Recommendations for Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer

In which I continue my charge through the Hugo Awards shortlist.

Best Fan Writer

This is a hard category to pick from. I love the attention and exposure Mark Oshiro gives to books he's reading, and I'm also a frequent reader of Abigail Nussbaum's excellent reviews and essays. Liz Bourke's column "Sleeps with Monsters" is likewise required reading to understand the portrayal of women in both our genre and the media. I could easily see myself voting for any of these people in any other year.

But in 2013, two writers stood out to me for their penetrating insight and advocacy for improving our genre — Kameron Hurley and Foz Meadows.

Kameron Hurley's fiction has shocked the SF genre like a kick to the solar plexus, with novels and stories such as God's War providing a well-needed example of what next-generation science fiction can be. But the Hugo's fan writer category isn't about professionally published fiction — it's about fan writings. And the good news here is that Hurley's fan writings are also shaking up staid genre conventions. I read her blog continually and find her Locus Magazine column to be equally powerful. For examples of her best 2013 essays, I recommend "Everybody Already Knows: How Silence About the Realities of Publishing Hurts Authors," "'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative," and "Making Excuses for Science Fiction."

Foz Meadows is also working hard to challenge genre conventions and improve SF/F for everyone. Writing across multiple platforms — including her blog, Tumblr, and Twitter accounts — Meadows is one of those essayists who not only cranks open your mind but rearranges your very neurons so you can't imagine a future without her vital insights. Among Meadow's must-read essays from 2013 are "On Grittiness & Grimdark," "Old Men Yelling At Clouds: SFWA Sexism," and "Why Terry Deary Is Wrong: The Case For Libraries."

I still haven't decided my top pick between Hurley or Meadows in this category, so I'm recommending both of them. The good news is that thanks to the Hugo's ranked voting system, we can easily make them the top two choices. I also have my fingers crossed for a tie.

As I said, all of the finalists for this year's award are worthy of winning (and have a great shot at winning in the future). However, Hurley and Meadows stood out to me with their excellent commentary and essays during a difficult year for our genre. It is also thanks to insightful writers like Hurley and Meadows that I remain optimistic about the direction science fiction and fantasy is headed.

For me, that's a great reason to make them the two top picks for this year's Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

My previous Hugo Award recommendations

More Hugo Award recommendations

Artwork for "The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola" by Hugo Award finalist Julie Dillon.

In which I continue my recommendations for this year's Hugo Awards.

Best Related Work

My recommendation: Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer, with Jeremy Zerfoss.

Seriously, have you seen this book? It's beautiful. It's innovative. It's the freshest take on how to write imaginative fiction I've seen in years. Hell, I wish I'd had this book when I was young. It'll be exciting to see what the new writers inspired by this book create in the coming decades.

Best Professional Artist

My recommendation: Julie Dillon

I first discovered the art of Julie Dillon when she illustrated my story "The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola." The artwork, which you can see above, not only perfectly captured the mix of science fiction and fantasy in my story, it also knocked my brain out of my head before feeding me new beliefs about what genre artwork could accomplish. You can check out more of Julie's artwork on her website.

Best Fanzine

My recommendation: Journey Planet, edited by James Bacon, Christopher J Garcia, Lynda E. Rucker, Pete Young, Colin Harris, and Helen J. Montgomery.

Journey Planet had a great 2013, releasing four issues well worth reading, including a special issue (Number 16) focused on Philip K. Dick. You can download all of their issues here.

Best Fancast

My recommendation: The Skiffy and Fanty Show, Shaun Duke, Jen Zink, Julia Rios, Paul Weimer, David Annandale, Mike Underwood, and Stina Leicht.

Yeah, I'm totally biased in this selection — evidently I was the first guest ever to appear on the Skiffy and Fanty Show. But don't hold that against Shaun and Jen and everyone else. The Skiffy and Fanty Show is what a fancast should be. It's unscripted, unpredictable and full of opinionated, outspoken hosts and guests who demand you listen to their every word. You can listen to the shows here.

My previous Hugo Award recommendations

 

Hugo Award recommendations in the Best Editor categories

I'm still reading through all the short fiction finalists for this year's Hugo Award, so my picks for those awards will have to wait a few days. In the meantime, here are my picks for the two Best Editor categories.

Best Editor, Short Form

Since I mainly write short stories, I'm very familiar with the finalists in the Best Editor, Short Form, category. Every editor here is worthy of winning, and two of them — Ellen Datlow and Sheila Williams — have twice won the award, with Datlow also previously winning the Best Professional Editor award two additional times.

This is a hard choice, not the least since I love Sheila Williams for her continuing work with Asimov's. Neil Clarke has also done amazing things with Clarkesworld while Jonathan Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year remains essential reading for anyone in our genre. Unfortunately, I haven't yet read Datlow's most recent Best Horror of the Year anthology but I'm sure it continues to meet the incredibly high standard she's always set for her editing.

This year, though, I'm voting for John Joseph Adams for Best Editor, Short Form. Adams has been pushing the bounds of short fiction editing in our genre, both through his anthologies and his online magazines. It is staggering to think about all Adams does to promote short stories these days. Lightspeed Magazine is one of our genres leading SF/F magazines while Nightmare occupies a similar space in the horror and dark fantasy fields. And now Adams is the series editor for Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, which will instantly become one of the highest profile venues for SF/F short stories in the world.

For all that Adams has done and is doing to raise the profile of short form fiction in our genre, he is my pick for this year's Hugo Award.

Best Editor, Long Form

I will admit up front that my depth of knowledge in this category doesn't equal that of the short form editors, so please take my pick with a grain of genre salt.

In many ways you judge long-form editors by the books their publishing houses release. Tor Books has long been one of the most vital publishers in our genre, and Liz Gorinsky is an essential part of Tor's success. Between editing book length projects and short fiction, it's hard to imagine Tor without Gorinsky.

The same can be said of Lee Harris and Angry Robot. This publisher burst on the scene in recent years with an impressive lineup of books and authors and I'm thrilled to see Harris being honored for this work with his first Hugo nomination.

I'm also happy to see Ginjer Buchanan on the list. Buchanan recently retired after a 30-year career as Editor-in-Chief at Ace and Roc Books and is one of those people who helped shape the direction of our genre. As has Sheila Gilbert, who runs DAW Books alongside Elizabeth R. Wollheim (who won this award two years ago). I'm not as familiar with the final nominee, Baen Books publisher Toni Weisskopf, mainly because most Baen novels don't appeal to me. 

I could easily see several of these editors winning, but this year I'm voting Liz Gorinsky for Best Editor, Long Form. Tor had the best year of all the publishers listed here and Gorinsky played a major role in this success.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie for the Hugo Award for Best Novel

My picks for this year's Hugo Awards continue with the Best Novel category. My vote for Best Novel, and my suggestion to others, is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

The novel is one of the best SF stories I've read in years and a perfect rejuvenation of the space opera subgenre, which has long needed a strong reset. Ancillary Justice is also wondrously well-written, and presents a fresh look at both human culture and gender issues. Leckie has expertly crafted an exciting glimpse into humanity's potential instead of dwelling in the continual nostalgia which haunts so much of genre literature. For all of these reasons, this novel should win the Hugo Award.

When I recommended Interzone the other day for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, I mentioned that the other finalists for the award also deserved being on the final ballot. I can't say the same for the novel category.

First off is the 800 pound doorstop, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Due to a quirk in the Hugo rules, all 14 novels in the series were allowed on the ballot. I have never been a fan of this series because it simply rehashes every previous epic fantasy novel in existence into a nearly endless series. Since the series is so popular with readers there's a good chance it will win, but this doesn't change the fact that The Wheel of Time doesn't deserve being on the ballot or winning. 

Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross is a follow-up to his previous novel Saturn’s Children, set in a universe where humanity's androids have outlived humans. It's a good novel but not as good as Saturn’s Children.  Parasite by Mira Grant is another good novel but doesn't reach the power of Ancillary Justice. While both of these novels are well worth reading, they simply are beaten in this category by Ann Leckie's novel.

The final novel on the ballot is Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia, who waged a vote campaign on behalf of himself and others to become a Hugo finalist. I knew very little about Correia and his writing prior to his campaign. Putting aside his in-your-face political screaming and desire to promote one of the worst haters in the SF/F genre, I tried reading Warbound but found it to be simply cranked out and predictable, one of the numerous genre novels which are read for a while then forgotten. While I can't say if this novel is typical of his writing, if you're going to urge people to vote for a book make damn sure they vote for a good one. 

So again, the clear choice for the Hugo Award for Best Novel is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

As a final note, it is irritating that Orbit only included samples of Ancillary Justice, Neptune's Brood and Parasite in the Hugo voting packet. But I urge voters not to hold this against the authors or their books.