The Hugo nominees - overall discussion

[eytanz]

I was disappointed to hear that Escape Pod was not able to get How to Talk to Girls at Parties, but that was mitigated by the fact that it's freely available to download from Neil Gaiman's website (though there's no knowing if it will remain up after the Hugo winner is announced, so I'd recommend getting it now if you want it). Anyway, it was a bit odd for me since How to Talk was the only story of the five I have actually read before Steve started playing the nominees, but I felt I should listen to the audio so I could judge it on equal grounds with the other four.

Now that I have, I find myself in a rather rare condition - I like all five stories, but I also have a very clear notion of the ranking between them - it's just obvious to me which ones I liked more than others. This rarely happens - usually I have a lot of trouble ranking things if I like them, and it makes me sorry I can't actually vote on this thing since I can't afford the $50 membership fee (ah, the joys of being a graduate student. Maybe next year...)

Anyway, here is my ranking - I'm curious if other people also found it easy to order the stories and how their rankings compare:

1 Impossible dreams
2 The House Beyond Your Sky
3 How to Talk to Girls at Parties
4 Kin
5 Eight Episodes

I found both Impossible Dreams and The House Beyond Your Sky to be truely wonderful stories. I felt that The House Beyond Your Sky was more stimulating intellectually and Impossible Dreams touched a more emotional nerve, and while I enjoyed both experiences, I find the latter a bit more rewarding. How to Talk was a story I could really relate to, but its episodic structure didn't entirely gel for me. Kin was very, very enjoyable and really well done for what it was trying to do, but I felt it aimed lower than the first three stories. Eight Episodes was the only one I didn't enjoy wholeheartedly - it was interesting, and thought provoking - good, but not great.

(As a side note, I find it funny how after four years of teaching I find myself thinking in the terms of grades - maybe I'm finding it easier to rank these because having read hundreds of student assignments by now, I have a clear sense of the difference between an A- work (Kin) and a B+ work (Eight Episodes) is, even if I can't explain it very well)...

[sayeth]

Mine's pretty similar:
1. Impossible Dreams
2. House beyond your sky
3. How to talk to Girls at Parties
4. Eight Episodes
5. Kin

IMHO, the first two are excellent - some of the  best science fiction I've read or heard this year. The last three were good, but not great. They were deserving of a nomination, but not a win.

[Listener]

I would say:

1.  Impossible Dreams -- did everything a story is supposed to do.

2.  Kin -- I probably liked this one more for the acting than anything else, but I also liked that it was told in four chunks.  Whenever I write I have to have lots of chunks to keep track of everything.

3.  How to Talk to Girls at Parties -- IMO not really all that sci-fi but it was a story that tells well.

4.  Eight Episodes -- no real punch at the end but a good premise.

5.  The House Beyond Your Sky -- I found the Sophie storyline cliched at best, and the rest read like a combination of stereo instructions and philosophy textbooks.

[Mr. Tweedy]

1. House Beyond Your Sky - Unites huge, cosmic with emotion and suspense.  Fascinating and (perhaps) profound.

2. Impossible Dreams - Very enjoyable.  Fun, with sympathetic characters, humor and romance.

3. 8 Episodes - Really tickled my brain and kept me thinking long after it was over.  Closest thing to a mind-bender I've heard on EP.

4. Kin - Well-told and with some good morals, even if it wasn't real original.

5. How to Talk to Girls at Parties - I honestly didn't like this one at all.  It didn't go anywhere.  Nothing really happened, and the fantasty element was very vague.  It also had some idiot plot: It was obvious from the first sentence that the girls were not human, but the boys somehow managed to remain oblivious.  This is the only one that I'd say didn't deserve a nomination, which makes me glad that it was this one, not one of the other four, that Steve couldn't get ahold of.

[DKT]

It's a bummer EP couldn't get the rights to Gaiman's story.  After hearing Gaiman read it, I can't really imagine anyone else doing it.  Still, I'm kinda bummed.  

For me, the top three is a pretty close race.

1) Impossible Dreams -- the most accessible, the most fun, and I loved the way it left me feeling when it was over.  I'm not sure I've had so much fun listening to a story on EP.  

2) The House Beyond Your Sky -- Both cosmic and intimate, this is great SF.  I was completely lost when I first listened to it but when I read it along on Strange Horizons, I was blown away.

3) How to Talk to Girls at Parties -- Close 3rd.  I think just about any guy can relate to the idea that girls are from outerspace.

4) Eight Episodes -- Very interesting idea but it's too abstract for me to put it any higher.

5) Kin -- a good SF story but I feel like I've read variations of it before.  And the characters, especially the bad guy, felt very one-dimensional to me.  

Anyway, they were all good stories and I've got to get kudos to Steve for matching the narrations up the way he did.  They were all a great listen.  

[ClintMemo]

The House Beyond Your Sky and Eight Episodes both go for the "High Concept" route but The House Beyond Your Sky is better.   Impossible Dreams  and How To Talk to Girls at Parties both try for accessibility with Impossible Dreams winning out.  The two at the top I think are better because they wove what they were trying to show within a story structure with characters, conflict and resolution where the two lesser entries didn't really do that - they just painted an interesting setting.  Kin was a good story, but didn't seem to be up to the level of The House Beyond Your Sky  or Impossible Dreams.

[Simon Painter]

I've not yet read or listened to 'How to Talk to Girls', but I've just finished going through all of the stories that got read on Escape Pod.

I wasn't really bowled away by any of them that I've listened to so far.  They were all enjoyable enough, but nothing that's really grabbed me in a way that I feel is worth giving an award over.

I'd probably put them in this order:

1) The House Beyond Your Sky - probably the most interesting of the set by far, I'm not 100% sure I understand it all, but it was at least both original and entertaining.

2) Impossible Dreams - the most fun of the set, and it's a nicely paced story that kept me listening, though it's lacking in originality, as well as being a blatent case of wish-fullfillment

3) Eight Episodes - an interesting idea, though it has some serious structural flaws

4) Kin - an OK retelling of a story that's been kicking around in SF for ages without any real innovation at all

I'll probably revise this if How to Talk to Girls ever turns up on here.

Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK

[Russell Nash]

I just finished listening to How to Talk…, so now I can rate them.

Here goes:

1) Impossible Dreams — This one was just fun.  The storyline itself wasn't fantastic, but it had a lot of DVD extras.

2) How to Talk to Girls at Parties — This explains a lot of the girls I met at parties.

3) Kin — Boys and assassins, it's like chocolate and peanut butter.  Not really, but this one made me wonder what was coming next and it's the only one that did that.

4) Eight Episodes — Cool idea, but the telling was as dry as the TV series in the story.

5) The House Beyond Your Sky — I'm getting a little sick and tired of two entirely different things and they were both in this story.  First is the veiw inside the house of the troubled god who created us all.  Second is this, "while I wasn't looking he launched his hacks and got past my first sub-routines…"

That's how I feel now. Later? who knows.

[Mr. Tweedy]

When do we find out the winner?

(Yeah, I know, dumb question.)

[Russell Nash]

When do we find out the winner?

(Yeah, I know, dumb question.)

Let's start a poll about a week before world con and see how we do compared to them.

[Roney]

Ask me on another day and I'll put them in a different order but this is my current ranking:

1) The House Beyond Your Sky -- I've already been so effusive about this story that Steve quoted me in the episode feedback.  This choice is the one that I don't think would change on another day.

2) Kin -- strong characters and nicely constructed, just lacking some oomf or something truly original to take it right to the top.

3) How To Talk To Girls At Parties -- there was a lot about this that made me smile.  It was a cute idea and well written but it felt like a writer putting his best polish on something that wasn't his favourite story.

4) Impossible Dreams -- I loved how it was read but the story itself tasted bland.  Pleasant, very easy to digest... but not nourishing.  Not Hugo.

5) Eight Episodes -- Out of politeness I'm not going to go into detail about how disappointed I was with this story.  If I had a Hugo vote I would be filling in 4 preferences on the ballot.

[Leon Kensington]

1) Impossible Dreams- It was fun and just think about what the alt. reality was like made me crave for more.

2) Kin- I loved it, there was everything to my likeing.  The pace, prose, pathos, it was great.

3) Eight Episodes- I was on a plane going to Alaska and on about 8 Advils, it could just have been the chemistry but it was somehow awe inspiring.

4) The House Beyond Your Sky- I didn't get it.  I liked the prose and how it skipped between plot lines but I REALLY didn't get it.

UNKNOWN) How to talk to Girls at Parties- I still havn't heard it yet.

[eytanz]

And Impossible Dreams won!

Yay!

[Russell Nash]

And Impossible Dreams won!

Yay!

That was my favorite.  Cool.

[eytanz]

So, now that EP finished its Hugo run, it's time to revive this thread.

This year ranking the five stories was much harder to me than last year. I liked all five, but none of them were perfect IMO. There wasn't any one of them that stood out as clearly above the others, and I think that which one I'd prefer would depend a lot on my inclination at the moment. But I think that, overall, I'd rank them something like the following:

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

Last Contact had stupid physical errors (ignoring the speed of light) but resonated strongest with me on an emotional level. Distant Replay was, in my opinion, the least ambitious but what it did it did well. Koboldtown has a mediocre story set in a wonderfully evocative world. Wolf 359 has a more interesting story but the world building is patchy. Tideline was good, but didn't really stand out.

Last year, I wrote:

(As a side note, I find it funny how after four years of teaching I find myself thinking in the terms of grades - maybe I'm finding it easier to rank these because having read hundreds of student assignments by now, I have a clear sense of the difference between an A- work (Kin) and a B+ work (Eight Episodes) is, even if I can't explain it very well)...

This year I have to eat those words a bit. Or maybe it's just that unlike last year, I feel all the stories this year belong in the "A-" category.

[cuddlebug]

Cool, I've been waiting for this, rating things is one of my favorite activities. Comes with the job, and after,.. what ... more than 10 years of teaching (OMG, has it really been that long  ) it seems to be a huge part of the job taking up a lot of my time. Hurrah!!! So here is my ranking with grades included in brackets. Seems like I am a lot more critical than eytanz, surprise, surprise ...

1. Last Contact  (A)
2. Distant Replay (A-)
3. Tideline (A-)
4. Who's Afraid of Wolf 359 (B-)
5. A Small Room in Koboldtown (D, or maybe even a fail , needs to be second/third/fourth ... marked and then sent to the external for monitoring, I guess)

... am not going into explanations of my 'marking criteria' now, maybe later, when I have more time. If someone requires more detailed 'feedback' please refer to episode comments or request an individual appointment during my office hours.

Wow, and I get to say that kind of thing on (almost) a daily basis, how cool is that 

[qwints]

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

I wouldn't put much difference between the bottom 3. Maybe I'm a sucker for sentimentality.

[wintermute]

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

So long as Last Contact doesn't win, I'll be happy.

Actually, I'll probably be happy anyway. I'm a happy kind of guy.

But it would make me scratch my head a little.

[Liminal]

Is it just me or did the stories from last year seem better overall than those nominated this year? (Although I'm still baffled by the fact that Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls" didn't win.) They just seemed richer, more thought-provoking.

[Darwinist]

Last Contact had stupid physical errors (ignoring the speed of light) but resonated strongest with me on an emotional level. Distant Replay was, in my opinion, the least ambitious but what it did it did well. Koboldtown has a mediocre story set in a wonderfully evocative world. Wolf 359 has a more interesting story but the world building is patchy. Tideline was good, but didn't really stand out.

I had problems with the speed of light issues with Last Contact, too.  That issued was briefly addressed in the story -

“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.”

I'd rank the stories as follows:
1. Last Contact
2. Tideline
3. Distant Replay
4. Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?
5. Small Room in Koboldtown

The top three were really close for me. 

[eytanz]

Last Contact had stupid physical errors (ignoring the speed of light) but resonated strongest with me on an emotional level. Distant Replay was, in my opinion, the least ambitious but what it did it did well. Koboldtown has a mediocre story set in a wonderfully evocative world. Wolf 359 has a more interesting story but the world building is patchy. Tideline was good, but didn't really stand out.

I had problems with the speed of light issues with Last Contact, too.  That issued was briefly addressed in the story -

“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.”

No, that's the wrong speed of light problem. It's not the alien communication which is the problem (though the explanation is pretty silly). It's the fact that people standing on Earth can see the galaxies vanish in real time.

[DKT]

Is it just me or did the stories from last year seem better overall than those nominated this year? (Although I'm still baffled by the fact that Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls" didn't win.) They just seemed richer, more thought-provoking.

Just looking from what people have posted here, there certainly seems to be less of a consensus than there was last year.  If there's a front-runner, I'm not sure what it is.

[tpi]

Last year the stories were better overall.
I am even tempted to put "No award" to the first place. But this might be my ballot:

1. Distant Replay
2. Tideline
3. Small Room in Koboldtown
4. Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?
5. No award
6. Last Contact

[birdless]

I've been trying to think how I'd rate them. I haven't read "Last Contact," yet, though. Judging from the ratings so far, it seems to be you either love it or hate it. In "Koboldtown," I can't decide if the story was made more enjoyable by the narrator, the world building or both, because just the story on its own merit seemed just a little contrived. That fact doesn't bother me a whole lot, because I enjoyed the ride, but (running with the "ride" analogy) I think it was the 'scenery' and 'music' I enjoyed more than the 'roller coaster' itself. "Wolf 359" left too many questions for my tastes, as per my comment in the comments thread, so of the four read here, I think I would place it last. So that leaves the question of whether it would be Tideline or Distant Replay for first. Hm... I think I'll go with Tideline as my favorite. I'm having a hard time deciding whether to put "Koboldtown" or "Distant Replay" as second.

[wintermute]

“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.