Jump to content

Hugo time! Your packet is available! 2018


Lily Valley

Recommended Posts

So, my novel category is currently:

The Obelisk Gate -- NK Jemisin
Crooked Kingdom -- Leigh Bardugo
The Raven King -- Maggie Stiefvater
The Devourers -- Indra Das
The Spider's War -- Daniel Abraham

I have at least one more novel to go before the nomination period closes -- if anything is going to get knocked off the list, it'll be The Raven King. Mostly, I'm surprised by a real lack of down-the-middle SF on my list, but I really didn't think any of the SF novels I read this year were superior. Even the most original and interesting -- Ninefox Gambit -- I felt was too uneven in quality to displace anything I have on my current novel list. Yoon Ha Lee is eligible for the Campbell, I believe, so I'm going to list her him there. 

Also -- weirdly SFWA has The Raven and the Reindeer down as a novel. That's....odd. I thought for sure it qualified under novella. And what the hell, they have Dead Djinn in Cairo as novelette, while other lists have it as a short story. Does anyone know which categorization the Hugo committee uses?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, unJon said:

Do you mean "Last Witness"? Or is there a Parker Novella I haven't read? *goes to look*

 

Sorry, yes. I really loved it, too.

 

4 hours ago, Bastard of Godsgrace said:

I also have nominated Finnegan's Field, buti it doesn' seem to have been very popular for some reason. Seanan McGuire's novella started very strong, but the ending was rather blah, IMHO. I still hesitate between this and K.J. Parker novella, but probably will go with the latter.

But wasn't "The Devil You Know"'s ending even more blah? And all the rest not  that strong? De gustibus, I guess.

Well, I have now read "Lazy Dog Out" by Suzanne Palmer from Asimov's Readers Award finalist list and it was, unfortunately, meh. The plot was somewhere between cliched and an incoherent mess. I sorta liked the main character and the setting, but they were hardly original or particularly grippingly written. A novella of this type really needed a strong plot, and it just wasn't there.

But I liked quite a few of the last year's finalists, so I will persevere. Hopefully, it was a one-off.

Oh, and the list of the finalists for Analog's Reader's Award, i.e. AnLab is also out and the pieces are available to read on-line:

http://www.analogsf.com/about-analog/anlab-readers-awards-finalists/

Too bad that all this stuff is becoming available so late... or that Hugo dead-line is coming so early. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

 Yoon Ha Lee is eligible for the Campbell, I believe, so I'm going to list her there.

No, there are stories from this author dating to at least as early as 2011 published in Clarkesworld Magazine. This was just the first novel. BTW, if you were interested in "Ninefox Gambit", there is this  story from the PoV of Jedao:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_10_12/

I liked it a lot - listened to the audio version. Something for after the Hugos, perhaps, since it is old.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

*pus on political correct hat*

Yoon Ha Lee prefers to be refereed to as "he"

*takes off hat*

thank you. I hadn't looked into anything about the author as a person, and for some reason assumed "she." No idea why. Mea culpa. Will edit upthread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I have at least one more novel to go before the nomination period closes

For heaven's sake, read Too Like the Lightning!

I guess my current novel list is:

1. Too Like the Lightning

2. Ninefox Gambit

3. Underground Airlines

4. The Devourers

5. TBA

 

Here's my complete list of 2016 stories (novels and novellas) read so far, so you can see the collection I'm choosing from:

Anders, Charlie Jane All the Birds in the Sky
Baker, Mishell Borderline
Bennett, Robert Jackson City of Blades
Bujold, Lois McMaster Penric and the Shaman
Bujold, Lois McMaster Penric's Mission
Chambers, Becky A Closed and Common Orbit
Das, Indra The Devourers
Jemisin, NK the Obelisk Gate
Kay, Guy Gavriel Children of Earth and Sky
Lawrence, Mark The Wheel of Osheim
Lee, Yoon Ha Ninefox Gambit
Lewis, Beth The Wolf Road
Liu, Ken The Wall of Storms
McGuire, Seanan Every Heart a Doorway
Palmer, Ada Too Like the Lightning
Sullivan, Michael J The Age of Myth
Whitehead, Colson The Underground Railroad
Winters, Ben Underground Airlines

 

 
   
   
   
   
   
 

 

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Contrarius+ said:

Ada Palmer!

Yeah, Ada Palmer is eligible for Campbell, and I nominated her twice.

 

14 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

Also, I am trying really, really hard to like Winged Histories. The writing is beautiful, but I just DGAF about any of the characters.

Well, de gustibus, I suppose. I liked The Winged Histories characters a lot, I did have this problem with All the Birds in the Sky though. It is perhaps strange, since both main characters are supposed to be archetypical nerds and I should to be able to care for them. I just didn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am still making my way through Asimov's and Analog's readers' awards finalist novellas. They are fairly short and go down quickly. Also,  enjoyable, on the whole.

Analog:

The Coward’s Option — Adam-Troy Castro - March 2016.

A misantropic attorney working for the human diplomatic corps must investigate a peculiar wrinkle of an unpleasant alien culture's judicial system.

I really liked this one.

Wyatt Earp 2.0 — Wil McCarthy - January/February 2016. Administration of a Martian mining town can't maintain civil order in their settlement and decides to produce a copy of Wyatt Earp based on historical records, but with slightly amended attitudes, to get a handle on their problems.

Now, their sore need of Wyatt's old-fashioned manliness and 19th-century-based wisdom didn't seem convincing to me, but his existential struggles and ruminations on the nature of identity and reality were more compelling. It was alright.

 

Asimov's:

Where There Is Nothing, There Is God – David Erik Nelson - December 2016.

Time-trader with a twist. Swindling 18th century New Englanders is a serious business!

Entertaining and darkly funny in places, but rather slight.   

 

What We Hold Onto – Jay O’Connell - June 2016

A near-future SF featuring a world ravaged by climate change, but where civilization in general and US culture in particular perseveres, but with some interesting worldbuilding making it all possible. A woman must decide what to do with her comatose mother and what she generally wants to do with her life.

Much more interesting than this summary suggests, with  plausible futuristic extrapolations. I really liked this one.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Maia said:

I am still making my way through Asimov's and Analog's readers' awards finalist novellas. They are fairly short and go down quickly. Also,  enjoyable, on the whole.

I've got several of those I'm going to try to get to.

Yesterday and today I went through:

The Ballad of Black Tom -- Victor LaValle -- good depiction of how continual exposure to the frustrations of racism can push someone over the edge, and the horrible results society may be headed toward if it doesn't "open its eyes" (refer to the climactic scene for a gory metaphor to this). It failed to really grab me, though, except for that well-done and pretty horrific climax.

The Devil You Know -- KJ Parker -- a fun read, not particularly deep, about a deal with the devil. Sort of a palate cleanser.

A Taste of Honey -- Kai Ashante Wilson -- beautiful writing, beautiful ideas about choices, the road not taken, and stuff like that. I'm a big fan of Wilson's prose; unfortunately, his plotting in this vella and Sorcerer of the Wildeeps sometimes leaves something to be desired. Still a very good read.

Tomorrow I'll try to read Cold-Forged Flame by Marie Brennan, and then The Dream-Quest of Velitt Boe by Kij Johnson. I've never read anything by either one of them, so it'll be educational.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Maia said:

I am still making my way through Asimov's and Analog's readers' awards finalist novellas. They are fairly short and go down quickly. Also,  enjoyable, on the whole.

Analog:

The Coward’s Option — Adam-Troy Castro - March 2016.

A misantropic attorney working for the human diplomatic corps must investigate a peculiar wrinkle of an unpleasant alien culture's judicial system.

I really liked this one.

 

 

 

I really liked it as well. Thanks for the link, since I missed it before. It made my list, completing the novella category.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've now filled in the ballot provisionally (since there are a couple of days left to change it).

Novel

Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Call by Peadar O’ Guilin

Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Spider’s War by Daniel Abraham

Series (this hasn't been mentioned in the thread so far but it's a one-off category for this year)

The Expanse by James S.A. Corey

The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham

The Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett

Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch

The Dregs by Leigh Bardugo

Although I read a fair amount of short fiction, very little of it was published in 2016, I haven't even read enough to fill any of the categories, but have written in:

Novella (a.k.a the three novellas that would qualify that I've read)

The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell

Penric’s Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold (although I know there's a question about its length, but it's not as if I'm displacing something else)

Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

Going to have to update my novel list. Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad just bumped Raven King. Still trying to finish a couple more books before Friday to see if any other nudge their way onto the list....

I actually didn't like that much. I never did really connect with it. OTOH, I liked Underground Airlines quite a lot.

Today I read Cold-Forged Flame, to which I say ehh. I also listened to Penric's Mission, which I had previously read, to see if I liked it better in audio format. I still much prefer Penric and the Shaman, but it's always fun to listen to LMB's writing.

Didn't get to Vellitt Boe today. Maybe tomorrow!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...