I'm trying to clear the decks of fannish stuff before Worldcon (next week!!), so here's the last of the Hugo homework:

I did manage to finish half the Hugo novellas before the voting deadline.

1.T.Kingfisher, What Feasts at Night -- I did not read the first novella with this protagonist and setting, but while the events of it were mentioned a few times, and it looked like the Angus and Patience relationship had come from there, I didn't feel like I was missing anything by skipping it. Alex Easton is a fun narrator; ( and that was my favorite thing about the book (non-spoilery) )

2. Nghi Vo, The Brides of High Hill -- I usually love the Singing Hills novellas; the one I merely liked, up until now, had been When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, which I found too simple after the beautiful intricacy of Empress of Salt and Fortune. I expect I will be ranking The Brides of High Hill above 'Tiger' and below the others, although I do think it's actually doing something interesting, and doing it well. It's just that one of the things it's doing well is again basically horror. (Why is everything on the ballot basically horror this year? The zeitgeist, I guess, but I wish there were more variety...) It's not JUST straightforward horror, although the climax of the book descends into it, and I found the last part the least interesting. ( spoilers )

3. Ray Nayler, The Tusks of Extinction -- Here is another excellent example of a novella doing very well what it had set out to do, which was not at all what I wanted to read about. There is a lot of graphic description of slaughtered elephants and also humans stomped into pulp by avenging mammoths (and also some references to human-on-human violence, for good measure), which are neither things I want to read about, like, at all. In fact, I was going to nope out after the extended description of elephants slaughtered by poachers, but then there was a POV change, and at one point, fairly early on, I read something in the dialogue of the Russian poachers that was a perfect rendition in English of something an actual Russian would say, and I got intrigued by that aspect of the novella, which is what kept me reading. ( More, with spoilers )

Hugos: Tusks, Brides, Feasts > Butcher -- but I'd be perfectly happy for either 'Tusks' or 'Brides' to win.


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I, uh, did not finish any of the novels, but I did read all of them at least a little bit: 4 in time to rank them on the Hugo ballot, and two after the fact, figuring I should at least have an opinion on them by the time the Hugo Ceremony happens. So these are not proper write-ups -- I'll do proper ones for anything I end up finishing -- but this is my thoughts ( on the novels going into the Hugos )

I also voted for: ( miscellaneous categories )

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Flow -- I have had a weird trajectory leading up to watching this movie. ( Under here ) And it was fine?

( Mostly complaints, to be honest (non-spoilery) )

Anyway, I had no trouble at all voting Wild Robot above Flow (hadn't seen any of the other nominated long-form things). I hope Wild Robot wins the Hugo, and I would have preferred ifit had won the animated Oscar, too.

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This is not strictly speaking Hugo homework, but it is Worlcon homework, because Martha Wells is a GOH and there's a bunch of Murderbot-the-show content I'm anticipating, so I wanted to make sure I had watched the show before attending (well, and also before my free months of AppleTV that I got when I bought my new iPhone ran out). This actually also required me to start using my new computer ahead of schedule, because the old one couldn't handle AppleTV, lol.

Murderbot (TV) -- As planned, I binged it in two stints, with just a night of sleep in-between, 7.5 episodes on Friday night and 2.5 with my morning tea on Saturday. The cliffhanger endings of the episodes are effectively positioned, to be sure! On the whole, I liked it quite a bit, as its own thing and also as an adaptation. I did not LOVE it, but I also did not love All Systems Red -- Artificial Condition was when I actually started feeling fannish about the series and really enjoying it (mostly but not exclusively because of ART). ( More, with spoilers for the show, no spoilers for books beyond ASR )

I know that a second season has been confirmed, and as Artificial Condition is my favorite of the novellas, I'm really curious to see what they do with it. ( Vague spoilers for the books ) Anyway, I'm excited to see what they do with it!

A couple of links from catching up on other people's thoughts (mostly sholio's :)

- official Sanctuary Moon credits (without the glitches/distortions) that Apple uploaded to YouTube
- Fanvid: I Lived by sholio, ensemble, T
- Ficlet by sholio in which Murderbot participates in Sanctuary Moon forums (along with *spoiler*)