Hugo Nominations

So apparently listing all the things one nominated for awards is the in thing.

I have a leftover Hugo membership from last year, meaning I can’t vote, but can nominate (and frankly, nominating means more to me anyway). I skipped some categories, like novels, for instance. (I am SO BEHIND on actually reading novels that were published in the same year that I read them. It is frankly EMBARRASSING. And don’t even get me started on movies. Movies are worse.)

Here is the nominating I did do:

Novelettes

  • Aliette de Bodard, “The Waiting Stars”
  • Tori Truslow, “Boat in Shadows, Crossing”

Short Stories

  • Meda Kahn, “Difference of Opinion”
  • Sunny Moraine, “I Tell Thee All, I Can No More”
  • Silvia Moreno-Garcia, “Them Ships”
  • Sofia Samatar, “Selkie Stories are for Losers”
  • Carrie Vaughn, “The Best We Can”

It was tough picking just five short stories. All of them are from my earlier favorites post except Carrie Vaughn’s story, which I found on someone else’s favorites list after the fact. Stories by Kenneth Schneyer, Linda Nagata, and Nghi Vo only barely missed the top five, and of course, everything on my fairly lengthy favorites list is awesome.

Semiprozine

Apex, Goblin Fruit, Shimmer, Stone Telling, and Strange Horizons.

Fan Artist

I’m not really an art person, but I couldn’t help but nominate Ashley Ellen Frary because I am so thrilled by her bright and colorful illustrations for Issue #1 of Plunge Magazine.

Campbell Award

This was so hard. Harder than picking just five short stories. There are so many fascinating and amazing new writers this year. I would have been much happier if there had been TEN places on the ballot, not five.

Also, I did not manage to finish reading the friggin’ enormous Campbellian Anthology in time. This is because I am a bad reader who manages reading time badly, and I should feel bad.

Finally I settled on:

  • Meda Kahn
  • Helen Marshall
  • Sofia Samatar
  • Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Then I took a long, hard, conflicted look at that fifth spot on the ballot, and at my short list of other eligible people whose writing I really liked. And I thought about it. And then I wrote in my own name.

I don’t have any delusions of getting onto the final ballot with competition like this. But I’m genuinely proud of how much I accomplished for the first time in 2013. And if I don’t believe in myself, who will?

So that’s that, then.

It occurs to me after the fact that there are no men on my ballot ANYWHERE. (Well, I guess the managing editor of Strange Horizons is a man, and some folks here are genderqueer, but still.) This was totally not on purpose; I wasn’t even thinking about gender when I made these selections. Huh.