psocoptera | Entries tagged with 2021hugos

I've had this tab open with this subject line since the longlist came out, and just couldn't organize myself to write anything down. But! Some thoughts! ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/545613.html

Cut for long and for my opinions. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/545025.html

I failed to vote in the Ignyte awards this year, and I don't love some of the outcomes, which feels related even though the odds are slim that my one vote would have changed anything. Anyways, here, or behind the cut with my comments. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/539976.html

The City We Became, NK Jemisin. I did not particularly want to read this book - I wasn't into the trial-balloon short story, and I find the whole concept of "New York is So Special" pretty insufferable as a theme. I mean, I'm not saying Jemisin shouldn't write that! People should write about whatever interests them! I just would have been way more into the "let's personify cities" concept if it had centered around São Paolo or Hong Kong, or Shanghai or Delhi or Mexico City or Buenos Aires or any of the "great cities of the world" where I will probably never go but could get to know a little bit in a book. Or there are so many American cities with long histories I'd be curious to spend some time with! Detroit or Baltimore or San Francisco or St. Louis! Somewhere like Philadelphia or Seattle where I've lived but only in a limited way! But no. NYC. (And in the next book we're apparently going to Paris, which has always felt similarly oversold, to me... although, I don't know, do actual Parisians feel like Paris is the center of the universe, in the way that NY people do, or is Paris just a tourist fixation?)

Anyways, all that said, Jemisin is a terrific writer, so it wasn't a terrible read once I got through the eye-rolling stage. Some fun scenes and sequences, and the whole thing moved along nicely. I don't think it's going to win the Hugo, but I'm going to boldly predict that it will come in third after Wells and Kowal, and I am fine with that (except for how I expect my personal first-place vote, Piranesi, to do poorly in the voting, but the Hugos are like that sometimes).

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/538511.html

Shirley Jackson winners! I did end up "attending" virtual Readercon - not a huge amount of it, but I watched Ursula Vernon read the beginning of something new and unfinished, and Malka Older read a 2019 short story that I liked a lot at the time, Sturdy Lanterns and Ladders (link goes to text of story; it made my shortlist and just narrowly missed being one of my Hugo nominees), and I watched good panels about Vonda McIntyre and about action-adventure and comedy, and I have an interview with Ursula Vernon queued up to watch at some point. And the Shirley Jacksons! If you can do a satisfying 6-category award ceremony in 20 minutes, I feel like you should be able to do a 20-category award ceremony in about an hour and a quarter, not to point fingers at anyone in particular, ahem. Although I guess in fact here everything was prerecorded, which the Hugos don't want to do? Anyways. Winners behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/537064.html

The Shirley Jackson Awards, an award I follow despite not being that into horror because they present them at Readercon, a con I go to despite not being that into cons? Online this year, and I suppose I'll pay my $25 to "attend" and then probably not actually attend anything. But, anyways! Finalists here (I can't find a specific link to the list other than the front page), or behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/535049.html

Hey, it's the Locus Awards. See the list here, or behind the cut with my comments. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/534501.html

Packet!

Here's what we got and didn't get, according to file770 and my own poking so far:( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/533581.html

Here, or behind the cut with my comments! ( Read more... )

Eagerly anticipating the Hugo packet now that everyone knows how they did in these! :)

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/532565.html

List is here, or behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/530295.html

See the list here without my commentary! Maybe the most interesting piece of news is that voting is going to go until November 19th; that's a much longer reading timeline than we usually have, and I would love to see someone do the heavy stats work afterward to look at whether there'll be voting changes (in number of votes cast in smaller categories, or in number of downballot votes, for instance - people who might have ranked their top three and not read every nominee now ranking all six).

My thoughts on the nominees behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/529588.html

See them here or behind the cut with my commentary! ( Read more... )

Victo Ngai is (not for the first time iIrc) this year's "I encountered this art in the wild and was struck by it", in this case for the cover of The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea which I just got the ebook of from the library. (It drives me nuts that ebooks don't usually include the back covers! I want to see the whole wraparound design!) Oh, and Tommy Arnold for the Harrow cover.

File770 did a compilation of pro artists here (that's a big page with a lot of images). I went through it and here's whose work jumped out at me:

Anna Balbusso and Elena Balbusso
Rovina Cai
Galen Dara
Bonnie Helen Hawkins
Sija Hong
Paul Lewin
Reiko Murakami
Marc Simonetti

Some familiar names in there. Hong, Lewin, and Simonetti were not on Renay's spreadsheet, so I might go with Cai, Dara, and Murakami to maximize chances.

Also Donato Giancola did a gorgeous cover for Spinning Silver that I just want to link to, although I'm not nominating him, he's won plenty.

As far as the always-vexing question of fanartist eligibility, I don't know, I never know, I never will know, but I recently came across the work of Manzi Jackson and JR Eisma on Tumblr (both links go to Instagram) and I liked their stuff so I'm going to put down their names. I have no idea who the actual nominees will be given that presumably nobody's been doing cover art for con brochures since we haven't had cons in a year. I guess there must have been cons last Jan/Feb, so there'll be art from those? (Maybe this unprecedented time is the perfect time to rethink this category? My forever hope??)

Lots of blathering on, so it's all behind a cut. ( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://psocoptera.livejournal.com/526806.html

Hi! People who follow my SFF reccing and haven't lost all track of the passage of time may be wondering if/when I will start posting about my annual expedition through the online short SFF of the previous year! And the answer is "more or less now"! I was considering skipping this year entirely but then I decided I didn't want to do that. But I am getting a late start and I don't feel like I have as much energy for reading as I have had in some past years. The Locus list is already out - my favorite stories often don't end up on it, but most of what ends up on the awards ballots usually does - and so what I'm thinking I might do this year is to work through the Locus short fiction first and then see what else I have time for. Well, I say "first", but I also read through the first half of Strange Horizons while I was considering, and I have a few miscellaneous recs for things I actually read during 2020. So here are those recs, and then some comments on the Locus list.

Things I Actually Read In 2020 For Whatever Reason

Yo, Rapunzel!, Kyle Kirrin, PodCastle. Cute Rapunzel retelling.

The Legacy, Malka Older, New Decameron Project. A reporter investigating an AI project.

Custom Options Available, Amy Griswold. A robot, making choices.

Legal Salvage, Holli Mintzer, Slate Future Tense. Bots and antiquing.

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter, Isabel Fall, NOVELETTE. Not trying to call up past hurt for anyone - it was taken down after a controversy - but I thought it was a good story and I didn't want to leave it out of my recs. I found the idea of the military militarizing gender identity fascinating.

Strange Horizons, Jan-Jun

The Pride of Salinkari, Elizabeth Crowe. SFF of the speculative-ethics sort, by which I mean "disturbing as fuck". Heavy warning for suicidality. Josh, don't read this one. Honestly this is not so much a rec as "this story actually stood out as memorable so I'm including it in case I'm thinking about it again later and need to remember what it was."

68:Hazard:Cold, Janelle C. Shane. A droid, a crash-landing, a first-contact. Felt like a fresh take on some familiar tropes. Not exactly a nonhuman POV but like one in the ways I like.

Here is a link to the Locus list. Locus list thoughts behind the cut: ( Read more... )