Info from http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2009/0...

Best Novel: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Best Novella: “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
Best Novelette: “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008)
Best Short Story: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
Best Related Book: Your Hate Mail Will be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)
Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen , writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Best Editor, Short Form: Ellen Datlow
Best Editor, Long Form: David G. Hartwell
Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
Best Semiprozine: Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
Best Fanzine: Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
Best Fan Writer: Cheryl Morgan
Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: David Anthony Durham

Let the complaining commence....

Not surprised Gaiman won the best novel - I'd guessed it would be him or Stephenson (see here).

I'd have sooner the best novella went to Ian McDonald Or Robert Reed, and the best novelette to Paolo Bacigalupi. The Kress dull, but she is popular, and the Bear wasn't bad.

The short story was a shoo-in for Chiang. At least Resnick didn't win.

#1
Not familiar with most of the nominations, which is not surprising, but Wall-E as best picture? The first half of that movie was excellent, but the second half was just Disney paint-by-numbers rubbish.

#2
That link you put was interesting, particularly how most people defended the Hugos on the basis that it was good as a barometer of what was popular in the field of SF. Why is this a legitimate defence?

It isn't. And I think the hugo is mostly irrelevant these days. But I'm in a minority.

Really? That is sad and a bit pathetic. I remember wasting hours in the library in undergrad just going through hugo winners (they had short stories and novellas archieved in a single binding by year). Since I am looking to get back into reading sci-fi, I was hoping I could start back in by reading past hugo winners (for free at a library).

If you're looking for the best books published each year, then - bar the odd exception - you won't find them on the Hugo shortlists. At least not unless you back to the early 1970s. If you're looking for the most popular sf novels of a particular type - i.e., appreciated by a shrinking, ageing, growing increasingly more conservative in their tastes sector of fandom - then by all means read the Hugo shortliested novels....

When I read the Erdmann Nexus last Fall in Asimov's it didn't register as great in my mind (more like ordinary). I think I was surprised it was shortlisted, and now having won I suppose I should re-read it and reevaluate. It is near the end of Gardner Dozois's 26th annual "Best" so I'll check it then.

I can't fairly say what is the best novelette, but I think I am pleased that Elizabeth Bear's Shoggoths story won since I thought it should have been included in GD's Year's Best collection, but wasn't. I did think Bear's novel "All The Windracked Stars" could have made the shortlist.

Ian,

Whilst this year was a particularly bad year, only Anathem would have made my final ballot. And despite every one of the final ballot novels were by authors who have a personal following, things aren't as terrible as they seem when we plug back through the past few years.

2008 - Both The Yiddish Policeman's Union and Brasyl would make my list.
2007 - Eifelheim and Glasshouse and Blindsight were all interesting enough to make the cut even if you didn't like them that much.
2006 - Spin was a worthy winner and Accelerando is hardly white-bread middle of the road SF. Learning The World made most of the award lists.

Were there other books that didn't make the final ballot which should have? Of course. I could name two or three for 2006-08 which should have made it.

So do the other awards get it right more often?

I think the Nebula has about the same record as the Hugos at ignoring worthy books.
The Clarke Award is often better, although sometimes it is too left field - in 2008 only 3 of the shortlist were published "in-genre".
The Campbell Memorial Award often picks a good list - this year was pretty good - but every now and then comes up with an inexplicable winner (Titan in 2007 for example). Also some years the Campbell list is too long for a final list.
The BSFA Award seems to be the best. If you look at the past five years I would say it has consistently picked a better set of books. Not perfect but far fewer conservative white-bread books.

(edited to fix touchstone)

Message edited by its author, Aug 10, 2009, 2:00pm.

I definitely concur regards the BSFA. As for the Nebulas - I've never understood how they work. It seems some writers automatically get on their shortlists every year.

Can you obtain BSFA in a bound version at a university library? Thanks

That rather depends.

All the novels (which is what I was mainly talking about) are proper published novels. Admittedly they are all published in the UK at the time of the award and might not have been published in the US (and indeed may never be published in the US) so it depends on how good your library is.

The short fiction is a single award (we don't split them up into length bands) and can be published anywhere in the world. They are all published in magazines, original anthologies, or online, or as a small-press novella. I'm not sure how your library got bound yearly collections of Hugo nominated short fiction - it isn't a product available you can buy AFAIK - so I can't say if it can get any short fiction bound together that way. But 3 out of 4 of this year's BSFA short fiction shortlist are online. Coverage for previous years is much lower.

Well then, someone is going online to burn the rest of the work day! Thanks

I suggest that you don't look at http://www.freesfonline.de/ if you want to have any time to do actual work.

#12 Earlier this year, the BSFA published a booklet with all of the shortlisted short fiction in it. So, you could either join the BSFA, or be very nice to an existing member...

To andyl,

I mean this is the true spirit of kindness when I proclaim, "You have ruined my life." That site (freesfonline) is amazing. Whole books and award winning short stories in one easily accessible place? (seriously, I may well get fired over this)

Well now I am back in. I also ordered Hyperion, Childhood's End, and The Man Who Folded Himself on other members recs.

I consider the recent Hugo's mostly irrelevant, selected as they are by a relatively small number of Worldcon attendees. (My disenchantment began when the Best Novel award went to To Say Nothing Of The Dog, a good-natured romp but not a great novel.)

I like the Locus readers poll for a better sense of breadth & quality.

#16

But Hugos have always been selected by a relatively small number of Worldcon attendees.

I think the issue is that your tastes have diverted from the tastes of the voting group.

Should the Hugo's be renamed "The Hugo Prize for the Best Science Fiction According to the Tastes of a Handful of Judges"? I would think this would make the Hugo's mean something else than what most people associate them with. Pretty soon you have the Hugo clique and the Locus clique and so forth. I don't know, maybe that's the way it is already. In which case people looking for good SF are left, once again, to the winds of chance.

#17

You are right. The 1999 Hugo (to Willis) was when I realized that the Hugo brand no longer guaranteed that a book would blow me away.

That fork in the road (To Say Nothing of the Dog) makes sense to me, too. OK book, not great.

To Say Nothing of The Dog is one of my favorite books. I suspect Locus had it highly rated the year it came out as well.

They say the Hugos in the past were picked by John Campbell's Analog mafia - even though it was voted on at Worldcon. They apparently sent in enough votes that they chose the slate.

I also liked To Say Nothing of the Dog, much more than the other Hugo winners I've read (which is admittedly not many compared to most of the people in this group, I suspect). But I have a fondness for Victorian lit, and Willis played off of it so well.

#21 To Say Nothing of The Dog is one of my favorite books. I suspect Locus had it highly rated the year it came out as well.

It was the top placed book on the Locus Poll that year.

Also nominated for a Hugo in 1999 was

Children Of God placed 7th in the Locus Poll
Darwinia placed 2nd in the Locus Poll
Distraction placed 4th in the Locus Poll
Factoring Humanity not on the Locus Poll (and I looked a year each side of 1999).

I don't think you can blame the Hugo voters for being completely out of touch with the Locus Poll. With one exception (Robert J. Sawyer's work) if a book appears on the Hugo final ballot it is likely (but not guaranteed) to appear on the Locus Poll (either SF or Fantasy) in a reasonable position.

There were all those Bujold books in the late 1980s - they're what killed the Hugo for me. Not every book that's been nominated has been dull, not very good, or both, but it was clear to me from then that the award was in no way representative. It only keeps its prestige because we're daft enough to keep up the fiction that it represents the best of the genre.

#24

Looking at the Bujold stuff that made the Hugo final ballot it isn't clear that the Hugos were out on their own. Every work has done well in the Locus Poll and most were nominated for (or won) another major award. Personally I think the SF world in general went a little too overboard on Bujold. So many nominations bunched together gives a somewhat slanted view of the field.

Falling Free
- novel : 1989 Hugo
- novel : 1989 Nebula Winner
- sf novel : 1989 Locus/9

"The Mountains Of Mourning"
- novella : 1990 Hugo Winner
- novella : 1990 Nebula Winner
- novella : 1990 Locus/4

The Vor Game
- novel : 1991 Hugo Winner
- sf novel : 1991 Locus/4

Barrayer
- novel : 1992 Hugo Winner
- novel : 1992 Nebula
- sf novel : 1992 Locus Winner

Mirror Dance
- novel : 1995 Hugo Winner
- sf novel : 1995 Locus Winner

Memory
- novel : 1997 Hugo
- sf novel : 1997 Locus/3
- novel : 1998 Nebula

A Civil Campaign
- novel : 2000 Hugo
- sf novel : 2000 Locus/4
- novel : 2001 Nebula

The Curse of Chalion
- novel : 2002 Hugo
- novel : 2002 World Fantasy
- fantasy novel : 2002 Locus/3
- adult literature : 2002 Mythopoeic Winner

Paladin of Souls
- novel : 2004 Hugo Winner
- fantasy novel : 2004 Locus Winner
- adult literature : 2004 Mythopoeic
- novel : 2005 Nebula Winner

Going back to 1980 there have only been 1 Hugo winner that wasn't on the Locus list - Hominids and I think 2 more that were outside the top-10 of their category - Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (18th). Looking at it the other way there has only been one book (since 1980) that has topped the Locus Poll (SF novels category) that has failed to make the Hugo final ballot - The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin.

So there's an overlap between the Hugo and the Locus Award. That's no real surprise. After all, how many Hugos did the magazine itself win? It still doesn't make the shortlisted books representative of the best the genre has to offer.

#26

Well it means that although the Hugos have few votes it means it corresponds pretty well with the Locus Poll which gets substantially more votes (I think). Also for Bujold only two of the nominations above did not get nominated for a juried award (of those The Vor Game is substantially the weakest IMO).

It leads to a number of possibilities
a) your tastes are very different to the mainstream of SF consumers
and/or
b) all awards (popular and juried) are fatally flawed.

I'm not sure what your point was about Locus winning the Hugo. I don't see how that would affect which books get voted for in its poll, especially considering you don't have to have bought Locus at all to vote in their poll. However the February roundup of recommended books may unduly affect both Locus Poll and Hugos if too many people use them as a crutch and don't write in good books they have discovered for themselves.

The fact that Locus won the Hugo so often to me indicates a large overlap between Hugo nominators/voters and Locus readers. Which in turn means any similarity between the two shortlists is no real surprise.

While I accept that my tastes are "very different to the mainstream of SF consumers", I'd also maintain that those of the Hugo voters are too. After all, the really popular series don't get nominated - not just Rowling and Meyer, but also Banks, Martin, Jordan, Hamilton (either)... Those who nominate and vote on the Hugos - and by extension the Locus Award - are privileging a specific view of the genre which, I feel, neither displays what is truly popular nor the best of the genre.

Juried awards, OTOH, often produce more interesting shortlists....

Message edited by its author, Aug 22, 2009, 12:04pm.

Banks hasn't been nominated because his book have been oop or not published in the US (until recently).

I thought a HP won a Hugo ? I think once is enough and the others you list are all huge books. There seems to be a built-in disdain for Big Fat Fantasy. Hamilton isn't fantasy but he has written door stopper space opera - fantasy is SF duds ?

#28

You are aware that Rowling won in 2001? And that Banks and Martin have been nominated?

Not that I want to defend all the winners--I've found that my tastes and those of the majority of Hugo voters don't align very closely. There are certain authors who are pretty much guaranteed to get a nomination whenever they have an eligible work (Stross, Willis, Vinge, Bujold for a few years, perhaps Scalzi now) and they're not my favorite wriiters. But they seem to be writers who are popular with the people who care enough to participate in the system. I don't have a problem with that.

#29 AFAIK Banks has been published regularly in the US, although his books did not make much impact until recently (when Orbit opened a US branch and began hyping him).

#30 Given Rowling's sales, HP should win every year, surely?

Message edited by its author, Aug 22, 2009, 1:20pm.

# 31, He may have been published long ago but they went out oop. His culture stuff has only been re/published here since 2007, and prior there are only 2 books listed one in 1998 and one in 1999.

I started collecting the Culture books in 2002, and had to get Orbit books from the UK. Might have been able to get oop used books, but a local indie has UK books in the store and doesn't add shipping charges, and I prefer new, so I didn't go the used root.

Of course I mean route :)

The system thinks I have blocked myself, so I can't see my posts once they are posted. I click on the show link, but can't get the edit pencil to work - hence the 2nd post.

Engaging Romulan Cloaking device.

Um, I've heard several different stories about Banks's books in the US. I thought he wasn't initially published, that his first book published over there was by Night Shade. But according to one person his books have been readily available for over a decade. Perhaps he just sells better in some parts of the US than in others. Over here in the UK, of course, he's the biggest-selling sf author.

Message edited by its author, Aug 22, 2009, 2:02pm.

Book store couldn't order it. They deal with nation-wide distributors. What a store may stock can be regional here, but ordering isn't. Some small stores may want you to pay up front, and not let you return a special ordered book, but thats about it.

I live in upstate NY and most of Banks' book are readily available in our local Borders and B&N. He seems to be a mainstay of our SF section here. And if he isn't widely read, why not? His culture novels seem if not superior, easily among the better SF out there right now and very readable.

... and on the main thread: shouldn't we take the Hugo and other "best of" lists like the AFI top 100 lists? IMO they should be meant, at least the popular consumer if not authors, as an interesting starting point for discussion and reading, not the be-all-end-all of ratings.

#31 Generally a book is are only eligible for a Hugo in its first year of publication. The British authors have a lot of problems with Hugos because they're usually first published in Britain and than a year (or two) later in the US. Since most of the Hugo nominators/voters are North Americans, the British books don't get on the radar in time to get on the ballot. (There's a weird WSFS rule that comes and goes about extending eligibility for non-US imprints by a year, but I don't understand when it applies and when it doesn't.)

The only way to change the Hugos is to nominate and vote. Currently a block of about 100 people can get a book nominated (that's how few people nominate). More people nominating would kill off some of the power of small groups and make the awards more reflective of wide-spread sentiment.

To nominate you need to be a supporting member of this year's or next year's Worldcon. See http://www.aussiecon4.org.au/index.php?p... for more details.

#31

I think things are a little better now but still good books have about a year or so lag between the UK and US version. This harms a lot of good UK books - for example The Quiet War and House Of Suns didn't have a US edition out by the time nominations closed. I don't think The Quiet War has a US edition out yet.

Looking at the full nomination list it seems that 54 nominations was enough this year to get on the final ballot and there was only one book with more than a 100 nominations*. A total of 639 people submitted ballots and there was a total of 1990 nominations which consisted of 335 unique titles. For the final vote there was a total of 1074 ballots. The amount of both nominating and final ballots were up substantially this year.

* In 2008 - only 40 nominations would have got you on the final ballot, and no book got more than 65 nominations.

#38 The only way to change the Hugos is to nominate and vote.

No it's not. The only way to change the Hugos is to disregard them. If I nominate a book and it is not shortlisted then I have achieved nothing. The Hugos remain exactly as they are. And you expect me to pay to do that?

28: Of the authors you mentioned, most have been publishing fantasy for their big popular series, and the Hugos have a bias against fantasy. So much so that when Rowling did win it was controversial. I tend to think that the Hugos should have a bias against fantasy, otherwise why do we have things like the World Fantasy Award?

Also, why should a big popular series be a guarantee of nomination? Should Goodkind or Hubbard have won? Their series, by sales, were very popular. Of course, all of the authors you mentioned plus Goodkind and so on are all a comparatively small volume of the market compared to the Star Wars, Star Trek and D&D based fiction out there. Should those books dominate the Hugos?

Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 2:49pm.

Well, yes. The Hugos should be either populist or best, but they're neither. They're awarded by a small club according to their lights. I'm not in the club, I don't want to be in the club, and I certainly don't want the club to be seen as speaking for me.

Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 5:12pm.

#41 and the Hugos have a bias against fantasy

Well I've heard plenty of SF fans complain that too much fantasy has got on to the final ballot and won over the past decade or so.

The World Fantasy Awards are juried (although two places on the shortlist are allocated by popular vote) so are more akin to Nebula Awards.

If I were to design an award it would be more akin to the original concept the Gemmell Legend Award had (before they wimped out). Have the public vote* for a long list of about 12-15 books. Then have a panel of judges read the long list to decide to form a short list of about 5 books. Then a reread of the short list to choose the winner.

Of course the problem with a fully open and free public vote would be general fanboyism (maybe we would have seen Twilight and Star Wars novels on the long list) and maybe even ballot stuffing. I am not totally sure how to fix that - even charging a token fee probably wouldn't work.