{"id":1296,"date":"2007-03-30T08:28:41","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T08:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/03\/30\/hugo-nominations-2007\/"},"modified":"2007-03-30T08:28:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-30T08:28:41","slug":"hugo-nominations-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/03\/30\/hugo-nominations-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Nominations 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nippon2007.us\/hugo_nominees.php\">Hugo Award Nominees for 2007<\/a> have been officially announced. The one award I usually watch closely is Best Novel, and this year&#8217;s nominees are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Eifelheim<\/cite>, Michael Flynn \t(Tor) <\/li>\n<li><cite>His Majesty&#8217;s Dragon<\/cite>, Naomi Novik  \t(Del Rey)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Glasshouse<\/cite>, Charles Stross  \t(Ace)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Rainbows End<\/cite>, Vernor Vinge  \t(Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Blindsight<\/cite>, Peter Watts  \t(Tor)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Kind of a mixed bag, really. I thought <cite>Rainbows End<\/cite> was terrific, and <cite>His Majesty&#8217;s Dragon<\/cite> was good fun, and there&#8217;s been really good buzz on <cite>Blindsight<\/cite>. <cite>Glasshouse<\/cite> frankly sounds pretty bad to me, though, and I&#8217;m not hugely enthused about <cite>Eifelheim<\/cite>.  <\/p>\n<p>In other Hugo news, John Scalzi was nominated for Best Fan Writer, and soon the Internet was ablaze with argument about whether he&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/makinglight\/archives\/008804.html#008804\">right<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/akirlu.livejournal.com\/118331.html\">sort<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scalzi.com\/whatever\/005001.html\">of<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/james-nicoll.livejournal.com\/754197.html\">fan<\/a> for the award. On the one hand, I think this is a deeply silly conversation, but then again, I didn&#8217;t nominate him, or either of the Nielsen Haydens for &#8220;Best Fan Writer,&#8221; for reasons that are actually kind of similar&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Which is not to say that I question the fannish credentials of John, Patrick, or Teresa&#8211; I think they&#8217;re absolutely the right sort of fans to be &#8220;Best Fan Writer.&#8221; I just didn&#8217;t think they were the right sort of <strong>writers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t nominate anybody for &#8220;Best Fan Writer,&#8221; actually, because of what pops into mind when I hear the phrase &#8220;Fan Writer&#8221; in the context of SF. Which is, basically writing <strong>about<\/strong> fandom, or, to put it another way, &#8221; the stuff I don&#8217;t read in <cite>Locus<\/cite>.&#8221; Or, for another examples, the award has been won umpteen times by Dave Langford, and while I enjoy his book reviews when I run across them, he&#8217;s usually associated with <a href=\"http:\/\/news.ansible.co.uk\/\"><cite>Ansible<\/cite><\/a>, which is mostly a collection of news reports about conventions I didn&#8217;t go to and people I don&#8217;t know, mixed with some in-jokes that I don&#8217;t get.<\/p>\n<p>As such, it never really occurred to me to put John, Patrick, or Teresa up for this award. They&#8217;re absolutely fans, and I enjoy their writing, but I don&#8217;t think of it as &#8220;fan writing.&#8221; Patrick and Teresa mostly write about politics these days, and John writes about whatever happens to strike his fancy. They occasionally write on fannish topics, and there&#8217;s a sort of fannish world view informing a lot of their other writing, but I don&#8217;t think of it as &#8220;fan writing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Which is just a long way of saying that I can&#8217;t really hack on Ulrika too much for what I think is a silly interpretation of the award category, because my own interpretation of it is probably equally silly. People who wear glasses shouldn&#8217;t get stoned, or something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hugo Award Nominees for 2007 have been officially announced. The one award I usually watch closely is Best Novel, and this year&#8217;s nominees are: Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor) His Majesty&#8217;s Dragon, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace) Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor) Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor) Kind of a mixed bag, really.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/03\/30\/hugo-nominations-2007\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hugo Nominations 2007<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}