The Hugo/Campbell Nomination Thread, 2007 Edition
Posted on February 4, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
I filled out my Hugo and Campbell nomination form tonight, which reminded me that it’s time to ask you all for your thoughts as to whom you would nominate for a Hugo and/or Campbell this year. But before I open the thread to your recommendations, allow me to share some thoughts and recommendations of my own:
1. If you’re a Hugo nominator this year, and you are at a loss in terms of people to nominate in the Best Professional Artist category, allow me to suggest the three fine gentlemen with whom I have worked this year: John Harris, who did the cover to The Ghost Brigades; Shelley Eshkar, who did the cover for The Android’s Dream; and Bob Eggleton, who did the cover and inside illustrations for Subterranean magazine issue #4. Now, to be sure, there are many fine artists eligible year, but these are the ones who did stuff for me and I feel obliged to remind you to consider them.
2. Likewise, if you’re stuck for someone to nominate in the category of Best Editor, Long Form, may I commend to you Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor of both The Ghost Brigades and The Android’s Dream? Aside from editing these two fine novels, I will remind people that he also edited two of last year’s Hugo nominees (Old Man’s War and Learning the World) and acquired for Tor the eventual Hugo winner, Spin. Which is to say, he has a record of fine editorship, which is continued on this year; aside from my two books he’s also edited Widdershins by Charles de Lint, Farthing by Jo Walton and The Armies of Memory by John Barnes, among others. Not a bad year, I’d say.
3. Also, if you’re stuck on what stories you should nominate in the Best Short Story category, please remember that there are many truly excellent short stories in the John Scalzi-edited edition of Subterranean magazine, a free pdf version of which you may download right here. There’s damn fine work here from folks like Allen Steele, Elizabeth Bear, Jo Walton, Nick Sagan and about a dozen others. I’m not eligible to be nominated in the Best Editor category (I don’t edit enough), but if one of the stories that I picked for the magazine managed to get on the ballot, well, I’d feel shiny.
4. Let me also again note that “Who Put the Bomp”? by Nick Mamatas and Eliani Torres, which appeared right here on Whatever, is eligible for nomination as well. If it were to hit the ballot, I believe it would be the first time that a story that was published on a personal Web site had managed that. And I think that would be cool.
5. As the editor of Subterranean issue #4, it would be remiss of me not to note that Rachel Swirsky, Ann Leckie, Dean Cochrane and David Klecha all had their first pro publications in its pages — and are therefore eligible to be nominated for The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year. Read their stories; I think you’ll see they make a good argument. Let me also mention that two members of my Campbell class from last year, Sarah Monette and Brandon Sanderson, are eligible this year as well, and well worth your consideration.
6. Let me take this opportunity to encourage folks who are eligible to nominate for this year’s Hugos to indeed nominate, because this year a very large percentage of nominators are likely to be Japanese, and nominating works, editors, artists and fans who are themselves Japanese. Now, I happen to think this is both a natural and laudable consequence of having the Worldcon in Japan — there ought to be Japanese works, editors, artists and fans nominated this year. But I think it’d be nice if the Western hemisphere gets a shoutout in the various categories as well. So if you can nominate — nominate!
7. Inasmuch as I’ve just given a number of suggestions for Hugo nominations above, and I have prodded all y’all to nominate for the Hugo, as promised I declare this the 2007 Hugo and Campbell Nomination Thread, in which I exhort you, the faithful Whatever readers, to offer up the books, stories, fans, artists and editors you feel folks should consider while nominating for the Hugo and the Campbell. Here are the categories; feel free to pimp in as many categories as you like. But there are two rules:
a) Don’t pimp yourself or your own work (although you can pimp artists and editors who have worked on your books);
b) Don’t pimp the host’s work. He’s already done that; no need to do it again. Let’s hear about others.
Got it? Excellent.
Now: Who/what do you want nominators to remember when they’re filling out their Hugo nomination ballots?
Oh goody, do I get to be first? =)
If you’re nominating for the Campbell Award, check out stories by both Ken Scholes and Cat Rambo. They’re both emerging talents on the horizon and their work is excellent. If you google them, you’ll be able to find a lot of their work online, particularly Cat’s great story, “Magnificent Pigs” over at Strange Horizons.
Charlie Stross. I realize this can’t be older work, but my alternative is either Egan or Baxter.
Plus, you deserve it, for writing neat novels from an arrrrmpit. (I was born in Ohio, I can say that.)
Fishbane (and others):
It’s useful to specify for which Hugo you think someone should be eligible for (which means, knowing which work you would nominate). I’m all for nominating Charlie on general principles, but it’s actually more useful for people who will be doing nominating if you give them an idea for which works Charlie (or whomever) ought to be nominated.
Also, the next person who tries to slip my works into the thread will have that portion of the comment deleted. Seriously. Let’s talk about other people.
Jana Souflova for best artist. The cover with the dragon reading is the Czech cover for my novel Tooth and Claw, which is how I discovered her. I think she’s just terrific.
I don’t get to nominate this year, so I haven’t been sorting through my piles of old magazines.
As fishbane states older literature is off this list I rekon. But Steven Baxter would be one of my picks.
I mean anyone who can pull off writing the destruction of the entire universe deserves someting.
John Varley’s “Red Lightning” should get some mention as well. Good Art, good editing, a excellent book and sequel to “Red Thunder”.
A couple of my favorites from this year, for best novel:
Alastair Reynolds, Pushing Ice
Brass Man, Neal Asher
Rainbow’s End, Vernor Vinge
In the Company of Ogres, A Lee Martinez
I’m unsure about how the hugo voters look on books in series, so the Asher selection may not be any good, as it picks up after a couple of Asher’s other books. I don’t see it as being impossible to pick up and understand what’s going on, but if you read Gridlinked first, that’d be good.
Pushing Ice is one I just finished, and had a hard time putting down. I like Reynolds a lot, and this is one of his best.
Vinge is just always good. This book was fascinating to me, somewhat evocative of Stross’s Accelerando.
Martinez is a fun read. Not deep stuff by any means, but if you haven’t read him, I’d encourage it. This one and his earlier book, Gil’s All Fright Diner are quick fun reads.
Hope that helps you out!
“If you’re nominating for the Campbell Award, check out stories by both Ken Scholes and Cat Rambo.”
I don’t know Scholes; I’m sure I’d like his work. Rambo’s is, I agree, fantastic.
I also recommend her short piece meditating on cyberpunk up at Abyss & Apex right now, and her story “The Dead Girl’s Wedding March” on the Fantasy website.
I’ll second Red Lightning by John Varley, who does s somewhat better job at being “Heinleinesque” than Spider Robinson’s Variable Star.
I’ll also strongly endorse Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, an excellent First Contact story set largely in 14th Century Germany.
“Inclination” by Bill Shunn was my favorite novella of the year. Blindsight by Peter Watts was my favorite SF novel. Juliet Ulman at Bantam Spectra for best editor, long form — she’s responsible for bringing some amazing British SF to America, and she’s acquired some awesome original books by new writers, too.
(I could go on and on, but that’s off the top of my head)
“Damascus” by Daryl Gregory for Best Novelette. A story about biochemical evangelism, this excellent and thoroughly screwed-up story was in the December ’06 F&SF.
“The Flying Woman” by Meghan McCarron for Short Story. Meg is in my writing group, and this was a sad and sweet story about a flying woman. I mean, come on…
By the way, does this mean that all of you LA Con attendees have gotten your ballots? I think mine’s been eaten.
Oh, and I think Meg’s now eligible for the Campbell, too.
“Shriek: An Afterword” by Jeff VanderMeer for Best Novel
Lou Anders over at Pyr for Best Editor
Dave McKean for best artist, especially for illustrating Ray Bradbury’s “The Homecoming”
And let me second “Inclination” for Best Novella, that one stood out for me all year. Also, “Cruncers, Inc.” by K. Rusch, for Best Novelette
As for best editor, long form – Tor seems to be the main example of a publisher where you can actually tell who edited a book. Anybody have any clue on how you can tell with most SF publishers who was the editor? A problem for me in nominating for this category.
And I’ll also mention Vinge’s Rainbow’s End and Varley’s Red Lightening for best novel.
Particularly useful to me would be suggestions for shorter fiction. I do get the big three magazines but there’s lots out there, particularly in original anthologies, that I just do not see.
Well, I will obviously keep my dreams of the host’s works winning playing on continuous feed in my imagination and admit that I haven’t read alot of books published in the appropriate time frame for this year’s Hugos.
I will say that John Harris is a perfect choice for the artist Hugo this year. His work on the host’s books was incredible. So much so that it brought back recollections of other Harris covers that I have liked and spurred me on to pick up a copy of Mass: The Art of John Harris, which in turn pointed me to a whole mess of science fiction that I would like to read.
Stephan Martiniere has done some fabulous cover work this past year as well.
I remember last year’s art field being a Who’s Who of my favorite artists and was glad that I didn’t have to vote.
Most of the short stories I read last year were parts of anthologies meaning that they were no doubt published more than a year ago. Stories by Robert Sheckley, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, and James Blaylock were among my favorites. I am trying to be better about picking up magazines like Subterranean, Realms of Fantasy, etc. this year so that I can stay current with fantasy and science fiction.
One of my favorite SF books of the year was “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon. I’m likely to be shouted down, but I’d like to remind everyone that he was also nominated for a Nebula in 73 for a little book called Gravity’s Rainbow. And if any of my local SF bookshops had bothered to carry it, I imagine it would have picked up more than a few fans.
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