Category: Hugos

2015 Hugo Awards Best Fan Writer: Reviewing D Freer

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David Freer

The first thing I encountered opening the PDF for Freer’s fan writing work is his brief history of how he was nominated describing the use of slates as “short listing” and claiming that the Petaybee (Powers That Be – go read Anne McCaffrey spouse!) objected to the people chosen. This is strange because I see the fans objecting to the method of overrunning the vote and hoping, like me, to give the nominees a fair reading in desire to find that all ideological differences aside we might discover a few sci-fi/fantasy gems.

Following his suit I feel the need to state that I object to people organizing their nominee suggestions into slates. I also dislike that the way the slates were perpetuated gives the impression that people were voting for nominees they had not read. New to the Hugo Awards as I am, the rule with which I approach voting is “if you don’t read it then don’t vote on it.” That means that if I am voting on best short story then I must attempt read ALL the short stories on the ballot.

Now that our respective stances on the state of this year’s Hugo Awards are mapped out it’s time to read the posts Freer self selected to be judged on. I went to his site but don’t see an archive based on date so I’m just sticking with his self selection unless it comes down to a close call in which case I’ll hunt.

(Side note: added archives to my site, it’s very easy to do with WordPress. Simply choose Appearance >> Widgets and then drag and drop the Archives widget into the side bar.)

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Reviewing; Meta Post

rebekahgolden1 Comment

I took a short break from writing twice a day reviews to have an existential crisis about writing reviews. I’m going to review what I’ve decided I’m reviewing for.

On file770, in the middle of some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in web site comments, someone brought up the dual ideas of compelling questions and conversational analysis. I’m going to focus on compelling questions because that’s the half that I’ve latched onto.

This goes back to my post about Totaled. It was a good story. Had some interesting ideas. Didn’t do it for me and I think the reason why not has to do with compelling questions. Look at Ancillary Justice and the story is full of compelling questions. Then there’s Mono No Aware.

Cutting for spoilers about Mono No Aware, Totaled, and me.

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