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The Hugo Awards: Word From A Winner
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Sep 04, 2000 09:22 PM
from the colorful-language dept.
from the colorful-language dept.
mouthbeef writes: "The year 2000 Hugo Awards have been awarded. Cryptonomicon didn't win but A Deepness in the Sky did. And hey, so did I. AFAIK, this is the first first-person account of a Hugo win published on the Web, and I know for a fact that my acceptance speech was the only one to contain an URL."
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The Hugo Awards: History Written By (One Of) The Winners
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IANAC (critic), but... (Score:5)
[Doing this from memory, so my apologies if I don't get it right...]
I found myself struggling to finish Cryptonomicon, it left me uninvolved with the characters and didn't seem to introduce any new ideas. This is disappointing because the concept had great potential, but in the end it came down to rather blunt corporate manouvering (which I think was included to cover up the problems with the data warehouse concept), and a hunt for some war booty (and then it was only gold!). In the end it felt like the author ran out of steam midway and then thought "hey, didn't I read about X in Popular Mechanics?", and sticks a reference to it in the story.
On the other hand, Deepness stayed with me. For the first time I realised the immense power (both in the good and bad sense) inherent in 'pervasive computing'. I assume this may be old-news to those who read Cyberpunk genre, but i'd not encountered it before.
Also, I really liked the way Vinge envisaged layer upon layer of computer architectures accumulating over thousands of years. I seem to recall that he implied that down in the deep depths file names were 8.3...
However, everything isn't perfect, while Vinge's aliens (the arachnids) are interesting, they are not as alien as the SMP creatures from his first book. Vinges description of alien buildings was really clever - from the point of view of the aliens they were described the way we would describe a room, warm, cozy, but from the point of view of the humans the rooms were darkly alien.
Also, Vinge is an IT academic, and he treads the line between speculative and fantasy very well.
Re:Vinge? Jeesh! (Score:3)
Because the post-Singularity world is impossible to write about, he writes either the people who for some reason or another are isolated from the Singularity (his Bobble future) or a universe where there has been artificial limits imposed on computing power in areas of the galaxy (the Zones of the Deepness/Fire universe.) He sees the Singularity arriving as soon as 30 years from now, so it's not surprising that in the Zones universe computers are not that much advanced beyond today's.
I'm not sure how much I agree with Vinge on the Singularity concept, but saying 'he has not kept up with computer science and technology' is foolish, nto the least because he's a professor of computer science (distributed and embedded computer systems.)
GQ won out in a crowded field. (Score:3)
The Sixth Sense was one of the most popular movies last year. Even if it wasn't looked on very kindly by many genre folk, it had a decent story, high production values, and some great acting by Willis, as well as yon precocious kid. So it was bound to get some of the more conventional votes here, as well as stand in for the fantasy crowd.
The Matrix was clearly the favorite going in, especially among young people. There would be a very strong vote for this movie no matter what. At the same time, a number of people just didn't like it (some of them are here). I, for one, thought it was the odds-on favorite, even though it was my personal 2nd choice.
The Iron Giant was a quirky entry that appealed to a certain minority. I thought a lot of people in this kind of literate forum might support it, but didn't expect it to win. It was my first choice.
Anyway, I forget what the other nom was -- Blair Witch? The Haunting?
With such a crowded field of worthy candidates, but all somewhat appealing to different crowds, the middle-of-the-road crowd-pleaser is a slam dunk -- nothin' but net. And GQ was actually better than that -- it was smart and funny.
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The Universe of Fire and Deepness: an intro (Score:5)
What is fascinating is how in the 1992 Hugo winner "A Fire Upon The Deep" and in its 1999 prequel, now also a Hugo winner, "A Deepness In The Sky", Vinge is able to study both sides of the Singularity in the *same universe*, and indeed with one very human character in common, despite the one book's events occurring about 30,000 years and about three fifths of the galaxy's diameter apart.
In "Deepness", Vinge deals with the Era of Failed Dreams: no faster than light drives, no human-plus computing, no Singularity.
The irony (and poignancy) for those who have first read "Fire" is that the events of "Deepness" occur deep in the Slow Zone, where FTL, human-plus computing and the Singularity are impossible due to the division of our galaxy (and apparently other galaxies) into distinct regions following lines of mean density (the core is the Unthinking Depths, Sol is in the Slow Zone, FTL is first available further out in the Beyond and Transcendence (the Singularity) and human-plus computers are possible only in the Transcend out at the edge and between galaxies), while "Fire" starts in the Low Transcend, switches to the High Beyond, drops to the Bottom of the Beyond and finishes in the Slow Zone.
Many of the desires of the characters in "Deepness" are impossible to fulfill in the Slow Zone, and they are not even aware of the existence of the Zones, which appear to be possibly artificial measures to protect the birth and development of infant civilizations from otherwise being overwhelmed by any single expansive species (This is one of the more original answers to Fermi's paradox concerning the apparent absence of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations).
Once the Zones are discovered, most societies attempt to colonize the Beyond in order to use FTL to travel, trade and (rarely) conquer, rather than stay mired in the Slow Zone.
Rarely, some elements of a civilization will colonize the Transcend, leading to short-lived transcendent entities. But it's risky to trade with Gods - just read your mythology. In fact, the topic of communicating with Transcendents is called Computing and Applied Theology. Remember that Vinge teaches Computer Science.
Vinge did a similar study of both sides of the Singularity on Earth in his two earlier novels from 1986 and 1988 respectively, the Peace War (setting us back from the Singularity for two generations or more) and its much richer sequel Marooned In Realtime. A novella, "The Ungoverned", is set in the same history not long before the Singularity.
It is not possible that the two sets of stories (Peacers and Zones of Thought) occur in the same universe: the former Peacer Della Lu made a trip to the Lesser Megellanic Cloud, and hence would have made it out of the Slow Zone with a resulting improvement in both her own intelligence and that of her devices.
Vinge in his universe of "Fire" and "Deepness" is adept at showing truly alien societies, the effect of technology on thinking beings for whom we come to care deeply, and using principles of computer science and networking in genuinely original ways for science fiction, although not, I suspect, for network gurus.
Even his choice of low bandwidth for ultrawave allows for a Usenet-like galactic culture in the Beyond and the Low Transcend in "Fire", with much effect for rueful recognition. I suspect that "Fire" was one of the books that influenced the second and third seasons of television scripts by J.M. Stracynski for his series "Babylon 5".
But that is another post.
Connie Willis won AGAIN! (Score:3)
If the count is up to date, this makes her fourteenth major award [geocities.com] -- six Nebulas, and eight Hugos. That's more than any other sf author, even some of the big names
Frankly, I had a hard time with The Doomsday Book, for various reasons including the fact that major characters playing with dangerous technology acted like idiots, but in the end it was very worthwhile. I'm just surprised it took me so many years to discover her. (Easy to do when you quit reading new sf, like I did.)
But I've now read more of her "Dunsworthy time machine" stories, the collection Fire Watch, which is top-notch, and I've jsut begun last year's Hugo winner for novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog. Not to be missed. If you've been off the SF beat for a while, pick up some Willis, you'll be glad you did.
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Re:The Universe of Fire and Deepness: an intro (Score:3)
Unfortunatley, that is no longer the case. He retired from SDSU [sdsu.edu] last spring. I had the honor of taking a class with him, and he was a wonderful professor. Although he will be sorely missed at SDSU, he did leave to pursue writing books full time!
What it's all about, a man page about fandom (Score:3)
SF existed before the 1920s, but it came into existance as a genre with Hugo Gernsback's creation of Amazing Stories in '26. That's why they're called the Hugos.
Fandom began shortly after, in the late 20s and early 30s, when folks writing to the lettercols realized that that some of the other letter writers lived in their own town.
The first con was in Philly, in '36 (when half-a-dozen guys from NYC came down to Philly, to meet half a dozen guys from Philly). The first Worldcon was in 1939, with over 200 folks. It's down now, slightly, from the high point of the 80's, but Chicon, the 58th Worldcon, was over 6000 attendees, and we ate both towers of the downtown Hyatt Regency, the Fairmont, and the Swissotel.
Unlike Oscars, etc, there is no self-appointed elite, who decide what is the One True Right. Anyone who ponies up their money to join Worldcon can nominate anything (nominations close around the beginning of spring), and you can vote after that. All you have to be, is a member. So, those of us who read it the most, and who care the most, are the ones who nominate and vote.
Someone mentioned the SF-Lovers list, but I didn't see mention of the rec.arts.sf heirarchy (that was *real* busy, and had a good number of newsgroups already, when I got on the 'Net in late 91). Also, the culture of the newsgroups was *real* familiar to me...it looked and sounded just like a party at a con, or an APA (think of a snail-mail newsgroup).
We were here first, guys. Who did you think you invented a lot of this? Wassamatter, you so afraid of the Big Blue Room that you can't deal with us in person?
For more about fandom, try
http://www.enteract.com/~whitroth/silverdragon/sf
Oh...and for only about the third time I can remember, someone actually involved with a film was there to get their Hugo, when it was announced who won - both the writer *and* the director, and I don't think there was a doubt in anyone's mind that the Hugo meant to the writer what it meant to us...not when he got up there, and went incoherent!
mark
Galaxy Quest beats The Matrix? (Score:3)
It was a hugo announcement 21 years ago (Score:5)
It quickly became very successful, and to a bureaucrats attention, prompting its move back to MIT, the name changed to SF-Lovers@mit-ai, where it puttered along still readable by a mostly 300 baud community, until Star Trek the motionless picture came out, otherwise known as the day the mailer died. The MIT mail engine got more than 6 hours behind. Digests happened. Unix mailers that at the time reqired a separate copy per recipient got re-written. We even saw semi-official header forgery -- kicked off MIT's machines due to overloading, its new host (another major university, on the left coast) forged headers to make it look like it still originated at MIT, so its own administration wouldn't know that the mail originated on their system.
As to first time by a hugo winner: One year later, saw the first "@-sign" party. two (past) hugo winners, and one nominee were in attendance (niven, pournelle, and forward. Went thru more irish whiskey than SFWA did that night). So was a suitcase sized portable printing terminal with thermal paper, and an acoustic coupler on the back. Ran at a whopping 300 baud. Results of the voting were posted to the list within hours of live announcement, a comment was added by one of the winners (who got an instant invite to the party when the result got announced) and with the digest maker in attendance at the party to launch a "special edition" of the digest.
So in less than a years time, we went from no list and more than one week from live announcement to first posting, to near real-time coverage, with comments by a winner. (the very first online announcement was delayed, because in 1979 the Worldcon was in Brighton, UK. Still fairly broke at the time, we went to the NASFIC in Loisville, held the following weekend instead, heard the results from some fen that had done both conventions. I posted the announcement when we got back home, slightly suprised that someone hadn't beaten me to it.)
One small comment about the "@-sign" parties. At the time, the arpanet was "our little secret", and we were particularly circumspect about "unofficial" uses of it. We really did worry that Proxmire (who was in office at the time) would find out about recreational use of the net, award a "Golden Fleece" award, and manage to divert the funding to a milk price support program. So it was a harder party to get into than the usual legends of tightly controlled doors, the SFWA and Balantine Books parties. It also made for a very funny panel discussion 6 months later at the 81 Boskone, where the 5 of us siting up at the table in front discussed how such a future system could work, carefully avoiding any use of the present tense, not telling them that "our tax dollars" were paying for one as we sat there.
-dp-
Editor's note (Score:4)