For reasons that I don’t know but am sure are reasonable, the deadline for the 2006 Hugo Award nominations is earlier than usual: Ballots must be in the administrator’s hands by midnight, Pacific Standard Time, on Saturday, March 3rd. When I became cognizant of this fact a couple of weeks I ago, I started reading frantically but nonetheless am caught quite ill-prepared to cast an intelligent ballot – not that ill-preparedness will keep me from the ballot box! What good’s the right to vote if you can’t exercise it stupidly (as a hundred get-out-the-vote drives attest in every even-numbered year)?
Here, then, are a few scattered suggestions for worthy candidates. There are doubtless many others of equal or better quality that I haven’t yet seen.
Novel: No matter what else I read from the 2006 crop, I am confident that my first choice will be Tim Powers’ Three Days to Never, a wondrous blend of time travel, real history, fake history and tense adventure. Where else will you find Albert Einstein’s daughter, a blind assassin, an ancient conspiracy, a Mossad agent who will die if he hears the telephone ring and a lesson about improving the past? The only criticism I’ve heard of it is that it isn’t as good as Declare. That’s like scoffing at King Lear because it isn’t Hamlet.
Also impressive, though I haven’t finished it yet, is Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Twenty years ago, Flynn wrote a Hugo-nominated novella with the same title, about a physicist and an historian who make a startling discovery about a vanished medieval village. The novel fills in the village’s point of view. As a recreation of life in the 14th Century Black Forest, it makes most historical novels look like juveniles. To that are added a truly alien alien race, as believable as First Contact scenario as I’ve ever encountered, a cast of odd but life-like characters, and, beneath the surface, a number of disturbing moral and philosophical quandaries. My only complaint is that the 21st Century sections, drawn from the original novella, show how much the author has progressed since 1986.
I’ll round off my nominating ballot with Prayers for the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (my review), Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell and Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder.
There are other books that, based on what I’ve seen and heard about them, I might well have nominated if I’d gotten around to reading them, such as Empire by Orson Scott Card, A Small and Remarkable Life by Nick DiChario, His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik and Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.
Short Fiction: Thanks to electronic books and the ability to subscribe to prozines digitally via Fictionwise, I’ve actually read quite a lot of short fiction this year. Alas, I neglected to make notes on worthy stories and must rely on a very porous memory. Standing out in recollection are Terry Bisson’s novella “Planet of Mystery” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January & February) and three novelettes: Jonathan Sherwood’s “Under the Graying Sea” (Asimov’s, February – a first sale!), Gary W. Shockley’s “The Cathedral of Universal Biodiversity” (F&SF, February) and Gardner Dozois’ “Counterfactual” (F&SF, June).
Related Book: Two works strike me as particularly deserving in this nebulous category: Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches, edited by Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari, and Heinlein’s Children by Joseph T. Major, Jr. Both are “amateur” in the most praiseworthy sense of that word.
Other Categories: I must not neglect my annual plug for John Hertz as Best Fan Writer. Hey! He made the final ballot last year, so maybe I have more influence than I think.
Best Book Editor is a new category, one that is difficult to gauge because readers have so little information about what the editors of particular books actually do for them. Was the MS. a jumble that the editor artfully shaped into a masterpiece, or was it a pluperfect novel that inept editorial supervision reduced to merely good? We are unlikely ever to know – certainly not in time for the knowledge to affect our voting. So I have two not-quite-on-the-wall recommendations: Jim Baen, for whom this is the first and last chance at the honor, and Ellen Asher, doyenne of the Science Fiction Book Club, who has probably done more than any other single person to shape SF reading habits over the past quarter century.
Finally, it would be delightful to see Ray VanTilburg, whose paintings grace so many fannish t-shirts, receive a Best Fan Artist nomination.
In case you didn’t know, members of last year’s World Science Fiction Convention, L.A.Con IV, and this year’s, Nippon 2007, are eligible to nominate.
For more recommendations, vide the annual NESFA list.
Comments