Hugo Winners 2018! A few thoughts

I need to finish my Hugo reviews – sorry, folks. Life got busy.  A few comments while I’m thinking about it today…..

Best Novel:
Winner: NK Jemisin’s The Stone Sky.  I heartily agree!

Jemisin’s trilogy is a resounding success. It’s the only second-person writing that’s ever worked for me, because she has a necessary and clear reason to use that approach, and she deployed it well. If you haven’t read The Fifth Season (my review) and The Obelisk Gate (my review) along with this year’s Hugo winner, you now have THREE Hugo Awards to spur you forward. No other author has scored a hat trick like this in Hugo history.  Plus, TNT is turning the series into a TV event – so read the books first!!

Amazon link to the trilogy or Apple iBook or Audiobook

Best Novella:
Winner:  All Systems Red by Martha Wells.  Yes!

I voted for Binti as #1, but this novella was a strong second and I’m thrilled that it won the award this year.  You’ll fall in love with Murderbot just like I did. The story serves up great military science fiction and characterization, and gives us a good window for grappling with the continuing question of how we define personhood and the tendency of humans to oppress those whom we dehumanize or strip of self-determination.  You can buy Wells’s novella on Amazon or Apple and it’s worth the dollars (plus you can support an author!)

Best Novelette:
Winner: “Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer

This is a delightful long story, one of my favorites this year though I voted for “Wind Will Rove” as the winner (Sarah Pinsker). I need to write a separate review of “Wind” here for y’all. It’s one of the most meaningful stories I’ve read in a long time.  But readers make meaning as we read, bringing our own reality into the equation as we judge the merits of a story.

“Wind Will Rove” tops my list because it’s a story about music and a story about teaching and a story about space exploration, and I love all of those things.  But that doesn’t diminish Palmer’s excellent tale and I’m not sorry “Secret Life of Bots” took the crown.  Her bot story made me smile and reminded me of the best from people like Scalzi. (Published in September 2017 issue of Clarkesworld magazine.)

Best Short Story:
Winner: “Welcome to your authentic Indian experience” by Rebecca Roanhorse (also the John W Campbell winner this year)

This is probably my largest divergence from the Hugo lineup this year. I put Roanhorse’s short story #4 on my ballot, behind “Fandom for Robots,” “The Martian Obelisk,” and “Sun, Moon, and Dust.”  It’s hard with short stories to settle on meaningful criteria for judging the works. Am I going by “feels”? Or story construction? Artistry of language? Punch and surprise? Big Central Question?

No complaints that Roanhorse won. The only short story I didn’t particularly like was “Clearly lettered in a mostly steady hand.” The other 5 were solid.

Best Related Work:  won by Ursula LeGuin.  I’m still not willing to acknowledge the loss of LeGuin, and apparently many of us are in that same spot. I did vote for Zoe Quinn’s book because I think the whole Gamergate dustup needs to be documented, dissected, and studied if we’re ever to get a handle on the toxic masculinity that dominates so much online discourse. But every word from LeGuin is a treasure, especially now that she’s gone.

Best Graphic Story:  I love Monstress, and it won!  But how on earth did My Favorite Thing is Monsters not WIN THE BALLOT this year?  It’s a remarkable work.  Read about it here:

If this sounds like a wild story, so is the tale of how Ferris came to write it. She was a 40-year-old single mom who supported herself doing illustrations when she was bitten by a mosquito, she contracted West Nile virus, became paralyzed from the waist down, and lost the use of her drawing hand. Fighting chronic pain, she taught herself to draw again, then reinvented herself as a graphic novelist, spending six long years creating what’s clearly an emotional autobiography.

And man, does her commitment show. Breaking away from the panel format customary in comics, Ferris’s densely-imagined, crosshatched images explode with a visual freedom I’ve not seen in a graphic novel. And she uses that freedom to give us, well — everything.

I cannot praise Ferris’s GN enough. You should immediately put this on your reading list.  Amazon link.

And I also highly recommend the Monstress series, which took home the award again this year. It’s beautifully drawn and a great story. I voted for the lead artist as Best Professional Artist, and I’m glad she won!
  

Best Long Form and Short Form Drama: I voted for Get Out above Wonder Woman, but WW was a lovely film and gave us the female superhero we always knew we wanted. No issues with how that turned out.

And that’s it for my commentary — I didn’t vote for the other categories (editor, magazine, fan writer, YA, Campbell, etc) because I don’t spend enough time in those worlds to cast a fair vote.

This was a great year for the Hugo Awards, IMO. The nominees were diverse, the selections were interesting and skilled. I’m so glad the “Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies” years seem to have passed.

DO YOU WANT TO VOTE IN THE HUGO AWARDS?

It’s open to all fans who hold a voting membership for the upcoming year’s WorldCon convention.  No attendance required; all voting is done online. Voting members receive a packet of PDFs of the various nominations (including selections from the novels and book-length works) in early June and voting closes in late July. Visit the site for more information. 

My husband and I have been voting for the past several years, and it’s enriched my summer reading. Even if you don’t spring to buy a membership and vote, the nominee lists for the Locus, Hugo, and Nebula Awards are always public. No excuse for not having great reading material at hand! 😉