Announcing the 2011 Hugo Award Winners!

*Best Novel for Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis*
Well, the second worst novel on the ballot and the fourth worst book that I read from 2010 has won the Hugo, along with the Nebula. As I expected going into this voting, and clearly people do see real value in the text. I’m not one of them, and have to regard this as a terribly disappointing pick, for a work that I find less well designed than Anasi Boys, probably making the worst Hugo win since Hominids took the medal. As with The Emperor of Mars, I see this as a general tendency towards embracing sentimental, regressive, contrived science fiction over the other kind. A shame that a novel as intricate, ambitious and well written as The Dervish House lost to an exercise in tedious poorly designed historical recreation. Willis taking it over McDonald at this point is something I’d expected for quite awhile now, but it doesn’t make me any happier at this point. A bit dispiriting that a process as corrupt as the Nebulas here echoes the decision of the largest gathering of Hugo voters in its history. More a shame that Willis can make such an over-sprawling account and be lauded by having made the best science fiction novel of the world. Even more unfortunate that the SF community finds it’s measure of greatness in character through Willis’ cutsey well-wishers, its guideline for worldbuilding a haphazard recollection of historians and its model towards the future in a return to the London Blitz.

*Best Novella for “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang
Thoroughly predictable, but also completely deserved, and a relief to see an actual top-rate writer get the award recognition. This is his fourth piece of short fiction to win a Hugo. This is the type of fiction that should be encouraged–specific, forceful, ambitious while being low key, writing future forms of life in the spaces within which most SF narratives leap.

*Best Novelette for “The Emperor of Mars” by Allen StteleInfuriating, although what I feared in the lead-up to the vote. There was only one worse pick on the ballet and three substantially better, and instead the mass voters went for an unabashed recreation and celebration of all that’s conservative in science fiction writing. This is a story that does not withstand even a minimal amount of thought on it, examined beneath the self-congratulatory aspect it falls apart. This is the first pick of the evening’s ceremony to really get me angry. “The Jagaur House” should have won this in a landslide.

*Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form for the Pandorica Opens/Big Bang”
Fairly pleased. That matched my top vote for the category, as well as my prediction for winner. Hardly a big surprise, the Doctor Who bloc has been really strong of late, there weren’t many quality alternates last year, and few of them nominated. Glad that fandom can now hopefully get past the ‘f— me Ray Bradbury’ fanvideo, and possibly regrow a little maturity. As well, hopefully next year one or more episode from Game of Thrones can challenge the Doctor Who monolith. G. R. R. Martin was presenting the award this year, foreshadowing?

Re: Dramatic Pres. Short Form: “Vincent and the Doctor” really should have won over “Pandorica Opens/Big Bang”. And if you watched the livestream too (or attended), don’tcha think Mr. Moffat should have sent an acceptance speech, or at least a few words of thanks? Two of the nominees were written by him, after all.

It pleases me that neither Deathly Hallows Part One nor Scott Pilgrim won for Dramatic Pres. Long Form. That category was very strong overall this year, though.

Isn’t it three years running that Girl Genius has won the Best Girl Genius Award?

And yeah, the only thing that could have stopped Blackout/All Clear would have been that obscure no award final check thing.

Connie Willis for best novel? Her work just screams mediocrity. I cry for the future of SF, I really do, if the Hugos are seriously presenting this the best science fiction novel of the year. Or perhaps SF ‘fandom’ has its head so far up its… well I should stop now but I wont.

Perhaps it was just a dry year for the good authors who like to make their readers think. Wasn’t that was SF about, at some stage?

If I sound bitter, it’s because I am.

Hopefully I can feel a little better about next year’s. At least Ted Chiang got a plaudit. Perhaps he’s working on a novel, finally…

the fact that they put up with the book splitting with nary a complaint.

I heard lots of complaints. I wrote some of them myself. “This book is incomplete,” I said. “This first book could have been cut down to two or three chapters without damaging the narrative in any way!” Rant James rant. See James rant.

That said, decades of buying fragments of fantasy novels in 500-600 page installments has probably conditioned F&SF readers into accepting that they will be reading something that begins in media res and ends without resolution.

Because although I personally dislike the fact that fantasy can win the Hugo, it can and does.

Some of the most interesting work in F&SF is done on the F side of things and I say this for whom fantasy is generally carob to SF’s chocolate, as someone whose desire to read SF is so overwhelming I own Robert Forward novels. Heck, I owned Cap Kennedy books back in the day….

Beamjockey did my homework for me:

Grumbles from the Grave was nominated in 1990. It lost to Alexei Panshin & Cory Panshin’s The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence.

James Gifford’s annotated bibliography Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion was nominated in 2001. It lost to Bob Eggleton and Nigel Suckling’s Greetings from Earth: The Art of Bob Eggleton

Joseph T. Major’s Heinlein’s Children: The Juveniles was nominated in 2007 (annoyingly, I’ve never found a copy of this). It lost to Julie Phillips’ James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

Bill Patterson’s Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1: (1907–1948): Learning Curve was nominated in 2011. It lost to Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea’s Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It.

In fact, Heinlein non-fiction turns out to be poor bet for the Hugo Award except when Panshin writes it. The obvious solution here is for him to do a new, updated edition of Heinlein in Dimension.

James Davis Nicoll, #15:
“Joseph T. Major’s Heinlein’s Children: The Juveniles was nominated in 2007 (annoyingly, I’ve never found a copy of this).”

It’s still listed on the Nesfa Press website.

David Goldfarb @28 – Here’s an interview with him. He goes by Michael Brunner (after his mother’s maiden name).

28: what Seth said. the YouTube interview is the top hit on Google for “valentine michael manson”. the first ten hits give further information.

I just did a web search and found a list of Charles Manson’s children — but that name wasn’t on it.

I don’t mean to be rude, but the poor guy even comes up in Google Auto-Complete. Bugliosi claims he was raised by his grandparents in Eau Claire and became a plumbing supply salesman in Colorado. May the worst thing to befall him be not knowing who to have rooted for in Super Bowl 32.

Sadly, she’s stopping well before 2011.