Voting Ends for This Year's Hugo Awards

Today's the last day to vote on the 2008 Hugo Awards, which will be given out at the World Science Fiction Convention next month in Denver. I joined the convention as a supporting member last fall to vote for the first time on the awards, which began in 1955 and have become the most coveted prize in science fiction.

In April, the Hugo nominees were announced. All of the nominees in several categories can be read for free online, including short stories, novellas, novelettes and fanzines. Four of the five best novel nominees were privately shared with voters as ebooks.

I won't disclose my votes until after the ceremony (if at all). I skipped most categories because I hadn't read enough of the nominees, but I did read all of the Best Short Story choices. Three of the five are terrific stories that were hard to rank from first to third. The other two not so much; I ranked them lower than "No Award."

The nominees, in alphabetical order:

"A Small Room in Koboldtown" by Michael Swanwick, from the April/May 2007 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction
"Distant Replay" by Mike Resnick, from the April/May 2007 Asimov's
"Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter, from The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2007
"Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear, from the June 2007 Asimov's
"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod, from The New Space Opera

If you'd like to vote in the next Hugos, become an attending or supporting member of the WorldCon convention for Montreal in 2009. I got carried away and have already joined Australia in 2010 and Seattle in 2011, though they could still get beaten out by another site.

Credit: The photo of a 2007 Hugo Award statue was derived from a photo taken by Cory Doctorow and is available under a Creative Commons license.

Science Fiction · Books · 2008/07/07 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Is that Ultra Man on the statue? Sure looks like him. I used to watch Speed Racer and then Ultra Man after school when my father was stationed at Schofield Barracks on Oahu.

#1 · Uncle Mikey · 2008/07/11

Yup. They added Ultraman to that year's Hugo because WorldCon was in Japan. I loved Speed Racer. I keep trying to introduce the Demon on Wheels to my kids, but they think the cartoon's hopelessly outdated.

#2 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2008/07/17

watch full Movies - The Dark Knight in www.tvokay.com

Synopsis: Batman and James Gordon join forces with Gotham's new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to take on a psychotic bank robber known as The Joker, whilst other forces plot against them, and Joker's crimes grow more and more deadly.
so so good!

#3 · debbycruz12 · 2008/07/31