Merged 2014 Hugo awards.

[catsmate]

Best Novel
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

Best Novella
“Equoid” by Charles Stross

Best Novelette
“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal

Best Short Story
“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu

Best Related Work
“We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley

Best Graphic Story
“Time” by Randall Munroe

Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation
Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Best Short Form Dramatic Presentation
Game of Thrones “The Rains of Castamere” written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter

Full winners here ballot details here.

 

[Roboramma]

Have you read any of them? What did you think?

(I haven't )

 

[catsmate]

Have you read any of them? What did you think?

(I haven't )

I've read (or watched) all of the winners, and many of the other nominees.

Ancillary Justice, We Have Always Fought and The Lady Astronaut of Mars were excellent, Equoid was superb, The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere was good.

 

[catsmate]

Anyone? Comments? Sad puppies? Beale's humiliation?
Does anyone agree with Scalzi's characterisation of 'Opera Vita Aeterna' as "...like Gene Wolfe strained through a thick and rancid cheesecloth of stupid".

 

[zooterkin]

While I consider myself a fan of science fiction, I realised how out of touch I was the other week when I attended an SF Con, and didn't recognise any of the authors who were signing books. (The only name I recognised was Ian Watson, when he came over to look at my pizza.)

I don't recognise any of the winners above either, apart from the film and the TV show.

 

[asydhouse]

I liked Ancillary Justice, but I voted for Charles Stross's Neptune's Brood because I saw more flashes from his conceptual well that delighted me. Leckie's book is a very satisfying sfnal work, but Stross is more fun!

The only other novel on the short list I read was Parasite, which I actually enjoyed and was engaged with, and which is properly sf even though looking initially like a horror novel.

There's no way I was going to read 14 fat volumes of The Wheel of Time, and it's absurd that the rules allow an entire series to be nominated as a single work in the best novel category. The other book was the third in a series, and looked like war porn, which does not interest me in the least, so again, I wasn't going to read three books to do the nominated book justice, and it didn't look like it was worth my effort.

So I read all the shorter fiction, and I think the winners are mostly good selections.

It's a bit of a shame that the sentimental Lady Astronaut of Mars won over the much more evocative and conceptually involving and structurally interesting piece by Ted Chiang (The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling), which I felt was the best piece in all of the categories. But I'm glad the thoughtlessly xenophobic and callous bit of military space porn from Torgersen did not win!

I had no access to the rest of the categories, but I did see Gravity in the cinema, and despite its shortcomings in accuracy, it was close enough to real to be a genuine "Golden Age" science fiction short story finally made it to the big screen 60 years after the heyday of such stories in the pulp magazines, and I'm glad to see it winning on that ground alone!

Finally, I would have liked to see Orphan Black get a nod, as it's a mind-blowing work of acting from the star of the show, and a killer plot which is complex and yet explicated on the screen with swift intelligence and design. It's the best sf television I've ever seen.

 

[zooterkin]

Oh, wait, I did see “Time” by Randall Munroe, which is, of course, the multi-part xkcd comic. Fascinating idea, if a little frustrating in the way it was originally delivered.

 

[catsmate]

While I consider myself a fan of science fiction, I realised how out of touch I was the other week when I attended an SF Con, and didn't recognise any of the authors who were signing books. (The only name I recognised was Ian Watson, when he came over to look at my pizza.)

I don't recognise any of the winners above either, apart from the film and the TV show.

Not even Stross? OK it is time for you to broaden your horizons.
Equoid is available online here. BTW even I found it disturbing.
Another of his Laundry novellas is also online: Overtime.

 

[catsmate]

I liked Ancillary Justice, but I voted for Charles Stross's Neptune's Brood because I saw more flashes from his conceptual well that delighted me. Leckie's book is a very satisfying sfnal work, but Stross is more fun!

I also preferred Stross's entry but AJ was nearly as good (IMO).

There's no way I was going to read 14 fat volumes of The Wheel of Time, and it's absurd that the rules allow an entire series to be nominated as a single work in the best novel category.

Agreed.

The other book was the third in a series, and looked like war porn, which does not interest me in the least, so again, I wasn't going to read three books to do the nominated book justice, and it didn't look like it was worth my effort.

That was Correia doing his sad puppy again. A bit silly really. If he spent more time writing, and creating better characters, and less whining about liberals in SF...

So I read all the shorter fiction, and I think the winners are mostly good selections.

A pretty good selection, except for Opera Vita Aeterna which was badly written crap, but it was a VD production, and Torgersen's nominations.

It's a bit of a shame that the sentimental Lady Astronaut of Mars won over the much more evocative and conceptually involving and structurally interesting piece by Ted Chiang (The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling), which I felt was the best piece in all of the categories. But I'm glad the thoughtlessly xenophobic and callous bit of military space porn from Torgersen did not win!

Another sad puppy nominee...

I had no access to the rest of the categories, but I did see Gravity in the cinema, and despite its shortcomings in accuracy, it was close enough to real to be a genuine "Golden Age" science fiction short story finally made it to the big screen 60 years after the heyday of such stories in the pulp magazines, and I'm glad to see it winning on that ground alone!

Agreed. I feel the short form DP was far too Doctor Who focused.

Finally, I would have liked to see Orphan Black get a nod, as it's a mind-blowing work of acting from the star of the show, and a killer plot which is complex and yet explicated on the screen with swift intelligence and design. It's the best sf television I've ever seen.

 

[Darat]

I also liked Ancillary Justice but don't think it was worthy of the Hugo - better books that year. There is nothing wrong with AJ and as a debut novel it is very promising, but in the end to me it was a rehash of many of the current themes and tropes of the last 10 years of space opera. (And there is nothing wrong with that - I've always like space opera, whether that's roving the galaxy in the Skylark or investigating an OCP.)

Surprised Equoid won as it doesn't really stand alone as a work of fiction (for its depths to be realised you need to know the world of the Laundry) but one I heartely agree with. I found the secret letters of Lovecraft laugh out loud funny. And as ever his comedy and humour are the spice in the macabre dish he concocts.

 

[jimbob]

My favourite Stross book is one that he apparently likes the least (Iron Sunrise).

 

[asydhouse]

My favourite Stross book is one that he apparently likes the least (Iron Sunrise).

I really enjoyed that one too. I'm surprised he likes it least… except on reflection I can see that he probably sees it as a less ambitious effort than most of his sf, on the grounds that he normally has loads of ideas sprinkled throughout which add a spice of conceptual extra-dimensionality to his stories, and Iron Sunrise was just a straightforward story without the fireworks of novel notions and tidbits of speculative extrapolations. That's why Accelerando is my favourite work of his, as it's a sparkling brew of nano cocktails and inspired conceits.

But now that you've reminded me of Iron Sunrise I recall the it was a very satisfying novel with a fantastic idea at its core (unintended pun there! ).

I went to a reading by Stross at the con, and he read the first couple of chapters of a new Laundry novel he's writing. I have to confess I've only read a couple of the short stories he's done in that world, so I'm not that au fe (if that's how that phrase is spelt!) with the characters, but he introduced it by saying that this book is from the point of view of the usual main character's wife (Mo?). And the next in the series is to be from the POV of another character. But then it will be back to the usual POV in the book after that. Someone was asking him afterwards if he had the whole arc of the books worked out, and he said he did indeed, implying that there was an overall denouement conceived for the series at some time in the future.

As much as I enjoy his pulpy tentacular and humorous horror/hacker punk stories, I do wish he'd spark up the old cyberpunk innovative ideas engine and give us some more whacky stuff like the autonomous rogue planetary economics program that had gone feral after consuming its original civilisation, and was now luring stray ships and cultures into its trap, so that it could consume them. That was only one of the incredibly inventive and original ideas he threw at us in Accelerando.

I rarely reread books, but I reckon this is one I will do one day!

 

[asydhouse]

Anyone? Comments? Sad puppies? Beale's humiliation?
Does anyone agree with Scalzi's characterisation of 'Opera Vita Aeterna' as "...like Gene Wolfe strained through a thick and rancid cheesecloth of stupid".

Not being really on the ball with fandom and all, the first I heard of the controversies over the shortlist nominations was the editorial in an issue of Interzone (my only regular periodical reading)(apart from the British Science Fiction Association mailings). Since then I have seen a couple of blog posts about it. So when you say "sad puppies" in relation to the shortlist (I should have quoted a later post of yours where in reply to my post you intimated the "scandal") I take it you mean that Vox Day and Correia were rallying their fans to get them onto the nominated short list using such emotive tactics as claiming they are unfairly dismissed because of their racism etc.

I have to confess I didn't even read Vox Day's short story after reading those blog posts. I was nearly out of time or I might have done so just to check what's what. I have never before voted without reading all the shortlists, but as already noted, this year I made an exception, for the reasons already noted.

This was my fifth world con, having discovered the pleasures in Brighton in '87. Then I went to the one in Holland in 1990, and the two in Glasgow. I see that Finland is trying for 2017, and Dublin for 2019, and apparently Paris have just announced that they plan to bid for 2023… so hopefully I'll get to some, or all, of those!

When I looked at the programme guide this time, I thought there was a lesser number of literature panels than in the past, but a lot of science discussion panels, which was good. There was a lot of practical programming, such as workshops on making costumes, and a lot of filking (fans changing the words of traditional or known pop songs, so that they now tell sfnal or fantasy stories, or relate to popular books in those categories, which the fans then perform for each other). They even had named acts on each evening! I never went this time, as I like to spend my time listening to the authors and others on panels discussing themes and ideas and trends in the world and so on, and hearing the other attendees' comments to the panels and the interesting back and forths that develop… sort of an extension of reading a forum like this one, come to think of it!

As it turned out, I did find enough such things, interspersed with the odd reading or film from the people who do the Sci-Fi London film festivals ("Where 'what if' meets 'wtf!'"), to keep me busy nonstop from 10 a.m. to 11p.m. or so on friday through sunday. We arrived early thursday afternoon, and went back to the hotel around 8pm that first day, satisfied with the items we'd attended for 6 hours in total by then on that first day, and on the last day we were occupied from 10 a.m. until we left at 4:30 to go catch our train home, conventioned to a pulp and thoroughly satisfied. We feel we got our money's worth!

 

[jimbob]

I really enjoyed that one too. I'm surprised he likes it least… except on reflection I can see that he probably sees it as a less ambitious effort than most of his sf, on the grounds that he normally has loads of ideas sprinkled throughout which add a spice of conceptual extra-dimensionality to his stories, and Iron Sunrise was just a straightforward story without the fireworks of novel notions and tidbits of speculative extrapolations. That's why Accelerando is my favourite work of his, as it's a sparkling brew of nano cocktails and inspired conceits.

But now that you've reminded me of Iron Sunrise I recall the it was a very satisfying novel with a fantastic idea at its core (unintended pun there! ).

I went to a reading by Stross at the con, and he read the first couple of chapters of a new Laundry novel he's writing. I have to confess I've only read a couple of the short stories he's done in that world, so I'm not that au fe (if that's how that phrase is spelt!) with the characters, but he introduced it by saying that this book is from the point of view of the usual main character's wife (Mo?). And the next in the series is to be from the POV of another character. But then it will be back to the usual POV in the book after that. Someone was asking him afterwards if he had the whole arc of the books worked out, and he said he did indeed, implying that there was an overall denouement conceived for the series at some time in the future.

As much as I enjoy his pulpy tentacular and humorous horror/hacker punk stories, I do wish he'd spark up the old cyberpunk innovative ideas engine and give us some more whacky stuff like the autonomous rogue planetary economics program that had gone feral after consuming its original civilisation, and was now luring stray ships and cultures into its trap, so that it could consume them. That was only one of the incredibly inventive and original ideas he threw at us in Accelerando.

I rarely reread books, but I reckon this is one I will do one day!

It's not the lack of imagination it's that he thinks it has a massive hole in the basic premise.

Books I will not write #4: Space Pirates of KPMG

 

[godless dave]

While I consider myself a fan of science fiction, I realised how out of touch I was the other week when I attended an SF Con, and didn't recognise any of the authors who were signing books. (The only name I recognised was Ian Watson, when he came over to look at my pizza.)

I don't recognise any of the winners above either, apart from the film and the TV show.

I just heard about Dan Simmons's "Hyperion" earlier this year, and just finished reading it a month ago. And that was from the early 1990s. I guess I wasn't reading much then.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Thanks for the information. I was immediately intrigued by Kameron Hurley and will be reading more of her work.

I’m passionately interested in truth: truth is something that happens whether or not we see it, or believe it, or write about. Truth just is.

It looks fantastic!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I just heard about Dan Simmons's "Hyperion" earlier this year, and just finished reading it a month ago. And that was from the early 1990s. I guess I wasn't reading much then.

I'm on the third book, Endymion.

 

[asydhouse]

It's not the lack of imagination it's that he thinks it has a massive hole in the basic premise.

Books I will not write #4: Space Pirates of KPMG

Wow, thanx for the link! I think he took too much out of Singularity Sky when he edited it down so drastically, because I did not realise what he was doing in that novel, and nor did I get the story in Iron Sunrise, which I remember as a straightforward novel involving human factions… all the AI business is just not there in my memory, implying I wasn't really aware of it while reading the story.

Now I'm going to have to read them again, to look for the clues that tell the story from the angles revealed in this blog post!

It was interesting though to see that his idea for the Crimson Permanent Assurance in Space (pirate accountants/insurance companies) made it into last year's Neptune's Brood (this year's Hugo nominee). I'm glad I never read the blog post before I read the book, as it was a fresh and novel idea to me in the course of reading the novel.

Charlie's unique, and really one of the best!

 

[asydhouse]

I'm on the third book, Endymion.

The fourth book is a mind-blower! He has not one but two universe threatening climaxes which both work beautifully, and each is very different from the other. It also wraps the whole thing up to complete satisfaction. One of the great works of sf.

Gosh, we truly live in an age of wonders!

 

[catsmate]

Not being really on the ball with fandom and all, the first I heard of the controversies over the shortlist nominations was the editorial in an issue of Interzone (my only regular periodical reading)(apart from the British Science Fiction Association mailings). Since then I have seen a couple of blog posts about it. So when you say "sad puppies" in relation to the shortlist (I should have quoted a later post of yours where in reply to my post you intimated the "scandal") I take it you mean that Vox Day and Correia were rallying their fans to get them onto the nominated short list using such emotive tactics as claiming they are unfairly dismissed because of their racism etc.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Correia's attempts to fight what he claims is the "liberal bias", and definitely not of his advocacy of VD. I've had the dubious pleasure of interacting with Beale, and I agree with Scalzi's description of him as "a real bigoted ******** of a human being". Baen, especially post-Jim Baen, has a few such writers that don't actually bother to hide their polemics behind decent writing any more, Williamson, Ringo and (especially) Kratman for example.

However the sad puppy slate seems to be attracting more derision and criticism that support, Howard Tayler for example despite being one of Correia's nominees distanced himself from the project and reminded people he wasn't even eligible.

ETA: Ooops, I forgot about the invocation of the memory of Heinlein. Scalzi's rebuttal was excellent.

I have to confess I didn't even read Vox Day's short story after reading those blog posts. I was nearly out of time or I might have done so just to check what's what.

Really I wouldn't bother, it's not just thematically awful the actual writing is really bad.

This was my fifth world con, having discovered the pleasures in Brighton in '87. Then I went to the one in Holland in 1990, and the two in Glasgow. I see that Finland is trying for 2017, and Dublin for 2019, and apparently Paris have just announced that they plan to bid for 2023… so hopefully I'll get to some, or all, of those!

I haven't been in a few years, a combination of work/life and a really awful dose of the crud some years ago. I'll certainly attend if it's in Dublin though, I suspect I'll be dragged along....