The Hugo nominees - overall discussion

[DKT]

1) A Small Room In Koboldtown
2) Tideline
3) Distant Replay
4) Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?
5) Last Contact

Deciding on which story I liked best this year was a bit of a stretch.  In the end, there wasn't a stand-out like "Impossible Dreams."  They also didn't seem to be of the same caliber as "The House Beyond Your Sky" or even "How to Talk to Girls at Parties."  That said, it was difficult for me to decide on how the top three should shape up, but I eventually went the way I did because I really loved the world and characters in "Koboldtown," I thought "Tideline" was a great story, and "Distant Replay" was just very, very touching.  "Wolf" I also enjoyed, but it didn't feel in the same league as the others.  "Last Contact" just didn't too much for me -- I couldn't identify with any of the characters. 

[Darwinist]

“Caitlin, I don’t really understand how all these signals can be arriving just now. I mean, it takes years for light to travel between the stars, doesn’t it? We only knew about the phantom energy a few months ago.”

“But others might have detected it long before, with better technology than we’ve got. That would give you time to send something. Maybe the signals have been timed to get here, just before the end, aimed just at us.”

Because the aliens all know that Earth is special, so they all time their messages to arrive at Earth at the same time.

Baxter used enough handwavium in that sentence to last Star Trek writers for an entire season.

Yeah.  The more I think about it the more it bugs me.  It was a cool concept but makes no sense and was too casually dismissed.   Maybe I should bump Tideline to the top o' me list.  I want a war robot mommy.