Hugo Novels and "Related Books"
May. 29th, 2009 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribSo, I finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book last night. Wow. Very good, with a couple of unanticipated twists. The novel category this year is looking tough.
Then we slide on down to the "Related Books" category. From the official rules "Best Related Book: This award can be given to a book which is related to science fiction, fantasy or fandom but does not qualify for any of the fiction categories. The type of works eligible include comics, graphic novels, collections of art, works of literary criticism, books about the making of a film or TV series, biographies and so on."
Well, there are five nominees, three of which I have electronically. Of them, only one is an easy call. That's John Scalzi's Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. I like Scalzi, and he's a good writer. But as far as I can see, Hate Mail only qualifies because Scalzi also writes science fiction. There's little or nothing in the book itself about science fiction or fantasy, so, I'm frankly not sure it even qualifies.
The other two electronic nominees are both rather densely-written treatises. Rhetorics of Fantasy discusses the tropes of fantasy and What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction strikes me as a bit overly navel-gazing. The other two books look somewhat more interesting (actually the art book looks a lot more interesting) but how much of that is the grass being greener on the other side of the fence I don't know. I'm kind of leaning towards a "no vote" in this category.
Then we slide on down to the "Related Books" category. From the official rules "Best Related Book: This award can be given to a book which is related to science fiction, fantasy or fandom but does not qualify for any of the fiction categories. The type of works eligible include comics, graphic novels, collections of art, works of literary criticism, books about the making of a film or TV series, biographies and so on."
Well, there are five nominees, three of which I have electronically. Of them, only one is an easy call. That's John Scalzi's Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. I like Scalzi, and he's a good writer. But as far as I can see, Hate Mail only qualifies because Scalzi also writes science fiction. There's little or nothing in the book itself about science fiction or fantasy, so, I'm frankly not sure it even qualifies.
The other two electronic nominees are both rather densely-written treatises. Rhetorics of Fantasy discusses the tropes of fantasy and What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction strikes me as a bit overly navel-gazing. The other two books look somewhat more interesting (actually the art book looks a lot more interesting) but how much of that is the grass being greener on the other side of the fence I don't know. I'm kind of leaning towards a "no vote" in this category.
