psocoptera

The PDF is here.

Tobias Buckell put together the likely Puppy-free ballot here.

Novels:
The most interesting thing to me here is the presence of The Martian on the longlist. I *seriously* thought this wasn't eligible. Also interesting: the total absence of The Magician's Land. Really, Hugo nominators? I mean, I didn't nom it, but it was a pretty major release for the year, and really excellent if you can read with slightly less feminist eyes than I could.

Novellas:
I'm sad that I didn't get that Nancy Kress novella in the packet; I suppose I could see if the library has it, or ::gasp:: actually buy it. I thought Swirsky's "Grand Jete" was pretty great, pleased to see it in the contenders.

Novelette:
I came very close to nominating "Litany of Earth", although in the end I did not, but I would have very happily voted for it.

Short Stories:
Man, look at that ballot. I guess Ursula Vernon got a Nebula at least.

Graphic:
Sex Criminals got onto the ballot with 60 noms, Nimona was 11th with 28. This is a category where your nomination makes a difference!

Dramatic Short:
Conventional wisdom is that there's more overlap between Puppies and others in the Dramatic categories - I myself voted for the Flash pilot even though it had been on the slate. So it's a little hard to say what a Puppy-free ballot in this category might have looked like. *However*, we know the top three got Puppy nominations, and "Legend of Korra: the Last Stand" came in 8th. Was there a chance? Maybe, maybe not, I'm pleased it came so close.

Pro Artist:
Galen Dara would have made the ballot without the Puppies, sigh.

Fan Artist:
Elizabeth Leggett squeaked onto the ballot with 23 nominations and ran away with the category, somewhat similar to Sarah Webb last year iIrc. Two of my nominees each got 16 nominations. Another category where your nomination has a lot of power.

I seem to have claimed back in March that I would comment on my Hugo ballot reading when I did it.

In fact I did very little Hugo ballot reading this year because of the Puppy situation, but here's what I've got:

Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu: made myself read to 20% and gave up, not into it. A novel.

Graphic Stories not previously read:

Saga Vol 3: if you like Saga you'll probably keep liking it!
Rat Queens Vol 1: if you like dungeon-crawling ladies, these are some. (I liked this a lot, classic this-could-be-a-campaign adventuring party stuff but all the PCs happen to be women.)
Sex Criminals Vol 1: man, my jury is out until I see where it's going. Clever, but do they think they're writing a psychological thriller, or a romantic comedy?

Ancillary Sword vs Goblin Emperor for Best Novel.

Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 made the Graphic Story nominees!

And that's all of love that could make it today.

Fan artist is a confusing category for me. My pro artist nominees are all people I came across while I was wearing my SFF hat - they did covers or story illustrations for something I was reading. I see awesome fanart on a daily basis, but I encounter it while wearing my fandom hat. I'm not thinking about SFF awards nor are these works clearly being put forward as part of a conversation in the SFF world. But, can there really be said to be a coherent SFF world. Maybe fanartists are in fact fan artists.

I've decided to split the difference and nominate three people whose work I liked while browsing this Hugo Eligible Art Tumblr: Evgeny Hontor, Autun Purser, and Mandie Manzano, who was my second choice on last year's ballot.

And also two people from the fandom world: Marisha Lozada for her Korra art, and Julia Cross for the Avengers Tarot that I cannot find an original posting for, just reblogs.

(And I believe this is the last of my Hugo nomination posts... I stay out of related works, longform editor, fanzine, fancast, and fanwriter. Tune in some time in April for my reaction to the ballot, in June and July for my reviews of things I haven't already read, and in August for the rejoicing and deploring.)

Yeah, I've been stalling on this one.

What I'm Nominating:

Lockstep, Karl Schroeder. The best alien-planet travel porn I've read in years, coupled with a genuine Nifty Idea. Made the Locus list under YA, which I'm sure is a sign it won't make it anywhere near the ballot, but it definitely belongs on my standouts-of-the-year list.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. I think this might actually have awards traction, which delights me.

Stranger, Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. I don't even know, possibly I like this in a YA way more than I like it in an SFF way, but the postapocalyptic worldbuilding is just so *competent*. ::fans self:: Didn't make the Locus list, will not have traction, possibly what I would really want would be for it to win the Norton, but I'm not voting for the Norton.

What I'm *Not* Nominating:

The Martian, Andy Weir. Consensus seems to be that this book isn't eligible due to prior self-publication, which gives me a cop-out on deciding whether I would have nominated it. I probably would have; it wasn't quite the book I wished it was in some ways, but it was hella gripping, it was the kind of thing I wanted to tell people they should read, and after I gave it to him for Christmas it's the most excited my dad has been about a novel in years (which is maybe a weird consideration? but I wouldn't even be playing this game if I hadn't started reading his old Year's Bests as a kid, and, like, a super-heartwarming moment of shared fandom with my dad is totally Hugo-relevant for me).

My Real Children, Jo Walton. Iiiii don't know. My favorite thing she's written (definitely liked it more than Among Others) and I wouldn't think it *didn't* belong on the ballot, I'm just... I don't know. Maybe I still harbor resentment for Among Others beating Embassytown (a catalyzing event for me being an actual Hugo voter and not just a Hugo spectator).

Lock In, John Scalzi. A fine book doing some nifty things, but enh. Also my opinion is irrelevant as I will eat my hat if it doesn't end up on the ballot.

The Magician's Land, Lev Grossman. I am SO TORN. On the one hand, I loved so much about it, he's *so good* and the stuff he's working on is so dear to my heart. On the other hand, his problem with seeing women as the sex class ENRAGES me, and I guess I feel like that's a disqualifying flaw for deserving a major award.

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice was a slam-dunk but this book felt very Book Two, like, there's a lot of neat stuff on the board but I just don't feel like I can judge the payoff yet.

Echopraxia, Peter Watts. Finally finished my Blindsight reread but I'm only like ten pages into this; maybe it'll turn out to be brilliant but I have not determined that in time to do anything about it.

Turn Of The Story, Sarah Rees Brennan. I love this so so so much, but it feels like it's part of a different conversation than the Hugo conversation. (Maybe *it* should win the Norton, in my fantasy universe where I'm the boss of the Norton.)

The Problem

I probably like any of the above more than Parasite 2 or GrimNoir 4 or Pluto's Increasingly Tedious Second Sequel or whatever the fuck ye Voters of Disparate Tastes are likely to put on the ballot. So should I use my fourth and fifth slots for something I don't really want to vote for after all?

I guess it's time to actually finish these.

Legend of Korra - "Day of the Colossus"
Legend of Korra - "The Last Stand"
Legend of Korra - "Venom of the Red Lotus"
Agents of SHIELD - "Turn, Turn, Turn"
Agents of SHIELD - "What They Become"

I admit I'm not passionately devoted to those particular Agents of SHIELD episodes - it's more that I like the idea of recognizing that SFF fandom likes shows other than Game of Who, and those seem like episodes SHIELD fans might be able to get behind. I mean, I did think the tie-in between the show and CA:TWS was neat and "Turn Turn Turn" seems like the right ep to award for that, but in general, I don't know, it's very hard to pick out an individual chunk of something I enjoy in its ongoingness.

The Legend of Korra finale on the other hand was the best thing to happen to my short-dramatic-presentation-watching eyeballs in 2014, no qualifiers.

Stranger, by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. This is *so good*, YA the way you want it to be and so often isn't. (Brown is "one of us" in a fandom sense so that might help.) The setting is great - postapocalyptic southern California, with all kinds of weird mutant animals and plants and powered people. The structure is great - five different POV characters, plus significant revelations and twists about non-POV characters, so it really feels like a world where everyone is real and interesting, not one of these stories where everything is always about one main character. Also, structure-wise, a bunch of random wacky adventure shit happens very fast in the beginning, building the world... and then over the course of the book, bits of it come back again, some of it in unexpected ways. I get annoyed when I feel like I'm just reading through a bunch of disconnected episodes, a mishmash of elements where the author seemed to take an "every nifty idea that ever occurred to me plus the kitchen sink" approach to their world, which seems to plague fantasy particularly. Stranger does not have this problem, it really felt well-built and coherent and like someone was paying close attention to hanging guns up on a series of walls and then taking them down again and firing them. (And they hit a good balance between a satisfying ending and still having some guns left on the walls that I'm eager to see go off in the next books - this is book one of a trilogy.) Did I mention some very intense action (and emotional realism about it) and a canonical OT3? And the world actually seems to make sense in terms of, like, population size and where people get their food and stuff, which I really appreciate *not* having to suspend disbelief about? I'm not sure what to compare this to but I highly recommend it.

Aka "movies". By the way, sorry to anybody feeling drowned in Hugo posts - the good thing is I'll run out of categories eventually ::grin::.

I definitely want to nominate How To Train Your Dragon 2, The Book of Life, and Big Hero 6. Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men: Days of Future Past were both fine, enjoyable movies but neither made me say "oh, yeah, that should get a Hugo". But I think I will nominate Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Oh, hey, I could nominate the Lego movie! Sure, why not. Apparently I have been wholesale convinced that animated movies can and often are the best SFF of the year ::grin::.

Just the one:

Grand Jete (The Great Leap), Rachel Swirsky. The limits of nerd Rapture.

I'll be curious to see what ends up on the ballot here, since I haven't read most of what's on the Locus list. I wasn't thrilled with any of "Where the Trains Turn", "The Things We Do For Love", "The Mothers of Voorhisville", or "The Black Sun", although I suppose if we get another "Butcher of Khardov" on the ballot I'm going to be sad I didn't nominate all four of those.

A recap of novelettes (minus the five Giganotosaurus ones I liked but am not considering nominating):

Saltwater Economics, Jack Mierzwa. Field biology at the Salton Sea.

The Djinn Who Sought To Kill The Sun, Tahmeed Shafiq. Classic-feeling fantasy.

Giants, Peter Watts. Reprint from a 2014 source. Far-future space exploration story.

*Wine, Yoon Ha Lee. Dark SF-or-maybe-high-fantasy.

The Dead Star, The Satirist, and the Soldier, Rachel Sobel. Big-R Romantic tragedy.

Reborn, Ken Liu. Aliens in Boston; memory and accomodation.

*The End of the End of Everything, Dale Bailey. Art and death.

*The Litany of Earth, Ruthanna Emrys. Humanist Lovecraft story.

*The Colonel, Peter Watts. Interstitial between Blindsight and the sequel. Serious science fiction.

*The Last Log of the Lachrimosa, Alastair Reynolds. Space adventure-horror, meh ending.

The five in bold are the ones I think I'm nominating.

In many ways the piece of fiction that brought me the most joy this year was Sarah Rees Brennan's "Wings In The Morning" in Monstrous Affections, which I would *totally* nominate if it were a novella, but my best guess based on number of pages (I asked SRB for a wordcount but never heard back) is that it's a novelette, and - I'm not sure I want to use one of my novelette slots? Let me digress for a minute about my philosophy of nominating. Certainly my own personal reading pleasure is a major factor, but I also see the Hugos as an ongoing conversation in SFF fandom, and so I'm looking for works for the Hugos that I think everyone (for, you know, large-percentage values of "everyone") might like, or that I think everyone *ought* to read; works I want to send forward to readers in the future as representing SFF today, or that I think the future *will* consider significant and I want us in the present to look smart by recognizing contemporarily. As much as I am crazy fannish about that SRB story, I don't think it's as interesting a contribution to the bigger conversation as the rest of these. Also, I'm interested in applying my nominations where they might actually push something over the line into making the ballot, because I like having things I like on the ballot. "Wine" and "The Colonel" made the Locus 2014 recommended reading list, which is a sign of possible ballot potential. "Litany of Earth" also made the Locus list and I'm a little tempted to swap it out for "Reborn" which didn't, although Ken Liu is very ballotable in himself. Anyways, this is where I am right now with novelettes.