2015 Hugo Award Nominees

I'll keep this post updated as I read through the 2015 Hugo Award Nominees. I have a lot of reading to do in a short period of time because I had only read one of the written works before it was nominated. My comments will be in blue.

Update 5/18/2015: Just downloaded my Hugo packet. Got some reading to do...

Best Novel - No contest. The Three Body Problem. It only remains to determine which I'll rank below it and which won't even make my ballot.

• Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK) - I'm not going to bother reading a book by an author who thinks calling everyone "she" is clever or poignant. It's moronic. Worse, it's evil, and that's not hyperbole.
• The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books) - ★★ I got 14% of the way through the ebook and decided my free time is too valuable to waste on a mediocre novel with shallow characters and sluggish plot. There is some SJWism going on, but it's half-hearted, as if Anderson doesn't buy into it enough to make it real.
• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books) - ★★★ Better than Dark Between the Stars. At least I made it through 25% of this one. It started alright but got bogged down in too much exposition about who ascended which stairs in what order and wore what color combination to which social event. The place names are a mouthful, but as long as you don't actually try to pronounce them, that's not fatal. What is fatal is that the protagonist probably would have lost his head, literally, in the first two chapters if any of the court conspirators actually cared about the power they appeared to be pursuing. He's a naive, effeminate nice-guy who would be helplessly out of his depth in a real political situation.
• Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books) - Since the entire book wasn't included in the voter's packet, I saved this one for last. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time to read it. I've heard good things about it.
• The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books) - ★★★★★ Fantastic book. I loved the glimpses into Chinese culture, but especially the way that Liu unfolded one dimension of insanity after another. Some of the characters seemed pretty cardboard, some seemed very odd (but that might be cultural or linguistic barriers), but I thought that the two primary protagonists (is that the right word?) were very well done. I might take a look at the other nominees, but I seriously doubt that any will surpass this one.

Best Novella - And the winner is... Big Boys Don't Cry!

• Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman (Castalia House) - ★★★★★ High-caliber, SciFi gun porn at its finest. Good, solid science fiction, and the message resonated with me. I've never been where Maggie was, but I saw the possibility and walked away.
• “Flow”, Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, 11-2014) - ★★ I got about 1/3 of the way through "Flow" and couldn't stand it anymore. It appears to be entirely written from the POV of an effectively blind and retarded midget. 
• One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright (Castalia House) - ★★★★ A little rambling at times, it seemed that Wright was trying to cram a trilogy into a series of flashbacks. This story and "The Plural…" both seemed to be exercises in the advice Wright gives in his "Patented One-Lesson Session in the Mechanics of Fiction" from Transhuman: lots of contextual gaps for the reader's own imagination to fill in. For the most part, he does a great job with the technique, but I think that sometimes he pushes it a little too far. The main fault I found with this story is that it is much too large in scope. Unfortunately, none of his nominated works quite measure up to Awake in the Night Land, which I thought was brilliant.
• “Pale Realms of Shade”, John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) - ★★★★ Overall, this was a very good story. Wright's Catholic theology leaks through all over the place, so if you find that offensive, you'll have a hard time appreciating the story. I thought this was the best of the three Wright novellas.
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy”, John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House) - ★★★★ Fascinating world! I'm definitely going to want to read more of City Beyond Time. On the other hand, some of the theological flourishes seemed tacked on as if the story changed destinations midstream.

Best Novelette - I'm not super excited about any of these stories, but only two of them warrant being left off the ballot so far. Hopefully I'll get to Flynn's story before I vote.

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium”, Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, 05-2014) - ★★★★ Entertaining story with an interesting take on human-alien relations. Not inspiring or jaw dropping, but good, entertaining SF.
• “Championship B’tok”, Edward M. Lerner (Analog, 09-2014) - ★★★ Not a bad story idea & the writing is competent, but not great. Too many awkward subordinate clauses and word orders plus an overly abrupt cliff-hanger ending left me unsatisfied. The story would have been much better without the Interveners. Lerner didn't relate the two major conflicts in any meaningful way.
• “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt translator (Lightspeed, 04-2014) - ★★ Juvenile, narcissistic, pointless, and creepy. Heuvelt gives us a thinly disguised revenge-porn fantasy with a very dream-like feel. Almost everything about this story rubbed me the wrong way except for the way the water didn't fall up unless it was separated from the main body. The technical writing--grammar, vocabulary, etc--itself isn't terrible.
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House”, Michael F. Flynn (Analog, 06-2014)
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale”, Rajnar Vajra (Analog, 07/08-2014) - ★★★ Cross-cultural miscommunications take center stage in a fun first contact story told in a light-hearted voice. Unfortunately, Vajra lost a lot of points with the abrupt ending. I flipped back and forth several times trying to figure out where the missing pages went.

Best Short Story - I'm undecided between "Samurai" and "Turncoat" right now, but these are all excellent stories. 

• “On A Spiritual Plain”, Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014) - ★★★★ Good story. The questions of spirituality of humans on other worlds doesn't get enough serious treatment in the industry.
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds”, John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) - ★★★★ If Aesop were more concerned with telling a good story, his fables might have looked something like this.
• “A Single Samurai”, Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books) - ★★★★★ Great adventure story highlighting honor and virtue. 
• “Totaled”, Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, 07-2014) - ★★★★ I really enjoyed "Totaled." My only complaint is that I never really felt like I was inside Maggie's head, but then neither was Maggie. It could have been me. I dunno.
• “Turncoat”, Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House) - ★★★★★ Great story. I stumbled a bit on the idea that an extremely advanced AI unable to understand that particular bit of text. (If you've read it, you know what text I mean.) The bare meaning seems pretty straight forward. Perhaps if TX had instead understood it perfectly but wrestled with whether the meaning of the text has legitimate applicability in his own existence.

Best Related Work - Transhuman is the hands down winner in this category.

• “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF”, Ken Burnside (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House) - ★★★★ Practical technical advice on writing hard SF in space vs fantasy in an SF setting. Reminiscent of Michael McCollum's nitty-gritty how-to series from more than a decade ago.
• Letters from Gardner, Lou Antonelli (The Merry Blacksmith Press)
• Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth, John C. Wright (Castalia House) - ★★★★★ Fantastic writing advice, biting & humorous criticism of SFF works, intellectual consideration of SFF themes... Excellent work.
• “Why Science is Never Settled”, Tedd Roberts (Baen.com)
• Wisdom from My Internet, Michael Z. Williamson (Patriarchy Press) - ★★★★ Otherwise known as The Collected Proverbs of MZW, Who is Very, Very Different than MZB. Wisdom is full of biting truths that every liberal should have tattooed on the palms of his hands, but the only thing that makes it more related to science fiction & fantasy than to westerns or mystery is the author's credentials as an SFF writer.

Best Graphic Story - Who reads this garbage? I looked at three of these works and decided this entire category needs to be destroyed. No Award.

• Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal - ★★★ Boredom, action, woe-is-me, boredom, action, boredom, woe-is-me. Islam is a religion of peace and apple pie. Not terrible, but not terribly interesting either. Existential naval gazing is fine to an extent; there's room for a bit of it in almost any super hero story. But can we get back to comic book heroes who are actual heroes already?
• Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery - ★★ Pretty decent artwork. Trash, otherwise. Stick-limbed, wide-hipped womynz who are still stronger, faster, & smarter than everyone else, but talk about little more than sex and penis jokes.
• Saga Volume 3 -
  
• Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick - ★ Pornographic comic book with only competent artistry. No SF or F at all that I could tell, but then I did skim over 95% of it.
• The Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate -

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - 

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier - ★★★★ Entertaining action movie. Unfortunately, it's been too long since I watched it to remember much more than that. One thing to remember with almost all super hero movies is that they are more fantasy than science fiction. As long as you keep that in mind, they're pretty enjoyable.
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Interstellar
• The Lego Movie

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form - 

• Doctor Who: “Listen”
• The Flash: “Pilot”
• Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper”
• Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”
• Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” - ★★★ Orphan Black didn't have a single positive portrayal of a straight, white male until season 2, and then it was only 1. Every single "positive" (using the word very loosely) character was female, gay, or black. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that the SJW subtext is so overpowering, it's clear that it was a deliberate slight and not just incidental to the story. It was such a promising idea for a series, it could have been great. Instead, by the middle of season 2, it was piling stupid on top of stupid. Despite that, I still give this episode 3 stars because it wasn't as stupid as some of the others.

Best Editor, Short Form - 

• Jennifer Brozek
• Vox Day - ★★★★★ Five stars not because his technical skills as an editor are so outstanding, but because of what he's done to the field at large. I'm going this way in the short form category because Riding the Red Horse is an outstanding collection, and that because it brings usefulness & relevance back to science fiction, not necessarily because the contents are so brilliantly composed.
• Mike Resnick - 
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt - 

Best Editor, Long Form - 

• Vox Day - ★★★★★ See my comments on Editor, Short Form.
• Sheila Gilbert - ★★ I haven't read anything that Ms. Gilbert has edited, but that's no coincidence. Browsing through her titles, I noted that very few of them looked like anything I'd care to read.
• Jim Minz - 
• Anne Sowards - 
• Toni Weisskopf - ★★★★★ I've read more BAEN books in the last few years than from any other SFF publisher.

Best Professional Artist - A lot of great work from all nominees. I'll have to decide between Greenwood and DouPonce for first place.

• Julie Dillon - ★★★★ Not a bad artist. Sci-fi & fantasy featuring very masculine women, men primarily in visually inferior position, lots of people of color. As I've said elsewhere, there's nothing wrong with any of those things, but I do wonder at the artist's motivation.
• Kirk DouPonce - ★★★★★ Great stuff. Sci-fi & fantasy. Detailed realism with dream-like qualities
• Nick Greenwood - ★★★★★ Warhammer-like dark fantasy, sci-fi, & book covers.
• Alan Pollack - ★★★★ Book covers, sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, etc. High adventure, action-oriented images. Nice. Mildly irritating that his website is completely nonfunctional without enabling javascript from a dozen different domains.
• Carter Reid - Comics, zombies, and more zombies. No art was included in the Hugo packet. Reid was nominated in the Graphic Story category also, so maybe there's something there. More later.

Best Semiprozine - 

• Abyss & Apex
• Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies - ★★★ Some good stories sometimes, but some really awful stories too.
• Lightspeed Magazine - ★★★ Some good stories sometimes, but some really awful stories too. A little heavy on the SJW preaching.
• Strange Horizons

Best Fanzine - 

• Black Gate
• Elitist Book Reviews
• Journey Planet
• The Revenge of Hump Day
• Tangent SF Online

Best Fancast - 

• Adventures in SciFi Publishing - ★★★★ I've been listening to this show for about a year and I'm still getting caught up on old episodes. I think they do a great job overall. They usually stay away from politics, which might keep them from being SJW targets temporarily, but it's not in the nature of SJWs to allow neutral parties. Today's moderates become tomorrows intolerable "extremists". Best of luck, guys.
• Dungeon Crawlers Radio - ★★★ The interviews can be good, but the endless banter makes this show too annoying for regular listening.
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast
• The Sci Phi Show
• Tea and Jeopardy

Best Fan Writer - It seems to be like much of the included matieral ought to be in the Related Works category, leaving this one for fiction, but whatever. Not my call. Or maybe they should have named this the Mad Genius Club category this year. I haven't read any of these writers' fiction, but I've read most of their blogs at least once before. Sarcasm, SF history, politics, and more. I don't know quite what to write about the individuals, so I'll leave most of them blank. Jeffro Johnson will get the top spot on my ballot.

• Dave Freer - ★★★★
• Amanda S. Green - ★★★★ 
• Jeffro Johnson - ★★★★★ Analysis of historical greats in SF. Johnson's articles bring back some memories.
• Laura J. Mixon - ★★★★ A little obsessive and possibly unbalanced, but Mixon's expose of Requires Hate is an important addition to the anti-SJW case. The Clarion story... I don't know what to think of that just now.
• Cedar Sanderson - ★★★★   

Best Fan Artist - Elizabeth Leggett will get my vote in this category. I have my doubts about whether she should be in the "Fan Artist" category, but of the nominated artists, I like her work the best.

• Ninni Aalto - ★★★ Pen and ink (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), comics, and lots of rabbits.
• Brad W. Foster - ★★★ Pen and ink, comic books, book covers, and more. Not bad.
• Elizabeth Leggett - ★★★★★ Lots of really cool work.
• Spring Schoenhuth - ★★★ Jewelry and painting. I'm not impressed by the one painting included in the Hugo voter packet, and, although the jewelry doesn't look bad, I don't know enough to judge it fairly.
• Steve Stiles - ★★★ Comic books, covers, and caricatures. A little retro, which is cool and understandable since Steve's been at it a long time. Overall, not bad.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer - 

• Wesley Chu - ★★★ The included work wasn't to my taste.
• Jason Cordova - ★★★★ I enjoyed Hill 142. I'm mostly impressed that it is as good as it is apparently unedited. With some polishing it could be great. There is the problem of overgrown arachnids, however. See Hank Davis' introduction to "The Baen Big Book of Monsters."
• Kary English - ★★★★ I was very impressed with "Totaled."
• Rolf Nelson - 
• Eric S. Raymond -