150 replies to this topic

[MeanMrMustard]

Xray--


I think we should go ahead and win Hugos next year. The dearth of quality in recent winners truly is depressing.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Sounds great. Do you want to write the nostalgic, wooden SF while I write the meandering dystopian fantasy, or the other way around?

Maybe we should do a free-verse epic poem for Novella?

[Mr. X]

Xray the Enforcer, on Sep 1 2006, 13.20, said:

Maybe we should do a free-verse epic poem for Novella?

Are you trying to make the committee members' heads explode?

[Stego]

I'm loving the attention.

I'm surprised that I haven't recieved a dead gopher in the post.

Well, to be fair, I have yet to check today's mail.

Oh, and my nominees for the Hugo if the year were to end today, off the top of my head:

The Lies of Locke Lamora
The Thousandfold Thought
Infoquake
Glasshouse
Shriek

In that order.

[kalbear]

Though I'd be shocked if TTT made it on the ballot, given that they didn't even INVITE Bakker to worldcon this year.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Kalbear, on Sep 1 2006, 17.45, said:

Though I'd be shocked if TTT made it on the ballot, given that they didn't even INVITE Bakker to worldcon this year.

don't get me started on that. I plan to buy the man extra drinks at WFA to make up for it. Still, with only 550+ nominations, surely we can muster 100 schmucks to nominate TTT yes?

I am pondering what would be on my ballot. definitely TTT and Lies of Locke Lamora. Haven't read Shriek, but if it's 50% as excellent as Veniss Underground, it still PWNS almost anything nominated this year, in any category.

[Mind Elemental]

You guys have no idea how glad I am to find out I'm not the only person who was underwhelmed by Tk'tk'tk and Telepresence. I was wondering just how badly out of touch with "mainstream fandom" (as represented by what Asimov's published, and what got nominated) I was.  :blush:

Wow, Stego's discussion really took off! Go, Stego. :D GRRM's thought about packing the business meeting gave me a slightly amusing mental image, too.

[Larry.]

The more and more I read the comments/defenses in Stego's blog, the more and more I'm convinced that there's a definite and growing gap between the WorldCon regulars and others.  I'm 32, not exactly wet behind the ears in reading in this field (and others, of course), but when it seems as though the most passionate defenders were going "well in the 20+ years that I've been attending WorldCons...", followed by a bunch of parliamentary procedural comments that had little to nothing to do with certain questions as to what sort of shit some people were smoking, the less inclined I am to care.  As I said in my one comment there, it's like the freakin' Grammy awards - run by, of, and for the 'established'.  It's too whitebread for me, unfortunately, so I'll just turn elsewhere in seeing which books are worthy of award status.  Those WFAs sure seem quite appealing after skimming through the Nebula and Hugo finalists for this year. ;)

[Brys]

Stego, on Sep 1 2006, 22.44, said:

I'm loving the attention.

I'm surprised that I haven't recieved a dead gopher in the post.

Well, to be fair, I have yet to check today's mail.

Oh, and my nominees for the Hugo if the year were to end today, off the top of my head:

The Lies of Locke Lamora
The Thousandfold Thought
Infoquake
Glasshouse
Shriek

In that order.

Am I the only person to have read Scar Night? I'd definitely put Lies of Locke Lamora up there at one, but I'd be tempted to put Scar Night by Alan Campbell at two, and then the Thousandfold Thought. It seems sort of a shame to me that Scar Night came out this year - it was hugely original, well written and easily one of the best books released so far in 2006 - but it's going to be in competition with TLOLL and Thousandfold Thought, and not that many people seem to have read it.

[Stego]

I bought Scar Night at Worldcon, have yet to read it. Unfortunately, it doesn't come out in the states until January, and so if it does get nominated, it will be crushed like River of Gods was.

[Xray the Enforcer]

It sucks when that happens -- the January phenom. Because River of Gods was an amazing book. If Scar Night is the same, how sad.  :mad:

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Kalbear, on Sep 1 2006, 23.45, said:

Though I'd be shocked if TTT made it on the ballot, given that they didn't even INVITE Bakker to worldcon this year.

  

That is where block voting by BwB may win the day :devil:  Bakker surely could use the boost. My list by now consist of The Thousandfold Thought, Glasshouse, The Bonehunters and Locke Lamora, but there is of course a lot of books I haven't read yet. i was rather undewhelelmed by Rainbows End, and I don't think it will make my list. IIRC, Scar Night is supposed to come out in December in the USA which would make American edition eligible.

Edited to add Bonehunters.

Edited by Bastard of Godsgrace, 02 September 2006 - 01:06 PM.

[mormont]

Mind Elemental, on Sep 2 2006, 01.08, said:

You guys have no idea how glad I am to find out I'm not the only person who was underwhelmed by Tk'tk'tk and Telepresence. I was wondering just how badly out of touch with "mainstream fandom" (as represented by what Asimov's published, and what got nominated) I was. :blush:

ME, as I said above, two of the most established editors in the field were also utterly underwhelmed (to say the least) by those stories. So I think it's fair to say you are not quite out of the mainstream yet.

Though apropos of the present discussion, the main complaint Brown had about Tk'Tk'Tk was that it was a nostalgia trip - it had been done before and better in the 50s and 60s by authors like Effinger. Might explain its apparent popularity in some circles. ;)

[MeanMrMustard]

I know what I'm nominating:

Quote

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

We just need to figure out how to get the author to show up to receive the award.

[Xray the Enforcer]

tempt him with naruto cosplayers and the entirety of furry fandom?  :unsure:

[MeanMrMustard]

Btw, Xray, you know McCarthy's new book comes out soon. The Road is much more ambitious than his recent efforts, and it could finally propel him past those peers he's always been better than -- DeLillo, Roth, Updike and everyone else who thinks he's (I'm sure most of them are male) the Best Novelist in the World.  



From the Village Voice:

Quote

Sci-fi divination is new for him, though, and the freshness he brings to this end-of-the-world narrative is quite stunning: It may be the saddest, most haunting book he's ever written, or that you'll ever read.

[Xray the Enforcer]

We were just talking about this book yesterday at the mag. I'm quite curious about his take on the future, given his grim outlook on the past and present (meaning, OK, it'll be grim. but how grim? what flava of grim?) I also find it intriguing that some of the best recent works in English fall somehow under the speculative fiction umbrella. The question for me is, will the genre fiction fans pick it up, or give it wide berth?

[Stego]

Like I said before, BoG, Scar Night comes to the States inm January 2007. It's eligible, but will garner no votes.

[MeanMrMustard]

...so did anyone quote the relevant Phife Dawg line to GRRM after his loss?

Personally, I never miss an opportunity to drop some Tribe Called Quest.

[Werthead]

I enjoyed Spin but felt it was somewhat overfamiliar, falling firmly into the Childhood's End and Contact school of Earth being fucked around by inscrutable alien intelligences for their own enigmatic ends, with a so-so explanation given at the end. I was pondering how much more story there was to be told in this world, so the news of a sequel, to be called Axis, was slightly bemusing. Still, a good read.