2014 Hugo Award
justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-08-17 8:48 PM (#8328)
Subject: 2014 Hugo Award



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Anne Leckie does it again. Thus saving the Award from huge embarrassment if the hijacked nomination process had returned The Wheel of Time as winner. I haven't hear anything about rule changes to prevent this kind of crap from happening again but we can but hope.
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DrNefario
Posted 2014-08-18 1:31 AM (#8329 - in reply to #8328)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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Yes, a great relief that Hugo has survived this crisis.

I think we should have a Best Controversy Hugo next year.
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spoltz
Posted 2014-08-18 8:54 AM (#8330 - in reply to #8328)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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I didn't really care for this book. I feel like Lecke's been winning for concept, not for execution. But I agree, at least the Hugos survived the crisis.
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FeminineFantastique
Posted 2014-08-19 7:03 PM (#8331 - in reply to #8329)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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DrNefario - 2014-08-18 1:31 AM
I think we should have a Best Controversy Hugo next year.


Yes.
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illegible_scribble
Posted 2014-08-27 4:45 AM (#8378 - in reply to #8328)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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I rather disagree. I absolutely loved and raved about Ancillary Justice , and would have been sorry if it had not won.

But I don't think it would have been a world-ending crisis if the WoT had won. Jordan's works sometimes got cumbersome, and there were certainly issues with his female characters, among other things (and I'd rather he'd not included his "pseudo-sex" scenes at all, because they were just so lame) but those books also had some really marvellous aspects to them. RJ was a ground-breaker in epic fantasy: if nothing else, we should appreciate him because he showed publishers it could be a hugely lucrative investment, paving the way for publishers' enthusiasm for series such as A Song of Ice and Fire, The Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Stormlight Archive, and others.

And I would say that the WoT books were certainly better than some of the Hugo Best Novel winners in the last 10 years (don't even get me started). Not to mention that Sanderson himself deserves a frickin' Hugo for 1) having the courage to take on the finish of that series, which if not done properly, could have been the end of his career, and 2) for doing such a smashing job of it that a) I completely forgot that I was reading a different author, b) he actually improved the quality in the last 3 books, and c) he managed to provide a very satisfying ending -- a monumental task.

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DrNefario
Posted 2014-08-27 8:03 AM (#8379 - in reply to #8328)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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I sure hope he improved the quality in the last three books, it was really sagging badly before that. I haven't read the last three, yet. I'd kind of lost enthusiasm, although I did buy all three of them, and intend to get to them one day.

Although I liked it a lot, I don't think it stands well for the state of genre fiction in 2013. It was the first four or five books that I enjoyed the most, and they were all published around 20 years ago. (And not nominated then.)

One of my fears was that having a 14-book series as a winner would be a big ask of anyone who wanted to read through all the winners, as I was doing when I discovered this site, but then the same would realistically apply if it was only book 14 that was was nominated.
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illegible_scribble
Posted 2014-08-30 10:31 PM (#8391 - in reply to #8379)
Subject: Re: 2014 Hugo Award



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DrNefario - ...I did buy all three of them, and intend to get to them one day.

I encourage you to give them a try at some point; I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.

One way to do that without re-reading the first 11 books would be to read instead Leigh Butler's Wheel of Time Re-Read posts over at Tor.com (stopping, of course, after Book 11). It would require a lot less reading, while still giving you a refresher on all the background before starting on the last 3 books.

(Edited to add: Note that the re-read of the prequel Book 0, New Spring, appears in the Re-Read TOC between Books 10 and 11. You may wish to do that one first, or skip it entirely.)



Edited by illegible_scribble 2014-08-30 10:39 PM
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