My Personal Hugo Nominations

Unless I change my mind in the next eight or so days, here’s what I’m nominating:

Short stories: This is the first year I’ve ever read or nominated any short stories! It’s kind of fun to be rooting for entries in more than the Novel category.

1. Hold Back The Waters by Virginia M. Mohlere. I didn’t really find that this story had enough closure for me, but I still liked it a lot.

2. Mad Maudlin by Marie Brennan. I really loved everything about this story.

3. The Earth and Everything Under by K.M. Ferebee. Honestly, I pretty much loved everything about this story, too.

4. When it Ends, He Catches Her by Eugie Foster. I did not like this one as much as the three above, but still, I would not mind seeing it on the ballot.

5. How To Become A Robot In 12 Easy Steps by A. Merc Rustad. What I liked best about this story was its structure and its (non-dark) ending.

Novelettes:

1. Nobody’s Home by Tim Powers. Craig brought this novelette to my attention at nearly the last minute. It’s a good yearfor ghost stories, I guess, as a couple of the short stories are more or less ghost stories. I liked it a lot.

I didn’t read any other novelettes.

Novellas:

In the end, I didn’t like any novella I read enough to nominate it. But then, I only read about four novellas. I’ll be interested to see what actually gets nominated.

Novels: I bet you already know most of these:

1. The Goblin Emperor by “Katherine Addison”

2. A Darkling Sea by James Cambias

3. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.

4. Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge. You were all right; I loved it. Horrible cover.

5. And, as a surprise to us all, or at least to me, Trial By Fire by Charles Gannon.

Which I haven’t finished. I’m voting for it because I don’t think The Tropic of Serpents has a chance (I haven’t seen it on anybody else’s list, which I do think is too bad), because I’m voting for Brennan’s short story which I hope does have a chance, and because I’d rather see it on the ballot than a bunch of the titles that are fairly likely to get a lot of attention.

Here, incidentally, are Chaos Horizon’s official predictions for the novels that will actually make the Hugo ballot. These predictions affected my nominations: This list made me move Gannon’s book up to my fifth spot because I wanted to vote for a book that might have a chance of bumping some of the titles that Chaos Horizon thinks are likely.

For example, I’d rather see Gannon’s book on the ballot thanAnnihilation by Jeff VanderMeer because his Finch was so not to my taste; I would FAR rather see it than Correia’s Monster Hunter book, which I skimmed and thoroughly disliked; I would rather see it on there than Butcher’s Skin Game if only because I do not really want to read a 14 book series so I can read that one.

Now, if we see Gannon’s book on there instead of The Goblin Emperor I will GNASH MY TEETH.