Virtual Worldcon/Hugo roundup, bits of reading roundup, and Good Omens
Semi-intentionally and semi-just-because, I ended up sort of de facto having a virtual Worldcon weekend, in the sense that while I couldn't be there in person this year, last year's eperience gave me enough of a taste for Worldcons that I spent Friday noon through Monday morning following Dublin2019's Twitter, reading the con newsletters, and watching pretty much anything that could be streamed, including, entirely to my surprise, all of Friday and Saturday's WSFS business meetings, which were both fascinating in their own way and also left me with deep amazement that any decisions ever get made at all -- Hugo-related decisions, but also just democratically administered decisions in general. I think it was when I heard the sentence "I appeal the ruling of the chair that the parliamentary inquiry takes precedence over the motion to refer" and essentially understood it that was the final straw XD).
So, yeah, I watched the Opening Ceremonies + Retro Hugos on Thursday; the time difference worked out so that the opening ceremonies started over my lunch hour, so I was able to stream the first part live, and then, when I had to go do something else at 1 p.m.,
cyanshadow took over live-blogging them, without premeditation but 100% seamlessly :D, and then I went back and watched the rest in the evening. I caught only about half of the San Jose Worldcon76 Opening Ceremonies, but I have to say, these were A LOT more fun, probably by virtue of taking themselves a lot less seriously. I did think some of the scripted jokes went on a bit too long, but overall I found Ellen Klages and her co-host delightful (the uncommented cross-dressing for the 40s Hugos, with Ellen Klages in fedora and Dave Rudden in the fascinator), enjoyed all the cracks about the Irish language, that one metric vs imperial joke, and also, honestly, anything said with an Irish accent is at least 33% more fun to listen to, so, that also helped. The jokes that didn't get old were the, presumably unscripted, struggles with the Retro Hugos envelopes, the highlight of which was Diane Duane posing proudly with her Swiss Army knife. I did not make an effort to educate myself on the Retro Hugos at all, or vote on anything, even the works I recognized (The Little Prince, and I've probably read the Asimov and Bradbury short fiction, though I don't remember them, just because in my teens I read everything of theirs I could get my hands on), but I did follow
ambyr's diligent journey through them, and was able to cheer based on opinions borrowed from her write-ups. I thought the Hugo bases were really pretty this year -- especially the lovely turquoise ceramic glaze of the Retro -- and enjoyed the presentation of them a lot more than at the San Jose Worldcon. And I like Irish folk(y) music, so the instrumentals and the choir performing at the end were fun to listen to (and I especially liked the way the choir were dressed, with individual blue accents -- scarves, belts, necklaces, ties -- over individual black outfits). This was also my introduction to Afua Richardson, who was one of the Hugo ceremonies co-hosts, so it was good to be prepared -- I enjoyed her presentation style, but it was very different from John Picacio's last year ("freight train"), so it was good to have the forewarning. Also, I got to admire her silver hairnet thing, which looked like she was attending the Purple Wedding as the poisoner :D It was also neat to see Sana Takeda ("and her possibly invisible interpreter"), who I think wasn't at our Worldcon, or at least did not get up to collect either of her Hugos.
And on Sunday I sat down to properly watch the Hugo Ceremonies live (although an inconveniently timed arrival of people who wanted to talk, instead of collecting B and driving off, made me miss the first 10 minutes or so, and I tuned in for the first time in the middle of Ada Palmer's Campbell presentation). This meant that I missed the part where speech-to-text closed captioning was rendering her very lovely speech as nonsense, until I went back and watched it later (I was happy to see she did not seem upset by this; or if she was, she hid it like a pro, and the moment when she glances behind her at the CC screen and facepalms/cracks up was pretty great. Huh, it would appear that Ada Palmer was the highlight of this Hugo ceremony for me, which is a little bit an indication of how I felt about a lot of the wins, and a lot an indication of how much I continue to fangirl Ada Palmer.) I was surprised to see Palmer presenting once again; turns out, Rebecca Roanhorse couldn't make it due to difficulties stemming from ID theft :( -- but it was lovely to have an (unexpected) opportunity to listen to her again. But anyway, there was an actual Campbell winner this year, too. It happened to be one of the two wins I'm most disappointed by. I thought the Campbell slate was very strong, and I would've been happy with any of my top 4 winning (Kuang, Solomon, Arden, Chakraborty) and would've been reasonably pleased if Prasad had won. Ng was at the bottom of my ballot, but while her writing merely doesn't seem to work for me, I find her way of interacting with fandom actively off-putting, and opening her acceptance speech with "John W Campbell, for whom this award is named, was a fucking fascist" and launching into a full-scale diatribe from there did not change my opinion on this. (The heartfelt shoutout to Hong Kong and the protesters there -- she was born in Hong Kong -- I could appreciate. But I had to listen to the speech twice before I heard a single thank-you, and even that was difficult to parse as any actual gratitude.) Anyway, I had to laugh when Afua Richardson, who was co-MC-ing, came back to the podium and mellowly, languidly said, "My... Congratulations." (I realize, based on reading reactions, that most people seem to feel positively about Ng's speech. That's fine. I'm taking it as basically just further proof that Jeannette Ng's stuff is Not For Me. Also, afterwards, it occurred to me that this means she'll be the one presenting the Campbell Award in 2021. That's bound to be interesting... Though I assume presenters' speeches are pre-vetted in a way that acceptance speeches can't be.)
Sadly, my Hugo experience got worse before it got better, because now that Lodestar is its own not-a-Hugo thing, rather than a trial category like last year, it was presented right after the Campbell, and not only did my dead-last choice win yet again, in this case it was a choice I put below No Award with extreme prejudice, breaking my own rules for No Awarding (because I hadn't finished it or read everything on the slate). I am so baffled and so annoyed by how anyone who's read any other book on the ballot could have voted for 'Children of Blood and Bone' over any other contender. Just, UGH. Come on, folks, YA deserves better than this hodge-podge of fantasy cliches and shoddy worldbuilding, especially when there are other books on the very same ballot dealing with the same (and/or equally worthy) social justice issues with 100x the nuance and creativity. I knew this was a possibility, of course, because this book had won the Nebula, but at least it didn't win the Locus, and I thought that Dread Nation (which had) would have a pretty good shot. I had a couple of moments where I wondered if I should just stop watching now, before more stuff I disliked won, but, honestly, even though I did have two other things ranked below No Award (Space Opera and Binti 3), neither of them winning would've incensed me as much as Children of Blood and Bone, so I kept watching.
Best Fanartist went to Likhain, who was 4th on my ballot, but a) this was better than 6-7th which we'd been tracking till then, b) I felt much less strongly about this category than Campbell or Lodestar, c) Mia gave a lovely speech, and d) the golden laurel crown/winged helm + gorget thing she was wearing was amazing and really fun to look at.
Things continued to improve when my actual top choice (Foz Meadows) won Best Fan Writer. Foz wasn't there in person, but Liz Bourke read her speech, which was one of my favorite of the evening.
Neither of the Fancasts I was rooting for won (Be the Serpent and Galactic Suburbia), but at least neither did my least favorite one, and while I ranked Our Opinions Are Correct at #5 on my ballot, Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz were adorably excited when accepting their award. (And it doesn't surprise me that a fancast run by two pro authors has a good shot at winning in its first year on the ballot.)
Best fanzine was not a category where I had any hope for my top favorite winning (Rocket Stack Rank has consistently come in last, but for myself, I'll take the extremely helpful data pulling and number crunching over all the woke articles in the other zines. So I was quite pleased when my second favorite,
ladybusiness won.
For Best Semiprozine, Uncanny won like last year, but this year I actually had them at the top of my ballot too, so I was happier about that, and also enjoyed seeing Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (and her guide dog) up on stage and hearing her speech.
Best Art Book special category went to the illustrated Earthsea omnibus, which I had ranked pretty low on account of not being an art book. But it gives LeGuin Hugos in six different categories, a record, which, I'm OK with that I guess? Especially as my top vote in this category was also not entirely an art book. And Charles Vess, who accepted the best art book award, said some neat things about LeGuin being an exacting collaborator who always kept him on his toes. He might as well have stayed on stage, since he also won Best Pro Artist right after. (He was also not at the top of my list, but I was expecting him to win, so this was not a surprise.)
The only win less surprising than that was the Editor short form, which went to Gardner Dozois of course. (I had him third on my ballot, but fully expected him to win posthumously.) Which made all the more odd that the person accepting the award seemed surprised by the win, or at least unprepared.
Editor long form was the category I'm torn on. The winner, Navah Wolfe, was someone I really wanted to nominate and vote for in the Editor short form category, but she's not yet eligible for that one (one more anthology!). I did actually nominate her for Long form, because she was eligible, but then I actually read A Conspiracy of Truths and Space Opera, which she was editor on, and I had to put her down last of my five. But she was so adorable during her acceptance speech! And she seems like a cool person. And I really, really like what she and Dominic Parisien have done with their anthologies. So... I'm glad she has a Hugo? But I don't feel like she deserves THIS Hugo.
I wasn't expecting any excitement in the Dramatic categories, because last year nobody showed up to claim the awards. But this time there were acceptance speeches from both of the winners! Short form went to "Janet(s)" (The Good Place), which was one of only two nominated things I'd watched, which was pretty cool, even though "Jeremy Bearimy" was my favorite of the two. And I really enjoyed the video acceptance speech (which I think was meant to serve in case of either episode winning). The Spider-Verse won, unsurprisingly, for Long Form, and two very excited Irish ladies gave the acceptance speech.
Best Series was one of the not very many categories where I had a single strong favorite that I was rooting for -- and alas, Machineries of Empire did not win. But at least the award went to my second choice, Wayfarers (which I respect, even if I don't love it; or at least I respect the second two books and Becky Chambers' ability to grow as an author -- I've liked every book in the series more than the previous one, which doesn't happen much). And Chambers' speech was really great, sweet and heartfelt and funny.
Best Graphic Story was a boring category for me, because I was pretty sure my least favorite nominee would win, and it did, for the third straight year. I was hoping at least Sana Takeda would be accepting, since she'd been at the Opening Ceremonies, but nope.
Then came the win that surprised me the most: AO3 for Best Related Work. Which, I guess other people were not surprised? And, I suppose, it's an easy nominee to vote for, for those people who don't read Best Related Work nominees, or at least do not read them exhaustively? Like, I could see how it would be a logical consensus winner with the ranked-choice voting system. Anyway, I'd been rooting for the Jo Walton book, and still think it should have won, but I was actually expecting the LeGuin interview transcripts to win, because LeGuin has been consistently winning everything -- and I had that ranked below AO3 on my ballot (where I had it second). So... a little disappointed, but it could've been worse? Though actually I liked all the nominees in some measure. I will say, I really liked the way the AO3 group did the acceptance speech, asking for the lights to be undimmed and for everyone in the audience who felt part of the AO3 community to stand up. Also, I was glad to have at least this opportunity to admire Naomi Novik's gorgeous (possibly faerie silver) necklace -- but I'm getting ahead of things.
I was fully expecting "The Secret Lives of Nine Negro Teeth" to win Best Short Story, considering that it had won both the Nebula and the Locus already, and I was resigned to it, because at least I liked it well enough, and had it on my ballot at #3, and at least better that than "STET" or "Raptor Sisters". But I was DELIGHTED to hear that my favorite, "A Witch's Guide to Escape" had won instead! And although Alix E Harrow couldn't be there in person, her speech was probably my favorite acceptance speech of the night, recognizing a lot of the other nominees and just speaking so warmly about the genre.
Best Novelette went to Zen Cho, whose "story about failure" was the nominee I ranked last of the five I read (although I *enjoyed* it more than The Only Harmless Great Thing -- but I thought it was much weaker than the other three nominees I read (Nine Last Days on Planet Earth, The Thing About Ghost Stories, and The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections), any of which I would've been happy to see win. But at least, unlike the other places where the Hugo (or not-a-Hugo) went to my dead-last pick, at least I actually liked the thing. And Zen Cho's acceptance speech was very cute.
Novella win for Artificial Condition did not feel like a surprise, but it was my top pick, so, yay. And, as I remarked to Best Chat, Martha Wells seemed pleased by the opportunity to say the word "asshole" from the Hugo podium (referring to ART's full 'name').
When they brought out an astronaut to present the award for Best Novel, I wondered if this presaged a win for Calculating Stars, or was just a reflection of the fact that 4 of 6 nominees were space stories. Well, whether they made arrangements after the winner was known or it was just a coincidence, The Calculating Stars did win. Which, I had it ranked as #2 on my ballot, and I had liked the book -- but it was not until I heard the winner that I realized how much I'd wanted Spinning Silver to win this category. Still, MRK was super-sparkly, in bling and smile, as she beamed at presenter Jeanette Epps ("So that's a real lady astronaut!"), and I quite liked her speech, too.
So, in terms of Hugo results satisfaction -- I could've sworn I did a roundup last year but I can't find it, so maybe I dreamed it? but anyway, I want to have a record of this:
- Categories in which my favorite won and it was a pleasant surprise: 2 (best short story, "witch's guide"; best fan writer, Foz Meadows)
- Categories in which my favorite won, but that's what I was expecting anyway: 3 (best novella, Artificial Condition; dramatic long form, Spiderverse; semiprozine, Uncanny)
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, but something else from the top half of my ballot won, and I'm pretty pleased: 2 (fanzine, ladybusiness; dramatic short form, "Janet(s)")
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, something else from the top half of my ballot won, but I'm still disappointed: 3 (best novel, Calculating stars; best series, Wayfarers; related work, AO3)
- Categories in which I'm torn on the winner: 1 (editor long form, Navah Wolfe)
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, but the nominee I was expecting did, and I'm fine with/resigned to that: 3 (editor short form, Dozois; best artist, Charles Vess; graphic story, Monstress)
- Categories in which something from the bottom half of my ballot won, but I still liked the work: 2 (novelette, Zen Cho; fanartist, Likhain)
- Categories in which something from the bottom half of my ballot won, and I'm disappointed, but it could've been worse: (fancast, OOAC; artbook, Earthsea)
- Categories in which my dead-last pick won and I'm unhappy with the results: 2 (Campbell, Ng; Lodestar, CoBaB)
I feel like this is a skewed-slightly-more-negative breakdown than last year, but not dramatically so? It just felt a lot more negative in the moment because, unlike last year, I had something that I ranked below No Award win, well and also because the two categories I was most disappointed by kicked off the night.
In between the awards, I thought the other presentations -- the somber In Memoriam, which included the Kyoto Animation fire victims, and a lot more Russian names than I remember from last year; Afua Richardson's tribute and song to Nichelle Nichols, and Michael Scott's tribute to Ireland. This all added ~15-20 min to the "freight train" ceremony timing from last year, but didn't feel overlong. Oh! and when the Hugo Administrator spoke, I really appreciated the shout-out to the software guy who designed the voter interface. It was great, and I hope subsequent Worldcons make use of it. Oh, and when I went back and watched the beginning, I was also really amused by the cracks about the "high security envelopes".
**
Then, right after I was done watching, it turned out that the Hugo stats were already available, and
cyanshadow and I dove in with abandon :D
Novel: Not surprised Spinning Silver was second, but it was less close than I would have expected, although there's an even bigger drop-off between 'Silver' and the lower places. Also happy to see that Space Opera, which went below No Award for me, was last (though I definitely feel like the fifth place fight was much too close). Otherwise the rankings don't align with mine. (I think Revenant Gun was hurt by being the only book on the ballot that could not be fully appreciated as a stand-alone; while Wayfarers 3 is also technically the third in a trilogy, it in no way relies on the previous two books for characters or plot.) Over in nominations, I was intrigued to see that The Poppy War was 7th on the list, although it's a pretty steep drop off from Space Opera. Blackfish City was the next one, and Foundrside, Witchmark (which I'm glad didn't make it in), and The Consuming Fire next, and Semiosis also made the long list. (Also, the final rankings ended up being pretty close to the ranking by nomination, with just Trail of Lightning and Wayfarers 3 swapped.)
Novella: This was the shocker in the full results for me. Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach LAST? WTF, Hugo voters? (I'm tempted to uncharitably assume that people who voted for it low were not able to keep up with the in media res worldbuilding.) I was also surprised by how low The Black God's Drums scored. Basically, besides Artificial Condition winning and Binti 3 being towards the end, the rankings are almost the reverse of mine. I was also a bit surprised that Sugar Sky was third, overall and in first place votes -- I was expecting it to be higher because of Seanan McGuire, but maybe the McGuire effect is wearing off? Because note series results, too.
The neat thing in nominations here is that Martha Wells could've had half the ballot to herself XP Which, if she hadn't passed on the other two Murderbots, would've spared me the need to read Binti 3, but also would've bumped Black God's Drums, which I'm glad to have read. Tensorate novella and Flowers of Vashnoi ere 10 and 11 on the long list.
Novelette: This one is also weird. I was disappointed to see Nine Last Days on Planet Earth in 4th place, because it's a lovely and beautifully crafted story. I was even more surprised to see "The Only Harmless Great Thing" in fifth, because I thought that one was likely to win. It had the second-most or even most-most first place votes in all the rounds until it got to its final position. I guess a lot of people liked it a lot, but it was sort of an outlier and as other nominees were eliminated, those votes went to other stories? And having "When We Were Starless" dead last in the voting further validates my decision not to read it. The interesting thing in nominations here is that The Only harmless Great Thing had over 2x the number of nominations -- and then ended up doing quite poorly in the voting (while the others had more commensurate ranking in nominations and final votes). Was there a huge push to nominate this one or something? Clearly it didn't do much for its final standing... Two of my nominees that didn't make the short list were on the long list -- Thirty-Three Percent Joe (which I'm still surprised got only 28 noms, considering it was from last year's category winner, and also a lot of fun), and Agent of Utopia. And apparently another Bolander novelette.
Short Story: I'm surprised by how not-close the "Witch's Guide" win was! -- because I saw more criticism of the story on my flist than praise. No surprise that "Nine Negro Teeth" was in second place (if it didn't win), but I am surprised that "Rose MacGregor" was pretty close behind. Pleased to see "Raptor Sisters", which I had ranked last, was last overall. I am surprised that "Court Magician" was also ranked quite low, but I guess it's the most "ordinary" of the stories on the ballot, so I'm even not surprised that it trailed "Raptor Sisters" in some of the place-determination votes. In nominations, actually, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by "Witch's Guide" winning, as it also ha the most noms, but I'm unsurprised that "STET" had a lot, too. The rest follow the final rankings pretty closely. And the long list has "Field Biology of the Wee Fairies" (which I didn't nominate but was expecting to see on the final ballot), "Sour Milk Girls" (which I came across in the semiproine packets and really enjoyed), YHL's "The Starship and the Temple Cat", and Szpara's dinosaur story (oy...). Not any of the short stories I nominated that didn't make the ballot, though.
Series: I was not expecting this order! Glad but also surprised to see that Hexarchate beat the Toby Daye series (though it was kind of close and Toby was leading until the very end). A bit sad that the Centenal Cycle was last, but I suppose it's understandable, as it's a series with no recent Hugo nominated works, unlike Wayfarers, Machineries, and Xuya (all of which featured on this year's ballot) or long-time followers (like Laundry Files and Toby Daye). In nominations, I was really pleased to see Hexarchate was the series with the most noms! Too bad this didn't hold over to the final voting... Just past the cut off are Earthse and Murderbot, which I'm pretty sure are not actually eligible? because I think Murderbot has to be too short (if all four books were properly novella length) an I don't think Earthsea had any NEW word published this year, despite the illustrated omnibus. I'm also pretty sure RoL, down at the bottom, didn't have enough new words to become re-eligible after finalist status in 2017. But I think they just don't vet the long list.
Best Related Work: Indeed the thing I was expecting to win (LeGuin 'Conversations') was secon, both in overall rankings and first-place votes (and the gap between it and AO3 kept shrinking through subsequent passes, which kind of makes sense, as AO3 was one of the oddball nominees). The Second Place ranking is really weird, with the Hugo book starting on the bottom there, but I was glad it got third place at least (though I still think it should have won). And while I myself also ranked the Astounding bio pretty low, I was sad to see it dead last, 'cos I thought it was an interesting if flawed book. The odd thing to me here is that Astounding, which ended up showing so poorly in the voting, had the most noms. Was it just a fluke of the timing or something? a campaign? And Serpent!Alex's hopepunk article just made it onto the longlist, good for them.
Best Graphic Story: Black Panther in second place, really?? And 8 votes apart??? And starting with the most first place votes?! But... it was boring and UGLY. I guess I'm glad Monstress won over it, even though I had them ranked as Black Panther > Monstress in 5 and 6 slot of my ballot. But I can recognie, objectively, the merits of Monstress while also not enjoying it one bit. I don't understand what people liked about the Black Panther comic besides the franchise tie-in. But whatever, at least my favorite, Abbott, got the third spot. I was a bit surprised that On a Sunbeam was last, especially as from the number of votes it looks like a LOT of people read it and just didn't like it. Not a ton interesting to me in the nominations here, except that I was trying to figure out if Runaways was eligible, and apparently at least volume 1 was? Or at least enough people thought so.
Dramatic long form: I was sad but unsurprised to see that Sorry to Bother You was ranked last -- I can definitely see how it's a movie that could turn off a fair number of people. Other than me having it ranked 4th and not last, this is actually the category whose rankings align with my own the most, probably: I had the superhero movies ranked in exactly this order, and the horror movies too. Holy cow, Black Panther had SO MANY NOMINATIONS -- 700+ -- and Spider-Verse had almost 500 -- compared to ~300 and change for the most nominated novel. But I guess there are a lot more eligible novels than movies. I'm surprised more people nominated Solo than Incredibles 2 or Deadpool 2 (the former was on my ballot and I toyed with the latter).
Dramatic short form: Mostly I'm puzzled by "Janet(s)" winning and "Jeremy Bearimy" from the same franchise being 5th. I thought "Jeremy" was HILARIOUS and liked it a lot more than "Janet(s)"; I can definitely see that if one were just watching the individual episode rather than the whole show, "Janet(s)" would be easier to appreciate, since "Jeremy" is really funny if you know what Chidi is normally like. But still! The two Doctor Who episodes are ranked sequentially, at 3 and 4, which is what I would expect -- not having a gap of three between them... I was also not expecting "Janet(s)" to have so many more nominations than "Jeremy Bearimy" -- presumably these did come from people who do actually watch TGP, so I wonder if everybody liked it more, or if this was strategic in that people picked an episode that could work as a stand-alone?
Editor, short form: Not surprised that Dozois started out with 2x the number of first place votes. I was pleased to see that Neil Clarke, who was my top choice this year, was second. And actually, other than Dozois winning (as I fully expected) and the 5/6 positions switched, this also aligns pretty closely to my rankings. Interesting that the two editors who ended up with lowest rankings had the most nominations -- presumably some kind of campaign. And I see Dominik Parisien, whom I nominated, at least made the long list, and Strahan almost made the cut-off.
Editor, long form: Meh, my two favorites were actually in position 5 and 6, and my last-ranked person won, and the person I didn't rank was in second place, so this is one of the categories where my ballot is pretty much reversed again in the final rankings. Also, Cyan and I wondered about Anne Groell coming in below No Award in first place votes, but it seems like there's a contingent of people who just don't think Editor Long Form should be a thing? Because the same thing happened to two other editors last year. This is another place where there must've been a nominations campaign, since Navah Wolfe has almost 2.5x the nominations of the next highest person. Joe Monti was just below the cut-off, though I don't suppose that means he was actually eligible, necessarily.
Pro artist: My favorite was in third place, and I have no other strong feelings in this category this year. I'm assuming Picacio's high number of noms (when he ranked pretty low in the voting) is due to name recognition from San Jose's Worldcon -- I know that was partly behind my nom.
Semiprozine: Ah, here we go -- THIS is the category that best aligns to my ballot. Other than 5/6 being reversed, the rankings are exactly the same as mine. But aww, EscapePod was next and would've presumably made the list if not for the Shimmer noms, which I assume were some kind of concerted effort.
Fanzine: Other than the winner, the only thing I really care about is the confirmation that my favorite was dead last. And still pretty close to the No Award votes, but a tiny bit less close than last year. I'm glad File770 recusing itself for all eternity after last year's win meant RSR got to be on the ballot at all.
Fancast: The thing that's weird to me here is how the first-place votes and final rankings are not consistent at all. Like, Coode Street podcast seemed on track for second-third place based on first place votes, but then ended up dead last. I guess that's an indication that it's kind of the outlier here? The other take away is, Fangirl Happy Hour was second, which means I'm actually grateful to OOAC for winning, because I would've been a lot more disappointed if that had won. My favorites, Serpents and Galactic Suburbia, are in third and fourth place, meh.
Fan Writer: Another category where I'm happy with the top three results! I'd ranked Elsa ahead of Bogi, but they and the winner, Foz, were my top three.
Fan artist: I'm going to assume that Ariela Housman being last is at least partially the result of not being allowed to include the Lady Astrnaut noveau in the Hugo packet because of stupid "public displayy" rules interpretation, and continue to be really mad on her behalf. (Hopefully the nonsense will be fixed next year, "forever"). My two favorites were on the bottom of the rankings, but other than the "public display" unfairness, I don't feel very strongly about this category.
Best Art book: Sad to see Tolkien ended up so low, but other than that, beyond-the-winner rankings make sense to me. I was wondering if the John Howe ACTUAL Tolkien art book was going to show up on the long list, and it did, and might've made the cut off if illustrated Earthsea and the Tolkien exhibit had been eliminated as non-artbooks. (Apparently the Whelan should've actually been eligible, despite the copyright date.)
Lodestar: Dread Nation was second and Tess was third (though Tess had actually gotten second-most first place votes). Cruel Prince is third, and The Belles is last, and while I don't entirely agree with the relative ratings on those four, they do make sense to me. The winner still doesn't. At least Dread Nation had more nominations than this drek... :/
Campbell: So, besides the fact that I'm not thrilled by who won, I was also quite shocked to see that R.F.Kuang only goth 5th place -- though, I suppose, as the only newcomer this year, and one of only two people who weren't on the ballot last year, she was at something of a handicap? And I could also see the grim nature of her book turning people off. Since four of the six were also on the ballot last year, I couldn't resist cross-checking the results -- especially as only Arden has published significant amounts of new material since last year, I think? The really surprising to me thing was that Vina Jie-Min Prasad dropped from second to LAST! Did people really hate the story that opens with literal gun porn so much? Ng and Solomon were 3 and 4 last year, so this year's 1 and 2 positions kind of make sense? And Arden was ranked after them and still is. So fairly consistent among themselves except for Prasad. I'm again surprised that someone like Kuang, who got a lot of nominations, ended up doing so poorly in the rankings. But at least Adeyemi didn't make the short list, and I'm also happy that C.L.Polk did not. As for Alexandra Rowland, I did briefly consider nominating them, but long list sounds about right (and they will still be eligible next year, I think?)
*
I still haven't written up all the Hugo Homework books, but they wouldn't all fit into this post anyway, so I'm going to offload a few of the ones I do have written up:
32. Charles Stross, The Concrete Jungle (Laundry Files novella, which apparently won a Hugo in 2005) -- I've tried Charlie Stross before, with the Merchant Princes books, but this was the first thing of his I've finished. I'd been aware of the Laundry Files books for a while, but bouncing off Merchant Princess kept me from trying them out earlier and, hm. I'm still not entirely sure whether this is something I'm interested in reading more of. Wiki describes the series as "mix[ing] the genres of Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour", and like half of those are a thing that appeals to me? (though I confess that I thought it was urban fantasy rather than sci-fi, because of the things it reminded me of). I don't like Lovecraftian horror, but it's also not necessarily a turn-off (e.g. I find those elements reasonably amusing in the Whyborne & Griffin books), and I would say I'm fairly agnostic on spy thrillers. The mix of SFF and "workplace humour" -- which, really, I'd call bureaucratic satire, I think -- reminded me of a couple of different things, Lukyanenko's Dozor books (Night Watch, Day Watch, etc.) and their spiritual progenitor, my beloved Monday Starts on Saturday (especially because the lead in this novella is an IT guy and Ponedelnik's lead is a programmer, but also in invoking real scientific figures in the study of magic, which I like) and also a little bit of Brust's Good Guys. But... I kind of hated Bob Howard and anyone connected to the Laundry who got any sort of characterization. Which may well be intentional, since I assume the spy thriller part of the recipe means you're going to have morally gray characters doing terrible things in the name of the greater good, to prevent even more terrible things from happening -- which is something I can enjoy. But here the "even more terrible things" were nebulous and/or ridiculous, and the ostensibly morally gray things were pretty damn terrible, so the equation didn't balance in the Laundry's favor for me. I enjoyed the bureacratic and magical worldbuilding, but with one notable exception (the central McGuffin, which was pretty damn interesting!) it ended up just making me think of Dozor and being a less interesting, less likeable version of a thing I like. (The Dozor books are far from flawless! I don't even like some of them very much, but the structure of the Watches and the way their roles and histories are revealed and complicated is genuinely cool, there are some really fun characters, and Lukyanenko pulls off some really neat twists.)
But back to this actual book! with spoilers! So the central premise, the magical idea, is actually really cool and the one thing I really liked here -- the use of CCTV cameras as a basilisk stare generator, the power of that, and the way it can be hacked. The "primary sources" were a bit of a mixed bag for me, and I'm not sure they all carried their weight, but I enjoyed the scientist name dropping. And I did enjoy the science, too, though the transmutation of carbon into silicon really bothered me until Howard lampshaded it by pointing out that the extra mass had to be coming from somewhere. So, magic-as-science, technologically assisted magic -- great stuff! But that was Plot more than Worldbuiding, and so it could only carry me so far. Like I said, I didn't like Bob Howard, and nobody else except the detective lady (whom I did like) felt like a character. And then there was Howard's harridan matrixed boss, and HER boss, who came across like such unpleasant caricatures of women in the workplace, like... really? I mean, yes, they are also non-technical, bean-counting middle management playing at departamental politics, vs Bob's technical expertise, but it was unpleasant enough that I actually googled around. Stross seems to think that “something of a miracle that Bob isn’t a complete misogynist shitbag, given the average outcome of that generation of male computer science graduates" -- and, OK, not a complete one, and probably even more of a contrast to the Lovecraft protagonists, but IDK, I don't feel like handing out cookies just yet. (Maybe I'm just extra annoyed because Harriet et al made me think of Ponedelnik's Modest Matveevich, who is such a beautiful portrait of a bureaucrat who does not understand and does not care about any of the important things his institution is doing, and is not fazed by this at all).
Anyway, I'm torn... I'm sure there's a lot of cool magical stuff and neat plot things elsewhere in this series. Question is, would I enjoy it enough to put up with more of the characters? And/or is there a better entry point for me than the Bob Howard books? (I gather the series changed protagonists at some point..?)
34. Cat Valente, Space Opera -- I was vaguely curious about this book when
ikel89 first picked it up, despite a) not caring about Eurovision and b) bouncing off most things by Cat Valente I've tried (The Refrigerator Monologues being the only exception. Then K HATED it with a passion, and I backburnered it again, despite having a copy on hand. But then it was nominated for the Hugos and, once I was done with everything else that I conceivably thought I might want to read, I picked it up, fully expecting to have to force myself through a self-imposed 50 pages before ranking it last and moving on. But actually it ended up being worse than that? Because usually I recoil instinctively from Valente's overabundant prose (I remarked in my Hugo roundup post that this book needed to be edited with a machete, and K retorted with "flamethrower", which had honestly been a word I'd been considering!), and stopping reading is a sweet relief. But here... there was JUST ENOUGH here that I liked, just enough clever metaphors or inventive ideas buried in the jungle of TOO MANY WORDS that I actually kept on reading! Disliking ~90% of the text, which took the kernel of a clever idea and then smothered it in layers of glitter until it was no longer clever or funny (dear Cat Valente, not everything needs fifteen fucking tortured and belabored metaphors stacked in a row. Honest!), but getting *just enough* return on my time investment that I kept going until the bitter end. And once I got to the bitter end, I was further underwhelmed because... there was nothing there. Nothing like a profound pay-off, nothing like a good joke -- it just felt utterly pointless, and it was this which caused me to drop it from merely last to below No Award.
I don't think it's that I've outgrown the Douglas Adams mode of sci-fi comedy. Admittedly, I haven't reread H2G2 in a couple of decades, and wasn't that impressed with Eoin Colfer's go at it, but I think the problem is, Douglas Adams is actually funny, and Cat Valente... is not, for the most part, or at least not in the same mode, and repeating the same unfunny joke/riffing on it over the course of novel does not make it funnier! (Mr-Looney-of-the-Tunes and everything of your ilk, I'm looking at you!) And some things are just a bad idea to begin with, like the space red panda aliens who literally say the same thing five times. I get your clever way of showing variation across parallel timelines; unfortunately, it is also REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING to read! -- much more annoying than it is clever!
There are a couple of things I liked, either because they were touched on briefly and not belabored or because the jokes/conceits miraculously did not outstay their welcome (at least for me). I mostly liked the inventiveness of the alien species, the sea-squirt Alunizar with their deposed Empire, the zombie virus Voorpret ("I'm not prejudiced against you [...] I don't even see species. I just think of everyone as pre-Voorpret. I love you for who you are: a viable host."), the Prozac-tinted world of the Litost, the Lummutis with their avatars playing an endless computer game through life, the psychic hurricane, and so on (unfortunately, the aliens we spent the most time with definitely stopped being funny long before I ran out of book). I quite liked the way the Elakh, living on their very black planet, use the word "black" as various positive terms in their slang: "it's all black", "that jam was well dark", hooked me up right inky", "we do it so damn sable", "you're in the black with me", etc. (although I ran out of amusement at this about five phrases before the end of the scene) I liked the concept that something like Halloween exists for all sentient species, because there is "something about the achievement of sentience that immediately fills the afflicted with the longing to become something else [35 superfluous words snipped from the end of this sentence. You're welcome!]" I liked the idea of Englishblokeman ("Faster than a well-ordered queue, more powerful than a muttered tut, able to walk right by police officers without being harassed.") and also Oort's cat.
And there are a couple of nice turns of phrase, or things that provoked me to smile, buried in the excess of verbiage: "the pent-up sexuality on unwalloped pinatas", "akin to a peacock vomiting forever into the howling void", "like the cavemen of Lascaux suddenly transported into the Sistine Chapel just in time for a live performance of Phantom of the Opera as sung by Tolkien's elves", secret service agents "attempting to assert their dominance using only biceps, baritones, and a genetic inability to remove their sunglasses", "the black adrenaline of stage fright", "[luck] that dealt Europe a royal flush of luxury high-speed horses, butter-dispensing cows, jumper-shedding sheep, bacon-distributing pigs, and nonunionized donkeys, and Australia a full hand of fuck all" (though, really, I would've pruned the pigs and the donkeys, because my attention started wandering around there. It doesn't need to be an exhaustive list!), "Carefully avoiding major organs [the Yurtmak] fondly stabbed her mother and father good-bye", "Mira, he supposed, had always lived in her own head and allowed others to visit once in a while. With advance notice. And extensive decontamination protocols.", "wearing last night's rhinestones and tomorrow's hangover", "a throng of brutally pale, slender people who looked like basketball players rolled in antlers as painted by El Greco", "eyeliner fit for a raccoon in heat", "He'd brought a pop song to a drag-out fight. They should have sent the Red Army Choir instead."
I mean, there's also a semblance of a plot? but it's ridiculous and also doesn't matter. And some social justice stuff drowning in the morass of text, about gender/pronouns and colonialism and prejudice and immigration and climate change (and actually the ridiculously manipulative way in which it is revealed that spoilers! Mira's car accident death was actuallly not because Decibel was a self-involved screwup but actually because he was worried about his deported grandmother, and she was upset because her Japanese uncle had been killed in riots pissed me off so much that it was one of the things that contributed to my ranking the book below No Award. I mean, why have your flawed hero experience any sort of growth over the course of the book, when we can instead reveal that it's all society's fault.
*
L and I watched Good Omens over the course of a week, starting with two episodes the first day but then settling into an episode a day as routine, because they are pretty long. L had read the book while we were on our holiday and of course really enjoyed it, as both Awesome Friend Ali and I knew she would, because it's very much her kind of humour and I knew Crowley would appeal to her; she not only liked the book herself but has since recommended it to the guy she made friends with at uni orientation, whom she's been texting with since. I'd planned to reread the book before watching the show, but Hugo homework got in the way, and honestly it's probably better that I didn't have it too fresh in my mind, as it was certainly vivid enough to appreciate my favorite lines and scenes when they popped up, but not enough to miss everything that had been cut as keenly as L was doing. And I think the things they changed (for creative rather than just updating reasons) bugged me less this way, too.
The bottom line is, we both really enjoyed the miniseries! Good Omens is a book I've loved and admired for 20 years, my first introduction to Pratchett for sure and I think also to Gaiman, and I do think this adaptation does it justice, even if I didn't love all their choices.
Both L and I were really happy they had found such a clever way to keep the narration in, since that's probably the best part of the book, and I liked their choice of narrator (as character, I mean; I have no strong feelings on Frances McDormand as the voice of God). I also really liked the choice of giving the angels and demons more than one gender while keeping the Biblical names, because why the hell not, they're angels; I liked the androgynous look of Michael, for example. I also like the look of Heaven in general. L quipped that it looked like an Apple store, and it kind of does! which makes for nicely snooty connotations, but mostly it's so bright as to be uncomfortable, and very sterile. Hell worked for me less well, but we also spent less time there, so it didn't bother me especially. Spoilers from here! While the casting of Hastur and Ligur made for some nice contrast with each other (although L and I were baffled by the lizard), I was sad that it was the one played by Ariyon Bakare who was killed, because I didn't much like looking at Hastur. (With Bakare, I just kept going, why does he look so familiar?!, looking him up on Wiki to remind myself that it's because he was Stephen Black in the JSMN adaptation, and then promptly forgetting it again).
Speaking of casting, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley actors matched my mental image of them particularly, but once I could see them in action, I was really won over. I mean, a lot of the scenes are still not exactly as I imagined them, but their chemistry really works, and was for sure the heart of the miniseries, to a greater extent than in the books. Both L and I felt that, in the book, Crowley is the really interesting one and Aziraphale is relatable mostly on account of his books, but not someone I was nearly as attached to as a character; here, I did feel like he was more of a protagonist in his own right. And by "chemistry" I do also mean the way the shippiness is played way up. Based on the book, Aziraphale/Crowley is an obvious ship, because of their history and the being on different sides to begin with but then literally banding together to the point where it's the two of them against the arrayed forces of Heaven and Hell, but I never felt shippily about it -- it's one of those platonic duos where for me the shipping feels superfluous. But seeing the two of them playing off each other onscreen, well, I still don't feel any burning need to ship them personally, but I absolutely understand why Tumblr has been taken over by "ineffable husbands". And I did think the scenes and episodes that focused on the two of them (and/or fanservice) -- episode 3 with A and C through the ages, the 'public break-up' scenes (complete with the sympathetic passerby who tells Aziraphale, "I've been there you're better off without him."), the bit where the erstwhile Sister Mary finds Crowley and Aziraphale scuffling against the wall -- were nicely done, respectful even if the particular situation was being played for laughs. And there are a lot of lovely touches, like Crowley rescuing Aziraphale's books in the Blitz, or hell, the first scene with the two of them where Aziraphale shields Crowley from the storm with his wing.
The rest of the casting I was more mixed on. Of the Them, I really liked Pepper's and Wensleydale's casting (Pepper, who is my favorite of the kids, of course was a ginger in the book, for symmetry with War, but I didn't miss that detail at all); Brian I have no strong feelings on, in either book or adaptation, and Adam... didn't match my mental image of Adam, but I didn't mind this particularly until the glowing eyes and voice effects started, at which point it just became very silly, and I'm not sure any degree of perfect casting to my mental image would've saved it at that point for me. The Horsemen were mostly disappointing despite some nice touches. I was willing to be won over by the cornfed-looking War, but she never hit the proper notes of badassness or glee for me. I liked the look of Pollution and the choice to make them non-binary, and the little special effects touches that accompanied them, but every time Pollution spoke, I found myself thrown out of the story, because the actress's voice just sounded too... human. Famine I had the least active problems with, but I also didn't think he looked skeletal enough to fit the part. And Death as the biggest disappointment of all, except for the bitchin' bike: the figure didn't feel menacing enough, the voice didn't feel, well, ALL CAPS enough, honestly, and I really disagree with the decision to lift his visor and show his "face" to the viewer, because the skull face just kind of looked ridiculous. (L was disappointed the Other Horsemen of the Apocalypse got cut, but I can understand why it would be an easy subplot to excise. And later I found the Neil Gaiman interview where he explained they were cut because they ran out of budget, which is fair). I also was underwhelmed by Satan, even though I thought Cumberbatch was a great voice choice for him. But, like, at this point I've seen Cumberbatch as Smaug and Dormamu, and the rather ridiculous giant devil just didn't compare. But on the other hand, Shadwell was GREAT! -- he was the one character whom I liked a lot more in the show than I had in the book, although he is basically the same character (well, maybe with some of the negative traits toned down/not repeated as much). Madame Tracy I was mixed on; I liked her quite well when she was playing herself, but the stuff during the seance and being possessed by Aziraphale didn't work for me as well. Agnes Nutter was wonderful, and it was just too bad that she only needed to be in one scene. Newt Pulsifer was very appropriately Newt-y, but I never warmed up to Anathema, either as casting choice or actress. It makes sense narratively that someone with access to the Prophecies would be able to make a lot of money and move around, so having someone "non-local" in that role makes sense. But I kept feeling like this particular actress had been cast a) to increase diversity a bit, and b) to be eye candy. Which, she was definitely very pretty, no complaints there! But I never really felt like she was Anathema, or gelled particularly well with the other actors.
There were a lot of tiny moments I missed, and alternatively scenes L and I squeed at because they were our favorite bits from the book. L missed the adventures of Aziraphale's hot cocoa, but appreciated the nod to it when it's first shown and then prophesied about. I was very amused by the drunk Aziraphale and Crowley scene, though I can't believe they cut the bit about the little bird, which is my favorite part! (and, conversely, could've done without the visual on the two of them sobering up XP) As L was reading, I kept asking her if she'd gotten to Crowley and his plants yet, which I knew would be a bit she would love, but apparently it comes a lot later in the book than I remembered. I was thus pleased when the show moved it way up, and enjoyed Crowley's demented acting in the scenes, though the plant-trembling effects were a little silly.
When we got to the end of the penultimate episode and just about everything seemed to be wrapped up, L and I looked at each other and were like, OK, what are they going to do for the last hour? But I quite liked the new stuff that was added, and if the ending is rather more re-set-ty than in the book, and more unalloyedly happy, well, I don't really begrudge that.
Oh, and one thing that I thought was done really well was updating a 30-year-old book for the modern setting, like Crowley knocking out cellphones, Adam believing Anathema's magazines because stuff on the internet can be made up but this is written down on paper, the Russian soldier jumping to the conclusion that they're at war with Ukraine when the nuclear Armageddon starts. I thought all those bits were seamless enough that if I hadn't known how old the book really was, I wouldn't have noticed them as additions/changes.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1110104.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
So, yeah, I watched the Opening Ceremonies + Retro Hugos on Thursday; the time difference worked out so that the opening ceremonies started over my lunch hour, so I was able to stream the first part live, and then, when I had to go do something else at 1 p.m.,
cyanshadow took over live-blogging them, without premeditation but 100% seamlessly :D, and then I went back and watched the rest in the evening. I caught only about half of the San Jose Worldcon76 Opening Ceremonies, but I have to say, these were A LOT more fun, probably by virtue of taking themselves a lot less seriously. I did think some of the scripted jokes went on a bit too long, but overall I found Ellen Klages and her co-host delightful (the uncommented cross-dressing for the 40s Hugos, with Ellen Klages in fedora and Dave Rudden in the fascinator), enjoyed all the cracks about the Irish language, that one metric vs imperial joke, and also, honestly, anything said with an Irish accent is at least 33% more fun to listen to, so, that also helped. The jokes that didn't get old were the, presumably unscripted, struggles with the Retro Hugos envelopes, the highlight of which was Diane Duane posing proudly with her Swiss Army knife. I did not make an effort to educate myself on the Retro Hugos at all, or vote on anything, even the works I recognized (The Little Prince, and I've probably read the Asimov and Bradbury short fiction, though I don't remember them, just because in my teens I read everything of theirs I could get my hands on), but I did follow
ambyr's diligent journey through them, and was able to cheer based on opinions borrowed from her write-ups. I thought the Hugo bases were really pretty this year -- especially the lovely turquoise ceramic glaze of the Retro -- and enjoyed the presentation of them a lot more than at the San Jose Worldcon. And I like Irish folk(y) music, so the instrumentals and the choir performing at the end were fun to listen to (and I especially liked the way the choir were dressed, with individual blue accents -- scarves, belts, necklaces, ties -- over individual black outfits). This was also my introduction to Afua Richardson, who was one of the Hugo ceremonies co-hosts, so it was good to be prepared -- I enjoyed her presentation style, but it was very different from John Picacio's last year ("freight train"), so it was good to have the forewarning. Also, I got to admire her silver hairnet thing, which looked like she was attending the Purple Wedding as the poisoner :D It was also neat to see Sana Takeda ("and her possibly invisible interpreter"), who I think wasn't at our Worldcon, or at least did not get up to collect either of her Hugos.
And on Sunday I sat down to properly watch the Hugo Ceremonies live (although an inconveniently timed arrival of people who wanted to talk, instead of collecting B and driving off, made me miss the first 10 minutes or so, and I tuned in for the first time in the middle of Ada Palmer's Campbell presentation). This meant that I missed the part where speech-to-text closed captioning was rendering her very lovely speech as nonsense, until I went back and watched it later (I was happy to see she did not seem upset by this; or if she was, she hid it like a pro, and the moment when she glances behind her at the CC screen and facepalms/cracks up was pretty great. Huh, it would appear that Ada Palmer was the highlight of this Hugo ceremony for me, which is a little bit an indication of how I felt about a lot of the wins, and a lot an indication of how much I continue to fangirl Ada Palmer.) I was surprised to see Palmer presenting once again; turns out, Rebecca Roanhorse couldn't make it due to difficulties stemming from ID theft :( -- but it was lovely to have an (unexpected) opportunity to listen to her again. But anyway, there was an actual Campbell winner this year, too. It happened to be one of the two wins I'm most disappointed by. I thought the Campbell slate was very strong, and I would've been happy with any of my top 4 winning (Kuang, Solomon, Arden, Chakraborty) and would've been reasonably pleased if Prasad had won. Ng was at the bottom of my ballot, but while her writing merely doesn't seem to work for me, I find her way of interacting with fandom actively off-putting, and opening her acceptance speech with "John W Campbell, for whom this award is named, was a fucking fascist" and launching into a full-scale diatribe from there did not change my opinion on this. (The heartfelt shoutout to Hong Kong and the protesters there -- she was born in Hong Kong -- I could appreciate. But I had to listen to the speech twice before I heard a single thank-you, and even that was difficult to parse as any actual gratitude.) Anyway, I had to laugh when Afua Richardson, who was co-MC-ing, came back to the podium and mellowly, languidly said, "My... Congratulations." (I realize, based on reading reactions, that most people seem to feel positively about Ng's speech. That's fine. I'm taking it as basically just further proof that Jeannette Ng's stuff is Not For Me. Also, afterwards, it occurred to me that this means she'll be the one presenting the Campbell Award in 2021. That's bound to be interesting... Though I assume presenters' speeches are pre-vetted in a way that acceptance speeches can't be.)
Sadly, my Hugo experience got worse before it got better, because now that Lodestar is its own not-a-Hugo thing, rather than a trial category like last year, it was presented right after the Campbell, and not only did my dead-last choice win yet again, in this case it was a choice I put below No Award with extreme prejudice, breaking my own rules for No Awarding (because I hadn't finished it or read everything on the slate). I am so baffled and so annoyed by how anyone who's read any other book on the ballot could have voted for 'Children of Blood and Bone' over any other contender. Just, UGH. Come on, folks, YA deserves better than this hodge-podge of fantasy cliches and shoddy worldbuilding, especially when there are other books on the very same ballot dealing with the same (and/or equally worthy) social justice issues with 100x the nuance and creativity. I knew this was a possibility, of course, because this book had won the Nebula, but at least it didn't win the Locus, and I thought that Dread Nation (which had) would have a pretty good shot. I had a couple of moments where I wondered if I should just stop watching now, before more stuff I disliked won, but, honestly, even though I did have two other things ranked below No Award (Space Opera and Binti 3), neither of them winning would've incensed me as much as Children of Blood and Bone, so I kept watching.
Best Fanartist went to Likhain, who was 4th on my ballot, but a) this was better than 6-7th which we'd been tracking till then, b) I felt much less strongly about this category than Campbell or Lodestar, c) Mia gave a lovely speech, and d) the golden laurel crown/winged helm + gorget thing she was wearing was amazing and really fun to look at.
Things continued to improve when my actual top choice (Foz Meadows) won Best Fan Writer. Foz wasn't there in person, but Liz Bourke read her speech, which was one of my favorite of the evening.
Neither of the Fancasts I was rooting for won (Be the Serpent and Galactic Suburbia), but at least neither did my least favorite one, and while I ranked Our Opinions Are Correct at #5 on my ballot, Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz were adorably excited when accepting their award. (And it doesn't surprise me that a fancast run by two pro authors has a good shot at winning in its first year on the ballot.)
Best fanzine was not a category where I had any hope for my top favorite winning (Rocket Stack Rank has consistently come in last, but for myself, I'll take the extremely helpful data pulling and number crunching over all the woke articles in the other zines. So I was quite pleased when my second favorite,
ladybusiness won.
For Best Semiprozine, Uncanny won like last year, but this year I actually had them at the top of my ballot too, so I was happier about that, and also enjoyed seeing Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (and her guide dog) up on stage and hearing her speech.
Best Art Book special category went to the illustrated Earthsea omnibus, which I had ranked pretty low on account of not being an art book. But it gives LeGuin Hugos in six different categories, a record, which, I'm OK with that I guess? Especially as my top vote in this category was also not entirely an art book. And Charles Vess, who accepted the best art book award, said some neat things about LeGuin being an exacting collaborator who always kept him on his toes. He might as well have stayed on stage, since he also won Best Pro Artist right after. (He was also not at the top of my list, but I was expecting him to win, so this was not a surprise.)
The only win less surprising than that was the Editor short form, which went to Gardner Dozois of course. (I had him third on my ballot, but fully expected him to win posthumously.) Which made all the more odd that the person accepting the award seemed surprised by the win, or at least unprepared.
Editor long form was the category I'm torn on. The winner, Navah Wolfe, was someone I really wanted to nominate and vote for in the Editor short form category, but she's not yet eligible for that one (one more anthology!). I did actually nominate her for Long form, because she was eligible, but then I actually read A Conspiracy of Truths and Space Opera, which she was editor on, and I had to put her down last of my five. But she was so adorable during her acceptance speech! And she seems like a cool person. And I really, really like what she and Dominic Parisien have done with their anthologies. So... I'm glad she has a Hugo? But I don't feel like she deserves THIS Hugo.
I wasn't expecting any excitement in the Dramatic categories, because last year nobody showed up to claim the awards. But this time there were acceptance speeches from both of the winners! Short form went to "Janet(s)" (The Good Place), which was one of only two nominated things I'd watched, which was pretty cool, even though "Jeremy Bearimy" was my favorite of the two. And I really enjoyed the video acceptance speech (which I think was meant to serve in case of either episode winning). The Spider-Verse won, unsurprisingly, for Long Form, and two very excited Irish ladies gave the acceptance speech.
Best Series was one of the not very many categories where I had a single strong favorite that I was rooting for -- and alas, Machineries of Empire did not win. But at least the award went to my second choice, Wayfarers (which I respect, even if I don't love it; or at least I respect the second two books and Becky Chambers' ability to grow as an author -- I've liked every book in the series more than the previous one, which doesn't happen much). And Chambers' speech was really great, sweet and heartfelt and funny.
Best Graphic Story was a boring category for me, because I was pretty sure my least favorite nominee would win, and it did, for the third straight year. I was hoping at least Sana Takeda would be accepting, since she'd been at the Opening Ceremonies, but nope.
Then came the win that surprised me the most: AO3 for Best Related Work. Which, I guess other people were not surprised? And, I suppose, it's an easy nominee to vote for, for those people who don't read Best Related Work nominees, or at least do not read them exhaustively? Like, I could see how it would be a logical consensus winner with the ranked-choice voting system. Anyway, I'd been rooting for the Jo Walton book, and still think it should have won, but I was actually expecting the LeGuin interview transcripts to win, because LeGuin has been consistently winning everything -- and I had that ranked below AO3 on my ballot (where I had it second). So... a little disappointed, but it could've been worse? Though actually I liked all the nominees in some measure. I will say, I really liked the way the AO3 group did the acceptance speech, asking for the lights to be undimmed and for everyone in the audience who felt part of the AO3 community to stand up. Also, I was glad to have at least this opportunity to admire Naomi Novik's gorgeous (possibly faerie silver) necklace -- but I'm getting ahead of things.
I was fully expecting "The Secret Lives of Nine Negro Teeth" to win Best Short Story, considering that it had won both the Nebula and the Locus already, and I was resigned to it, because at least I liked it well enough, and had it on my ballot at #3, and at least better that than "STET" or "Raptor Sisters". But I was DELIGHTED to hear that my favorite, "A Witch's Guide to Escape" had won instead! And although Alix E Harrow couldn't be there in person, her speech was probably my favorite acceptance speech of the night, recognizing a lot of the other nominees and just speaking so warmly about the genre.
Best Novelette went to Zen Cho, whose "story about failure" was the nominee I ranked last of the five I read (although I *enjoyed* it more than The Only Harmless Great Thing -- but I thought it was much weaker than the other three nominees I read (Nine Last Days on Planet Earth, The Thing About Ghost Stories, and The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections), any of which I would've been happy to see win. But at least, unlike the other places where the Hugo (or not-a-Hugo) went to my dead-last pick, at least I actually liked the thing. And Zen Cho's acceptance speech was very cute.
Novella win for Artificial Condition did not feel like a surprise, but it was my top pick, so, yay. And, as I remarked to Best Chat, Martha Wells seemed pleased by the opportunity to say the word "asshole" from the Hugo podium (referring to ART's full 'name').
When they brought out an astronaut to present the award for Best Novel, I wondered if this presaged a win for Calculating Stars, or was just a reflection of the fact that 4 of 6 nominees were space stories. Well, whether they made arrangements after the winner was known or it was just a coincidence, The Calculating Stars did win. Which, I had it ranked as #2 on my ballot, and I had liked the book -- but it was not until I heard the winner that I realized how much I'd wanted Spinning Silver to win this category. Still, MRK was super-sparkly, in bling and smile, as she beamed at presenter Jeanette Epps ("So that's a real lady astronaut!"), and I quite liked her speech, too.
So, in terms of Hugo results satisfaction -- I could've sworn I did a roundup last year but I can't find it, so maybe I dreamed it? but anyway, I want to have a record of this:
- Categories in which my favorite won and it was a pleasant surprise: 2 (best short story, "witch's guide"; best fan writer, Foz Meadows)
- Categories in which my favorite won, but that's what I was expecting anyway: 3 (best novella, Artificial Condition; dramatic long form, Spiderverse; semiprozine, Uncanny)
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, but something else from the top half of my ballot won, and I'm pretty pleased: 2 (fanzine, ladybusiness; dramatic short form, "Janet(s)")
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, something else from the top half of my ballot won, but I'm still disappointed: 3 (best novel, Calculating stars; best series, Wayfarers; related work, AO3)
- Categories in which I'm torn on the winner: 1 (editor long form, Navah Wolfe)
- Categories in which my favorite didn't win, but the nominee I was expecting did, and I'm fine with/resigned to that: 3 (editor short form, Dozois; best artist, Charles Vess; graphic story, Monstress)
- Categories in which something from the bottom half of my ballot won, but I still liked the work: 2 (novelette, Zen Cho; fanartist, Likhain)
- Categories in which something from the bottom half of my ballot won, and I'm disappointed, but it could've been worse: (fancast, OOAC; artbook, Earthsea)
- Categories in which my dead-last pick won and I'm unhappy with the results: 2 (Campbell, Ng; Lodestar, CoBaB)
I feel like this is a skewed-slightly-more-negative breakdown than last year, but not dramatically so? It just felt a lot more negative in the moment because, unlike last year, I had something that I ranked below No Award win, well and also because the two categories I was most disappointed by kicked off the night.
In between the awards, I thought the other presentations -- the somber In Memoriam, which included the Kyoto Animation fire victims, and a lot more Russian names than I remember from last year; Afua Richardson's tribute and song to Nichelle Nichols, and Michael Scott's tribute to Ireland. This all added ~15-20 min to the "freight train" ceremony timing from last year, but didn't feel overlong. Oh! and when the Hugo Administrator spoke, I really appreciated the shout-out to the software guy who designed the voter interface. It was great, and I hope subsequent Worldcons make use of it. Oh, and when I went back and watched the beginning, I was also really amused by the cracks about the "high security envelopes".
**
Then, right after I was done watching, it turned out that the Hugo stats were already available, and
cyanshadow and I dove in with abandon :D
Novel: Not surprised Spinning Silver was second, but it was less close than I would have expected, although there's an even bigger drop-off between 'Silver' and the lower places. Also happy to see that Space Opera, which went below No Award for me, was last (though I definitely feel like the fifth place fight was much too close). Otherwise the rankings don't align with mine. (I think Revenant Gun was hurt by being the only book on the ballot that could not be fully appreciated as a stand-alone; while Wayfarers 3 is also technically the third in a trilogy, it in no way relies on the previous two books for characters or plot.) Over in nominations, I was intrigued to see that The Poppy War was 7th on the list, although it's a pretty steep drop off from Space Opera. Blackfish City was the next one, and Foundrside, Witchmark (which I'm glad didn't make it in), and The Consuming Fire next, and Semiosis also made the long list. (Also, the final rankings ended up being pretty close to the ranking by nomination, with just Trail of Lightning and Wayfarers 3 swapped.)
Novella: This was the shocker in the full results for me. Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach LAST? WTF, Hugo voters? (I'm tempted to uncharitably assume that people who voted for it low were not able to keep up with the in media res worldbuilding.) I was also surprised by how low The Black God's Drums scored. Basically, besides Artificial Condition winning and Binti 3 being towards the end, the rankings are almost the reverse of mine. I was also a bit surprised that Sugar Sky was third, overall and in first place votes -- I was expecting it to be higher because of Seanan McGuire, but maybe the McGuire effect is wearing off? Because note series results, too.
The neat thing in nominations here is that Martha Wells could've had half the ballot to herself XP Which, if she hadn't passed on the other two Murderbots, would've spared me the need to read Binti 3, but also would've bumped Black God's Drums, which I'm glad to have read. Tensorate novella and Flowers of Vashnoi ere 10 and 11 on the long list.
Novelette: This one is also weird. I was disappointed to see Nine Last Days on Planet Earth in 4th place, because it's a lovely and beautifully crafted story. I was even more surprised to see "The Only Harmless Great Thing" in fifth, because I thought that one was likely to win. It had the second-most or even most-most first place votes in all the rounds until it got to its final position. I guess a lot of people liked it a lot, but it was sort of an outlier and as other nominees were eliminated, those votes went to other stories? And having "When We Were Starless" dead last in the voting further validates my decision not to read it. The interesting thing in nominations here is that The Only harmless Great Thing had over 2x the number of nominations -- and then ended up doing quite poorly in the voting (while the others had more commensurate ranking in nominations and final votes). Was there a huge push to nominate this one or something? Clearly it didn't do much for its final standing... Two of my nominees that didn't make the short list were on the long list -- Thirty-Three Percent Joe (which I'm still surprised got only 28 noms, considering it was from last year's category winner, and also a lot of fun), and Agent of Utopia. And apparently another Bolander novelette.
Short Story: I'm surprised by how not-close the "Witch's Guide" win was! -- because I saw more criticism of the story on my flist than praise. No surprise that "Nine Negro Teeth" was in second place (if it didn't win), but I am surprised that "Rose MacGregor" was pretty close behind. Pleased to see "Raptor Sisters", which I had ranked last, was last overall. I am surprised that "Court Magician" was also ranked quite low, but I guess it's the most "ordinary" of the stories on the ballot, so I'm even not surprised that it trailed "Raptor Sisters" in some of the place-determination votes. In nominations, actually, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by "Witch's Guide" winning, as it also ha the most noms, but I'm unsurprised that "STET" had a lot, too. The rest follow the final rankings pretty closely. And the long list has "Field Biology of the Wee Fairies" (which I didn't nominate but was expecting to see on the final ballot), "Sour Milk Girls" (which I came across in the semiproine packets and really enjoyed), YHL's "The Starship and the Temple Cat", and Szpara's dinosaur story (oy...). Not any of the short stories I nominated that didn't make the ballot, though.
Series: I was not expecting this order! Glad but also surprised to see that Hexarchate beat the Toby Daye series (though it was kind of close and Toby was leading until the very end). A bit sad that the Centenal Cycle was last, but I suppose it's understandable, as it's a series with no recent Hugo nominated works, unlike Wayfarers, Machineries, and Xuya (all of which featured on this year's ballot) or long-time followers (like Laundry Files and Toby Daye). In nominations, I was really pleased to see Hexarchate was the series with the most noms! Too bad this didn't hold over to the final voting... Just past the cut off are Earthse and Murderbot, which I'm pretty sure are not actually eligible? because I think Murderbot has to be too short (if all four books were properly novella length) an I don't think Earthsea had any NEW word published this year, despite the illustrated omnibus. I'm also pretty sure RoL, down at the bottom, didn't have enough new words to become re-eligible after finalist status in 2017. But I think they just don't vet the long list.
Best Related Work: Indeed the thing I was expecting to win (LeGuin 'Conversations') was secon, both in overall rankings and first-place votes (and the gap between it and AO3 kept shrinking through subsequent passes, which kind of makes sense, as AO3 was one of the oddball nominees). The Second Place ranking is really weird, with the Hugo book starting on the bottom there, but I was glad it got third place at least (though I still think it should have won). And while I myself also ranked the Astounding bio pretty low, I was sad to see it dead last, 'cos I thought it was an interesting if flawed book. The odd thing to me here is that Astounding, which ended up showing so poorly in the voting, had the most noms. Was it just a fluke of the timing or something? a campaign? And Serpent!Alex's hopepunk article just made it onto the longlist, good for them.
Best Graphic Story: Black Panther in second place, really?? And 8 votes apart??? And starting with the most first place votes?! But... it was boring and UGLY. I guess I'm glad Monstress won over it, even though I had them ranked as Black Panther > Monstress in 5 and 6 slot of my ballot. But I can recognie, objectively, the merits of Monstress while also not enjoying it one bit. I don't understand what people liked about the Black Panther comic besides the franchise tie-in. But whatever, at least my favorite, Abbott, got the third spot. I was a bit surprised that On a Sunbeam was last, especially as from the number of votes it looks like a LOT of people read it and just didn't like it. Not a ton interesting to me in the nominations here, except that I was trying to figure out if Runaways was eligible, and apparently at least volume 1 was? Or at least enough people thought so.
Dramatic long form: I was sad but unsurprised to see that Sorry to Bother You was ranked last -- I can definitely see how it's a movie that could turn off a fair number of people. Other than me having it ranked 4th and not last, this is actually the category whose rankings align with my own the most, probably: I had the superhero movies ranked in exactly this order, and the horror movies too. Holy cow, Black Panther had SO MANY NOMINATIONS -- 700+ -- and Spider-Verse had almost 500 -- compared to ~300 and change for the most nominated novel. But I guess there are a lot more eligible novels than movies. I'm surprised more people nominated Solo than Incredibles 2 or Deadpool 2 (the former was on my ballot and I toyed with the latter).
Dramatic short form: Mostly I'm puzzled by "Janet(s)" winning and "Jeremy Bearimy" from the same franchise being 5th. I thought "Jeremy" was HILARIOUS and liked it a lot more than "Janet(s)"; I can definitely see that if one were just watching the individual episode rather than the whole show, "Janet(s)" would be easier to appreciate, since "Jeremy" is really funny if you know what Chidi is normally like. But still! The two Doctor Who episodes are ranked sequentially, at 3 and 4, which is what I would expect -- not having a gap of three between them... I was also not expecting "Janet(s)" to have so many more nominations than "Jeremy Bearimy" -- presumably these did come from people who do actually watch TGP, so I wonder if everybody liked it more, or if this was strategic in that people picked an episode that could work as a stand-alone?
Editor, short form: Not surprised that Dozois started out with 2x the number of first place votes. I was pleased to see that Neil Clarke, who was my top choice this year, was second. And actually, other than Dozois winning (as I fully expected) and the 5/6 positions switched, this also aligns pretty closely to my rankings. Interesting that the two editors who ended up with lowest rankings had the most nominations -- presumably some kind of campaign. And I see Dominik Parisien, whom I nominated, at least made the long list, and Strahan almost made the cut-off.
Editor, long form: Meh, my two favorites were actually in position 5 and 6, and my last-ranked person won, and the person I didn't rank was in second place, so this is one of the categories where my ballot is pretty much reversed again in the final rankings. Also, Cyan and I wondered about Anne Groell coming in below No Award in first place votes, but it seems like there's a contingent of people who just don't think Editor Long Form should be a thing? Because the same thing happened to two other editors last year. This is another place where there must've been a nominations campaign, since Navah Wolfe has almost 2.5x the nominations of the next highest person. Joe Monti was just below the cut-off, though I don't suppose that means he was actually eligible, necessarily.
Pro artist: My favorite was in third place, and I have no other strong feelings in this category this year. I'm assuming Picacio's high number of noms (when he ranked pretty low in the voting) is due to name recognition from San Jose's Worldcon -- I know that was partly behind my nom.
Semiprozine: Ah, here we go -- THIS is the category that best aligns to my ballot. Other than 5/6 being reversed, the rankings are exactly the same as mine. But aww, EscapePod was next and would've presumably made the list if not for the Shimmer noms, which I assume were some kind of concerted effort.
Fanzine: Other than the winner, the only thing I really care about is the confirmation that my favorite was dead last. And still pretty close to the No Award votes, but a tiny bit less close than last year. I'm glad File770 recusing itself for all eternity after last year's win meant RSR got to be on the ballot at all.
Fancast: The thing that's weird to me here is how the first-place votes and final rankings are not consistent at all. Like, Coode Street podcast seemed on track for second-third place based on first place votes, but then ended up dead last. I guess that's an indication that it's kind of the outlier here? The other take away is, Fangirl Happy Hour was second, which means I'm actually grateful to OOAC for winning, because I would've been a lot more disappointed if that had won. My favorites, Serpents and Galactic Suburbia, are in third and fourth place, meh.
Fan Writer: Another category where I'm happy with the top three results! I'd ranked Elsa ahead of Bogi, but they and the winner, Foz, were my top three.
Fan artist: I'm going to assume that Ariela Housman being last is at least partially the result of not being allowed to include the Lady Astrnaut noveau in the Hugo packet because of stupid "public displayy" rules interpretation, and continue to be really mad on her behalf. (Hopefully the nonsense will be fixed next year, "forever"). My two favorites were on the bottom of the rankings, but other than the "public display" unfairness, I don't feel very strongly about this category.
Best Art book: Sad to see Tolkien ended up so low, but other than that, beyond-the-winner rankings make sense to me. I was wondering if the John Howe ACTUAL Tolkien art book was going to show up on the long list, and it did, and might've made the cut off if illustrated Earthsea and the Tolkien exhibit had been eliminated as non-artbooks. (Apparently the Whelan should've actually been eligible, despite the copyright date.)
Lodestar: Dread Nation was second and Tess was third (though Tess had actually gotten second-most first place votes). Cruel Prince is third, and The Belles is last, and while I don't entirely agree with the relative ratings on those four, they do make sense to me. The winner still doesn't. At least Dread Nation had more nominations than this drek... :/
Campbell: So, besides the fact that I'm not thrilled by who won, I was also quite shocked to see that R.F.Kuang only goth 5th place -- though, I suppose, as the only newcomer this year, and one of only two people who weren't on the ballot last year, she was at something of a handicap? And I could also see the grim nature of her book turning people off. Since four of the six were also on the ballot last year, I couldn't resist cross-checking the results -- especially as only Arden has published significant amounts of new material since last year, I think? The really surprising to me thing was that Vina Jie-Min Prasad dropped from second to LAST! Did people really hate the story that opens with literal gun porn so much? Ng and Solomon were 3 and 4 last year, so this year's 1 and 2 positions kind of make sense? And Arden was ranked after them and still is. So fairly consistent among themselves except for Prasad. I'm again surprised that someone like Kuang, who got a lot of nominations, ended up doing so poorly in the rankings. But at least Adeyemi didn't make the short list, and I'm also happy that C.L.Polk did not. As for Alexandra Rowland, I did briefly consider nominating them, but long list sounds about right (and they will still be eligible next year, I think?)
*
I still haven't written up all the Hugo Homework books, but they wouldn't all fit into this post anyway, so I'm going to offload a few of the ones I do have written up:
32. Charles Stross, The Concrete Jungle (Laundry Files novella, which apparently won a Hugo in 2005) -- I've tried Charlie Stross before, with the Merchant Princes books, but this was the first thing of his I've finished. I'd been aware of the Laundry Files books for a while, but bouncing off Merchant Princess kept me from trying them out earlier and, hm. I'm still not entirely sure whether this is something I'm interested in reading more of. Wiki describes the series as "mix[ing] the genres of Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour", and like half of those are a thing that appeals to me? (though I confess that I thought it was urban fantasy rather than sci-fi, because of the things it reminded me of). I don't like Lovecraftian horror, but it's also not necessarily a turn-off (e.g. I find those elements reasonably amusing in the Whyborne & Griffin books), and I would say I'm fairly agnostic on spy thrillers. The mix of SFF and "workplace humour" -- which, really, I'd call bureaucratic satire, I think -- reminded me of a couple of different things, Lukyanenko's Dozor books (Night Watch, Day Watch, etc.) and their spiritual progenitor, my beloved Monday Starts on Saturday (especially because the lead in this novella is an IT guy and Ponedelnik's lead is a programmer, but also in invoking real scientific figures in the study of magic, which I like) and also a little bit of Brust's Good Guys. But... I kind of hated Bob Howard and anyone connected to the Laundry who got any sort of characterization. Which may well be intentional, since I assume the spy thriller part of the recipe means you're going to have morally gray characters doing terrible things in the name of the greater good, to prevent even more terrible things from happening -- which is something I can enjoy. But here the "even more terrible things" were nebulous and/or ridiculous, and the ostensibly morally gray things were pretty damn terrible, so the equation didn't balance in the Laundry's favor for me. I enjoyed the bureacratic and magical worldbuilding, but with one notable exception (the central McGuffin, which was pretty damn interesting!) it ended up just making me think of Dozor and being a less interesting, less likeable version of a thing I like. (The Dozor books are far from flawless! I don't even like some of them very much, but the structure of the Watches and the way their roles and histories are revealed and complicated is genuinely cool, there are some really fun characters, and Lukyanenko pulls off some really neat twists.)
But back to this actual book! with spoilers! So the central premise, the magical idea, is actually really cool and the one thing I really liked here -- the use of CCTV cameras as a basilisk stare generator, the power of that, and the way it can be hacked. The "primary sources" were a bit of a mixed bag for me, and I'm not sure they all carried their weight, but I enjoyed the scientist name dropping. And I did enjoy the science, too, though the transmutation of carbon into silicon really bothered me until Howard lampshaded it by pointing out that the extra mass had to be coming from somewhere. So, magic-as-science, technologically assisted magic -- great stuff! But that was Plot more than Worldbuiding, and so it could only carry me so far. Like I said, I didn't like Bob Howard, and nobody else except the detective lady (whom I did like) felt like a character. And then there was Howard's harridan matrixed boss, and HER boss, who came across like such unpleasant caricatures of women in the workplace, like... really? I mean, yes, they are also non-technical, bean-counting middle management playing at departamental politics, vs Bob's technical expertise, but it was unpleasant enough that I actually googled around. Stross seems to think that “something of a miracle that Bob isn’t a complete misogynist shitbag, given the average outcome of that generation of male computer science graduates" -- and, OK, not a complete one, and probably even more of a contrast to the Lovecraft protagonists, but IDK, I don't feel like handing out cookies just yet. (Maybe I'm just extra annoyed because Harriet et al made me think of Ponedelnik's Modest Matveevich, who is such a beautiful portrait of a bureaucrat who does not understand and does not care about any of the important things his institution is doing, and is not fazed by this at all).
Anyway, I'm torn... I'm sure there's a lot of cool magical stuff and neat plot things elsewhere in this series. Question is, would I enjoy it enough to put up with more of the characters? And/or is there a better entry point for me than the Bob Howard books? (I gather the series changed protagonists at some point..?)
34. Cat Valente, Space Opera -- I was vaguely curious about this book when
ikel89 first picked it up, despite a) not caring about Eurovision and b) bouncing off most things by Cat Valente I've tried (The Refrigerator Monologues being the only exception. Then K HATED it with a passion, and I backburnered it again, despite having a copy on hand. But then it was nominated for the Hugos and, once I was done with everything else that I conceivably thought I might want to read, I picked it up, fully expecting to have to force myself through a self-imposed 50 pages before ranking it last and moving on. But actually it ended up being worse than that? Because usually I recoil instinctively from Valente's overabundant prose (I remarked in my Hugo roundup post that this book needed to be edited with a machete, and K retorted with "flamethrower", which had honestly been a word I'd been considering!), and stopping reading is a sweet relief. But here... there was JUST ENOUGH here that I liked, just enough clever metaphors or inventive ideas buried in the jungle of TOO MANY WORDS that I actually kept on reading! Disliking ~90% of the text, which took the kernel of a clever idea and then smothered it in layers of glitter until it was no longer clever or funny (dear Cat Valente, not everything needs fifteen fucking tortured and belabored metaphors stacked in a row. Honest!), but getting *just enough* return on my time investment that I kept going until the bitter end. And once I got to the bitter end, I was further underwhelmed because... there was nothing there. Nothing like a profound pay-off, nothing like a good joke -- it just felt utterly pointless, and it was this which caused me to drop it from merely last to below No Award.
I don't think it's that I've outgrown the Douglas Adams mode of sci-fi comedy. Admittedly, I haven't reread H2G2 in a couple of decades, and wasn't that impressed with Eoin Colfer's go at it, but I think the problem is, Douglas Adams is actually funny, and Cat Valente... is not, for the most part, or at least not in the same mode, and repeating the same unfunny joke/riffing on it over the course of novel does not make it funnier! (Mr-Looney-of-the-Tunes and everything of your ilk, I'm looking at you!) And some things are just a bad idea to begin with, like the space red panda aliens who literally say the same thing five times. I get your clever way of showing variation across parallel timelines; unfortunately, it is also REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING to read! -- much more annoying than it is clever!
There are a couple of things I liked, either because they were touched on briefly and not belabored or because the jokes/conceits miraculously did not outstay their welcome (at least for me). I mostly liked the inventiveness of the alien species, the sea-squirt Alunizar with their deposed Empire, the zombie virus Voorpret ("I'm not prejudiced against you [...] I don't even see species. I just think of everyone as pre-Voorpret. I love you for who you are: a viable host."), the Prozac-tinted world of the Litost, the Lummutis with their avatars playing an endless computer game through life, the psychic hurricane, and so on (unfortunately, the aliens we spent the most time with definitely stopped being funny long before I ran out of book). I quite liked the way the Elakh, living on their very black planet, use the word "black" as various positive terms in their slang: "it's all black", "that jam was well dark", hooked me up right inky", "we do it so damn sable", "you're in the black with me", etc. (although I ran out of amusement at this about five phrases before the end of the scene) I liked the concept that something like Halloween exists for all sentient species, because there is "something about the achievement of sentience that immediately fills the afflicted with the longing to become something else [35 superfluous words snipped from the end of this sentence. You're welcome!]" I liked the idea of Englishblokeman ("Faster than a well-ordered queue, more powerful than a muttered tut, able to walk right by police officers without being harassed.") and also Oort's cat.
And there are a couple of nice turns of phrase, or things that provoked me to smile, buried in the excess of verbiage: "the pent-up sexuality on unwalloped pinatas", "akin to a peacock vomiting forever into the howling void", "like the cavemen of Lascaux suddenly transported into the Sistine Chapel just in time for a live performance of Phantom of the Opera as sung by Tolkien's elves", secret service agents "attempting to assert their dominance using only biceps, baritones, and a genetic inability to remove their sunglasses", "the black adrenaline of stage fright", "[luck] that dealt Europe a royal flush of luxury high-speed horses, butter-dispensing cows, jumper-shedding sheep, bacon-distributing pigs, and nonunionized donkeys, and Australia a full hand of fuck all" (though, really, I would've pruned the pigs and the donkeys, because my attention started wandering around there. It doesn't need to be an exhaustive list!), "Carefully avoiding major organs [the Yurtmak] fondly stabbed her mother and father good-bye", "Mira, he supposed, had always lived in her own head and allowed others to visit once in a while. With advance notice. And extensive decontamination protocols.", "wearing last night's rhinestones and tomorrow's hangover", "a throng of brutally pale, slender people who looked like basketball players rolled in antlers as painted by El Greco", "eyeliner fit for a raccoon in heat", "He'd brought a pop song to a drag-out fight. They should have sent the Red Army Choir instead."
I mean, there's also a semblance of a plot? but it's ridiculous and also doesn't matter. And some social justice stuff drowning in the morass of text, about gender/pronouns and colonialism and prejudice and immigration and climate change (and actually the ridiculously manipulative way in which it is revealed that spoilers! Mira's car accident death was actuallly not because Decibel was a self-involved screwup but actually because he was worried about his deported grandmother, and she was upset because her Japanese uncle had been killed in riots pissed me off so much that it was one of the things that contributed to my ranking the book below No Award. I mean, why have your flawed hero experience any sort of growth over the course of the book, when we can instead reveal that it's all society's fault.
*
L and I watched Good Omens over the course of a week, starting with two episodes the first day but then settling into an episode a day as routine, because they are pretty long. L had read the book while we were on our holiday and of course really enjoyed it, as both Awesome Friend Ali and I knew she would, because it's very much her kind of humour and I knew Crowley would appeal to her; she not only liked the book herself but has since recommended it to the guy she made friends with at uni orientation, whom she's been texting with since. I'd planned to reread the book before watching the show, but Hugo homework got in the way, and honestly it's probably better that I didn't have it too fresh in my mind, as it was certainly vivid enough to appreciate my favorite lines and scenes when they popped up, but not enough to miss everything that had been cut as keenly as L was doing. And I think the things they changed (for creative rather than just updating reasons) bugged me less this way, too.
The bottom line is, we both really enjoyed the miniseries! Good Omens is a book I've loved and admired for 20 years, my first introduction to Pratchett for sure and I think also to Gaiman, and I do think this adaptation does it justice, even if I didn't love all their choices.
Both L and I were really happy they had found such a clever way to keep the narration in, since that's probably the best part of the book, and I liked their choice of narrator (as character, I mean; I have no strong feelings on Frances McDormand as the voice of God). I also really liked the choice of giving the angels and demons more than one gender while keeping the Biblical names, because why the hell not, they're angels; I liked the androgynous look of Michael, for example. I also like the look of Heaven in general. L quipped that it looked like an Apple store, and it kind of does! which makes for nicely snooty connotations, but mostly it's so bright as to be uncomfortable, and very sterile. Hell worked for me less well, but we also spent less time there, so it didn't bother me especially. Spoilers from here! While the casting of Hastur and Ligur made for some nice contrast with each other (although L and I were baffled by the lizard), I was sad that it was the one played by Ariyon Bakare who was killed, because I didn't much like looking at Hastur. (With Bakare, I just kept going, why does he look so familiar?!, looking him up on Wiki to remind myself that it's because he was Stephen Black in the JSMN adaptation, and then promptly forgetting it again).
Speaking of casting, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley actors matched my mental image of them particularly, but once I could see them in action, I was really won over. I mean, a lot of the scenes are still not exactly as I imagined them, but their chemistry really works, and was for sure the heart of the miniseries, to a greater extent than in the books. Both L and I felt that, in the book, Crowley is the really interesting one and Aziraphale is relatable mostly on account of his books, but not someone I was nearly as attached to as a character; here, I did feel like he was more of a protagonist in his own right. And by "chemistry" I do also mean the way the shippiness is played way up. Based on the book, Aziraphale/Crowley is an obvious ship, because of their history and the being on different sides to begin with but then literally banding together to the point where it's the two of them against the arrayed forces of Heaven and Hell, but I never felt shippily about it -- it's one of those platonic duos where for me the shipping feels superfluous. But seeing the two of them playing off each other onscreen, well, I still don't feel any burning need to ship them personally, but I absolutely understand why Tumblr has been taken over by "ineffable husbands". And I did think the scenes and episodes that focused on the two of them (and/or fanservice) -- episode 3 with A and C through the ages, the 'public break-up' scenes (complete with the sympathetic passerby who tells Aziraphale, "I've been there you're better off without him."), the bit where the erstwhile Sister Mary finds Crowley and Aziraphale scuffling against the wall -- were nicely done, respectful even if the particular situation was being played for laughs. And there are a lot of lovely touches, like Crowley rescuing Aziraphale's books in the Blitz, or hell, the first scene with the two of them where Aziraphale shields Crowley from the storm with his wing.
The rest of the casting I was more mixed on. Of the Them, I really liked Pepper's and Wensleydale's casting (Pepper, who is my favorite of the kids, of course was a ginger in the book, for symmetry with War, but I didn't miss that detail at all); Brian I have no strong feelings on, in either book or adaptation, and Adam... didn't match my mental image of Adam, but I didn't mind this particularly until the glowing eyes and voice effects started, at which point it just became very silly, and I'm not sure any degree of perfect casting to my mental image would've saved it at that point for me. The Horsemen were mostly disappointing despite some nice touches. I was willing to be won over by the cornfed-looking War, but she never hit the proper notes of badassness or glee for me. I liked the look of Pollution and the choice to make them non-binary, and the little special effects touches that accompanied them, but every time Pollution spoke, I found myself thrown out of the story, because the actress's voice just sounded too... human. Famine I had the least active problems with, but I also didn't think he looked skeletal enough to fit the part. And Death as the biggest disappointment of all, except for the bitchin' bike: the figure didn't feel menacing enough, the voice didn't feel, well, ALL CAPS enough, honestly, and I really disagree with the decision to lift his visor and show his "face" to the viewer, because the skull face just kind of looked ridiculous. (L was disappointed the Other Horsemen of the Apocalypse got cut, but I can understand why it would be an easy subplot to excise. And later I found the Neil Gaiman interview where he explained they were cut because they ran out of budget, which is fair). I also was underwhelmed by Satan, even though I thought Cumberbatch was a great voice choice for him. But, like, at this point I've seen Cumberbatch as Smaug and Dormamu, and the rather ridiculous giant devil just didn't compare. But on the other hand, Shadwell was GREAT! -- he was the one character whom I liked a lot more in the show than I had in the book, although he is basically the same character (well, maybe with some of the negative traits toned down/not repeated as much). Madame Tracy I was mixed on; I liked her quite well when she was playing herself, but the stuff during the seance and being possessed by Aziraphale didn't work for me as well. Agnes Nutter was wonderful, and it was just too bad that she only needed to be in one scene. Newt Pulsifer was very appropriately Newt-y, but I never warmed up to Anathema, either as casting choice or actress. It makes sense narratively that someone with access to the Prophecies would be able to make a lot of money and move around, so having someone "non-local" in that role makes sense. But I kept feeling like this particular actress had been cast a) to increase diversity a bit, and b) to be eye candy. Which, she was definitely very pretty, no complaints there! But I never really felt like she was Anathema, or gelled particularly well with the other actors.
There were a lot of tiny moments I missed, and alternatively scenes L and I squeed at because they were our favorite bits from the book. L missed the adventures of Aziraphale's hot cocoa, but appreciated the nod to it when it's first shown and then prophesied about. I was very amused by the drunk Aziraphale and Crowley scene, though I can't believe they cut the bit about the little bird, which is my favorite part! (and, conversely, could've done without the visual on the two of them sobering up XP) As L was reading, I kept asking her if she'd gotten to Crowley and his plants yet, which I knew would be a bit she would love, but apparently it comes a lot later in the book than I remembered. I was thus pleased when the show moved it way up, and enjoyed Crowley's demented acting in the scenes, though the plant-trembling effects were a little silly.
When we got to the end of the penultimate episode and just about everything seemed to be wrapped up, L and I looked at each other and were like, OK, what are they going to do for the last hour? But I quite liked the new stuff that was added, and if the ending is rather more re-set-ty than in the book, and more unalloyedly happy, well, I don't really begrudge that.
Oh, and one thing that I thought was done really well was updating a 30-year-old book for the modern setting, like Crowley knocking out cellphones, Adam believing Anathema's magazines because stuff on the internet can be made up but this is written down on paper, the Russian soldier jumping to the conclusion that they're at war with Ukraine when the nuclear Armageddon starts. I thought all those bits were seamless enough that if I hadn't known how old the book really was, I wouldn't have noticed them as additions/changes.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1110104.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).