Convention Reporter kept up a stream of Tweets last night (Canada time, early hours of this morning for the UK) from the weekend’s Worldcon, one of science fiction’s major global annual events, including live updates from the prestigious Hugo Awards. This year the Hugos decided to include a specific category for Best Graphic Story, the very first of which – presented by Neil Gaiman – went to Phil and Kaja Foglio for Girl Genius. I must admit to being a bit surprised – its not a series I’ve read or indeed heard that many folks talking about; the latest volume just hit the shelves in the last couple of weeks, so perhaps it is something we should be paying more attention to, especially as there had been nominations along the way for Paul Cornell, Grant Morrison and Shaun Tan in the same category – pretty impressive to score a win against that sort of comics talent.
Wall-E won the Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, the Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form went to – no, not Doctor Who or Galactica, shockingly, but a piece which began life on the web rather than broadcast, Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The fact that the mighty Joss Whedon was involved no doubt influenced voting patterns; Whedon fans are well known for their ability to marshal the votes (they even made a close attempt for the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Fest a few years back for Serenity). The fact that it was highly enjoyable wouldn’t have hurt either.
The Best Novel went to Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book, Best Novelette to Elizabeth Bear for Shoggoths in Bloom, Best Novella to Nancy Kress for Erdmann Nexus and the always-interesting Ted Chiang won the Best Short Story gong for Exhalation. Best Semiprozine went to the excellent Weird Tales (still encouraging new writing after all these years with Anne VanderMeer actively looking for good short fiction for the mag) and on a personal note I’m delighted to see old chum Cheryl Morgan picking up the Best Fan Writer award. The full list of Hugo awards and nominees can be found here.
Mon, Aug 10, 2009
Awards, Books