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Hugo time! Your packet is available! 2018


Lily Valley

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I'll keep that in mind when I get back to it, thank you!

Short story ranking is HARD!  I've changed my vote 3 times already.  The only one that didn't work for me was Alyssa Wong's story,  I plan to read it again to see if I missed something the first time.  Entirely possible as there was beer involved.   I liked her novelette much better.  The only two votes that haven't moved are Noah and JCW.

REALLY leaning towards City as#1.  This resonated strongly with me for personal reasons.  I've even forgiven Jemisin for dissing New Orleans.  Brought me to tears.  

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1 hour ago, Lily Valley said:

I'm clueless on how to review the short nominees for film / Clipping.  

For clipping., you can always go here, scroll down to the tracklist, and click the play button next to 1.

You can watch the video at the top of that page if you want a quick sense of them, but the album is much better in sequence.

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4 minutes ago, Mr. X said:

For clipping., you can always go here, scroll down to the tracklist, and click the play button next to 1.

You can watch the video at the top of that page if you want a quick sense of them, but the album is much better in sequence.

Oddly, I have bi-coastal pals who know those cats.  They've got my Small World support.    Thanks for the link, seems like it would make more sense as presented from what I've read about it.  

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I finished The Dreamquest of Vellitt Boe last night.

 

I think I would have liked this much better if I were familiar with Lovecraft. The writing was appealing, and I liked the MC and loved the cat, but I got bored of the travelogue.

 

Oh, and I started This Census-Taker. LOVE the beginning, but I've only read a few pages so far. Mieville does know how to grab me!

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At least the cat in Vellitt Boe had a whole story ark.  I mean, WHERE IS BERKELEY?  Did he get left with the mean sister?  Did he run away into the woods?  The mystery of  his disappearance from "All the Birds" is one of the greatest Hugo stories of all time.  FANS NEED TO KNOW WHERE THE CAT IS.  It's I N THE RULES !

Let me know what you think of the Mieville piece.  

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Re: Craft Sequence, I might be making this up, but IIRC the second book was actually the first one Max wrote (or at least, contains more early material), and he wrote Three Parts Dead later after having his concept of the world & story more established. That's part of why 3PD is stronger, IMO.

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13 hours ago, Lily Valley said:

Only a week left!   Rushing off to read what I can of the Campbell offerings.

Same.

I never did manage to read any of the novels except Ninefox Gambit, which I'd already read. But! Amazon did have a sale on renting Hidden Figures, which was one of the two DP:LF nominees I hadn't already seen, so I watched that on Saturday. Very glad I did. Very tough competition in that category this year, though.

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The Campbell has some fantastic writers in it this year.  Really torn!   My favorite story thus far is Haunted with Blue Monday as a second.  I finished the Rivers of London excerpt and am struggling through Temeraire.  Not struggling because of the story, but because of the tiny font.  Broke down and bought some 4x cheaters and that's helping a lot.  I really enjoyed Rivers of London, it's exactly my cup of tea.  Temeraire is fun, enjoying it, but I never particularly enjoy Victorian stuff all that much, putting up with it because I like the dragons.  I think I'll be able to get through the Expanse excerpt at least in order to rank everyone by what was offered.  **winning**

Race to the finish time!  Read!  Read! :whip:

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On 10/07/2017 at 8:01 PM, mormont said:

Hidden Figures ... I watched that on Saturday.

Snap! Great film, but I have reservations about it as a Hugo nominee, since it's obviously not SF/F, and not really even about the space race.

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8 minutes ago, felice said:

Snap! Great film, but I have reservations about it as a Hugo nominee, since it's obviously not SF/F, and not really even about the space race.

I thought it deserved to be on the list, but it ain't going at the top of my ballot.

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I've finished reading through the short fiction nominees, I think it's fair to say that I'm not going to get through the novels as well.

I haven't filled in the ballot yet, I think I might find it difficult to rank many of them since I thought there were a lot of good stories but perhaps not many great stories.

Provisional thoughts:

Novella

The Dream Quest of Vellit Boe - I really liked this. I haven't read the Lovecraft story it is based on but I didn't feel that really detracted from it. I thought Vellit was a compelling protagonist, this type of quest story tends to involve a young adult of some description so a middle-aged woman who feels she is a bit too old for it all but is still very capable despite that made an interesting change. The inversion of telling a portal fantasy story from the perspective of someone from that world rather than from others was also a nice touch. As someone pointed up above it is a bit of a travelogue but I thought it did a good job of portraying the bizarreness of the world.

Penric and the Shaman - read this back when it was released. I always like Bujold's writing and characterisation and the way magic works in the Five Gods world and I think both Penric and Inglis get some good character development here. It's perhaps a bit less ambitious than many of the other nominated stories.

The Ballad of Black Tom - stories based on Lovecraft stories I haven't read seem to be popular this year. Unlike Vellit Boe I felt not having read the original maybe detracted a bit here, I've enough general knowledge of Lovecraft that I think I understand much of the conversation the author is having with Lovecraft's story, but I might be missing things as well. I thought the first half was stronger than the second, Charles Thomas was a good protagonist and the inequalities of 1920s New York are vividly portrayed but it started to get less interesting as it focused more on the detective's story.

Every Heart a Doorway - I liked the idea of a school for children traumatised by their return from adventures in various magical portal worlds and the varying ways in which they had reacted to the worlds they visited meant there was a good variety of characters. However, the murder mystery plotline felt a bit rushed and some of the ways in which characters reacted to the murders felt a bit unconvincing.

This Census Taker - this one was a bit weird. I found a large part of the story to be very compelling, the strangeness and sadness of the tale of the young boy in his remote mountain home and the horrific things that can happen there made for a memorable plotline. Unfortunately, the other part of the plotline based on the census taker of the title was never really interesting, nor did it feel like it complimented the other part of the story.

A Taste of Honey - I thought there was some good writing here, but the structure felt a bit misguided, I think jumping between time periods so abruptly hurt the pacing. It seemed an interesting world, but many things felt underexplained and some seemingly significant plot points ultimately felt a bit pointless.

 

 

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Novelette

Touring With The Alien - there are some interesting and inventive SF ideas in here including some an unusual type of alien, I thought this had a good combination of a fairly light-hearted story with some more serious SF elements.

A Jewel and Her Lapidary - I liked this story, it's an unusual setting and magical gemstones are in some ways more interesting than Tolkien's rings - they might still have the potential dangers and temptations but their danger isn't as inevitable.

You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay - this has some very vivid imagery and probably has the best prose of any of the stories, although I read this a few months ago and I'd struggle now to really describe what the plot was about, which isn't really a good sign.

The Tomato Thief - a fun story, nothing exceptional but I enjoyed reading it. I particularly like the glimpse of the Train Gods.

The Art of Space Travel - a nicely written character piece, but it felt very low-key and the central revelation the main character experiences is obvious from early in the story.

I didn't read the other story.

Short Story

The Game We Played During The War - I thought this did well at having both commentary on the recently ended war and the relationship between the two main characters and the connections between those large and small scale aspects without necessarily having to spell things out explicitly.

Seasons of Glass and Iron - reimagined fairy tales seem almost as popular as reimagined Lovecraft these days. I thought this was well written with a couple of likeable central characters.

The City Born Great - it's quite a nice idea, but the central conflict seemed to degenerate into a list of New York neighbourhoods. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more if I was familiar with New York?

A Fist of Permutations In Lightnings and Wildflowers - the gradual revelation of the cause of the central conflict was done well, other than that I feel a bit indifferent about this story.

Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies - makes some good points, but I'm not sure there's enough here to actually be a story.

Sadly, upon downloading the voter packet I was immediately seized by an uncontrollable urge to delete John C. Wright's story and was hence unable to read it.

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34 minutes ago, williamjm said:

Penric and the Shaman - read this back when it was released.

A Taste of Honey - I thought there was some good writing here

How do they work as standalones? I haven't read Penric's Demon or Sorcerer of the Wildeeps yet, though I have read the Chalion novels.

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Just now, felice said:

How do they work as standalones? I haven't read Penric's Demon or Sorcerer of the Wildeeps yet, though I have read the Chalion novels.

Pernic and the Shaman is set a few years after Penric's Demon and the characters are new apart from Penric and Desdemona, so it probably would be possible to read it first. Since much of the story is told from the perspective of a character who hasn't met Penric before there has to be some explanation of Penric's abilities. Being familiar with the theology and magic from the Chalion books probably helps a little bit as well although there's no direction connection (I think the Penric series is meant to be set centuries before The Curse of Chalion).

I haven't read Sorcerer of the Wildeeps either. I found myself a bit confused by the worldbuilding in A Taste of Honey, so maybe I would have understood that better if I'd read something else in the same world before?

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10 hours ago, felice said:

Snap! Great film, but I have reservations about it as a Hugo nominee, since it's obviously not SF/F, and not really even about the space race.

That boat sailed a long time ago. If Appollo 13 qualifies, Hidden Figures certainly does too.

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15 hours ago, williamjm said:

I haven't read Sorcerer of the Wildeeps either. I found myself a bit confused by the worldbuilding in A Taste of Honey, so maybe I would have understood that better if I'd read something else in the same world before?

That's true. There's nothing about the story or characters that carries over from one to the other, but some of the worldbuilding is explained better in the first story.

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Felice, for whatever reason, I can't quote.  A Taste of Honey was my favorite and it is completely different than Wildeeps.  It stands alone and may not even be in the same world.  Please read.

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1 hour ago, Lily Valley said:

Felice, for whatever reason, I can't quote.  A Taste of Honey was my favorite and it is completely different than Wildeeps.  It stands alone and may not even be in the same world.  Please read.

It's probably gonna be #2 on my list -- I'm a big fan of the way Wilson writes. But yeah, it's the same world.

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I spent most of today binge-watching The Expanse series.

 

On the whole, I liked it a lot. I was seriously irritated by some of the things they changed from the books (for instance, the casting for both Naomi and Alex was ALLLLLL WROOOOOOONG), but in general I think they did a good job. And I've always been fond of Thomas Jane, so it was nice seeing him.

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