Friday 1 August was the last useful day to vote for the 2014 Hugo Awards and now, finally done with them, I must admit I was not able to read the whole bunch. Too many things, too little time. Some reviewers – like Redhead on her WP blog – did a great job posting timely and inspiring reviews of the best novella, novelette and short story nominations (for a good summary, see this one). And some others, at Tor for example, shared their views on some of the best novel nominations. I do suggest you to go and have a look at them, while we all wait for the announcement of the winners at Loncon 3, The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention – an event that promises to be awesome. Voting was indeed difficult.
Being lazy, I’ve started with the novella. I love Charles Stross’ Laundry series, and Equoid is an amazing, chilling story. I had already read it, and that vote was quick and easy. The novel, however, has been painful, for many reasons too long to explain, but again, people on the blogosphere had seen it coming. I can relate and I advise this post by Justin Landon about why Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice might – I stress the conditional – have been a good choice.
The short story has been difficult too, but for the opposite reason: all the entries were pretty good, even though two of them – If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky and The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu – have really made me struggle. I could not decide which one I preferred, so at the end I had to make up my mind as we often do in life, out of small details. I do love dinosaurs.