Last day for those pesky Hugo nominations.
http://sasquan.org/hugo-awards/nominations/
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Tags: hugo awards
For Your Consideration: Stuff Not By Me
March 8, 2015 at 6:39 pm
Now that I’ve done the de rigeur listing of all of my own stuff published in 2014, I wanted to say a few words about some other things that I will nominating.
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM. It was a great year for SF and fantasy movies. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY was a lot of fun and will undoubtedly end up on the final ballot… but I’d go with INTERSTELLAR as the best of the year. The most ambitious and challenging SF film since Kubrick’s 2001. A feast for the eyes, and a film that demands to be seen more than once. I will also be nominating a long-shot: PREDESTINATION, the film version of the ultimate time-travel story, Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies.” RAH himself would have liked this, I suspect: very faithful to his story, well directed, superb acting (Sarah Snook especially). It’s a small film compared to blockbusters like GUARDIANS and INTERSTELLAR, but I hope it won’t be overlooked.
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM. Sure, I’d be thrilled if one or more episodes of GAME OF THRONES made the ballot… but I have to admit, there was a LOT of great SF and fantasy on TV last year. It would great if the voters would start looking beyond our show and DOCTOR WHO. ORPHAN BLACK got a nomination last year, and probably deserves another one. The British anthology series BLACK MIRROR had some wonderfully original and mind-bending segments. Horror fans had a lot to enjoy between THE WALKING DEAD, Z NATION, and PENNY DREADFUL. And for something truly from left field, the always witty crime romcom CASTLE has been known to wander into SF from time to time. The time travel episode from 2013 was overlooked, alas… but 2014 included “The Time of Our Lives,” a parallel worlds story that I enjoyed almost as much.
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. John Picacio, of course. Donato, for the calendar, as mentioned in my last post. But also MICHAEL KOMARCK, and JOHN HOWE, and ALAN LEE, and MAGALI VILLENUEVE.
BEST NOVEL. The big one. I read a lot of good novels in 2014… but, alas, not all of them were published in 2014. So many books, so little time, it’s hard to match the reading to the awards calendar. One of the 2014 books that I did read stands above all the others, however: STATION ELEVEN, by Emily St. John Mandel. As best I can recall, I’ve never met Emily St. John Mandel, and I’ve never read anything else by her, but I won’t soon forget STATION ELEVEN. One could, I suppose, call it a post-apocolypse novel, and it is that, but all the usual tropes of that subgenre are missing here, and half the book is devoted to flashbacks to before the coming of the virus that wipes out the world, so it’s also a novel of character, and there’s this thread about a comic book and Doctor Eleven and a giant space station and… oh, well, this book should NOT have worked, but it does. It’s a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac… a book that I will long remember, and return to.
BEST FAN WRITER. There have been arguments in the past about what, precisely, constitutes fan writing, and who should or should not be eligible for this award. LAURA J. MIXON is a professional writer, and a very talented one, with half a dozen strong novels under her own name and her pseudonym of M.J. Locke… but this year she published on-line, in a non-professional and unpaid capacity, ‘A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names,’ a detailed, eloquent, and devastating expose of the venomous internet troll best known as ‘Requires Hate’ and ‘Winterfox.’ You can find it here: http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/ It’s not your usual sort of fan writing, admittedly… but it wasn’t done for money, and it wasn’t published professionally, and it’s a terrific piece of journalism, an important piece that speaks to issues of growing importance to fandom in this internet age. So I’m nominating Mixon for Best Fan Writer, and I urge you to do the same.
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For Your Consideration: Stuff By Me
March 8, 2015 at 5:57 pm
THE WINDS OF WINTER did not come out in 2014, as some of you noticed. But I did have a lot of other material published and broadcast that is eligible for Hugo consideration.
The fourth season of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES leads that list. ‘Dramatic Presentation’ is split into two categories, Short Form and Long Form. The former is mostly TV shows, the latter mostly films, though the actual division is by running time. GAME OF THRONES is actually eligible in both categories… though should it be nominated in both, the rules require us to bow out of one in favor of the other.
Season four, considered as a whole, can be nominated in Long Form.
Individual episodes are eligible for nomination in Short Form. You do need to know the episode titles. And yes, more than one episode of a given show can be nominated. Last year at Loncon the Short Form shortlist pitted one episode of ORPHAN BLACK and one episode of GAME OF THRONES against four episodes of DOCTOR WHO. That’s not unusual. The DR. WHO fans are very well organized.
I am, to be sure, enormously prejudiced, but I thought we had some very strong episodes last season. Of course, I am very proud of episode two, “The Lion and the Rose,” since I wrote the script myself for that one. For those of you who don’t remember titles, that was the ‘purple wedding’ episode. Episode nine, “The Watchers on the Walls,” scripted by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and directed by Neil Marshall, was also huge for us: that was the battle episode, devoted entirely to the fight for the Wall. Biggest action sequences we’ve ever done. Dan and David also scripted episode ten, “The Children,” with the final confrontation between the Imp and his father. Oh, and there was also “The Laws of Gods and Men,” aka the Trial of Tyrion Lannister, scripted by Byron Cogman, with its amazing performances by Peter Dinklage and Sibel Kekilli, and “The Mountain and the Viper,” another script by Dan and Dave, wherein the Mountain That Rides faces off against the Red Viper of Dorne.
The other five episodes had some good stuff too, I think.
Aside from the television show…
ROGUES was published last year, which means that Gardner Dozois and I are both eligible for nomination as Best Editor, Short Form. Also, all the stories in ROGUES are eligible in the Short Story and Novelette categories. We had some terrific stories in that book. Take a look.
LOWBALL, the twenty-second volume in the Wild Cards series, was also published in 2014. That one I co-edited with Melinda Snodgrass. (Shared world stories NEVER get nominated for Hugos, but I mention this for the sake of completeness).
And then there’s the odd duck: THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE, the huge and concordance of the world of Westeros by Elio Garcia, Linda Antonnson, and yours truly. Exhaustive, gorgeously illustrated throughout, and years in the making.
To tell the truth, I am not sure what category the worldbook belongs in. It’s not a novel in any traditional sense, and there’s no “fake history” category, so I suppose it fits best in “Best Related Book.”
Lastly… and not strictly by me… I want to mention the latest Ice & Fire calendar. It’s the 2015 calendar, but it came out in July 2014, debuting at Comicon. The calendar itself is not eligible for anything… but the artist certainly is.
The 2015 calender was painted by DONATO GIANCOLA, and if he doesn’t deserve a nomination for Best Professional Artist for his work therein, I don’t know who does.
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Hugo Nomination Deadline Draws Nigh
March 8, 2015 at 5:18 pm
It’s that time again: time for my annual Not A Blog post urging all the fans and readers out there to nominate their favorite books, stories, films, and writers from last year for the Hugo Awards.
Actually, it’s probably PAST that time. Nominations for the 2015 Hugo Awards for the best sf and fantasy of 2014 close in two days, so I probably should have made this post a month ago. What can I say? I was busy. Too little time, too much to do. But here I am regardless.
The Hugos are the oldest awards in our genre, and to my mind, the most meaningful. These are fan awards, given by the readers… your awards, in short. They have been given annually at the World Science Fiction Convention since 1953 (well, except for 1954, but that’s a detail). ((And no, I don’t count the ‘Retro-Hugos,’ which are another thing entirely)). This year they will be award at Sasquan in Spokane, Washington in August. To nominate, you need to be either an attending or supporting member of Sasquan, OR of last year’s London worldcon, Loncon, OR next year’s worldcon, MidAmericon II. Easy enough to become a member if you’re not signed up yet… and if you can’t attend, well, that’s what the inexpensive supporting memberships are for.
You can nominate on line at http://sasquan.org/hugo-awards/nominations/
All the rules and definitions are there as well.
In recent years it has become fashionable in some quarters to bitch about the Hugo ballot (ah, sweet Internet). But the truth is, the ballot is what we make it. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people vote for the Hugos when presented with the final ballot. Far fewer ever bother to nominate. In some categories, a couple dozen votes is all that’s required to win a place on the shortlist.
And it IS an honor just to be nominated. Even if you lose. (I should know. I’ve won a few, but I’ve lost a lot more. Hell, in 1976 I founded the Hugo Losers’ Club with Gardner Dozois, but that’s a story for another day).
I am going to follow this with a couple more posts wherein I will make my own recommendations of stories and films that you might want to consider when filling in your ballot. Read them or not, as you wish. The important thing is not what you nominate, but that you do nominate.
Friends, fans, readers… this is your award. Let your voice be heard.
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Where Am I Now?
August 22, 2014 at 1:54 pm
And now the latest installment of, "If this isTuesday, that must be Whitechapel."
Jet lags rules, but I think I am in Los Angeles. Beverly Hills, actually. A different city, a different world. But they treat me very well here.
Scotland was grey, wet, rainy, but the Fringe was in full roar. Music everywhere, and some great shows that we did not have time to see. (I was especially chuffed at having to miss the James plays, a triptych of quasi-historical dramas about the reigns of the Stuart kings James I, James II, and James III, all of whom came to bad ends. You'd think the Scotts might have taken the hint and started naming their kings Graham, Rory, Duncan, Alister, Andrew…. anything but bloody James. But no, the Scots are a stubborn folk.
When something isna working, by damn, they stick with it.
But I digress. I missed the plays, and most of the Fringe, but I did get rained on, appeared in several hundred selfies with fans, strangers, and the occasional drunk who did not know who the hell I was but wanted a selfie anyway. I also did two major interviews at the Edinburgh Book Festival. You can find those on line. I will post links when I get home. Signed many books afterwards. I also saw many other terrific authors coming and going, but did not, alas, have time to talk.
In Edinburgh I heard about Robin Williams, which made me very sad. Never met him, but I loved his work. We will never see his like again. We plan to offer free showings of some of his best films at the Cocteau in weeks to come. DEAD POET'S SOCIETY is my own favorite. Oh, captain, my captain…
Next was London. Or rather the Docklands, which are to London as Jersey City and Port Newark are to NYC. But who cares, it was worldcon… and not only that, but the BIGGEST worldcon in thirty years, finally breaking the attendance record set by the 1984 world com in LA. (Well, Anaheim). Worldcon cracks 10,000 at last… it comes twenty years too late, but better late than never.
Would that I could say the growth will continue, but next year's con in Spokane will be lucky to get 3,000. And the Hugo Losers Party, traditionally hosted by next year's worldcon, was a dismal affair, the worst I've seen since I threw the first of those in 1976 at Big Mac in KC, Does not bode well for next year. In the old days a Hugo winner who dared show up at the Hugo Losers party, Hugo in hand, would have been thrown into the hotel pool, or at least had whipped cream sprayed in his hair. Now all the winners get is… congratulations.
I was one one of them. "The Rains of Castamere" won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. David Benioff and Dan Weiss scripted that episode and came down from Belfast to represent, the first time they were able to get to a worldcon. ORPHAN BLACK — a terrific show — also had an episode nominated, and a writer/ producer on hand to accept. But we were both vast underdogs, since the other four nominees were all episodes of DOCTOR WHO, the 600-point gorilla that has ruled this category since its inception. "Blackwater" did break the Doctor'es string last year, but that was at San Antonio. No sane person thought that we had the slightest chance against the Doctor on his home ground, and on his 50th niversary to boot. Even the BBC must have been dead certain they were going to win, since they sent David Tennant to accept… but when the envelope was opened, it was David and Dan who sprang from their seats and rushed to the stage to grab the rockets. I don't think anything could have thrilled them more… well, aside from winning the Emmy on Monday, but the odds against that are long.
What they did afterward was even cooler. D&D did eventually make their way to that dreary Hugo Losers' Party for a belated bow, but they did NOT hang around the empty auditorium for that endless round of group shots of winners and presenters that has somehow become de rigeur after the Hugos of later. Instead they headed right down to the Fan Village where all the party tents were, and bought a round for all the fans in the house, to share the joy and celebration. Now there's a tradition I can get behind.
Anyway, that was cool. GAME OF THRONES collected its third Hugo in a row, in a stunning upset over DOCTOR WHO.
And now I am LA, wondering if we can do it again in the Emmys, and somehow shock the world by coming up ahead of BREAKING BAD and TRUE DETECTIVE. They are the overwhelming consensus choices… but so was DOCTOR WHO.
Tune in Monday night, and find out.
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Hugo Nominations!
April 19, 2014 at 4:30 pm
The Hugo nominations for 2014 have just been announced as Eastercon in the UK, and other conventions around the world. You can find the full list here:
http://loncon3.org/2014hugos.php
GAME OF THRONES has been nominated in Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form this year, for "The Rains of Castamere," the infamous Red Wedding episode, scripted by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and directed by David Nutter. Congratulations, all. The nomination is just the latest confirmation that David, Dan, T'Other David, Richard Madden, Oona Chaplin, Michelle Fairley, and the rest of our cast and crew did an amazing job on this one, creating a moment that will live in the annals of television for a long, long time. No novelist has ever been more fortunate in the people who came forward to translate his work from the page to the screen.
I would love nothing better than to have David, Dan, David, Bryan, and a whole contingent of our cast drop by this year's Hugo Awards. London is not that far from Belfast, after all. Whether that will happen or not, I cannot say, but I'll do my best. It would be great to have them all at worldcon.
(Mind you, however, I think the odds of GAME OF THRONES actually winning this year are remote. "The Rains of Castamere" is up against an episode of ORPHAN BLACK, and four (4!!!) episodes of DOCTOR WHO, which has dominated Short Form since the category was created. Last year, in San Antonio, "Blackwater" broke DOCTOR WHO's long streak of victories, but I suspect that only served to rouse the Whovians, and this year the con is on their home ground in the UK, where they are legion. So GOT is a long shot at best, but hey… it IS an honor just to be nominated).
Speaking of which… I am REALLY jazzed to be able to reveal, at last, that Jet City's MEATHOUSE MAN has also been nominated, in the Graphic Novel category. MM the graphic novel is the work of the amazing and talented Raya Golden, my sometime assistant and all-around minion, and long-time friend and quasi-goddaughter, based on a novelette that I originally wrote for Harlan Ellison's THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS back in the dawn of time (well, mid-70s) and eventually published in Damon Knight's anthology ORBIT 18. Written at one of the lowest points of my life, the novelette "Meathouse Man" is probably the darkest and most twisted thing I've ever written, a story so personally painful to me that I can hardly stand to re-read it even now… that Raya chose this tale, out of all my stories, to adapt and illustrate as a graphic novel, producing a work capable of earning a Hugo nomination… well, that's just bloody incredible, and a real testament to her dedication, her talent, and her madness. Bravo!
And that's my Hugo news.
As for the rest of the ballot… well, the good news is, more people nominated this year than ever before.
And the bad news… well, you guys are smart, you can figure that out for yourself. And if you can't, there a hundred blogs that will tell you. I expect it will only be a matter of hours before someone starts talking about "Hugofail." Prepare for the internet to go to war again.
I will leave that to others. I am just thrilled for David and Dan and David, for HBO, and most of all for Raya. (FWIW, a couple years back, James S.A. Corey was nominated for Best Novel [should have been nominated again this year, actually], and James S.A. Corey is half Ty Franck, who was my assistant at the time. And now Raya is nominated. I think I may be the first writer to have two assistants to be nominated for the Hug. Cool).
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Hugo Deadline At Hand
March 31, 2014 at 7:42 pm
Just a reminder. Today is the last day to nominate for the 2014 Hugo Awards, to be awarded this August in London. You will need to be a memer (attending or supporting) of LonCon to vote… but if you were a member of last year's San Antonio worldcon, or the forthcoming one in Spokane, you can still nominate.
The Hugos are the oldest award in the fields of SF and fantasy, and still far and away the most important. They are a fan award… a reader award… YOUR award… so do let your voice be heard.
To nominate, start at the official website here: http://www.loncon3.org/nominations.php
You will need your membership number and PIN.
(I don't have time to give a long list of recommendations this year, as I have done in past years. But I will suggest that you remember GARY GIANNI when nominating for Best Professional Artist, for his incredible work on the 2014 Ice & Fire calendar, and JANE JOHNSON and MALCOLM EDWARDS when nominating Best Professional Editor, Long Form. This is a British worldcon, after all, and these two titans of SF and fantasy publishing in the UK have NEVER received a single nomination for their contributions to our field, which is shocking and shameful. Both of them deserve places on the ballot this year).
((And even if you have already sent in your e-ballot, it's not too late. The LonCon format permits you to go back and add and even change right up to the deadline)).
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Tags: hugo awards
Back From Texas
September 6, 2013 at 11:43 pm
… with a little friend.
His name is Hugo.
Thanks to all of you who gave "Blackwater" your vote. We're thrilled that you enjoyed the episode enough to vote it our genre's greatest honor.
Thanks to Rory, for coming all the way from Glasgow to help me accept the award. He's just as tough as advertised; not only did he survive a Hugo ceremony, he downed TWO ghost pepper shots at the BWB party. And thanks to HBO for sending him, with a special tip o' the hat to Mara and Stephanie, who made it happen.
Thanks to David Benioff and Dan Weiss, world's greatest showrunners. My name is on the "Blackwater" script, but there's an awful lot of their writing in there as well, including that amazing original scene between Bronn and the Hound (I wanted to show that at the Hugos as our clip, but, er, LoneStarCon was concerned about the young lady sitting in Bronn's lap, so we went another way).
Thanks to Neil Marshall, who directed the hell out of "Blackwater," stepping in with barely a week's notice to make the episode everything we dreamed that it could be. (And he's back this year for another battle! There's a brave, brave man).
Thanks to our amazing cast and incredible crew. The wildfire explosion was a thing of beauty, truly, but it's the performances of Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Conleth Hill, Jerome Flynn, Rory McCann, Sophie Turner, Jack Gleeson, Sibel Kekilli, Eugene Simon, Roy Dotrice, Stephen Dillane, Liam Cunningham, Finn Jones, Charles Dance, and the rest of our company that made "Blackwater" what it was, bringing the words to life, and creating scenes that will linger in memory long after the green fire has faded. The SFX were great, but without characters to love and hate and fear for, the big explosion is just a light show.
And yes, I was surprised when Paul Cornell called out our name. I had hopes, of course, but DOCTOR WHO has taken this category in six of the past seven years, and we were up against not one Doctor, but three. For those who care about such things, "Blackwater" had the most first place votes, but the Doctor was closing in on us as the lower ranked DR. WHO episodes were eliminated and their votes cascaded into the others. It was only when the episode of FRINGE dropped out and their votes moved to us that "Blackwater" went over the top. Ah, the complexities of the Australian ballot…
FWIW, this was the second Hugo for GAME OF THRONES, and the sixth for me. I've won in five different categories now. And no, it never gets old.
So once more, to all of you:
THANKS!
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Wildfire v. The Doctor
March 30, 2013 at 3:51 pm
GAME OF THRONES will be taking on The Doctor this year in the Hugos… and FRINGE as well.
LoneStarCon 3 just announced this year’s Hugo nominations. “Blackwater,” the ninth episode of the second season, has been nominated in Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form. That was the episode with the wildfire and the big battle, I am sure you all recall, written by yours truly (with considerable help from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who added one of the shows’s best original scenes) and directed by Neil Marshall. We’ll be up against an episode of FRINGE, and no less than three episodes of DOCTOR WHO, which has owned the Short Form category for most of the past decade.
The full list of nominees can be found at:
http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/index.shtml
The Short Form finalists:
Doctor Who:”The Angels Take Manhattan” Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who:”Asylum of the Daleks” Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who:”The Snowmen” Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Wales)
Fringe:”Letters of Transit” Written by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Akiva Goldsman, J.H.Wyman, Jeff Pinkner. Directed by Joe Chappelle (Fox)
Game of Thrones:”Blackwater” Written by George R.R. Martin, Directed by Neil Marshall. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)
Thanks to all those who sent in nominations, whether you nominated us, or someone else. As I have said time and time again, the nominations are in many ways the most crucial part of the process.
Should be an interesting contest. I haven’t seen any of the last season of DR. WHO, so I don’t know which of those episodes is the strongest contender… but the Whofans are many and formidable, so I figure we are rather a long shot to upset the Doctor’s applecart. I know even less about FRINGE. But hey, you pays your money and you takes your pick, and the Hugos fall where they may.
Congratulations to all the other nominees, and my thanks to David, Dan, Bryan, Neil, and all the rest of the great cast and crew who make HBO’s GAME OF THRONES the hit it is.
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Tags: hugo awards
DEADLINE!
March 10, 2013 at 1:40 pm
If you’re a member of LoneStarCon 3 (this year’s worldcon), Loncon (next year’s worldcon), or Chicon 7 (last year’s worldcon), you are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards….
… but you need to do it today. March 10 is the deadline for nominations.
The nominating ballot can be found here: http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/
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Tags: hugo awards
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