Hugo Nominations and Awards - Now onto 2021 Nominations

[felice]

On 3/13/2021 at 7:24 AM, Werthead said:

Not eligible to vote this year

NB if you were eligible to vote last year, you're eligible to nominate this year, even if you're not eligible to vote.

[felice]

For any last minute nominations, there's a spreadsheet to remind you of a bunch of eligible works: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w5rNvJLJZ1lno7X4PXzG9BBhCjtHjAc0cgPoKfQUgRs

[Werthead]

Nominations are out.

Best Related Work could be a bit awkward if George attends the ceremony.

[Maltaran]

I feel I’m missing something, maybe because I haven’t seen it, but how is Will Ferrell’s Eurovision film eligible?

[Corvinus85]

I can only shake my head at that, because I haven't read nor care to. I know the controversy regarding GRRM's handling of the ceremony last year, and I'm going to leave it at that.

I'm glad that Martha Wells made it in both the novels and series categories. And in the dramatic short form, glad to see Gaugamela from the The Expanse and The Mandalorian. When will we no longer see Dr. Who nominations? (Probably when the show ends, which will be when the Earth is swallowed by the Sun)

39 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

I feel I’m missing something, maybe because I haven’t seen it, but how is Will Ferrell’s Eurovision film eligible?

Probably because of the best scene in the movie - murder elves. Personally I didn't even nominate a single movie, just full seasons for shows. The category is lackluster this year.

[David Selig]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Nominations are out.

Best Related Work could be a bit awkward if George attends the ceremony.

Nominating a blog rant about last year's presentation makes this award category even more of a joke than ot already is. 

In other news, the amazing coincidence of not nominating works by white men in the novel and short fiction categories after the Puppy mess was over continues. Who could possibly have predicted it...

[Werthead]

If Strange Horizons wins, they're going to have a time fitting all the names on the gong.

21 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

I feel I’m missing something, maybe because I haven’t seen it, but how is Will Ferrell’s Eurovision film eligible?

It's very tenuous, but the scene where it makes it clear that the elves are real moves the film into very borderline fantasy territory.

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In other news, the amazing coincidence of not nominating works by white men in the novel and short fiction categories after the Puppy mess was over continues. Who could possibly have predicted it...

It is always entertaining to suggest that an all-or-mostly female shortlist is an artificial result when for many years an all-male list was considered the normal and nothing to be bemused by.

In any case, the list contains the most notable SFF books of 2020 with maybe one obvious exception: Unconquerable Sun unquestionably deserved to be on the list. I can't offhand think of any notable 2020 releases by a male author that were good enough to get up there. Maybe men should up their game?

At the moment I think Harrow the Ninth could be the frontrunner, since the first book was well-regarded but the sequel seems to be even more acclaimed for being so different.

[Ran]

The self-referentiality of the Best Related Works category continues apace. The ouroboros will only be complete when the Best Related Work winner is a takedown of the previous year's Best Related Works winner.

[David Selig]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

It is always entertaining to suggest that an all-or-mostly female shortlist is an artificial result when for many years an all-male list was considered the normal and nothing to be bemused by.

So how many years in a row do you need to see the list of nominees completely dominated by women to accept that something suspicious going on? 20? 50?

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

In any case, the list contains the most notable SFF books of 2020 with maybe one obvious exception: Unconquerable Sun unquestionably deserved to be on the list. I can't offhand think of any notable 2020 releases by a male author that were good enough to get up there. Maybe men should up their game?

This is pretty funny given what you said in the previous paragraph. It's probably exactly what the more conservative male fans were saying back in 1968 or 1974 about the female writers.

Also, didn't The Ministry of the Future get a lot of hype? Even Obama recommended it. It's as topical as it gets too.

Anyway, it's not just the novels. The three short fiction categories are completely female dominated and that's been the case the for years. I don't know how much short fiction you read, but I read plenty and it's definitely not the case that male writers suddenly became completely outclassed by the female ones in 2016.

BTW, the infamous "attack helicopter" story which was pulled from in Clarkesworld also got nominated, under the new name "Helicopter Story". I expect a lot of drama in the fandom.

[mormont]

DS: is there a notable omission from the ballot by a male writer?

Is there a work on the list whose presence is 'suspicious'?

Is it not relevant that pretty much all of the nominees are writers the WSFS community really likes and has a history of nominating? (With the possible exception of Tamsyn Muir.)

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

12 minutes ago, mormont said:

DS: is there a notable omission from the ballot by a male writer?

Is there a work on the list whose presence is 'suspicious'?

 

"The Vanished Birds" by Simon Jimenez is IMHO very good. He also managed to make Astounding  Award list, so, he isn't completely unknown for Hugo waters.  Also, I think Rebecca Roanhorse nomination is a joke, but YMMV.

Related work award was a travesty for some years, so I am not even surprised, but if this thing will win it will be a really big snub for George.

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, David Selig said:

BTW, the infamous "attack helicopter" story which was pulled from in Clarkesworld also got nominated, under the new name "Helicopter Story". I expect a lot of drama in the fandom.

I hope there is not a lot of drama. People were complete assholes towards Fall. It'd be just if it won, in fact. Is the title change the only difference? I hadn't even realized it had been republished. Good for them for not giving up.

It's quite true that a number of the novel nominees look like they are going to be perennials whenever a new book comes out from them. Much as Bujold, Willis, or Gaiman have been perennials. Though I don't think Clarke's nomination was a given in the same way that, say, Jemisin or Roanhorse -- it's her second novel in umpteen years, and she's never been a convention-going fixture.

[Ran]

As noted on File 770's comments, George's appearance at Discon was struck some time after April 10th, per the Internet Archive. He won't be at the convention. This is probably due to the move to December, though, as on the 10th it was still listed as being in August while the move to December was announce on the 7th. It gets his goat enough not to do it on Labor Day weekend, but to push it to near the holidays may have conflicted with other plans he already had, or a general desire not to be slogging around DC in mid-winter.

 

 

[Denvek]

Jesus, 2020 was a long year if The Good Place finale is still eligible for the Hugos. I mean, it's a very strong contender and probably favourite given previous form, but there must have been at least 6 Jeremys since that first aired.

[Ran]

The Locus Recommended Reading List compiled from a large and very diverse group of critics, editors, and so on, suggests men wrote plenty of noteworthy works. Maybe what we're discovering is that people who nominate are just not reading them?

I agree that the dramatic presentation, long form list leaves something to be desired. But 2020 was a pretty poor year for film due to the pandemic.

 

 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, David Selig said:

So how many years in a row do you need to see the list of nominees completely dominated by women to accept that something suspicious going on? 20? 50?

It would certainly need to be more than (checks notes) two. Especially given the last time we had a completely male-dominated list, it was for the same length of time (2008 and 2009).

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This is pretty funny given what you said in the previous paragraph. It's probably exactly what the more conservative male fans were saying back in 1968 or 1974 about the female writers.

Yes, almost as if I'd intended that. Also, we don't need to go back that far. The last completely male-dominated list was twelve years ago, and there were four in that decade (2003 and 2006 as well).

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Also, didn't The Ministry of the Future get a lot of hype? Even Obama recommended it. It's as topical as it gets too.

I haven't read it, but it doesn't seem to have made anywhere near as much of an impact as Robinson's last nominated novel (the splendid New York 2140).

[mormont]

There was certainly a time when a new William Gibson, an Alastair Reynolds, a Kim Stanley Robinson, a Cory Doctorow or even a Walter Jon Williams would have been expected to be on the Hugo list. But that time has passed, and with the probable exception of Doctorow I think that's less to do with gender issues than the type of books these are. Notice that the Hugo list has only one of the novels from the Locus SF list, but four from the fantasy list.

And, if we're talking notable omissions from that Locus list, you could also be listing VE Schwab, Katherine Addison, Elizabeth Bear, Alix Harrow and (as others have noted) Kate Elliott: I'm not attesting to the quality of these books but they're all authors who regularly make the Hugo lists.

[felice]

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

And in the dramatic short form, glad to see Gaugamela from the The Expanse and The Mandalorian.

Though I think two slots for the Mandalorian is a bit excessive - there were plenty of other good shows last year that deserved recognition.

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Probably because of the best scene in the movie - murder elves. Personally I didn't even nominate a single movie, just full seasons for shows. The category is lackluster this year.

And the ghost! Mostly ditto on long form nominations. I really think they should move the short/long cutoff to something like three hours so movies go in short form.

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Anyway, it's not just the novels. The three short fiction categories are completely female dominated and that's been the case the for years.

Not completely; there are four short works by male writers on the ballot.

46 minutes ago, Mr Gordo said:

OK who nominated Birds of Prey? You all been drinking?

I don't think it's out of place on the ballot given the limited competition last year; it's an entertaining enough film, especially by DC standards.

[Corvinus85]

3 minutes ago, felice said:

Though I think two slots for the Mandalorian is a bit excessive - there were plenty of other good shows last year that deserved recognition.

I agree, even though those were my favorite episodes. I kept my nominations at one per show in the category. Sad that the final season of Clone Wars didn't get in, long form or short form. Those final episodes were fantastic.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Denvek said:

Jesus, 2020 was a long year if The Good Place finale is still eligible for the Hugos. I mean, it's a very strong contender and probably favourite given previous form, but there must have been at least 6 Jeremys since that first aired.

I remember being surprised when someone pointed out shortly before the nomination deadline that it was eligible, January 2020 feels like an eternity ago.