Hugo Awards 2011

The Hugo Awards for 2011 were given out at WorldCon/ on Sunday. They include a big winner our reviewer didn’t enjoy, new awards for the Doctor, and more.

BEST NOVEL
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)

BEST NOVELLA
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE
“The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)

BEST SHORT STORY
“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)

BEST RELATED WORK
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY
Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM
Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM
Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens”/”The Big Bang,” written by Steven
Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM
Sheila Williams

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM
Lou Anders

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
Shaun Tan

BEST SEMIPROZINE
Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, Sean Wallace;
podcast directed by Kate Baker

BEST FANZINE
The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon

BEST FAN WRITER
Claire Brialey

BEST FAN ARTIST
Brad W. Foster

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER
Lev Grossman

10 replies on “Hugo Awards 2011”

  1. yeah!
    Chicks DO dig timelords!! :)
    (this one sure does!! *grin*)

    Yay for Doctor Who!! :)
    Loved The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

    Hope the Doctor’s Wife wins next year. That episode was brilliant and I can still watch it over again.. *grin*
    But I’m a geek like that..

    • The original Doctor Who didn’t get much respect from the Hugos, but the current incarnation of the show holds the current record for most awards received by a franchise.

      • The original Doctor Who was more cultish.
        Plus, America didn’t get the episodes until a few years after they’d been originally aired on the BBC.

  2. My complaint about “Inception”: When you have a dream that is running 20 times faster than reality, your physical brain is now running at full speed. If you have a dream within a dream, if that dream is running 20 times faster than the first dream, or 400 times faster than reality, that means that your physical brain has to be running 400 times faster than normal. But it can’t – it can only run 20 times faster than normal.

    Too bad.

    • Is there actually some research on dreams and brain-speed? Or is this simply applying the movie’s own (inaccurate) assumptions about our brain functions?

      The Telegraph has a good overview of Inception‘s good movie, bad science.

      I enjoyed the story and liked the acting (anything with Ellen Page can never be too bad), but cringed when the film repeated the same urban legends about our brain, most of which aren’t needed to make the film work.

      • I took a psychology class where I was told that we dream in real time — that is, it’s a one-to-one ratio between dream time and real time.

        • From the experience of others, including myself, I will have to respectfully disagree. We do not dream in real time, one-to-one.

          • I have a friend who says
            “I would argue that there are no dimensions in dreams as the dream exist only in our heads. No one else can experience it in the same way we do, so I would say that it is not a physical construct and therefore is dimensionless, time is irrelevant.”

            LOL
            Sorry.. just another perspective..
            *huggles*

        • In my experience, different dreams run at different rates. Some are close to one-to-one, some are not. Given that dreams are basically our brains processing things and cleaning things up, I’d say the speed depends upon one’s state of mind more than anything.

          I don’t know how relevant my experiences are, though. I haven’t remembered a dream since I was in University, and back then, the only dreams I remembered were those about me sitting down and solving a homework problem I hadn’t solved before going to sleep. Thankfully, the solutions I came up with in the dreams almost always worked and I could just transcribe them in the morning.

  3. Blackout was an annoying read, in part because of Willis’ writing style (which I also don’t like). But once you make it through to the second book, All Clear, the series becomes fantastic.

    These books are essentially historical fiction loosely tied to science fiction, and the sci-fi portion is pretty lame. Read these books for their amazing view of England during the blitz, not for any time-travelling plot.

Comments are closed.