two Hugo nominations
I am pleased to report that my work has received two Hugo final nominations this year, for the 2017 Worldcon to be held in Helsinki: "Penric and the Shaman" gets a slot in the Best Novella category, and the Vorkosigan Saga as a whole in the Best Series category.
The latter is a new, somewhat experimental award category this year. It has long been plain, to me at least, that the series is an art form in its own right, as distinct from the stand-alone novel as the novel is from the short story. But it's really hard to figure out how to fit the many varied structures and publication time-frames of series work into an award that tries to capture works by the calendar year. The solution on this initial trial is to limit candidacy to series that had a new novel/unit published in 2016, which seems to have encouraged some fresher names to appear.
The complete 2017 Hugo ballot may be seen here:
http://www.locusmag.com/News/2017/04/...
The 2017 Worldcon website is here:
http://www.worldcon.fi/
and I can highly recommend Helsinki and Finland as places to go see, with or without fannish interests.
Ta, L.
The latter is a new, somewhat experimental award category this year. It has long been plain, to me at least, that the series is an art form in its own right, as distinct from the stand-alone novel as the novel is from the short story. But it's really hard to figure out how to fit the many varied structures and publication time-frames of series work into an award that tries to capture works by the calendar year. The solution on this initial trial is to limit candidacy to series that had a new novel/unit published in 2016, which seems to have encouraged some fresher names to appear.
The complete 2017 Hugo ballot may be seen here:
http://www.locusmag.com/News/2017/04/...
The 2017 Worldcon website is here:
http://www.worldcon.fi/
and I can highly recommend Helsinki and Finland as places to go see, with or without fannish interests.
Ta, L.
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Brian
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Apr 04, 2017 08:40AM
Tor.com has posted a great review and recommendation by Liz Bourke for Penric and the Shaman - http://www.tor.com/2017/04/04/sleeps-...
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So happy to see you get the recognition you deserve. If I weren't so blooming old I'd love to visit Finland.
OK, it is just cruel to put Lois and Ben up against each other. I love them both, and they both love reading each other's books. No one should ever have to pick between them, and they are totally different genres. Congratulations Lois, your books are the ones that I always go back to, over and over. Your characters have become real to me.
Yay, the Vorkosigan saga is absolutely one of my favorite series! Congratulations. I hope it inspires to many more wonderful novels. Well done.
Mazel Tov! Both worthy candidates. Best of luck!
Komarr scored 75. LOLI find the Star Ratings on Goodreads and Amazon quite annoying. Almost all of the books range between 3.5 and 4.5, It is nothing but an average. So I have been playing with the statistics.
Total the 4s and 5s and divide that by the total of the 1s and 2s. That basically gives you a ratio of the people who liked a book to those who didn't. Using Goodread's statistics Komarr has the highest ratio I have found so far. Moby Dick got 2.29.
LOL
Barrayar got 40 and Shards of Honor got 18
There is a certain logic to this for a series. People are trying the first book in a series as an unknown. People who rate it and don't like it will lower the ratio. But they probably will not read more of the series. So later books will mostly have a biased audience of people who liked earlier books and the Star Ratio should rise.
Karl wrote: "Komarr scored 75. LOLI find the Star Ratings on Goodreads and Amazon quite annoying. Almost all of the books range between 3.5 and 4.5, It is nothing but an average. So I have been playing with t..."
Heh. You could run a sample test of your theory by rating the four Penric novellas. Being something of a series-in-miniature by now.
Ta, L.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: "Heh. You could run a sample test of your theory by rating the four Penric novellas. ."But I am biased against fantasy and the test should be with a different author.
LOL
How about Robert J. Sawyer?
#1. Far-Seer 14
#2. Fossil Hunter 25
#3. Foreigner 27
You beat the pants off of him. Naughty girl.
There will of course be series where things eventually go down hill where the author runs out of steam or producing junk for the money. The Gor series for example. Then Dune series taken over by different writer. I got tired of Weber after Flag in Exile.
Karl wrote: "Komarr scored 75. LOLI find the Star Ratings on Goodreads and Amazon quite annoying. Almost all of the books range between 3.5 and 4.5, It is nothing but an average. So I have been playing with t..."
If a book rates over a 2.5 I give it a chance. I also look at what people hated about it in their reviews. I have certain "absolutely not" triggers, like poorly written romantic leads or dystopians where society collapses in an unrealistic way (it's been 50 years since New York fell...and now we have castles!). But other than that, I rate pretty harshly myself sometimes so I give things a little benefit of the doubt.
I like your formula though for ratings. I'm gonna take it out in the wild and give it a spin. Thanks for sharing!
Sea Bunny wrote: "I like your formula though for ratings. I'm gonna take it out in the wild and give it a spin. Thanks for sharing! "I am thinking about weighting the system. Some stats have more 5s then 4s and some more 4s then 5s, but my current system gives equal weight to both. So I am thinking of multiplying the 5s by 1.1 and 4s by 0.9 so if there are equal 4s and 5s there should not be much effect but if they are significantly different the score should change.
You so deserve the nominations, Lois and I hope you get the awards. The Vorkosigan Saga is my favorite series of all time and holds up to reading multiple times! Whenever I finish up the series again with "Gentleman Joel and the Red Queen", I go through a little sad time of missing Miles and family and friends. Thank you for your imagination and writing skills. Marci.
