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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The 75th World Science Fiction Convention (commonly known as WorldCon) is being held this weekend in Helsinki, Finland. The convention is where the annual Hugo Awards are presented, and today, the convention announced the latest recipients.
This year, women almost completely swept the Hugo Awards, taking home the top prizes for literature in the science fiction community. That's particularly notable, given how the awards have been increasingly recognizing works from female and minority creators. The trend prompted a counter-movement from two group of fans, the self-described "Sad Puppies," and their alt-right equivalents, the "Rabid Puppies." These groups gamed the awards and forced a slate of nominees onto the Hugo ballot in 2015, prompting widespread backlash within the wider genre community. Another award, the Dragon, faced similar issues earlier this week when several authors asked to pull their nominations over concerns about Puppy interference and the award's integrity.
This year's sweep by female creators seems to be a strong repudiation of anti-diversity groups. 2017 also marked the year the ceremony earned its own award: a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records certified that the Hugos are the longest-running science fiction awards ever.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Informative) by darnkitten on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:27PM (4 children)
who here has read anything on the list?
Reading the thread, I found two comments indicating the commenters had read at least one entry, one where the commenter had read a teaser or summary, and one where the commenter seemed to say he was planning to listen to audiorecordings of the winners.
I am afraid that due to work pressures, I wasn't able to read everything on the novel/novella/novelette/series lists this year, though I did read those that had been up for Nebula Awards.
I found The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (which I read along with the earlier book in the series), Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders to be enjoyable reads. None are scifi, but I would classify the first two as solid specfic, one exploring a scifi concept in a fantasy setting, and the other exploring a fantasy concept in a scifi setting. All the Birds... was basically a YA novel, looking at the concepts that, in a two-party conflict, the conflict will likely be escalated by a combination of ignorance of the other side and the personal agendas of the more influential members, and that neither side will realize that there may be more "sides" than the main two. While I haven't read it yet, I would probably have favored Death’s End by Cixin Liu for the Hugo, assuming it is up the the quality of the other two in the series.
I very much enjoyed the YA novella "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire, having grown up on Narnia, the Green Knowe and Oz, among others, but, not having read any of the others, can't say whether it is the best of the list. Same with the TV adaptation of The Expanse, which is the only of the shortform dramatic presentations I have seen (I would complain about the casting, but the award is for the script, to which I have no objections).
Finally, in the series category--while I enjoy Bujold's other work, I have never been able to get into Miles Vorkosigan. I would, of the other two series I have read in the category, prefer Novik's Temeraire, just slightly, slightly over the pseudonymous Corey's Expanse.
So any recommendations from the remaining nominees, as to what I should read or acquire next? I probably won't get the short stories, as my patrons generally prefer long-form, but beyond that....
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As an aside, my patrons who read sci-fan tend to break down at least two-to-one in favor of fantasy, from adolescents to seniors, and have done for years.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:56PM (1 child)
When I was writing post 555003 I went and looked up summaries for everything that won. Pretty much everything that won seemed to lean toward the fantasy side, meaning that I would never read it. If I have to choose between some shitty pulp SF about a lucky space captain fighting aliens or a book that mentions the word "magic" at all, I will always read the pulp crap. It seems weird to me that the Hugo's describe themselves as being all SFy but then give out awards for Fantasy, aren't there other awards that could be given out for Fantasy works?
As an aside, I found Death’s End to be up to the quality of the other two.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Informative) by darnkitten on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:17AM
I apologize if I sounded condemnatory--that was not my intention. At least you read the summaries, (though I'm not sure the the summarizer did a good job if your descriptions are true to the summaries, to wit: Obelisk Gate, inspired by a paper at an astronomical conference, is a fantasy exploring the geological (and cultural) effects of destroying the frickin' moon; while Every Heart a Doorway is exploring the psychological effects that living on the worlds on the other side of magical portals (Wonderland, Oz, Narnia, as well as darker ones) has on the kids who go there, and the worse effects of returning, sometimes forcibly, to the real world; when I was reading the Vorkosigan Saga, it was pretty ordinary military scifi, albeit with better characters and worldbuilding than most--often about how one would successfully run a military organization when one is not a person the soldiers would see as any sort of proper leader or commander--interesting conceptually, but, at the time, I was more into Bolos or Hammer's Slammers-style pulp action).
I was more making a general comment on how the tenor of an award thread tends more toward criticizing the perceived content of the nominees in question, and away from actually reading them. Similarly, with the Nebulas, I started reading the nominees with a negative impression of most, due to the way they were described in the SN thread, but found, when I actually read them, that they were pretty good reads--not always to my taste--but worthwhile investments of my time and energy, nonetheless.
I was also asking for feedback on which of the shortlist it might be worthwhile reviewing for acquisitions, given that most of my library's spec-fic readers prefer fantasy (to my dismay).
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Sounds reasonable--everyone has genres they don't care to read. I've been forced into reading fantasy, though it is certainly not my favorite genre, due to the need to buy for my fantasy-reading patrons. I'm slowly developing an appreciation of some of it. (You might try Ninefox Gambit, though--it's not bad--essentially a scifi setting, though with an underlay of Korean-style astrology-as-science, which adds a unique flavor.)
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As to the Hugos and fantasy, their website says:
Robert Silverberg and Philip Jose Farmer, both of whom I'd consider to be more Fantasists than SciFictionists, won Hugos in the first three years of the Awards, and Anne McCaffrey won both Hugo and Nebula awards for her Pern stories, which is basically fantastic fiction in a space-opera universe. Admittedly, SciFi proper did dominate the early awards, but Fantasy has always claimed its part, and has grown more dominant therein, as it sadly has in the marketplace in general...
Besides, I think there always needs to be a bit of Fantasy allowed in Scifi awards, if only to prevent the dreary quibbles over whether FTL travel is scientific or fantastic, and whether Star Wars and Star Trek should be included in the genre. :)
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...Oh, and thanks for the recommendation--I'll order Death's End directly. I'm looking forward to it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @12:48AM (1 child)
I've read The Expanse books and greatly enjoyed them. It's not clear from the TV show yet, but basically it turns into galactic Stargate with three half-waring half-peaceful factions of humans (Earthers, Martians, Belters) and three 'baddies' (aliens who tried to 'kill' Earth millions of years ago, the aliens who obliterated those aliens, and the evil corporations trying to steal all the alien tech). It is science fiction in that it's asking what would happen if we were colonizing our solar system and discovered portals to new worlds. How would that affect our society? The TV show is more focused on the character dynamics and less on the higher level story. There's more action suspense tossed in to keep you glued to the screen instead of mystery.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday August 18 2017, @02:45AM
I've enjoyed both, though the casting of the show still annoys me (of course, I would say that about most adaptations); also, I think they should have held off filming the series until effects were good enough to make the Belters look like Belters!