2011 Hugo Ballot

Well, this Sunday (the 31st of July) is the deadline for Hugo voting. We cast our individual ballots (well, those of us eligible anyway), but we figured we should let you all know what we picked, why we picked them, and where there were differences of opinion if there were any. If you don't see a category on here, it's because we didn't vote in that category.

Here we go!

BEST NOVEL

Steve's Pick: FEED by Mira Grant
This was the only Hugo Nominated novel that I enjoyed from beginning to end. This is one of the best zombie novels out there right now, and I loved how self-aware the the world within the book is. Do I think this book is going to win? I kinda doubt it. I think Connie Willis is kind of an auto-win, which is a disappointment to me personally. I'm a tad bothered that BOTH of Willis' novels are lumped together. It seems a bit unfair to the other nominees. It isn't that Willis (or any of the other authors for that matter) aren't deserving, it's just that Mira Grant was able to create a single novel that was self contained (mostly), and that was so incredibly fun.

Differing Opinions? Shawn's Pick - Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis


BEST NOVELLA

Steve's Pick: "Troika" by Alastair Reynolds
I think Shawn's Novella post pretty much explains why "Troika" was so awesome. This was such a tough category, and really any of them could win. This was my personal favorite.

Differing Opinions? Shawn's Pick - "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang


BEST NOVELETTE

Steve's Pick: “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone
Eric James Stone is one of the best short fiction writers out there, and this is one of his best works. Religion in the future that doesn't just say, "Ah, well, religion is stupid and so is everyone that follows it." Completely awesome.

Differing Opinions? Nope. We ALL liked this one the best.


BEST SHORT STORY

Steve's Pick: “The Things” by Peter Watts
This story was fantastic all the way around. One of the most fun short stories I have read in a long time. I did vote for Mary Robinette Kowal for 2nd place here...you know, for those keeping score.

Differing Opinions? Nope. I have them all brainwashed!


BEST RELATED WORK

Steve's Pick: Writing Excuses
If you are a hopeful author, there is a ton of really good information on this podcast. Run by Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Brandon Sanderson and (now) Mary Robinette Kowal, this is pretty much a go-to resource.

Differing Opinions? Nope. Considering we all want to be authors, this is an easy choice for us. And we're all still upset Elitist Book Reviews wasn't nominated...


BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Steve's Pick: Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel
This web-comic just does it for us. It's reliably funny and well thought out. Not much else to say...

Differing Opinions? Nope.


BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

Steve's Pick: Inception
Yay for movies!! This is where I get to turn off the critical part of my brain and just relax. I could vote for any of the nominated works except Harry Potter and feel good about it. But I just love Christopher Nolan's films. All of them. Seriously though, the rest are all awesome too (except Potter. I'm just not anywhere close to being a fan).

Differing Opinions? None.


BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

Steve's Pick: Lou Anders
In just a few short years, Lou Anders has taken Pyr to one of the best publishing houses for SF&F. not to mention he's a pretty good Art Director too. Lou Anders is a stud, and deserves this freaking award.

Differing Opinions? No, I didn't allow any on this one.


BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

Steve's Pick: Jonathan Strahan
Strahan and Anders edited SWORDS & DARK MAGIC, one of the best short fiction anthologies EVER. I wasn't about to pick anyone else.

Differing Opinions? Nope.


BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Steve's Pick: Stephan Martiniere
I like every artist on this list. Every single one. This was my second hardest category to make a decision in. I'll be honest here, I'll be stoked for whomever wins.

Differing Opinions? No one else had an opinion in this category.


JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER

Steve's Pick: I'm not telling.
No, seriously. I will never tell anyone my pick here. I either voted for Larry Correia or Dan Wells. One was first, one was second. Why won't I just tell? Because I am very good friends with both of them. It just wouldn't be right for me to spill the details of my vote here. I wish I could vote for them both at #1, but the system doesn't allow it. I hope one of these two wins.

The Other Votes:
Dan Smyth: Dan Wells
Vanessa: Dan Wells
Shawn: Dan Wells
Nick: Can't say for the same reason's as Steve


And there you have it. I look forward to attending the Hugo Awards Ceremony at WorldCon next month.

List your votes in the comments section.

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Posted in Hugo Awards 2011

2011 Hugo Novellas

Here we are with the Hugo novellas. In case you are wondering, a novella ranges from around 17,500 words and measures up to 40,000 words in length. There’s some beautiful stuff in this set of nominated works—in fact, it was a little hard to choose which was the best. In the end, this category will vary a lot from reader to reader. Anyway, let’s jump in.

"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window" by Rachel Swirsky

Wow! If there were an award for just plain coolness, of breathtakingly beautiful scenes and weird and wonderful magic, then this novella would win hands down. It’s the story of a female magician—males aren’t allowed to be magicians—who is betrayed and killed and subsequently recalled to life to help various rulers and magicians and teachers throughout the ages. Each scene is gorgeous, interesting, and wonderful. There was enough magic here to last through a couple of novels (at least) and I ate through it ravenously. Sadly, the ending kind of fell apart for me. The story just didn’t tie together very well. Some of the scenes that I had earlier hoped would come into play in the end turned out to be pretty useless, other than being cool. It was such a bummer, because if it had come together at the end a bit better, this would have been my favorite.

"The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang

This is a novella that puts a different twist on the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. The book posits that intelligence requires the time and experience that humans get by learning and growing and interacting to emerge. Thus the AI's in this novella are raised from infancy and we see their development over the years. I have a strange love/hate relationship with this novella. I actually read it first a year ago when it was published by Subterranean Press. I mean come on, this is a Ted Chiang story, which is reason enough to rejoice. I read it completely in a day and I was actually very disappointed. Chiang’s work is brilliant, and while I was reading this one I saw glimpses of brilliance. I saw pathways that I sorely wanted Chiang to explore, and then he never did. I was pretty bummed out. Then I started discussing it with my dad who loved it to death. He saw it as an allegory for God and his creations and thought it was brilliant. I realized that I had committed one of the cardinal sins for reviewers: I judged the work not based on what it was, but what I wanted it to be. Shame on me. I’m happy to report that I reread "Lifecycle" and found it wonderful. I still wish he had expounded upon some of the ideas introduced here, but it was still quite good. Was it my favorite of Chiang's work? Probably not. But even a middling work from Chiang is enough for a Hugo nomination in my opinion.

"The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand
Here is a weird story about a motley group of characters striving to recreate footage of McCauley’s Bellerophon that has been sadly destroyed by a fire. The characters were interesting, the plot was OK, and then at the end it had a chance to be great. I thought I saw where the ending was going and I was excited about it. Then the story stopped short, tied up none of its loose ends, and sputtered out into nothing. Just like with "The Lady" this one would have been great if it had been a tad more solid in the end.

"The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey A. Landis

Here we have some good old-fashioned fun space opera. We have cities floating around Venus’ acidic clouds, weird alien family relationships, action, gadgets, and intrigue. It was a fun story with big fun ideas and I really enjoyed reading it. I'd say more, but short fiction gets completely ruined if you get more than a few details. It's awesome, enough said.

"Troika" by Alastair Reynolds

Can Alastair Reynolds write anything but top-notch Science Fiction? How is it that his short work can be singled out for the Hugos and yet his novels never seem to be nominated? We need to rectify this. STAT. "Troika" is a great first contact story that is told as a flashback as the main character is searching for a woman to tell his story to. I'm dying to tell you why it’s really more than that, but I won't let you all pull it out of me. We'll just leave it at that, and say that the first contact stuff is top notch. There are images here that are still in my head because they were so cool.

All in all I think the novellas were my favorite of the categories to go through (novels included). There’s enough time and space to really tell a top-notch story with cool ideas, but not so much as to get bogged down. If you read only one category, make it the novellas. There’s some amazing work being done.

My order? Man, picking the top three was tough. He's what I voted:
1. The Lifecycle of Software Objects
2. The Sultan of the Clouds
3. Troika (Steve informs me that this was his pick)
4. The Lady Who Plucked Flowers from Beneath the Queen's Window
5. The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon

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Posted in Hugo Awards 2011 , Short Fiction

2011 Hugo Novelletes

It’s been a while since I read these novelettes, but I wanted to sit on them for a bit to see which ones stuck with me, which ones disappeared from memory and just see when I came back to it, which ones were the best compared to the others. The question I hear a lot is, "What the heck is a novelette?" Simply put, it's a work of fiction ranging from 7500 words to around 18,000 words in length. It is that piece of fiction that takes up the space between the short story and the novella.

There were some pretty good pieces of of fiction in this year's Hugo nominated batch of novelettes. So here we go:

"Eight Miles" by Sean McMullen — The basic premise of this story follows a balloonist living in Victorian times who is hired by an eccentric scientist to fashion a balloon that will take him up eight miles into the air. The scientist is in possession of a strange creature that becomes lucid and coherent only in thinner atmospheres. What started out (in my mind at least) as a steampunkish fantasy tale actually turns into a weird first encounter story set a hundred years ago. That turnaround really drew me in and made me smile. I loved realizing that I was reading a different story than I had thought and that discovery made the story great. It was weird, it was different and it surprised me.

"Plus or Minus" by James Patrick Kelly — A bunch of young kids are on a space ship heading home. Something goes wrong with the space ship and they need to figure out how to survive the long trip. Great premise. The characters were well thought out and interesting. The situation was great. Overall it was a great story. I just wish it wasn’t so open to “Why didn’t they just __________?” I won’t fill in the blank, but in the end I thought there were several more obvious solutions than the one that happened. Other than that, it was a lot of fun.

"That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone — Wow! What can I say but Wow! I actually read this story on a recommendation from a friend a few weeks before Hugo nominations were due and I was blown away by this story. I was happy to see it on the Hugo ballot when it was released.This is a great story guys. It’s the story of a man living on a space station near a star who has a theological dilemma involving one of the members of his church. The problem is that member of the church is an alien life form (and not just a Star Trek alien, who are mostly human with weird bumps on their head—this is a weird and strange and almost impossible to comprehend type of creature). The story goes through the man’s attempt to solve the theological debate and answer some difficult questions. The great thing about this story is its take on religion in the future. Most SF that I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) portray religion in SF as either gone--because in the future we’ve totally proven that religious is bogus for some reason--or else they portray religious folk as imbeciles and zealots who just don’t know better. Not this story. Here we see real religion in my opinion, full of people looking for truth and doing the best they can. They don’t have all the answers and are willing to take some things on faith. They are flawed but trying. I loved the implications of religion in an alien context. I loved the struggles and the questions. This is a great story. I nominated it and after everything else, I think it’s still my favorite, and there's a reason why Eric James Stone won a freaking Nebula.

"The Emperor of Mars" by Allen Steele — This was a story that right from the get-go really sucked me in. There’s a guy talking to you about going crazy in space. (Side note, the whole going crazy in space theme hasn’t been used near enough for me in books movies whatever. It’s just cool.) The guy then proceeds to tell of a specific incident that happened on Mars when one of the workers goes completely bananas. It was fun, it was cool, it was intriguing, and then it just kind of fizzled out in the end. If it had built to something really big and cool I would have loved it. The ending was OK, but I was expecting more. Still a "good" story, I was just hoping for "great".

"The Jaguar House, in Shadow" by Aliette de Bodard — This is the story of a break-in to a temple complex in a future where (for some reason) everything has been modeled with Aztec names and sensibilities in mind. There are flashbacks to the past to kind of reveal why the break-in is happening in the first place and then a resolution where the villains' motives are explained. It didn’t really stick with me. The names and Aztec stuff, for me at least, instead of being really cool and adding depth to the story, just muddled it up and made it confusing. Sorry. Didn’t do it for me

In the end I’m going to go with:
1. "That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made" (Steve informed me this was his pick as well)
2. "Eight Miles"
3. "The Emperor of Mars"
4. "Plus or Minus"
5. "The Jaguar House, in Shadow"

So which ones are you all voting for? Enjoy.

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Posted in Hugo Awards 2011 , Short Fiction

2011 Hugo Nominated Short Stories

The 2011 Hugo Nominated Short Stories

Short stories are interesting beasts. They are extremely subjective—even more so than novels. For the sake of reviewing the Hugo Nominated Short stories, Steve & Shawn gave them a read. Enjoy!

***

Shawn: I love Hugo voting season. I know I'm one of the few, but I love seeing the nominees. I relish going online and finding all the works I can and reading them all. My dad and I read them and talk about them. We yell at each other for being idiots and liking certain works and disliking others. I love it. For the past few years I've read all the fiction works and now that I'm reviewing books for the Elite I thought I would share my ramblings.

Steve: I've come to have a greater appreciation for short fiction over the past few years. Some of it can be truly excellent. Shawn was all keyed up to talk about the 2011 Hugo Nominated short stories, and after reading them it's easy to see why. While they were all good, two ended up standing out for me.

***

"Amaryllis" by Carrie Vaughn—This story surprised the both of us. Most of the time in these shorter works you expect to find a really cool idea. The author only has a few thousand words (or less sometimes) to tell the story and most of the time it's used to just get across one really cool or weird idea. That wasn't the case here. Instead we're treated with a tender character story. The setting is a not too distant future where the world is worried about over-population and not enough food to go around, and quotas rule everything. The story follows a group of fishers as they struggle with the politics and prejudices of the world.

Shawn & Steve: We both felt pretty equally about this story. It was well done, and exceeded our expectations.

--

"For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal—We're both fairly surprised that this is Mary Robinette Kowal's only nomination this year. Her debut novel SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY was excellent and deserved a nomination as well. This story takes place on a generation ship. A simple accident—dropping a family's AI unit which severs its wireless connection to the ship—has major repercussions.

Shawn: I felt it was fun, but the repercussions weren't as large as he was hoping. The ending depends on a deep feeling for the characters (a tough task in a short story, that's why "Amaryllis" was so impressive) that I just didn't feel story hammered home enough. Good, but not great in my opinion.

Steve: Whoa, I totally disagree. I actually liked this story much more than "Amaryllis". Why? Well to give details would spoil some of the story, but I personally cared way more about these characters and the interactions with the AI. I thought it was fantastic. I will admit that part of may have to do with writing style, and I'm a big fan of the way Mary writes.

--

"Ponies" by Kij Johnson—There's no easy way to discuss this story without hurting the experience. It's a very short story, so seriously ANY in-depth discussion will totally ruin this story. It should be mentioned though that it seems like this one will invoke very different feelings in the readers.

Shawn: OK, am I the only one who didn't really get this one? I mean I can see a bit of relevance to the story and how it could be a metaphor for blah blah blah...but this one just didn't sit well with me. Nothing was explained and you're just dropped into a weird social situation that is bitter and cruel. Not that I'm against those things. I actually like a bit of dark in what I read, but this one just didn't do it for me. Sorry. I'd tell you the premise but that would almost be as long as the story itself. Read it if you want. Not my cup of tea.

Steve: Honestly, I hated it when I first finished it. Then I thought about over the next few days—not because I wanted to, but because my mind couldn't get free of the visuals this story stabs you with. I started liking it more and more. I, too, felt that the story was lacking in explanation at first, but now I think that more explanation would have hurt the story. I still don't love it, but for what it represents it is actually pretty solid. It's pretty impressive really.

--

"The Things" by Peter Watts—Have you seen the brilliant John Carpenter movie The Thing (based on a short story of the same name)? Well this short story tells the same tale from the alien's point of view. The alien in the movie is a monster so horrible and terrifying that it makes the chest-bursting aliens seem tame by comparison. And yet Peter Watts manages to give that horrible creature morals and method and reason. He twists the whole thing on its head and gives something really wonderful and actually alien.

Shawn: Here it is folks, my pick for the Hugo! I actually read this one awhile ago and was distraught because I thought it was eligible last year and it didn't get the nomination. When I saw it here I was SO happy. This story is brilliant!

Steve: High-fives, Shawn! This story was AWESOME! For me, "The Things" was easily the best story here—which should say something since I enjoyed them all. It was fun, interesting, and had me smiling the whole time.

Consensus:

Shawn: I'm thinking I vote "The Things" to win, followed by "Amaryllis", "For Want of a Nail", and then "Ponies" in that order.

Steve: I'll also go with "The Things" as the winner, but I'll follow it with "For Want of a Nail", "Ponies", and then "Amaryllis".

***

So what do you all think? These were all solid stories, so it can be tough to pick out the order. Make your own decision and read them all online:

Amaryllis - Carrie Vaughn
For Want of a Nail - Mary Robinette Kowal
Ponies - Kij Johnson
The Things - Peter Watts

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Posted in Hugo Awards 2011 , Short Fiction

Our 2011 Hugo Ballot

The Elitist Book Reviews 2011 Hugo Ballot

Before we let you in on our opinions of the Hugo Awards, we are going to give you our picks. You'll notice that we didn't nominate in a few categories. Usually that means we either didn't read anything in that category, or just didn't feel like nominating. The Hugo Award nomination deadline is the 26th of March. If you attended WorldCon last year, or bought your membership to this year's convention in Reno before the 31st of January, you can nominate--and we strongly suggest you do so. If you have already electronically voted, and forgot to put us on your list (GASP!!!) you can just recast your entire ballot and add us in before the deadline. We aren't begging...oh who are we kidding, we're on hands and knees here groveling!

Now this isn't by any means a final list. This is really a collaborative mash-up of what we all think. Our individual ballots will probably be slightly different, and of course we may add stuff to it as we read/watch more of the various stuff that was released last year.


Best Novel
GEOSYNCHRON - David Louis Edelman
NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR - Mark Charan Newton
TWELVE - Jasper Kent
THE RAGGED MAN - Tom Lloyd
MR. MONSTER - Dan Wells

Best Short Story
In the Stacks - Scott Lynch
The Family Business - Jonathan Maberry
The Non-Event - Mike Carey
The Goats of Glory - Steven Erikson
The Fool Jobs - Joe Abercrombie

Best Related Work
Writing Excuses Season 4
Elitist Book Reviews (Duh!!)

Best Graphic Story
Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
Inception

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
The Walking Dead - Guts
The Walking Dead - Days Gone Bye

Best Editor (Long Form)
Lou Anders
Toni Weisskopf
Moshe Feder

Best Editor (Short Form)
Lou Anders
Jonathan Strahan
Christopher Golden

Best Professional Artist
Raymond Swanland
Stephan Martiniere
Isaac Stewart

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Dan Wells
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Larry Correia
Jasper Kent
Mark Charan Newton
John Brown


For a complete list of Hugo Categories, follow the link below:
Hugo Categories

The Hugo Awards. Honestly, we have mixed feelings about them. It's completely awesome for the authors/works that get picked...but we can't help but feel it is a popularity contest. Let's be honest, the main award for the Hugos is for Best Novel. This isn't to say the other categories are less important--in fact, we feel the other categories are more...well, let's say fair and an accurate representation of what the award represents. The award for Best Novel is the big one. The one that sells books.

But like we said, we have mixed feelings about it.

Before you go all "torches and pitchforks" on us (or even worse, delete your internet browser bookmark to our blog) hear us out. You may have noticed that our picks for the Hugo awards are very different from what usually gets picked. We have very little SF. We don't have the usual authors on the list. Just for fun, this is who we think will be on the final ballot for best novel: Sawyer, Willis (we wouldn't have a problem with this), Wolfe (his 2010 novel was good, but not great), Scalzi (doesn't have an eligible book? Doesn't matter), Stross...well, you get the picture.

It's not that these authors are bad. It's not like they don't write well. On the contrary, we like all those authors a lot. It's simply a matter of them, in our opinions, not being the best every time they write a novel. We love guys like Erikson, but even we will admit that his novel isn't ALWAYS the best novel released during the year. For example, Vernor Vinge has a novel coming out this year. Why even have an official nomination for the 2012 Hugos? When he writes something, it is an auto-win (for the record, we DO like Vinge). Are his novels ALWAYS the best written that year? Yeah we know, subjective judging and all that. But hopefully you get our point.

What appears to be happening is that the winner of the award is either a "Big Name Author" or has a blog with 82.5 bajillion hits a day (if you detect some jealously in that last bit, you'd be reading it correctly). When you look back over the list of winners, do you say, "Oh man, that was one of the best novels ever!" or do you say, "Huh. That won the award?" If you agree with the awards, then that's great. But we can't help but feel that it's like when you look back over the past Oscar winning movies and see The Hurt Locker or A Beautiful Mind. All too often the response is, "Really?"

We don't want to come across as bashing certain authors. We have a lot of respect for the authors that have become published and who have built up a loyal following. They got their awards, and we give them high-fives for it. We just wonder if there isn't a better way. We don't have a good solution. If you open the nominating up to everyone, then suddenly the latest YA Emo Vampire-of-the-Month gets nominated. No thanks. We just don't know. Maybe the people who attend need to be more well read--but then that is an unfair generalization.

But hey, what the heck do we know? Maybe we are just complaining since the books we think the best are rarely ever on the list--we vote, so we're allowed. It's not like the Hugo Awards are comparable to MVP awards for sports. No, those have actual stats to back them up. The Hugo Awards are totally subjective. In the end, this is a blog, and therefore an opinion. No doubt there are bajillions of bloggers and professionals out there who would read this and say, "Frak them." Different strokes for different folks and all that.

So. Since there is really nothing that we can do about it, and since we have no better ideas that we can implement without bailing on this blog and doing it ourselves (a tragic suggestion...unless we get paid), we've thrown our opinions out there the same as everybody else. Our votes are for works (or people) that we think are awesome. Not just those that are popular. We command...err...encourage you to do the same.

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Posted in Hugo Awards 2011