This year’s Hugo Awards (either the Oscars of the Golden Globes of the science fiction/ fantasy field, depending on who you ask) were announced last night at the Worldcon in LA. Pleasant surprises abound:
1) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson won the Best Novel Hugo. As I’ve said before, I think it was far and away the best book in the field, but I didn’t think it would win. They’ve made a lot of bad calls in recent years, but this one, I like.
2) The Best Professional Editor Hugo goes to David Hartwell. This is nice to see not just because David is a nice guy, and does good work, but because there’s been a historical tendency for this award to only go to magazine editors, not book editors (they’re actually splitting the category into “short form” and “long form” next year for just this reason). As I read more novels than short fiction, I always pull for book editors, and it’s nice to see one win.
3) The John W. Campbell Not a Hugo for Best New Writer goes to John Scalzi. OK, that one’s not terribly surprising, but I do like the result.
A complete list of the results is below the fold, for those who care (and who don’t want to click through to the list at the Locus site…). I’ll provide a few comments (in italics) as appropriate.
Best Novel: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Best Novella: “Inside Job” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s January 2005)
This was more or less inevitable…
Best Novelette: “Two Hearts” by Peter S. Beagle (Fantasy & Science Fiction October/November 2005)
Haven’t read the story, but I like his other work.
Best Short Story: “Tk’tk’tk” by David D. Levine (Asimov’s March 2005)
Best Related Book: Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop by Kate Wilhelm (Small Beer Press)
Go, Small Beer Press…
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Serenity Written & Directed, Joss Whedon. (Universal Pictures/Mutant Enemy, Inc.)
And this year’s award for “Least Surprising Award” goes to…
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who “The Empty Child” & “The Doctor Dances” Written, Steven Moffat. Directed, James Hawes. (BBC Wales/BBC1)
Best Professional Editor: David G. Hartwell (Tor Books; Year’s Best SF)
Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
Best Semiprozine: Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
Has a magazine other than Locus ever won this award?
Best Fanzine: Plokta edited, Alison Scott, Steve Davies & Mike Scott
Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
Other Awards presented before the Hugo Ceremony:
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: John Scalzi
First Fandom Hall of Fame Award: Joe L. Hensley
Seiun Foreign Long Story: Diaspora [Diasupora] by Greg Egan/Trans. Makoto Yamagishi
Seiun Foreign Short Story: “The Human Front” (“Jinrui Sensen”) by Ken MacLeod/Trans. Youichi Shimada
Big Heart Award: Forrest J Ackerman
Special Committee Award: Betty Ballantine
Special Committee Award: Robert Silverberg
I’m not actually sure about that last one– I copied the list from the SFWA site, because it was a little cleaner, and they have Silverberg down as the winner, but Locus says it was Harlan Ellison. I’m not sure which is correct, or how you confuse those two, but I also don’t care all that much.
If you want the full vote breakdown, go here. Interestingly, the George R. R. Martin book that somebody thought was a shoo-in for the Best Novel Hugo appears to have come in last.
The special award went to Harlan, not to Bob Silverberg, although Silverberg was quite gamely Connie Willis’ foil for most of the evening.
I would just like to WOOT! for Spin winning Best Novel. It was one of the few books I have read in recent years that gave me a sense of wonder and newness. You know, why I started reading sf.
Has a magazine other than Locus ever won this award?
Yes, but not often. SF Chronicle has won twice and Interzone once.
As always, trying to intuit how Hugo vote weighting works from looking at the sheer numbers is hurting my brain. Could someone explain to me why they thought the Doctor episode that won for BDP(Short) was all that? I wasn’t particularly impressed with it, to the point that I remember thinking its central conceit was both obvious and silly.
BSG was robbed.
congrats to “doctor who” for winning best short,in fact for scooping the top three slots in this category.
I dont think that the formulac bsg was robbed at all,doctor who has showed us to be exiting and inventive in both its stories and characterization,So there for deserves the accolades that it’s peers have bestowed upon it.
The voting system isn’t that complicated – it’s vote transfer, not vote weighting. Take the shortform drama vote. You count all the first preference votes, the things that people voted number 1 on their ballots, and that gives you the first column. ‘No award’ was last on this column, so it’s votes are distributed – ie. you see what people put down second on their ballot, because that’s what they’d want to win if No Award didn’t win – among the other nominees. When No Award has gone, the Lucas thing is in last place, so you do the same thing there, and so on until you only have two nominees left.
It’s actually very easy to understand from that example, because there were three Doctor Who’s nominated, getting almost half of the first preference votes. Which means almost half of the people voting wanted a Doctor Who episode to win, compared to about a quarter who wanted BSG to win. Any voting system that didn’t return a Doctor Who win would be deeply flawed.