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Hugo Awards 2012

Ever since the Hugo Award nominees for 2012 were announced I can’t tell you how many people have asked my opinion about them. Ok, I can tell you: zero. However, I won’t let a silly number like that stop me from sharing with you, my Internet friends.

This is one of the first years I’ve read a majority of the Hugo nominated novels before they were announced (3 out of the 5 beforehand) mostly because of my participation in the Incomparable book club (listen to the episode where we discuss 2011’s nominated novels). Since the nominations have been announced I’ve managed to read the other two novels (I owned one and the library provided the other).

Now, last year I read almost all of the nominated novels, with the exception of Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear (two novels that were considered as one for some reason). I bet my hat that The Dervish House was destined to win since it was the best novel I had read in a long time (I was also fairly certain that Feed‘s inclusion was some sort of clerical error).

I tell you all of this so you can get a feel for my track record. Last year not only did Connie Willis walk away with the award (she’s a great writer, and since I haven’t read her novels as of yet I can’t say with certainty that The Dervish House was a better book, but I’m pretty sure it was) but Feed, which I hated, managed to garner more votes than The Dervish House.

That ain’t right folks.

With all of that in mind, here are my thoughts about the nominated novels this year (here’s the full list of Hugo nominees this year):

Generally, I’m a novel kind of guy but John Scalzi rounded up links to all the nominated short stories this year so I decided to read them. They are all worth your time to read, especially since you can read them for free, but there was one that really stood out to me.

Here are my thoughts, and my pick:

  • “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld): This lovely, and beautifully written, story about some warmongering wasps expanding their empire gets my vote. Great writing which feels like it belongs in a literary fiction magazine which might turn some people off but worked for me. I choose not to linger on the fact that Yu is a recent college graduate (damned talented young people) and won’t let that make me spiral into a depression about my own (nonexistent) fiction output.
  • “The Homecoming”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s): A great story about a young man visiting his ailing mother and estranged father and experiencing that wonderful tension that you get when visiting parents. Oh, and the son has voluntarily had his consciousness transplanted into an alien body which complicates things just a bit.
  • “Movement”, Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s): This one didn’t do too much for me, though I can see how other folks would really like it. The main character is a autistic girl who only becomes truly functional when she is dancing.
  • “The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction): This story came in a close second for me, just edged out by those darned cartographer wasps! A story about cultural assimilation, a parent’s unconditional love, and how awful kids can be without even knowing it. Add in some animated paper animals and a wonderful story is born. How can you go wrong?
  • “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”, John Scalzi (Tor.com): This is a parody of fantasy novels, and it is funny though I have a hard time believing there wasn’t another non-jokey short story out there that could have been nominated. That said, it is fun.
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