The 2019 Awards Consideration Post
Posted on January 2, 2019 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
For those of you casting about for things to nominate for various awards this year, here’s what I have that’s eligible.
Best Novel
Head On (April 2018; Tor Books; Patrick Nielsen Hayden, ed.)
The Consuming Fire (October 2018; Tor Books; Patrick Nielsen Hayden, ed.)
Best Related Work
Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies: Selected Writings From Whatever, 2013- 2018 (December 2018; Subterranean Press; William Schafer, ed).
Best Short Story
“Regarding Your Application Status” (May 2018; published at Whatever/Scalzi.com)
“Automated Customer Service” (November 2018; published at Whatever/Scalzi.com)
Although Athena and I did a podcast last year, it’s not eligible for the Best Fancast category since we only did three episodes.
That said, and speaking of Athena, as my intern she did quite a bit of writing about science fiction, fantasy and other material of fandom interest (her posts from the summer are here). She was compensated, because I believe in paying people for their work, even (especially) interns; nevertheless I do believe she is eligible for consideration for the Best Fan Writer Hugo category, if after reading her material you believe it merits such a nomination.
(Indeed, and of course, only nominate anything for an award if you genuinely believe it merits a nomination, including obviously my own work. I’m okay if you look at what I’ve written this year, and then look at other work you read and go, “yeah, I think I’ll nominate that other stuff.” It happens! I won’t think it means you didn’t like what I wrote; it just means there’s a limited number of things you can nominate in any given year (and if in fact you didn’t like what I wrote — well, sorry about that, I guess).)
Happy reading and nominating this year!
For those of you who need this:
While I’m perfectly okay with you deciding not to nominate me for an award this or any year, please feel free not to tell me you don’t plan to nominate me. I realize you may think it’s just you being bracingly honest, but on this end of things, it just comes across as you being a bit of a dick. I’m sure if you think about it a bit you might understand why this is so.
(And also, don’t feel the need to argue about whether Athena merits a fan writer nomination either. I mean, come on, dude, that’s my kid, I’m not going to take kindly to you badmouthing her on my own site. Show some sense.)
Why is there no ‘Best SF Cat’ award?
1. Did “The Consuming Fire” make the OMW series eligible for the Best Series Hugo?
2. If so, was the non-inclusion of Best Series in your Award Consideration post an oversight or was it a statement that you would prefer not to be considered for that award?
Thanks!
jhardson:
Inasmuch as The Consuming Fire is not in the OMW series, no, it did not.
Neither is the Interdependency series (of which The Consuming Fire is part) eligible for series, as there are only two installments at the moment (additionally, there are three installments in the Lock In series, but the total number number of words is below the 240K cutoff, so it’s not eligible either).
So my neglect of the Best Series category is because nothing I have is currently eligible for it.
Wow, that was a total brain fart! I couldn’t get through Zoe’s Tale so I didn’t read Human Division, End of All Things, Collapsing Empire, or Consuming Fire because I thought they might build on each other. I had always assumed Collapsing Empire and Consuming Fire were OMW novels because of the artwork. I guess I have 2 “new to me” books to read ;-)
I’m not nominating you for anything because I’m not a member of any organization where I’d have the option of doing that sort of thing.
If I were, however, I would definitely because I’ve been a huge fan of your works and evangelize them to a degree that I’m pretty sure has annoyed at least some of my friends.
Looking forward to the Hugo nominations opening soon, though it’ll be tough to narrow down my list of nominees to just the number of available options. There was some awfully good work done in 2018, most definitely including Mr. Scalzi’s.
John.
Your Award is that in 2019/20 your self-respect, sanity and general well-being[1] remain intact. Hell, we even threw some curve-balls to make sure your assets weren’t secretly funding a Mexican Burrito Franchise that was actually a front for the Communist invasion of America[TM][2] and we 100% drove the Puppies into insane Mirror-Realms just in case one of them would ever produce a decent book[3].
This is a rather more rare award than you’d imagine for USA, American writers, Caucasian, aged 45+. FBI file – check. CISEN (Mexican) file – check. 5 Eye file (all nations barring NZ, they think you’re something to do with Hobbits, it’s a cluster-frak of book name confusions) – Check. Russians? Check! Etc
No, really.
That’s the test. You passed!
It’s the WHITE MALE (GROWN PRE-!970 VERSION) LAB TEST: CK failed, sadly. *sad panda*
Now you’re living in the post-apocalyptic zombie waste-land but the zombies are people and y’all need to heal yourselves[4] and sort your shit out and so on.
Ignore the secret service files. That was a really bad “Joe vrs the Volcano”[5] joke that got waaaaaay out of hand. No, really. Absolutely not owning up to why you might get upgraded on certain flights because someone claimed… All the Democratic Representatives that are over 60 are not working for you, the American People.
~
So, fuck awards: John, you proved a decent American Right-winger still exists. It’s not the future you chose, but it’s the model they need right now.
[1] Look: we’ve talked about this: high levels of testosterone lead to male balding. No, those sacrifices to the Goddess for a female child don’t off-set your natural spunk. No, MRA peeps will never respect it. Deal with your testosterone overload by, we don’t know, taking up like sky-diving or something? You’re not into killing random living beings which is good, so… I guess “be less Male Spunktastic Right-Wing Icon”… ??
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation
[3] One did. This is a low bar, but hey.
[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/29/671701019/2-years-after-standing-rock-protests-north-dakota-oil-business-is-booming – pro tip: they continue to persecute / prosecute / kill the activists once the media spot-light dims.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Versus_the_Volcano
John Scalzi —> Becoming John Wayne.
It’s funny (but also reverse-true: JW never served his country and was in the same band-wagon as Reagan). John is like the anti-John Wayne, but not really, since he lets his pardner’s ride his large grass mower and restore order to his pastures and doesn’t actually get jealous about it… and he never claimed he fought in any wars, he just published a fiction about it.
Which is kinda more honest than Bone Spurs, if we’re being brutalist.
John has a secret. Wife, daughter, lots of land. And neither of them love horses? This is fishy as frakk, 70% odds the women line are nymphs, not USA wild horses[1] fans. 100% Spirit entities. That much grass[2] and no horses?!
Suspicious.
Calling it now: John Scalzi: married a frakking Mermaid[3].
Anyhow: Host only won this award because in 2019 (Bladerunner, Akira, Running Man) on the deadline he was literally the only Caucasian male to not have done some heinous stuff.
I mean: YA “The Hunger Games” got re-made into “MeToo, the reckoning”.
Actual funny bit: he’s an angel in bed. Total monster. Ravishing, orgasms like Candy Crush sound effects… [*ok, ok, I’ll stop that, sorry Ms Junior Scalzi]
[1] Look, it’s a Wyld Stallions joke. You might be too old / young to get it.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_(novel) — read it. It’s good. It’s also a joke about Nobility, hierarchy and how Host isn’t one of them.
[3] This is a call back to the film “The Lure”. Which in the native tongue is Córki dancingu – “The Daughters of Dance Party. Yeah. Lost in Translation, huh?
Last time I checked – if you got paid for writing a thing, it, unfortunately, doesn’t count for fan writing under the Hugo rules – the same way that if you pay someone for anything that shows up in your Fanzine, your fanzine is now a Semiprozine and is operating in the same weight class as Lightspeed.
I do a Fanzine, so I did some research into this and was rather disappointed by the result.
Alexander Case:
I checked. “Low Paying” is allowed.
That’s good to hear. The rules for Fanzine appear to be more restrictive, unfortunately. There are several fan artists I’d like to commission work from for a cover, but doing so would push me into Semi-Pro territory, and well, Lightspeed and Clarkesworld will have me beat (and for perfectly legitimate reasons) every time.
This isn’t to say that I started doing a Fanzine to win a Hugo. It’s more of a recognition that if I try to work on the same level as them, I’ll just end up getting lost in the shuffle, even more than I could in the Fanzine space.
Goodness, you’ve been busy! Always a useful post; I’m not yet a member of anything that makes awards but will bear this post in mind if that changes as I particularly liked Head On.
@jharaldson: Zoe’s Tale mostly parallels previous events (as I’m sure you noticed.) There’s new stuff in there, but nothing that will leave you confused in Human Division and End of All Things. The latter two also jump off in a slightly different direction (the Perry family is not the center of attention) and are somewhat different in feel, so I wouldn’t consider Zoe’s Tale a prerequisite. It’s kindasorta a spinoff series in the same universe.