{"id":677,"date":"2015-12-14T23:31:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T23:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=677"},"modified":"2017-06-30T00:43:24","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T00:43:24","slug":"more-hugo-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2015\/12\/14\/more-hugo-musings\/","title":{"rendered":"More Hugo Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking of awards, nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards will be opening soon… so maybe I should post a few more thoughts about some works I think worthy of consideration.<\/p>\n

I talked about the two Dramatic Presentation categories in previous posts, and also mentioned NEMESIS GAMES by James S.A. Corey as a possible contender in Best Novel. Tonight I want to draw your attention to a couple of possibilities for Best Related Work.<\/p>\n

Now, I will freely admit that Best Related Work is not my favorite Hugo category. It is kind of a grab bag category, the place fandom puts stuff that it likes that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Nobody really seems to have a clear idea what a “related work” is… but past nominees have included biographies, autobiographies, essays, critical works, encyclopedias, science books, graphic novels (before there was a graphic novel category), and other, stranger things. <\/p>\n

This year, I think there a couple of strong ‘related works’ worthy of attention.<\/p>\n

THE WHEEL OF TIME COMPANION was a mammoth concordance of facts about the universe and characters of the late Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series, edited and assembled by Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons. It’s a labor of love, and everything one could possibly want to know about Jordan’s universe is in there.<\/p>\n

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Robert Jordan was a giant in the history of modern fantasy, but during his lifetime he was never nominated for a Hugo, for a Nebula, for a World Fantasy Award (the entire WOT series was nominated at Loncon after his death, but lost). The COMPANION is worthy of consideration in its own right, I think… and a Hugo for Harriet, Jim’s widow and Jim’s editor, would be a splendid way to acknowledge his contribution to the genre he loved so much.<\/p>\n

Biographies and memoirs have often contended and won in this category before: Jack Vance’s memoir was a recent winner, as was a brilliant biography of Alice Sheldon. The first volume of William Patterson’s Heinlein biography was nominated (though it lost).<\/p>\n

This year we have something different: Felicia Day’s delightful look at her life, YOU’RE NEVER WEIRD ON THE INTERNET (Almost).<\/p>\n

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No, Felicia’s not an SF writer like Vance or Heinlein or Pohl… but she’s certainly an SF person, the queen of the geek girls, an actress, a gamer, a producer. Her whole life has been lived in and around the worlds of SF and fantasy, and her credits include EUREKA and THE GUILD and DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG and SUPERNATURAL and… Her book is a lot of fun, witty and wise and insightful… and besides, if she was nominated, maybe she’d come to Kansas City, and it would be a hoot and a half to have Felicia at MidAmericon.<\/p>\n

So there you are. Two books to consider when nominating for Best Related Work. I am sure there’s other good stuff out there as well… let’s get some of it on the ballot this year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of awards, nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards will be opening soon… so maybe I should post a few more thoughts about some works I think worthy of consideration. I talked about the two Dramatic Presentation categories in previous posts, and also mentioned NEMESIS GAMES by James S.A. Corey as a possible contender in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":678,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}