Hugos Part 7 – Best Related Work and Campbell Award

Jul28
by berry on July 28, 2011 at 10:27 pm
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I’m running out of days to post these things! I still have Long Form Dramatic Presentation and  Novel to go! At least I’m almost done! Just the behemoth! Exclamation point!

OK, now that I’ve finished hyperventilating, I can discuss the two awards above, joined only because I spent all of yesterday finishing off Dervish House (Black Out/All Clear must excel if it wants to get top spot from me), and I don’t have enough days left to post them all individually. You will forgive me, no?

Best related work: Easy for me. Writing Excuses. I love this podcast. The guys have insightful things to say, their topics are interesting, I love the guests, and it’s short… but not too short. I’ve listened to all of them, not just season 4. They are all good. It seems, too, that this is the year of Writing Excuses. I can’t wait to see how they fare (for the uninitiated, Dan Wells and Howard Tayler are up for the Campbell and Graphic Story, respectively, and Dan’s editor is up for Long Form editor). Other than Chicks Dig Time Lords, I wasn’t all that enthused with anything else, so I’ll just be voting for those two.

  1. Writing Excuses, Season 4, by Brandon Sanderson, Jordan Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells
  2. Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)
  • Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001, by Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon) – Read Online Excerpt [PDF]
  • The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing, by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg (McFarland)
  • Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1: (1907–1948): Learning Curve, by William H. Patterson, Jr. (Tor)

For the Campbell, I was already familiar with three of the authors, and I’ve skimmed the other two. It’s tough, I didn’t give myself enough time to actually read the work offered, so I don’t know if I will vote in this category, since it wouldn’t be totally fair to Lev and Lauren. If I do vote, though, Dan Wells will get the top spot (unless I read more before the deadline (doubt it!)), like so:

  1. Dan Wells
  2. Saladin Ahmed
  3. Larry Correia
  • Lauren Beukes
  • Lev Grossman

I became engrossed in I Am Not a Serial Killer, and went out and immediately bought the next book in the series, of course to let smolder in the stacks around here. I really enjoy Saladin’s take on the genre, and I really like the story of Larry himself. I feel like I am in the same boat,  carving out bits of time here and there around my hectic life to get a few hundred words down here or there. Easier now that I have something portable to write on.

Should I be this scrupulous? I don’t know. I read another blogger’s take on best novel; he did not read and is not voting for Cryoburn merely because he hadn’t read the rest of the series, and it would be unfair to the author. Might also be unfair to discount the author this way. I’ll make my decision on ballot day.

 

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Hugos Part 6 – Best Graphic Story

Jul26
by berry on July 26, 2011 at 4:10 pm
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I like comics. I like graphic novels. I like them on the web, in the newspaper, on the iPad (I will get to that, don’t worry). If you look at my LibraryThing “read in 2011” list, there’s 11 graphic novels there,  including the 5 below. I actually kept up my Ottawa Citizen subscription a few years longer than I needed to, merely to have the comics with my breakfast. Having children solved that problem. It isn’t 1960 anymore. I can’t eat my morning meal hidden behind the paper, pipe in hand while my sweetness takes care of everything and everyone else.

Anyway, I like the graphic storytelling form. It’s good. I really enjoyed them all, and could put a 1 next to all of them. I’m giving the number 1 spot to the Unwritten because as soon as I finished it, I wanted more. I’ve read Volume 1, and will get Volume 3 as soon as I drop into Wizard’s Tower. I am waiting impatiently for Volume 4 to come out in October. The rest did not give me this reaction. I’ve read Schlock and the first couple of volumes of Girl Genius online, but I never really got hooked, though I enjoyed reading them again immensely. The other two had compelling story-lines, and I found it hard to choose between all of them. I opted instead to vote with what I know.  Sorry Bryan, Bill and Mark.

  1. The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man, written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)
  2. Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, written and illustrated by Howard Tayler; colors by Howard Tayler and Travis Walton (Hypernode) – Read Online
  3. Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment) – Read Online
  4. Grandville Mon Amour, by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse)
  5. Fables: Witches, written by Bill Willingham; illustrated by Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)

 


As an aside, I won’t vote for editors, or zines. I don’t know enough of them to make an informed decision, and that isn’t fair. I’ll put up my choices for novel in Vegas, as I haven’t started Blackout/All Clear yet (most of the way through The Dervish House, and it is phenomenal, BTW).

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My reading list

Jul22
by berry on July 22, 2011 at 5:56 pm
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Just to get off the Hugo topic for a bit, here’s what I have lined up for the rest of the year. Not exhaustive, but these are books that I actually have, that are actually yelling at me to finish up. Of course, there are some Hugo books still in there, but I should finish them off by the 31st (moot otherwise!). Secret weapon? Audiobooks. I have an Audible account, and a two-hour round-trip commute. I just finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms this way, and I thoroughly endorse this method of “reading”. I’ll be listening to Feed whilst reading Dervish House this week, and hopefully plowing through Blackout on my travel day to Vegas. Not like I’ll be doing anything else. I do have a couple of Early Reviewer books to take care of in there, and a couple by authors appearing at Can-Con. Everything else I can read in any order, though Jennifer Morgue should probably fall before the Fuller Memorandum, simply because it’s book 2 in the series. I don’t know if they stand random reading. I’ll keep my eyes open on that one. Ed: According to Charlie, this is the order I should read them. Well, good. Thanks, Charlie!


The Fuller Memorandum is got sucked into a vortex, and the iPad is there for the e-books in the list…

Note that most links above go to the author’s site, other than Scott Meredith’s, who died the same year NSCA released Mosaic, and probably didn’t have time for the Internet…

There are two reasons I want to get these read. I tend to buy books right when they come out, and let them sit for interminable amounts of time. Rule 34, which I was so chuffed about three weeks ago is still sitting, lonely, on my shelf. Heck, I got Blackout on its release day, and I’m only getting to it now so I can make an informed decision for Renovation. So I want to clear the backlog and start fresh for 2012.

The second? I promised myself I’d read my Robert Jordan books next year. It will be known as the “Time When I Tackle Wheel of Time”, AKA TWITWoT. The series is sitting on my desk (minus, obv., the one coming out in 2012) staring at me sullenly, accusingly almost. So I vowed to read them next year.

A photo from 2008? Nah, we sometimes don’t replace the calendar… for 3 years…

PS: I find it funny that Spellwright got flagged for spelling…

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Hugos Part 5 – Artists

Jul21
by berry on July 21, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

I’m lumping professional and fan artists into one post. Why? Because I can, muahahaha! It’s more of a “I don’t know much about art” thing, really. As usual, five each. You can see each artist in the links below. I’ve had a pretty hard time with this, mostly due to the knowing what I like versus knowing anything at all about what makes art good.

I have one quibble in the choices presented: in my opinion, xkcd doesn’t belong here. I love it, I read it regularly, but it isn’t fan art. It isn’t really professional art either, since no one pays Randall to draw his comics. Maybe it should have been in Best Related Work? But it isn’t. It’s here. Hard.

I’ve included links to the artists home pages, if extant. The voting packet contained specific pieces of art, but I’m not sharing those, because I agree with this (found in the packet’s readme file):

The works in these packages are presented without Digital Rights Management because the authors and publishers trust that you will use this Hugo Voters Packet as it was intended — for yourself, to aid you in your voting for the Hugos and Campbells. Please do not share this Packet with others outside of your household. Your willingness to do this makes a difference in convincing authors and publishers to participate in this packet, both now and in the future. Thank you.

Best Professional Artist

  1. Stephan Martiniere
  2. Daniel Dos Santos
  3. Bob Eggleton
  4. John Picacio
  5. Shaun Tan

Best Fan Artist

  1. Maurine Starkey (NB: I can’t find a Mo Starkey webpage. This is a link to DrinkTank, to which she contributes often)
  2. Randall Munroe
  3. Brad W. Foster
  4. Steve Stiles
  5. Taral Wayne

 

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‪Ottawa Bluesfest Stage Collapsing Down‬‏ – YouTube

Jul17
by berry on July 17, 2011 at 9:02 pm
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Were Bojana not pregnant, we probably would have been there, getting ready to watch Death Cab for Cutie. That would have blown (See what I did there, pretty good, eh?).

PS: One broken leg, according to the CBC, nothing else.

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