21 new of 41 responses total.
Pleasant, but fluffy. On the other hand, comedy suits her: Willis's characters are consistently extraordinarily mentally dim. In a comedy, at least, this is appropriate and amusing; in her more serious works, it's somewhere between annoying and distressing. Bruce Sterling's novelette is in his new collection, _A Good Old-Fashioned Future_, which I just bought: I'm looking forward to reading it. Disch's non-fiction book was very thoughtful, but so provocative and iconoclastic that I'm not sure which surprises me more: that it won a Hugo, or that the author (presumably) was willing to accept one. "The Truman Show" was a fine movie (especially for Jim Carrey, who manages to play a nice guy without being sappy), much better than "Pleasantville", which had tedious spots and was never really thought through. I wonder if "Babylon 5" lost because everyone agrees the last season was a dog, or because the con was held in Australia where presumably fewer people saw the show?
Did a little web searching. Connie Willis Awards: Hugo, 1982 "Fire Watch" (novelette) Nebula, 1982 "Fire Watch" (novelette) Hugo, 1983 "A Letter From the Clearys" (short story) Nebula, 1982 "A Letter from the Clearys" (short story) Campbell Award, 1988 "Lincoln's Dreams" (novel) Hugo, 1988 "The Last of the Winnebagos" (novella) Nebula, 1988 "The Last of the Winnebagos" (novella) Nebula, 1990 "At the Rialto" (novelette) Nebula, 1992 "Doomsday Book" (novel) Hugo, 1993 "Doomsday Book" (novel) Locus, 1993 "Doomsday Book" (novel) Nebula, 1992 "Even the Queen" (short story) Hugo, 1993 "Even the Queen" (short story) Locus, 1993 "Even the Queen" (short story) Locus, 1994 "Impossible Things" (collection) Hugo, 1994 "Death on the Nile" (short story) Locus, 1994 "Close Encounter" (short story) Locus, 1996 "Remake" (novella) Hugo, 1998 "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (novel) Is this enough awards?
Hmph. (Scott enters some pointlessly sarcastic remark)
More to the point, does Willis' domination of the prominent science fiction awards during the 90s mean that she's the greatest writer to hit scifi in decades or does it point to the scarcity of other fresh writing talent in the genre? (or at least other talent with general appeal..) I never finished "To Say Nothing of the Dog" -- I abandoned it after about fifty pages because I found it particularly boring. I'm willing to try again if someone wants to assure me that it (or any of her other stories) is really worth the effort, but I am definitely wondering what all the hype is about.. (But then the only currently-writing science fiction authors I've been genuinely enthusiastic about in recent years have been Neal Stephenson and Tim Powers.. I just don't read science fiction like I used to..)
Who does? (Read science fiction like they used to, I mean.) If you like Stephenson and Powers, Mike, then you might just find Willis too, well, fluffy. Try _Doomsday Book_, which is her grittiest novel: time-traveling grad student lands in the middle of the 14th Century Black Plague without realizing it. Or some of her short stories: "Fire Watch" (middle of the Blitz) or "A Letter from the Clearys" (her most successful attempt at the kind of gut-wrenching story that the 1950s sf authors did so well).
Well, I like and read Connie Willis. I just don't think she is anything like the only game in town - I'd like to see more writers recognized. I think part of the reason that she wins so many awards is that she writes so many short stories - not that many short stories get published and they don't get very much attention, so I think it is a smallish clique of people who read them and vote on short story awards. On the whole I agree that there is a shortage of writers to be enthusiastic about. People I'm at least mildly enthusiastic about include Neal Stephenson, Pat Murphy, Sean Stewart, and Robert Sawyer. The last two may be pushing their luck - some of their recent work has been less impressive.
re #25: thanks for the suggestion, perhaps I'll try those.. re #26: care to go into further detail about the writers you like -- what sort of stuff they write, what would be a good starting point, etc..?
Luke: _All_ awards are nominated essentially by a small group of people, though not necessarily a clique (which implies a conscious, self-aware group). I counted three years' worth of Hugo ballots, so I've seen this in action. But fewer people nominate, or vote, for the Hugo short fiction awards than for Novel. Nomination, by the way, is a more critical filtering process than the actual voting, because it selects from a larger field and because fewer people participate.
Indeed. I remember the shock I felt a few years back when the awards were announced and I realized that I had already read the Hugo-winning short story!
janc in resp:26 :: Yes, it's true that working actively in the shorter fiction lengths can run up your award totals. See Harlan Ellison, who has never to my knowledge written a science fiction novel. The Hugos represent the economic structure of the SF field at the time the awards categories were fixed: in the 1950s, the pulp magazines were dominant, and there were probably less than 50 full-length novels published each year -- I'm guessing, based on things I've read in old fanzines. One might consider revising the awards categories to reflect the field in 1999: Roll together the Novella and Novellette awards, and then create some new categories for longer works. Best Short Novel, Best Big Honking Novel, and Best Trilogy, perhaps?
If I remember correctly, Harlan Ellison wrote a novel back in the 50s or 60s called Doomsman. It's one of those books that he'll rip up if you ever ask him to sign it. I have a problem with presenting awards for Best Trilogy. How do we handle a series whenone or more of the individual books had already won? Would these series be disqualified?
I'm not sure that Ken was literally suggesting a "best trilogy" award.. I took it as a snide comment on a perpetual trend in the science-fiction world..
I'm semi-serious and semi-snide.
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aren't we all?
I used to run another award, the Mythopoeic Society Awards, whose rule is that only stand-alone novels are eligible by themselves; trilogies (or whatever) have to wait until the entire trilogy is out. This policy wouldn't work for the Hugos, since it requires an administrator to split the hairs, which would generate too much carping in the Hugo biz. Generally, when judging the eligibility of a book I hadn't read, I went by presentation: if it had a summary of its predecessor, it probably didn't stand alone, and if the t.p. had something like "Vol. 5 of the Celts In Space Trilogy", then it certainly didn't. But many books which don't stand alone are published with no indication of that fact. If I were revamping the Hugos, which I'm not (especially because it's impossible to get anything sensible through the Worldcon Business Meeting), I'd collapse the 4 fiction categories into either 2 (Novel and Short Fiction) or 3 (Long Novel, Short Novel/Novella, Novelette/Short Story, though obviously not with those names), replace Professional Artist with Original Artwork, and split Dramatic Presentation into Series and Stand-alone.
<MIke quickly digresses> I liked the comment on "Vol. 5 of the Celts in Space TRILOGY" because of the absurd ideas that spring to mind from the title. It also makes me think of _Mostly_Harmless_, the 5th book in the Hitchhiker's trilogy. <digression=off> I think narrowing down the fiction categories makes sense. Not too many people think of the distinctions between a short novel, novella and novelette. Creating a Short Fiction category makes more sense. I also like the idea of splitting Dramatic Presentation into Series and Stand-Alone. That would prevent episodes of the same series (like B5) from competing with each other. Plus,you wouldn't have to examine an episode out of context and rate it as a stand-alone.
IIRC, "Mostly Harmless" had a blurb on the cover proclaiming it something like "The Fifth Book in the Increasingly Inaccurately-Named Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy" Do books from the middle of series ever seriously contend for the Hugo? Most of the winners I can remember either a) stood apart, or b) sparked a series later but weren't clearly "series books" at the time they won..
Both the first and second books of Orson Scott Card's (hideously awful, wretched, and nauseating -- but I digress) Ender Wiggin saga won Hugos. And I think that some of Lois McMaster Bujold's Hugo-winning novels were from the middle of a series (I haven't read any). The second and third, but not the first, books of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy won Hugos.
Oh good, I'm not the only one who thought that the "Ender" books were more than a little gagging..
Hi David, long time no talk... Bujold's books (which, btw, were quite good, but didn't deserve three hugos) were from a series, though one was basically an outlier. None were of the level of binding that would have necessitated waiting for them all to be out before voting on them; all the books have a single plot that begins at the beginning, and ends (mostly) at the end.
You have several choices: