very brief Hugo thoughts

[cahn]

Argh, it's almost the end of nomination time and I was totally going to make a post and never did!

Best Novel
A Memory Called Empire (Martine)
Ninth House (Bardugo)
Raven Tower (Leckie)
...that's all I can think of right now, any other thoughts?

Best Novelette
For He Can Creep (Carroll) (I expected the title to only be tangentially related but I was happily surprised!) (thanks ambyr)
Dave's Head (Palmer) - I always love Palmer's short work, and this one I think is her best yet. (Also, for anyone who has read or will read this, I would like to talk about what is going on. (I think I have figured out most of what's going on except what exactly IS in the things.) (from psocoptera)

Best Short Story
Compassionate Simulation (Swirsky, Lee). Content note: abuse. ...This one hit me really hard. (I think this one is from psocoptera)

Best Related Work
hamsterwoman pointed out that we can nominate the article about John M. Ford in Slate by which I of course mean not only the article but the work described in that article of bringing together people so that his stuff can be republished! What a great idea!!

Comments

[leaflemming]

Air Logic (Laurie J Marks) for novel. (Why isn't this part of everyone's Hugo conversation? This is not rhetoric, I'm honestly puzzled).

Also for novel, The Absolute Book (Elizabeth Knox). (Which hardly anyone outside New Zealand has read yet; but still).

[cahn]

Maybe because it's the third book of a series? :) So I wasn't able to get into Fire Logic... would it make sense to try again with a later book (I know this isn't ideal, but sometimes I've had success with a later book grabbing me and then going back to pick up the others), or keep going with FL? It's very possible I gave up too soon, as it's hard for me to distinguish "this starts slow" from "I'm not going to gel with this book" when it's an author I haven't read before.

Hmph, it seems kind of hard to get my hands on The Absolute Book, I wonder if it will be published in the US?

[leaflemming]

Elemental Logic: definitely not a series to jump into anywhere but the start. Which is quite a slow start, and also quite a grim one, relative to the overall mood; I can quite see how it might be offputting. But I'd rate these books as one of the most important spec fic achievements of the last twenty years. If I were asked which ficitonal world I'd choose to live in, it would most likely be Shaftal. (...though not the Shaftal of Fire Logic).

Absolute Book: yeah, it's coming out in the States, later this year I think. (After Dan Kois reviewed it on Slate, there was a 39-party bidding war for the rights. If you're ever writing a rave review and wondering whether anyone will take notice, the answer turns out to be... sometimes!) I have no idea whether this will extend its eligibility for nomination into a second year.

[cahn]

Excellent, good to know! ("Slow and grim start" also means I should tackle it in e-book, as it turns out.)

From http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/

"Because a large proportion of the people who nominate on the Hugo Awards reside in the USA, and because those people often do not get to see works first published outside the USA until those works get US publication, WSFS extends the eligibility of works first published outside the USA. Works published in prior years outside of the USA are eligible if they were published for the first time in the USA in the current year."

So yes!

[leaflemming]

Why ebook for slow/grim, especially?

[cahn]

The e-reader is easy to carry around so I can just sort of take it around with me and flip through pages while I'm doing the laundry or whatever, and I don't have to sit down with it like I often have to do with hardback books, which helps with something being slow as I can multitask. But also I think part of my brain treats the e-reader like a screen so I tend to do more skimming and flipping through slow bits, which helps me get through it, although it's happened before that once I get past the slow part I wish I had a paper copy :P :)

I guess the grim part isn't really relevant, actually, now that I think about it.

[leaflemming]

That makes sense. I seem to choose ebooks mostly where I want to lose the sense of where I am in the text -- so I'm reading Hilary Mantel that way now, not because the book's huge (though it kind of is) so much as because I don't want to see my bookmark slowly sinking towards the back cover.

[cahn]

Yeah, that makes sense too! And in general just for books that are very large, so I don't have to carry around a large book :)

What I really really like paper books for is books where I want to flip around for various reasons. So any reference book, of course, but also often plot-heavy books (hence the "I wish I had a paper copy" above) where something happens and I'm like "...wait!! was that related to the thing five chapters ago??" and I want to flip back and cross-reference. I know there are lots of e-book tools for this (and search is a great thing!) but I'm so used to doing it with paper (and often retain a sort of visual memory for pages) that it's still generally both faster and more pleasant for me to flip through paper pages looking for something like that.

[schneefink]

Thanks for the reminder! I won't nominate Air Logic for best novel (I liked it but not that much,) but I'll definitely nominate it for best series.