2015 Hugo nominees - initial reaction post

[psocoptera]

2015 Hugo award ballot.
File 770 breakdown of nominees by Sad and Rabid Puppy lists.

Okay, so, look: I don't think I can talk about 61 out of 85 nominees coming from these organized campaigns without breaking down quickly into "flames on the side of my face" incoherency.

Here's what I can say. I read the vast majority of the new short fiction published online by Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Giganotosaurus, Tor.com, Daily SF, Apex, Subterranean, Crossed Genres, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies last year.

On this year's ballot, there are four novella nominees from Castalia House and one from Analog (incorrectly listed as being from Tor.com, I hope a correction for that circulates soon). There are three novelette nominees from Analog, one from Castalia, and one from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, a magazine I don't follow. The short stories come from Castalia, Sci Phi Journal, Galaxy's Edge, and an anthology series of apocalypse stories.

I admit that I don't read Analog and had never heard of Castalia or any of those other magazines. So maybe there's some good stuff out there, I think you know you'll be hearing all about it when the packet comes out.

But JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, it is my STRONG SUSPICION that there are a bunch of Hugo nominators who don't read Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Giganotosaurus, Tor.com, Daily SF, Apex, Subterranean, Crossed Genres, or Beneath Ceaseless Skies, because I read some REALLY FUCKING GOOD STORIES and it pisses me off that not a single piece of short fiction from any of those fine publications made it to this ballot. I mean, never mind that no short fiction I personally LIKED made it to the ballot - NO SHORT FICTION I READ.

I am interested in the Hugos as a conversation about SFF. But this isn't a fucking conversation.

Comments

[gannet.livejournal.com]

And it turns out that the reason we've never heard of Castalia is that it's owned by Vox Day (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/the-biggest-little-sf-publishe.html), which explains why so many things published by them ended up on the Rabid Puppies slate.