An Informal History of the Hugos (Walton)

[cahn]

5/5. I have a lot of feelings about this book, which is a collection of columns Walton did for Tor.com (and still available there free), only I really like having them all together. Perhaps I'll start with saying that it evoked for me the most resonant parts of Among Others -- the entire book is basically a long involved conversation about books (sometimes literally, as she pulls in some comments from the columns) as in AO.

One of the unexpected lovely pleasures of this book were the comments, especially those of Gardner Dozois, whose anthologies, particularly his Year's Best Science Fiction, were a mainstay of my childhood. I was sad to learn of his death last year and this was -- an unexpected gift.

The best thing this book did for me is that it got me excited about SF, about short fiction, and about the Hugos again. One of the interesting conclusions Walton comes to is that the novella length is where a lot of interesting work is done in SF -- which -- I think she may be right. But just in general feeling like I was part of a conversation about SF (even if I suppose I was juts reading about it) was very exciting and very interesting to me, and basically galvanized me to read a bunch of older SF (as you can kind of see from my June reading list).

Because of that -- and, to be fair, also because I still feel Walton was robbed of the Hugo that should have been rightfully hers the year of the Rabid Puppies -- I'm voting her to win and I'd like to convince as many other people as I can to vote for her to win :)

(Although there's a lot of good stuff in Related Works...)

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

I got to hear Walton talk about books at the last worldcon and immediately knew I wanted to read this book, which did not disappoint. It’s at the top of my Related Work ballot (and also, Walton so clearly hates the Related Work category - admittedly it is VERY “kumquats and parakeets” this year - that I’d be amused to hear what she’d have to say if she won it :)

[cahn]

ahahaha I thought it was hilarious that she talks about how weird the Related Works category is all those years and now her book is on... the same year as AO3 and a Hobbit documentary and a worldcon initiative...

Ah, she's like that in person too? Not surprising but still very cool!

[snickfic]

Oh man, I didn't know about Gardner Dozois. :( In the early aughts he and I both hung out a lot on the Asimov's message board, so of all the big names of SFF, he's one I felt I actually knew somewhat. And those Year's Best volumes were massive productions. Even when I didn't get around to reading the stories, I made sure to read the "This year in SFF" summaries in the front, which have got to be goldmines in the genre's historical record.

[cahn]

I know :( He wasn't that old!

That is so cool that you internet-knew him! And yes! I loved those "this year in SFF" summaries -- I often liked them more than the actual stories (see also, I was probably too young for a lot of them).