It’s literary pie fight time!
Otherwise known as the Hugo Awards.
And lo, in the midst of the Covid19 Plague Year, heat waves, hurricanes, murder hornets, and global political unrest, the speculative fiction community did come together virtually to award (some) of the best creators in the business.
They did so in what could have been a legendary & transformative experience guided from New Zealand.
The awards themselves went to some amazing people & organizations.
The physical awards are some of the best I’ve seen. That paua shell! It’s like the rocket is lifting from bioluminescent oceans.
The staging & coordination could have been better. We could have had a Maori Haka. We got three hours of tone-deaf old-white-guy meandering. I like much of the writings of both Robert Silverberg and George R. R. Martin. But their Hugo commentary came away like ‘Get off my lawn!’
Here’s one objective recap.
I’m proud of the winners, flummoxed by some organizational choices, and I come away with some realizations confirmed.
We’re moving in the right direction. Some people are dragging their feet. In the unlikely event I ever produce anything Hugo-worthy, I’m probably never attending the ceremony itself. It’s stressful, expensive, and digitally unnecessary.