Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Science Fiction Discussion => Topic started by: Talia on August 21, 2011, 01:25:29 PM
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http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/08/announcing-the-2011-hugo-award-winners
Congrats to the winners. Gonna have to check out that Ted Chiang novella now (I'd been hearing mixed things).
Edit: Changed the link. Tor's awards ceremony gives more complete information. The people in the comments are being a bunch of whiners, but oh well.
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Reading through the comments... wow. There's a LOT of stuff about how this or that isn't Science Fiction. And I'm certainly not going to open that can o' worms here :-)
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Hmmm... I've looked through the comments and they don't seem that bad to me, and I can't see practically anything about how anything is or isn't SF. Were a bunch of comments removed?
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By far the worst novel won.
I understand that Connie Willis is supposed to be extremely nice peron, but I wonder why that should be a reason to vote for her?
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Do you have any evidence that people voted for Willis's novel out of affection to her rather than because their tastes are different than yours?
It's possible to express one's personal disagreement with a result without resorting to belittling both the winner and those who voted for her.
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Reading through the comments... wow. There's a LOT of stuff about how this or that isn't Science Fiction. And I'm certainly not going to open that can o' worms here :-)
Hmmm... I've looked through the comments and they don't seem that bad to me, and I can't see practically anything about how anything is or isn't SF. Were a bunch of comments removed?
There's a little bit of *WAHyougotfantasyinmysciencefictionWAH* but not anywhere near, say, some of the responses to NPR's list of 100 F&SF novels on various blogs, etc. That was a lot more WAH for your buck. ;)
I was interested to see how close the other short stories were to have made a fifth Hugo nominee. .15% kept a fifth story from being nominated? That's kind of frustrating.
The Hugo voting system is kind of amazing and weird. The Things scored the majority of the shorty story nominations, but when the voting was done, it took third place.
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The Hugo voting system is kind of amazing and weird. The Things scored the majority of the shorty story nominations, but when the voting was done, it took third place.
That's not too surprising from a procedural point of view. I think a lot of people may have made a nomination liking it best of all the stories they read thus far that year, but when the nominee list was released and they read the other nominees they decide they like one of those better.
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Do you have any evidence that people voted for Willis's novel out of affection to her rather than because their tastes are different than yours?
Yes. There is at least indirect evidence for that.
The two authors in the final ballot with the most name recognition were Connie Willis and Lois McMaster Bujold, both with multiple awards. Both with books which were clearly below average for them. Blackout/All Clear was an overlong, badly researched book with extremely stupid and irritating characters. (If interested, see my review at http://tpi-reads.blogspot.com/2011/05/all-clear-by-connie-willis.html ). Cryoburn was ok, but it was by far the worst Vorkosigan book I have read, others have been mostly very good).
If there were a group of people voting for familiar names, it can assumed that those two names would be on the top two choices in one order or in another on their ballot forms in spite of the mediocre quality of their nominees on this year's voting.
The detailed voting results have been published. From there can be seen that about 60% of people who were voting for Bujold had placed Blackout/All Clear directly below the Cryoburn. That supports the hypothesis very well.
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First, let me just state I haven't read any of the nominated novels, and indeed have never read any novels by any of the authors (I've read short fiction by Jemisin). I say this because I want it to be clear that I have neither any information nor any bias here.
What I am concerned with is the level of the discourse, especially when it comes to these forums. I have several things to say:
- Just because you think the Willis novel (and the Bujold novel) is a lesser work, doesn't mean that everyone agrees. Since you seem to be stating subjective opinion as fact, then already none of your argument works.
- Your first post said people voted for Willis because she is nice. In your second post you say people voted for her because she is famous. That's not the same thing.
- Most importantly, I can't see why it matters. Every poster here is welcome to give their opinion, but the one rule (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=3289.msg59467#msg59467) of these forums is that these opinions need to be given in a respectful manner. That includes being respectful of Hugo voters. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying that Willis's book was among her least succesful, or saying why you thought that, or saying that it's the weakest of the nominees. But there's no reason to cast aspersions at the Hugo voters based on anything but hard evidence.
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I am saying that there were probably other factors that literary quality effecting the voting. If someone feels that it is disrespectful I am sorry. But I am not the only one shaking my head after hearing the results:
http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2011/08/2011-hugo-awards-winners.html
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1799387.html
http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2011/07/hugo-thoughts-big-one.html
http://strangelove4sf.blogspot.com/2011/07/2011-hugo-awards-novel-shortlist.html
http://laviniashadows.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html
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Man, I just couldn't sleep tonight. It sounded like someone was sharpening tools over and over and over. Like a grindstone against, I don't know, an ax head or something?
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I, for one, am certainly going to have to read the Connie Willis books now :P
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Reading through the comments... wow. There's a LOT of stuff about how this or that isn't Science Fiction. And I'm certainly not going to open that can o' worms here :-)
yeah, yeah... "Science fiction is whatever I'm waving my dick at when I say it."
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I, for one, am certainly going to have to read the Connie Willis books now :P
By all means.
I must admit that for the most part the writing itself is fluent. And if you are not bothered by the meandering plot depending on the immense stupidity of the characters, you might get some amusement from trying to spot as many errors and anachronisms you can. ;D
And "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is actually fairly good.
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I didn't read any of the novels and probably won't, maybe Jemisin's someday, but I read everything in the short story and novelette categories as well as Chiang's winning novella. I would've voted for Watts in the short story and Steele's in the novelette. Although I thought the latter category was pretty even in terms of quality and wouldn't have cared which one won.
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Does the fact that The Lifecycle of Software Objects won its category in the Hugos but not the Nebulas mean that we as a fandom have more tolerance for more-deliberately-paced, idea-heavy stories than the SFWA establishment?