Author Archive

Hugo Golf

Speaking of the Hugos, I was informed of a wonderful game you can play called Hugo Golf. The idea is to take your program booklet and rank each category in the order you think the nominees will fall. So, for novel, say, you might (as I did) rank your ballot like this:

Learning the World by Ken MacLeod – 5

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin – 3

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – 4

Accelerando by Charles Stross – 2

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson – 1

(Note: this was not necessarily my preference for the books; that’s just how I thought the voting would turn out.)

At the end of the award ceremony, you tally up your score, based on how many you got right. So if you ranked Spin 1, then that’s good, and you only add one point to your score (a lower score is better, this being golf). If, however, the Ken MacLeod had one, I would have done very badly in this category, because I would have had to add 5 to my score. You grok?

I didn’t do terribly well. I got a 33, which is far too high for my taste. I did well in some categories, but got hosed in others. For instance, I really got nailed on pro artist, which I was sure was going to John Picacio, and had to take a 5 for Giancola’s win. Likewise on Best Pro Editor — I had to take a 5 for Hartwell; I figured that the book editor wouldn’t win, and it was just a matter of guessing the right short fiction editor (I thought Ellen would win, as a sort of SCI FICTION thank-you).

Of all categories though, I have to say my biggest surprise was that “Magic for Beginners” didn’t win. I was sure it was going to, and thought it had momentarily, because Robert Silverberg, who was presenting, said “Oh, she isn’t here,” and since Kelly was the only one not there (Gordon would have accepted for her), I thought it was going to her. But Silverberg was just continuing the schtick that he and Connie Willis had been doing throughout the ceremony. I should have known though — Connie Willis is a Hugo magnet. I don’t think it was the best novella of the year, but I read the story and liked it quite a bit.

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2006 Hugo Awards photoset




Connie Willis

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

I’ve reorganized my Worldcon photos to segregate the Hugo Awards ceremony into a set by itself. So if you wanted to just look at those photos, you can browse through them, starting with the one pictured here. If either view the set as a slideshow, or just keep clicking the “more” button, you can view the ceremony in order. I’ve also now titled all the photos, so you should be able to figure out what’s going on in all of them.


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Isles, ‘Pericles’ Win Sidewises

If you’d like to see my reportage of the Sidewise Award winners over on SCI FI Wire, you can do that here. It’s not much of a story, so if you’ve already seen the winners, not much to see. I’m mainly posting this for record-keeping purposes.

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