{"id":2405,"date":"2008-03-21T08:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T08:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/21\/hugo-nominees-2008\/"},"modified":"2008-03-21T08:46:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T08:46:00","slug":"hugo-nominees-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/21\/hugo-nominees-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Nominees 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hugo Award nominees<\/a> for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have:<\/p>\n

\n

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union<\/i> by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
\nBrasyl<\/i> by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
\nRollback<\/i> by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog<\/i> Oct. 2006-Jan\/Feb. 2007)
\nThe Last Colony<\/i> by John Scalzi (Tor)
\nHalting State<\/i> by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Does Robert J. Sawyer have secret mind control powers, or something? The Chabon is a fantastic book, Scalzi’s book is the best thing he’s written, the Stross is very good and he’s a buzz-worthy author, and I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Brasyl<\/cite>. I’ve never heard anybody mention Rollback<\/cite> at all– Locus<\/cite><\/a> doesn’t list it, NESFA<\/cite><\/a> doesn’t list it, and yet, there it is. What the hell?<\/p>\n

I’m really amazed by this, mostly because every time I’ve looked at the cover copy of one of his books, it’s looked unreadably awful to me. But, really, I don’t recall anybody talking about this book as a possible nominee, and I read a whole bunch of nomination lists when I was trying to fill out my own ballot. So what gives?<\/p>\n

Other notes:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

— Not a huge improvement in the gender balance area– only four nominated works by women, out of twenty. Still, better than last year.<\/p>\n

— Shaun Tan’s The Arrival<\/cite> made the list in Best Related Book. It really is a terrific piece of work, and eveybody should read it and vote for it.<\/p>\n

— A really good slate of Professional Editor, Long Form nominees. I always forget about Beth Meacham, because she’s quiet and sensible, but she does a terrific job for Tor. And Lou Anders (who looks and talks like a hit man) is doing really good things at Pyr. Any of these people would be a fine choice for the award.<\/p>\n

— Another Fan Writer nomination for Scalzi, which is particularly amusing given that he’s also nominated for Best Novel. That ought to make some heads go all explodey.<\/p>\n

— Scott Lynch for the Campbell in a walk.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate) Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan\/Feb. 2007) The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)… Continue reading Hugo Nominees 2008<\/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":[73,18,35,37,29,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-movies","category-pop_culture","category-sf","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405","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=2405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}