seems so much like SF is actually a real-life job that some people do everyday.
Why did teh Star Warz win anything?!?!?!
"Largely unsuccessful" is a bit of an understatement. Those who follow such things have been rejoicing that the "Sad Puppy Slate" ended up last in all the author categories, and that the novella by Vox Day, the guy with very... questionable political and personal views, actually ended up below "No Award". I think it's interesting that despite the outcries and rage and threats about "No Awarding" the entire slate, the only nominee to actually meet such a fate was the one that almost everyone agreed was literarily a piece of garbage.
One does have to wonder how the "Sad Puppy Slate" would have done if it hadn't weighed itself down with a nominee that was simultaneously so objectionable and so poorly written.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Some of what was going on was designed to expose the EXISTING issues with Hugo nominations and voting. There have been strong indications of idealogical bias in the 'acceptable' nominations for quite a while. As a result of the efforts made the last two years, some of the reasons for that bias, and some of its proponents, have 'outed' themselves. The absolutely vile hatred spewed out by the 'powers that be', basically the 'establishment' that has been running the nominations and awards for years was breathtaking; the near total (but happily NOT total) lack of any effort to actually debate the issue was, sadly, expected. If you the author, or your story, did not adhere to or support the dogma of the establishment, why then you were a horrible author, a rape apologist, a fascist, or worse.
Ad hominem attacks. Slanders against the authors in question. It was all pretty interesting. Unfortunately, much like the constant exposure of corruption and pandering in politics in the nation, it will likely be forgotten unless some few brave folks stand up again next year.
This is an aside to TFS, and more of a rant.
At my local library they have folded the Sci-Fi section in with the general fiction books. Which means I can no longer browse just Sci-Fi books. I am not sure why they did it, but what irks me a bit is that the Mystery section still remain separate.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
tl;dr: conservative SF authors are victims because people like other authors' works better.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
What's the difference?
That's like having an award for "best short story" and "best short short story"
this stuff is appalling !!!!!!!!!!
Sad thing. After Paolo Bacigalupi won all the awards below he discovered that you make much writing SF, and now writes Young Adult novels
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a great book, one of the best I have read for years. Its plusible dystopian take on the near future still haunts me.
No, just an indicator that there are more liberal SF fans going to WorldCons. I personally know a large number of conservative and libertarian who think the Hugo process is "rigged" and hence don't want to spend the money to participate. There are *some* problems with the process, but not that many. So, liberal fans happy with the results will continue to buy WorldCon memberships even if just to vote, and conservative and libertarian fans will continue to stay away because they're unhappy, further reinforcing the mindset of most involved in the process.
I won't give a dime to vote since the system is run by those who possess views I find odious. The difference between me and them is I vote with my wallet and they piss and moan and libel those that disagree with them.
... who published all three of the short-form stories, and additionally one of their editors (Ellen Datlow) won Best Editor (short form). Congrats to everyone over there (I know at least some of you read /. :) )
That was my first thought too. 75 minutes of Sandra Bullock talking to herself and utterly failing as an actress now wins a hugo? Not to mention, don't most sci-fi fans actually like a little bit of technical plausibility in their stories?
Were there no other graphic stories this year? Randall makes a very good comic and Time was intriguing on how to tell a story, but it wasn't that good of a story. The characters didn't grow or learn much.
That's only part of the story. The forum is where all the real action was/is. There was/is a religion of sorts. Complete with popes, prophets and pilgrimages. And lingo. (Chirping mustard! The OTT is seaish. and cancercoffeesemenbabies). I assume it is still going, but I refuse to check. I lost a lot of time in that forum, and I had to make a clean break. There were many people whose RL relationships were strained because of this. People were up every hour checking the latest ONG. For those of you willing to go down the rabbit hole, you will want to read the thread from the beginning. That is called blizting. You will be encouraged along your way, and encounter many strange and wonderful things. Randallspeed.
How can one properly determine the difference between a novel, a novelette and a novella?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
But GOP has been telling everyone that people who follow the conservative view are richer, has better employment and more cash to spend on the capitalist system. Hence you would have thought that they would be able to afford to go to WorldCons or buy a way cheaper supporting membership and still be able to vote w/o attending the convention by person.
Hence, I can only conclude, you're talking out of your orifice usually used to expel brown smelly stuff.
System is run by World Con attendees. You can join and take over with your rightwing friends, if you have the majority. Good luck.
The conservative authors are selling more copies. Scalzi has wet dreams of getting Correia's sales numbers.
But Correia is a conservative writer, so the left-wing idiots that attend WorldCon (and love and protect child molesters like Marion Zimmer Bradley) will do anything to trash him.
Most voted against his novel without having read it. They are PROUD of never having read it. Yet they still think they are qualified to vote on its quality.
The Hugos have been a joke for decades, but they've gotten obvious about it these days. That's the only difference.
How many times has Correia made the NYT bestseller list? Got a source for both of their sales numbers?
You're a whining "victim" who wants everyone to see how trod-upon you are. However, we don't hate you because of your politics (despite how very badly you want it to be so), we hate you because you're an asshole.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I was there. Didn't bother to attend the Hugos.
BTW. They were two ceremonies. Check out http://loncon3.org
That was nominated for best short story, but didn't get enough votes to make the short list.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, it's not hard sci-fi. Neither are many of the winners many years.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It hadn't occurred to me to nominate it, and unfortunately didn't occur to enough other people, so it missed the short list for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form by about 3 votes (usually only the top 5 nominees get onto the ballot, occasionally 6 if there's a tie or fewer than 5 if not enough works meet the "5% of nominations" threshold.)
An actual astronaut, in space, performing a classic science-fiction-themed song, named after one of the most influential SF movies? It so totally belonged on the ballot, because [expletive deleted] we're living in the future!.
Of course, a few other works I liked, and works I haven't read yet by authors I like, also didn't get on the ballot, but that's normal.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I honestly think the movie "Her" was a more satisfying SF story than "Gravity". SF's main point is the impact on humans and human society of disruptive technologies, and "Her" fit the bill better.
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
BTW, you might not have noticed, but three of the five nominees for the Hugo novels this year were published by Orbit Books, in London. The ideology that marked them was "Hey, we don't want to lose book sales by giving away free copies in the voting packet, let's just do excerpts!" Correia's trilogy was published by Baen, and the Wheel Of Time series, 15-or-so volumes, which got nominated as a single work, was published by Tor, both of whom included the entire sets, which I liked much better. (In Correia's case, Volume 3 was the new work that was actually nominated, but including the first two made it make a lot more sense.)
Excerpts didn't do the job for me. It's not just that I'm grumpy because I'm cheap and consider getting the nominated novels part of what makes it worth paying for the voting membership*, but it also affected how well I could judge the work before voting. For Stross's book, which I was planning to buy anyway, it was enough; for Mira Grant's, it probably was (though so far it doesn't look like as strong a work as the Feed series.) But I know both of their work and have read most of their novels, so I've got some idea of where they might be going; Ancillary Justice was Leckie's debut novel, and while the excerpt was enough to get some flavor of her writing skill, and see some of the things she did in the first few chapters, it's a bit of a slow start, I didn't get sucked into it, and also I can't yet tell whether the main character is just an interesting and complex post-human or a totally creepy slave-taker.
* The package includes the Hugo novels or excerpts, the Campbell-nominated works (mostly novels), all the shorter works, most of the graphical material, a lot of short stories in this year's short-form editor award, a really amazing related-works section (this was a good year for that), all for the cost of a supporting membership for the upcoming Worldcon, which is usually about $40. You get to nominate for the Hugos if you bought it in time, and you get to vote on the winners.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sorry, I'm a Libertarian, from a relatively conservative background (which is not at all the same thing as a right-wing background, so I guess I was the "wrong" type of conservative for you), and I'd much rather read good writing by somebody whose politics I disagree with than bad writing. There are writers who really need gatekeepers to keep them from wasting my time, and there are good writers who still need editors to rein them in (how did Neal Stephenson get to burn a Baroque Cycle worth of paper?) or to help them fix stuff that isn't working. Small presses or big presses can both do that, while electronic publishing usually means "self-publishing" by people who might know to hire a copy-editor, which isn't the same thing at all. And while Charlie Stross* is a socialist who hangs out with Paul Krugman, his economic writing is great stuff; I'm planning to finish Neptune's Brood after reading the Hugo nom excerpt.
Publishing on dead trees is a tough game these days - it has to compete with TV, video games, and the Web and other internet distractions for readers' time, bookstores are dying, getting people to sit down for an entire novel is harder than it used to be, and forget trying to make a living as a short-story writer now that the pulps are gone and the remaining outlets can't pay as much a word. "Hollywood accounting" is more of a problem for writers selling to the alternate-publisher press than the traditional houses.
And yeah, there's too much formulaic dreck out there; Sturgeon's Law hasn't changed, and many publishers are still willing to make literary decisions based on what they've been able to get bookstores to buy, but that's no different for Baen's mil-sci-fi writers than for the urban-paranormal subgenre or the million Tolkien imitators.
* (Yes, Charlie's published in London, and mostly only later in New York, because of the international publishing rights weirdness, but most of the other Scottish SF writers are fairly radically socialist just to annoy people like Anonymous Coward.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Guess you and I are on opposite sides of the fence about Scalzi. I read Old Man's War, and while it was well done, it didn't grab me at all. Most military sci-fi is pretty soulless. Redshirts started out looking like it was going to be a fun Star Trek parody, but then went into a bunch of totally new directions. It wasn't my first choice of the nominees that year, but it way exceeded my expectations.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As a writer, it really annoys me that people accept such trash at the theater. I saw the trailer for Gravity and thought that the story was a ridiculous piece of a turd. Maybe if directors and studios had brains enough to hire a real SF writer, or any good writer, such steaming turds wouldn't be hitting us in the face with the frequency of a Gatling gun. They pay chicken feed for the movie rights to great novels that take an immense effort to write and make shitty movies out of them; conversely they pay same money to a lousy Hollywood hack for a brain-dead script and 20 million to some brain-dead movie star ala Cruise to star. But as pertains to Gravity, orbital mechanics in this movie are so idiotic
that only a demented space bat would accept them at face value. The spacecraft fly like bees not spacecraft. There is nothing
possible in this movie except the views of Earth, but you can get the REAL ONES for free form the International Space Station,
in HD. You see the closer the story cuts to reality, the more careful a writer has to be not to botch it completely; and this story
was supposed to be realistic, not fantasy like Star Wars; I love the light-heartedness of SW, but it's a humor-filled fantasy fairy
tale not a realistic space thriller. Just realize those incompetent barely-storytelling morons are making huge amounts of money by
selling us a nonfunctioning product. They sell you a stinking burrito and you eat it. All the time, every year. What other profession
can do such a nasty trick and get away with it? Yes, I know Gravity is just a movie; I'm just tired of not having a chance in
fucking hell of seeing a decent blockbuster that isn't a risible piece of garbage. Excuse me for the rant; I hope I didn't unnerve
you too much; remember that above the clouds the star we call the Sun ALWAYS shines. Bye!
Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke good? No. Stop it. It wasn't that good.
More importantly, the Hugo awards are a popularity contest biased in large part towards the section of the fandom that attends WorldCon, and it's quite possible to target a work at this population.
That, as others have observed, this means that Hugo Award winners tend to be pretentious message works probably is indicative of a bias in this population towards that, or maybe simply a horrible confusion between 'literary quality' and 'pretentious and follows the party line.'
This can be pretty annoying when you find that 'good story and characterization' apparently stops being important if it hits the right combination of PC buzzwords--even if, when you look beneath the surface, it's got Problems with subtextual approval of bigoted behavior as long as it's by the 'right' people and/or towards the 'right' targets. (I have found that the 'right' person can get away with not getting the 'right' targets, as long as it's possible to ignore the large elephant in the room.)
I'm not actually interested in politics here, as much as I am very against being handed hollowly pretentious pieces and being told lies.
Phil and Kaja Foglio made their own report of the Hugo Awards: http://www.girlgeniusonline.co...
They take good note of the award for Time, by the way.