2010 Hugo Award winners announced

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

My current recommendation is Liz Williams "Inspector Chen" stories. Chen is a "Snake Agent" - the officer in his precinct responsible for crimes involving the supernatural. He lives in Singapore 3, in a future in which such things are franchised. And Chinese mythology is real and active in Chen's world. His wife is a rescued demon, he has a patron goddess who is displeased with him (in part, for marrying a demon), and his partner is a demon - a Seneschal of the Ministry of Vice in Hell, responsible for making sure Hell's rules are followed by those who live there. Chen's life is...complicated, and he finds himself caught up in events that could affect Heaven and Hell as well as Earth.
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Dennis

Who sells her books, Dennis? She's listed as an author on Baen's "Webscriptions" site, but when I select her name from the authors list, there are no books shown.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Who sells her books, Dennis? She's listed as an author on Baen's "Webscriptions" site, but when I select her name from the authors list, there are no books shown.

Night Shade Books, who've apparently been less than fair in their dealings with some of their authors lately. I suppose those particular books have been removed from the catalogue due to that.

Too bad. I was looking forward to getting these via Webscriptions, and I hope that Ms. Williams manages to make a deal with the Baen people and get her novels back on the site, hopefully with a discount bundle deal for purchasing the lot.

In the meantime, I'll be checking the library.

[HarryT]

Oh well, thanks anyway. Perhaps I should have a day trip to Glastonbury and see if I can buy them in person from her .

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Glastonbury is a seriously wierd place - perhaps the last hold-out of the hippies (in the UK, at least). Absolutely full of strange little shops selling crystal balls, magic charms, healing crystals, etc. Great fun .

Liz can be snarky about it. Great fun it may be, and Liz and Trevor own three of those little shops, but the seriously weird extends to seriously loony, and a fair number of the loons seem drawn to Liz and Trevor's establishments. It's also a small town with small town attributes, like a fertile and inventive gossip mill. Liz frequently shakes her head at what she and Trevor are rumored to be doing.

Of course, dealing with loons comes with the territory in retail, so they expect it, but some of them are really over the top.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Night Shade Books, who've apparently been less than fair in their dealings with some of their authors lately. I suppose those particular books have been removed from the catalogue due to that.

As I understand it, Nightshade placed its financial affairs in the hands of someone who proved untrustworthy, looted the till, and decamped leaving them holding the bag. It put them in a position where they couldn't do things like pay authors money owed them, and Liz was one who got burnt.

I believe they have settled accounts with Liz and personally apologized. The main complaint about Nightshade at this point seems to be that they should have come clean about what happened to them and what they intended to do to fix it earlier than they did. "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."

I met the Nightshade proprietors at the Tor party at LACon IV, and was able to thank them for publishing Liz. They seemed quite committed to publishing quality work, but they are a small publisher. As such they are under capitalized, and things like that can be a much bigger problem than they would be for a bigger, better heeled outfit.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh well, thanks anyway. Perhaps I should have a day trip to Glastonbury and see if I can buy them in person from her .

If she's scheduled to be on duty in one of the shops, you probably can.

Watch your PMs.
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Dennis

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

They supposedly were.

Holtzbrinck nixed the deal because Baen did not apply DRM to Webscriptions offerings. Holtzbrinck subsequently got a new CEO that did not believe in DRM, and the deal was supposedly on again.

It would be nice to see that come through again in the webscriptions which I think is a great deal. IT might also get some new titles into the free library which hasn't seen an update since last December.

Back to the topic at hand....

I read The Windup Girl (got it free from the notice posted here a while back) and greatly enjoyed it. That's the only one on the list that I've read....

[EricLandes]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I read The Windup Girl (got it free from the notice posted here a while back) and greatly enjoyed it. That's the only one on the list that I've read....

I've read Boneshaker, The Windup Girl, and The City & The City.

I really have a hard time choosing which of the latter two is better. It's possibly the Mieville, but The Windup Girl is much more of a science fiction book. The City & The City is a detective novel in a wonderful setting. Boneshaker's very good, but not up to the two that ended up tying.

I probably would have voted for The Windup Girl, but it would have been a very hard decision.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The Hugos are a driver, though it's not clear they're a huge one, and along with the Nebulas are the only SF awards that have that sort of popular recognition and drive sales. There are a plethora of other SF/fantasy awards, but none I can think of actually boost sales of the books that get them.
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Dennis

Well, I think the Clark-award also have this kind of popular recognition. From my perspective the Clarke-award seems to choose better books and are more well known than the Nebula award.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Some friends have the complete set of Girl Genius books. Reading them straight through was a different experience than the "updated three times a week" web version.

It reminded me a bit of J. Michael Straczynski's "Babylon 5" TV show. When it hit syndicated reruns, and you could watch an episode every night instead of a week between them, the series gained force, and Straczynski's story arcs and "holographic" writing methods became more effective.
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Dennis

I agree. I am thinking about not reading the current web updates and wait for the current story to end. When I caught up and read all Girl Genius from the beginning a year ago or so I thought it was really brilliant but reading it now when they appear it is hard to get this feeling of a big connected work.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by dsvick

It would be nice to see that come through again in the webscriptions which I think is a great deal. IT might also get some new titles into the free library which hasn't seen an update since last December.

Updates happen when Eric Flint has the time. And they may not be listed on the Baen Free Library What's New page. For instance, Baen added Lois McMaster Bujold's _The Warrior's Apprentice_ as a Free Library download, but it wasn't listed in the What's New page.

See http://www.webscription.net/s-13-loi...er-bujold.aspx

There are also a number of Free Library titles that were issued on bound-in CDs in selected hardcovers, but not all are on the Free Library site.

The fan site The Fifth Imperium has all extant Baen CDs available for download as big zip files or CD ISO images. The site also has functions to let you view the content of individual CDs and extract specific books.

See http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

There is also reportedly a new CD in the works: Lois McMaster Bujold's new Miles Vorkosigan novel, Cryoburn, with have a "Vorkosiverse" CD bound in. (No word on what content will be included.)

My Baen directory in the SF category of my master ebooks archive is about 1.48GB.

(The full eBooks directory tree is 17.4 GB. Obsessive? Moi? )
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, I think the Clark-award also have this kind of popular recognition. From my perspective the Clarke-award seems to choose better books and are more well known than the Nebula award.

That's a good point. The SFWA has expanded to include authors outside the US, and has a European Regional Director, but it's still a largely North American organization, and is probably better known over here. The Clarke Award may well have better recognition elsewhere.

The Nebulas are peer awards, chosen by the membership, and will represent what the folks in SFWA think is good.

A bigger question is whether readers buy books on the basis of a Clarke Award. The Hugo does increase sales somewhat. I have no real data on the others.
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Dennis

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

A bigger question is whether readers buy books on the basis of a Clarke Award. The Hugo does increase sales somewhat. I have no real data on the others.
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Dennis

I really do not know but I think it increase sales inside sf fandom at least. At Eastercons you notice that a lot of people have read the Clarke short list and the BSFA-award short list.

And one goal of the Clarke-award is to promote science fiction books to the general book buying public.

In any case. I definitely recommend people to try all the book on the Clarke-award short list also. I usually read the Clarke-award short list and the Hugo-award nominations (since I vote).