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The Hugos

 

Long time listeners of Galactic Suburbia will know what huge fans of the Hugos we are. To be nominated for a Hugo just totally floors us. To be able to attend a Hugo ceremony as fangirls was amazing. To be there in a year we were nominees was just super awesome. We got to do the whole trip and we held on and enjoyed the ride. Mostly. We talk about the experience on the latest episode of the podcast. Here are the accompanying photos.

The rehearsal.

Yeah that’s terrifying. Here is a photo of Tansy as we entered the auditorium and got hit by the wave of Hugo nerves. We were all good until this very moment. Behind her, Al Jazeera had swept in asking about where they should set up their cameras. I took this photo to capture all the moments but clearly Tansy is all “Just what the hell are you doing, Alisa? We don’t have time for this right now.”

Here I think she is agreeing with me that is a truly terrifying moment. Behind her is *half* the auditorium and stage.

HALF OF GALACTIC SUBURBIA AT THE HUGOs Selfie!!! (And the OTHER HALF of the auditorium.)

And then we went up to do the rehearsal proper. Here is lovely Niall Harrison going along with my antics. We did the rehearsal with Niall and Abigail Nussbaum and that was a truly fun experience (as well as deeply deeply terrifying, but we were all terrified together). There were lots of instructions on how to handle and how not to handle the trophy – look, if you make your trophy look like a giant penis, there’s not much you can do about what that’s gonna look like when nervous people clasp to it trying not to drop it in a moment of great shock/surprise/denial/surrealism/overwhelming joy/whatever.

Then we went to get changed and head on out to the preceremony cocktail party.

The Cocktail Party

Here is Tansy placating Scottish Liz (Scottish Liz, I cut you out of this photo because it was not a good shot.)

There were two Doctors Who at the party. I’m not sure if there was also a rift in the time space continuum because of this. Doctor One:

Doctor Two:

I was sad neither of them won since they came along and all. But George is lovely. And I was also sad Orphan Black didn’t win. So I guess I must have really liked that category.

OK, so basically, at the party, everyone is nervously hanging around counting down til the pain of the Hugos will be over, oh and also, having their photos taken in their category. Here is ours (I’m going to link to it rather than post it here. Click over to the next photo for us being a bit silly.)

The Hugos Ceremony

Here we are seated for the ceremony in a sort of half the Podcast Posse.

My attempt of a Pat-Cadigan-style-selfie (see her Facebook for the reference)

And Verity!

Our lovely hosts for the evening – Geoff Ryman wearing his Tiptree tiara and Justina Robson

The guarded Hugos cabinet, or as I like to call it – a cupboard of dildos

I was in the front row. Like a true Hugos nerd. Therefore my photos are not awesome but what they lack in lighting, the add in enthusiasm for being there in person to take them.

Sofia Samatar (author of the loved “Walkdog” in Kaleidoscope and the Crawford winner for A Stranger in Olondria) won the Campbell Award (not a Hugo) and here is Julia Rios accepting it for her.

Gratuitous picture (because I love her) of Kate Elliott accepting the Best Fanwriter Hugo for Kameron Hurley. (BTW, Elliott knows how to classily handle a Hugo. Just sayin’)

Best Fancast category was up and SF Signal won. Here is Gail Carriger accepting for Patrick Hester

And then there were my three personal favourite wins (though there were many more that night that were truly awesome too).

John Chu won Best Short Story for “The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere” which … was rejected 12 times and he was told that noone would ever want to read this kind of stories he wrote. Oh how wrong that feedback was. “To win, and for *this* story” is what he is saying here:

You can read his story for free here, and I really do think it’s worth it. You can thank me later :)

And then Mary Robinette Kowal won Best Novelette for “The Lady Astronaut from Mars” which was my absolute favourite in the category – and that’s including against the Ted Chiang! I know!!! This story made me cry, it’s totally beautiful and totally feminist and exactly the kind of subject matter I love to read about and get explored in science fiction. There was some politics surrounding this entry because it was first published in audio format the year before and knocked out of eligibility. You can read it for free on Tor.com who saved it from missing out due to this ruling by printing it online.

And then, finally. The big moment. I had tried not to listen to all the people predicting who would win Best Novel. I really really wanted Ann Leckie to win. And then, as the awards unfolded, and it came to pass that I quite liked the 2014 Hugo voters, I thought, surely, surely they won’t let me down? And they didn’t. And Ann Leckie swept the full suite of awards for her first novel in her trilogy – Ancillary Justice. And we in the front gave her a standing ovation of excitement, of respect and of celebration. And here she is, accepting her Hugo:

What an awesome night! Truly exhilarating. In my mind, a gauntlet had been thrown down many months before, and the Hugo voters picked it up and ran off with it. We read the works and judged them on their merit. And lo, it came to pass that Hugo winning science fiction could be gender bending, feminist, and gay. Who knew?! I love you all. EVEN the people who voted No Award in the Best Fancast category.



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April 24   Hugo Nominations 2014

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This is the podcast you’re having when you’re not really having a podcast. Don’t think of it as a new episode. Think of it as an additional appendage. If we’d recorded the last episode further down the timeline, we’d have discussed the Hugo ballot in full. And when you think of it that way, aren’t you glad we split those 4 hours into two?

Galactic Suburbia the John Campbell Memorial not a Hugo Episode 

In which we do discuss the Hugo shortlists both Retro and Current, but this is not an episode. Not at all. For… administrative reasons.
Retro Hugo Shortlist 1939.
Hugo ShortlistBrandon Sanderson says interesting things about fandom groups, and the Wheel of Time nomination. 

Some gender notes on the Hugo shortlist
Tansy’s Hugo links post
Tansy & John DeNardo of SF Signal discuss the shortlist on Coode Street Podcast
THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO NOMINATED GALACTIC SUBURBIA FOR BEST FANCAST, WE LOVE YOU TOO. WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH WE WOULD GIVE YOU FIVE STARS ON ITUNES.
Download the latest not a Hugo Episode Hugo Episode Additional Appendage HERE


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Heads up: there’s a bonus Hugo edition episode incoming.

In which we approach Fringe from multiple sides, rant about Game of Thrones, muse about cake lit and Alisa is a PhD student again! Bonus supplemental awards chat (but not in depth about the Hugos because we recorded before the shortlist went public) and an invitation to CAKE OUT for our 100th. See you there…

Culture Consumed:
Alex: Fringe s1; A Million Suns, Beth Revis; The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams

Tansy: Game of Thrones rant, Jenny Colgan novels, Jago & Litefoot 7, Yonderland!

Alisa: Game of Thrones; Generation Cryo; The Cuckoo by Sean Williams, Clarkesworld Issue 91; the PhD Report

Aurealis Awards were awarded.

(sidetracked: Before the Internet from XKCD)

Hugo nomination
CAKE COMPETITION! For our 100th episode, we would like to have a new logo. On a cake. Designed by you. Send a picture of your creation and you could win… something… and you can eat the cake, too. (This is episode 98, so you’ve got 4 or 5 weeks to plan your creation.)
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
LISTEN TO US HERE!


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April 9   In other news …

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Yesterday was a huuuuge day! We woke up to a twitter stream informing us that the Hugo ballot was out and Galactic Suburbia was on it! We’ve made it onto the first ever Fancast category ballot and it’s absolutely amazing, hard to take in and just totally floored me. Thank you to every one who nominated us!! We’re so glad you think what we’re doing is Hugo worthy. This category is absolutely awesome, if you don’t listen to the other podcasts, you’re missing out!

 

 

Best Fancast

  • The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
  • Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts (presenters) and Andrew Finch (producer)
  • SF Signal Podcast, John DeNardo and JP Frantz (presenters), Patrick Hester (producer)
  • SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente
  • StarShipSofa, Tony C. Smith

As you know, at Galactic Suburbia, we LOVE awards season and we’re major fans of the Hugos. To be a part of it is too too cool. I’d already decided that this year I’d follow Alex’s suit and work me way through the entire Hugo packet and I can hardly wait til the 2012 one is out!

If you want to play along and if you want to cast a Hugo vote! you can do so by buying a supporting membership here.

And if that wasn’t enough for one day, I was so pleased to hear that Nightsiders by Sue Isle won the Tin Duck for Best WA Long Fiction Best WA Professional Production. I’m so very proud of this book. I’m so very glad that others are enjoying it and getting as much out of what she has done in this collection as I did.



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