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Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom
Fans are welcome to share their Hugo nominating ballots in the comments.
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I feel like my short fiction picks this year are, with a couple of exceptions, lonely shouts out into the void.
But I had a heck of a good time finding them all.
—-
Novel:
– Too Like The Lightning; Ada Palmer; Tor
– The Fireman; Joe Hill; William Morrow
Novella:
– The Dunsmuir Horror; David Gerrold; Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction
– Brushwork; Aliya Whiteley; Giganotosaurus
– The Vanishing Kind; Lavie Tidhar; The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction
Novelette:
– Angel, Monster, Man; Sam J. Miller; Nightmare
– Foxfire, Foxfire; Yoon Ha Lee; Beneath Ceaseless Skies
– Touring With The Alien; Carolyn Ives Gilman; Clarkesworld
– The Stone War; Ted Kosmatka; Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Short Story:
– Terminal; Lavie Tidhar; Tor.Com
– Three Paintings; James Van Pelt; Asimov’s
– How High Your Gods Can Count; Tegan Moore; Strange Horizons
– A Fine Balance; Charlotte Ashley; Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction
– Touch Me All Over; Betsy James; Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction
Related Work:
– Speculative Blackness; André M. Carrington; University of Minnesota Press
– Octavia E. Butler; Gerry Canavan; University of Illinois Press
– Words are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books; Ursula K. Le Guin; Small Beer Press
– Jo Walton Seminar; Writers of Crooked Timber; http://crookedtimber.org/category/jo-walton-seminar/
Fancast:
– Cabbages and Kings; https://www.cabbagesandkings.audio/
– Storyological; http://www.storyological.com/
Fan Writer:
– Abigail Nussbaum
– Charles Payseur
New Writer:
– Ada Palmer; “Too Like The Lightning” (novel)
– Charlotte Ashley; “A Fine Balance” (F&SF, Dec 2016)
Oo, another nomination for the Crooked Timber Walton seminar!
Is anyone interested in tabulating this? Last year Nicholas Whyte did so, but for obvious reasons he’s not available this year.
@Andrew M
I’m doing it for Novella, Novelette, and Short Story. I’ll share the result, if people are interested.
Danny Sichel: my reading was that “Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe” was — based on word count — a short novel, not a long novella.
It was about 36,000 words — well under the 40,000 threshhold for novel.
I nominated mainly in short fiction categories this year:
Novella:
– Runtime; S.B. Divya; Tor
– The Ballad of Black Tom; Victor LaValle; Tor
– A Taste of Honey; Kai Ashante Wilson; Tor
Novelette:
– Polyglossia; Tamara Vardomskaya; GigaNotoSaurus
– The Dancer on the Stairs; Sarah Tolmie; Strange Horizons
– A Dead Djinn in Cairo; P. Djeli Clark; Tor
– Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea; Sarah Pinsker;
Lightspeed
Short Story:
– And Then One Day the World was Full of Voices; Margaret Ronald;
Clarkesworld
– Touch Me All Over; Betsy James; F&SF
– Life in Stone, Glass and Plastic; Jose Pablo Iriarte; Strange
Horizons
– Between Dragons and Their Wrath; An Owomoyela & Rachel Swirsky;
Clarkesworld
– Laws of Night and Silk; Seth Dickinson; Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Dramatic Long:
– Hidden Figures; Fox 2000 Pictures
Editor Short:
– Scott H. Andrews
– Neil Clarke
– Niall Harrison
– Rashida Smith
Semiprozine:
– Beneath Ceaseless Skies
– Clarkesworld
– Strange Horizons
– GigaNotoSaurus
– Shimmer
New Writer:
– Tamara Vardomskaya; Polyglossia
– Naru Dames Sundar; Broken-Winged Love
– Ekari Mbvundula; Montague’s Last
– Wole Talabi; Regression Test
BTW, @Ken Richards, thank you very much.
I’ll share these because I did such extensive reading in both this year:
(53 novels and 33 novellas)
Novel:
– Behind the Throne; K. B. Wagers
– A Closed and Common Orbit; Becky Chambers
– Impersonations; Walter Jon Williams
– The Invisible Library; Genevieve Cogman
– City of Blades; Robert Jackson Bennett
Novella:
– Cold-Forged Flame; Marie Brennan
– Every Heart a Doorway; Seanan McGuire
– Runtime; S. B. Divya
– The Arrival of Missives; Aliya Whiteley
– The Coward’s Option; Adam-Troy Castro
And Doctor Science, you’re not alone. I found AtBitS unreadable. You can read my mini-review of it here, but the money quote is “at 65 pages I’m still thinking “really? REALLY??? This is what people are raving about???”
I suppose that if it makes the ballot I will have to give it another try. I am not looking forward to it.
@lurkertype
I think she’d get on well with you, too.
@Andrew M:
I’d just copied the first page of comments ready to make a start on tallying them up about a minute before reading this! It’s almost midnight here as I write, so it’ll probably be tomorrow before I make a start, but I should be doing everything – although I’ll happily leave the short fiction to Greg. To whom, incidentally, I owe my thanks for being able to make any sort of decent fist at nominating in those categories; RSR ‘s long list of recommendations was very useful.
@Peter J
Very glad you liked it!
Eric is the one who produces those big lists that integrate results from different reviewers, so I’ll tell him thanks on your behalf.
Greg and Peter J — a tabulation would be wonderful!
I honestly spent the run-up in a panic over oh-god-I-haven’t-read-watched-seen-enough-if-only-2016-had-sucked-less *rends clothing*, so I’m going to very selectively share a piece of my short story list that I don’t expect to make it onto the final ballot, because fanfiction:
Empty Graves by Unpretty
A time travel Martha Kent backstory, where her fierce devotion to the young Clark leads to some violence and a lot of good parenting.
@Meredith, thank you for reminding me of that story! It’s so wonderful. 🙂
I’m sure I got some of them wrong, but, well, here’s mine:-
Novel:
– Ninefox Gambit; Yoon Ha Lee; Solaris
– City of Blades; Robert Jackson Bennett; Broadway Books
– The Obelisk Gate; N.K. Jemisin; Orbit
– The Raven and the Reindeer; T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon); Red
Wombat Tea Co.
– Rosewater; Tade Thompson; Apex Publishing Co.
Novella:
– Hammers on Bone; Cassandra Khaw; Tor.com
– The Ballad of Black Tom; Victor LaValle; Tor.com
– The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe; Kij Johnson; Tor.com
– The Burning Light; Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler; Tor.com
– This Census-Taker; China Mieville; Picador
Novelette:
– The Apologists; Tade Thompson; Interzone 266
– You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay; Alyssa Wong; Uncanny 10
– Blood Grains Speak Through Memories; Jason Sanford; Beneath
Ceaseless Skies 195
– The Future is Blue; Catherynne M. Valente; Drowned Worlds (2016
anthology)
– Red in Tooth and Cog; Cat Rambo; Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, March/April 2016
Short Story:
– Rock, Paper, Incisors; David Cleden; Interzone 267
– Laws of Night and Silk; Seth Dickinson; Beneath Ceaseless Skies 200
– Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies; Brooke Bolander; Uncanny Magazine 13
– Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left; Fran Wilde; Shimmer 9/16
– A Non-Hero’s Guide to the Road of Monsters; A. T. Greenblatt;
Mothership Zeta 3
Related Work:
– Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK 1930-1980; Rob Hansen;
Ansible Editions
– Writing Women Characters into Epic Fantasy without Quotas; Kate
Elliott; Tor.com
– The Geek Feminist Revolution; Kameron Hurley; Tor
– Hidden Figures; Theodore Melfi (dir.); 20th Century Fox
– Words Are My Matter: Writing about Life and Books 2000-2016;
Ursula
K. LeGuin; Small Beer Press
Graphic Story:
– Stand Still, Stay Silent vol. 2; Minna Sundberg; Online at
http://www.sssscomic.com
– Realm of the Damned: Tenebris Deos; Alec Worley, art by Simon
“Pye”
Parr; Werewolf Press
– Mooncop; Tom Gauld; Drawn & Quarterly
– Monstress vol.1; Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda; Image Comics
– Black Panther: A Nation under our Feet vol. 1; Ta-Nehisi Coates,
art by Brian Stelfreeze; Marvel Comics
Dramatic Long:
– Arrival; Paramount
– Rogue One; Disney
– Star Trek Beyond; Paramount
– Kubo and the Two Strings; Focus Features
– Doctor Strange; Marvel Studios
Dramatic Short:
– The Return of Doctor Mysterio; Doctor Who; BBC
– Playtest; Black Mirror; Netflix
– The Winds of Winter; Game of Thrones; HBO
– Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers; Stranger Things; Netflix
– Nightvisiting; Class; BBC
Editor Long:
– Devi Pillai
– Patrick Nielsen Hayden
– Jonathan Oliver
– Miriam Weinberg
– Liz Gorinsky
Editor Short:
– John Gregory Betancourt
– Jonathan Strahan
– David Steffen
– Ellen Datlow
– Andy Cox
Pro Artist:
– Vincent Sammy; Covers for Interzone issues 263-267
– Anxo Amarelle; Cover for After Atlas
– Jeffrey Alan Love; Cover for Hammers on Bone
– Galen Dara; Covers for Lightspeed 68, Uncanny 10
– Fred Gambino; Cover for Asimov’s 03/16
Semiprozine:
– Interzone
– Uncanny Magazine
– Strange Horizons
– Giganotosaurus
– Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Fanzine:
– File 770
– The Bias
– James Davis Nicoll Reviews
– Galactic Journey
– Ansible
Fancast:
– The Coode Street Podcast;
– The Skiffy and Fanty Show;
– Tea and Jeopardy;
– Re:View;
– Verity!;
Fan Writer:
– Alexandra Erin;
– Ursula Vernon;
– Camestros Felapton;
– Gideon Marcus;
– Mike Glyer;
Fan Artist:
– Teddy Harvia; Cartoons in Opuntia (issue 357 and others)
– A. B. Kynock; Illustrations for The Reluctant Famulus 113
– Brad Foster; Illustrations for BCSFAZine (e.g. #517, June 2016)
– Harry Bell; Cover for Beam #10 (August 2016)
– Taral Wayne; Broken Toys passim
Series:
– Obsidian Heart; Mark Morris; The Wraiths of War; Titan Books
– Polity; Neal Asher; War Factory; Pan
– Mistborn; Brandon Sanderson; The Bands of Mourning; Orbit
– Craft; Max Gladstone; Four Roads Cross; Tor
– Dream Archipelago; Christopher Priest; The Gradual; Gollancz
New Writer:
– Jo Zebedee; Inish Carraig
– Sylvain Neuvel; Sleeping Giants
– Scott Hawkins; The Library at Mount Char
– Laurie Penny; Everything Belongs to the Future
– Benjamin C. Kinney; “The First Confirmed Case of Non-Corporeal
Recursion: Patient Anita R” (Strange Horizons, 6 June 2016)
(edited ’cause I c&p’ed direct from the confirmation email and left in way too many links.)
Here’s mine:
Best Novel:
-Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer
-Obelisk Gate, NK Jemisin
-City of Blades, Robert Jackson
-Infomocracy , Malka Older
-Nine Fox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
Best Novella
-A Taste of Honey, Kai Ashante Wilson
-The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
-The Arrival of Missives, Aliya Whiteley
-Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire
-The Lost Child of Lychford, Paul Cornell
Best Novelette
-You’ll Surely Drown Here if You Stay, Alyssa Wong
-The Great Detective, Delia Sherman
-The Art of Space, Nina Allen
-The Jewel and Her Lapidary, Fran Wilde
-Finnegan’s Field, Angela Slatter
Best Short Story
-Red in Tooth and Cog, Cat Rambo
-The High Lonesome Frontier, Rebecca Campbell
-A Good Home, Karen Lowachee
-Seven Birthdays, Ken Liu
Terminal, Lavie Tidhar
Best Related Work
-Making Conversation, Teresa Nielsen Hayden
-The View From the Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman
-The Geek Feminist Revolution, Kameron Hurley
-Words Are My Matter, Ursula K LeGuin
-Time Travel: A History, James Gleick
Best Series:
-Remembrace of Earth’s Past, Cixin Liu
-Thessaly, Jo Walton
-Diving Universe, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
-Fairyland, Catherynne M Valente
-Fractured Europe, Dave Hutchinson
Campbell Award:
-Ada Palmer
-K.B. Wagers
-Malka Older
-Iona Sharma
-Laurie Penny
I’ll delurk for a change and post mine.
Best Novel
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
Who Killed Sherlock Holmes by Paul Cornell
The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemison
Best Novella
Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi
Best Novelette
Freedom is Space for the Spirit by Glen Hirshberg
Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Fifty Shades of Grays by Steven Barnes
Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man by Suzanne Palmer
The Green Man Cometh by Rich Larson
Short Story
Charlotte Incorporated by Rachael K. Jones
Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands by Seanan McGuire
A Good Home by Karin Lowachee
The Mutants Men Don’t See by James Alan Gardner
Don’t You Worry, You Aliens by Paul Cornell
Fancast
The Cornell Collective
Tea and Jeopardy
Verity
Best Series
Shadow Police by Paul Cornell, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?
Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Best Dramatic Work, Long
Arrival
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Best Dramatic Work, Short
“6,741”, Person of Interest
“return 0”, Person of Interest
“eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z”, Mr Robot
“The Mitigation of Competition”, Orphan Black
Marketing. As he put it, “It was because I was sort of jumping genre. My publisher wanted retailers and readers to approach it with an open mind.”
…which says to me that his previous urban fantasy books had established a sales pattern that his publisher thought GIFTS could break out from, so they wanted to divorce it from the previous sales records and present it as literary horror rather than category UF.
Similarly, Joanne Harris’s more literary and crime stuff is published as Joanne Harris, but her fantasy writing, as of THE GOSPEL OF LOKI, is being published as by Joanne M. Harris. This means either that her fantasy novels are selling markedly better than the other books or markedly worse (but in any case, markedly different), and they don’t want the one set of books ordered based on the sales patterns of the other set.
It doesn’t fool anyone but computers, but that’s all it’s intended to do.
And just as Harris was back to her usual name with DIFFERENT CLASS, it looks like Carey will be Mike again when he does the next Felix Castor book, and is “Adam Blake” on his Leo Tillman/Heather Kennedy novels. It’s branding.
http://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-0765391414/
Dream Quest of Vellit Boe
2016-08-16
Kij Johnson
Wordcount: 54,560 words
??
@Danny that website is just taking the “number of pages” data from Amazon and multiplying it by 310, when in fact the number of words on a page varies considerably depending on all sorts of page layout decisions. I’m guessing that JJ has obtained the number directly (or gone to another website which has), using an ebook programme like Calibre, which is free and highly useful for management of DRM-free books like those from Tor.com.
Danny Sichel: Dream Quest of Vellit Boe
Wordcount: 54,560 words
That site appears to use number of pages to estimate wordcount. It claims “The Jewel and Her Lapidary”, which we know to be 16,880 words, as being 29,760 words.
I would recommend against using that site for the wordcount of anything. It looks to me to be a site set up to obtain Amazon referrer commissions by pretending to know word count so as to draw clicks from readers.
“The Shutdown” by Marge Simon.
Delurking. I unfortunately haven’t had a chance to read much longer fiction last year, so my ballot’s pretty bare, but here’s what I nominated:
Novelette:
– “Polyglossia”; Tamara Vardomskaya; GigaNotoSaurus
– “Angel, Monster, Man”; Sam J. Miller; Nightmare Magazine
– “Touring With the Alien”; Carolyn Ives Gilman; Clarkesworld
– “Das Steingeschöpf”; G. V. Anderson; Strange Horizons
– “The Dancer on the Stairs”; Sarah Tolmie; Two Travelers
(I found “Angel, Monster, Man” more effective both overall and in its use of its sf/f element than “Things With Beards”)
Short Story:
– “Applied Cenotaphics in the Long, Long Longitudes”; Vanjra
Chandrasekera; Strange Horizons
– “Laws of Night and Silk”; Seth Dickinson; Beneath Ceaseless Skies
– “Between Dragons and Their Wrath”; An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky;
Clarkesworld
– “How to Piss Off a Failed Super Soldier”; John Chu; Book Smugglers
Related Work:
– Writing Women Characters in Epic Fantasy Without Quotas; Kate
Elliott; tor.com
Graphic Story:
– Homestuck; Andrew Hussie; mspaintadventures.com
– The Lady of the Shard; Gigi D. G.; https://gigidigi.itch.io/lady
(To be perfectly frank, the only reason I even have a ballot this year is because I wanted to nominate Homestuck)
Dramatic Long:
– Arrival
Dramatic Short:
– Weirdmageddon Parts 1, 2, and 3; Gravity Falls
– Splendor and Misery; clipping
– Mindful Education; Steven Universe
– Hyper Reality; Keiichi Matsuda
Fancast:
– Folding Ideas;
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNtlmLB73-7gtlBz00XOQQ/featured
(He’s more about video games and movie-making, but I like it)
Fan Writer:
– Dr. Chuck Tingle
– Tyrant Is Terror; Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction
@Mark & @Andrew M: Yay, someone else who likes “Alice Grove”! I almost nominated it; it was one of my several runners-up for Graphic Story (I didn’t make a formal list of runners-up).
@Various: I wish I’d read “The Lost Child of Lychford” & “A Taste of Honey” in time. I foolishly waited, hoping for an audiobook. Well, I’ll read them at some point.
@microtherion: “From the other responses here, I’m pleased to see that Lovecraft Country and Necessity seem to have a decent chance of ending on the final ballot,”
I’m not sure this blog’s commenters are a representative sample of Hugo voters. 😉
@Khitty Hawk: Thanks for mentioning that John Chu story; I’ll check it out. I like his work.
I swear I’m not Adam Roberts, he’s just a new favourite. ha
Novel:
– Children of Earth and Sky; Guy Gavriel Kay; Viking
– Revenger; Alastair Reynolds
– Too Like the Lightning; Ada Palmer
Novella:
– The Last Days of New Paris; China Mieville; Del Rey
– Every Heart a Doorway; Seanan Mcguire; Macmillan CA
– Bethany; Adam Roberts
Novelette:
– You’ll Surely Drown Here If you Stay; Alyssa Wong; Uncanny
– The Venus Effect; Joseph Allen Hill; Lightspeed
Short Story:
– A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers; Alyssa Wong;
Tor.com
– Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies; Brooke Bolander; Uncanny
Related Work:
– Palgrave History of Science Fiction; Adam Roberts
– Troll of the Rabid Puppies; Chuck Tingle; Twitter
Graphic Story:
– Saga Vol 6; Brian Vaughan; Image Comics
Dramatic Long:
– Game Of Thrones Season Six; HBO
– Deadpool
– Arrival
– Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; Disney
– Stranger Things Season One; Netflix
Editor Short:
– Ann Vandermeer
Semiprozine:
– Strange Horizons
Fanzine:
– Chaos Horizon
Fan Writer:
– Abigail Nussbaum
– James Nicoll
– Adam Roberts
Series:
– Foreigner Series; C J Cherryh; Visitor
– Thessaly; Jo Walton; Necessity; Tor
– Mistborn; Brandon Sanderson; The Bands of Mourning
– Fractured Europe; Dave Hutchinson; Europe in Winter; Solaris
New Writer:
– Joseph Allen Hill;
– Jonathan Edelstein;
Kendall: I wish I’d read “The Lost Child of Lychford” & “A Taste of Honey” in time.
I did not feel that “Lost Child” was as good as “Witches” — but there were quite a few Filers who disagreed with me. review here
And I suspect that “A Taste of Honey” struggled to get enough popular support to make the ballot, because it’s a lot more about romance and a lot less about speculative fiction. review here
@JJ: Thanks, I remember your reviews (now that I check them again, at least; my memory’s not fantastic). Re. “A Taste of Honey,” I read some M/M romance, so this may be right up the part of my alley. But, good to know going in, yes.
BTW thanks in advance to @Greg H & @Peter J for their tallying work; I look forward to it. A ballot was just posted, so you may want to give it another day or so before tallying (or not; I can’t personally predict when new ballot comments will peter out).
@Arifel
What IS the recommended method for determining word counts? I struggled mightily with this in the short fiction categories.
Skipped most categories. For pro artist, only Victo Ngai (there’s no justice if she doesn’t make the ballot) and perpetual favorites Cris McGrath and Richard Anderson. For Campbell, some short story writers who struck me as being a bit original: Margaret Killjoy (definitely deserves it), Nin Harris, Benjamin C. Kinney, Tamara Vardomskaya.
Novella
Every Heart a Doorway; Seanan McGuire
This Census-Taker, China Miéville
The Charge and the Storm, An Owomoyela
Novelette:
Foxfire, Foxfire; Yoon Ha Lee; (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Elves of Antarctica; Paul McAuley (Drowned Worlds)
Blood Grains Speak Through Memories; Jason Sanford (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Spinning Silver; Naomi Novik; (The Starlit Wood)
Is Your Blood as Red as This? Helen Oyeyemi (What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours)
Short Story:
Those Who Leave; Michael Choi (Upside Down)
The High Lonesome Frontier; Rebecca Campbell (Tor.com)
Screamers; Tochi Onyebuchi (Omenana)
The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles: Rachael K. Jones (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Seasons of Glass and Iron; Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood)
Editor Short:
Jennifer Lyn Parsons [Luna Station Quarterly]
Dominik Parisien [The Starlit Wood, Clockwork Canada]
C. C. Finlay [F&SF]
Jaym Gates [Upside Down, Genius Loci]
Rose Lemberg [An Alphabet of Embers]
Semiprozine:
Luna Station Quarterly
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Strange Horizons
Lackington’s
Uncanny
Fan Writer
Nina Allen
Heather Rose Jones
Charles Payseur
Vajra Chandrasekera
James Davis Nicholls
microtherion: What IS the recommended method for determining word counts? I struggled mightily with this in the short fiction categories.
Using the actual word count. Anything posted online can be easily copied-and-pasted into a word-processing program for a word count. And as Arifel said, Calibre can be used to do word counts on non-publicly-published e-books. I suspect that’s where Rocket Stack Rank gets their wordcounts. You can always check to see if they have listed the piece for which you need a wordcount.
I also got some wordcounts from authors and editors by messaging them on Facebook.
Vasha, just a note for next year: As far as I have been able to tell, Dominik Parisien is not yet eligible for Editor Short Form, as he has thus far only 2 anthologies under his belt (as opposed to the requisite 4).
@microtherion
I have a chrome extension called “Word Count Tool” (from here) that’ll give you the word count of any highlighted block of text with a right-click.
Marketing. As he put it, “It was because I was sort of jumping genre. My publisher wanted retailers and readers to approach it with an open mind.”
…which says to me that his previous urban fantasy books had established a sales pattern that his publisher thought GIFTS could break out from, so they wanted to divorce it from the previous sales records and present it as literary horror rather than category UF.
That makes more sense! Fellside didn’t feel different enough from the Felix Castor novels for me to think that a different name was warranted, but I haven’t actually read The Girl With All The Gifts yet. (The copy at my local library seems to have gone missing, alas.) Marketing categories often bewilder me, but then, I am not in the business of selling books to booksellers.
::sigh:: predictably, I’m now noticing a few things I wanted on my ballot and didn’t put there.
Not too many. But every little counts/hurts.
Novel:
– Lovecraft Country; Matt Ruff; Harper
– Underground Airlines; Ben Winters; Mulholland Books
– All the Birds in the Sky; Charlie Jane Anders; Tor
– The Hike; Drew Magary; Viking
– Crosstalk; Connie WIllis; Del Rey
Novella:
– This Census Taker; China Miéville; Subterranean
– The Last Days of New Paris; China Miéville; Del Rey
– Every Heart a Doorway; Seanan McGuire; Tor
Series:
– The Laundry Files; Charles Stross; The Nightmare Stacks; Ace
– The Young Wizards; Diane Duane; Games Wizards Play; HMH Books for
Young Readers
– Wild Cards; George R. R. Martin; High Stakes; Tor
– Tufa Novels; Alex Bledsoe; Chapel of Ease; Tor
– Sandman Slim; Richard Kadrey; The Perdition Score; Harper Voyager
For everyone who loved Ninefox Gambit, is there a point at which the book draws you in? I picked it up twice, based on the rave reviews and a fondness for hard sf, and put it back down both times. I usually give a book at least 40-50 pages, but reading this was such a chore that I didn’t even give it that much.
@Valoise
Well, you’re not alone, a fair few people have said they couldn’t get into it. I found it really heavy going until I sort of recalibrated my expectations and stopped trying to puzzle out the science. (It’s much better to think about the system once you’ve finished the book and have more of the clues).
There are a couple of prequel short stories available: The Battle of Candle Arc and Extracurricular Activities. It might be worth sampling one of those to decide if you want to persist.
After the Hugo finalists are announced, any interest in a File 770 Shadow Hugo, or even just a File 770 Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence? Anyone could make a case for their favorite work in each category that didn’t make the cut and we could vote this summer.
Novella:
– The Arrival of Missives; Aliya Whitely
– The Devil You Know; K. J. Parker
– The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe; Kij Johnson
– The Last Days of New Paris; China Mieville
– This Census-Taker; China Mieville
Novelette:
– Blood Grains Speak Through Memories; Jason Sanford
– The Visitor from Taured; Ian R. MacLeod
– I Married a Monster from Outer Space; Dale Bailey
– The Dancer on the Stairs; Sarah Tolmie
– The Art of Space Travel; Nina Allan
Short Story:
– Things with Beards; Sam J. Miler
– Das Steingeschöpf; G. V. Anderson
– Applied Cenotaphics in the Long, Long Longitudes; Vajra
Chandrasekera
– Room Formed of Neurons and Sex; Ferrett Steinmetz
– Terminal; Lavie Tidhar
Dramatic Long:
– Daredevil Season 2
– The Expanse Season 1
– The Man in the High Castle Season 2
Dramatic Short:
– Bad Jubies; Adventure Time
– Hall of Egress; Adventure Time
– Crossover; Adventure Time
– Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls; Gravity Falls
Editor Short:
– Scott Andrews, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
– Niall Harrison, Strange Horizons
– Sheila Williams, Asimov’s
– C. C. Finlay, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
– Mike Allen, Clockwork Phoenix 5
Semiprozine:
– Beneath Ceaseless Skies
– Strange Horizons
– New York Review of Science Fiction
– Mothership Zeta
– Uncanny
Fanzine:
– Rocket Stack Rank – rocketstackrank.com
– Galactic Journey – galacticjourney.org
– Science Fiction Ruminations –
sciencefictionruminations.wordpress.com
– More Words, Deeper Hole – james-nicoll.livejournal.com
– SF Commentary – efanzines.com/SFC/SFC93L.pdf
Series:
– Malazan Empire; Steven Erikson
– Dream Archipelago; Christopher Priest
– Dune; Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson
– Europe; Dave Hutchinson
– Myth Adventures; Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye
New Writer:
– G. V. Anderson
– Ryan W. Norris
– Benjamin C. Kinney
– Nathan Hillstrom
– Arkady Martine
@Valoise — “For everyone who loved Ninefox Gambit, is there a point at which the book draws you in?”
It drew me in immediately.
I think it takes a certain mindset. In this book, you’re supposed to be confused. In this book confusion is a feature, not a bug. So if confusion intrigues you, you are likely to appreciate the book. But if confusion simply frustrates you, you may throw it across the room.
Regarding M.R. Carey: my copy of The Girl with all the Gifts claims that M.R Carey is the pseudonym of a well known comic writer, which confused me intensely at first: i wouldn’t call ‘M.R. Carey’ for ‘Mike Carey’ a pseudonym.
I remember someone at Loncon claiming that no one now could get away with a double identity as transparent as Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, but clearly this is not so. (See also Jenny Colgan, J.T. Colgan and Jenny T. Colgan.)
@Vasha! It’s great to see you again! (Hug)
@Kendall
Eric is going to format the result the same way RSR does other lists, so it’ll be easy to compare the results with other reviewers, big anthologies, reader’s-recommended lists, etc. It’ll be interesting to see.
My plan is to wait until we’ve gone 24 hours without a new ballot.
@microtherion
SFWA standardizes on the word-count function provided by Microsoft Word. Rocket Stack Rank uses the count provided by the publisher, where possible. Lacking that, we used to use the count provided by Kindle, but that number is so wrong that we’ve switched to counting them the hard way. Where possible, we open them in Calibre and paste them into MS Word. It’s also possible to ask the editor for a DRM-free copy for review purposes.
If you count words per page and then count pages, you can get a rough estimate that’s almost always with 20% of the right answer. That’s probably where the 20% number in the Hugo rules comes from. For most stories, that’s probably close enough. For the rest, it’s a struggle.
@Valoise
Mark is right. Read “The Battle of Candle Arc” and then start Ninefox Gambit over. I had bounced off it as well (and I gave it three whole chapters), but after reading “The Battle of Candle Arc” (and starting the book over), I loved it.
Also, “The Battle of Candle Arc” is an excellent story in its own right.
Coming out of lurking to post the fiction portions of my ballot. Novelette and Short Story were particularly hard for me to narrow down to just 5 this year. And there are about 4 or 5 novels that I didn’t put on my ballot that I would be perfectly happy to see as finalists.
Novel:
– Kingfisher ; Patricia A. McKillip
– Summerlong; Peter S. Beagle
– Version Control; Dexter Palmer
– Roses and Rot; Kat Howard
– Obelisk Gate; N.K. Jemisin
Novella:
– Forest of Memory; May Robinette Kowal
– What We Hold On To; Jay O’Connell
– The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello; David Gerrold
– The Dunsmuir Horror; David Gerrold
– The Ghoul King; Guy Haley
Novelette:
– Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea; Sarah Pinsker
– Teenagers from Outer Space; Dale Bailey
– The Charge and the Storm; An Owomoyela
– Passion Summer; Nick Wolven
– Spinning Silver; Naomi Novak; Starlit Woods
Short Story:
– Touch Me All Over; Betsy James
– Not by Tornado, Wardrobe, or Looking Glass; Jeremiah Tolbert
– Bringing Them Back; Bruce McAllister
– And Then One Day, the Air Was Full of Voices; Margaret Ronald
– Mer; Patricia A. McKillip
Series:
– Thessaly; Jo Walton; Necessity
– ‘Mancer; Ferrett Steinmetz; Fix
– Queen of the Tearling; Erika Johansen; Fate of the Tearling
– Red Rising; Pierce Brown; Morning Star
– Rivers of London ; Ben Aaronovitch; The Hanging Tree
New Writer:
– Ada Palmer; Too Like the Lightening
– Scott Hawkins; The Library at Mount Char
– Malka Older; Infomocracy
– Natasha Pulley ; The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
I linked to it elsewhere, but here’s my nom list.
Novel
The Silent Army – James A. Moore- – Angry Robot
A Little Knowledge – Emma Newman- – Diversion Books
The City of Mirrors – Justin Cronin- – Ballantine Books
Saint’s Blood – Sebastein de Castell- Jo Fletcher Books
Graphic Story
Monstress Vol. 1- Marjorie M. Liu- Image Comics
Outcast Vol. 3 – This Little Light- Kirkman & Azaceta- Image Comics
BDP – Long Form
The Magicians – SyFy
Stranger Things – Netflix
The Expanse – SyFy
Westworld – HBO
Fancast
SinCast-
The Sarcastic Voyage Podcast (Contentment Corner)
The Post Atomic Horror Podcast
Tea & Jeopardy
The Grim Tidings Podcast
Series
Seven Forges – James A. Moore- The Silent Army- – Angry Robot
The Passage – Justin Cronin- The City of Mirrors- Ballantine Books
Campbell
JR Handley – The Legion Awakes/Fortress Beta City/Demons of Kor-Lir
erp….and tick
Valoise: For everyone who loved Ninefox Gambit, is there a point at which the book draws you in? I picked it up twice, based on the rave reviews and a fondness for hard sf, and put it back down both times. I usually give a book at least 40-50 pages, but reading this was such a chore that I didn’t even give it that much.
Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I tried twice to get into it. The first time I set it down after a chapter or two, to read something I knew that I would enjoy.
The second time I tried it, I said this:
“I managed 100+ pages of the book (more than 25%). But it just seemed to me like it was the infodumping for an elaborate RPG worldbuilding setup, rather than a coherent novel. I may try it again when the sequel comes out. But right now I don’t have any enthusiasm for that.”
If it ends up on the ballot, I guess I’ll have to give it one more try. But it says a lot that I feel as though I am reluctantly being forced to do so. 😐
@Valoise and JJ: I had the same reaction you did to Ninefox Gambit. If it’s a finalist, I’ll give it another try, but I’m guessing it’s just not my thing.
@Andrew M: M.R. didn’t seem much like a pseudonym to me, either. Another example – Tim Pratt versus T.A. Pratt. 🙂
@JJ
It’d be very boring if we all liked the same things, so I actually feel reassured when someone dislikes a favourite of mine. It means there’s some real substance there to react to, even if it’s an opposite reaction.
@Valoise – For everyone who loved Ninefox Gambit, is there a point at which the book draws you in?
I love fiction that starts in media res; the uncertainty and the need to piece together scant information intrigues me. That’s probably why I was drawn in immediately and stayed invested throughout. If it’s not working for you after the first few chapters, I’d give it up, because it starts as it means to go on. But it might help to, as I think others have suggested, read The Battle of Candle Arc first if you’re going to try again.
Perhaps a nom de plume? It’s not a false name, but it’s a name he uses specifically as a writer…