Hugo nominees announced

This year's Hugo and Campbell nominees have been announced.

Congratulations to Cory, Scalzi, Charlie, Ben, Bear, Mary, Ted, Farah, Cheryl, Nick, Sean, and Aliette! And anyone else I know and/or who might be reading this. Well, and all the other nominees, too, of course.

I'm especially pleased to see Weird Tales and Clarkesworld appear (for the first time for each of them) in the Semiprozine category, joining category stalwarts Locus, Interzone, and NYRSF, all three of which have been nominees every year this decade. I'm always pleased to see more fiction-focused publications in that category, and to see online venues in that category. (Nothing wrong with nonfiction-focused and/or print venues, of course.)

I would, of course, have liked to see an SH story among the short story nominees, but that's happened only once in the past, so I'm not especially disappointed. I am disappointed that, for only the second time since SH launched, none of our authors are on the Campbell ballot. (The other time was in 2003; we did eventually publish Charlie F, but not until 2005.)

I've read only two of the short-fiction nominees. Looking forward to reading the rest; some of them are already available free online (follow links from the nominees list above), and I imagine most or all of the rest will be eventually.

Pleased to see both Girl Genius and Y: The Last Man in the special-this-year Graphic Story category. I also nominated Darths & Droids, but I'm not surprised not to see it there.

Not at all surprised by three of the Dramatic Presentation: Long Form nominees; rather surprised by the other two. I didn't realize Hellboy II was that popular (and I'm going to skip watching it, something I don't think I've done for a DP:LF nominee before). Rather surprised to see METAtropolis there; not having heard it yet, I was thinking of it more as an audiobook than as a dramatic presentation per se. I had nominated a couple of movies that unsurprisingly didn't make it onto the list, most notably The Tale of Despereaux.

In DP: Short Form, nothing terribly surprising, except the absence of Presto. Dr. Horrible will presumably win in a landslide, though I won't be voting for it. Only one of my nominees made it to the ballot; I had a hard time choosing among various episodes of various things, but ended up nominating three Sarah Connor episodes, plus Presto, plus "Turn Left" (the one that made it to the ballot).

Both editor categories are identical to last year's nominees.

Disappointed not to see Phil Foglio in Pro Artist this year, but I like the work of all the nominees.

For some discussion of who on the ballot has had past nominations, see the Locus analysis.

Added a little later: This year there are only three four [thanks for the correction, Aliette!] female writers nominated in the fiction categories. (Which is about normal for recent years.) And only one woman on the Campbell ballot--this is only the second time since 1982 that there haven't been at least two women on the Campbell ballot (the first time being last year).

Also added later: The total number of nominating ballots cast was 799. That doesn't seem like a lot until you compare it to previous years. It is in fact the highest number of nominating ballots this decade, by quite a bit, and I think the highest since 1971, which may mean it's the highest ever. The previous highest in recent years was 2003--which was also a Canadian WorldCon. Coincidence? (I don't have numbers for Boston in 2004, so I could be wrong about this year being the highest.)

3 Responses to “Hugo nominees announced”

  1. Aliette de Bodard

    Thanks, Jed! I’m surprised there are that few women on the ballot–it’s nothing against the trend, as you say, but I had somehow imagined things were more equal…(though I counted 4 nominees in the fiction categories: Mary, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear and Kij Johnson)

    reply
  2. Jed

    Thanks for the correction! I counted something like three times, but still somehow got the number wrong. Math is hard!

    I’ve now corrected the number in the body of the entry.

    reply
  3. Aliette de Bodard

    No problem. (I counted three the first time around as well)

    reply

Join the Conversation

Click here to cancel reply.