Novelettes tend to be long short stories (7500-17500 words). The little bit of extra space gives more flexibility and can lead to greatness (last year’s Tomato Thief springs to mind), but far to often they fall into the uncanny valley where the length makes them flabby without gaining the depth of a longer work.
Category: Project
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2018 – Short Story
Hugo short stories can be surprisingly long (7500 words or less). I tend to prefer the vignette, but regardless of length, I want a self contained story that hits its mark.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2018 – Introduction
Hugo time again. If you want a primer on the Hugo awards and where I fit in, I did one last year. This year, some personal stuff happened and I got a little bit sidetracked.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Shorter fiction recommendations – aka what to read beyond the winners!
One of the tragedies of the Hugos is that once the winners are announced, all the other worthy nominees tend to get forgotten. This can be particularly egregious when there is a large disparity in the categories, or there is an instant classic in a category that overshadows works that would have won in any other year. So instead of discussing the Hugo’s in terms of winners and losers, let me instead present a list of nominated stories that I think are worth reading. I hope you find something that peaks your interest…
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Categories I probably shouldn’t have voted in…
I’m a big believer in trying to read all of the eligible works in a category before voting, but I sometimes, hypocritically vote in some of the “fan” categories for sites or writers I regularly read. Obviously these awards shouldn’t become popularity contests in terms of site readership, but by the same token, unless an […]
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Best Series
Now we get to the category where I can actually seem vaguely competent because I’ve read most of them before. As you would hope, this is an extremely strong category, and my only regret is that I didn’t have time to read more books in these series.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
As mentioned before this is not strictly a Hugo category, it just uses the same voting system with the same electorate and is given out at the same time. It’s also an odd duck, as novels duke it out with short stories and mixtures of both. Still, the Campbell Award often ends up being my favourite slate – in previous years I have preferred the novels represented here to those in the novel category.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 – Close of Voting
I will put up full posts on the categories I voted in over the next week or so. If you cant wait, my full ballot is below.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Graphic Story
What happens when SFF fans nominate comic books for an award? Usually I would say you get fewer superhero titles and more SFF, but this year fully half the titles contain avengers, though not the avengers you are thinking of. Also, I love comic books, but I have no knack for visual criticism, so I apologise in advance to both readers and artists if my art criticism boils down to “it looked pretty”.
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2017 -Novella
The Novelette and Novella are the ugly step children of the Hugos, novelette being a long short story, and a novella being a short novel. Nonetheless, they are often have the most diversity in offerings of the categories. This slate of novellas is particularly strong, with five of the six stories being excellent and deserving of award.