(1) SPACE, THE INITIAL FRONTIER. In a profile published in the October 17 New Yorker, Julie Phillips reveals why Ursula Le Guin’s name has a space in it.
Her husband’s birth name was Charles LeGuin. They were married in France, and “when they applied for a marriage license, a ‘triumphant bureaucrat’ told Charles his Breton name was ‘spelled wrong’ without a space, so when they married they both took the name Le Guin.”
(2) JUST MISSPELL MY NAME CORRECTLY. By a vote of the members, the Science Fiction Poetry Association has renamed itself the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Although its name has changed, the organization will keep using the initials SFPA.
And nearly every time the poets talk about SFPA in the hearing of old-time fanzine fans you can depend on someone dropping a heavy hint that they’re at risk being mixed up with a pre-existing fan group that uses the same abbreviation. Today it was Andrew Porter chirping in a comment on the announcement —
Not to be confused with the Southern Fandom Press Association, which has been around for more than 40 years…
Unfortunately it’s Porter who is confused, as he seems to have forgotten the apa’s name is the Southern Fandom Press Alliance.
(3) SAMOVAR LAUNCHES. A new sff magazine, Samovar, launched today, featuring “the best of speculative fiction in translation including original stories, reprints, poetry, reviews and more material, as well as printing translations alongside the stories in their original language.” Samovar will be produced as a quarterly, special imprint of Strange Horizons.
“Stories tell us who we are, and let us see who other people are. We already have access to an enormous wealth of speculative fiction in English, but we want to know more” – The Samovar editorial team.
What wondrous fantastical tales are being conjured in Finnish? Who writes the best Nigerian space odysseys? Is Mongolia hiding an epic fantasy author waiting to be discovered? We want to know, and we aim to find out.
For Samovar, writers and translators are of equal importance, and we do our best to shine a spotlight on the talented individuals who pen both the original and the translated version of a story. We hope that in this way we can boost the profile of speculative fiction in translation so that everyone involved receives the recognition they deserve and so we can all continue to enjoy the strange, mind-bending and fantastical fiction of all cultures.
In issue one: two sisters create an imagined world where things that are lost can be found. A despot is forced to see the truth he’s tried to hide from. An academic finds poetry, science fiction and reality beginning to merge. And the Curiosity Rover turns its own sardonic gaze on Mars.
The Samovar editorial team is Laura Friis, Greg West and Sarah Dodd. Their advisory board includes Helen Marshall, Rachel Cordasco and Marian Via Rivera-Womack.
https://twitter.com/samovarmag/status/846365472660635648
(4) TENSION, APPREHENSION, AND DISSENSION. The Atlantic’s Megan Garber asks: What’s the opposite of a “cliffhanger”?
Extended cliffhangers (cliffstayers? cliffhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangers?) have animated some of the most narratively powerful works of television of recent years; they have helped to heighten the tension in shows like Breaking Bad (how low will Walt go?) and Serial (did he do it?) and Quantico (did she do it?) and True Detective (who did it?) and Lost (who are they? where are they?) and, in general, pretty much any sitcom that has ever featured, simmering just below its surface, some will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension.
What’s especially notable about the recent shows that are employing the device, though, is that they’re locating the tension in one (unanswered) question. They’re operating in direct opposition to the way traditional cliffhangers were primarily used: between installments, between episodes, between seasons, in the interstitial spaces that might otherwise find a story’s momentum stalling. Big Little Lies and Riverdale and This Is Us and all the rest are taking the specific narrative logic of “Who shot J.R.?” and flipping it: The tension here exists not necessarily to capture audience interest over a show’s hiatus (although, certainly, there’s a little of that, too), but much more to infuse the content of the show at large with a lurking mystery. Things simmer rather than boil. The cliffhanger is less about one shocking event with one central question, and more about a central mystery that insinuates itself over an entire season (and, sometimes, an entire series).
(5) SLOWER THAN LIGHT COMMUNICATION. This is how social media works: I never heard of Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality until somebody complained about it.
Tho i found out author was a guy at the end…lol in retrospect only a man would ask his readers to nom his fanfic for the hugo awards lolm
— MCU will never be her (earth-616) (@artingkrusca) March 27, 2017
The appeal for a 2016 Hugo nomination was posted by the author in 2015.
First, the following request: I would like any readers who think that HPMOR deserves it sufficiently, and who are attending or supporting the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcon, to next year, nominate Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos. Whether you then actually vote for HPMOR as Best Novel is something I won’t request outright, since I don’t know what other novels will be competing in 2016. After all the nominees are announced, look over what’s there and vote for what you think is best.
I don’t know how many votes he ended up getting but it wasn’t enough to rank among the top 15 works reported by MidAmeriCon II.
(6) FINALLY A GOOD WORD ABOUT THE MOVIES. Book View Café’s Diana Pharoah Francis was both nostalgic and thoughtful after hosting a Lord of the Rings marathon at home.
…Among the SF/F communities, it was this extraordinary vision come to life in a way we had never experienced before. It was not cheesy or all about the CGI. It was about strength, honor, choices, and hope. It was real characters in dreadful situations. The watching of heroes being made and broken beneath weights no one should have to bear. And Aragorn — a king in the making. A soul of strength and doubt and humility.
The movies were inspiring on a lot of fronts. I think it’s appropriate to watch it now in a world that is struggling so hard against itself. With so much fear, and worry and such dire enemies. Who are those enemies? Too many are ourselves. Our fears that turn us into monsters or traitors. Denethor, Gollum, Boromir, the Nazgul — absolute power corrupts. There are those who give up. Those who refuse to fight. Those who lose themselves.
The stories, the movies and the books, are a view into ourselves and what we can hope to be and what we may become — good and bad. It’s a reminder that it’s never a good time to quit in the battle against darkness — in whatever shape it takes….
(7) MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! ON YOUR SHELVES. James Davis Nicoll names “Twenty Core Space Operas Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves”.
“Chosen entirely on the basis of merit,” says James, “with a side-order of not repeating titles that were on the first list.”
(8) TWEETS OF THE DAY ABOUT TWO WEEKS AGO. I felt a disturbance in the force. Just not right away.
Best Series just seems like a handout for white dudes willing to write the same boring book every other year for a couple decades.
— Kilgore Trout is My Copilot (@SFBluestocking) March 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/ApeInWinter/status/841731401108094977
(9) FIVE PLUS TWO. John Scalzi offers “7 Tips for Writing a Bestselling Science Fiction Novel” at Female First. This is my favorite:
Make your universe two questions deep. By which I mean, make it so when someone asks you a question about why/how you created or portrayed the universe, character etc the way you did, you have a smart, cogent answer for it, consistent with the construction of the book. And then when they have a follow-up question, be able to answer that effectively, too. That will make 95% of your readers happy with your worldbuilding (the other 5% are SUPER nerds. Which is fine! For them, say “Oh, I’m glad you asked that. I’m totally going to address that in the sequel.” Try it! It works!).
Strangely enough, none of his seven tips is “Start a fuss with somebody in social media.”
(10) SECOND FIFTH. But as we just witnessed last week, that is part of the Castalia House playbook – which is evidently followed by Rule #2, “Stalk real bestselling writers on their book tours.”
Here’s a video of a jackass asking John Scalzi to sign Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie, and posing an insulting question about John’s Tor book deal. You’ll note the book in John’s hand has not been autographed by Vox Day. When is his book tour?
(11) HOT OFF THE PRESS. Liz Colter (writing as L. D. Colter) has a new book out this week – A Borrowed Hell.
Facing a sad, empty life, July always persevered by looking forward. An unhappy childhood, a litany of failed relationships, and even losing his job–none of it could stop him. But then the foreclosure notice arrives, and July is facing losing the one thing that keeps him grounded–his home.
With pain in his past and now in his future, July gives up and starts down the same road of self-destruction that the rest of his family had followed. It is only when he awakens in a hospital after a violent car accident that things change.
He starts to experience blackouts, which leave him in an alternate reality of empty desert and strange residents. It is a nightmarish world that somehow makes the real world seem that much better. Then he meets a woman that becomes a beacon of light, and his life starts to turn around.
But the blackouts continue, sending him to the alternate reality more often and for longer periods of time. Realizing that he may never escape, July asks the question he’d always been afraid to ask: How can he finally be free? The answer is one he’s not sure he can face.
I can’t resist a droll bio:
Due to a varied work background, Liz can boast a modest degree of knowledge about harnessing, hitching, and working draft horses, canoe expeditioning, and medicine. She’s also worked as a rollerskating waitress and knows more about concrete than you might suspect.
(12) HISTORY MINUS FDR. The LA Times says a bestselling author has a new trilogy on the way.
Charlaine Harris, whose Sookie Stackhouse books inspired the television series “True Blood,” will release the first book in a new trilogy next year.
Harris’ novel “Texoma” will be published in fall 2018 by Saga Press, a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Simon & Schuster, the publisher announced in a news release.
“Texoma” will be a work of speculative fiction that takes place in “an alternate history of a broken America weakened by the Great Depression and the assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
(13) DAMP YANKEES. In New York Magazine’s author interview “Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140: To Save the City, We Had to Drown It”, Robinson discusses why the book is surprisingly optimistic, how his thoughts on the global economy influenced 2140, and how he came up with the time frame for the book.
…[T]here were two goals going on that forced me to choose the date 2140, and those two goals cut against each other. I needed to put it far enough out in the future that I could claim a little bit of physical probability to the height of the sea-level rise of 50 feet, which is quite extreme. A lot of models have it at 15 feet, though some do say 50 feet. So I did have to go out like a 120 years from now.
Cutting against that future scenario, I wanted to talk about the financial situation we’re in, this moment of late capitalism where we can’t afford the changes we need to make in order to survive because it isn’t cost effective. These economic measures need to be revised so that we pay ourselves to do the work to survive as a civilization facing climate change.
I wanted a finance novel that was heavily based on what lessons we learned — or did not learn — from the crash of 2008 and 2009. All science-fiction novels are about the future and about the present at the same time.
(14) WEBCAST. Another Spider-Man trailer will be out tomorrow – here’s a seven-second teaser for it.
[Thanks to Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Chris Gregory, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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@Simon @ghostbird I seem to recall a mention of Charles Foster Kane in one of the USSA stories…which I found rather odd.
1) I’ve been spelling her name wrong all these years without noticing.
Best series: I did read the entire Wheel of Time between nomination and voting, no way I would do that for multiple series. However, my opinion of the series didn’t change between book 2 and book 12, and I think that’s generally true of most series. Reading the first two books should give someone enough information to vote by.
I adored HPatMoR and encountered it because it had been mentioned on File770.
@Paul isn’t Charles Foster Kane the VP who succeed to the presidency after Roosevelt’s assassination and is overthrown by Debs?
Teddy Bears Picnic is the story that goes to town on fictional characters, pretty much everyone in it comes from British sixties TV (save for Nigel Molesworth and the LRPG who are from boarding school novels) and Sergent Grimshaw from Carry On Sergent (as played by a pre Who William Hartnell).
I heard about Methods of Rationality somewhere—Making Light, perhaps—and it worked right away for me. I stuck with it all the way through from wherever it was when I binge-read the existing chapters. I dug the piercing gaze it brought to the furniture and assets of Rowling’s world.
Books reads:
Age of Myth – Michael Sullivan. I’ve liked his Riyria books because they feature just the kind of wise-cracking, carrying out capers kind of protagonists I like. This book doesn’t have those, its a much more traditional kind of epic fantasy. The characters are still great though. The plot is complex and I think Sullivan handles plot twists really well – they are not predictable but they fit seamlessly into the story when they happen because there has been enough foreshadowing.
Dark Water’s Embrace – Stephen Leigh. This is another book with great characters. Alas, the plot is not as well done, the ending was obvious a third of the way into the book. I also found the biological premise scientifically implausible – the author seems to agree since he throws in some spiritual mumbo-jumbo to support it. Overall, 3/5 for me.
End Game – Lindsay Buroker. A good ending to a fun, thrilling space adventure with vivid characters. I’m finding Buroker somewhat frustrating, this is app. her 20th book and it reads very similarly to her first. It’s good but she hasn’t improved in that time; her hero and heroine are the same characters in each series and the style of writing is the same. I wish she would try something different some time.
10) If they were attempting wit, they solidly made it halfway there.
(10) I think the lesson here is simply that one should never contract with any of Beale’s sycophants, as they seem not to know what contracts actually are.
@Paul In my favourite USSA story, Tom Joad, there’s reference to the Waltons… (and the final story is a road trip across a newly open to the world US by Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in a pink Rolls Royce).
@NickPheas And of course it’s Apocalypse Now as filmed by the man who made Peeping Tom. “I love the smell of linseed oil in the morning” as Molesworth napalms the jungle to clear a pitch for a quick game of cricket.
Of course it’s the same pillaging of popular culture that permeates Newman’s fiction. He does much the same all through the Anno Dracula books and there are pieces of it in his horror fiction like the Night Mayor. I guess that’s what happens when a polymath film critic writes stories…
@Andrew M …Kevin Standlee’s plan for eliminating editors.
That seems rather drastic. Surely eliminating the awards would be sufficient?
“When pixels last in the dooryard scroll’d”
(3) I’ll recommend the stories in this issue of Samovar – I hope it keeps up the quality.
LOL. “Some thought it harsh the day Kevin Standlee eliminated the editors, but we were all moved that he did it with an impeccable grasp of parliamentary procedure.”
Newman’s latest book is a mixture of The Phantom of the Opera and Charlie’s Angels. (Mostly unseen man uses beautiful women to solve mysteries.) One story does include Charles Foster Kane.
“The first thing we do, let’s scroll all the pixels”
@Nick That sounds right.
@Kyra: Space operatic. Beat me to it — although I’d say “space-operatic” as I like the way hyphens can show binding order.
@8: We already have several amorphous awards (2x Editor, Artist, Fanzine, Fanwriter); I’m not sure we need more. It’s hard enough to rank individual works; is a book of stories rated by its average or by a few gems? And for conscientious readers (cf @Mark) it would probably triple the reading load (or worse, given the size of some best-of-the-year anthologies…).
@Paul Weimer: this must be some new meaning of the word “bigly” that I haven’t previously been acquainted with.
@IanP: AAUUGGHH!
@Kyra: I don’t think the problem is as dire as you suggest; many people will have already read many chunks of a series ]good[ enough to be nominated. But it is an issue; I can see fixing it by making the cutoff in year N year N-2 instead of N-1, but that’s another burden on Hugo administrators.
I think a lot of the impetus for “Best Series” was the fact that it was very difficult for a book from a series to win an award (or even get nominated). Probably the best way to define an award to fix that would be “Best Novel in a Series.” That way you’re awarding a specific book, not the series as a whole, so no one needs to feel they have to read the whole series to make a judgment.
I can answer one of those questions.
There’s no requirement that the nominee be alive (e.g., the 1987 nomination for L. Ron Hubbard’s Black Genesis) so we know there’s no limit on age.
That actually occurred to me as the ongoing list of problems started up–looking at the description, it seemed likely that at least some of them were caused by Beale’s “preparations” for “enemy action”. But of course, the Dark Lord Gossage-Vardebedian prefers drama and plots to admissions of error…
bookworm1398, thanks for the review of End Game. It’s been rec’d to me recently, but I bounced pretty hard off of one of her books a few years ago.
—-
I would love a best anthology category. WDSF wasn’t eligible in any existing category, and the editor didn’t meet the requirements for Short Fiction Editor. There have been some other rather innovative collections and anthologies with no clear place on the ballot. Not in place of a category, mind. I’m fine with more categories. I know there are practical concerns about how long the ceremony is and how much the electorate has time to examine, but whatever.
@Chip Hitchcock: . It’s hard enough to rank individual works; is a book of stories rated by its average or by a few gems?
How is this not just as much of a problem for Best Series? Up above bookworm1398 suggested that one could judge the Hugo-worthiness of a series by reading just the first two books, which to me completely eliminates the point of the award. (I’m not suggesting that most other voters would agree with bookworm1398’s position.) A Best Anthology/Best Collection Hugo is no more amorphous than Best Series.
Mike: If you don’t mind the question, how did you find out about the Beale fan stunt at the Scalzi signing yesterday? That video was filmed only a day before you linked it here.
Would a Best Anthology award apply to reprint anthologies? It’s hard for me to see why you’d want to give an award to a reprint anthology. I’d think you’d have to insist on (say) at least 45,000 words of original SFF. (Equivalent of one issue of a traditional SF magazine.)
If you required the content be mostly original SFF, though, that would rule out most collections and omnibus editions. (The way I use the terms, a collection is an anthology where all the stories are by the same author, while an omnibus is a collection where all the stories are in the same series/universe.)
Ed G. on March 28, 2017 at 8:58 am said:
Quite.
Also, note that I already have to recuse myself from chairing this year’s meeting when 3SV comes up for its ratification debate. Therefore, I have no plans to introduce new legislation this year. I did draft a proposal in 2015 that would have eliminated the Best Editor Long Form, Best Editor Short Form, and Best Semiprozine categories and would have added Best Publisher, Best Professional Magazine (which would have included semiprozines), and Best Anthology or Collection.
I claim no ownership or custody of ideas. I’ll draft lots of proposals, including those I don’t plan to vote for, in order to try and make the debates focus on the substance rather than the technicalities.
Agreed. I was a nope when it came to reading the whole Wheel of Time when it was nominated for Best Novel. (Previously, I had already read the first five as they were published before giving up. I figured it was no different to giving up on a one-volume book a third of the way in.)
From Vox Day’s blog — he wrote a post gloating about it. You know the minions didn’t waste any time sending him the link.
Greg:
Reading the fourth book in a series without having read the previous is rarely doing the book justice, though. Part of the point with books in a series is that the author can build on the worldbuilding, characters, and overarching plot set out in previous books.
Incidentally, the fourth book of Kage Baker’s Company series, “The Graveyard Game” was the first one I read. It made me a fan of both her series & her other writing. There was sufficient context in that volume that it held together on its own, and enough tantalising hints to make me hunt out earlier & later volumes. It’s uncommon, but a fourth book can stand on its own *and* do the series justice.
Charles Foster Kane is also a supporting character in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, or rather the spinoff “Nemo” stories. But of course in those, all the characters are borrowed from other works of fiction, which I gather isn’t generally the case in USSA (which I really ought to read). The League world also features a Communist government in the US, but a short-lived one, led by Mike Thingmaker.
@Greg Hullender: Would a Best Anthology award apply to reprint anthologies?
If I were writing the proposal, then no; it would be Best Collection or Original Anthology.
I think this is defensible: a reprint anthology, no matter how good, is a reflection solely of the editor’s taste in curating a selection of stories; there is no collaboration between the writers and the editor(s) as in an original anthology. A collection, on the other hand, is a reflection of a body of work by a single writer, and a Best Collection Hugo is not all that different from a Best Series Hugo in that it would be a recognition of that body of work. In addition, even in a collection that is entirely reprints, placing the stories in conjunction with one another can allow the reader to see thematic concerns and connections between them that may not be apparent when they are read in isolation.
Greg:
Nine out of eighteen Best Novel winners since 2000 (eighteen because of the tie in 2010) have belonged to series. (Admittedly there’s been a bit of a run lately, but that just balances a run of non-series novels from 2007-10.)
There’s an actual reason why novels in long and closely-knit series tend not to be shortlisted; they rely on knowledge of the previous works, without which one will neither understand what is happening or care about it. This reason is not removed by changing the rules. Works in series which are either short or loosely structured do get shortlisted now.
As well as the problems that other have stated with ‘Best Novel in a Series’, it would, if standard Hugo procedure were followed, make novels in a series ineligible for Best Novel. Do we really want to do that?
Kevin:
I had an idea that you were holding your proposal over until the slating crisis had been resolved. It may be a bit early to say that it has been now, but next year would look a good time, if nothing too disturbing happens between now and then.
I do think that, as different categories impact on one another, changes should be approached in a comprehensive way, along the lines you have set out. To introduce Best Anthology while changing nothing else does not seem a good plan, since anthologies currently qualify their editor for BESF. (And if that were stopped, BESF would in effect become Best Magazine, in which case it would make more sense and be more perspicuous to call it that.)
It’s starting to get to the point where when I see yet another silly generalization about “white dudes,” “white males,” etc., etc., I cringe. It’s creeping into the category “things assholes I don’t want to deal with say,” along with SJW, cuck, libtard, and on and on and on. I’d like to see a return to the more honest and exciting term, “white devil.”
Just finished reading: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A long read – took me three weeks total. Highly recommended.
Just started: Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher. I need something to give me a little boost in my faith in humanity after the previous book. This is just the thing.
@Andrew M: Agreed. I would totally have supported Kevin’s proposal.
It should probably be noted that it’s only three out of eighteen for series books other than the first book in the series (and arguably two, since one of those three is a prequel.) The last mid-series book to win was more than a decade ago, with 2004’s Paladin of Souls, which does fairly well as a stand-alone. The last truly enmeshed-in-a-series book to win was probably Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2001.
Kyra: Doesn’t Blackout/All Clear count as a mid-series book? (Or end-of-series, if she doesn’t write any more.) Though that also works as a stand-alone.
But like I say, reasons. It’s typically the first book of the series which introduces the big ideas, which gives it more of a boost; and after that the later books will appeal only to people who are already locked in. (Though the remainder of the Ancillary series were shortlisted, and there’s a fair chance The Obelisk Gate will be this year. They just have less power to win.) In any case, Hugo voters are not neglecting series.
I get the sense that some of impetus for the Series Hugo comes from the feeling that Hugo voters are Wrongfans having Wrongfun: they have a duty to represent the market, and they are failing to do so. But – even supposing that they have such a duty – the facts don’t really bear that out; there are good reasons for their choices. Later works in series sell well because people are already fans of the series and want to see what happens next; they aren’t good things to recommend to new readers, which is a large part of the purpose of awards.
(7) I’ve read eight of them. Clearly need to read more of them.
I read a metric ton of SFF and on average there are generally about three Best Novel nominees that I have not read by the time they make the shortlist. It is true that series have been around longer so people will have had more time to check them out, but nonetheless, far from everyone has taken a look even at every good and/or popular thing.
Fair enough; I’d forgotten that was the case.
Joe H said “For Best Series, if it sticks around, my hope is that when Cherryh publishes her Alliance Rising, that’ll be enough to give the title to her Union/Alliance books.”
Agreed, I’m hoping Cherryh (and Fancher) finish Alliance Rising this year so the A/U series will be eligible for San Jose. Assuming the Best Series category is voted in.
(7) I know I have six on my shelves right now, maybe more that I don’t recognize by name. I am a fan(tom) of the Space Opera
Looking at the list of Best Novel winners, if I exclude first novels in a series and exclude novels that are set in the same universe but don’t have any continuity to speak of, then in the past 25 years we have “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 2001, “Forever Peace” in 1998, “Blue Mars” in 1997, “Mirror Dance” in 1995, and “Green Mars” in 1993.
It looks as though it used to be pretty common for a middle book of a series to get an award, but for the past fifteen years, that has quit being the case.
I believe “Forever Peace” shouldn’t count either under that exclusion; it’s not actually really a sequel to “The Forever War”, oddly enough.
Blue Mars and Green Mars seem to have been very unusual in being later books of a tightly structured series. (Bujold, though she has continuity, takes care to make her books comprehensible in themselves. But ff you count the Vorkosigan books you should also count Paladin of Souls, which is a fairly direct sequel to The Curse of Chalion, though written so it can be read as self-contained.)
Going back further, we have Speaker for the Dead, which, though a sequel to Ender’s Game, is a very different book, and Foundation’s Edge, clearly a special case. If anything, I think more series fiction wins now than in the olden days, which makes sense in the light of changes in the market.
I think looking only at winners is limiting your data; if you look at finalists as well then you see a reasonable level of mid-series books, albeit they tend to be from series whose earlier books had placed as well.
However, I suspect the proponents of best series would say that recognition for series novels that can stand alone to some extent and therefore sometimes get nominated isn’t the point; it’s recognition for works where the series is itself an achievement that overshadows any individual work.
I don’t disagree with this in principle, it’s just I’m currently unconvinced that the current idea for best series will be practical. I do support the idea of this year’s special award, as it will test our reactions to the amount of reading and how to judge the finalists before the best series proposal gets voted on again.
I agree with Kyra’s earlier comments; when we will read the stuff is a problem. My memory is – though I can’t now trace the source – that the proposers were asked about this at the Business Meeting, and replied that there’s no obligation to vote in every category. But that assumes someone will be qualified to vote, which isn’t obvious. (This will depend to some extent on what sort of series get shortlisted – ones that have cross-group appeal, or ones that have a lot of devoted fans but not so much following outside their fanbase.)
I’m worried that a number of developments happening at once may tend to undermine the idea of the Hugos as a consideration and comparison of works, and lead to them becoming more of a process in which people vote for what they already know and like. As well as the Series Hugo we have the YA not-Hugo increasing the amount we have to read, and also 5/6 doing the same. This may lead to the whole thing becoming more like the Dragons (well, like the Dragons would be if they worked properly). But the Hugos have traditionally tried to be something different.
BGrandrath on March 28, 2017 at 2:46 pm said:
I believe they expect it to be published next year – it takes about a year after they turn it in for it to be published, and it’s about 3/4 done. Convergence comes out next week.
5) I think I lack the gene to enjoy HPatMoR. I found the main character reminded me irritatingly of some rationalists I know, and the writing I found lackluster.
Honestly, as far as entertainment value goes, I preferred Hermione Granger and the Perfectly Reasonable Explanation.
@kathodus – well said.
7) Of that list, I have two and have read but didn’t keep a third.
10) Well, that’s just trashy. But then, that’s nothing new.
12) Hmmm, could be interesting. On a related topic, is anyone else looking forward to the “Midnight, Texas” series premiering this summer? Based on the trailer, while they’ve made some changes, it’ll be a lot closer to the books than Bones ever was to its source material.
@ rcade: I feel like Scalzi needs a better class of nemesis.
Heh. Got that in one.
@ HRJ: I think I got about 3 chapters in before succumbing to terminal boredom. Eh bien, it was neither the first nor the last time I’ve been unable to see what all the fuss was about.
@ Standback: I agree that it would be nice to see some of the show-stopper fics get nominated; I can think of 2 or 3 that I’d be more than happy to put on my list. But I think you start getting into a very grey area there, and I’m not sure I’d want to put that kind of load on the administrators.
@ Mark: Also, I’m willing to bet this doesn’t even make the top ten of weirdest things brought to the signing table.
*snerk* Not taking that bet.
Why on earth would someone who dislikes Scalzi enough to film and post a ‘gotcha’ video want to sit through an hour+ reading / performance / Q&A session surrounded by his fans? I’d rather eat my own liver than sit through a similar session with VD and his ilk.
But would that qualify for a Prometheus Award?