Gaiman's American Gods Wins Hugo

H.I. McDonnough writes "Neil Gaiman won this year's Hugo for his novel American Gods. A much better choice than last year. " If you are a curious, check out the review I did on it.

In honor of Hugo Gernsback

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Hugo, grew up reading his pulp magazines. Here's an article [todaysengineer.org] about him. One of my favorite magazines was Hugo's magazine Radio Electronics. Not only was Hugo a brilliant science fiction promoter, but he was also a brilliant electrical engineer involved in the development of many of the gizmos which we now take for granted.

Unlike most posting here, I've actually read it.

[CountBrass]

What surprised me was how much the book felt like Gaiman's comic books, Sandman in particular. I certainly enjoyed reading it and would reccomend it, but, and this is a big but, was it worthy of the Hugo ? Well I'm kind of surprised to discover that apparently it was. Yes it was good, entertaining even thought provoking in a minor way and nice twist at the end. But then I suppose that's more than you can say for most sci-fi which is lucky to achieve one of those. Anyway, if you haven't already read it, you should.

Audio Format

[RWarrior(fobw)]

American Gods is also available on audio cassette from Harper Audio. [harperaudio.com] It runs unabridged at 20 hours in length on 14 cassettes. I do books by audio exclusively now (because of my work), and found this to be not only an excellent book, but also an excellent production.

If you're not familiar with this book, I will make a suggestion: Make sure you get at least half way through before you decide to quit. You won't regret it.

You can pick this up on Amazon, from your local library, or from your local audiobook store if you have one.

Remember these are the Hugos,

[tb3]

And as such are voted on by attendees of Worldcon who are bothered enough to vote. There's between 500 - 1000 votes cast (I can't find accurate figures), but the nominating ballot counts are online. This year, there was a total of 381 nominating ballots for best novel.

We're not talking about a serious statistical sample here, folks.

As a side note, were the Hogu and Black Hole awards presented this year?

Magic Realism

[ajs]

Magic Realism is a sub-genre of both Fantasy and Science Fiction (though its roots are more firmly in Fantasy than Science Fiction) that was fist recognized in South America, but has spread across the globe. I consider much of Gaiman's work to be in this catagory, though others might argue. Certainly American Gods is part Magic Realism, though also part traditional Fantasy.

It's nice to see Fantasy moving forward beyond the niches in which it had languished for so long. Not that there weren't brilliant Fantasy authors or stories that broke out of the standard molds of the genre, but let's face it: science fiction has roamed far and wide from hard science speculation to space opera to the new wave SF of the 60s to the alternate histories of the 90s. Fantasy has maintained a fairly narrow range during that time, focusing mostly on European mythology in various forms (here I include purists such as Tolkein and origial mythologies such as Moorecock's) and the Horror Fantasy that was pioneered in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Poe and Lovecraft among others.

Fantasy is now re-discovering its vast potential, and I could not be more thrilled. Authors like Ian Banks, Jonathan Lethem and others of the genre are well worth checking out. Hopefully this is only the beginning, and we'll have another three or four sub-genres of Fantasy sprouting in the coming decades!

Hugo as Sci Fi/Fantasy

[Tiburana]

I think the Hugos have simply an unstated expansion of the definition to include some fantasy. After all, the winner for Dramatic Presentation was Peter Jackson's 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'.

I am very happy with American gods as their choice. I think Gaiman's writing is lush and well-crafted. While American Gods may thematically reflect the flavor of the Sandman comics/graphic novels as a book it gave Gaiman the space to explore the themes with a lot more depth. Despite having a signature darkness his writing has shown a great range from Stardust to Neverwhere to Smoke and Mirrors and even his children's books. I am glad that he is receving some of the critical acclaim that is his due.

Other awards

[vandemar]

This book is just racking up the awards. It has been nominated for the most prestigious award of each major genre. This may be the first time in history that something like this has happened (too lazy to verify it myself though). Check it out:

In horror: Bram Stoker Award [horror.org] (winner)
In fantasy: World Fantasy Award [sfsite.com] (nominated, the winner has not been decided yet)
In sci-fi: Hugo Award (winner)

Look at the tons of other awards in Neil Gaiman's collection [neilgaiman.com].

Fantasy is part of the definition

[jbennetto]

From the [worldcon.org]
constitution of the WSFS:

3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

Admittedly, prior to Harry Potter the winning novel has never been fantasy (Lord of Light and To Your Scattered Bodies Go are probably the closest, and few people would characterize those as anything other than SF). But fantasy often wins in the short fiction catagories.

Irrelevant

[Cheshyre]

And yet, if you read the actual rules for the Hugo Awards [worldcon.org], it clearly states that "Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy"