by Helen Lowe
The Hugo Award ceremony was definitely the highlight of my Worldcon in Melbourne—not just because of reading all those fiction finalists and then getting to “be there” for the grand denouement, but because it was very much a grand finale. The Worldcon organisers definitely carried off the award ceremony with panache and a sense of occasion that I felt all the nominees and those attending, well, you know, deserved! I already knew that winning a Hugo Award is a very big deal, but the ceremony said that to the world, so—kudos to all those involved in making the ceremony not just happen, but happen with style.
My focus in previous Out of this Eos blogposts has been on the fiction finalists and I plan to stick with that focus, without in any way taking away from the achievements of the fan, semipro and non fiction winners, who were just as big a part of the night. Congratulations to you all!
But in terms of those fiction finalists, you may recall that on 30 July, I blogged about some of the themes I detected, having read my way through all the nominated works. In particular, I noted that “the big thing that struck me though, trends-wise, was how far this list is from the science fiction I read as a kid / young adult … [when] … science fiction meant space, and ships, and alien cultures, even if it might not always be hard sci-fi.” Only 23% of the fiction finalists, I estimated, fitted into this category (and none, incidentally, of the novel contenders.)
Not so, however, with the results on the night, with Peter Watts’ The Island taking the Hugo for Best Novelette, and Charles Stross’ Palimpsest winning the Novella Category—50% of the available fiction categories of Short Story, Novelette, Novella and Novel. Or 40% if you include “Best Graphic Story”, which I personally do, i.e. still considerably more than 23%! And of course Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius (Volume 9, Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm) carried the banner for Steampunk, winning the Hugo for “Best Graphic Story” for the second year running. (I note that steampunk costumes were also very prevalent amongst Worldcon attendees, although Star Wars still ruled.)
Although there were zombie stories amongst the Hugo nominated works (but no vampires, werewolves or angels that I could detect) they were not represented amongst the fiction winners—except that the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer went to Seanan Maguire, aka Mira Grant, for Feed, her novel of the “inevitable zombie apocalypse.”
OK, back to the Hugos. On 20 August I bravely recorded my first and second “picks” for each of the fiction categories, so the result for novelette and novella will already tell you that I was out of step with the majority there. But not for “Best Graphic Story” where you may recall that I ’fessed up to being a regular reader of both winner Girl Genius and Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary. (Why couldn’t they both get a Hugo?) My second pick for the Short Story category, Will McIntosh’s Bridesicle, also got the Hugo Award on the night.
You may also recall that I found putting a number 1 or 2 against either Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, or China Miéville’s The City & The City, a very tough call—and it appears that I was not alone in that dilemma, as for only the fourth time in the history of the Hugo Awards, the Hugo for Best Novel was awarded jointly to both books. As I am sure you can imagine, this caused a fair amount of excitement on the night!
I personally found it interesting that they are also such different, but clearly equally popular forms of story. The City & The City is almost Fantasy Noir, a very different kind of “urban” Fantasy worked around a single, very powerful idea. The Windup Girl is “biopunk”, dystopian science fiction set in a medium term future of gene hacking and bio-engineering fallout in the form of plagues.
So that’s it—my first Hugo Awards experience, but not my last as I intend becoming an attending member for the next Worldcon 69 (to be held in Reno) and so will be eligible to vote next time around. Who knows, I may even nominate some works of fiction this time as well!
Helen Lowe is a New Zealand-based speculative fiction writer. Her first novel Thornspell (Knopf, 2008) won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for “Best Novel: Young Adult” 2009, and Helen won the Award for “Best New Talent” in the same year. Helen’s second novel, The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night, Book One) is being published by Eos on 1 October (not many sleeps to go now!). She also blogs on the first of every month on the Supernatural Underground and every day on her own Helen Lowe on Anything, Really blog.
Photos by J. Horlor
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