The
Dublin2019 team has announced the finalists for the 2019 Hugos. I am...unsure.
One the one hand, I have yet to dive into works by Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Valente, or Rebecca Roanhorse. I've read quite a few good things about Ms. Roanhorse's "
Trail of Lightning".
In the graphic story category, I'm looking forward to returning to
Monstress and
Paper Girls.
In the fancasting category,
Be the Serpent sounds like it might be good.
On the other hand...and that's the hand that everyone hates.
The novel nominees from Becky Chambers and Yoon Ha Lee are from their respective series that have already had entries nominated under the best novel category. At least one of those past nominated works failed to clear the "no award" bar on my ballot(s). Maybe these books will be better, but past history would suggest otherwise.
In the graphic story category,
Saga is nominated, again. I've yet to be impressed by that series. Curiously, the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, is also the writer of Paper Girls. So he has two entries in this category; one that piques my interest and one that, most decidedly, does not.
The cover art for
Abbott does not inspire much confidence. It reminds me of
Bitch Planet from last year. I would love to forget that
Bitch Planet exists. But never trust a book by its cover still applies. We shall see.
And in the fancasting category, perennial nominees The Coode Street Podcast, Fangirl Happy Hour, and Galactic Suburbia are back....again. At least listening to only one of those three has a history of being an actively unpleasant experience for me. The others have been good, but not great experiences.
From my perspective, the problem remains one of habit. Many nominees are entries in series that have been previously nominated. They benefit from the exposure of those prior nominations. It seems to me that once an author gets nominated, they have a leg up on getting subsequent entries in a series nominated. Once they join the ranks of nominees, they stand a better chance of getting the attention of influential reviewers for future works.
And let's be honest. Reviewers have a finite amount of time and space. How many worthy books get ignored in favor of known authors? How many periodicals (i.e. Grimdark Magazine) remain unread while a select group of "worthy" periodicals receive the greater share of attention?
Perhaps increasing the number of people nominating works will improve the range of nominees. One can always hope.
Dancing in the Dust by Gwendolyn Pendraig