Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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