{"id":19033,"date":"2024-08-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=19033"},"modified":"2024-07-15T22:07:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T04:07:41","slug":"how-i-would-vote-now-2016-hugo-award-best-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/how-i-would-vote-now-2016-hugo-award-best-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"How I would vote now: 2016 Hugo Award (Best Novel)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Nominees<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Aeronaut’s Windlass<\/em> by Jim Butcher<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Fifth Season<\/em> by N.K. Jemisin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ancillary Mercy<\/em> by Ann Leckie<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Uprooted<\/em> by Naomi Novik<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Seveneves<\/em> by Neal Stephenson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Actual Results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  1. The Fifth Season<\/em> by N.K. Jemisin<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Uprooted<\/em> by Naomi Novik<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Ancillary Mercy<\/em> by Ann Leckie<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Seveneves<\/em> by Neal Stephenson<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. The Aeronaut’s Windlass<\/em> by Jim Butcher<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    How I Would Have Voted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
      \n
    1. The Aeronaut’s Windlass<\/em> by Jim Butcher<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. No Award<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Uprooted<\/em> by Naomi Novik<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Seveneves<\/em> by Neal Stephenson<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Explanation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      I enjoyed The Aeronaut’s Windlass.<\/em> It was a fun steampunk adventure, sort of like a mashup between Horatio Hornblower and the Bioshock games. It’s also very unlike most books to be nominated for the Hugo, probably because it was nominated by the Sad Puppies. After this year, the people who run the Hugo Awards rewrote the rules to allow them to disallow “slate voting,” which was how they disqualified the majority of ballots in the 2023 Hugo Awards, including almost all of the ballots cast by Chinese fans. But guys, it’s the Puppies who were totally the racists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      All of the other books were pretty terrible, in my opinion. I’ve already written about The Fifth Season<\/em> at length<\/a>, so I won’t go into that rant here. I’ve also written at length about Ann Leckie’s obsession with fake transgender pronouns, and since Ancillary Mercy<\/em> is basically just another book about pronouns, I won’t waste any more time on that subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I wanted to like Uprooted,<\/em> since I loved Spinning Silver<\/em> so much, but both times I tried to read it, I ended up DNFing it midway through. Partly that’s because the fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast was not as interesting to me, but there was also a scene where the main character and her mentor randomly started making out after casting a spell together, with a graphic description of digital penetration. The whole thing came so totally out of the blue that it threw me out of the book, and I had no desire to finish it after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I’m also really conflicted about Seveneves.<\/em> I’m not a huge fan of Neal Stephenson generally, especially after the neon orgy scene at the end of Diamond Age,<\/em> and Seveneves<\/em> is loooong\u2026 like, over 800 pages long. Which would be fie, if Stephenson had the economy of words of a true master like Louis L’Amour, but Stephenson really doesn’t. Around 100 pages or so, I skipped to the last chapter and read a spoiler-filled synopsis just to see if it was worth pressing on, and I decided that it really wasn’t, because 1) it’s apparently never explained why or how the moon exploded, and 2) the Hillary Clinton analog becomes absolutely insufferable, and I really didn’t want to slog through four hundred pages of that. Seveneves<\/em> has an interesting premise, but if you cut out half the words it would be a better book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
      How I Would Vote Now: All Years<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The Nominees The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie Uprooted by Naomi Novik Seveneves by Neal Stephenson The Actual Results How I Would Have Voted Explanation I enjoyed The Aeronaut’s Windlass. It was a fun steampunk adventure, sort of like a mashup between Horatio Hornblower… Continue reading How I would vote now: 2016 Hugo Award (Best Novel)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1508,567,1760,1298,1558,1545],"class_list":["post-19033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ann-leckie","tag-hugo-awards","tag-jim-butcher","tag-n-k-jemisin","tag-naomi-novik","tag-neal-stephenson","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4WZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19033"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19146,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions\/19146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}