Hugo Awards 2019: Initial Thoughts

The 2019 Hugo Award Finalists were announced earlier this week, so it’s time for the requisite joyful praise and bitter recriminations.

  • Best Novel has a reasonably balanced mixture of elements. 4 of 6 are part of a series… but two of those are the first in a series (which can often operate in a standalone way, though far too many do not), one of them seems to be a standalone novel set in the same universe, and one is the third in a series (and decidedly not standalone). 4 of the 6 are also pretty squarely Science Fiction, which is about par for the course of late (and generally reflects my preferance). 4 of the 6 authors have nominations for Best Novel before, and all 6 have nominations in shorter fiction categories in recent years too. This could probably be better, but the Hugos have a long history of this sort of thing and it’s somewhat unavoidable given the popularity contest aspects of the way Hugos are administered.
  • The only Best Novel finalist I’ve read is Yoon Ha Lee’s Revenant Gun, the third in his Machineries of Empire series (the previous two entries in the series were also nominated, but did not win). I quite liked it, but did not nominate due to it’s place in the series. I have not read Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers or Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, but based on previous experience with both authors, I’m anticipating that I’ll enjoy both. Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse has an interesting premise that I’m sure I can sink my teeth into, despite my moderate ambivalence to her Hugo-winning short story of last year (I ranked it middle-of-the-pack). It’s also always nice to see a new name on the Novel ballot, which tends to fill up with the same names year after year (as mentioned above, most of the authors have been nominated for best novel before…). The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal seems to be based on a previously nominated novelette, which I thought was good, even if it didn’t really scratch my sense of wonder itch and fell to the middle of my ballot that year. Finally, there’s Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente. The concept sounds interesting enough I guess, but everything I’ve read about this indicates that it’ll be an uphill battle for me. I’m not much into musicals or character sketches, and this seems filled with both. I will dutifully give it a shot though…
  • Best Novella has a couple of stories I’m interested in, namely another of Martha Wells’ Murderbot stories (which I read and enjoyed greatly) and The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard, which was on my reading queue, I just didn’t get to it in time. A couple of the nominees are completely new to me, and a couple others are from authors that I’ve had mixed reactions to in the past. Also of note is that 5 of the 6 finalists are from Tor. Granted, they’ve made a concerted push for Novellas in recent years, and it’s nice to see the Novella enjoying a general resurgence, as it’s long enough to provide depth, but not so long as to always be a slog… I feel like a lot of Novels these days are far too long (ditto for a lot of long-form storytelling in TV shows). I can’t tell if that’s just because I’m getting older and more impatient, or if there’s something more broad going on. On the one hand, I generally feel like every Netflix season I’ve watched is about 5 episodes too long and a lot of novels over 500 pages don’t warrant the extra length, on the other hand, I love Neal Stephenson’s unwieldy tomes.
  • Short Stories and Novelettes feature a bevy of familiar names, which is again, par for the course when it comes to the Hugos. Still a few new names here and there though, which is nice.
  • Best Series continues to vex. Aside from logistical concerns (if any of the series are new to you, how on earth are you supposed to read all the qualifying material or even enough to get a good feel for the series?), it does seem a bit weird that fully half of the series finalists have the actual latest installment also nominated by itself in the other fiction categories. I thought part of the impetus for this award was to give recognition to series where none of the individual installments was nominated, but the series as a whole is still beloved. This made a lot of sense a few years ago when The Wheel of Time got nominated in the Best Novel category (certainly a stretch, even if technically not against the rules), but so far, the award hasn’t exactly served its purpose. I mean, I love Lois McMaster Bujold as an author, but it’s not like the Vorkosigan Saga or Five Gods universes got no recognition before… (while several of the other nominees fit the mold well enough, I guess, though again, who has the time to read through all of it if you haven’t already…) This again speaks to the popularity contest aspects of the Hugos, I think.
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form is about what you’d expect, though it’s nice to see smaller indie-esque fare like Annihilation and Sorry to Bother You make the cut. Still, there’s no stopping the Marvel juggernaut. A little surprised to see A Quiet Place make the grade. It’s got horror/suspense chops, but as SF it’s pretty dumb stuff. Pour one out for actual indie flicks that were deserving: Upgrade and The Endless, both well worth your time.
  • The 1944 Retro Hugos have some interesting stuff in there. No Heinlein, owing to his work during WWII and thus not publishing anything in 1943, which clears the field a bit for some of the folks Campbell turned to in his absence, like the Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore duo, Fritz Leiber, and A.E. van Vogt. Asimov somehow squirmed his way onto the ballot, but then, popular names always do, even when the story is by all accounts minor. H.P. Lovecraft also makes an appearance, which is interesting because I don’t normally peg him as a Hugo favorite. More interesting to see are multiple noms for Leigh Brackett, and some stories from the likes of Hal Clement and Eric Frank Russell… Some of this stuff interests me more than present-year nominees in shorter fiction categories. Maybe I’ll focus more on the Retros this year. It’s always an awkward set of nominees though, as most people aren’t especially familiar with all the 1943 works (only 217 nominating ballots for the Retros, three of which were on paper), and thus you end up with the really common names. But then, you end up with that in present-day too, so it’s not too surprising.
  • The Retro Dramatic Presentation categories are interesting too. It seems that the 75 minute features favored by Val Lewton and Universal get categorized as “Short Form”, and it’s great to see Lewton’s work in particular get recognized. Great to see Heaven Can Wait on the list, which to my mind is the clear favorite. The Batman serials, on the other hand, are hot garbage and presumably only made the list due to the general recognizability of a popular superhero. I wasn’t particularly impressed by The Ape Man, though Bela Lugosi is always entertaining. Would have rather seen something like The Leopard Man (arguably not SFF, but it makes feints that direction) or even Son of Dracula (look, I get it, Lon Chaney Jr. makes for a terrible Dracula, but the movie itself is decent; certainly better than The Ape Man). There’s a few nominees that I don’t recognize, but I should be able to catch up with them easily enough…

So there you have it. I just took on a couple of long-ish books, so I’m not going to get to any of this for a bit, but there’s plenty to seek my teeth into here…

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