{"id":5538,"date":"2011-04-27T11:33:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T11:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2011\/04\/27\/hugo-nominations-meh\/"},"modified":"2011-04-27T11:33:04","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T11:33:04","slug":"hugo-nominations-meh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/04\/27\/hugo-nominations-meh\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Nominations: Meh"},"content":{"rendered":"

The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards<\/a> were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it’s just our flaky DSL that’s kept me from saying anything about it. that’s only part of the story, though. I haven’t said anything about them in large part because it’s a really uninspiring bunch of works.<\/p>\n

I’ve only read two of the Best Novel nominees at this point, Cryoburn<\/cite> and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms<\/cite>, and I’m not enthusiastic about either. I have fairly low expectations for a Miles Vorkosigan novel relative to a lot of fans, but Cryoburn<\/cite> failed to meet them: the main plot is shaggy and aimless, and it feels very much like a novel of obligation rather than a story that needed to be told. And the ending is ridiculously cheap. I probably would’ve liked The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms<\/cite> more if I hadn’t read a bunch of urban fantasy right before it, but as it was it reminded me too much of the “My Awesome Werewolf Boyfriend” plot, which I have grown to really hate.<\/p>\n

The only remaining book that looks at all interesting is The Dervish House<\/cite>. I really disliked the last Connie Willis book I read<\/a>, and nothing I’ve heard about Blackout\/ All Clear<\/cite> makes me think I’d like it any better. And then there’s Feed<\/cite> which reminds me that there’s one currently fashionable topic that I’m less enthusiastic about than steampunk, which is zombies. I’ve heard people say good things about it, but the website<\/a> just makes me twitch– zombies plus “new media” triumphalism? Not just “Meh,” but “Enh,” bordering on “Bleagh.”<\/p>\n

So, on the whole, I’m not fired up to read any of these books. In short fiction, the Ted Chiang story was perfectly good, I didn’t think much of the Peter Watts story<\/a>, and I should know better than to click through to a Kij Johnson story that someone else reviewed with a “shudder.”<\/p>\n

Is there something absolutely brilliant in there that I’m missing? Otherwise I’m going to pass on buying a voting membership this year, because the right to vote for James Nicoll and Lev Grossman is not worth of order $100 to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it’s just our flaky DSL that’s kept me from saying anything about it. that’s only part of the story, though. I haven’t said anything about them in large part… Continue reading Hugo Nominations: Meh<\/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-5538","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\/5538","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=5538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}