The unspoken speaking

I strongly feel that, if one wishes to respect an award, the least one can do in response to the honor of being nominated for it is to prepare oneself against the possibility that one will actually win it. Here's the statement I prepared on the chance we actually won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, which of course we didn't:

I would like to take this occasion to cite, but not quote, our guest of honor. [For the home audience: Go here and search for "I won a Hugo!"]

That said, thanks are due to all of the following:

• My co-winners, and most particularly Kris Dikeman, associate managing editor, who could not be present tonight and without whom the magazine would look precisely like it was laid out by orangutans;


• Our Work Weekend staff, without whom the issue would look remarkably like 24 blank pages: Alex Donald, Ann Crimmins, Eugene Reynolds, and Jennifer Gunnell;


• Our Weekly Meeting Krew: Avram Grumer, Lisa Padol, Chris Quinones, Joshua Kronengold, and Aubrey Lynch, without whom the issue would never actually leave our doors;


• Our Remote-Control Ace Poorfeeding team: Anne Zanoni and my co-husband Arthur D. Hlavaty, who probably should have gone over this statement;


• and eternal thanks to Tor Books for allowing us use of their conference room for over fifteen years now.


• Thanks to my beloved wife, Bernadette Bosky, for not killing me for going off to join the SF Reserves;

and most of all,

• Thanks to my father John and my brother Tim, for infecting me with SF in the first place. I love you all.

Man, this is one great-looking Hugo.

(That last bit was added after the preview of the Hugo. Man, it is.)

Continuing to talk about the Best Graphic Story Hugo nominees list

I alluded earlier to the fact that I was not very satisfied with the nominations list for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, and stated directly that I was appalled that there was such an obvious counting error in the nominations. Here's a bit more discussion why.

Six works made the final list as published (in alphabetical order):

• The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle


• Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones


• Fables: War and Pieces


• Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic


• Serenity: Better Days


• Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores

So, two web comics--one created as a web comic by a relative newcomer (Schlock Mercenary) and one a hybrid web comic/print comic created by a thirty-year veteran cartoonist (Girl Genius); two Vertigo titles, one fantasy (Fables) and one sf (Y: The Last Man); and two tie-ins to other media (Dresden Files, tied in to the novel series, and Serenity, tied in to the television/movie series).

I would have been much more impressed by the list of nominees if they had been correctly counted:

• Captain Britain and MI-13


• The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle


• Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones


• Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic


• Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores

That drops one Vertigo title and one media tie-in in favor of a superb superhero title. While I like Fables a great deal, I liked Captain Britain and MI-13 more. I also think it's just a good thing to have a superb superhero title on the list--superheroes are such a large part of the English-language comics field, and there's a lot there which is worthy of serious consideration by f&sf readers. It's ironic to the point of active weirdness that there were no superhero titles in the Best Graphic Story nominee list and two in the Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form nominee list--The Dark Knight and Iron Man. (Actually, three, if you count Hellboy as a superhero, which I mostly do.) CB-MI13 is not only a superhero book, it's very unapologetically a superhero book, and its virtues are the virtues of the best company shared-universe superhero titles--showcasing an ensemble cast deeply embedded in the wider story, respecting continuity, and engaging with and improving on company-wide crossovers.

Most importantly, I actively support pushing Serenity off the list of nominees. Having one-third of the nominees in a category as other-media tie-ins really made the category look pathetic. I don't mind having one tie-in--tie-ins and adaptations have been a major part of American comics, even of good American comics, since their inception. Remember, Carl Barks spent most of his life doing media tie-ins. But two titles out of six made it look like comics are the weak hand-me-downs of the "real" media, and that was just wrong.

(I also just plain didn't like Serenity: Better Days very much. If we are going to nominate media tie-in comics, they should be good ones.)

Recommendation question: quest fantasy with a team/party flavor

One of the people in my weekly gaming group really, really likes the Dragonlance novels, especially the early ones actually by Weis and Hickman. One of the things he particularly liked about them was the ensemble cast--that the novels weren't about a single hero and her companions, but about a team. I'm not terrifically widely read in that type of quest fantasy, and I was at a loss of what to recommend.

I checked, and he's read some Robert Jordan and David Eddings. Of course he's read Tolkien. And he's not averse to reading better books*, but my friend is definitely looking for things very specifically like what he described. Any suggestions?

*Two of us suggested Tigana, which does have a strong ensemble cast and is not fundamentally dissimilar to a quest fantasy--on reflection The Fionavar Tapestry is much more likely to appeal to him.

Bleg: Quotation about Canon & Readers

One of my NYRSF co-staffers asked this question:

I remember reading an essay (I think) in which the author roughly said: If you as a reader don't "get" a piece of canonical literature, then it's thought that the reader is too daft to understand the lofty ideas. Whereas with sf if the reader doesn't "get" it then it's not necessarily the fault of the reader.

I swear, I feel nuts because I remember this but cannot for the life of me find the reference. Does it ring a bell? I thought it was in Speculations on Speculation, but I can't find it.

I've made a different point in the past about reviews of classical music--that reviews of new recordings of canonical works discuss the performance but, too often, not the work, which gives the impression that the canonical works are simply beyond criticism. I'm also very fond of the sentiment, "No work can speak to every reader." But I've never encountered the thought expressed above.

Any ideas?

On categories

Just because I don't believe that there are bright shining lines between most categories, I think it is possible to discern a difference of kind between a group like ACORN, which is donor-funded and tries to get more people to vote, and FreedomWorks, which is corporate-funded and is trying to silence debate. Anyone who conflates the two is either lying or negligently underinformed.

From the "Rocking the Town Halls--Best Practices" memo:

Try To "Rattle Him," Not Have An Intelligent Debate: "The goal is to rattle [the member of Congress], get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."