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Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominations
Jul. 15th, 2005 12:59 pmEvery once in a while, I feel the need to remind you that I am a total geek. This is one such time. I have now read all the short fiction Hugo Award Nominees and I’m now going to tell you what I thought of each one.
( crawl with me into tomorrow or i’ll drag you to your grave )
So. A great many of these stories, even the ones I like (for instance, "The Best Christmas Ever"), feel either “classic” or “cliché,” depending on your perspective. (Charles Stross being the blazing exception.) It makes me wonder if SF as a whole has just failed to evolve much in fifty years or if there’s some kind of retro movement going on now… I just think about the cyberpunk stuff that captivated me so much in middle school and high school, and with the exception of Charles Stross, there just doesn't seem to be anything here with that same kind of immediacy, edge, and vibrant originality.
Some of the stories I really, really liked. Some of the stories I really didn’t care for. Which is fine until I realize that these are nominations for one of SF’s top honors. This is the best there is? Disappointing. My dad frequently cites a theory (I forget who first came up with it) that 95% of all science fiction is complete crap, but the 5% that’s good is absolutely sublime. (There’s an alternate version of the theory that raises the figure to 99%, and another alternate version that applies it to art in general.) I guess that’d be about right.
Actually, the crapitude of some of these stories kind of encourages me. Reading the work of my favorite authors can be kind of discouraging to my aspiring writer side. Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice… I read their stuff sometimes and I get this sinking feeling like, “I could never write anything anywhere near as good as this.” [Well, some of those guys are a little hit and miss. Anne Rice and Orson Scott Card have been phoning it in for years, for instance, and I can’t help but notice that all of LeGuin’s stuff that I’ve read (and that is most highly praised) was written thirty years ago. But when they’re good they’re REALLY good.]
But some of these stories left me thinking, “If this is all that’s required to get a Hugo nomination… Hell, I’ve gotta be able to write something at least as good as that!” Seems like I should be able to get published at the very least.
So why I don’t I write something, already? Actually there’s a few things in the works, but I’ve been dragging my feet.
It'll be interesting to see which ones actually win.
( crawl with me into tomorrow or i’ll drag you to your grave )
So. A great many of these stories, even the ones I like (for instance, "The Best Christmas Ever"), feel either “classic” or “cliché,” depending on your perspective. (Charles Stross being the blazing exception.) It makes me wonder if SF as a whole has just failed to evolve much in fifty years or if there’s some kind of retro movement going on now… I just think about the cyberpunk stuff that captivated me so much in middle school and high school, and with the exception of Charles Stross, there just doesn't seem to be anything here with that same kind of immediacy, edge, and vibrant originality.
Some of the stories I really, really liked. Some of the stories I really didn’t care for. Which is fine until I realize that these are nominations for one of SF’s top honors. This is the best there is? Disappointing. My dad frequently cites a theory (I forget who first came up with it) that 95% of all science fiction is complete crap, but the 5% that’s good is absolutely sublime. (There’s an alternate version of the theory that raises the figure to 99%, and another alternate version that applies it to art in general.) I guess that’d be about right.
Actually, the crapitude of some of these stories kind of encourages me. Reading the work of my favorite authors can be kind of discouraging to my aspiring writer side. Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice… I read their stuff sometimes and I get this sinking feeling like, “I could never write anything anywhere near as good as this.” [Well, some of those guys are a little hit and miss. Anne Rice and Orson Scott Card have been phoning it in for years, for instance, and I can’t help but notice that all of LeGuin’s stuff that I’ve read (and that is most highly praised) was written thirty years ago. But when they’re good they’re REALLY good.]
But some of these stories left me thinking, “If this is all that’s required to get a Hugo nomination… Hell, I’ve gotta be able to write something at least as good as that!” Seems like I should be able to get published at the very least.
So why I don’t I write something, already? Actually there’s a few things in the works, but I’ve been dragging my feet.
It'll be interesting to see which ones actually win.
