One Aging Geek

Sunday, March 27, 2005

2005 Hugo Nomination thread from slashdot

Posted by Zonk (27% noise) View
COBOLgrrl writes The 2005 Hugo Nominations have been announced. Books up for Best Novel include The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, Iron Council by China Miéville , Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and River of Gods by Ian McDonald.”

A Hugo First: The British Invasion - by Justinian II (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
I believe this year marks a significant milestone in SF history. Unless I am very mistaken, this is the very first year that none of the Best Novel nominees are American. All of them are from the UK and we have representatives from Scotland, England, and Ireland. I’d vote for either Susanna Clarke or China Mieville but any of those novels are more deserving than some of the garbage that has won in recent years. I’m looking at you, “Hominids”.  
 
This just reinforces my impression that American SF is stagnant while all the real action these days is taking place across the pond. Great stuff, and I hope American authors take this as a kick in the pants to stop rehashing the same old material and start showing a little imagination.

Totally unsolicted review - by dlasley (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
I’m not done with Iron Sunrise yet, so I’ll refrain (but it is really really good so far). I did finish Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and found the core story was imaginative and the characters were pretty engaging. I thought Strange was actually more distant in terms of visualization than Norrell - for some reason I could picture the latter and hear his voice much more readily than the supposedly more approachable and contemporary Strange. She didn’t rush the story (even at page 800) and there were not any useless passages: everything had a bearing on at least one aspect of each storyline. 
 
One book that is not mentioned here that I highly recommend is Dan Simmons’ Ilium. This was a 12-hour read - problem was, it was 12 straight hours because I couldn’t put the damn thing down!!

Melville is overrated - by Silverhammer (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

In my opinion, China Melville is overrated as an author. His Perdido Street Station was the “it” book of 2001, but after I finished reading it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the big deal was.

Granted, he has an excellent sense of the phantasmagoric and his worldbuilding skills are certainly impressive, but as an author, he just doesn’t have the chops. His characters are almost too angst-ridden to move in a forward direction, and his plots read like a bad slasher flicks.

Take away his word processor and give him a job as a conceptual designer. Everyone will be happier in the long run.



Re:There should be more online awards given… - by FireballX301 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Remember, popularity != quality. Just because something is popular doesn’t prevent it from being, for example, pandering tripe.  
 
And you know how english majors are.

Hugo Lowdown. - by sanityspeech (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

The Hugo Award® is the leading award for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. The Hugos are awarded each year by the World Science Fiction Society, at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). All members are entitled to make nominations and to vote on who receives the Awards, which are presented in a public ceremony which is always one of the highlights of the Worldcon.


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