psocoptera

Following the as always appreciated blogging of Alex Acks.

The Pro Artist/Fan Artist subcommittee didn't produce a report and has been dissolved back into the general Hugo committee, so, no proposals to have opinions about there.

Graphic Story now maybe Graphic Story Or Comic.

Boy, there's a bunch of small-details stuff going on. Not actually sure whether I care about any of this.

Worldcon 2021 in DC, which is interesting as potentially close enough to actually go to, hmmm.

Hugo for Games under further discussion.

We seem to be keeping 5 and 6 for next year, and maybe permanently if ratified in New Zealand. I like 5 and 6, so yay.

Ooh, an arts related amendment! The Internet now officially counts for publicly displayed art? Did it not before? Per the liveblog there seems to be a lot of agreement that the arts categories need *something*.

The whole thing in one place, mostly for my ease of reference. ( Read more... )

Thoughts/votes/predictions about the Semiprozines and the Short Editors behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Okay, putting this off isn't going to make it easier (but I did go unload/reload the dishwasher, so putting it off briefly was good). Whole thing behind a cut. ( Read more... )

Whole thing behind a cut. Thoughts about all the artists and art books, ballots, and predictions.

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The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal. I was going to skip this one, having been lukewarm about the novelette, but then it made the Nebulas and the Hugos and here we are. And... I"m still lukewarm about it. I love space, and have a pretty endless appetite for stories about space exploration, and I'm interested by reluctant necessity in stories about how we might grapple as a planet with impending human extinction, but this book felt weirdly short on both of those, for its premise? Like, I guess for the end to feel like a big payoff, Kowal had to ration out how much space we could get before that, but it left a lot of the book just feeling like a workplace drama. And I have a lot of complicated feelings about stories about people struggling with their anxiety and whether/how to treat it (as a person currently not treating mine, myself), but they boil down to my not being into that particular part of this story at this particular time.

I'm excited that I get to rank novels now, though! (And also Long Editors, because one of them edited this, so I was waiting on it to do them.) This is the last of the big fiction categories for me, after this I just have Semipros and Short Editors, Relateds, Fanwriters, and Fanzines, and the three art categories. Which I guess is still a lot, but it feels like progress anyways. Novels and editors behind the cut! ( Read more... )

Watched Annihilation for Hugo purposes - I refuse to watch Quiet Place (I don't like horror! don't like being tense and upset!) but I figured Annihilation would be the lesser of two evils and also I was curious about it as an adaptation. I still found it pretty unpleasant even having read a spoilery synopsis awhile ago... Josh, in contrast, said he didn't even feel like it was horror, that he never found it scary, but I very much felt like they were doing horror stuff with the tense music and atmosphere of worsening dread. Anyways, it was interesting to see how they went about filming what I would have said was an unfilmable book (which I talked about here), imposing a more movie-friendly narrative, and how they visually represented the weird biology.

Hugo Dramatic Long thoughts/predictions/ballot under the cut; I can say right here that in the Hugo Dramatic Short category I am watching none of the television and casting a vote for Dirty Computer anyways.

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Saga volume 9 is definitely a volume of Saga. I had already been accidentally spoiled for the end and was like "hrmm" at first but I actually found it more interesting given some of the other stuff that happened? Wow, that's vague. Anyways. Space soap opera still soaping along.

Graphic novel thoughts/ballot/predictions behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Finally read The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander. Liked it more than I expected it to - did some clever stuff, even if I couldn't quite buy a couple of the linchpins.

I have now read all of the short fiction, so thoughts/ballots/predictions behind the cut. ( Read more... )

I tried to stay up to watch these despite them starting at 8 pm in Los Angeles, but gave up around my 11:45 when they still hadn't started. Were they... waiting to make sure the East Coast had gone to bed?? Anyways as it turned out I'm not all that excited about many of the results (by which I mean my favorites didn't win) so I don't regret having missed it.

The Nebula winners (link to Locus, winners bolded below)

Novel
The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang
Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller
Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik
Witchmark, C.L. Polk
Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse

Still haven't read it! Or Poppy War or Witchmark. But I was rooting for Blackfish City, or would have been equally happy to see Spinning Silver win (especially as a possible forecast of the Hugos).

Novella
Fire Ant, Jonathan P. Brazee
The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark
The Tea Master and the Detective, Aliette de Bodard
Alice Payne Arrives, Kate Heartfield
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, Kelly Robson
Artificial Condition, Martha Wells

I enjoyed Tea Master! But I would have ranked it fourth on this list, of the four I've read.

Novelette
The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander (Tor.com Publishing)
“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections”, Tina Connolly (Tor.com 7/11/18)
“An Agent of Utopia”, Andy Duncan (An Agent of Utopia)
“The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births”, José Pablo Iriarte (Lightspeed 1/18)
“The Rule of Three”, Lawrence M. Schoen (Future Science Fiction Digest 12/18)
“Messenger”, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and R.R. Virdi (Expanding Universe, Volume 4)

I am not at all surprised - still haven't read it myself, but the buzz has all pointed this way even before nominee lists were out.

Short Story
“Interview for the End of the World”, Rhett C. Bruno (Bridge Across the Stars)
“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”, Phenderson Djèlí Clark (Fireside 2/18)
“Going Dark”, Richard Fox (Backblast Area Clear)
“And Yet”, A.T. Greenblatt (Uncanny 3-4/18)
“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies”, Alix E. Harrow (Apex 2/6/18)
“The Court Magician”, Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed 1/18)

Go Clark!! This was the one acceptance speech I was excited to hear and when I clicked through the video this morning looking for it was disappointed to find out he couldn't make it to the awards and had sent some very short thanks for someone else to read. I hope he's a) going to Dublin and b) wins for novella.

Game Writing
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Charlie Brooker (House of Tomorrow & Netflix)
The Road to Canterbury, Kate Heartfield (Choice of Games)
God of War, Matt Sophos, Richard Zangrande Gaubert, Cory Barlog, Orion Walker, and Adam Dolin (Santa Monica Studio/Sony/Interactive Entertainment)
Rent-A-Vice, Natalia Theodoridou (Choice of Games)
The Martian Job, M. Darusha Wehm (Choice of Games)

I still know nothing about this category. I guess I could watch the presentation or acceptance for this and see if I learned something, although actually if this was a TV person I'm sure they weren't there, so, whatever.

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
The Good Place: “Jeremy Bearimy”, Written by: Megan Amram
Black Panther, Written by: Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole
A Quiet Place, Screenplay by: John Krasinski and Bryan Woods & Scott Beck
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Screenplay by: Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman
Dirty Computer, Written by: Janelle Monáe and Chuck Lightning
Sorry to Bother You, Written by: Boots Riley

Ok, Spider-Verse beat Black Panther, so now I'm predicting that will happen again with the Hugos.

The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book
Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi
Aru Shah and the End of Time, Roshani Chokshi
A Light in the Dark, A.K. DuBoff
Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman
Dread Nation, Justina Ireland
Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, Henry Lien

Wow, okay, a lot of people clearly had a really different experience reading this book than I did. That's great! Different people can like different things! Yay for there being so much YA that we can all find things we like!