Return of the Poo-Flinging Monkey

[secritcrush]

So it's Hugo nomination season and we've learned two things - the sad puppies are basically irrelevant, and yes, it is necessary to change the nomination process unless we want to let a poo-flinging monkey get crap all over the nomination list for the foreseeable future

Comments

Ready

[lilievallie]

I finished the third Ancillary Novel, the Fifth Season and will start Uprooted next. Eyeballing the Novella category while I wait for Seveneves to get shorter and either:

A) Go on sale
B) Be in the packet

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Re: Ready

[secritcrush]

Ancillary Mercy, Fifth Season and Uprooted are the three I'd read before the ballot was nominated. I'm currently noodling around with the stories that are posted online before I do a reread of those. I think I'm going to need to be trapped in a plane before I can get the energy to read Seveneves.

[mount_oregano]

That's basically my plan.

I hear the dino porn is actually pretty funny -- but it doesn't belong on the ballot. It was nominated as an insult to the award.

Chuck Tingle

[lilievallie]

It is really funny, as is his whole online persona. My brother collects all manner of over-the-top gay erotica and he has some of this in his collection. Drawn in by the titles, stayed for the fun.

Re: Chuck Tingle

[mount_oregano]

If it comes in the voter packet, I will read it!

[rushthatspeaks]

I hope the Chuck Tingle ends up in the packet, but whether it does or not I highly recommend looking over his website, because it turns out that I don't actually object to the Hugo nomination, I just think they got the wrong story. He's doing a really complicated set of meta-jokes on the nature of fiction and the question of why people read, and I wound up reading one to see what the fuss was about and then buying a lot more because they are hilarious. Comedy is hard and consistent comedy is harder, and Tingle is consistently funny in ways I haven't seen around otherwise. I doubt the Puppies have actually noticed this or care, because they seem to consider his existence innately insulting or something, but stuff like Tingle is what self-publishing is and ought to be for.

[secritcrush]

You have convinced me to give him a read even if he doesn't add his story to the packet.

[rimrunner]

I figured there had to be something to what he was doing for the joke to keep going for so long, but I haven't read any yet. I don't even know what he's doing but I already like it.

[dreamer_easy]

The first two-thirds of Seveneves is thoroughly Hugo-worthy...

[secritcrush]

I am basing my impending dread on this review and also the fact that I felt done with Stephenson after Snow Crash

[dreamer_easy]

Meanwhile, I'm in search of a female author who writes like Stephenson (or like Charles Stross, or Kim Stanley Robinson), so our tastes are clearly different. :)

As for the biological determinism in Seveneves, it's the subject of that profoundly weak last third. I ain't gonna defend it. The best of it is a character who, via epigenetics, changes into a not-quite-but-almost different person.

[diatryma]

May I ask why you don't like the semiprozine Hugo? I think it's a weird distinction and category, but it's hard to define anyway.

[secritcrush]

I've disliked it since it was the Best Locus category. There is no such thing as "semi-pro" - it's just a bodged up thing to create an artificial category boundary. It's now basically a best magazine category that excludes the big three and a limited number of other fiction magazines for no real reason.

I'd like to see the two best editor categories deleted as well as the semi-prozone and best magazine reinstated (without a pro qualifier.)