Now we get to the category where I can actually seem vaguely competent because I’ve read most of them before. As you would hope, this is an extremely strong category, and my only regret is that I didn’t have time to read more books in these series.
Author: James
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
As mentioned before this is not strictly a Hugo category, it just uses the same voting system with the same electorate and is given out at the same time. It’s also an odd duck, as novels duke it out with short stories and mixtures of both. Still, the Campbell Award often ends up being my favourite slate – in previous years I have preferred the novels represented here to those in the novel category.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Close of Voting
I will put up full posts on the categories I voted in over the next week or so. If you cant wait, my full ballot is below.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Graphic Story
What happens when SFF fans nominate comic books for an award? Usually I would say you get fewer superhero titles and more SFF, but this year fully half the titles contain avengers, though not the avengers you are thinking of. Also, I love comic books, but I have no knack for visual criticism, so I apologise in advance to both readers and artists if my art criticism boils down to “it looked pretty”.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Novella
The Novelette and Novella are the ugly step children of the Hugos, novelette being a long short story, and a novella being a short novel. Nonetheless, they are often have the most diversity in offerings of the categories. This slate of novellas is particularly strong, with five of the six stories being excellent and deserving of award.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Novelette
The Novelette and Novella are the ugly step children of the Hugos, novelette being a long short story, and a novella being a short novel. Nonetheless, they are often have the most diversity in offerings of the categories.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Short Story
I love short stories, but don’t read enough of them. For science fiction in particular, a short story represents the perfect length to show off a good idea without getting bogged down. Stories here are less than 7,500 words, listed in order of reading. Given the short length, spoilers are somewhat inevitable.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Introduction
So it’s time for my semi-annual attempt to read the bulk of the Hugo Award Fiction Nominees and vote for my favourite candidates.
What are the Hugos?
The Hugo Awards are probably the best known Science Fiction and Fantasy awards for books…
Review – The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
I loved Old Man’s War, became increasingly disillusioned as the series went on, then jumped off the Scalzi train with Redshirts, which was a great idea of a book that I just hated. Still, my residual goodwill for that first book was enough to get me to try his new space opera, and while not an instant classic like Old Man’s War, this was a thoroughly enjoyable book.
Review – Gridlinked by Neal Asher
This should have been a slam dunk: an intergalactic agent fights terrorists and negotiates with aliens while accompanied by a pet shuriken at the behest of an immortal Japanese administrator working for a superintellegent AI. Furthermore it comes with an impressive pedigree, as the first of over a dozen polity novels by Neal Asher. Unfortunately it’s just kind of there, not bad, but inferior to similar books such as Altered Carbon or most of the Culture novels.