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You know an additional frustrating thing about the Chengdu Worldcon? (you know aside from asian diaspora and chinese authors/fans/organizers being fucked over)
As far as I can tell, there wasn't any govt attention at the time.
But now that it's made international news and so many ppl are talking about it on weibo and western social media? There's now a good chance there will be govt bodies paying closer attention going forward.
oh fuck that shit. Apparently there's a real chance that the Dave-guy running the proprietary counting software for the Hugo Award count = took the votes meant for the chinese authors and just copied pasted western authors into their space on the damn spreadsheet ot whatever database he was running things off of. Which is why western names kept reappearing twice.
And also means their vote numbers increased significantly with votes that were never meant for them. It wasn't just a matter of him throwing out the votes altogether - because he was doing this at all and the numbers wouldn't have matched.
Well…. the Hugo Awards nominees are out, and I am once again shown to have rather different tastes than the majority of hugos fandom. From the novel, novella, and novelette categories, exactly one thing that I nominated made it onto the ballot for each category! ZERO of the short stories and the lodestars that I nominated made it on the list. The only category where I matched two entries is the astounding award.
I'm a bit heartbroken at some of the works that didn't make it on the ballot that I thought were so deserving of attention tbh - Siren Queen (Vo), Radcliffe Hall (Pinckard), To Embody A Wildfire Starting (Sharma), Sestu Hunts the Last Deer in Heaven (Cheung), and When the Angels Left the Old Country (Lamb)…..all of them were SO good and they didn't make it on?!
There ARE amazing things on the list though so the news isn't all downers! Delighted by Kingfisher getting a number of spots on the list, Muir of course, and more opportunities to read Tchaikovsky after my surprisingly delightful intro to him in last year's hugos. Even if this does mean I'm finally going to have to read one of Kingfisher's horror works (oh noooooo I am going to perish). And the John Chu short story!!!
Plus others on the list I've been meaning to try but haven't yet gotten round to yet (like Hartman) - I now have a more pressing reason to, which is always great.
And although it makes life harder for me since I don't read Chinese, I do like to see more finalists from the country that the year's worldcon is being hosted in. A good sign that people local to the worldcon are invested in it and interested in attending. Though it does make it challenging for me to start by reading everything in the short story category like I usually do - a number of these stories have only been published in Chinese!
At any rate my spreadsheet is created, my library holds are being placed, let's do this!
My hugo nomination list as it currently stands
Okay I have read the things I have time to read, I have considered what things I haven't yet read but seem worthy regardless, and I have put my nominations into the ballot! Any last-minute addenda you think I should make, let me know before it's too late!
Best Novel Nghi Vo, Siren Queen Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth Everina Maxwell, Ocean's Echo Sacha Lamb, When the Angels Left the Old Country Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water
Best Novella Sarah Tolmie, All the Horses of Iceland Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver, Uncommon Charm Nghi Vo, Into the Riverlands Carrie Vaughn, Polly and (Not) Charles Conquer the Solar System Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Radcliffe Hall
Best Novelette Iona Datt Sharma, To Embody A Wildfire Starting SB Divya, Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold John Chu, If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You
Best Short Story Kylie Lee Baker Lily, the Immortal MH Cheung, Sestu Hunts the Last Deer in Heaven Nadine Aurora Tabing, Obsolesce Anneke Schwob, Spirochete Rebecca Fraimow, A Farce to Suit the New Girl
Best Series Tamsyn Muir, The Locked Tomb
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 3 Turning Red Everything Everywhere All At Once Prehistoric Planet
Best Fan Writer skygiants
Lodestar Award of Best Young Adult Book Frances Hardinge, Unraveller Sacha Lamb, When the Angels Left the Old Country
The Astounding Award for Best New Writer Isabel J Kim Everina Maxwell Sacha Lamb
Somehow it is ALREADY hugo awards season again, and I am once again behind on reading books published in the last year that I might want to consider nominating. Nominations close at the end of April! That's less than 2 months away! And I have so many books to read.
Here are the books I'm currently thinking of reading before the end of nominations, to bulk out my familiarity with the books of 2022 with the most interest to me before I decide what to nominate.
Do you have any opinions on which of these I should prioritize? Or which are not worth reading? Or, perish the thought, books I haven't thought of which are worth adding to the list? If so please let me know!!
Nettle & Bone - T Kingfisher
A River Enchanted - Rebecca Ross
The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez
Babel - RF Kuang
The Unbalancing - RB Lemberg
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves - Meg Long
Hunt the Stars - Jessie Mihalik
City of Orange - David Yoon
Spear - Nicola Griffith
Saint Death's Daughter - CSE Cooney
End of the World House - Adrienne Celt
The Monsters We Defy - Leslye Penelope
The Dark Between the Trees - Fiona Barnett
The Stardust Thief - Chelsea Abdullah
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy - Megan Bannen
The Stars Undying - Emery Robin
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka
A Half-Built Garden - Ruthanna Emrys
Geometries of Belonging - RB Lemberg
Under Fortunate Stars - Ren Hutchings
Uncommon Charm, by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver
Unraveller, by Frances Hardinge
A Garter as a Lesser Gift, by Aster Glenn Gray
as an aside, here's the books I've already read, and are on my longlist for nomination in at least one category at the moment:
Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
Ocean's Echo, by Everina Maxwell
When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb
All the Horses of Iceland, by Sarah Tolmie
EVEN MORE just under the wire, here are my thoughts on the hugo nominees for best series! 1. The World of the White Rat, by T Kingfisher I have read every single book in this series, some more than once. Do I find Kingfisher's obsessions with paladins and with large breasts irritating? I do. But everything else about the series is delightful, and I just find her writing to be immensely comforting/comfortable to read. I've been following her work since I was a teenager reading her weird extensive descriptions that were more like mini-stories about her deviantart paintings, and I just like how her brain works. 2. The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee Well, I've only read 20% of the first book in this series, but from that sample I can tell that what the author is doing here is very well done and very compelling. I really enjoyed what I was reading, but I just cannot handle reading books about crime families, I'm afraid, and when I looked up spoilers for the rest I was like NOPE. Not what I want to read, even if it is good! I definitely recommend this series, but for other people, lol. 3. The Kingston Cycle, by CL Polk I've only read the third book in this trilogy, Soulstar, and although it was basically fine, it felt too simplistic and too lacking in the feeling of weighty reality in the various hard and bad things the book addresses. 4. Terra Ignota, by Ada Palmer I have adored Palmer's blog Ex Urbe for many years; her extensive posts about florentine history are fascinating to me, though she hasn't been doing much of that for the past few years, I'm assuming because she's busy with other things. (Her series of posts on machiavelli and his context is particularly excellent, and I find her spot the saint series great fun!) So I was excited when I heard she was writing novels! But. I tried the first novel and was soooooooo bored. I could tell it was probably doing interesting things, and I think I might have even eventually found my way round to finding it worthwhile, but I just could not force myself to keep my attention on it despite multiple attempts. 5. Merchant Princes, by Charles Stross I read the first book in this series when it came out in 2003, more or less enjoyed it at the time, but never felt strongly enough about it to keep up with the series as it kept coming out. This summer I gave it another go, and got a decent way into the first novel, and my main reaction was that it's so very, very much of its era that it feels out of place to be in conversation with the current genre. And to me it didn't even feel INTERESTINGLY of its era, but just kind of dated and boring. I don't know where he's gone with the series since then, whether the newer books feel more relevant and exciting, but tbh I found the first book tiresome enough that I didn't bother finishing it, and felt no motivation to keep going. 6. No Award 7. Wayward Children, by Seanan McGuire I've read multiple books in this series for past hugos, and what I've read of it actively frustrates me enough that I do not personally feel able to countenance voting for it to receive an award, though I know it speaks to other people.
Whew, coming in just under the wire, here's my voting plans for the Hugo best novel! Obviously She Who Became The Sun is required to win, but in any other year both my #2 and #3 choices would be strong contenders for first place in my mind, and it's just too bad they can't all three get awards!
(I don’t want to go to the effort of looking up the tumblr links for my original reviews for any of these right now, but I tag all my book posts with title and author so you can find them on my blog that way if you’re curious)
1. She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan
I cannot vote anything but this for first place because it's perfect in every way.
2. A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
It may not reach the same degree of delighting-me-on-every-level that A Memory Called Empire did, but it's still a fascinating and compelling book and very well done.
3. Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki
A book that's doing its own thing, haven't really seen anything else like it, and I am HERE for it.
4. A Master of Djinn, by P Djélí Clark
Not as strong as his novella in the same world (The Haunting of Tram Car 015), especially in terms of development of character for the protagonist, so I was disappointed -- but it was still good, and I do love the worldbuilding.
5. The Galaxy and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers
Usually I love Chambers' approach of writing plotless novels about disparate characters interacting and being generally hopeful, but this one focuses on themes of children and parenthood and reproductive choices, and those are just not themes that inherently speak to me, so instead of finding it cozily enjoyable I was just bored.
6. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
Andy Weir doesn't understand how humans work, doesn't understand how the soft sciences work, doesn't understand how communication works, is a little too into leaders being autocratic, and mostly just cares about expositing at length about science things he thinks are cool. I'm glad he has found his niche, and I am charmed by how much he loves science, but I did not like this book.
