The 2014 Hugo Awards

Asimov's Science Fiction by sinij · 2014-08-21 02:14 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Asimov's Science Fiction by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 03:02 · Score: 1

I met a guy who gave me a lyft ride that had submitted a story to anthology. it was about a futuristic spider queen or something like that? I forget his name.

Doctor Who by AlecDalek · 2014-08-21 02:19 · Score: 1

Can believe they snubbed Doctor Who this year. There were at least 4 Doctor who stories in the running.

Re:Doctor Who by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 03:03 · Score: 1

yeah but they gave an award to the red wedding and you have to admit that was pretty badass.

Re:Informative winners list by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 02:21 · Score: 1

What should have won?

Re:Informative winners list by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2014-08-21 02:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

If there's one thing I've learned reading all kinds of award-winning books, is that more often than not, the award is a big warning that the book is shit, or pompous, or written specifically to woo often sophisticated, pedantic jury members into giving the award.

In short, I usually go for stuff that hasn't been awarded certain kinds of awards. The Hugo certainly seems overrated these days, and has been for many years.

--
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash

Obligatory XKCD by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:25 · Score: 1

http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/

Re:Informative winners list by marsu_k · 2014-08-21 02:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

If the award is to be given to an actual science fiction movie? Europa Report.

4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by Thud457 · 2014-08-21 02:27 · Score: 1

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!".

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the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by symes · 2014-08-21 03:04 · Score: 1

Game of Thrones is science fiction?
Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by Oligonicella · 2014-08-21 03:42 · Score: 1

How in holy hell does that make it science fiction? You just buried the bar for the lowest definition under the earth rendering The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into science fiction.
Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by jratcliffe · 2014-08-21 04:02 · Score: 1

Agreed on the reboot, but your claim about best Doctor is off by 25% - it's clearly the 5th Doctor.
Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by ColdWetDog · 2014-08-21 04:25 · Score: 1

Well, given the era in which it was produced, the Tin Man sure looks like a robot. That should count.

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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by RabidReindeer · 2014-08-21 04:55 · Score: 1

Well, given the era in which it was produced, the Tin Man sure looks like a robot. That should count.
Actually, he does qualify as a cyborg or something like that.
He was built by a sort of reverse-Cyberman upgrade process. Limb by limb.
Re:4th Doctor is BEST Doctor. Scientific fact. by Rakarra · 2014-08-22 07:11 · Score: 1

It's a Sci-Fi AND Fantasy award.
Science Fiction being a sub-genre of Fantasy. Oh, I went there.
(Well, it all depends on what your definition of "fantasy" is. Are the John Carter books sci-fi? Fantasy? Both? Is any fiction work based on a non-earth "fantasy?")

Time by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:28 · Score: 4, Funny

This is undoubtedly the first hugo award for a graphic story featuring stick figures.

Novel by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:31 · Score: 2, Informative

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]

Re:Novel by ColdWetDog · 2014-08-21 04:30 · Score: 2

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]
Interesting, but as an annoying sidelight that is altogether too common:

HOWEVER!! The Kindle version which I received was full of typos, missing letters and missing words. There were enough mistakes that it passed through annoying and actually affected my ability to follow the story. To their credit the publisher contacted me directly to apologise and asked for examples of mistakes. I've provided some examples but have not heard back, nor do I know how to verify that current versions of the Kindle book have been fixed.
I hate that. How hard is it to copy something into a machine readable format that started out in machine readable format. What do they do, running through Slashdot's filters?

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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Re:Novel by nogginthenog · 2014-08-21 04:43 · Score: 1

I enjoyed Ancillary Justice and am glad Ann Leckie won, but you could tell it's a first novel. Her next novel is out in the next couple of months and will be worth a look at.
Re:Novel by nogginthenog · 2014-08-21 04:47 · Score: 1

HOWEVER!! The Kindle version which I received was full of typos, missing letters and missing words. There were enough mistakes that it passed through annoying and actually affected my ability to follow the story. To their credit the publisher contacted me directly to apologise and asked for examples of mistakes. I've provided some examples but have not heard back, nor do I know how to verify that current versions of the Kindle book have been fixed.
I don't recall any formatting issues in the version I read.
In the past I bought a (self published, I think) Kindle book that was poorly formatted and Amazon refunded it immediately.
Re:Novel by rochrist · 2014-08-24 05:14 · Score: 1

I got it via iBooks and it seemed fine to me.

Re: "Time" won Best Graphic Story? by TheGavster · 2014-08-21 02:32 · Score: 4, Informative

It's actually several thousand frames that play out a sequence of events. It was notable both because of the unique presentation (most frames, particularly the early ones, change only subtly) and because of the details that go into establishing the otherwise unexplained setting.

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"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".

Re:Informative winners list by tbuddy · 2014-08-21 02:32 · Score: 2

Considering it was one spot from the bottom of the list you only disregarded Game of Thrones.

Re:"Time" won Best Graphic Story? by Millennium · 2014-08-21 02:34 · Score: 2

What you see at that link is only the last panel. The story was revealed frame-by-frame over a much longer period of time.

I do think it would be nice if xkcd made the whole thing available, but others have managed. The Wikipedia link above can point you at some of them.

It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

...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.

Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:49 · Score: 1

That, and the fact that SFWA has been hijacked by amateurs purging actual, accomplished writers for perceived thought-crime.
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by Nimey · 2014-08-21 03:50 · Score: 1

You're giving me a conspiracy theory with a fuckton of assumptions and unsupported allegations.

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by almitydave · 2014-08-21 04:55 · Score: 1

You're giving me a conspiracy theory with a fuckton of assumptions and unsupported allegations.
That's redundant. Like Mel said, if you can prove it, it wouldn't be a good conspiracy now, would it?

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my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:05 · Score: 2

[Citation Needed]
The only shithole that has been expelled was done so because he used SFWA channels for his own racist propoganda. Until then he was still a member of the SWFA while being an active obnoxious asshole.
If you're attempting to say successful and best-seller writers like Scalzi and co. are "amateurs", I think youre more than deluded.
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:09 · Score: 1

Funnily enough, Hugo has zero with the New York-based publishing industry since Hugo nominees are nominated by World Con attendees and voted by the next World Con attendees. Anyone who can spare some cash for a supporting membership can nominate and vote as they like.
If you were talking about the Nebula awards, however, you might have been right.
Especially at this age, publishing a book via Kindle is trivial and if a so-called "wrong type of person" writes a good book, he will be able to sell it, or made it read enough to be nominated. The award to related-work went to a fucking blog post, and rightly so, it was a well written article related to SF. Three of the stories who won were "printed" on Tor's web site.
Any idiot who can design a web site and gather enough readers who will like it and nominate it in the next World Con has the chance of winning the next Hugo, no conspiracy required.
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by Eric+Green · 2014-08-21 18:49 · Score: 1

Orson Scott Card is proof that ideology doesn't stop you from winning Hugos. All that is necessary is to write something interesting and mind-blowing. Writing formulatic space operas that are basically 1950's Don Pendleton manly war-fighting men set in space rather than in the wilds of darkest Africa or Southeast Asia is not the sort of thing that gathers awards, those have been done so many times that they're mind candy, something entertaining if in a certain mood but hardly mind blowing. Neither are fifteen page dissertations on why Libertarianism is the only proper ideology for running a space station. Nobody wants an ideological tract when they read science fiction, they want to have their mind blown. Orson Scott Card's later books haven't won Hugos not because of his right wing ideology, but, rather, because they've been boring, having nothing new to offer over his earlier fiction that did win awards. Which is a shame, because his 80's output was ridiculously good, then he got full of himself and his output got boring.
I liked Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a work of fiction, and probably would have nominated it for an award that year if I hadn't been 2 years old at the time. L. Neil Smith's work, on the other hand, read like Libertarian tracts with cardboard characters and stereotypical plots, I read a couple of them and was, like, "meh", even though at the time I considered myself somewhat Libertarian and liked a number of other Prometheus Award winners. But ideology is *boring*. In the end, what I want when I read science fiction is something that's going to make me say "wow!", with a story that isn't predictable and characters that seem like real (if perhaps quirky) people and ideas that make me go "Hmm." Heinlein managed that for me, as do writers like Vernor Vinge, Ken MacLeod, and Neal Stephenson. Too many other "Libertarian" or "right-wing" authors don't. If you're going to turn it into an ideological tract with cardboard characters spouting ideological talking points, or just another by-the-numbers space opera where manly men of the finest cardboard kill lots of mooks while spouting pretentious jargon... YAWN.

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Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Re:It's not an attempt to "game the system"... by rochrist · 2014-08-24 05:15 · Score: 1

And calling /him/ an actual accomplised writer would be a pretty long stretch indeed.

So, what controversy? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 02:40 · Score: 1

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?

Re:So, what controversy? by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 02:46 · Score: 2

Theodore Beale (who uses the en name Vox Day) has generally been making enemies by being racist, sexist and generally unpleasant. He does seem to have at least some fans though.

He allegedly encouraged his fans to buy a memebership solely to get his short story on the ballot.

Probably wouldn't have blown up quite so much but Beale seems to have been winding up the sci-fi writers association for some time.
Re:So, what controversy? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-21 04:37 · Score: 3, Informative

>If Americans can find the courage to consciously reject the myth of the melting pot and expel the Mexicans from the American Southwest, the Arabs from Detroit and the Somalis from Minneapolis, they can reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.
or maybe
>EuropeÃ(TM)s demise is all but assured, thanks to them, as womenÃ(TM)s individual choices taken in the collective have stricken European society and brought on successive waves of feminist-friendly Islamic immigration by reducing EuropeÃ(TM)s birth rates far below replacement levels
or
>The women of America would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying marriage, children, civilized Western society and little girls
Yeah, I don't think it takes a lot of digging to find out he is a racist, sexist scumbag.
Re:So, what controversy? by Xtifr · 2014-08-21 06:34 · Score: 2, Informative

I've read some of what he's written on his blog, and I am more than satisfied that he's a racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit who completely deserves all the opprobrium he receives. What's worse, he's one of those crazy religious fanatics who twists the bible into excuses to hate people, like the Westborough folks. As a human, I find him utterly contemptible.
Nevertheless, if I'd been voting on the Hugos this year, I would have judged his work on its own merit. I still find Orson Scott Card an outstanding writer, despite my (milder) contempt for the man himself. Fortunately, I have many friends who were Hugo voters this year, who are also capable of separating their opinion of the artist from their opinion of the art, and they have uniformly told me that the work didn't deserve a nomination, let alone a win. Maybe it wasn't bad enough to end up below no-award--maybe that happened because of Day's vile on-line persona--but the fact that it didn't win seems to me to be fully justified.
Re: So, what controversy? by ravenshrike · 2014-08-21 07:09 · Score: 2

Wow, just wow. That was the worst summation of the situation that didn't devolve into outright fantasies. Vox Day was only even tangentially involved to help prove the point of Sad Puppies II.
http://monsterhunternation.com...
http://monsterhunternation.com...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
Re:So, what controversy? by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:13 · Score: 1

We have sampled enough of so-called writing, thanks to his blog and no one should have any qualms abous his qualifications for his racism and unpleasantness. His Hugo nominated work, on the other hand, appears to be a solidly written pile of turd. Even then some might like it - there's no account for taste.
Re:So, what controversy? by billstewart · 2014-08-21 15:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

Correia seemed to be trying to rudely bully a lot of people to make it clear that he doesn't like all of you politically correct liberal liberal liberals out there in the publishing business. He was the one who brought Beale in to offend anybody who's even vaguely possible to offend; I don't like people doing that at parties I'm attending. (He also ran a campaign slate for nominees, which is pretty much not done (except every publisher saying "hey, vote for all OUR stuff.") I assume they did that together, but I don't know either of them. Their other main slate-member was Torgerson, who writes Mormonish mil-sci-fi. (He also threw the Schlock Mercenary comic in as a graphic work, which I found quite enjoyable back when it was originally nominated but which wasn't eligible as a 2013 work, so I thought that was tacky.)
Beale's fiction wasn't, in my opinion, Hugo quality, but it would have been ok in a pulp magazine back when those were the dominant form. His personal writings are so creepy that I can see why anybody willing to vote for his work would get criticism; reminds me of the "Vote for the Crook" election in Louisiana a few years back. Correia's writing is entertaining, in a mostly cartoonish way, and I'm ok with that. Not super deep, moderately fun if you like the stuff. Torgerson's work was so utterly soulless I ranked it below Beale's.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Re:So, what controversy? by billstewart · 2014-08-21 15:37 · Score: 1

I recommend getting drunk first. What is it you trolls drink?

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Gravity isn't SF by zap1992 · 2014-08-21 02:48 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Gravity isn't SF by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 03:23 · Score: 2

it was fictional. it was about science. what more do you want? I would say Apollo 13 and the right stuff aren't science fiction, but most every other movie involving space is science fiction.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by zap1992 · 2014-08-21 04:04 · Score: 1

It really doesn't involve any more science than any other movie, and I would hardly consider simply using science to be the defining characteristic of SF. SF uses science, or pretends to, in fantastic ways that are not currently possible in order to tell a story--usually one about the ramifications of fictional science or technology. Sending astronauts into low Earth orbit is not only possible, it's routinely done.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by Zak3056 · 2014-08-21 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Good science fiction is (almost) ALWAYS about people, and how they react in an environment that is altered by a technology, or an event, or some other external influence that simply wasn't imaginable until our understanding of the universe progressed (the science part of the fiction). While there are some examples that differ from this, if you take a look through your favorite stories, they almost all conform to this pattern.
In this case, it's an exploration of what happens to someone who is in orbit during an event that leads to Kessler Syndrome. I'm not saying the film deserved to win, but I think complaining that "this isn't science fiction" is decidedly unwarranted.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Gravity isn't SF by Xtifr · 2014-08-21 06:14 · Score: 1

Gravity isn't science fiction. We actually do send people into space, and that kind of disaster could sort of happen.
"Could happen"--but hasn't. That's what makes it science fiction. "Speculative science" is absolutely not a requirement of SF, and "predictions of the future" is basically what it was. It was at least as plausible a prediction as something like Heinlein's "...If This Goes On". And "fantasy elements", in a lot of people's opinions, loosely including mine, are never an element of actual science fiction.
Space exploration and research still falls basically in the domain of science these days, even though it's a lot more of an everyday activity than it once was. Once tickets to space become affordable to the average person, then maybe we can say that a movie like Gravity is no more SFnal than something like The Fast and the Furious. But until then, I think it qualifies, and a whole lot of people seem to agree with me.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by vux984 · 2014-08-21 10:10 · Score: 1

Gravity isn't science fiction
Of course it is.
We actually do send people into space, and that kind of disaster could sort of happen.
But we didn't send anyone named Dr. Ryan Stone on space shuttle mission STS-157, and none of the other events in the film ever happened... so its CLEARLY fiction.
And it is science fiction because many of the antagonists/obstacles are consequences of the known rules of physics.
It handily meets any definition of science fiction I would ever care to use.
And that's really cool--what seems so much like SF is actually a real-life job that some people do everyday.
We all live moments away from science fiction. A fictional story about the challenge of escaping a car after it goes over a bridge into a river can be science fiction if the accident is modelled according to our understanding of science instead of just done for dramatic effect. The juxtaposition of the vehicles crumple zones with how they'd react hitting a river from 30 feet up, how much time would the occupants REALLY have, how could they REALLY get out... etc.
Most good Science fiction are simply stories about people reacting to their environment within the bounds of their humanity, and the constraints of known science.
That environment can be trumped up with constructs which are not explained... whether its faster than light travel, or an alien race governed by a hive mind... or it can be entirely mundane (as in Gravity or my imagined car accident story).
What makes it science fiction is that once the rules of the environment is established, the characters react to it constrained by the rules of science.
What separates good science fiction from fantasy is that fantasy is not bound to establish and then follow a set of physics. It's free to continually introduce whatever capabilities the characters need as the story needs it. Fantasy follows whatever path the author wishes without constraint. Science fiction's defining characteristic is that the narrative is constrained and driven by known physics or known or speculative physics.
Now you might say, but that's true of James Joyce's Dubliners; it too is constrained by the rules of phyiscs. None of the characters are magical or fantastical and nothing impossible according to known physics happens. And that's true. The difference between science fiction and ordinary (non-fantasy) fiction is that in science fiction the narrative is driven in part by the science. Dubliners narratives are not driven by science.
So even CSI could have been really good science fiction. Except its not, because despite the trappings of science they toss it out the window left and right. Star Trek with its particle-du-jour ... often is science fiction, because you are allowed to "pre-suppose" an alternate physics -- the trick is to play out the rest of the story constrained by it. Star Trek of course, as often as not, also fails to follow the rules it sets out for itself, and so deviates to space-fantasy or something... but many of its good episodes are good SF.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by Skidborg · 2014-08-21 10:12 · Score: 1

Science fiction /always/ has fantasy elements. Otherwise it would just be transcribing what is happening in reality now.

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Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by radarskiy · 2014-08-21 14:57 · Score: 1

" There's no speculative science, predictions of the future"
The cascading debris storm was certainly speculative, as well as transiting large distances by suit only. Also, the whole idea of a *rapid* orbital emergency is new... most orbital problems are slow.
Re:Gravity isn't SF by Xtifr · 2014-08-22 08:44 · Score: 1

Heh, depending on how you define "fantasy elements", sure, but then the same thing can be said of mainstream fiction, detective novels, and the movie Gravity. :)
In the context of science fiction and fantasy, the term "fantasy elements" generally refers to pure magic and other impossible things; since OP claimed that Gravity lacked fantasy elements, that seemed like a more plausible interpretation of what he meant.

Re:Game of Thrones = Sci-FI? by jlockard · 2014-08-21 02:55 · Score: 4, Informative

From the Hugos' webiste:

"Science Fiction? Fantasy? Horror?

While the World Science Fiction Society sponsors the Hugos, they are not limited to sf. Works of fantasy or horror are eligible if the members of the Worldcon think they are eligible."

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--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips

Re:Game of Thrones = Sci-FI? by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 02:57 · Score: 2

So is historical fiction if the theme seems sci-fi enough; Apollo 13 had a nomination.

Re:Informative winners list by wonkey_monkey · 2014-08-21 02:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maybe it's because opinion is subjective.

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

Re:Game of Thrones = Sci-FI? by MRe_nl · 2014-08-21 02:59 · Score: 1

[Spoiler Alert] In book six Adam Reiths' spaceship is shot down by "dragons" and it turns out the books are but a prelude to Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure"

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"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"

Re:Informative winners list by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 02:59 · Score: 1

I found it extraordinarily tense. walking out of the theater I realized I had been holding my breath for the entire movie.

Sad Puppy Slate by Daetrin · 2014-08-21 03:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

"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...

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This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Re:Sad Puppy Slate by halivar · 2014-08-21 03:19 · Score: 1

So the Hugo awards are a popularity contest.
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 03:24 · Score: 1

Have been for some time. Very few awards aren't.
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by Daetrin · 2014-08-21 03:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yes, they are. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention. The Nebula awards are a popularity contest as judged by people in the industry (authors and possibly editors and publishers as well, i forget the specifics,) while the Hugo awards are a popularity contest as judged by the public.

In theory in both contests the popularity is supposed to be based on the quality of the work. That rule is probably more closely observed for the Nebulas than the Hugos, but in both cases it is impossible to eliminate all personal biases.

I voted in the Hugos and personally found the Vox Day work to be junk, while the other works from the "Sad Puppy Slate" were decent, though not anything i would have considered worth nominating myself. Obviously i agree with the results, but obviously i am also biased like every other human being.

So yes, the Hugos are a popularity contest, as are the Nebulas, the Oscars, the Grammys, and every other reward for artistic achievement that you can think of.

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This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by pavon · 2014-08-21 03:43 · Score: 1

Thanks for posting a link that actually mostly explains the issue. Much more helpful than the summary that posted a link to a huge list of links, and of the ones I clicked, half weren't applicable to the issue, and the other half were just opinion pieces that assumed you were already familiar with the controversy. Horrible editing.
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by Nimey · 2014-08-21 09:19 · Score: 1

You keep asserting that without providing any numbers to back you up. You're full of shit and clearly one of those people for whom everything has to be about your politics.

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by Daetrin · 2014-08-22 06:29 · Score: 1

So, just for the record, i happen to be a fan of both Scalzi and Baen books. There are also a number of series and books which i have enjoyed very much but which i have not nominated for the Hugos.

David Weber, Jack Campbell/John G Hemry, Elizabeth Moon, Taylor Anderson, Jack McDevitt, Lynn Flewelling, Mercedes Lackey. All write stuff that's great fun. All of them are at least moderately popular and at least some are massively popular. But in my opinion none of them have written anything that i would consider "Best". I feel that a book has to be "impressive" in some way other than just being enjoyable in order to be "Best"

And judging by the Hugo results of this and other years it seems that most of the people who vote on the Hugos agree with me. Even though i said in another post that the Hugos (and all other artistic awards) are a popularity contest, and continue to stand behind that, that doesn't mean people will just vote for whoever takes up the most space on their shelves. (Though looking at 2012 in particular i have to admit that apparently a lot of the voters seem to think that pandering is impressive *cough*)

Are you honestly saying Transformers: Age of Extinction deserves to win the Oscar for Best Film just because it made a billion dollars? I personally quite liked the Underworld movies, they were a lot of fun, but there's not a one of them i would nominate for Best Film (in either the Hugos or the Oscars if i had any say in the matter.)

So yes, i could believe Correia might sell more books than Scalzi (although a quick check of Amazon sales rank does not seem to back that up) but selling a lot of books neither guarantees nor justifies a Hugo. I expect that Weber outsells both Correia and Scalzi put together (though i've admittedly done absolutely zero research on that) but he's never even been nominated, which i don't really think is a scandal.

As far as the people who attend WorldCon, i'm not sure if i confirm your preconceptions by being someone who likes Scalzi and (sometimes) goes to WorldCon, or if i confound them by being someone who like Baen and (sometimes) goes to WorldCon. However i will say that the reason why i started going to WorldCon was because the authors who i follow online kept talking about it. Obviously the fact that Correia promoted WorldCon/the Hugos on his blog had an impact. If all he'd said was "you should go to WorldCon and you should vote for my books in the Hugos" without dragging Vox Day and others into it i don't think anyone would have complained. So perhaps if more of the people who feel excluded did that instead of complaining about biases then the results would be a little more in line with what they think is popular?

As for Toni Weisskopf, i see that he was part of the slate. I didn't actually get around to that category, so i can not personally attest to the quality of work of either him or any of the other contenders. However it is unsurprising to note that about half as many people voted in "Best Editor" as in "Best Novel" (honestly, it surprises me a little that it got even that many) so it was even more susceptible to influence by block voting.

First, 140 people votes for No Award for #1, which seems rather high. Almost 10% of the voters thought _none_ of them deserved a Hugo.

The difference between Ginjer and Toni before the instant run-off was only 25 votes (384 vs 359), or less than 2% of the total vote.

Unsurprisingly that didn't change much after No Award was eliminated, but in the third pass Ginjer picked up about twice as many votes as Toni, and almost three times as many in the fourth pass. (Notably, Liz picked up as many votes in passes 3 & 4 as both Ginjer and Toni combined but wasn't able to overcome the initial deficit. But given that it's not surprising that she came in second.)

So in short there was a minority, the largest of the initial minorities but still a minority that put Toni first. All the other minorities tended to rank Toni fairly low.

Somethi

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This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Re:Sad Puppy Slate by rochrist · 2014-08-24 05:21 · Score: 1

Citation?

Re:Informative winners list by Tx · 2014-08-21 03:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

I agree about the winners in recent years, although I usually peruse the best novel nominees, quite a few of my favourite books have been "losing" Hugo or Nebula nominees.

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Oh no... it's the future.

Sci-Fi trend at my local library by OzPeter · 2014-08-21 03:04 · Score: 1

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.

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I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?

Re:Sci-Fi trend at my local library by Zero__Kelvin · 2014-08-21 03:33 · Score: 3, Funny

"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."
That sounds mysterious. You should investigate.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Re:Sci-Fi trend at my local library by Jason+Levine · 2014-08-21 04:53 · Score: 1

"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."
That sounds mysterious. You should investigate.
It's probably the fault of some old guy who dresses as a monster or ghost and who'll get away with it if us meddling kids don't stop him.
I'll grab the Scooby Snacks.

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My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Re:Sci-Fi trend at my local library by Archfeld · 2014-08-21 05:34 · Score: 1

Jenkies and Zoinks, made me laugh and almost snort OJ out my nose, thanks :)

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errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?

Re:Informative winners list by marsu_k · 2014-08-21 03:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

But I found much of the tension to be very artificial. For example (spoilers ahoy!), when Bullock and Clooney reach ISS, both being tethered with a rope. And are no longer moving. Yet, Bullock is forced to cut the rope, because of... what, exactly? (yes, their characters had names, no longer remember them)

Re:Tactics unsuccessful? by Nimey · 2014-08-21 03:11 · Score: 1

You're moving the goalposts and positing a conspiracy theory.

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Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem

Re: Ancillary Justice by stoolpigeon · 2014-08-21 03:17 · Score: 2

I am a big Scalzi fan and have loved every bit of his fiction that I have read - except for Redshirts. So I don't get it either, but a lot of people love it. A TV show will come of it and that escapes me as well. Apparently we are just not in touch with something a lot of other people see in it.

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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?

Re:Informative winners list by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 03:18 · Score: 1

I think it was intended to be an emotional movie, not an analytical movie. Try to enjoy it on the director's terms not on your terms.

Re:Informative winners list by torkus · 2014-08-21 03:26 · Score: 1

If both those claims are equally accurate...it about jives with my experience as well

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You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.

Re:well-documented attempts to expose nomination b by Nimey · 2014-08-21 03:28 · Score: 1

tl;dr: conservative SF authors are victims because people like other authors' works better.

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Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem

Re:Game of Thrones = Sci-FI? by rogoshen1 · 2014-08-21 03:30 · Score: 1

Ah Gotcha, had always assumed the Hugo award was relegated to just sci-fi. Thanks for setting me straight with a minimum of snark :)

Re:Informative winners list by war4peace · 2014-08-21 03:30 · Score: 1

...and you could still walk and be alive after holding your breath for so many minutes?
PROOF THAT ALIENS ARE AMONG US!

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...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)

Re:Informative winners list by bluefoxlucid · 2014-08-21 03:34 · Score: 1

The Hugo awards come from the audience. The audience is a bunch of drooling retards. Also, I'm surprised XKCD got the graphic story thing.

Seriously, Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games are largely a joke. And they're bringing out Dragon Tattoo movies. You won't see Gateway or The Gap Cycle as a dramatic long-form series (it's too fucking massive to run as a set of movies); I would love to produce The Gap Cycle as a scifi-drama-epic narrative in an opera-style, as the prose won't translate to modern theatrical style. ("He looked over at the alarming medistat screen. It said he was awake. No shit. It also said...")

You really want the Nebula awards.

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Support my political activism on Patreon.

Re:Informative winners list by SuricouRaven · 2014-08-21 03:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's soft sci-fi pretending to be hard sci-fi.

It's perfectly fine to have non-realistic physics in science fiction. It just needs some justification or explanation. Future super-tech that hasn't been invented, or a revolution in our understanding of the universe. This is a good thing: It lets you introduce a 'magic box' like a perfect lie detector or an artificial intelligence and then examine the impact it would have. Or it can just serve as the backdrop to a more conventional story, like a space opera - just throw in some vague mumbling about the hyperdrive, it doesn't matter how the thing is supposed to work so long as it gets the characters where they need to go.

But Gravity doesn't have that excuse. It's supposed to be realistic. It's supposed to be near-future. That sets certain constraints. For a layperson it might be acceptable for an astronaut to jump out the ISS and achieve an orbital intersection and velocity match by eye with a distant station - but for anyone who knows the slightest thing about space travel, or has played Kerbal Space Program, this as as glaring a violation of the established rules of the setting as if she'd cobbled together a teleporter from the wreckage.

Re:Informative winners list by SuricouRaven · 2014-08-21 03:35 · Score: 1

The director set terms: The terms are near-future, realistic setting. Then those terms were violated. From there comes the problem.

Re:Informative winners list by Oligonicella · 2014-08-21 03:37 · Score: 1

Those two goals are in no way incompatible. There's no need to employ sloppy writing to generate emotion unless your goal is a high score on What's Wrong With.

You cant make much writing Science Fiction by InterGuru · 2014-08-21 03:47 · Score: 1

Sad thing. After Paolo Bacigalupi won all the awards below he discovered that you make much writing SF, and now writes Young Adult novels

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel, written by Paolo Bacigalupi and published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by TIME magazine,[1] and as the best science fiction book of the year in the Reference and User Services Association's 2010 Reading List.[2] This book is a 2010 Nebula Award[3] and a 2010 Hugo Award winner (tied with The City & the City by China Miéville for the Hugo Award), both for best novel.[4] This book also won the 2010 Compton Crook Award and the 2010 Locus Award for best first novel.

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.

Re:You cant make much writing Science Fiction by RabidReindeer · 2014-08-21 05:07 · Score: 1

It's different. Although one of the things that's a little annoying is that while he implies that a lot of the damage to the world's food supplies may be deliberate and ongoing, he never has anyone actually say that or even grumble, accuse or try and fight back. The closest approximation is where Thailand isolates itself and does internal purges.
The kink-spring concept is original, but nobody seems to have a clue about other renewable energy sources. He apparently never saw the YouTube video where someone took the fresnel lens out of an old flat-screen TV and used it to smelt metal. You could probably refine silicon for solar cells that way. Then again, since everybody seems to be running on the ragged edge, maybe they just can't spare the extra effort.
Re:You cant make much writing Science Fiction by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:21 · Score: 2

YA SF/F novels are still SF/F novels. I fully approve any writer who can write good YA stuff. Just because it's for youngsters doesn't mean it has to be bad.

Re:Informative winners list by hawkinspeter · 2014-08-21 03:58 · Score: 2

I'm sure you're right, but I did enjoy Equoid by Charles Stross. Then again, I'm a fan of the Laundry series, so I'm not going to be that critical of his writing.

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You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe

Re:Informative winners list by jratcliffe · 2014-08-21 04:06 · Score: 3, Informative

"the book is shit, or pompous, or written specifically to woo often sophisticated, pedantic jury members into giving the award."

Over 3,500 people voted on the Hugos this year, not exactly a tiny jury.

Re:Informative winners list by ColdWetDog · 2014-08-21 04:23 · Score: 1

No,that would be Twitter.

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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!

Re:Informative winners list by mythosaz · 2014-08-21 04:25 · Score: 1

The movie where they drift off into space, never encounter another object, and slowly die wasn't as interesting...

Re:Informative winners list by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 04:31 · Score: 2

The problem here for a lot of people is it breaks them out of their suspension of disbelief. We've established this as a representation of a fairly realistic world when something we know wouldn't happen happens.

If we established earlier that this was a world with its own physics then we'd accept it.

Re: Ancillary Justice by ColdWetDog · 2014-08-21 04:32 · Score: 1

A TV show about Redshirts? Didn't we just finish the Star Trek reboots?

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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!

Re: Ancillary Justice by Shatrat · 2014-08-21 04:51 · Score: 1

We will never finish the star trek reboots. 1000 years from now they will still be making them and people will be believe that Captain Kirk was a real historical figure.

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09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Re:Informative winners list by tippe · 2014-08-21 04:55 · Score: 1

Most people are idiots.

You forgot to add "present company excluded"..., right?

Anyway, reminds me of a George Carlin quote that I saw in somebody's sig once:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” -- George Carlin

Re:Informative winners list by Kelbear · 2014-08-21 05:00 · Score: 2

I really liked Europa Report and I recommend it to sci-fi fans. But the criticisms against that movie were well placed, and Best Dramatic Presentation? If anything, the movie was intentionally downplaying the inherent drama of their predicament in order to keep the movie grounded in a more documentary format. Sci-fi fans should definitely check out Europa Report, but I don't think it would have won here.

Re:"Time" won Best Graphic Story? by Atzanteol · 2014-08-21 05:00 · Score: 3, Informative

Click the panel itself. Brings you here:

http://geekwagon.net/projects/...

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

- Charles Darwin

Wait for it... by orgelspieler · 2014-08-21 05:14 · Score: 1, Informative

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.

Re:Novella versus Novellette by netsavior · 2014-08-21 05:29 · Score: 2

Short story under 7,500 words
Novelette 7,500 and 17,500 words
Novella 17,500 and 40,000 words
Novel 40,000 +

I know you were trying to be cheeky, but there is a specific answer to your question.

Re:Informative winners list by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-21 05:57 · Score: 1

Are you familiar with Kerbal? Orbital mechanics are drasticly different from ground mechanics and may seem unintuitive when first encountered.

Re:Novella versus Novellette by WheezyJoe · 2014-08-21 06:15 · Score: 1

I believe you, but do you have a cite? Does some literary authority make these numbers gospel?

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Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...

Re:Informative winners list by oobayly · 2014-08-21 06:21 · Score: 1

I wholeheartedly agree - I picked up a collection of Hugo Award winners, as edited by Isaac Asimov - I found the writing incredibly pretentious and the stories almost seemed to take a back seat. They were a massive disappointment to me.

Re:Informative winners list by 91degrees · 2014-08-21 06:24 · Score: 2

Yes, but I know full well that when an object's motion is arrested, the object will not continue pulling on whatever arrests it.

Re:Informative winners list by jratcliffe · 2014-08-21 06:37 · Score: 1

That quote only showed that George Carlin is too stupid to understand the difference between mean and median.

Re:Informative winners list by hawkinspeter · 2014-08-21 06:44 · Score: 1

So, would her breathing heavily be the result of running away from you?

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You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe

I am stupid by war4peace · 2014-08-21 06:45 · Score: 1

How can one properly determine the difference between a novel, a novelette and a novella?

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...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)

Re:I am stupid by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:24 · Score: 1

A lot of golden-age novels would be treated as novelettes and even novellas these days. Thanks to publishing industry & consumer pressures, anything below 900 pages becoming harder to shift! I used to be able to read a book in a day, no longer.
Re:I am stupid by radarskiy · 2014-08-21 15:03 · Score: 1

By reading the official category definition for the body overseeing the particular award. For the Hugos, see the World Science Fiction Society Constituion Section 3.3 http://www.wsfs.org/bm/const-2...

Re:Informative winners list by R3d+M3rcury · 2014-08-21 07:34 · Score: 1

True. But what if the object that they're connected to is moving? What's to say that ISS wasn't rotating in such a way as to create force?

Now ISS has various gyroscopes and thrusters to keep it oriented. However, it appears that many of the ISS systems were turned off and/or damaged, which means that those thrusters or gyroscopes may not have been working. So ISS may have also had some spin to it, considering that it and the Soyuz had been hit by debris.

So it's quite possible that ISS was rotating or spinning in some manner. While the ropes stopped their momentum, they were still taut afterwards so that implies that there was some force acting on them.

Re:well-documented attempts to expose nomination b by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 07:59 · Score: 1

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.

Re:well-documented attempts to expose nomination b by M1FCJ · 2014-08-21 08:01 · Score: 1

System is run by World Con attendees. You can join and take over with your rightwing friends, if you have the majority. Good luck.

Re:Informative winners list by The+Rizz · 2014-08-21 08:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

I picked up a collection of Hugo Award winners, as edited by Isaac Asimov - I found the writing incredibly pretentious and the stories almost seemed to take a back seat. They were a massive disappointment to me.

Hugo winners are often incredible stories - I've read a lot of them, and while some of them are crap, a lot of them are very, very good. Really, it depends a lot on the year they were written - if the collection you read was from the 70s, then I can see why you thought they were crap; the popular scifi writing style in in that decade was ... well ... pretentious. It's also possible that you just don't like the same kinds of stories Asimov likes - as editor, the stories were chosen by him.

Re:well-documented attempts to expose nomination b by Nimey · 2014-08-21 09:14 · Score: 1

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.

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Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem

Re:Informative winners list by StormShaman · 2014-08-21 09:57 · Score: 1

Ray Bradbury did well with it (Kaleidoscope). But that wasn't the story Cuaron wanted to tell.

Re:Time? by Skidborg · 2014-08-21 10:13 · Score: 1

At least Girl Genius has intentionally pulled out of nominations because they were afraid that repeated wins would devalue the award.

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Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.

Old news by metoc · 2014-08-21 10:28 · Score: 1

I was there. Didn't bother to attend the Hugos.

BTW. They were two ceremonies. Check out http://loncon3.org

Re:Informative winners list by Prune · 2014-08-21 10:42 · Score: 1

Your post only shows that you're too stupid to understand that average can refer to mean, median, or any other central tendency metric (not to mention that, since intelligence is roughly normally distributed, mean and median in this particular case happen to be the same). Gotta love it when someone tries to show how smart they are by criticism, only to crash and burn, the way you did with this post.

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"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."

Re:first post by billstewart · 2014-08-21 10:48 · Score: 1

That was nominated for best short story, but didn't get enough votes to make the short list.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Fantasy's part of the genre by billstewart · 2014-08-21 10:50 · Score: 1

No, it's not hard sci-fi. Neither are many of the winners many years.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Chris Hadfield's Space Oddity missed by 3 votes by billstewart · 2014-08-21 10:59 · Score: 1

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.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Re:Informative winners list by radarskiy · 2014-08-21 14:16 · Score: 1

"And are no longer moving."

This did not occur in the movie being discussed.

Her by Ikester8 · 2014-08-21 14:22 · Score: 1

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.

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That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...

"New York" was London this year - Orbit Excerpts by billstewart · 2014-08-21 14:52 · Score: 1

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.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Ideological right-wing whiners don't speak for me by billstewart · 2014-08-21 15:19 · Score: 1

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

Re: Redshirts vs. Old Man's War by billstewart · 2014-08-21 15:43 · Score: 1

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.

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Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

Re:Informative winners list by TheGoodNamesWereGone · 2014-08-21 23:52 · Score: 1

Most accurate science in a movie since "2001". Highly recommended

Re:Informative winners list by TheGoodNamesWereGone · 2014-08-21 23:53 · Score: 1

Authors who write to get awards are writing the social justice NOW bullshit. Authors who write for readers are having their lunches.

Ancillary Justice was good but... by petergriffinismyhero · 2014-08-22 01:53 · Score: 1

Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke good? No. Stop it. It wasn't that good.

Re:Informative winners list by 91degrees · 2014-08-22 02:17 · Score: 1

Still makes no difference. Even if, having done the calculation, I can work out a means for this to be completely effective, I've lost the suspension of disbelief. When telling a story, things should be presented in a way we'll accept them.

We shouldn't need to leave our involvement of the movie, come up with an entire fan theory and then go back in having established it will work. That's just bad scrptwriting.

Re:Novella versus Novellette by netsavior · 2014-08-22 02:44 · Score: 2

sure, those are the Hugo award rules. The words themselves can mean different things to different communities, but for Hugo, they have a specific quantitative meaning.

On the official site

Best Novel: Awarded for a science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more.

Best Novella: Awarded for a science fiction or fantasy story of between seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) and forty thousand (40,000) words.

Best Novelette: Awarded for a science fiction or fantasy story of between seven thousand five hundred (7,500) and seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) words.

Best Short Story: Awarded for science fiction or fantasy story of less than seven thousand five hundred (7,500) words.

Re:Informative winners list by Rakarra · 2014-08-22 05:55 · Score: 1

Gravity was science fiction. Near-time science fiction, that is, depicting structures that we may not have now, but may have some time in the future.
The Tiangong space station featured in the last act of the movie is still in planning stages.

The movie put together a number of space technologies, past, present, and future, that will likely never exist together. The ISS, the Tiangong, a refinement of the 1980s EVA pack, the retired Space Shuttle, etc.

Re:Informative winners list by Rakarra · 2014-08-22 07:03 · Score: 1

This is like.. the one scene that everyone talks about. I think the scene should have been handled a little better. When Bullock comes to the end of her tether (before she grab's Clooney's line), she is shown as still being moving.. but it's rotational momentum. Rotational energy is still energy, and that created tension on the parachute lines. I think the movie's mistake is that during the closeups of Clooney and Bullock right after, the station appears static. The rotation that Bullock was shone to be having in the wide shots just vanishes. If the effects department had shown the ISS rotating out of frame behind them, it would have made clear that there was still angular velocity at play, which would explain the tension on the tether.

Either way, it's quite possible that Clooney's character could have hung on and they could have climbed back together. But he didn't want to even take the chance that both of them would die.

Re:Informative winners list by Rakarra · 2014-08-22 07:07 · Score: 1

As I mentioned above, I think the script-writing is fine, but there's a special effects f-up. In wide shots, Bullock is shown to be orbiting the station, and that creates tension on the line. But in closeups, the station is static, even though just a shot earlier, she was shown to still be moving. Why that decision was made, I don't know. Maybe someone forgot. But it seems curious to establish rotational momentum in the wide shots and then just drop that entirely in the closeups.

Re:Informative winners list by marsu_k · 2014-08-22 07:33 · Score: 1

I find it very telling that even you, who seems to enjoy the movie much more than I do, refer to the characters as Bullock and Clooney. I think that's really what irks me about the movie. Those two are not the right actors. Clooney plays George Clooney very well, but not every movie needs a George Clooney. Don't get me wrong, some movies definitely require him, and then he excels. But George Clooney the astronaut? Doesn't work. Him dicking around in a MMU at the beginning of the film, just wasting fuel? This wouldn't happen.

As for Ms. Bullock, I think she did a good job, no complaints. Nothing spectacular, but nothing really irritating either. But perhaps I've been too conditioned into thinking how Hollywood works - if there are two A-list stars in a film, and one of them dies, there's no way in hell the second one will as well. As such, the rest of the movie is basically watching how Bullock will eventually survive. There is no great surprise. When she hit the ocean I almost walked out of the theatre - get it over with already!

If they would have toned down the action, and had a no-name (or less known even) cast it would have been much more effective. Yes, space is a terrifying place, no need to try to make it more so. As it though, they were almost there (as said, the visuals and sound design were very good), but missed the mark.

Re:Informative winners list by oobayly · 2014-08-22 08:19 · Score: 1

Yes, they were from the 70s. The reason I bought the book was exactly because of Asimov. It's possible that the stories he liked were nothing like his writing (which I love).

Re:Informative winners list by Rakarra · 2014-08-23 12:29 · Score: 1

I find it very telling that even you, who seems to enjoy the movie much more than I do, refer to the characters as Bullock and Clooney

Oh, I liked it, but I just saw it once. And since their are only two characters in the movie they rarely refer to themselves by name, and for half the movie, Mission Specialist Ryan Stone (oh, I do remember that) is alone, so no one else says her name. I think Sandra Bullock was the perfect choice and have a hard time seeing another actress in there, but Clooney was pretty replaceable.

But mostly I referred to them in that way because you did. I just use the same context I'm given.

Him dicking around in a MMU at the beginning of the film, just wasting fuel? This wouldn't happen

Mmm, been awhile so I don't remember the scene too clearly, but I thought they mentioned he was test driving it -- a new model, testing it out was pretty much the reason he had it in the first place.

Re:Informative winners list by rochrist · 2014-08-24 05:07 · Score: 1

The Hugo is a non-juried award.

Foglio report by LienRag · 2014-08-27 22:16 · Score: 1

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.

Re:The Problem with the Hugos by Daetrin · 2014-08-28 03:50 · Score: 1

I'm curious, which past Hugo winners did you think were pretentious?

2013 - Redshirts - John Scalzi: Not the best in the field, I wanted Blackout or Captain Vorpatril's Alliance to win, but i'm not sure what was pretentious about it.
2012 - Among Others - Jo Walton: I didn't think this one was pretentious. Just kind of boring and pandering. Should have gone to Leviathan Wakes or Deadline.
2011 - Blackout/All Clear - Connie Willis: Again, doesn't seem pretentious, but i've been disappointed with all the Connie Willis i've read since To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Cryoburn, and Feed were all better than this.
2010 - Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and China Mieville's The City & the City: I had some serious concerns about the economics underlying the Windup Girl but thought it was otherwise okay. I've never really gotten people's fascination with China Mieville's works however. But neither seemed especially pretentious to me. Robert J Sawyer's Wake really should have won.
2009 - The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman: Okay, this year just sucked. I failed to inherit whatever gene it is that makes so many people like Neil Gaiman, nor have i yet found anything to like about Cory Doctorow or Charles Stross yet. I used to like Neal Stephenson, but his more recent work is just too... i dunno. And i haven't actually read Scalzi's Zoe's Tale yet because i just get annoyed by "let's tell the same story from a different perspective" books.
2008 - The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon: This was before i started going to WorldCon/voting in Hugos, and the only one i've read from that year so far is Scalzi's The Last Colony. Which was okay, but not something i'd have voted on myself. (I tend not to be a big fan of books from the middle of a long series for Hugo consideration in general.)
2007 - Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge: This on the other hand was a great year. I totally agree with the winner, but Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and Michael Flynn's Eifelheim were both great as well (though admitedly it took me a little while to get into Eifelheim.)
2006 - Spin - Robert Charles Wilson: I think John Scalzi's Old Man's War gave Spin a run for its money, but i don't think this was a poor choice.
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke: Okay, i liked the book, but my opinion of it suffered from over-hype. I also thought at the time she seemed like a one-hit wonder, and i'm not sure if i should be sad or gloating about being (so far) correct. I haven't read The Algebraist yet, but in retrospect it's kind of sad Ian M Banks didn't win this year.
2004 - Paladin of Sould - Lois McMaster Bujold: Not her best book, but it was pretty good and it was definitely better than the other contenders that i've read, so this seems fine to me.

So that's ten years of Hugos. There are definitely some authors whose appeal i don't get, or at least haven't gotten yet (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow) but none of them really jump out at me as pretentious.

So what is it about them that bothers you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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