This is the award for best new writer, regardless of output length (or quantity), and year after year it ends up my favourite category by delivering works that I think are better than any of the nominees in the main ballot. This year I will be thwarted however, as the three shorter pieces in this category are all in regular competition. On the upside, this makes this category an easy ask, as I’ve also already read Under the Pendulum Sun, leaving me with just three novels to cover.
Category: Review
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2018 – Novella
Novellas are almost exclusively short novels, self contained and fully fleshed out. I was expecting good things given that one is a sequel to a novella I liked last year (A Heart Shaped Door), another by an author I liked last year (Sarah Gailey), and a third is the sequel to a 2016 winner (Binti).
Review – Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
A young girl defies her tribal traditions and sneaks off-world to university. Binti has magical artifacts, powerful rituals, strange races, and arcane institutions – it’s not science fiction that is obsessed with, or even interested in technology. Instead, Binti is about leaving home, encountering new cultures, and becoming part of the big scary world. Two […]
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2018 – Novelette
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.
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.
Review – Shades of Magic Series by V.E. Schwab
The world might be different but there will always be London, or at least there are four of them, spanning from Georgian England to a lifeless world scoured by magic. A few special mages ferry messages between the worlds, but not all messages are created equal…
Review – Welcome to Nightvale: All Hail
Welcome to Nightvale is the 300lb gorilla of the sf narrative podcast scene – a community radio show from a simple town in the desert where the one world government helicopters are always circling, angels called Erika are on every corner, and the community calendar is as likely to contain temporal paradoxes as crocheting events. Nailing a tone that reminds me of the best of the comedic X-files episodes, and hosted by the mellifluous Cecil Baldwin, Welcome to Nightvale is a permanent fixture in my podcast rotation. None of which answers the current question – how does a radio show do live
Reviews – Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee (Plus The Battle of Candle Arc)
Sequel to Ninefox Gambit/Book 2 of the Machineries of Empire Trilogy
I thought Ninefox Gambit was brilliant and strange, if a little obtuse. With all the strange technology and bizarre calendar tricks out of the way, Raven Stratagem feels like a chance for Yoon Ha Lee to cut loose and have fun.
Review – Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
A young woman in private practice after being cast out of the academy in disgrace, is hired by a partner in a major firm to assist in a post bankruptcy restructuring of a global entity, but a range of opponents both old and new are arrayed against her. Oh and the practice is wizardry, the academy was above the clouds, and the entity being restructured is a god.
Impression – The Orville
The Orville is a riff of Star Trek the Next Generation from Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy/American Dad and resurrector of Cosmos. It’s a problematic mess…However there is a moment in the Orville that spoke to me.