2017 Hugo Nominations are Out

[Wendell_Wagner]

E-DUB writes:

> 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.

I believe that most of the nominees for novel, novella, novelette, and short story are science fiction rather than fantasy, even though either is eligible for the awards. Would someone who’s more knowledgeable about this go through the nominees and tell us which ones are science fiction and which are fantasy? That would be useful to know.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Wendell_Wagner

I believe that most of the nominees for novel, novella, novelette, and short story are science fiction rather than fantasy, even though either is eligible for the awards. Would someone who’s more knowledgeable about this go through the nominees and tell us which ones are science fiction and which are fantasy? That would be useful to know.

Well, lots of books blend science fiction and fantasy elements (and always have, such as including ESP in science fiction.)

Let’s see–out of the novels, Obelisk Gate probably counts as fantasy, and Ninefox Gambit is mixed SF/fantasy. The others are more or less SF.

This should be a useful link.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@E-DUB

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.

Three Body Problem is hard as nails science fiction, and I strongly suspect the third book in the trilogy is as welL. A Closed and Common Orbit is space opera; some of the science is kind of sketchy, but it is firmly in the Star Trek vein.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Three Body Problem is hard as nails science fiction

Except the bits involving certain sub-atomic particles, which are stupid beyond words.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Darren_Garrison

Except the bits involving certain sub-atomic particles, which are stupid beyond words.

Hmm…I’m not sure I agree. Certainly they’re well beyond what we think is possible; but they don’t violate fundamental rules of physics, as I understand them, and the havd-wavy stuff they use to say, in effect, “this is beyond our science,” worked for me.

Chambers’s books seem in a couple of places to violate some basic conservation of energy stuff; but since they’re not trying to be hard SF, I didn’t care much beyond taking note of that violation.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Bumping this because I just finished Too Like The Lightning. What the fuck of a fuck of a book was that? And I mean that in the best possible way.

For folks unfamiliar with it, it’s set in the 25th century or so. The narrator is a criminal sentenced to Service for his terrible crime (which you only learn about 200 or so pages in)–he can’t own any property except for his clothes, he must work for food and shelter and nothing more, and he’s a supergenius. Nations, corporations, and churches no longer exist, but only the last are outlawed. Flying cars can traverse the earth in a matter of a few hours. It’s written in the self-conscious (the narrator explains the decision) style of an 18th-century novel.

The novel has tech in it, but the author is way more interested in sociology than technology. It’s super-weird. I think I like it, but I’m gonna have to sit on it for a few more days before I settle on an opinion.