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Hugo Award Voting Open 127

Posted by timothy from the choose-wisely dept.
FortKnox writes "This is from SciFi Storm: It's time for the Hugo Award (Best in Science Fiction) nominations and voting for 2001. You can vote if you get at least a Supporting Membership in The Millennium Philcon or ConJosé (location of worldcon). I haven't read much current SciFi (still working on some Heinlein works), but some of the /. readers might be interested in putting in their opinions."
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Hugo Award Voting Open More

Hugo Award Voting Open

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  • My vote (Score:1, Troll)

    by Corvidae ( 162939 )
    Hugo Weaving? Oh, wait, sorry. Wrong Hugo. =(

    • Re:My vote (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mr_Matt ( 225037 )
      Dang, there's a p-o'd moderator out there today...this is about the n-th funny post I've seen modded down as "offtopic." Maybe the dude needs to get laid or something...sheesh.

      Seriously, guys, lighten up!
  • "3 out of 4 people prefer Microsoft's .Net over other web services!"

    komi

    • Hmmm...new entry for the "MS English Dictionary":

      "People (pl. n): 1. Lobotomized mental patients ('The people used to be interesting before the operation'). 2. Monkeys of sub-average intelligence ('The people like to fling poop'). 3. MSCEs ('Those people broke my computer again')."

      -Legion

  • My nomination... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:09PM (#2820194) Homepage
    The book based on the Lord of the Rings movie is really good. If you haven't read it yet, you really should, there is a lot more stuff in it than the movie, and most of it is pretty exciting (except this dude called Tom Bombadil who is a real fruit, almost as annoying as Jar-Jar). Some guy named Tokin wrote it, and and I think it should be nominated, even though it's based on a movie.

    • Re:My nomination... (Score:5, Funny)

      by yesthatguy ( 69509 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:14PM (#2820215) Homepage
      Unfortunately, in a movie marketing flop, the book was published before the movie was released. This meant that anybody could read the book, and have the entire plot of the movie before they watched it. In fact, you could take this far enough, and say you wouldn't even need to watch the movie if you had read the book. The makers of the movie should have predicted this and prevented the book from being released until after the movie was ready.

  • Old News (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:16PM (#2820229) Homepage
    Well, since WorldCon 2001 was in late August, and the winner of the Best Novel was "Harry Potter", and this isn't reflected on the Hugo website, I'm really getting disappointed with these awards.

    The Seiun (Japanese Hugo) and the Nebula are still better representations of SF and Fantasy works, since their voting is done a little better and less of a clique setup. I mean, how does Harry Potter win over George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords [amazon.com] and Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God [amazon.com]?
    • Harry Potter is known around the world and has even had a movie done about the characters.

      Martin and Sawyer's fans are few and far between. (Though no less avid and quite a bit more thoughtful.)

      Dancin Santa
      • Harry Potter is known around the world and has even had a movie done about the characters.
        Martin and Sawyer's fans are few and far between.

        So the Hugo is a popularity contest now? I somehow doubt that the Hugo award was designed to facilitate "market entrenchment". But I suppose the corporations who fund this have something else to say about it.
        Rampant commercialism/consumerism...

    • how does Harry Potter win over George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords [amazon.com] and Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God [amazon.com]?

      It wins because the Hugo is a reader-voted award, and the readers voted for Harry Potter. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the quality of modern SF fans.

      • I actually thought Harry Potter was a fantastic book.

        Sure it may not be as "serious" as other books, but lots of readers liked it, and that is all that matters right?

        In my mind, it is a lot like the people that trash the GameCube for having a lot of games with cartoony graphics that just aren't as "serious" as Halo or DOA3. Apparently they don't care if the games are a lot of fun - they are bad because they break from the tradition of serious gaming. I see a lot of scifi/fantasy readers do the same to books, and it is disappointing to me.
        • I actually thought Harry Potter was a fantastic book.

          That's nice. I thought it was an enjoyable book as far as it went. But I've read plenty of other books in the same category just as good, or better (e.g. some of the Heinlein juveniles, or the Hobbit, or The Princess Bride). I honestly don't understand why this particular series has become such a huge fad (and let's face it, a fad is pretty much what it is). But since it's a fad, it's popular by definition. Which means it wins a popularity contest like the Hugo Awards.

          Sure it may not be as "serious" as other books, but lots of readers liked it, and that is all that matters right?

          It's not about seriousness, or lack thereof. Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" isn't exactly "serious", and yet it is a great science fiction novel all the same. But you're right, lots of readers liked Potter, and so it won. Regardless of its quality. Lots of people like N'Sync too, but I wouldn't necessarily rate them up there with the likes of Beethoven.

    • Sorry, but how is the Hugo a clique setup? Anyone can vote for the Hugos, all they have to do is have a membership of the Worldcon.
      Harry Potter won last year because the majority of people attending the Worldcon voted for it to win. It's as simple as that.
    • I have to say, it's amusing to see the suggestion that the Nebula awards are less cliquey than the Hugos. The Nebulas are voted on only by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and internal SFWA politics often play a part in the process. The Hugos, by contrast, can be voted on by anyone who cares enough to stump up thirty bucks for a supporting Worldcon membership, and very few of the voters have any political connection with the candidates.

  • Best Si-Fi award goes to: (Score:4, Funny)

    by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john@lamar.gmail@com> on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:17PM (#2820234) Homepage Journal
    Hack Proofing Windows 2000 Server [cmu.edu]

    It's fiction... and since it deals with computers I'm guessing it goes under Science.

  • Douglas Adams' Salmon of Doubt due out in May (Score:4, Offtopic)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:18PM (#2820244) Homepage Journal
    Ok, last time I plug this, it's been rejected 3 times on submission, but here it is to keep Hitchhikers posted:

    Since originally reading here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org], the possibility of Douglas' last works coming to print, I've been checking periodically. On Jan. 9th a hit [amazon.com] came up on Amazon [amazon.com] for Salmon of Doubt - Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. A quick check of Harmony Books seems to confirm [randomhouse.com] it's due out in May, one year after the death of Douglas Noel Adams [tdv.com]. There's at least cover artwork, as oppose to the last time, back in the mid-90's, or so, when I saw listing of this same book.

    Speculation has been that Salmon and other bits have been harvested from DNA's computer hard drive. As much as Douglas, a tough critic of his own work, may not have wanted other eyes to see work he deemed unfit to publish, it's coming. I'll probably buy the book. Perhaps a pint of bitter, with a pleasantly nutty taste and some Dire Straits will help cope with the mixed feelings.

  • Living Our Values (Score:5, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:23PM (#2820275) Homepage
    I'd like to nominate Microsoft's Living Our Values [microsoft.com] page for short fiction.
  • For the CONJOSE' award(best SCIFI website) I think everyone should vote for this Site [slashdot.org]

  • this was posted why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:32PM (#2820337) Journal
    "You can vote if you get at least a Supporting Membership in The Millennium Philcon or ConJosé (location of worldcon)."

    Presumably, if you are a member of one of these groups, you would receive notification from them that it's time to vote. So why waste the space on Slashdot alerting a bunch of people to vote on something they can't? I'll be more interested when the results of that voting has been published, but not until then.

    This is analogous to posting a link to the AMPAS website when it's time to vote on the Oscars. With the exception of CleverNickname (Slashdot's token celebrity), none of us are likely to be voting for them, either.
    • Anybody can get a membership - you don't need to be a member before a certain time, other than the close of voting. You don't even have to actually attend to Con...
      • To be precise, the deadline to join ConJose in order to nominate for the Hugos is January 31. I don't quite recall the deadline to join to vote, but IIRC, earlier Worldcons have allowed people to buy memberships at the same time they vote, so end-of-voting as the deadline is likely to be correct.

  • It's obvious, isn't it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Thursday January 10, 2002 @07:49PM (#2820429) Journal
    The award should go to Hugo Weaving for his striking portrayal of Elrond in "The Fellowship of the Ring". That, and the fact that I can't even think of any other Hugos who might deserve an award.

    Maybe Hurricane Hugo, but that was a while ago.

    *whisper whisper* What? Oh.

    Okay, then. How about a Harry Potter book? *hides*

  • Greg Egan (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 )
    slashdotters have to read Greg Egan.

    (1) he is a programmer.

    (2) he writes exciting but surreal multidimensional stories that actually explain quantum mechanical ideas (espc. "many worlds") more than they exploit/exagerate them.

    I have no idea if he has written anything recently to actually win a Hugo.

    btw, Stanislaw Lem is another must for ultra-logical or mathematical cream of the crop science fiction.

    • Re:Greg Egan (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I thoroughly agree! Greg Egan is a Western Australian Science Fiction Author whose short stories touch on very ./ relevant issues such as the real world implications of advances in and nanotech/biotech.

      I encourage you all to read Axiomatic, his anthology of short stories. His stories haunt my imagination just like the works of Brunner and JG Ballard.

      l8r

      chOpper
    • And, you're forgetting, Stanislaw Lem is also one of the funniest SciFi writers. I used to reread stories from the "Trurl" + "Klapautius" (sorry, I read them in my native language) once every two months before I was stupid enough to lend my copy to a "friend". Fighting wars by hurling babies at an enemy planet must be the coolest idea in any SciFi story ever...

    • Book-a-minute Greg Egan book summaries. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Every Book I've Ever Written
      by Greg Egan
      condensed by Anonymous Coward

      Enter TRAGIC HERO and SKEPTIC.

      TRAGIC HERO: "I have developed a radical new idea about the nature of reality which seems absolutely absurd at first but which really makes sense in a certain twisted way."

      SKEPTIC: "Your idea seems absolutely absurd at first!"

      TRAGIC HERO: "But?"

      SKEPTIC: "But... it really makes sense in a certain twisted way!"

      TRAGIC HERO: "My radical new idea about the nature of reality will change the world!"

      THE WORLD: "I don't get it."

      Tragic Hero GETS LAID. Tragic Hero DIES.

      The Universe either BEGINS or ENDS. Or BOTH. Or SOMETHING. I can't REMEMBER.

      THE END

  • Pointless. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bilby ( 222476 )
    I used to actually respect the Hugo awards. I learnt better. Especially after last year - best novel: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Even ignoring questions about how good it is (although I have strong opinions about that) the fact is that it simply isn't Science Fiction. And "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as best Science Fiction movie? (Great film, though). If the Hugos mean anything, they should at least be given to work in the correct genre.

    Off course, this year at least we know what the best movie will be - LotR. So the tradition of SF awards going to non-SF films will continue in all it's glory. :) Although there doesn't seem to be a lot of competition.
    • The Hugos are not strictly for science fiction. They are for science fiction AND fantasy works. This misconception that the Hugos are only for SF works is rampant but still wrong.
      • I'll give you that. I always presumed that, as it was the World Science Fiction Society that governed them, that they would therefore be genre specific. But, according to their consititution, they include fantasy.

        Odd that. I wonder if it was due to a historical lack of distinction between the two, or a deliberate decision to include both genres in the same award? At any rate, now I'll just have to go back to complaining about the quality of the winners, instead of their genres. :)
        • they changed the rules in the early eighties because everyone read Lord of the Rings in the seventies, after which no science fiction was produced until Star Wars.
  • Because I don't, but I was considering buying one of his books today, choosing not to because in true Anglosaxon fashion, it refused to divulge information on what it was about (got A&R instead).
    • I always go to buy his books but then get intimidated by how "intelligent" and "interesting" they seem.
      So I bought Dan Simmons instead.
    • Well, I've taken him out to dinner... Oh, the books. 'Vurt' was great, also 'Nymphomation' and 'Needle In The Groove'. I thought 'Pollen' and 'Automated Alice' sucked ('Pollen' because it wrecks the up-in-the-air ending of 'Vurt'). 'Pixel Juice' was OK.

      Try 'Vurt', just don't expect anything like any SF you've ever read before. If you like everything rational, logical and carefully explained, don't even bother. If you like weird and psychoactive, give it a try.

      Unfortunately, as far as I know, Jeff hasn't anything eligible for this year's Hugo, even though books published in the UK are now eligible for 2 years instead of one.

      Steve Davies
  • should be who should get a Hugo...

    As a Worldcon 2002 member, I'm going to vote for Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter for Dramatic Presentation (you get to vote for five)...

    And hey, Taco, take the time to Googlesearch for the Suggested Nominees and get the poll right, eh? Spelling too? Or is that too much to ask...

    --
    Shipping the Penguin [pogolinux.com] in Bill's backyard...

    • Re:Next Slashdot Poll (Score:2, Informative)

      by Gasconne ( 526952 )
      Just for the record... The Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo isn't just for movies. Single episodes of TV shows as well as TV miniseries are also eligible. "Dune" was up for the BDP Hugo last year. I'm planning on nominating at least one episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" myself (probably the musical ep). And on a related note, the category may be split up after this year so movies and TV are in separate categories. There are so many qualified movies and TV shows out there these days that the amount of material seems to merit the split, IMO.
      • I think we will see the Dramatic Presentation Hugo split into TV and movie categories for the reason you stated.

        There has been much arguement about just what constitutes a movie and what constitutes a TV show for the new separate Hugos, but I think the arguement should be settled by the this premise: where it was shown first. A science-fiction movie first shown on TV should definitely go in the TV category, IMHO.

        Anyway, I can hazard a guess that Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will win this year's Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation.
      • He's got a point (and I knew all that, I just wanted to get the meme out there and let folks do their own research :) .... I would definitely vote for separating off TV from the rest of it, given that there's quite a bit of good stuff out there on the Small Screen, and Legend of the Rangers hopefully will be on come fall and make it into the 2003 vote... I'd hate to see that lose just because The Two Towers will be out.... :)

        On the other hand, BUFFY?!

        You think the uproar when Harry Potter won it was bad.... BUFFY? That high-camp soap opera? Good god, man, put a stake in it!

        Go ahead, mod me down, I have my asbestos underoos on, but that is not even within an order of magnitude of Harry Potter, much less Tolkein or JMS...

        Buffy?!???

        • Buffy? That high-camp soap opera?

          Aargh. Yet another wise-ass that has seen 10 minutes of Buffy combined and feels fully qualified to judge it.

          I'm not denying your right to like or dislike; I'm just telling you that you're obviously passing judgement on something you have no idea what it's about - in true /. fashion. Jerk.

          Re the Hugos - the awards used to stand for something. They've been going down the hill for some time, but when HP beat Martin's ASOS last year that was the last drop. I don't really care who gets Hugos anymore. Only Nebulas left..

          Have fun,

          Yan (proudly risking karma in defence of Buffy since 2001)
        • I vote with the 'diss Buffy' camp most of the time, but when Sci-fi awards are mentioned all I can think of is the BAD sci-fi I've seen on TV in the past... the 70's 'Buck Rogers' series comes to mind; some of my friends still make fun of it, 20 years after its none-too-soon demise (the villainess in that one was pretty hot though). Twiki the robot makes the Tick's live action sidekick seem positively macho by comparison.

          Really though, Buffy is no less eye candy than Baywatch or Xena are. Nothing wrong with eye candy, just have to recognize it for what it is.

  • The only reason I, as a reader, have cared about the awards in the past is that it gives me some suggestions of what to read.

    However, many Sci-Fi fans like different kind of books. So, as a Sci-Fi fan with particular tastes, looking at an award list for suggested reading isn't as helpful as browsing Amazon.com or getting recommendations from my ratings there.

  • Best of 2001 according to others (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pikathulhu ( 550091 ) on Friday January 11, 2002 @01:07AM (#2821688)
    Here are a few "Best SF of 2001" lists:

    Locus Magazine Best Novels of 2001 [locusmag.com]
    Barnes and Noble Best SF of 2001 [barnesandnoble.com]
    January Magazine Best of 2001 (go down to the bottom for SF) [januarymagazine.com]
    Borders Best SF of 2001 [bordersstores.com]
    Amazon Best Science Fiction of 2001 [amazon.com]
    Amazon Best Fantasy of 2001 [amazon.com]
    Some guy's Best SF of 2001 list [project-inspiration.com]
    An Amazon Listmania Best SF of 2001 list [amazon.com]

    It's a tiny sample, but it looks like these are clear favorites:

    1. The Wooden Sea, Jonathan Carroll
    2. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
    3. American Gods, Neil Gaiman

    And all these do well, showing up on several lists and/or ranking high where they're mentioned:

    Cosmonaut Keep, Ken MacLeod
    Nekropolis, Maureen McHugh
    The Chronoliths, Robert Charles Wilson
    Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
    Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey
    Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds

    Personally, I haven't read enough 2001 novels to make a decent list.

    • I've been reading Ken Macleod recently.
      Cosmonaut Keep is pretty good, but personally I prefer some of his earlier books (The Stone Canal, The Cassini division, the star fraction).
      IMHO well written, and a good read.
    • I suggest you go pick up an Orson Scott Card's "Shadow of the hegemon" copy and start reading it right now.

      I devoured it in 2 days. Really cool!!!

      This is valid if you've already read the whole Ender Saga and the previous "Ender's shadow" novel.

      OSC is pure fun
    • Wow ! Thanks a lot firstly for the great links, and second, for the mentioning of "Cosmonaut Keep"
      by Ken MacLeod. I saw a review of this in early 2001 (AFAIC) and put it in my bookmarks, but these went lost. I have been searching for the name of the author and the title for a long time now, and finaly I found it!

      Besides, these few examples prove (at least for me) that SF is still one of the most progressive "stylistic devices" if I may call them so, for discussing changes in the way societies behave.

      Keep up posting good stuff like this, so that the signal/noise ratio does not drop
      too far down ;)
  • Nobody has suggested anything new in SF. Is it that bad? Today I left the SF section in Borders feeling disgusted. Almost everything is either fantasy or military. (And most of the military stuff is crap. Name one real war won by a single hero.)
    • Hear hear. I am so sick of the incredible lack of choice you find in the sf section these days. Only place I find a decent amount of interesting sf is at used bookstores, and there you usually have to go back 20 years to find anything worthwhile.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin's two 2001 releases, The Other Wind and Tales From Earthsea, were some of the most amazing books I've ever read.

    I've learned more from reading Ursula Le Guin than I can even express. If you haven't read this author yet you are missing out!
  • On an article which has absolutely nothing to do with computers in any way, people STILL manage to turn it into a "Microsoft sux, Linux rools"-fest.

    Christ on a bike!

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