Thursday, July 5, 2012

My Hugo votes 2012, part 5: Related works

Related works was a very heterogeneous category. The nominees mostly had nothing to do with each other’s: a collection of essays about science fiction film, a coffee table book about steam punk, a net site containing the new Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, a collection of songs by a science fiction author and a podcast series about writing science fiction.

The encyclopedia of SF seems to be very much work in progress. The first article I checked (about Finland) was apparently written about twenty years ago, and has never been updated after that. It really didn't give a very flattering impression.


I tried the music album by Seanan McGuire. I am a very unmusical person, I practically never listen to any music by choice and even while driving a car if I don't happen to have any podcast to listen I try to find a radio channel without any music or sports (usually an extremely hard task) . It isn't probably surprising that I really don't even understand why the music album was nominated. Even the lyrics seem to have hardly anything to do with sf. If a singer is a sf author, that shouldn’t be a reason for a nomination. This was something which was really easy to put under ”no award".

The “writing excuses” is a podcast about writing speculative fiction. It isn't the only one on that subject, and after I had listened a few episodes it doesn't seem to be the best one. The actual books in the category were both at least ok, so it was easy to put them at the top positions. My voting order is probably going to be:


1. Jar Jar Binks Must Die...
2. The Steampunk Bible
3. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition
4. Writing Excuses
5. No Award
6. Wicked Girls

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