Among Others Wins Hugo For Best Novel

The 2012 Hugo Award ceremony has completed at Chicon 7, and Among Others by Jo Walton has been given the award for Best Novel. The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson won for Best Novella, and The Paper Menagerie won for Best Short Story. Doctor Who had three nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), and ended up taking home the award for the episode "The Doctor's Wife," which was written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark. Season 1 of Game of Thrones won Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), edging out Hugo and Captain America. Ursula Vernon was awarded the Best Graphic Story Hugo for Digger. See below for the full list of winners.

Best Novel: Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)

Best Novella: “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov's, September/October 2011)

Best Novelette: “Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)

Best Short Story: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Best Related Work: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight (Gollancz)

Best Graphic Story: Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Game of Thrones (Season 1), created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss; written by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, Jane Espenson, and George R. R. Martin; directed by Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Tim van Patten, and Alan Taylor (HBO)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): “The Doctor's Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales)

Best Editor (Short Form): Sheila Williams

Best Editor (Long Form): Betsy Wollheim

Best Professional Artist: John Picacio

Best Semiprozine: Locus edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al.

Best Fanzine: SF Signal edited by John DeNardo

Best Fan Writer: Jim C. Hines

Best Fan Artist: Maurine Starkey

Best Fancast: SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente

For a full breakdown of how all 1922 ballots were cast, check this PDF.

Many voters don't read all novels

[blarkon]

A lot of voters don't seem to read all the novels - so a substantial number vote for what they've read and they've only read what they already know they will like.

Congratulations to Ursula Vernon

[sapphire wyvern]

Ursula Vernon well deserves the recognition for Digger.

That reminds me that I should go and buy the print collections. I enjoyed it very much as a free webcomic, and she deserves some money for her efforts.

I'm sure I will enjoy re-reading Digger...

Re:I must be getting old

[TheRaven64]

It's the Hugo, not the Nebula. The Nebula award is intended to judge the artistic merit (whatever that means) of a work and is based on the opinions of a selected group of (mostly?) science fiction writers. The Hugo is based on nominations and votes from fans. It just means that a lot of people liked Captain America. Or that it didn't have much competition this year. Given that two of the other three options were 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2' (not as bad as Part 1, but still pretty dire, well into the Hollywood 'but my swimming pool is already filled with money' stage) and Source Code (if it's twice as good as I've heard, I'm still glad I haven't seen it), then there wasn't a great deal of choice. I thought Hugo was superb, but it also didn't get anything like the publicity of the other two, so I wouldn't be surprised if most of the voters hadn't seen it.

Re:I must be getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

The only bit of the second half I didn't watch in fast forward

Yeah, if I watched an entire show in fast forward, I'd think it was pretty bad too. Game of Thrones was pretty awesome when watched at normal speed though.

Re:Jo Walton? Dr. Who?

[thomst]

1u3hr opined:

Gaiman is British, and Doctor Who is truly an icon of British SF. Just about every SF fan, and writer, was weaned on it and feels deep affection for it.I've been watching it since 1964 myself. Doctor Who is very soft core SF, but still tries to be SF.

I remember when the first Doctor Who paperback novel came out (yes, I'm that old). Even though I was only ten years old, the back cover blurb alone was enough to convince me that this was not science fiction - and any discriminating sf fan of the time would have reached the same conclusion.

Flash forward nearly fifty years: last night, the Mrs. and I finished watching the premiere episode of season seven of the Dr. Who reboot with great satisfaction and kudos to Stephen Moffat, who continues to crank out immensely entertaining scripts at a Straczynskian pace. And we're very much looking forward to seeing what he's got up his writerly sleeve over the course of the rest of the season, too.

The difference? Back then, I was a hard-sf purist, who disdained anything that smacked of fantasy dressed up in science fiction clothes. What changed my mind about the Dr. Who reboot (besides my tastes becoming less rigidly defined with the passage of time, I mean) was that, first and foremost, the new Dr. Who is based on good storytelling. The Gaiman-penned The Doctor's Wife episode is a good case in point, but Moffat (who writes most of the episodes, as well as being the showrunner) is a consistently excellent writer, too.

The thing about Dr. Who both then and now is that you just have to accomodate yourself as a viewer/reader to the fact that there's essentially no actual science in this nominally-science-fictional series. Oh, they'll throw in sf buzzwords, but, as for any real science content? Don't get your hopes up. But, as long as you're content to discard any expectation you might have of ACTUAL sf in this so-called "science fiction" show, and content yourself with mere crackin' entertainment, Dr. Who - especially the latest version - can be a mightily pleasurable indulgence.

If you held to strict definitions of SF, you'd hardly ever give out any awards for TV or movies. Game of Thrones is pure fantasy, for instance. "Gritty" fantasy, but still has magic, zombies, dragons, etc. I'm just glad it didn't go to a comic book superhero "franchise". Leave that stuff to Comicon.

The Hugos are awarded based on voting by the fans that attend (or at least pay to support) the WorldCon. Some of 'em are purists, but many are not.

Otherwise, how to account for the presence of so many of Anne McCaffrey's seemingly-endless procession of Pern novels on Hugo finalist ballots over the years?

However, I take issue with the notion that, barring fantasy entries, "you'd hardly ever give out any awards for TV or movies." Over the years, there's been a steady, if admittedly thin, stream of "hard" sf TV series, and a thinner, but still steady stream of movies: Joss Whedon's Firefly and Dollhouse, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cattlecar Galaxia, Andromeda, Babylon 5, and the various incarnations of Star Trek all spring immediately to mind in the TV category, and Syfy's current Alphas certainly qualifies, as well (and it has a kickin' theme song, to boot). As for movies, there's been plenty of those, too - far too many to list here - with Bruce Willis's upcoming Loopers being the latest. And there's some really good smaller, indie movies, too (Moon and Timecrimes, for instance).

The good stuff - the pure quill, to quote a Smithism - is out there. Certainly there's been enough of it to make an award every year (although the number of choices in any given year might well be pretty limited), even with the entrants limited to "hard" sf stories. And remember, ever since Judy Merrill coined the term back in the 60's, "sf" has stood for "speculative fiction" - and, in the long run, that's probably all to the good for the relentless expansion of the brand into the mainstream.

Believe me when I say that's something I never expected to happen, back when I picked up Tom Swift Jr. and the Caves of Nuclear Fire at the age of six, and began my lifelong love affair with sf.