So the Hugo nominees are out, and there are a couple of surprises, I suppose. In the novel category, Robert Sawyer's "Hominids" gets a nomination, although it wasn't on the Locus recommended list. Sawyer's books are always readable, and I discovered him by way of his first Hugo nomination for "The Terminal Experiment" several years ago and was pleasantly surprised at his page-turning style, which is all too rare in sf these days. Although he's dabbled in space opera like "Starplex", which I also liked, he seems to be more at home in molecular biology and anthropology. I actually read three-quarters of "Hominids" while it was serialized in Analog, but never got around to reading the fourth part. It's a testament to Sawyer that I still remember a fair amount of the story and plot now, over a year later, since usually I forget the whole thing as soon as I put the finished book on the shelf. Don't know why Locus didn't recommend it (they didn't recommend the last one either, if memory serves), but it seems a reasonable choice.



The books I thought of as most likely nominees are otherwise all there, and I've got the previous posts here to prove it. I don't think I mentioned "The Scar", but given the showing of "Perdido Street Station" I'm not surprised this would get on the list, and I would like to read that more than the latest 700-page slog through Brin or Robinson. I've never read a Swanwick novel, but it would have to be better than his short stories, since at that length there would need to be some semblance of plot presumably.



The novella category includes a couple of surprises, not because they're inferior stories but because of where they were published. Paul di Filippo is long overdue to get a Hugo nomination, but this small press story is going to be hard to find unless somebody posts it online. I'm probably more surprised than I should be that Neil Gaiman gets one for "Coraline", which is really a YA story, but it seems Gaiman has arrived in the sf world after years being known mostly to comics readers, and anyone that get accollades within sf, fantasy and horror circles for the same book is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Publishers will be tripping over each other to get him. I would have thought that Kessel's "Stories For Men" would have gotten a nomination based on its notoriety, and its interesting that a couple of the other nominees are relative unknowns. "Breathmoss" is supposed to be the most fabulous thing Ian MacLeod has ever done, so I'm particularly psyched for that one. This category is always my favorite, and this time I get to look forward to reading those stories which I otherwise wouldn't have time for.



Of the combined 10 novelette and short story nominations, three go to Swanwick, and I suppose he could win both categories plus best novel the way people gush over him, but I haven't read any of them yet so I shouldn't leap to judgment. I would most like to read the Charles Stross and Molly Gloss entries, plus Geoff Landis who is always entertaining and thought-provoking in a variety of settings (this story is the only short fiction nominee that didn't make the Locus list, but two other stories of his did), and Maureen McHugh should be worth a read too, although she hasn't written much short fiction recently on a par with her early stuff. A Le Guin story is always an enigma, you never know if it's going to amount to anything or not, sometimes not even after you read it, but last year's was a real snoozer so let's hope for more this time. Don't know anything about Gregory Frost or Jeffrey Ford.



All in all, seems like a good sampling. Don't know if I'll make it through the novel nominees, but I should be able to do the short stuff. And I've already seen all five movie nominees, so that's one category I can vote for no matter what.