The Hugo awards, probably the most prestigious award of the science fiction and fantasy community were handed out on August 19th at Worldcon 76 in San Jose. Now this was the second Worldcon I had ever been to but this first one I voted on.
So when you sign up as a member of Worldcon, you are eligible to nominate and vote on the Hugos. I did not participate in the nominating process. And a good thing too. Apparently all the books I read in 2017 were not published in 2017, except for one.
When the Hugo nominations came out I was not prepared for the fact that I did not read a single one of the novels on the list, nor any of the novellas, let alone novelettes or short stories. I did manage to see all the movies nominated which were under the category of “Dramatic Presentation Long Form.” So yay for having the time to watch a bunch of nerd movies and no time to read? No? I guess not.
There was of course no way that I was going to read all the works nominated. There was even a Best Series category. So I set out the goal of reading all the novels, six in total. And maybe the novellas as they were relatively short.
Little did I know, there is such a thing as a Hugo Packet. Much like how around awards season, studios provide screener copies of their movies for review and voting thus becomes easier. Yeah, I found out about this late.
Oh, and the votes are ranked voting, so out of six nominees, you are supposed to rank your 1st place to 6th place choice for winner.
Come the night of the Hugos and the show went on. My friends Veronica Belmont and Tom Merrit lost in the Best Fancast category for their show The Sword and Laser to the Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace hosted Ditch Diggers podcast. It’s Tom and Veronica’s first of hopefully many Hugo nominations.
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for New Writer went to Rebecca Roanhorse. “So listen, y’all a Black and Indigenous woman just won the Campbell award,” she said to applause. Though I have not read her debut novel Trail of Lightning, I did read her short story, “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience,” which by the way also won the Hugo award for best short story.
Winner of the Best Graphic Story went to Monstress, Volume 2: The Blood. Written by Marjorie M. Liu with art by Sana Takeda. This is the second year in a row of winning for them. It’s a really well done graphic novel series. Very mature, often graphic. But yet beautifully drawn as well. Sana Takeda also won the award for Best Professional Artist.
The winner of the Best Editor Long Form went to Sheila E. Gilbert. Now this is one of those categories that I know next to nothing about but they are responsible for editing many of our favorite novels. Here, I would probably shut down and look at my phone, then Ms. Grant closed with this statement:
I’d just like to add one more thing this year. We find ourselves living in a terrifying dystopian reality. If someone had submitted this as a novel to me, I would have turned it down as way too improbable. But if this had been a novel instead of 21st century America, I could have at least edited and improved the situation. The only way that we can all do that now is to exercise our right to vote. If you can vote in the Hugos, you can vote in the midterm elections. Vote to change the present. Vote to save the future. Go out and vote and get everyone you know to do the same. Thank you all very much.
Truly, to me the highlight of the night went to N.K. Jemisin who is the breaker of records. Not only is she the first African American woman to win the Hugo back in 2015, but she has won it three years in a row. No author has done it three years in a row. She won in 2015, thwarting the efforts of the Puppies movement. Her first win was for The Fifth Season, followed by The Obelisk Gate, and she pulled off the trifecta this year with the final book in the trilogy, The Stone Sky. Now some of those sad and rabid puppies may have cried tokenism and not earning her Hugo, Ms. Jemisin had a message for them:
And yes, there will be naysayers. I know that I am here on this stage, accepting this award, for pretty much the same reason as every previous Best Novel winner: because I worked my ass off. I have poured my pain onto paper when I could not afford therapy. I have studied works of literature that range widely and dig deeply, to learn what I could and refine my voice. I have written a Million Words of Crap and probably a Million More of Meh…But this is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers—every single mediocre insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honor, that when they win it it’s meritocracy but when we win it it’s “identity politics” — I get to smile at those people, and lift a massive, shining, rocket-shaped middle finger in their direction.
The full video of her speech is below:
And the full text is available here.
The Hugos are a way for us, readers to acknowledge great accomplishments. And this was a tough field to vote on. I regret not being able to vote in as many categories as I could, but I am glad I was able to participate.
For a full list of nominees and winners. The San Jose Mercury News, Newspaper for the host city has a fill list of nominees and winners here.
Until next year, Worldcon. I won’t be in Dublin, but I’ll be sure to vote again next year. And hopefully I will be reading more.
The Ranting Penguin 