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DMS

Saturdays in Books

Reviews of speculative fiction, YA, middle grade, and graphic novels, along with stray thoughts, links, and pictures.

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The SFWA European Hall of Fame: Sixteen Contemporary Masterpieces of Science Fiction from the Continent
Kathryn Morrow, James K. Morrow

2017 Hugo Ballot - Best Editor, Long Form

This is part of a series of posts reviewing categories in this year's Hugo ballot. I'll be discussing the entries, the voter packet, and my ballot. I've nominated and voted most years since 2011, when I figured out that all I had to do was join Worldcon to get to do so. Not only that, but if you participate in one year, you still get to nominate the next year. This year, thanks to a rule change, we nominated up to 5 entries, and the final ballot included the top 6.

 

I typically leave this category blank, because I don't know anything about it. I recently had a conversation with a friend about it, and am taking her suggestion to treat acquisitions as a means of evaluating entrants. Which makes sense since that's a part of how I think through Short Fiction Editors, but isn't going to help with nominations next year. Alas, at least it's a metric to vote in the current ballot.  Below are this year's finalists, listed in the order they appeared on the official announcement, with my notes on each.

 

Vox Day - Fuck no.

 

Sheila E. Gilbert - Well, I've read none of the works listed for her in the packet. Great. One author on here I consistently like, one I'm consistently meh on, and 2 whose short fiction I've bounced off of, hard. 

 

Liz Gorinsky - The packet lists a wide range of genres, with the few entries I've read being very good books. Ghost talkers is a really interesting concept, good on Gorinsky for acquiring it.

 

Devi Pillai - Obelisk Gate is one of the best books published last year, and this is the editor. 

 

Miriam Weinberg - The packet includes a list of conceptually interesting books, one of which I did not love. Hmm.

 

Navah Wolfe - Borderline is listed in Wolfe's credits, and that's a rather fresh kind of urban fantasy. I'm not familiar with most of the rest of the list though.

 

In summary, my metric sucks. I don't know what I'm going to do. How does anyone vote in this category?