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Hugo time! Your packet is available! 2018


Lily Valley

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I like McGuire fine, but this series is pure fluff. And it's not particularly my kind of fluff.   I liked History of Dragons fine, but it was more fluff.  I will at least start the Sanderson, but I'm kinda with you on the series category this year. 

Why no Wild Cards Nomination?  :shakes fist at sky:

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4 hours ago, felice said:

I don't seem to be able to log in to my ballot form at the moment...

No comment from New Orleans, which lost by 81 votes, btw and isn't ever snotty in their public responses and  had an excellent IT / PR team.  Also, we had more rooms at 130 / night.  Not just 3 small areas at one hotel that were sold out in 15 minutes.  

Oh right, I'm not bellyaching.  They rolled out the retrohugo ballot today.  I didn't get an email, found out on file770.  Probably messed up their magic system.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would be interested in those as well. 

Finished some of each of the nominated series except for Sanderson.  I'm going to give it a shot if I can get through the rest of the Campbell materials.  Packet is moving along!

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On 7/25/2018 at 12:48 AM, Lily Valley said:

I would be interested in those as well.

In case it's still relevant, Paper Girls Vol 2:

Spoiler

KJ is missing. Erin hangs out with her 2016 self, who doesn't remember what happened in 1988, but does have the bullet scar. Another version of 88!Erin also shows up, but turns out to be a clone from the future teenagers' era. Mac finds out she's going to die from leukemia. Erin gets a message apparently from KJ via a small portal warning her not to trust the other Erin. Clone!Erin rescues Mac and Tiffany and takes them to the other two Erins, and tries to force the girls through a portal to her time. They push her in instead and go through a different portal to an unknown time, where they find KJ.

The Art of Starving is tricky to rank. It's certainly a good book, but while the supernatural elements work as metaphor, I don't think they work very well as SF, and I feel a bit uncomfortable about the message it's sending. I think it would have been better if the powers had been entirely delusional. And if the SF element is a problem with the book, should it be eligible for an SF award?

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On 7/21/2018 at 3:21 PM, felice said:

Are there any good summaries of Bitch Planet vol 1 and Paper Girls vol 2 online?

It's not exactly a standard summary, but I found this take on Bitch Planet v. 1 to be the best thing I've read about it:

 

http://whitelippedviper.tumblr.com/post/132545988392/bitch-planet-more-ras-kass-than-chuck-d

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here are the results, for those wondering, and the stats including the long lists of nominees. As noted at File 770, the Campbell Award was a pretty wild ride, with the final round being needed to determine the winner.
In the Series category, I see Jemisin declined being nominated -- was that something she has previously noted, or is that news?

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A shame New York 2140 didn't get the nod - it's the big, epic climate change SF novel we sort of need right now - but KSR has a few Hugos to his name already. I'll need to read the Jemisin trilogy at some point, was waiting until it was completed (I did enjoy the Dreamblood duology though).

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Happy to see Murderbot win the novella category, but any of the other nominees would also have deserved to win. Crazy high quality in this category this year.

8 hours ago, Ran said:


In the Series category, I see Jemisin declined being nominated -- was that something she has previously noted, or is that news?

Not news, see her blog: http://nkjemisin.com/2018/02/hugo-nomination-rumination/

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

A shame New York 2140 didn't get the nod - it's the big, epic climate change SF novel we sort of need right now - but KSR has a few Hugos to his name already. I'll need to read the Jemisin trilogy at some point, was waiting until it was completed (I did enjoy the Dreamblood duology though).

It looks like KSR was lucky to get nominated - 7 other books got more nominations but after adjustments it got in and the 5th and 6th most popular nominations got knocked out. I guess this a side-effect of some of the anti-Puppy measures that when there's a lot of nominees very close to each other the adjustments done to the nomination counts can knock them out, it's probably inevitable this is going to happen now and then but it does seem unfortunate for the likes of Kameron Hurley who lost out on a best novel nomination because of it.

I haven't read most of the nominees this year. I'd say The Stone Sky is a worthy winner, I wouldn't have minded Raven Stratagem winning but The Stone Sky is probably the better book.

Also nice to see Bujold's World of the Five Gods series winning. It doesn't get as much attention as the Vorkosigan books (even if it has won a Best Novel Hugo in the past), but I think it has some of her best writing.

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4 hours ago, williamjm said:

It looks like KSR was lucky to get nominated - 7 other books got more nominations but after adjustments it got in and the 5th and 6th most popular nominations got knocked out. I guess this a side-effect of some of the anti-Puppy measures that when there's a lot of nominees very close to each other the adjustments done to the nomination counts can knock them out, it's probably inevitable this is going to happen now and then but it does seem unfortunate for the likes of Kameron Hurley who lost out on a best novel nomination because of it.

That's a feature, not a bug. The people who nominated Hurley tended to also nominate Jemisin, so their nominations were down-weighted, while the KSR fans were less likely to nominate Jemisin. It results in a more diverse ballot, which is a good thing (even though personally I liked Stars are Legion more than NY2140).

You can see the effect in the voting stats - New York 2140 was the fourth most popular first choice, but hardly anyone who ranked Stone Sky first ranked NY2140 second, so it ended up in sixth place overall. It appeals to a different subset of fans.

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

I haven't read most of the nominees this year. I'd say The Stone Sky is a worthy winner, I wouldn't have minded Raven Stratagem winning but The Stone Sky is probably the better book.

Yes, Stone Sky deserved the win; Raven Stratagem was good, and I enjoyed it more than Ninefox, but the Broken Earth trilogy is close to perfect.

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15 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'll need to read the Jemisin trilogy at some point

I have read the first volume in the trilogy, The Fifth Season. It was a good book, but nothing special. Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which was also published in 2015, is much stronger fantasy novel.

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1 hour ago, Jussi said:

I have read the first volume in the trilogy, The Fifth Season. It was a good book, but nothing special. Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which was also published in 2015, is much stronger fantasy novel.

I liked both of these a lot but felt Fifth Season was much stronger all around, in terms of writing, character, world building and that 'unique' selling point. And for me the series only improved with each installment. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have complained had Uprooted won but Fifth Season was a worthy winner that year I think. Icing on the cake after the atrocious insults and slurs made toward her by the puppies too 

And I am happy Jemisin made it 3/3 this year.

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8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I see board member and hero @Contrarius+ pwning misogynistic dicks on the web page. :bowdown:

I don't know that pointing out two years of a very stark gender disparity is misogyny. The person who pointed it out suggested the opposite gender bias seemed indicated by results of a decade ago, so it's not like they are claiming one is good and the other is not.

Unlike Contrarius, I don't think we need much more data. There is a bias when you consider the nominations as well as the winners these last two years. Your gender won't mean crap will Win awards, but it does mean your good work is going to get a bit of extra attention within the circles who are highly motivated in voting for reasons of representation.

 

The hypothesis that this in part has to do with the Puppies is interesting, namely that the counter-correction to their efforts is in full swing even after they themselves have been beaten away by EPH, but moreso I think it's a matter of the historical moment and zeitgeist. Social media has done a lot to sharpen organizing efforts and to increase visibility of once-marginalized authors, and current events are certainly a factor given the cultural and political climate.

It will be sad if this is the future of the Hugos, a regression to the bad old days (not so long ago, for that matter) where the equipment you were born with really mattered, but I doubt it's anything more than, essentially, a fad. I suspect the numbers will even out when it stops being historic and starts feeling predictable.

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