Hugo flailing and also personal flailing

[psocoptera]

I have reached a point in this trip where it seems like everything is falling apart - flash flooding has closed a destination I was particularly excited about, so we are scrambling to come up with an alternative, we made a restaurant reservation without thinking about the timing of rental car return, I'm realizing I only have a couple of days left and haven't undertaken one of the major projects I wanted to do, gah.

And also my clever plan to finish my Hugo reading while I was here has been an abject failure since I'm not spending any time reading. Whoops! Time to go with what I know!

Behind the cut, some disjointed thoughts on the bits of remaining categories I've managed to read,and a stab at some rankings.

Series

The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee. I have been repeatedly making attempts at Jade City and it's *so well done* and I *just don't care*. Maybe eventually I could get far enough into it that I care about the characters?? Or possibly organized-crime-family-dramas are not for me.

The Kingston Cycle, by C. L. Polk. I have read the first two of these (1, 2) but was trying to read the third on my laptop and it just keeps not happening. I think what these are doing is neat but it's not always quite working for me.

Merchant Princes, by Charles Stross. I read the first one of these for the Hugos, The Family Trade, and the basic conceit is very clever but I don't feel like I want to read any more of Stross exploring it.

Terra Ignota, by Ada Palmer. I read the first two of the four of these (1, 2) and was really into the first one and completely lost patience with the second.

Wayward Children, by Seanan McGuire. I have read every single damn one of these for Hugo reasons and I'm *cranky* about it.

The World of the White Rat, by T. Kingfisher. I have read every single one of these because I wanted to and they bring me joy and I will continue to read all further installments in this series with greed and delight.

So, I think that looks like:

Kingfisher
Polk
Lee
Palmer
Stross
McGuire

Relateds

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson. I read this, and thoughts some of it was interesting, or made points that it's good to keep having made.

The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War, by Camestros Felapton. I... opened this? Skimmed a little? I'm sure it's a valuable resource/reference to have this all written up but I want no part of it?

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. I read a bunch of this and a bunch of it was very interesting!

“How Twitter can ruin a life”, by Emily St. James (Vox, Jun 2021) I think I read this at the time. So sad and frustrating. I'm glad this story got told.

Never Say You Can’t Survive, by Charlie Jane Anders. I'm sure there's an audience for this writing manual but I have no patience for reading about writing when I could actually be writing. (And I opened at random to a couple of places and some of the tone here kind of annoys me

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman. I've had this open for awhile on my laptop and I keep reading more bits of it. I'm not sure how much I care about Stan Lee but I guess biography of major cultural figures is interesting?

So...

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985
“How Twitter can ruin a life”
Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee
The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War
Never Say You Can’t Survive

Comments

[glynhogen]

This year especially, I am so glad I have not been doing the Hugo Thing. I would not be able to take the extra stress you feel.

The first Kingston book made me want to read whatever Polk did next (Midnight Bargain is sitting on a bookshelf somewhere). I've bounced off McGuire enough that it's been a while since I tried any of her stuff; Lee's on my I'll-read-this-eventually list; I agree Kingfisher is delightful (but with the ongoing nature of the series, it winning in any particular year feels less urgent, sort of like Murderbot or Xuya). I DNFed the first Merchant Princes book very quickly. It was one of the most hamfisted character introductions I've read. I'm a big fan of Palmer's series for the sheer amount of care and scope and stuff she's doing. (I suspect I'm going to regard this year's series results like whatever year Graveyard Book won when Anathem was sitting right there, simultaneously being Peak Stephenson and Fewer Annoyances Stephenson.)

I am apparently in the minority of not liking the Emily St. James piece. On the one hand, good from a memoir-style perspective. One the other, it doesn't work as a Timeline/Retrospective Of What Happened On Twitter, which is how it's sometimes wielded. On the third, when I first read it I found it rather troubling that, of all the people reacting negatively to the story (in a lit-crit or personal reaction way), she chose to name Jemisin and Yang. (Suffice to say I was not terribly surprised when Yang, trans and more professionally vulnerable, was the one harassed, and then Neon Hemlock and their authors.) "Isabel Fall" may have become a cudgel wielded by unscrupulous trolls anyway, but the Vox piece certainly lubricated that process.

[psocoptera]

Hmm. I may be being dumb (or rather, reading while simultaneously involved in multiple overlapping logistical conversations, which is not helping my focus on anything) but I think the version of the St. James piece that is in the packet does not name Jemisin, and the quote from Yang felt very "reasonable", like, talking about why trans people might be predisposed to feeling like they're under attack (because they so often are). I can't remember what was in the original or how edited this packet version might be but that feels complicated. Am I voting for the original or the packet version. Probably requires more research that I don't have time to do. Gah.

[glynhogen]

Ah, no, my bad on that front; apparently there was an off-the-record conversation that Jemisin later referenced, and I have been conflating that with the article itself in my head.

I agree about the Yang quote (especially because yeah, those first couple CW comments were highly sus), but it's positioned as a mea culpa and St. James doesn't get any other quotes (from Twitter or on the record for the piece) from the many authors who tweeted things similar to Yang. That may be part of the reason that they were the first trans person dubbed as a ringleader coordinating attacks on Fall.