I was surprised when I learned that having joined the
Anticipation SF Convention last year, I not only got the right
to vote on the Hugo Awards last year, but I get to vote for the
nominees this year.
For how organized the voting procedure was (they sent you a
packet of most of the nominees as ebooks), the nomination
process is surprisingly free-form.
I wasn’t able to find a list of eligible works anywhere. Some
of the blogs I read had lists of what their authors had that was
eligible, and a couple of them offered to send voters free
copies. I don’t make any pretense of following the shorter
forms. And although I would like to be aware of good new
science fiction and fantasy novels, I’m not at all sure that
always happens.
So I did my best. I nominated four novels:
- The Price of Spring, Daniel Abraham
- Makers, Cory Doctorow
- Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
- The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
I was cheating a bit on Makers, since I haven’t
finished reading it yet, but it’s clearly a good novel.
I also nominated The God Engines by John Scalzi, in the Best
Novella category.
I probably wouldn’t have read it if he hadn’t sent any
nominator who asked a free copy, but it is well-written,
although I hope there are other good novellas to read before I
have to vote.
I nominated District 9 and Star Trek
in the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category, and tor.com in the Best Related Work
category. There should probably be some specific online
categories, but there aren’t yet.
LayMusic.org 