In theory, this category can include just about any medium (TV series, Game, Street Performance) as long as it is longer than 90 minutes. Disappointingly, it end up as the best movie category. Given my scarcity of going out time, I generally only see films that appeal to my wife (horror), or my kids (superheroes), but this year that covered four of the six, and I watched Annihilation when it dropped on Netflix. On the upside, this means that I only had to watch Sorry to Bother You to vote in the category, on the downside, a lot of these films are a bit fuzzy in my recollection.
Author: James
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Novel
The marquee category, prima inter pares, what people mean when they refer to “The Hugo Award”, the novel category is open to works greater than 40,000 words (~80 pages plus). It is also the category I dread the most; no matter how bad a short story is, it will be gone in a moment, while even a good story can drag at novel length. This year I’ve read two going in, Trail of Lightning and Revenant Gun.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 -Graphic Story
This is a pretty self explanatory category typically composed of graphic novels and trade paperbacks. The big story of 2019 is how stagnant the selection is; half of the Graphic Story slate has been locked in since 2017, in the form of Saga (six time nominee), Monstress (two time winner), and Paper Girls. Fortunately two of the repeats (Monstress and Saga) were my top picks of last year, so it is hard to begrudge them their perennial status.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
The Campbell award is open to the best new writer, and is judged over their output regardless of length or quantity. Usually, the main thing to comment on is that it is not really a Hugo, but the interesting wrinkle of the Campbell award this year is that you can be eligible for it twice.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Novella
Works in the Hugo Novella category are almost always short novels (17500-40000 words).I feel like this category has undergone a bit of a renaissance with digital publishing…
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Novelette
Hugo novelettes tend to be long short stories (7500-17500 words). The little bit of extra space gives more flexibility and can lead to greatness (last year’s Wind Will Rove, or two years ago’s Tomato Thief spring to mind), but far to often they fall into the uncanny valley where the length makes them flabby without gaining the depth of a longer work.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Short Story
I like short stories to be self-contained: a good idea or a complete story. As such I often gravitate to stories that are focused on doing one thing well. It also means that I tend to prefer vignettes, where Hugo short stories can be surprisingly long (7500 words or less).
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Introduction
This might be the best I’ve been prepared for evaluating the Hugos since I started doing this a few years ago…With a bit of effort, I might actually be able to get through all of the fiction categories.
Avengers Endgame: It’s the journey, not the destination
As a movie, Avengers Endgame was overly long, slow in places, and incredibly self indulgent; as an experience, Avengers Endgame was the end of a journey through two dozen movies that evoked powerful emotions in me. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been running for over a decade, and Endgame felt like a weaponised piece of nostalgia, evoking the entire history of the MCU, and by extension, the last quarter of my life.
Review – The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
I understand that Historical 14th Century Russian Folk Fantasy might not be the selling point for others that it is for me, but regardless, the Winternight Trilogy is something special. I can’t speak to the accuracy of Arden’s Rus, but the verisimilitude is impressive, from the frozen rural hold where the book starts, through to the proto-city of Moscow, all under the yoke of absent Tartar rulers. It is a land of hard work, resilient people, and of course magic.