Hugo 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 Wind Will Rove, or two years ago’s Tomato Thief spring 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 2019 – Short Story
I like short stories to be self-contained: a good idea or a complete story. As such I often gravitate to stories that are focused on doing one thing well. It also means that I tend to prefer vignettes, where Hugo short stories can be surprisingly long (7500 words or less).
Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Introduction
This might be the best I’ve been prepared for evaluating the Hugos since I started doing this a few years ago…With a bit of effort, I might actually be able to get through all of the fiction categories.
Avengers Endgame: It’s the journey, not the destination
As a movie, Avengers Endgame was overly long, slow in places, and incredibly self indulgent; as an experience, Avengers Endgame was the end of a journey through two dozen movies that evoked powerful emotions in me. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been running for over a decade, and Endgame felt like a weaponised piece of nostalgia, evoking the entire history of the MCU, and by extension, the last quarter of my life.
Review – The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
I understand that Historical 14th Century Russian Folk Fantasy might not be the selling point for others that it is for me, but regardless, the Winternight Trilogy is something special. I can’t speak to the accuracy of Arden’s Rus, but the verisimilitude is impressive, from the frozen rural hold where the book starts, through to the proto-city of Moscow, all under the yoke of absent Tartar rulers. It is a land of hard work, resilient people, and of course magic.
Hugo Nominees for 2019
I did not read a lot of 2018 books, in 2018 or now. Given my ignorance, I tend to nominate things that might not get attention otherwise, that stood out for some reason, or that are so good, they would have gotten nominated anyway. I also don’t usually write about my nominations unless they are really off the beaten track, but I haven’t posted in a while, so with that out of the way
Dr Who – Not squandering an opportunity.
I’ve been pretty harsh on recent seasons of Dr Who for having over-plotted season arcs, a poor understanding of time travel, and a lack of conviction that just wore me down. This season could have just given us a female Doctor, told some bog standard, standalone Dr Who adventures and I would have been happy as a woodchuck. Instead, they not only fixed almost all of my problems, but Dr Who feels like it has come back with a purpose – it has things to say and it’s not afraid to say them.
2018 books in review
This year sucked…for me and mine. Between an extremely sick family member and finishing out my career, I had a lot of trouble concentrating on reading, and relied instead on Anime as my primary escape method. In the end I read 35 books probably the fewest since I reached double digits in age, though I feel I should get extra credit for reading the three Stormlight archive novels (~3300 pages across three books). Fortunately, while not a year of classics, I enjoyed most of the books I actually managed to read.
Review – Hullmetal Girls
Sometimes I just want the literary equivalent of junk food. Hullmetal Girls has a cover of an earnest women in space armor, the dedication is to the kung fu panda 2 soundtrack, and the blurb is about a girl in a lost fleet who agrees to become a robocop for the government, only to find that all is not well (and it’s obvious both what is not going well and where it is going to go).
Review – Trail of Lightning
I put Trail of Lightning into the urban fantasy box from a look at the cover, and, to be fair, it feels like an urban fantasy book…