Hugo Voting

I just submitted my votes for the Hugo Awards to the good people at Noreascon. Yes, I'll be at WorldCon, at least for the weekend portion. I've actually never been to a science fiction convention before, because I don't tend to like conventions of any sort, but it's been a while since WorldCon last plopped itself down ninety minutes from where I live, so I didn't think I could get away with resisting this one.

Voting for the Hugos this year was difficult because, for the most part, I disliked most of the choices in every category except novelettes, and there I really wanted a tie between a few of them. I didn't vote for a novel, because I haven't read any of them, or any short dramatic presentation, because I hadn't seen any of them. The professional editor category was the easiest -- although in a perfect world, I think Gordon van Gelder of F&SF and Ellen Datlow of SciFiction would tie, I voted for van Gelder as #1 and Datlow as #2. I expect Gardner Dozois of Asimov's will win, though, not only because he tends to be the popular choice, but because his recent resignation from editing Asimov's will make people want to give him awards while they can. Since Asimov's dominates the short fiction nominations, perhaps this makes sense, but I enjoyed reading F&SF far more than Asimov's last year (and even more so this year), while SciFiction seems to get better and better (indeed, so far this year SciFiction has offered the most consistently excellent and interesting work by a major short fiction market, though F&SF has also continued to publish some interesting work in just about every issue).

It's all an amusing game, but I'm wary of taking any awards too seriously, much as I like analyzing them. I look forward to seeing the Hugo ceremony and offering applause and congratulations to everyone who wins, because ... well, because it's fun.

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