2003 Hugo Award Winners Announced 177
securitas writes "For those that follow these sorts of things, the 2003 Hugo Award Winners list has been released (PDF). Robert Sawyer's 'Homonids' won Best Novel, fan favorite Neil Gaiman won Best Novella for 'Coraline', Geoffery A. Landis won Best Short Story for 'Falling Onto Mars', Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'Conversations with Dead People' won Best Short Form Dramatic Presentation and predictably 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' won Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation. You can get all the details at the Torcon 2003 Hugo Awards section."
Re:Modern Sci-Fi (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because the second foundation trilogy sucked.
Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it was totally derivative, had a fairly lame "cyberpunk-lite" plot, and was written by three different people. IMO, Asimov ruined both the Foundation and Robots series when he merged them in his later years. Not quite as badly as Heinlein messed up his own series with dreck like Number of the Beast, but still pretty bad.
There are still some good SF authors out there, though: Kim Stanley Robinson, CJ Cherryh, Ursula LeGuin, Connie Willis, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, ....
Re:Since when are Buffy and Coraline Sci-Fi? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had this conversation with some other SF authors (yeah, I have pretentions), and it seems the big distinction between SF and fantasy isn't the way the world differs from our own (high-tech vs. magic), but how the characters relate to it. In SF, technology is external and understandable. In fantasy, magic is beyond understanding, and it's a mostly internal thing. Being able to do spells and make potions is just a different flavor of technology. But the One Ring isn't technology, it's a force of nature, and thus magic.
The supernatural in Buffy is very much magical technology. Anyone, even Xander, can pick up a stake and nail a vamp. Even the Slayer is technology - the Shadow Men just bound the essence of a demon to the slayer line and presto!, superchicks to fight vampires.
Sawyer's Work Disappoints Plenty (Score:4, Interesting)
That is, if you're not bothered by details like scientific plausability, plot, characterization, etc.
I have not read Hominids (although the reviews of it I have seen have not been promising [google.com]), but I did read Starplex, which was a Hugo and Nebula finalist, and that was such a singularly wretched novel [google.com] that I haven't read another Sawyer novel since.
This is clearly a case of "home cooking," since Worldcon was held in Sawyer's back yard. It's very sad that Sawyer won a Hugo before (and here's just a partial list) Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Pat Cadigan, China Mieville, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, John Kessel, Iain Banks, Michaael Bishop...
Well, the list of science fiction writers better than Robert J. Sayer who haven't won a Hugo just goes on and on, doesn't it?
Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy (Score:4, Interesting)
But these days there's very little sci-fi that's actually science fiction. Most of it is fantasy with computers.
China Mieville (one of the Hugo-nominated authors this year) has an excellent essay on the subject of what he calls "weird fiction" at his website, http://www.panmacmillan.com/features/china/debate
Re:Science fiction? (Score:4, Interesting)
Day of the Minotaur (1967)
Too Many Magicians (1967)
Goblin Reservation (1969)
Harpist in the Wind (1980)
Little, Big (1982)
Tea With the Black Dragon (1984)
Seventh Son (1988)
Red Prophet (1989)
Prentice Alvin (1990)
Towing Jehovah (1995)
By the way, Hominids is a dreadful book, and there's a coincidence in its win that Slashdot readers may not know about: the author couldn't possibly be more active in promoting himself as Canada's big-time SF writer [sfwriter.com], and all the Hugo voters this year were necessarily paid members of a convention taking place in Canada--in fact, Toronto where the winning author lives. Are Canadian SF fans really such parochial nationalist boosters that they would vote for a bad book just because it's Canadian? I wouldn't have thought so before yesterday.
You should read Hominids, The Scar, Bones of the Earth, Kiln People, and The Years of Rice and Salt if you'd like to judge for yourself. I'd have voted for any of them and even "no award" before I would have voted for Hominids.
Re:Science fiction? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to my high school teacher, it was the other way around; i.e. fantansy included science fiction. This makes sense because the simple English word fantasy is more general than science fiction. Fantasy was supposed to refer to any story with a fantastical premise or situation--in fact it didn't even specifically have to involve science or guys with swords and wizards. Many Twilight Zone episodes fall into this category. By contrast, in a science fiction story, some sort of made-up science was always supposed to play a major role.
Re:Good for Buffy (Score:2, Interesting)
Should you see all the episodes of Buffy to 'get' it? Would you look at three square centimeters of a statue before dismissing it as crap? I appreciate that you may not find Buffy accessible at first viewing and not be motivated to continue. However, just because YOU don't like something doesn't automatically mean there is no argument for its status as something more than television filler material.
In other words, I think you've contradicted your own point that personal taste shouldn't enter much into the 'art or not' debate. Your only argument that Buffy isn't art is that you find it beyond crap. What objective reasons can you give that Buffy is not art?