Hugo Awards
Since I wrote about the nominees for the short story category of the Hugo awards earlier, I thought I ought to mention that the winners have now been announced. My favorite of the short story nominees, “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt, pulled out the win. I guess my tastes aren’t as wonky as I sometimes think. I’ve read the winner for best novella, “A Billion Eves,” by Robert Reed. I quite liked it, but I can’t exactly comment on it’s choice, since I haven’t read any of the other nominees. I haven’t read the winner for best novelette, “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald, so I certainly can’t complain about that choice, but I have to admit that I was pulling for another nominee, “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman. This was a pretty controversial story, but pushed my buttons nicely.
I found it interesting that all three of these short fiction winners were published originally in Asimov’s Science Fiction. In fact, “The Djinn’s Wife” and “Impossible Dreams” actually appeared in the same issue. When I looked at the nominees, I realized that this wasn’t as surprising as I’d originally thought, Asimov’s was the source of four out of the five novella nominees, three out of the five short story nominees, and two out of the five novelette nominees. No other publication was the source of more than one of the fifteen. This says a lot of good for Asimov’s editor, Sheila Williams, especially when you consider that 2006 was only her second year at the helm.
In fact, it makes it almost look a little odd that she lost to Gordon Van Gelder (editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine) for best editor. But, hell, I love F&SF and have been reading it for much of Van Gelder’s 10-year run. I’d have probably voted for him too.
Film award went to Pan’s Labyrinth, no shock there, although I think the category was stronger this year than a lot of years–at least judging from the previous winners. I certainly wouldn’t have argued if The Prestige won, although I know a lot of people didn’t like that as much as I did. From what I’ve heard, Children of Men was excellent as well, although I still haven’t had the chance to see it. Guillermo del Toro deserves a Hugo, although I’d probably have given it to him for The Devil’s Backbone ahead of Pan’s Labyrinth. Then again, I suppose the voters might have considered that too much of a horror film to fit into the SF/fantasy paradigm–it wasn’t even nominated, and even if it had been, there was pretty much no way it was going to beat out The Fellowship of the Ring. It also seems that it’s only the second film to win the award that wasn’t made in English–after only Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It does seem that a lot of the best SF film is being made outside of Hollywood these days, so it’s good to see that the Hugo voters acknowledging that.
At any rate, you can check out all of the winners here, and the nominees here. If you’re reading this sometime later, you’ll probably be able to get all the info at the second link; the winners were just announced in the past couple of days and Locus hasn’t gotten them up yet, but I’m sure they will.
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