Spacefaring Hugo Ballot 2016

Leave a reply

There are 28 hours left before this year’s Hugo winners are announced. Due to timezones, I’ll have to wake up in an inhumane time to follow the stream. In the state I’ll be in, I am probably not going to remember what I voted for first in every category, so I’ll write it down here as a reminder for my tired self on tomorrow night.

Best Novel

  • Nothing.

Yeah, that’s what I did: left the novel blank. I didn’t manage to read all of them, so this seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

Best Novella

  • Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson

Okorafor’s Binti was very good as well, but in the end the concept of Perfect State won me over.

Best Novelette

  • And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead by Brooke Bolander

Best read of the bunch, even though the prose could have been less purple in places. Stephen King’s Obits and Hao Jinfang’s Folding Beijing were also good, but they either had all the weaknesses of a Stephen King story or relied too much on coincidences to make the narrative work for me.

Best Short Story

  • Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer

How can you beat cat pictures? There’s just no way. Asymmetrical Warfare by S.R. Algernon and Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuch Tingle were also above No Award on my ballot.

Best Related Work

  • Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini

It’s a decent book, probably. I find it hard to read Wolfe the way Aramini does, but in an overall terribly weak category this is the best thing.

Best Graphic Story

  • Invisible Republic vol 1 by  Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman

Not enough science fiction comics are based on Irish anti-war folk music.

Best Dramatic Presentation / Long Form

  • Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Dramatic Presentation / Short Form

  • Doctor Who: Heaven Sent

Best Professional Editor / Short Form

  • Ellen Datlow

Best Professional Editor / Long Form

  • No Award

A protest vote.

Best Professional Artist

  • Larry Elmore

Best Semiprozine

  • Strange Horizons

A coin toss between SH and Uncanny Magazine.

Best Fanzine

  • File 770

Best source of what went down in 2015.

Best Fancast

  • Tales to Terrify

Best Fan Writer

  • Mike Glyer

Best Fan Artist

  • Matthew Callahan

Absolutely breathtaking.

The John W. Campbell Award

  • Andy Weir

Sheer aspiration porn.

That’s it. Let’s see if any of my picks wins this year.

 

 

Leave a comment