This year’s Hugo nominations have been announced. Rather than repeat the entire list like everyone else has, I shall point you instead at the announcement and provide the novels in swirly widget style because it looks pretty.
I’ve read Anathem, which is of course quite good but I enjoyed The Confusion more and Saturn’s Children which I found disappointing. Keep meaning to read Little Brother and fancy The Graveyard Book. Not read any Scalzi.
The biggest observation however is that all the authors are big “internet” names. High profile. And bar Stephenson, online and actively marketing themselves. Is the 2009 Hugo novel shortlist more of a popularity contest than ever?
Another slightly shocking statistic is the number of votes cast in the categories. A mere 693 ballots for the novel, 337 for novella, 448 for short story. That doesn’t strike me as very many given the number of SF fans in the world. That’s a fraction of the traffic a site such as io9 gets on one post.
As usual I have little to say about the story categories due to being a bad SF fan and not reading enough. Again.
I can even only make a partially informed comment about the film category: Wall-E for the win, surely?! Joyous, touching, gorgeous, robots, spaceships and fun for all the family (except for that young girl who burst into tears behind me in the cinema).
The short form aka TV category I’ve seen everything in. Which says something about me I think. Much as I love Lost obsessively I think the win should go to Dr. Horrible. I don’t think either of the Doctor Who episodes were that amazing and BSG is now rubbish. Lost would instead win my award for complete TV series story arc, which of course doesn’t exist: maybe a extreme-long form category?
Anyway, enough “commenting” it’s time to say a big congratulations to everyone on the list : CONGRATULATIONS!
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