Hugo Awards – Geeking Out About.com

Road to the Hugo Awards: Fight the Future for Best Fancast

Posted on 1 March 2016 by admin 1 Comment

Fight the Future
Hosted by: Dan Saunders and Paul Saunders
First Published: March 30, 2015
Rating: For teens, with light swearing; one episode has a trigger warning
Update Schedule: Fortnightly
Current Status: Final episode airs March 29, 2016 [Updated with new details]

Spout-Approved Hugo Noms_Fight the Future — Canadian brothers Dan Saunders and Paul Saunders read books and watch movies so you don’t have to! © Loading Ready Run

Not long after I published my list of what kinds of works should receive the Geeking Out About… seal of approval for celebrating inclusivity and diversity, I read a notice on the message board for this podcast that it was going to be going to be ending this year. This prompted me to fire off an email to Paul Saunders asking him if I could include the podcast as one of my platform planks because even though I was an infrequent listener (due to my not having read or seen all of the works they were reviewing), I really enjoyed the premise of the podcast and what it was attempting to achieve. His response was to be flattered but wonder if they were even eligible, something about which I was quick to reassure them. And yet, I am totally not surprised to know that was the first reaction from him, seeing as he is a member of my favorite Internet sketch comedy troupe Loading Ready Run.

The Five-Sentence Synopsis

Canadian brothers Dan Saunders and Paul Saunders (and their guests) first introduce, then recap the entire plot of a young adult dystopian science fiction movie or book as objectively as they can, perhaps with some comedic asides. Next, they discuss the plausibility of the worldbuilding as well as how scary the world is for its fictional characters. There’s a section where they talk about what kind of characters they would be in the fictional world, and then using either clues left by the creators or information from official sequels, they talk about what hope there is for the characters in the fictional world beyond the end of the book or movie. Finally, there’s either a snippet of a scene from the movie or a song which they feel illustrates the work the best, and a final summary from the hosts before the sign-off.

What Works

There are many podcasts out there which are dedicated to reviewing books and movies from a critics’ perspective. However, I believe this is one of the first podcasts I’ve heard of which reviews the actual worlds in which the books or movies take place. Of all the episodes I’ve heard, there are very few instances in which I feel that either Dan or Paul or their guests know or care too much about the current science fiction/fantasy literary blogosphere’s opinions of the works, its creators, its production team, or the actors portraying the characters. They are just there to discuss the work and only the work. When they do bring in references to other works or the greater outside world, they do it either near the beginning or near the end so that the discussion of most of the episode is focused on just the world inside the movie or book. It’s both fan discussion and literary criticism in its purest form, where the only clues you have are the work itself, the world you currently inhabit, your personal experiences, and that’s it. From the very first episode, I loved this premise and found myself wanting to join in on the discussion in either the forum threads or the comments on the YouTube version of the podcasts. (It’s also available on iTunes and well as having its own RSS feed as well.) They are never mean or cruel when they point out major flaws, which is very much in keeping with the whole Loading Ready Run ethos which I love. They’re also not slavish in their approval or disapproval, which I really appreciate. I even love the original theme song, composed by Bradley Rains.

Selected Highlights

Episode 8 – A Boy and His Dog: Dan reads out the email Paul sent to him with his concerns about how they’ll cover the movie. (“It ends with the hero KILLING HIS LOVE INTEREST AND FEEDING HER TO HIS DOG!”)

Episode 15 – Battle Royale: Dan and Paul pick out which of their former 15-year old classmates would they kill or be killed by. (“I see all these cute faces and I see them all as potential killers.”)

Episode 23 – The Knife of Never Letting Go: Guest host Emily explains why this dystopic world is particularly horrific to her. (“It’s pretty much my world anyway.” “It’s called ‘The Internet.'”)

What Doesn’t

As I begin to evaluate works for my platform, I’m starting to realize that just like the Bechdel or the Mako Mori test, just because a work can stand on my platform on a superficial level, it doesn’t mean that the work is a perfect example of a truly diverse work. In my email correspondence with him, Paul Saunders admitted that the podcast isn’t very diverse. “We have tried to get as many different special guests with different points of view as possible,” he wrote in an email, “but obviously the pool of people in our social circles that are available and have an interest in the topic is not that big.” My reaction to that is a hope that for any future podcast they do, he and/or Dan are able to reach out to members of the YA dystopia fiction community at large who can recommend more works by non-Caucasian, cisgendered Canadian authors and/or filmmakers or more guests who aren’t from just North America.

Final Thoughts

At last year’s CONvergence, the theme was all about dystopian futures. While at a MetaFilter meetup, I mentioned Fight the Future to a person I was meeting in person for the first time and extolled its virtues. Months later, she asked me about the podcast because clearly the idea of it was something that had stuck in her mind after all that time. Fight the Future is a podcast which was sadly limited in its length and lasted for only a year, but should be pointed out as one of the best productions of 2015. That’s why I’m nominating it for a Hugo Award this year and next year, and I hope that many of you agree.

Road to the Hugo Awards: Selected Fancasts, part 2 – The “Professionals”

Posted on 28 February 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

Road to Hugo Award Header_Part 1 Continuing to go through the Best Fancast Hugo Award eligibility list on this Google Spreadsheet, there’s something I noticed which I thought was interesting: For a category called “Best Fancast,” there are an awful lot of “professionals” on it.

This is not to say that someone who gets paid to write and/or edit and/or create science fiction and/or fantasy works by another company can’t be a fan and talk about the industry, the genre, and/or the people who are involved in it. It does set up a potentially unrealistic expectation about the quality of said works, and/or that the hosts have access to better equipment and a higher caliber of guests or material.

As a result, there’s a chance that as I review these “Best Fancasts” further, I may be a bit more critical of certain shows than others; I certainly hope that’s not the case. So here’s round two of my reviews of Hugo Award-eligible works for “Best Fancast”:

Hugo Fancasts_WhosRound Toby Hadoke’s Who’s Round
Episode 127: July #01 (feat. Keith Hodiak)
Hosted by Toby Hadoke
Date Published: July 3, 2015

First Impression: This is precisely the kind of stunt podcasting that I like. The premise behind British comedian Hadoke’s podcast is that for the 50th anniversary year of the BBC series Doctor Who he would attempt to interview as many people as he could who were involved with the show over its lifetime. For this episode, he caught up with dancer/actor Keith Hodiak who played the Raston Warrior Robot who annihilated a bunch of Cybermen in the 20th anniversary special episode “The Five Doctors”. Not being a true Whovian, I had no idea why Hadoke was so enamored of this minor character; subsequent research and some time watching YouTube clips has revealed that because the Raston Warrior Robot moved so differently and destroyed its enemies so completely in such a short amount of time, it instantly became a favorite Monster-of-the-Week for fans of the show. For a podcast with such a limited scope, Hadoke is a deft interviewer, starting off with questions and anecdotes about the filming of the episode, segueing into Hodiak’s post-Who career filming Full Metal Jacket with Stanley Kubrick and the genesis of his career as a modern dancer who was given a scholarship to a prominent British school, and then circling back around to the Doctor Who theme of the show to end the interview. It was very well-done, and I hope that Hadoke may eventually branch out into doing interviews with non-Doctor Who actors, too, for other British sci-fi franchises. Another thing I noticed that was a point against it was that for a podcast which had excellent audio for an interview being held inside a restaurant before and after a meal, the end bumper before the preview of the following episode had terrible audio. How does that happen?

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: For a specific, single-subject podcast, sure.

Hugo Fancasts-Unattended Unattended Consequences
You’re Gonna See Some Hogs
Hosted by Patrick Rothfuss and Max Temkin
Date Published: August 4, 2015

First Impression: While I know that Rothfuss is “not [my] bitch” and I’m sure he’s heard every joke under the sun relating to when the third book in the Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy will be published and out in the wider world, it is certainly no coincidence that the episode I picked to review would be the one where he and Cards Against Humanity co-creator Temkin talk about procrastination. As mentioned in a previous review, this podcast greatly suffered from a descriptive error because for about half of the time, Rothfuss and Temkin talked about GenCon, a convention for board and tabletop games which now has a writers’ track attached to it. There was also a brief segue where Rothfuss talked about the state of Wisconsin (the original home of the convention) and how excited he gets whenever a mainstream media product mentions the state and does a really excellent job of depicting the state and its people how they really are. Wow, I thought to myself, on another show, this would be an excellent way to get into the discussion of under representation in mainstream media and genre fiction for non-Caucasian people. But of course, Rothfuss and Temkin aren’t creating that kind of podcast; to me, this feels more like the All Work, No Play podcast created by voice over actors Liam O’Brien and Sam Riegel where they talk about the voice work they’re currently doing (which they really can’t talk about due to non-disclosure agreements) and try to find ways to have fun while having lives and raising families in Hollywood. There was a different weird turn to the conversation when Rothfuss was talking about how GenCon used to be a convention where there would be so few women that one easily could play the game “Where’s the Girl?” by taking a photo of the convention hall or one of the gaming rooms and trying to figure out where the lone female gamer was in the crowd. I expected the next words out of their mouths to be that of course now there are several women playing games in the halls and showing off their own games in the exhibit hall, but the next words were actually extolling the virtues of the kid-friendly options for GenCon. That was such an awkward transition because it made it feel like Rothfuss and Temkin were saying that because the con is more open to casual play and kid-friendly now, it’s now okay and welcoming to women, as if women couldn’t also be the “dark” rules-lawyering, uber-competitive nerds who used to comprise all of GenCon’s audience, or that it would be the “women’s” job to bring the kids to the conventions. It wasn’t until 30 minutes into the podcast that they actually started talking about procrastination, and the main takeaway I got from it was that while I was very glad that Rothfuss really understands the mindset of someone who works as someone else’s assistant for a living, I didn’t get a sense that he wasn’t about to make the same kind of leap which YA author John Green did last year in removing himself completely from most of his non-writing obligations in order to finish his next book. I hope he’s able to come to that kind of conclusion soon, if only for the sake of being able to spend more time with his young kids and his partner—and also so that he can finish his book.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Nope, as it is only barely about the genre and/or even the life of a genre author.

Photo by Bruce Press Ditch Diggers
Episode 10: Featuring Guest Host Gail Carriger
Hosted by Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace
Date Published: April 30, 2015

First Impression: Despite the fact that I have known and loved Hugo-award winning creator Ursula Vernon’s work for a very long time, I did not choose to review the episode featuring her because I know that she and Lafferty are great friends in real life. Instead, I chose to review an episode featuring a writer with whom I’m not familiar, despite the episode notes stating that she is a New York Times bestselling author. Imagine my “surprise,” when it’s revealed that not only are Lafferty, Wallace, and Gail Carriger also good friends, she was also part of the impetus behind the creation of the podcast. And therein lies a bit of a problem. Listening to this conversation, it made me feel and really believe that there is a secret cabal of science fiction and fantasy authors who all know each other and support each other to the exclusion of others. There’s a verbal shorthand that they have with each other which to a longtime listener and fan sounds chummy but to a new listener feels a bit alienating. At the same time, this is the kind of “professional” podcast which both readers and aspiring writers need to have on their podcast rotation. For both audiences, it not only pulls back the curtain to show off the real life of a working writer, it also turns on all the stage lights and peers into the dressing rooms during intermission as well. The bits from Carriger I was fascinated to learn was that like me, she can’t stand when a book is poorly edited and has purposefully stopped buying books or reading some authors’ work because of it. She also revealed that she was able to circumvent her publisher Orbit’s usual “two-book contract” by deliberately dropping a cliffhanger into her second novel Changeless (which was the first one to hit the NYT list), just so her editor would want to ask her about the next book in the series. I also loved hearing her reaction to what she called the most polite piece of hate mail regarding two homosexual characters in the series, from a reader who had bought all five books but was disappointed by her positive treatment of the two characters. But perhaps the part of Carriger’s interview that I loved the most was when she mentioned that writers should not overly denigrate other writers whose books are bestsellers but not to their own particular taste because the sales of those books are paying for their advances with the same publisher. It’s a very business-first sentiment, and one I had not heard many other writers speak of before; now that I’ve heard it, it makes total sense to me. For their part, Lafferty and Wallace mostly let her speak her mind and helped the conversation along in a helpful way, except for one part about halfway through the episode where it felt like Wallace was re-explaining something Carrigan had just finished saying about how she tailors her social media presence to her established brand and what she knows her audience expects to see from her. He even lampshaded his own mansplaining (“I didn’t want to seem like I was regurgitating what Gail says…”) but to someone who’s never heard him speak before, that’s totally what he just did. The end of the podcast focused on listener questions about things such whether or not it’s a detriment if a person can’t afford to pay for something like the Clarion workshops or how viable the short story market is for a new writer, all of which was very interesting to hear. It was great to listen to this casual conversation between friends, and yet at one and a half hours, I think it was perhaps a bit too long—something which Lafferty, a veteran podcaster since 2004 should have known and tried to prevent.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, and bits of this should definitely go into their highlight reel.

Road to the Hugo Awards: Selected Fancasts, part 1

Posted on 13 February 2016 by admin 4 Comments

Road to Hugo Award Header_Part 1 Finding the time to listen to hour-long episodes of podcasts which are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards wasn’t easy for me, but that’s what today’s article is about. The eligibility requirements state that the podcast must be a “non-professional” production—that is, no other company paid the podcaster(s) to make it—and at least one episode has to have been produced during the calendar year in question.

As such, then, I decided to pick one episode from a currently eligible podcast whose description interested me the most and I’ll be basing my recommendations on just the one episode. Unlike the “three episode rule” which I’m borrowing from former GOA contributor Kara Dennison, I think that I’d be able to tell what’s going to be on my nomination and/or platform lists before March 31 from just one episode.

Once again, in no particular order, here are my impressions of podcasts which are currently eligible for the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Fancast:

Black Girl Nerds
Episode 43: Brotriarchy, The State of Sci-Fi, and NekoCon 2015
Hosted by Jamie Broadnax
Date Published: November 11, 2015

First Impression: This episode was a mixed bag for me, mostly because of the expectations which were raised due to a titling error. For an episode whose title claimed that it would talk about the state of the sci-fi genre, there was only a somewhat cursory examination of it. The episode began with a lively discussion between Black Girl Nerd website creator and podcast host Broadnax and contributor Lauren Warren, whose think piece for the website about how to fix Project Greenlight after Matt Damon’s “white mansplaining” gaffe to African-American producer Effie Brown caused a bit of a sensation. I appreciate how Broadnax and Warren talked about how the piece was written and that it went beyond hollering what was wrong about the gaffe but moved past and talked about how to fix the problem, something with which I’m very familiar. I loved the lengthy interplay between these two colleagues whose discussion ranged far and wide across the pop culture and media landscape, which was why I was surprised with Broadnax’s more laid-back approach to her interview with “Out of Time” webseries creator Steve Kasan. I appreciate that she allowed him the space to talk about how he felt about diversity in genre media, but to go from such a light-hearted and engaging conversation between equals to a more stilted and less conversational interview was jarring to me. It also doesn’t help that it doesn’t sound like Broadnax even watched an episode of the series at all. Why didn’t she ask more about the thought behind the diversity of the characters? Or how Kasan and co-creator Rodney V. Smith’s take on time-travel in sci-fi works and how it’s different than other people’s take? Those are the kinds of questions I would have asked myself as an occasional podcaster, and I’m disappointed that they weren’t asked. The final segment on NekoCon was another bit of a letdown for me because while her conversations with attendees were interesting for getting a perspective on diversity at anime conventions from the average fan, she never had her interviewee’s give their names or handles. And that’s a big no-no from a journalism perspective because as Sir Terry Pratchett commented in The Truth, getting the names of the people you interview helps you “sell” your work more.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: No, but I’m sure this would win several other awards in general geekery and lifestyle podcasts categories.

I Don’t Even Own a Television
Episode 44: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
Hosted by J.W. Friedman and Chris Collision
Date Published: December 9, 2015

First Impression: Instantly my back was up despite the excellently-produced original theme song because as the description states and as they say in the intro, this podcast is dedicated to talking about bad books. And even though I’ve read other Spider Robinson books and I don’t recall if I’ve read this specific one, I don’t think that Robinson is the kind of person you’d call a “bad” author. This meant that I was instantly inclined to think that this podcast was not for someone like me. And yet, I was completely surprised how fair they were with the material. Friedman and Collision gleefully point out the problems with tone and the problems with misogynistic and/or sexist attitudes towards women; listening to them talk about it in a completely fair and open way made me think about how I might be perceiving the book and its author through rose and nostalgia-tinted glasses. Another thing that I appreciated about this podcast was how both Friedman and Collision were unafraid to state that they thought a part of the book was bad, but then they thought a bit longer about it and changed their mind. The last 15 minutes of the podcast is dedicated to answering listener email, which shows that this show has definitely reached a critical-growth stage to where they actually have long-time listeners and fans. After finishing up this episode, my instant reaction was to wonder if they would ever read Lady Slings the Booze, just so I could see what they think of the characters in that Spider Robinson book.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, despite the fact that they denigrated the pun wars in the book.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show
Episode 250: Emily Jiang, John Chu, and E. Lily Yu at ICFA
Hosted by Shaun Duke and Julia Rios
Date Published: February 4, 2015

First Impression: Unlike the co-hosts in this episode, I’ll put my disclaimer before the review: One of the contributors to this podcast is Mike R. Underwood, and he and I were on “The Smurfette Principle in Marketing” panel at CONvergence 2015; since then, we’ve followed and ReTweeted each other a lot. I deliberately chose to listen to this particular episode because I know that my reading shelf is very sparse when it comes to works by Asian and Asian-American authors. One of the things I immediately liked about this episode was how much it was like a casual, free-flowing conversation. Each of the guests were engaged on their own, but also allowed to chime in and comment on what the other guests were saying. Also, like the best in talk radio, there were several times where I wanted to join in the conversation as well; I credit this to co-hosts Duke and Rios’ skills as interviewers who except for two awkward bits (one with Yu and one with Chu) were able to manage this five-way conversation with ease. Based solely on her appearance in this episode, I got the impression that Yu’s author persona is gruff and prickly; both Duke and Rios were able to work with it and get her to open up when they asked her what her reaction was to getting the call that she was nominated for a short story Nebula in 2012. From a hindsight perspective, it was also very fun to hear Chu talk about his experiences as a beta-translator for Ken Liu, whose translation work for The Three Body Problem helped that book win a Hugo in 2015.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, despite the low fidelity of their recording. But if more people subscribe to their Patreon, I’m sure they could fix that.

Road to the Hugo Awards: Presenting The Geeking Out About… Platform

Posted on 9 February 2016 by admin 8 Comments

Geeking Out About Spout © Geeking Out About

As I’ve mentioned before, I became a sci-fi fan when I was in college. However, even though I was interested in writing sci-fi (and the one short story I’ve had published had been written during this time) I didn’t really get into the world of being a sci-fi writer until I learned who author John Scalzi was, thanks to Wil Wheaton. His writing about what it’s like to be a sci-fi author drew me into wanting to learn more about the fandom and the genre, to the point of where I now actively follow several prominent authors on Twitter and know the names of several more.

(I also “stuck my oar in” like almost everyone else did during the whole SFWA Bulletin #200 thing and was issued a DMCA takedown request as a result, but that’s almost ancient history now.)

When word first broke on how a vocal and reactionary segment of the sci-fi/fantasy fandom managed to rally its supporters over the years into jamming works they liked into the nominations list for the Hugo Awards, culminating in a near-total overrun in 2015, I was amused at how it began, appalled and how it progressed, and ultimately impressed at what they managed to pull off.

Which makes me think that if a group of terrible people can push forwards works they think epitomize the best in science fiction and fantasy, why can’t someone like me who is not completely terrible do the same thing?

Here then are the planks of the first-ever “Geeking Out About…” platform for the 2016 Hugo Awards season:

1. All works which are being promoted must be created by people who believe that genre fiction should contain diverse characters and perspectives.
2. All fictional works which are being promoted must contain at least two characters whose gender, sexual, physical, and/or racial identity is substantially different from the creator’s and also:
a) Has their own agency within the plot.
b) Has a scene with another character who is also of their same gender, sexual, physical, and/or racial identity where they don’t speak about the main protagonist but do advance the plot.
c) If there is a love interest for either or both of the characters, it is not the same character as the main protagonist.
d) If the characters die, the deaths are meaningful.
3. All non-fictional works which are being promoted must contain references to and/or significant discussion about diversity in genre fiction, and also:
a) If a web article written by one person or solo podcast or web series, must contain links to other articles or references to other work where the gender, sexual, physical, and/or racial identity of those creators/authors is substantially different from the solo creator’s.
b) If a multiple-creator podcast, article, or web series, one of the authors/creators or a guest speaker must be a person whose gender, sexual, physical, and/or racial identity is substantially different from the other creators.
4. All visual works which are being promoted which depict humanoid beings must contain imagery which does not demean individuals who are not of the same gender, sexual, physical, and/or racial identity of the creator.

As you can see, the “Geeking Out About…” platform is all about inclusivity, diversity, and reaching outside of a creator’s comfort zone to encompass new points of view into their own work. It’s all about promoting works where the creator has made a conscious effort to reach out not just to an audience who is just like them but can transcend their own cultural/physical identity and reach an audience which are not like them in substantial ways. I hope it goes without saying that all of the works I’ll be promoting must be things which I think are “good,” but that’s more of a subjective standard than an objective standard, so I didn’t include it as a plank.

Now that I have the terms of my platform all set, I’m definitely more eager to continue reading and experiencing more Hugo Award-eligible science fiction work as well as naming the first entry on my recommended list. Also, if you know of a work which you think I should consider, please drop a note in the comments and I’ll be sure to take a look at it.

Road to the Hugo Awards: Selected Science Fiction Short Stories, part 1

Posted on 7 February 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

Road to Hugo Award Header_Part 1 Following up on my last post wherein I said that I’d be reading (or listening to) as many 2016 Hugo Award-eligible works as possible before the nomination deadline, the first thing I did was to set a bookmark for this Google spreadsheet because it seems to be a pretty good place to start when it comes to finding works that were published in 2015 and are eligible to be nominated.

What I like about this spreadsheet is that it’s not curated: If someone read (or listened to, or saw) a piece that was eligible and they think it is a good or great piece, it goes into the spreadsheet. This allows for the most widest possible range of works to be listed and it’s done in a very egalitarian way. There also aren’t any synopses available which means that when you click on a link to a short story, you’re diving right into the work blind without any preconceptions as to what the work is about.

As I started to go through the short stories on the spreadsheet, I soon realized that there’s a vast difference between a piece of work that I like and a piece of work that I think should be nominated for a Hugo Award. It will be pretty easy to tell which stories fall into which categories.

So without further ado and in no particular order, I present to you the first in several reviews of Hugo Award-eligible science fiction short stories:

Illustration by Gustavo Torres © 2016 Vice Media LLC

“A Song for You”

By Jennifer Marie Brissett
Date Published: May 11, 2015

First Impression: For an adaptation of Greek mythology, this one was pretty good. By about the halfway mark, I could tell that this was an adaptation of the Orpheus myth, with Orpheus being transformed into an android and his wife Eurydice becoming a human member of the crew of a spaceship called Calliope. Once the key to this story was “unlocked” the plot became less interesting to me because I was waiting for all the major points to be hit. The things I did like about the story was the amount of worldbuilding that took place regarding the war in which Eura died and what happened to the Maya character after she left the android’s head for the second time. However, all of this was “told” to the reader without the reader becoming immersed into it.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: No, because the underpinnings are too apparent.

“How to Survive the Apocalypse”

By Rhiannon R.S.
Date Published: September 18, 2015

First Impression: I don’t recall when zombies became the new vampires, but one of the results of the rise of zombie fiction is the corresponding increase in video games devoted to the subgenre. After all, because they’re non-sentient and dead (as opposed to charismatic and dead) it’s very easy to feel jubilant about slaughtering them in large amounts. This short piece is a deconstruction of what it’s like to be a fictional character in an apocalypse which features zombies, and it’s fairly amusing. I like how even though the illustration is of a Lara Croft-ish character running away from a feminine zombie with makeup in her hands, the fictional character in the piece can be assumed to be male or female.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: No, because video game commentary isn’t evergreen. (But this would be a good candidate for the Related Work category.)

“Broken”

By Jason Kimble
Date Published: November 3, 2015

First Impression: While reading this, I got a real “Flowers for Algernon”-type of vibe, except more cyberpunk in style. The amount of worldbuilding that was done for this story is amazing. What is “the Skew”? What happened to make dual-births so uncommon? These details are nicely slotted into place for a story which deals with mental illness and developmental disorders, according to Kimble’s blog post about this story. I like that he’s thought so much about this world and is telling just one story in it. I’m almost sad that I went searching for Kimble’s explanation about his thought process for writing this story, but at the same time I’m glad I did.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: It’s certainly going onto my short list.

“Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight”

By Aliette de Bodard
Date Published: January 2015

First Impression: One of the greatest things about writing science fiction (and possibly by extension, fantasy) is that an author can take something unfamiliar such as a future world and ground it in the familiar through universal themes. On the surface, this story is about what happens when after a brilliant biogeneticist dies and there’s no one around to continue her work, but as referenced in the title, this story is about three ways of looking at and dealing with grief. At no point does de Bodard give an opinion as to which way is best, but instead offers up these vignettes as examples. There is really no protagonist or antagonist in this story and that’s fine because that’s not how grief and mourning operate either. After wondering why de Bodard’s characters and universe were Asian-flavored, I discovered that this short story is set in her Xuya universe and I now want to read more.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yep, also going onto the short list.

“I am Graalnak of the Vroon Empire, Destroyer of Galaxies, Supreme Overlord of the Planet Earth. Ask Me Anything.”

By Laura Pearlman
Date Published: April 2015

First Impression: Normally, I’d relegate stories that are styled to look like a message board thread or Facebook post or other current Internet trend to be gimmicky and not worth a second look. And then my English literature training kicks in and I remember that The Color Purple is also an epistolary work and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983. As entertaining as this piece is, though, it’s definitely not on that novel’s level (or even the aforementioned “Flowers for Algernon” which was also epistolary in style). It’s clever in how it uses the current Reddit nomenclature and discussion style, but the underlying plot of how a brutal dictatorship is overthrown through the use of disinformation feels like it wrapped up too quickly. Ultimately, this is a very nice and brief humor piece and definitely a good example of how the epistolary style has changed with the advent of new publishing technologies, but not a story for the ages.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Only if there’s a subdivision for humor pieces versus serious pieces.

Setting on the Road to the 2016 Hugo Awards

Posted on 31 January 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

As with almost everything genre-related in my life, the reason I became interested this year in reading as many Hugo Award-eligible works as I can before March 28 this year is all thanks to my former college professor Dr. Atara Stein (may you rest in peace).

As a young undergrad at Cal State Fullerton, I had taken her Science Fiction literature class because I’d become interested in learning how other people have written science fiction in the hopes that I would be able to write my own. One of the first things she told us on the first day was that because even the science fiction genre encompassed a wide breadth of topics and themes, we would be focusing on what to her embodied what science fiction was as its very heart: What does it mean to be an intelligent “human”?

Through the clarifying lens of the “artificial intelligence” theme, a partial list of everything I read that school year is as follows: Neuromancer, Frankenstein, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and He, She and It. We also watched the director’s cut versions of Blade Runner and Terminator 2 as well as the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man” (because she was also a secret Trek fanfic writer on the side).

It’s because of her college course that my philosophy about what makes “good” science fiction has to flow from satisfying at least two of these three criteria:

Does the work examine what it means to be “human” in some extensive way?
Is a very important part of how the plot and/or setting works tied to the use of technology created by sentient beings?
It is very improbable that the events in the setting of the book will happen during my lifetime?

This is a rubric which I’ve been following both consciously and sub-consciously my entire life, and it’s the rubric by which I plan to read and critique as many science fiction comics, short stories, novellas, and novels as are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards as I can before the nomination deadline of March 31.

Because this year, I have a Supporting Membership to the 74th WorldCon, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Tag: Hugo Awards