Nominating the Hugos

I was surprised when I learned that having joined the Anticipation SF Convention last year, I not only got the right to vote on the Hugo Awards last year, but I get to vote for the nominees this year.

For how organized the voting procedure was (they sent you a packet of most of the nominees as ebooks), the nomination process is surprisingly free-form.

I wasn't able to find a list of eligible works anywhere. Some of the blogs I read had lists of what their authors had that was eligible, and a couple of them offered to send voters free copies. I don't make any pretense of following the shorter forms. And although I would like to be aware of good new science fiction and fantasy novels, I'm not at all sure that always happens.

So I did my best. I nominated four novels:

• The Price of Spring, Daniel Abraham
• Makers, Cory Doctorow
• Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
• The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood

I was cheating a bit on Makers, since I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's clearly a good novel.

I also nominated The God Engines by John Scalzi, in the Best Novella category. I probably wouldn't have read it if he hadn't sent any nominator who asked a free copy, but it is well-written, although I hope there are other good novellas to read before I have to vote.

I nominated District 9 and Star Trek in the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category, and tor.com in the Best Related Work category. There should probably be some specific online categories, but there aren't yet.

Related posts:

1. Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi
2. I'm reading a PDF book
3. Hugo Award Voting