…kinda like Zen dog-fighting, then. Far out, man. Marvy.
No problem! I read around 50-100 novels a year, mostly SF and fantasy, and tend to choose them by browsing the “new books” shelves at various libraries. By now, having read this way for about 30 years, I’ve read a pretty decent chunk of the fantasy/sf out there (by no means a majority, but you get what I mean). Reading new stuff is the surest way I have to find something exciting and surprising; and it also lets me understand and participate in threads like this :).
Now I want to be Left Hand of Dorkness’s friend on Goodreads. 
While I liked the film quite a bit, I’m confused why HIDDEN FIGURES is in the running for Dramatic Presentation. There are no scifi or fantasy elements in it. Is it because it’s a celebration of nerds (directly) and space (indirectly)?
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I’m mostly pleased with the list (far less slate-style shenanigannery, from what I can tell), even though my own short story didn’t make the cut.
The Hugo for Dramatic Presentation is for “dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects” - and historically, the Hugo voters have included “stuff about space travel” in the “related subject” category - leading to Hugos for “Apollo 13” and for news coverage of the actual Apollo 11 mission.
In every previous year, there are anywhere from 2 to 5 authors of the Best Novel nominations list that I at least recognize (and would have at the time), which is a contrast to this year. I thought this might mean something; I just didn’t know what. For instance, are they all new-ish authors who haven’t published much before now? Or have they been producing a lot, but until now it’s mostly been under the radar? And if so, whose radar (just mine? the bestseller lists’? the casual SF fans’?), and why?
Yeah, those are examples of the kind of “enormous names” that I thought were conspicuously missing from the Best Novel list.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Like Wendell Wagner, I don’t necessarily read what’s newly published, when it’s still new. But I would kinda like to be at least somewhat aware of who the “big names” currently working in SF (and various other genres) are (partly just so I don’t feel ignorant, and have some idea of what people are talking about, and partly so that I can check some of them out when I get a chance).
A Closed and Common Orbit is every bit as delightful as A Long Journey… was, but it is not a sequel so much as a story within the same universe. Nevertheless, I just finished it and I loved it very much. It is also a tale that would set the Puppy faction off, but that has nothing to do with my love it.
To Like the Lightning has not got many mentions here, but this was one of my favorite books in a long time. Very good worldbuilding.
Is Arrival not already a lock to win Dramatic Presentation?
Let’s see–A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is a sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. (A highly Firefly-ish book that gets a heap of praise but I found merely “okay.”) It is her second book. Death’s End is the third book in a trilogy–the first, Three Body Problem, won a Hugo in a year contaminated by puppy droppings (I personally, found 3BP to be a very weak book and never bothered with the two sequels.) The author is a giant in China. but his books have just recently began to be translated into English. The Obelisk Gate is a sequel to 2016’s Hugo Winner The Fifth Season and the author’s 7th novel. Ninefox Gambit and Too Like the Lightning also get lots of praise. (I haven’t read either–Ninefox is on my TBR pile, Too Like doesn’t sound like my bowl of Ancillary-served tea.)
All definitely well on the radar of the highly-involved heavy readers who are the nominating and voting pool for the Hugos.
All true, and since you didn’t mention All the Birds in the Sky I’ll go ahead and point out that this is Charlie Jane Anders’ first novel, but she’s well known for short fiction (including a Hugo award for best novelette in 2012).
I was surprised to find that I’d already read five of the six best novel nominees (not Too Like the Lightning) - this rarely happens these days. Honestly doesn’t seem like an especially strong year, although I more or less enjoyed all of them I wouldn’t be giving any of them an unqualified recommendation. I’d probably give the nod to All the Birds though, because (1) it’s the only one that’s not part of a series or trilogy, and (2) although it was rough in spots the best parts of it were perfect, which may reflect Anders’ strengths as a short form writer.
Oops, forgot to mention that one. She also was a writer at IO9.
Heh–sorry to disappoint. Years ago I made an account and rated about 70 books before getting bored; now I visit the site about once a year or so, and hardly ever review anything.
Interesting–I really enjoyed Chambers’s first book, and I thought any one of three or four different big ideas in 3BP was astonishing enough to hang an entire novel around, and the surfeit of them was just like candy. Not great characters by any means, but boy oh boy did it scratch the hard SF itch.
And yet even as a casual observer I knew enough to say that calling the sources obscure and the names unrecognizable reflected the poster and not the field. Hmmm.
Yeah, I used to be this way. I got into it during the New Wave, when the field exploded. The field almost imploded around 1960. Most of the magazines had died but there weren’t yet good outlets for novels. Avalon was the only hardback line exclusively for sf and that was fourth-rate. No exclusive paperback lines existed except for the Galaxy Novels and they put out exactly three new books hidden among porn titles. Only the few established names could sell to mainstream publishers. Writers were fleeing the field.
Then this huge influx of young writers. Zelazny, Delany, Le Guin, Wilhelm, Disch, and Lafferty appeared within a couple of years, and Ellison and Silverberg stopped writing garbage filler, and the similar collection of British names made waves. Suddenly paperback lines appeared and magazines rebounded and serious critics discovered the field again, after having done so in the early 50s.
If you didn’t pay attention to the newest of the new you lost everything that made the field worth your time. Sure, going back and reading the classic names was worthwhile, but most of them were still around and rejuvenating their writing to catch up.
SF, like most everything else, has cycles like this. Cyberpunk created another one in the 1980s. Fantasy took a huge jump at the turn of the century. Maybe we’re having another one today with writers from around the world finding it easier to get published and recognized in English.
And maybe it’s time for me to plunge back in and see if this is another revolution. Maybe not, with the comments here mostly damning with faint praise, but maybe that time is coming.
In the meanwhile, I’m trying to read every robot story ever published in roughly chronological order so I can write a chapter on those for my book. It’s not like I’ve abandoned the field. It’s just not fun right now. Most of those stories are of historical interest only. The field really deserved its bottom-of-the-barrel reputation in the old days.
Oh, I did happen to read Three Body Problem because of all the praise. I agree with Darren. Barely slogged my way through it.
The Three Body Problem has some great sequences (notably the description of the Cultural Revolution) but overall was good but not great.
Just for the heck of it, I compared the short fiction nominees to those on the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List. One novella, three novelettes, and three short stories from the list made it to the ballot. A couple of the novellas were not reviewed since they were from sources that didn’t make it obvious they were novellas. One in the novelette and one in the short story category were not reviewed because they were not in pro markets.
Agreed. I actually started to get a bit bored of it around 3/4th of the way through. The stilted dialogue really started to annoy me.
I wondered how much of the stilted dialog was due to translation. Often translated dialog comes across that way to me.
Anyway, I just finished A Closed and Common Orbit, the sequel to A Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet. It’s a very different book from Chambers’s first–though set in the same universe with a tiny bit of character overlap, it’s not a picaresque novel, and it’s not nearly as funny. That said, I loved the first one, and thought this one was even better, finishing the whole book in less than a day.
Haven’t read any of them. Big SF fan who can’t stand fantasy, which is so proliferant (which should be a word) now that it’s hard to find actual SF titles with all that stuff about vampires, etc crowding the shelves.
But yeah, I haven’t “kept up” either. I look to see if my faves have something new out, the once that aren’t dead that is. If not, I’m off to the used section.
Really enjoyed Ninefox Gambit. It was one of the best things I read last year. It took two tries to get into it but it was definitely worth it.
Me, too (as I mention above). I’m looking forward to the sequels.