Hugo Voting

Posted on by Chad Orzel

Just a reminder, if you’re someone who’s eligible to vote for this year’s Hugo Awards, the deadline to do so is tomorrow. Of course, you probably already know that– they sent out reminder emails last night. They want me to vote so badly, in fact, that I got four reminder emails last night, two with my own member number and voting PIN, and two with somebody else’s…

I sent my vote in this morning. Once again, this was a year in which there was a huge gap between the category winners and the next-best nominees. It was awkwardly large, in fact– not quite big enough to put “No Award” second, but big enough that I wanted some way to indicate that. I wonder how they would handle a ballot with no second-place vote, that went directly from “1” to “3”?

For those who care, my votes are below the fold:

Best Novel:

  1. Anathem
  2. The Graveyard Book
  3. Little Brother
  4. Zoe’s Tale

This was probably the category with the biggest gap. Anathem is head and shoulders above all the rest, which all have significant flaws. The ordering of the next three almost doesn’t matter– they’re good books, but not even close to Anathem.

I haven’t read the fifth nominee, because the whole concept of Charlie Stross writing a late-Heinlein tribute novel makes my skin crawl. I can’t bring myself to read it, but not having read it, I can’t put it below “No Award.”

Best Novella

  1. “Truth” by Robert Reed
  2. “The Tear” by Ian McDonald
  3. “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress
  4. “The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay

Another category that isn’t even close. “Truth” is better than the next three put together. The McDonald gets the edge over the Kress because Kress says silly things about quantum, and the Finlay is a lovingly detailed story about how much it sucks to be in a concentration camp, so it goes right to the bottom.

“True Names” by Doctorow and Rosenbaum got the Eight Deadly Words halfway through, but it wasn’t awful enough to go below “No Award.” I just didn’t care about what was going on.

Best Novelette

  1. “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner
  2. “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel
  3. “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi
  4. “Shoggoths in Bloom
  5. No Award
  6. “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick

Another category with a clear winner and a bunch of “Enh.” “The Ray-Gun” is a Kelly Link-ish story where the fantastic element is just an excuse to tell a sweet story about two ordinary people. After that, there’s a huge step down to the next three, which are, respectively, second-rate Neil Gaiman, an unsubtle lecture about how we’re all Bad People, and a Lovecraft homage that goes nowhere.

If there were a way to put “No Award” on the ballot four or five times before the Resnick story, I would. God, that story (or, more precisely, its presence on the ballot) pisses me off.

Best Short Story

  1. “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson
  2. “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang
  3. “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowall
  4. “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick
  5. No Award
  6. “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick

Finally, a difficult decision, at least for the first two spots. Kij Johnson gets the edge in the end because the Chiang got a little too obvious at the end, but they’re both very good stories.

After those two… “Evil Robot Monkey” comes third because Swanwick has some sort of artistic objection to endings, or something. Resnick, of course, comes 428th, after a whole bunch of “No Award”s.

I have no opinion on most of the other categories, due to not having enough time to read/ watch/ give a damn about the nominees. I did happen to see 60% of the field for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), so I threw in a partial vote of 1) The Dark Knight, 2) Iron Man, 3) Hellboy II. I didn’t get to the other two, so I have no opinion on them.

The other category for which I cast a complete ballot was the John W. Campbell Not-a-Hugo Award for Best New Writer:

  1. Felix Gilman
  2. David Anthony Durham
  3. Gord Sellar
  4. Aliette de Bodard
  5. No Award
  6. Tony Pi

Here, we see the dangers of putting together the Hugo Voter Packet– as I don’t read much short fiction, I wouldn’t ordinarily have any idea who Tony Pi is. Thanks to the packet, though, I was able to read his story “The Stone Cipher,” which was sufficiently awful to put him below No Award. We’re talking Resnick-level bad, here.

As for the others, Thunderer (included in the packet) was a better novel than Acacia (which I read a year or so ago). I enjoyed Gord Sellar’s story about jazz musicians playing for aliens, and he gets bonus points for doing a Many-Worlds thing without including a tedious and incorrect lecture about how it works. Aliette de Bodard’s Aztec-themed stories were unobjectionable– not great, but not shriekingly awful, either.

And that’s how I voted, and why.