Hugo Fallout

Last night, the winners of the Hugo Awards were announced. To no-ones great surprise, but to my personal disappointment, "No Award" was the result in 5 categories. To put this in context, in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, No Award had only won in a total of 5 categories before last night.

When voting for myself, I had elected to avoid using the No Award option. This was in part because I wanted to avoid this outcome, but also because I did not feel that I had a clear enough grasp of the quality of prior award winners to make a judgment as to whether the nominees this year were markedly inferior to past winners. But I am not surprised by the result, given the amount of vitriol spilled on the web over the vote.

I am a bit surprised by some of the awards, as well as by the information contained in the nomination and final vote tallies which were also released. On the final vote tallies:

1. Best Novel. The voting was very tight between Three Body Problem, the eventual winner which I loved, and Goblin Emperor, which I disliked intensely. I was also disappointed to see that in the race for lower positions, No Award beat out Skin Game, a worthy nomination from the puppy slates.
2. Best Novelette. The single non-puppy nominee, The Day the World Turned Upside Down, won, despite being a mostly forgettable self-indulgent whine-fest about a boy who must deal with an actual, but not always internally consistent, reversal of gravity that coincides with his own metaphorical world turning upside down after being dumped.
3. Best Short Story. No Award won in a landslide over Totaled which I thought was a very worthwhile piece of writing.
4. Best Related Work. No Award won in a landslide over The Hot Equations, from which I learned a lot.
5. Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the logically inconsistent and stunningly idiotic Interstellar finished fourth, although was disappointed to see that it placed above The Lego Movie.
6. Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. I was very pleasantly surprises to see Orphan Black rewarded, even if the nominated episode was not the best the show has ever offered up.
7. Best Editor, Long Form. Very disappointed, but not surprised, to see Toni Weisskopf trounced by No Award.
8. John W. Campbell Award. No surprise to see Wesley Chu deservedly dominate, but a little surprised to see so little love for Kary English.
9. Best Fan Writer. Not a huge surprise to see Laura Mixon win, especially after the heady endorsement by George R.R. Martin (see here and here). Hell, even I drank the Kool Aid and voted for her. But since casting that vote, I have looked deeper into the matter and now believe that I made a terrible mistake; this was a poorly researched hit piece. I'd like to think that the voters will come to look back on this choice with regret in the same way that I have.

As for the nominations, I was surprised to find that:

1. Best Novel. Andy Weir's brilliant The Martian and Jeff Vandemeer's Annihilation, came in only12th and 17th, respectively, in the nominations. At least Andy has the movie grosses to look forward to.
2. Best Novella. Patrick Rothfuss's The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which I thoroughly enjoyed, just missed out on a nomination.
3. Best Novelette. Scott Lynch's A Year and a Day in Old Therandane came in only 11th, while contributions by Joe Abercrombie and Patrick Rothfuss to the same volume did not register (I enjoyed all three of them).
4. Best Related Work. Volume 2 of William Patterson's Heinlein biography came in 11th, while Jill Lepore's brilliant Secret History of Wonder Woman came in 12th. Both would have missed out even absent the puppies, which is a travesty.
5. Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. X-Men: Days of Future Past came in 9th, which seems crazy to me (I loved it).
6. Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Orphan Black only barely received a nomination.

The fall-out over this result will no doubt continue for several weeks or months and I will have more to write about it later.