#the hugos

[kingsandbastardz]

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.

[sophia-sol]

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!

[quoth-the-goblin-nevermore]

At the barricades of freedom *vague sizzling of cooked meats*

[st-hugs]

Found an old animation of mine from 12 years ago, please hold your applause

[cadriona]

So, a funny thing happened on trigun twitter

(amazon link where its 50% off as of May 8th: https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-Lose-Time/dp/1534430997/)

(more up to date version here because holy fuck did this escalate)

[thecollectibles]

Art by Hugo Lambert

[gaybuckybarnesss]

HUGO DIEGO GARCIA The Substance (2024)

[hugopegler]

Obviously Matt 100% deserves crap for how he's been handling this situation, but I feel like people have been focusing on the wrong thing.

[sixth-light]

Holy shit someone finally leaked what went down with the Hugos and from a quick skim it appears to be the worst possible scenario: that is, Western award-runners PREEMPTIVELY censoring anything they thought the Chinese government might not like. Clownery AND fascism.

[kingsandbastardz]

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.

[sophia-sol]

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

[pearbosc]

More comic practice. Credit to @reyneluvirith for the scenario

[finchknits]

My boyfriend and I are watching Ratatouille and he made a comment about the complexity of the sewers at the beginning.

So I, a nerd, go "oh boy do I have a book for you!"

Amd he goes "oh? What book goes that in depth about the Parisienne sewers system?"

And my friends, he was shocked at my answer.

[pi-ying-xi]

I haven't yet read those mails and not sure I have the spoons to follow everything like I did during racefail - because it's always a new! improved! version of the same trashfire somehow - but what little I've absorbed is already making me want to peel my face off.

There are so many things to say about the Hugo controversy i dont even know where to start.

The absolute blatant racism and trans/queerphobia in the leaked emails is actually galling. I wouldn't say SURPRISING considering other recent controversy but it really feels like the committee, at least to an extent, used "fear of censorship" as an excuse to remove works with politics they didn't agree with. The assurance that committee members didn't have to actually read the entries to eliminate them. The fact they spelled Zhao's name wrong TWICE then used the completely wrong title for their book while deciding to eliminate them? They eliminated someone for going to Tibet (an insane reason to disqualify someone from a writing award) and turned out he NEVER HAD?

Considering the Hugo awards are such a career changing selling point for authors it's shameful that officials acted in this manner. And again, I would be shocked if the award has any prestige going forward since committee members can just eliminate any entries they feel like without actual justification and with no control against personal biases. If the process is not completely obvious and transparent in the future there is no salvaging it.

[lilithsaintcrow]

“What this means is that the entire 2023 Hugo scandal is something completely different from what we've understood it as during the last month.”