{"id":2242,"date":"2008-02-05T08:55:32","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T08:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/02\/05\/tell-me-what-to-nominate\/"},"modified":"2008-02-05T08:55:32","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T08:55:32","slug":"tell-me-what-to-nominate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/02\/05\/tell-me-what-to-nominate\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me What to Nominate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s Hugo nomination season again, which means that I need to come up with a list of works to suggest for SF&#8217;s premier fan-voted award. It also means that there are lots of publications out there putting out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.locusmag.com\/2008\/2007RecommendedReading.html\">lists<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nesfa.org\/recommends\/hugos07.html\">recommended<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/sfrevu.com\/php\/Review-id.php?id=6785\">works<\/a> to help potential Hugo voters narrow their ballots.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, there was a bit of a fuss kicked up because the list of nominees was almost all white males. Looking at my potential list of nominees (more detail below the fold), I would say at least my ballot is headed in that direction again. If you are a person who would like to see more books and stories by women and minorities nominated, here&#8217;s your chance to tell me what I&#8217;m missing. What works should I be considering for the Hugo by people from those groups?<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t promise to nominate anything just for political reasons, but I will give any suggested works all due consideration, in the interest of not having to read a bunch of complaints about the gender breakdown of the ballot. But I need suggestions, because I&#8217;m not seeing a whole lot here.<\/p>\n<p>My preliminary ballot thoughts at the moment:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a list of the books that I&#8217;ve read from the <cite>Locus<\/cite>, NESFA, and <cite>SFRevu<\/cite> lists:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>The Yiddish Policemen&#8217;s Union,<\/cite> Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Spook Country,<\/cite> William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Bad Monkeys,<\/cite> Matt Ruff (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Queen of Candesce,<\/cite> Karl Schroeder (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Halting State,<\/cite> Charles Stross (Ace) <\/li>\n<li><cite>Axis,<\/cite> Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Territory,<\/cite> Emma Bull (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Ink,<\/cite> Hal Duncan (Macmillan UK; Del Rey)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Ysabel,<\/cite> Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Making Money,<\/cite> Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Cauldron,<\/cite> Jack McDevitt<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Last Colony,<\/cite> John Scalzi (Tor)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To these, I would add:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Ragamuffin,<\/cite> by Tobias Buckell (Tor)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which is inexplicably missing from all three lists. It was a terrific bit of space opera, with a really cool setting, and great fun to read.<\/p>\n<p>Those are pasted in in the order that they appeared on the other lists, but my top three would be the first three: Chabon, Gibson, and Ruff. People will complain that the Gibson isn&#8217;t really SF at all, but it has the feel of SF to me, and more importantly, it&#8217;s a really good book&#8211; not his very best, but very good. Ruff&#8217;s twisty thriller goes a little wonky at the end, but it&#8217;s a really good read all the same. Chabon&#8217;s alternate history Jews-in-Alaska story is head and shoulders above anything else on this list.<\/p>\n<p>After that, I&#8217;d probably go with <cite>Axis<\/cite> (an excellent book, but not as good as <cite>Spin<\/cite>) and <cite>The Last Colony<\/cite>, which is the best thing Scalzi&#8217;s written so far.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I know I said I&#8217;d add <cite>Ragamuffin<\/cite> into the mix, but as good as it is, it doesn&#8217;t quite catch the others. <cite>Halting State<\/cite> is orders of magnitude better than <cite>Glasshouse<\/cite> which was awful, but it&#8217;s still got serious flaws. <cite>Queen of Candesce<\/cite> is good, but it goes into a corner of the setting that I don&#8217;t like as much, and doesn&#8217;t really make sense unless you&#8217;ve read <cite>Sun of Suns<\/cite>. <cite>Ink<\/cite> barely makes sense even if you <strong>have<\/strong> read <cite>Vellum<\/cite>. <cite>Territory<\/cite>, Emma Bull&#8217;s secret history of the Wild West, is a very strange book&#8211; it moves along in a very slow and atmospheric sort of way, and then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of stuff happens all at once. When you look back, the story was clearly building to that point, but it&#8217;s disorienting the first time through.<\/p>\n<p>Books from those three lists that I haven&#8217;t read, but have at hand:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Undertow,<\/cite> Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Shelter,<\/cite> Susan Palwick (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Ha&#8217;Penny,<\/cite> Jo Walton (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Secret History of Moscow,<\/cite> Ekaterina Sedia (Prime Books)<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Orphan&#8217;s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice,<\/cite> Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Pirate Freedom,<\/cite> Gene Wolfe (Tor)<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Name of the Wind,<\/cite> Patrick Rothfuss (DAW; Gollancz)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Nova Swing,<\/cite> M. John Harrison (Note: Published by Gollanz,<\/cite> UK 10\/2006)\n<\/ul>\n<p>to which I would add<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Acacia<\/cite>, by David Anthony Durham<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which isn&#8217;t on any of the lists, but got some good buzz.<\/p>\n<p>Of these, I am unlikely to read <cite>Ha&#8217;Penny<\/cite> any time soon&#8211; though I&#8217;m thanked in the acknowledgements of <cite>Farthing<\/cite>, it&#8217;s really not my thing. I&#8217;m 150 pages or so into <cite>Shelter<\/cite>, and as much as I want to like it, there are some bits of the setting that just don&#8217;t do it for me, and I think I&#8217;m going to put it aside in favor of other things. It&#8217;s the rare case of a book whose cover copy is <strong>too accurate<\/strong>, starting off:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The three basic human needs are food, water&#8230; and shelter. But in the late twenty-first century, compassion is a crime. You can get your memories wiped just for trying to help.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If that appeals to you, then jump right in, because it&#8217;s very well written. Personally, it makes me want to put the book down, and reach for something else.<\/p>\n<p>I started <cite>Nova Swing<\/cite> a while back, and remember almost nothing of what I read before getting distracted by something else. I enjoyed <cite>Light<\/cite> quite a bit, though, so I&#8217;ll definitely come back to it. The start of <cite>Undertow<\/cite> looks promising, but I&#8217;m a little wary of Bear. Kate is halfway through the first book of the Valente duology, and raves about it, so that&#8217;s likely next in the queue, after she finishes it.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Hughes&#8217;s <cite>The Spiral Labyrinth<\/cite> gets mentioned as well, and while we don&#8217;t have that, we do have the first book in the series, <cite>Majestrum<\/cite>, and the premise of those sounds interesting. <cite>Acacia<\/cite> and <cite>The Name of the Wind<\/cite> look fairly entertaining as well, though I was on a Big Dumb Fantasy kick a little while ago, and I&#8217;m not quite in the mood for them now.<\/p>\n<p>As for the rest of the ballot, I&#8217;m not planning to nominate anything in the short fiction categories, just because I read so little short fiction. I&#8217;m willing to change that plan&#8211; I asked Kate to grab a copy of <cite>The New Space Opera<\/cite> from the library, because it collects a large number of the short works recommended by <cite>Locus<\/cite>&#8212; but I need some specific recommendations, because my time and attention are finite resources. If there&#8217;s a short fiction work out there that you thought was spectacular, point me to it, and I&#8217;ll give it a read.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the current state of my Hugo nomination ballot. If there&#8217;s something you&#8217;d rather see nominated than the works I listed, now&#8217;s your chance to tell me about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s Hugo nomination season again, which means that I need to come up with a list of works to suggest for SF&#8217;s premier fan-voted award. It also means that there are lots of publications out there putting out lists of recommended works to help potential Hugo voters narrow their ballots. Last year, there was a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/02\/05\/tell-me-what-to-nominate\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tell Me What to Nominate<\/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":[18,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242","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=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}