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ladybusinessDespite being busy offline the last few years, I have stayed on the periphery of the Hugo because I'm one of the admins for the Hugo Rec sheet. It's hard not to have some idea of what's going on year to year even when I'm not reading or watching much. This is the first time in years I feel like I'll be able to participate in the main fiction category! I'm still behind/unstudied in many categories, but I'm slowly rebuilding after the loss of Twitter. Here's what I'm considering for my ballot!
The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott | Tordotcom | Best Novel
This short novel has very strong family, justice, and worker's rights themes. It feels like reading a novel when you're meeting a society right on the edge of becoming great or something to be feared and regular people in the world are fighting to make sure it's the former. I have continued to think about it after finishing it. It's giving "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies" vibes and therefore, I must stan.
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu | Tor Books | Best Novel
This book feels entirely too irreverent and weird to be popular enough for the Hugo Award, but I also thought that about Gideon the Ninth. The story in this book reflected my political and community organizing life back at me in the questions that the characters grappled with over how to make a better world. Even if we had a magic solution to all our troubles, the problem is that after the magic fades the humans, in all their contradictions, remain. How do we control for that? Is it possible? Is that freedom from tyranny or simply another kind? And it's easy to say we advocate for the rights of people we care about, but much harder to put those values into practice when doing so challenges our comfort or personal goals.
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi | Tordotcom | Best Novella
Legit, I did not like this novella because it feels beyond my capacity to "like" a book with this much body horror and misery. However! The writing is beautiful and the themes at the center are things I grapple with in my political work. I have continued to consider it in the months since reading it. Who loves a parable? They sure do make you think even when they tease you with hope and make you feel sad and bittersweet!
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older | Tordotcom | Best Novella
This sapphic mystery was an absolute joyous romp. Mossa & Pleiti are the perfect companions to bring life to this world. It feels like a lot of the books I read this year kept hitting on the theme of, "but we're not going fast enough!" and how the different characters grapple with that reality. I only know Older's work through Infomocracy and its sequels (which I liked a lot) so this setting was very different but very gaslamp/steampunk (I can never remember which one is meant to be the fantasy or science fiction version). She nailed it, though, and I can't wait to read more adventures with these two.
One Piece (S1)
I was tossed into the deep end of One Piece's manga with fan translations of scans of the Japanese manga years ago. I'm off and on with it, and I stopped reading somewhere during the prison arc so I'm very behind. To be fair, this manga is long as hell. Tackling it is a challenge. Don't rattle off white male epic fantasy writers to One Piece manga readers when we've been in the bowels of Oda's imagination.
I've never continued the anime because something about it stomps all over my humiliation squick. I was, at best, dubious about the live-action adaptation. After watching it twice I have to say: they really nailed the core themes of the arc they adapted. It's never going to be able to be the manga, just like no movie can be its book original. But the core of what makes the manga great is there. The way they brought forward revelations to deepen the story that we don't get in the manga until much later was brilliant. Also, the casting? On point. Luffy is such a specific type of character and Iñaki Godoy nails it.
The Last of Us (S1)
I watched the game while my partner played it; back then I was not yet convinced I could play games like this and have any success at all. (I sucked at shooting, melee, and stealth, so basically all the elements you need to get through the game). It's a very nice game to watch, though. The graphics and acting are wonderful. The vibes are strong even if you're not actively playing; it's menacing and tense even as a viewer. The adaptation not only allows the original source material to shine, but it also changes some things to work better for the medium and the story of human connection that it's telling.
That's where I'm at for fiction. I have very little time to get in a year's worth of other media (hahasob). I need to spend my next few weeks reading some non-Tor books because the fact my whole written fiction line up is Tor is embarrassing. This is why it's important to pay attention to publishers!
Normally I'm terrible at predicting what the finalists will be in any category, but this year I have a good feeling about Best Novel based on some of the commentary I've been seeing. If you asked me to predict it right now: The Saint of Bright Doors, Some Desperate Glory, Starter Villain, and The Terraformers would be my immediate picks. I assume Tor will continue its domination of the popular award lists, since the momentum is on their side. After that, I'm unsure! Maybe To Shape a Dragon's Breath? I've also been hearing a lot about The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and A Power Unbound. But it also depends on a wide variety of things! Who has the money for a membership in this time of greedflation? Will younger fans have time to nominate? Will we get an influx of new voters to the awards? Will the romantasy girlies realize they have phenomenal cosmic power? Since it seems nominating and voting online won't be a miserable experience like last year, more people might participate, too.
Don't take anything written here seriously, though. I am fooling myself. I never predict these shortlists with any degree of accuracy.
My main item in the category was served to me by Adri: Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood deserves to be nominated for this award for the viral tweet that launched a cultural movement on behalf of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Adri had this idea and I went, "This is brilliant. You are brilliant. I'm in." How easy I was: she didn't even provide a full pitch, just the basic concept, and I was sold. I admit that others may not be as easily swayed as I, an Extremely Online person who loves the joyous chaos of the Weird Internet™. The Internet is a tool and it's very easy to see it as a detriment to society and human connection. But in the case of This is How You Lose the Time War going viral, it showed how wonderfully ungovernable it could be in the best way possible: connecting thousands of people and two fandoms through two stories (Trigun and This is How You Lose the Time War).
In an interview that Mr. Bigolas did, they said: “Fandom is powerful mostly because of collective enthusiasm. It can be a very dangerous but also very fun thing, depending on how you use it. I think the energy that’s created when tons of likeminded people meet up is incredible!” However, they also said they were, "overjoyed that somehow tweeting about about anime characters putting their tongues in each other’s mouths actually amounted to something?"
Reader, I would die for Mr. Bigolas. I am nominating them, their tweet, and their contribution to Culture for Best Related Work. Please join me. If you need more evidence this is an Award Worthy Cultural Moment, please see the thread Amal El-Mohtar created as the incident spiraled to heights none of us could have predicted.
Blogs have largely fallen away in favor of short form social media and video, social media platforms are crumbling under the weight of rich men's egos, and we're creating new communities on different sites. But fans writing about things haven't gone anywhere! Most people agonize like this over Best Novel. Meanwhile I'm over here reading nonfiction essays, commentary, and social media feeds deep into the night because I don't want written SFF criticism outside of genre magazines to die as the Internet goes through its "scattered to the winds by billionaires, capitalism, and video content" era.
Jenny Hamilton: One of my favorite genre commentators writing in our current moment, Jenny's commentary is always funny, insightful, and a delight to read. She brings her varied interests to bear in how she looks at genre tropes, turning them sideways, upside down, and shaking them a bit to rattle free fresh perspectives on things we've been staring at so long they've started to fade into the background. Her humor and pacing are top-notch. The way she communicates about complicated topics makes it accessible for people at many levels (something I struggle with and admire in other people). Jenny's got "explain it like I'm five" and "ancient, wizened professor explains it all" on lock. The range! The voice! Some pieces released this year: How to Uphold the Status Quo: The Problem With Small Town Witch Romances; Five Space Books to Send a Chill Down Your Spine; Cassandra Khaw Books, Ranked By How Clearly I Understood Why the Characters Were Eating Human Flesh; or, Gobbets Tomorrow and Gobbets Yesterday But Never Jam Today; Usher Siblings Ranked by How Much They Deserved Their Nasty, Nasty Deaths; The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo. Her BlueSky stream is great for pieces of bite-sized brilliance and hilarity.
Adri Joy: My complaint about Adri, and it's a BIG one: how dare capitalism require her to do a regular job and take away valuable reading/writing time that she could be using to write about science fiction and fantasy literature online to benefit me, specifically? Adri's perspective is critical to me because she has immense knowledge about international issues, especially when it comes to geopolitics. She'll trot out an insightful, flawless explication of an SF trope and how Society has conditioned us to react to it after one minute of consideration. I'm in constant awe. I'm always ready to read what she has to say and see stories from her perspective. The way she thinks about how power works is so vastly different than mine and it's a delight to learn from her. Adri has mostly reviewed work in 2023 that I haven't read yet (betrayed by my own divergent reading year), but I also find her commentary on the various SFF awards incredibly valuable for thinking about the impact of various books on the direction of our genre, as well. Pieces Adri has released in 2023: Adri and Joe Talk About Books: 2023 Locus List; Adri and Joe talk about books: The Nebula Awards; Nanoreviews: Unraveller, The Mimicking of Known Successes, Tread of Angels; Microreview [book]: The Book of Gems by Fran Wilde; Adri and Joe Talk About Books: 2023 Hugo Award Finalists; Review: The Faithless by C.L. Clark
forestofglory: forestofglory is a Lady Business editor! That's my bias disclosed, although I don't think it necessary because her work speaks for itself. She brings critical considerations to genre, including: the importance of cultural respect; how women, mothers, and motherhood are handled in fiction; environmental issues; and how we use food to communicate. Before I started reading her writing on genre, I didn't reflect on how often mothers were sidelined in fiction. I also didn't think about how many moms specifically (or parents in general) were dead so the narrative didn't have to deal with them except as a character motivation. Reading and considering her work on those issues has changed how I look at character death (whether off or on screen) as a tool authors use, as well as how they handle families/communities. Also (and this is incredibly niche), she's changed how I examine the function of cities in the stories I read. She's been as influential on the logistics of worldbuilding as Kate Elliott. Elliott's work is where I started to think about the invisible politics of fantastical stories: supply lines, labor, and how the world itself is even possible. The writing forestofglory did kept taking me down related roads about urban planning and community building until I'm over here adding books about city planning to my TBR (I have so many books to get to) and following urbanist activists on TikTok. Pieces released this year: Recent Nonfiction Highlights; This Made me Think: A Rec list of Critical Essays; The Joy of Artifact Fanfic: a Rec List; Middle Grade and Young Adult Graphic Novel Rec List; Media Round Up: Reading Things so I Can Talk About Them; Media Round Up: Look, some books!; Worldbuilders Book Club Rec List.
I am very behind on genre podcasts! I have two things for sure.
Stitch & Bitch, a live show where fans of SFF talk crafts and reading. It changes hosts each month around a panel of regulars. Their discussions are wide-ranging and the genre gossip is piping hot. Plus, there are regularly cats. One of my favorite things about Stitch & Bitch (and this will surprise zero people) is that they have a live chat and engage with people who are watching, shift the discussion based on chat comments, and do an excellent job of creating an inclusive conversation. They're also just really kind and patient to each other and their viewers. It's not a fast-paced show, there's no attempt to be flash/over-produced. It feels very fannish in the best way. It's difficult to choose which to show because the shows are so stuffed, but for Hugo voters, Stitch & Bitch - March 2023 - Hugo Nominations Special! and 2023 Hugo Awards Shortlist Reaction Liveshow and will be most accessible.
Then Marines grabbed a spot for both her Youtube channel and TikTok. Her book discussions and deep dives have been a treat to listen to/read (yay for captions) this year. Our reading tastes don't always align, but I like how she deconstructs books, even books I haven't read yet. Her work on Youtube: are any of these debut novels good or did they just win Goodreads Choice Awards?; reading red tower: fourth wing makes absolutely no sense; reading and ranking the 2023 Hugo nominated novels. On TikTok: hype status ranking of SFF books; response about TikTok turning publishing into fast fashion; GRWM: weird books edition; three star books I love; enjoying problematic media; the hunger games vs ACOTAR.
This is a complicated year for me because I follow so many people on BookTok, and if Youtubers are eligible then BookTok folks are, too. I don't think there's much of an appetite for nominating BookTok-only reviewers; the bias against the platform is strong. There's excellent commentary happening over there once you wade through the discussions bloggers settled for themselves over a decade ago that must be had again, because the wheel turns, so are the days of our lives, etc. I have some time to decide but it's looking like I may end up in the same place I am with Fan Writer: too many great options and not enough space on my ballot.
Fanzine is the only category where I know, immediately, everything that I'm nominating. I miss reading blogs and spent the holiday finding a new, more user friendly RSS reader and loaded up. It seems like newsletters might be making a comeback, too (y'all need to have an RSS feed, though…my inbox is crying). Ah, I remember when blogs were fighting for respect/a place on the ballot against the printed/digital fanzines. How time flies.
The Rec Center: From articles and essays about fandom to recs for fanfic and fanart, I remain a determined advocate for The Rec Center. I have an AGENDA, and that agenda is THE REC CENTER SUPREMACY. I realize that Hugo fandom and fans-who-like-fanfic fandom don't always overlap, but the Rec Center deserves its flowers! I need those of us in the club to band together speak with one voice! Gavia and Elizabeth have created such a wonderful resource for us to enjoy fandom how it used to be before algorithms and the fracturing of platforms. They bring together such great material each week and give other fans the chance to share what they love, too. Fannish labors of love are important and as always, here at Lady Business we believe in reccing as critical practice (another greatforestofglory essay).
Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together: NOAF has reached institution level now in the Great World of SFF Blogs. They're a mainstay. If you want to get a pulse on current genre offerings, there's no better place to start. All they need now is a SFF link round up and they'll be unstoppable (hint hint hint). They have a ton of great writers, churn out lots of content (without being spammy) that is thoughtful and critically engaging with texts, and are a fun and chill bunch. If comment culture was still a thing, they would 100% have a comment section worth hanging out to chat in (curse you, social media!!).
SFF Book Reviews: The State of the Genre posts are important touchstones for me. I look forward to them every month to see what's been happening in the corners of the internet I don't get to. They give me the SF Signal Tidbits nostalgia vibes for real. Also, Dina covers lots of books via reviews. We disagree a lot (see: Fourth Wing) but I appreciate her perspective. Her reviews (both positive and negative) have saved my bacon a few times now on things I love (that she dislikes) and things I simply don't want to read about, which is why she's one of my trusted reviewers.
Fantasy Café: The fact Kristen hasn't been nominated even once for her excellent blog is! A travesty! She's just been steadily posting about books for years, talking about genre and the topics she's passionate about, making space for others to write and share their thoughts, doing cool projects (her Women in SFF Month is a huge achievement and I should have advocated harder for it in Best Related Work), and vibing. Fandom! I am just one fan. Help me fix this!
The Full Lid: This newsletter (you can add it to RSS readers, although I had to fight to figure out a URL mine would accept) has great central essays each week. When I have the context they're always excellent pieces. My favorite section (because I am often too under-read/watched for the essay portion) is where they ask people to share what they've been working on and then link it. I've discovered so many neat things from these sections, and that type of community building is my favorite. Staying connected is harder than ever and I appreciate that The Full Lid, amid their other writing, makes space for this in their newsletter.
That's it for me so far while I read/watch additional material and try to decide. What's everyone else got on their nominating ballots?
If you're interested in nominating: in theory if you were a member of the last year's Worldcon you're eligible to nominate in 2024, but need a membership to the current Worldcon to vote on the shortlist that's produced. The whole process confuses me. I never bother with the overlap period from Worldcon to Worldcon. Instead, I pretend each Worldcon is its own thing and chaotically buy a new membership to each one in December/January each year. For Glasgow, you can do that here by registering an account. If you're just in it for the Hugo Awards or aren't sure if you can attend yet, you'll want the WSFS Only option which can be upgraded later. If anything in this paragraph is wrong, feel free to correct me! It's so unnecessarily confusing. :D
Fiction Categories
The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott | Tordotcom | Best Novel
This short novel has very strong family, justice, and worker's rights themes. It feels like reading a novel when you're meeting a society right on the edge of becoming great or something to be feared and regular people in the world are fighting to make sure it's the former. I have continued to think about it after finishing it. It's giving "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies" vibes and therefore, I must stan.
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu | Tor Books | Best Novel
This book feels entirely too irreverent and weird to be popular enough for the Hugo Award, but I also thought that about Gideon the Ninth. The story in this book reflected my political and community organizing life back at me in the questions that the characters grappled with over how to make a better world. Even if we had a magic solution to all our troubles, the problem is that after the magic fades the humans, in all their contradictions, remain. How do we control for that? Is it possible? Is that freedom from tyranny or simply another kind? And it's easy to say we advocate for the rights of people we care about, but much harder to put those values into practice when doing so challenges our comfort or personal goals.
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi | Tordotcom | Best Novella
Legit, I did not like this novella because it feels beyond my capacity to "like" a book with this much body horror and misery. However! The writing is beautiful and the themes at the center are things I grapple with in my political work. I have continued to consider it in the months since reading it. Who loves a parable? They sure do make you think even when they tease you with hope and make you feel sad and bittersweet!
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older | Tordotcom | Best Novella
This sapphic mystery was an absolute joyous romp. Mossa & Pleiti are the perfect companions to bring life to this world. It feels like a lot of the books I read this year kept hitting on the theme of, "but we're not going fast enough!" and how the different characters grapple with that reality. I only know Older's work through Infomocracy and its sequels (which I liked a lot) so this setting was very different but very gaslamp/steampunk (I can never remember which one is meant to be the fantasy or science fiction version). She nailed it, though, and I can't wait to read more adventures with these two.
One Piece (S1)
I was tossed into the deep end of One Piece's manga with fan translations of scans of the Japanese manga years ago. I'm off and on with it, and I stopped reading somewhere during the prison arc so I'm very behind. To be fair, this manga is long as hell. Tackling it is a challenge. Don't rattle off white male epic fantasy writers to One Piece manga readers when we've been in the bowels of Oda's imagination.
I've never continued the anime because something about it stomps all over my humiliation squick. I was, at best, dubious about the live-action adaptation. After watching it twice I have to say: they really nailed the core themes of the arc they adapted. It's never going to be able to be the manga, just like no movie can be its book original. But the core of what makes the manga great is there. The way they brought forward revelations to deepen the story that we don't get in the manga until much later was brilliant. Also, the casting? On point. Luffy is such a specific type of character and Iñaki Godoy nails it.
The Last of Us (S1)
I watched the game while my partner played it; back then I was not yet convinced I could play games like this and have any success at all. (I sucked at shooting, melee, and stealth, so basically all the elements you need to get through the game). It's a very nice game to watch, though. The graphics and acting are wonderful. The vibes are strong even if you're not actively playing; it's menacing and tense even as a viewer. The adaptation not only allows the original source material to shine, but it also changes some things to work better for the medium and the story of human connection that it's telling.
That's where I'm at for fiction. I have very little time to get in a year's worth of other media (hahasob). I need to spend my next few weeks reading some non-Tor books because the fact my whole written fiction line up is Tor is embarrassing. This is why it's important to pay attention to publishers!
Normally I'm terrible at predicting what the finalists will be in any category, but this year I have a good feeling about Best Novel based on some of the commentary I've been seeing. If you asked me to predict it right now: The Saint of Bright Doors, Some Desperate Glory, Starter Villain, and The Terraformers would be my immediate picks. I assume Tor will continue its domination of the popular award lists, since the momentum is on their side. After that, I'm unsure! Maybe To Shape a Dragon's Breath? I've also been hearing a lot about The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and A Power Unbound. But it also depends on a wide variety of things! Who has the money for a membership in this time of greedflation? Will younger fans have time to nominate? Will we get an influx of new voters to the awards? Will the romantasy girlies realize they have phenomenal cosmic power? Since it seems nominating and voting online won't be a miserable experience like last year, more people might participate, too.
Don't take anything written here seriously, though. I am fooling myself. I never predict these shortlists with any degree of accuracy.
Best Related Work
My main item in the category was served to me by Adri: Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood deserves to be nominated for this award for the viral tweet that launched a cultural movement on behalf of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Adri had this idea and I went, "This is brilliant. You are brilliant. I'm in." How easy I was: she didn't even provide a full pitch, just the basic concept, and I was sold. I admit that others may not be as easily swayed as I, an Extremely Online person who loves the joyous chaos of the Weird Internet™. The Internet is a tool and it's very easy to see it as a detriment to society and human connection. But in the case of This is How You Lose the Time War going viral, it showed how wonderfully ungovernable it could be in the best way possible: connecting thousands of people and two fandoms through two stories (Trigun and This is How You Lose the Time War).
In an interview that Mr. Bigolas did, they said: “Fandom is powerful mostly because of collective enthusiasm. It can be a very dangerous but also very fun thing, depending on how you use it. I think the energy that’s created when tons of likeminded people meet up is incredible!” However, they also said they were, "overjoyed that somehow tweeting about about anime characters putting their tongues in each other’s mouths actually amounted to something?"
Reader, I would die for Mr. Bigolas. I am nominating them, their tweet, and their contribution to Culture for Best Related Work. Please join me. If you need more evidence this is an Award Worthy Cultural Moment, please see the thread Amal El-Mohtar created as the incident spiraled to heights none of us could have predicted.
Best Fan Writer
Blogs have largely fallen away in favor of short form social media and video, social media platforms are crumbling under the weight of rich men's egos, and we're creating new communities on different sites. But fans writing about things haven't gone anywhere! Most people agonize like this over Best Novel. Meanwhile I'm over here reading nonfiction essays, commentary, and social media feeds deep into the night because I don't want written SFF criticism outside of genre magazines to die as the Internet goes through its "scattered to the winds by billionaires, capitalism, and video content" era.
Jenny Hamilton: One of my favorite genre commentators writing in our current moment, Jenny's commentary is always funny, insightful, and a delight to read. She brings her varied interests to bear in how she looks at genre tropes, turning them sideways, upside down, and shaking them a bit to rattle free fresh perspectives on things we've been staring at so long they've started to fade into the background. Her humor and pacing are top-notch. The way she communicates about complicated topics makes it accessible for people at many levels (something I struggle with and admire in other people). Jenny's got "explain it like I'm five" and "ancient, wizened professor explains it all" on lock. The range! The voice! Some pieces released this year: How to Uphold the Status Quo: The Problem With Small Town Witch Romances; Five Space Books to Send a Chill Down Your Spine; Cassandra Khaw Books, Ranked By How Clearly I Understood Why the Characters Were Eating Human Flesh; or, Gobbets Tomorrow and Gobbets Yesterday But Never Jam Today; Usher Siblings Ranked by How Much They Deserved Their Nasty, Nasty Deaths; The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo. Her BlueSky stream is great for pieces of bite-sized brilliance and hilarity.
Adri Joy: My complaint about Adri, and it's a BIG one: how dare capitalism require her to do a regular job and take away valuable reading/writing time that she could be using to write about science fiction and fantasy literature online to benefit me, specifically? Adri's perspective is critical to me because she has immense knowledge about international issues, especially when it comes to geopolitics. She'll trot out an insightful, flawless explication of an SF trope and how Society has conditioned us to react to it after one minute of consideration. I'm in constant awe. I'm always ready to read what she has to say and see stories from her perspective. The way she thinks about how power works is so vastly different than mine and it's a delight to learn from her. Adri has mostly reviewed work in 2023 that I haven't read yet (betrayed by my own divergent reading year), but I also find her commentary on the various SFF awards incredibly valuable for thinking about the impact of various books on the direction of our genre, as well. Pieces Adri has released in 2023: Adri and Joe Talk About Books: 2023 Locus List; Adri and Joe talk about books: The Nebula Awards; Nanoreviews: Unraveller, The Mimicking of Known Successes, Tread of Angels; Microreview [book]: The Book of Gems by Fran Wilde; Adri and Joe Talk About Books: 2023 Hugo Award Finalists; Review: The Faithless by C.L. Clark
forestofglory: forestofglory is a Lady Business editor! That's my bias disclosed, although I don't think it necessary because her work speaks for itself. She brings critical considerations to genre, including: the importance of cultural respect; how women, mothers, and motherhood are handled in fiction; environmental issues; and how we use food to communicate. Before I started reading her writing on genre, I didn't reflect on how often mothers were sidelined in fiction. I also didn't think about how many moms specifically (or parents in general) were dead so the narrative didn't have to deal with them except as a character motivation. Reading and considering her work on those issues has changed how I look at character death (whether off or on screen) as a tool authors use, as well as how they handle families/communities. Also (and this is incredibly niche), she's changed how I examine the function of cities in the stories I read. She's been as influential on the logistics of worldbuilding as Kate Elliott. Elliott's work is where I started to think about the invisible politics of fantastical stories: supply lines, labor, and how the world itself is even possible. The writing forestofglory did kept taking me down related roads about urban planning and community building until I'm over here adding books about city planning to my TBR (I have so many books to get to) and following urbanist activists on TikTok. Pieces released this year: Recent Nonfiction Highlights; This Made me Think: A Rec list of Critical Essays; The Joy of Artifact Fanfic: a Rec List; Middle Grade and Young Adult Graphic Novel Rec List; Media Round Up: Reading Things so I Can Talk About Them; Media Round Up: Look, some books!; Worldbuilders Book Club Rec List.Best Fancast
I am very behind on genre podcasts! I have two things for sure.
Stitch & Bitch, a live show where fans of SFF talk crafts and reading. It changes hosts each month around a panel of regulars. Their discussions are wide-ranging and the genre gossip is piping hot. Plus, there are regularly cats. One of my favorite things about Stitch & Bitch (and this will surprise zero people) is that they have a live chat and engage with people who are watching, shift the discussion based on chat comments, and do an excellent job of creating an inclusive conversation. They're also just really kind and patient to each other and their viewers. It's not a fast-paced show, there's no attempt to be flash/over-produced. It feels very fannish in the best way. It's difficult to choose which to show because the shows are so stuffed, but for Hugo voters, Stitch & Bitch - March 2023 - Hugo Nominations Special! and 2023 Hugo Awards Shortlist Reaction Liveshow and will be most accessible.
Then Marines grabbed a spot for both her Youtube channel and TikTok. Her book discussions and deep dives have been a treat to listen to/read (yay for captions) this year. Our reading tastes don't always align, but I like how she deconstructs books, even books I haven't read yet. Her work on Youtube: are any of these debut novels good or did they just win Goodreads Choice Awards?; reading red tower: fourth wing makes absolutely no sense; reading and ranking the 2023 Hugo nominated novels. On TikTok: hype status ranking of SFF books; response about TikTok turning publishing into fast fashion; GRWM: weird books edition; three star books I love; enjoying problematic media; the hunger games vs ACOTAR.
This is a complicated year for me because I follow so many people on BookTok, and if Youtubers are eligible then BookTok folks are, too. I don't think there's much of an appetite for nominating BookTok-only reviewers; the bias against the platform is strong. There's excellent commentary happening over there once you wade through the discussions bloggers settled for themselves over a decade ago that must be had again, because the wheel turns, so are the days of our lives, etc. I have some time to decide but it's looking like I may end up in the same place I am with Fan Writer: too many great options and not enough space on my ballot.
Best Fanzine
Fanzine is the only category where I know, immediately, everything that I'm nominating. I miss reading blogs and spent the holiday finding a new, more user friendly RSS reader and loaded up. It seems like newsletters might be making a comeback, too (y'all need to have an RSS feed, though…my inbox is crying). Ah, I remember when blogs were fighting for respect/a place on the ballot against the printed/digital fanzines. How time flies.
The Rec Center: From articles and essays about fandom to recs for fanfic and fanart, I remain a determined advocate for The Rec Center. I have an AGENDA, and that agenda is THE REC CENTER SUPREMACY. I realize that Hugo fandom and fans-who-like-fanfic fandom don't always overlap, but the Rec Center deserves its flowers! I need those of us in the club to band together speak with one voice! Gavia and Elizabeth have created such a wonderful resource for us to enjoy fandom how it used to be before algorithms and the fracturing of platforms. They bring together such great material each week and give other fans the chance to share what they love, too. Fannish labors of love are important and as always, here at Lady Business we believe in reccing as critical practice (another great
forestofglory essay).Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together: NOAF has reached institution level now in the Great World of SFF Blogs. They're a mainstay. If you want to get a pulse on current genre offerings, there's no better place to start. All they need now is a SFF link round up and they'll be unstoppable (hint hint hint). They have a ton of great writers, churn out lots of content (without being spammy) that is thoughtful and critically engaging with texts, and are a fun and chill bunch. If comment culture was still a thing, they would 100% have a comment section worth hanging out to chat in (curse you, social media!!).
SFF Book Reviews: The State of the Genre posts are important touchstones for me. I look forward to them every month to see what's been happening in the corners of the internet I don't get to. They give me the SF Signal Tidbits nostalgia vibes for real. Also, Dina covers lots of books via reviews. We disagree a lot (see: Fourth Wing) but I appreciate her perspective. Her reviews (both positive and negative) have saved my bacon a few times now on things I love (that she dislikes) and things I simply don't want to read about, which is why she's one of my trusted reviewers.
Fantasy Café: The fact Kristen hasn't been nominated even once for her excellent blog is! A travesty! She's just been steadily posting about books for years, talking about genre and the topics she's passionate about, making space for others to write and share their thoughts, doing cool projects (her Women in SFF Month is a huge achievement and I should have advocated harder for it in Best Related Work), and vibing. Fandom! I am just one fan. Help me fix this!
The Full Lid: This newsletter (you can add it to RSS readers, although I had to fight to figure out a URL mine would accept) has great central essays each week. When I have the context they're always excellent pieces. My favorite section (because I am often too under-read/watched for the essay portion) is where they ask people to share what they've been working on and then link it. I've discovered so many neat things from these sections, and that type of community building is my favorite. Staying connected is harder than ever and I appreciate that The Full Lid, amid their other writing, makes space for this in their newsletter.
That's it for me so far while I read/watch additional material and try to decide. What's everyone else got on their nominating ballots?
If you're interested in nominating: in theory if you were a member of the last year's Worldcon you're eligible to nominate in 2024, but need a membership to the current Worldcon to vote on the shortlist that's produced. The whole process confuses me. I never bother with the overlap period from Worldcon to Worldcon. Instead, I pretend each Worldcon is its own thing and chaotically buy a new membership to each one in December/January each year. For Glasgow, you can do that here by registering an account. If you're just in it for the Hugo Awards or aren't sure if you can attend yet, you'll want the WSFS Only option which can be upgraded later. If anything in this paragraph is wrong, feel free to correct me! It's so unnecessarily confusing. :D
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Date: 2024-01-11 12:28 am (UTC)For Best Fancast, may I also suggust Con-Tinual, the ongoing online convention? (Yeah, again. Lady Business is one of the few places to remember Best Fancast is a thing.) Our panels and interviews are all on YouTube at <https://www.youtube.com/continualconvention> (the most recent are under the "Live" tab) - all 248+ in 2023 alone. But the real action is on the Facebook group <https://www.youtube.com/continualconvention>, which not only includes panels, but special features like Destination Research, author readings, free promotional opportunities for new releases, SFFH-related crowdfunding campaigns, links to fan podcasts, and more.
Thanks for keeping the comments open.