So the Hugo nominations are out, and it's a mixed bag this time around in the novel category. A huge plus is that there is no Harry Potter book nominated (nothing against Harry Potter, but I haven't read the fourth one yet so I was hoping the fifth one would miss the cut, although I'm surprised it actually did). A huge minus is Bujold's "Paladin of Souls", sequel to "Curse of Chalion" from a couple of years ago, a Jane Austen fantasy pastiche if ever there was one. How come her newer Vorkosigan novels aren't getting the nod but this is? "Humans", Sawyers sequel to the Hugo-winning but otherwise ho-hum "Hominids", is in there, and the only one that is or will be in mass market paperback before the voting ends. As with "Hominids" its the only nominee not in Locus's best of the year list. "Ilium" by Dan Simmons should be worth a read (although apparently it ends in the middle like "Hyperion" did), and I would like to read "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross. And "Blind Lake" by Robert Charles Wilson, who made a splash with "Darwinia" a few years ago. Snubbed are Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" and Stephenson's "Quicksilver" (neither of which are really sf but are still supposed to be top drawer, I can vouch for the Gibson as I read that several weeks ago), plus the latest from Baxter and Bear. SF book club has everything but the Stross, but it won't be in mmpb until July, so I may have to spring for a hardcover this time, which I haven't had to do since Ken MacLeod's "The Sky Road" a few years ago.



The Retro-Hugo novel nominees contain no surprises, basically the generally accepted top five books of that year (which was a pretty good year) are all represented. Four of them (Childhood's End, Fahrenheit 451, Mission of Gravity and More Than Human) I've read before, but only the Clement in the last 10 years probably. The fifth is Asimov's Caves of Steel, which is a robot novel that I haven't read before. What's nice about retro-Hugos is that you can read them all in about 10 ten days without trying very hard.



Back to the regular Hugos, four of the five novella nominees are on the Locus list (the exception being Catherine Asaro's "Walk in Silence") and feature some authors I like in Williams and Willis, and the variable Vernor Vinge. Novelettes include a story from the "Writers of the Future" anthology, which may be a first, and a Jeffrey Ford story from scifi.com's Sci Fiction, which is definitely a first. Stross, Swanwick and Kelly are all worth reading, although I don't always understand what Stross is trying to do and I often wonder if Swanwick is trying to do anything.



Short stories include another Burstein entry (big surprise), a story from David Levine (who was nominated for the Campbell award last year and again this year), and the reliable Haldeman, Resnick and Gaiman, although Gaiman's story is only in a hardcover anthology that is not coming out in paperback soon and is not offered by SFBC.



I don't see anything on the Noreascon 4 website about what the voting deadline is, but it may be the end of July, which is good because there are twice as many stories to read with the retro-Hugos in there too (although probably several of them will be hard to find in their original form). As usual when the nominations are announced, I'm in the middle of the next classics book group book, but unlike last year it's not too long so I should be able to get cracking next week. I'll have a page off of the sf subdomain for my reviews shortly.