Hugo Fan Writers and Fan Zines
Jul. 28th, 2019 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraFinal! two! categories! No predictions because who even knows, but yes notes and votes.
First, the fan writers.
I seem to have failed to actually nominate Bogi Takács this year, but would have; they do a lot of valuable reviewing/reccing/compiling, and I follow them on Twitter.
I did nominate Charles Payseur, who is a superhero of short fiction reviewing. I mostly fail to actually read his reviews, because I read short fiction in such a weird untimely way, but when I'm struggling with what to make of a story I go look to see if he wrote about it, and I picked up some good stuff out of his Sippy Awards that I would have missed otherwise. Definitely needs to get the Fan Writer Hugo one of these years (and why not this one).
Foz Meadows was on the ballot last year and got my second place vote after Takács. This year she (she? they? I think she's genderqueer and uses she) wrote some valid criticism of Last Jedi (there is so much utterly bullshit criticism out there it was weird to read valid criticism) and interesting thoughts about In the Vanishers' Palace.
Elsa Sjunneson-Henry writes interesting stuff about sff and disability.
Alasdair Stuart I hadn't heard of before, but wrote the first review I ever read of Hunger Makes The Wolf that made me actually want to read it.
James Davis Nicoll I couldn't place, but sounded vaguely familiar. Turns out he writes articles and reviews for Tor.com. There are a bunch of reviews in the packet and I didn't think he had anything particularly interesting to say in any of the ones I read.
So, ballot, middle two are basically tied but had to be ranked somehow.
1 - Charles Payseur
2 - Bogi Takács
3 - Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
4 - Foz Meadows
5 - Alasdair Stuart
6 - James Davis Nicoll
And the fanzines! I sometimes have this feeling that I have no business voting in fanzine because I have no familiarity or interest in, like, Traditional Fanzine Subculture, but, hey, I did my reading homework, and some of these are actually more like modern blogs than Fan Zines per se.
Namely Quick Sip Reviews, Charles Payseur's blog, discussed above under his Fan Writer nom, and Lady Business, which I follow on Dreamwidth, although I don't remember any of these posts. Good stuff, though - the statistics about Worldcon bids were fascinating, and I feel like they generally have interesting stuff to say in their reviews and commentary.
Galactic Journey is the "liveblogging the sff scene of 55 years ago" zine. I think I found this cuter last year when it was novel - gave them my top vote last year! Wasn't into it this year.
Journey Planet does themed issues - we've got Judge Dredd, Star Wars, Heroes Unlimited which is about superhero comics, Silicon Valley, Flann O'Brien, and Star Trek. I don't really get Journey Planet - either the topic is something I don't care about, in which case why do I want to read it, or it's something I do care about, in which case why do I care what these random people think about it.
Nerds of a Feather had some interesting reviews.
My download of the packet has typos in a folder name and pdf name such that the last nominee is Rocket Stank Rank, and who am I to argue with the packet. Ok, honestly, I have no idea if their transphobia has continued or if they've improved, but for my purposes, since I actively like stories with interesting gender stuff going on and the usage of nonbinary and/or invented pronouns, their recs are pretty much useless to me if there's a chance they're still biased against those things. I do sometimes use them for word counts though, or to see if there are any recent novellas worth library-requesting copies of print magazines for. I kind of wish they were focusing on the resource side of their operation rather than the ranking and reviewing. Anyways, I think I'm not going to no-award them this year, but I am still ranking them last. Will cheerfully go back to no-awarding them if I hear they're still being dicks.
Ballot:
1 - Quick Sip Reviews
2 - Lady Business
3 - Nerds of a Feather
4 - Galactic Journey
5 - Journey Planet
6 - Rocket Stack Rank
First, the fan writers.
I seem to have failed to actually nominate Bogi Takács this year, but would have; they do a lot of valuable reviewing/reccing/compiling, and I follow them on Twitter.
I did nominate Charles Payseur, who is a superhero of short fiction reviewing. I mostly fail to actually read his reviews, because I read short fiction in such a weird untimely way, but when I'm struggling with what to make of a story I go look to see if he wrote about it, and I picked up some good stuff out of his Sippy Awards that I would have missed otherwise. Definitely needs to get the Fan Writer Hugo one of these years (and why not this one).
Foz Meadows was on the ballot last year and got my second place vote after Takács. This year she (she? they? I think she's genderqueer and uses she) wrote some valid criticism of Last Jedi (there is so much utterly bullshit criticism out there it was weird to read valid criticism) and interesting thoughts about In the Vanishers' Palace.
Elsa Sjunneson-Henry writes interesting stuff about sff and disability.
Alasdair Stuart I hadn't heard of before, but wrote the first review I ever read of Hunger Makes The Wolf that made me actually want to read it.
James Davis Nicoll I couldn't place, but sounded vaguely familiar. Turns out he writes articles and reviews for Tor.com. There are a bunch of reviews in the packet and I didn't think he had anything particularly interesting to say in any of the ones I read.
So, ballot, middle two are basically tied but had to be ranked somehow.
1 - Charles Payseur
2 - Bogi Takács
3 - Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
4 - Foz Meadows
5 - Alasdair Stuart
6 - James Davis Nicoll
And the fanzines! I sometimes have this feeling that I have no business voting in fanzine because I have no familiarity or interest in, like, Traditional Fanzine Subculture, but, hey, I did my reading homework, and some of these are actually more like modern blogs than Fan Zines per se.
Namely Quick Sip Reviews, Charles Payseur's blog, discussed above under his Fan Writer nom, and Lady Business, which I follow on Dreamwidth, although I don't remember any of these posts. Good stuff, though - the statistics about Worldcon bids were fascinating, and I feel like they generally have interesting stuff to say in their reviews and commentary.
Galactic Journey is the "liveblogging the sff scene of 55 years ago" zine. I think I found this cuter last year when it was novel - gave them my top vote last year! Wasn't into it this year.
Journey Planet does themed issues - we've got Judge Dredd, Star Wars, Heroes Unlimited which is about superhero comics, Silicon Valley, Flann O'Brien, and Star Trek. I don't really get Journey Planet - either the topic is something I don't care about, in which case why do I want to read it, or it's something I do care about, in which case why do I care what these random people think about it.
Nerds of a Feather had some interesting reviews.
My download of the packet has typos in a folder name and pdf name such that the last nominee is Rocket Stank Rank, and who am I to argue with the packet. Ok, honestly, I have no idea if their transphobia has continued or if they've improved, but for my purposes, since I actively like stories with interesting gender stuff going on and the usage of nonbinary and/or invented pronouns, their recs are pretty much useless to me if there's a chance they're still biased against those things. I do sometimes use them for word counts though, or to see if there are any recent novellas worth library-requesting copies of print magazines for. I kind of wish they were focusing on the resource side of their operation rather than the ranking and reviewing. Anyways, I think I'm not going to no-award them this year, but I am still ranking them last. Will cheerfully go back to no-awarding them if I hear they're still being dicks.
Ballot:
1 - Quick Sip Reviews
2 - Lady Business
3 - Nerds of a Feather
4 - Galactic Journey
5 - Journey Planet
6 - Rocket Stack Rank
