Category Archives: scifi

Hugo award voting and material, an overview

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As a preparation for the voting for the Hugo Awards 2009 I downloaded the package of material from their website, and listened to some the short stories on a variety of podcasts, and watched what I could easily get hold of.

There was not enough time to read the rest of the material.

This is what I got to see or read before voting :

Dramatic presentations, short form :

Doctor Who : ‘Turn Left’
Doctor Who : ‘Silence in the Library’/’Forest of the Dead’
Battlestar Galactica : ‘Revelations’
I would have liked to see more, especially ‘Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’ . I was not aware that the DVD version from the US was Region Free, so missed out on that one. I will have to get it some time

Dramatic presentations, long form :

‘The Dark Knight’
‘Iron Man’

Novels :

Charles Stross : Saturns Children
Neil Gaiman : Graveyard Book
Cory Doctorow : Little Brother
John Scalzi : Zoe’s Tale

Short stories (audio podcast format) :

Ted Chiang : ‘Exhalation’
Michael Swanwick : ‘From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled’
Mike Resnick : ‘Article of Faith’
Kij Johnson : ’26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’

A bit of info on my preferences will follow when I get to the different categories.

I still have some novellettes and novellas on my reader that I will want to read, but at the moment I am busy reading a much older Science Fiction story, EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s ‘Lensman’ Series

More details when I get to watch/read more of the stuff, and a few more thoughts on the stuff I am reading/watching

Update, and visit to DK

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Just back from holidays in DK

Got the blog software updated to the latest version.

I went to the small Danish convention “Fantasticon” (organised by the Danish Scifi association Fantastik)

Nice little con with about 150 people, Guests of Honour were British authors Charles Stross and Gwyneth Jones. Thinking of going to the Easetercon in London next year, and possibly the Eurocon in Stockholm 2011.

Long time no see

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It has been a while since I last had an entry here, things have been a bit hectic.

I became a supporting membert of the Anticipation Worldcon 2009, and with that came the right to vote on the Hugo Awards.

So for a month I was – among other things – busy reading 4 of the nominated novels, listening to the short stories, and a few other things.

Also, I have been more active building some radio equipment, and have had a successful attempt of receiving the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a friend in Denmark, and finally I have been active learning more Tai Chi and Qigong.

Some of those activities will result in some new entries in the near future. Right now I am taking it a bit easy – and watching the new “Torchwood” series : “Children of Earth”. The first episode looks very promising, so let us hope that carries through the whole story.

Looking at Hugo Awards nominees 2009

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This year I decided to become a supporting member of the Worldcon/Anticipation that takes place in August in Montreal, Canada.

With a (supporting) membership of the Worldcon comes the right to vote on the Hugo Awards, the science fiction fans’ own awards.

Not just that, this year a big part of the nominee’s works are made available to the voters, so last week I downloaded the “Hugo Voter’s package 2009”, a zipped file of about 180 MB.

The file contains 4 novels, several novellas, short stories , a graphic novel (as far as I can see, have not opened that file yet), and other contributions, in order to facilitate an enlighttened voting process.

Now I am very happy that I got myself an eBook reader – it would be far too tiring reading that much on the iPod Touch. Still I am not tied to the computer screen, but can read anywhere I want – the Sofa or lazy chair is a good place.

I started reading “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross, partly because I expect to see him at a small local con (Fantasticon) in Copenhagen this year.

With 4 novels and all the other material I have a quite sufficient amount of reading to do before the Worldcon, even if I am not going to Montreal. I would like to go to a Worldcon once, especially if it takes place somewhere in (Northern) Europe.

The Next Doctor DVD

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Watching “The Next Doctor” DVD this week end.

“The Next Doctor” is not about the next Doctor, as one could have assumed from the title. I enjoyed most of it, but I think we have had enough of Cybermen (and Daleks, for that matter) in the last four years of Doctor Who. I do look forward to Steven Moffat taking over, since he has indicated that we will have less of the “old” enemies of The Doctor, and more new adventures.

I enjoyed the story quite a bit, even more so the extra, a one hour long recording from “Doctor Who at the Prom” with a nice show with Murray Gold’s music scores for the series, and appearances of a whole bunch of the “baddies” form the new series. It was a *lot* of fun seeing the reactions of the children in the audience, some of them just enjoying the show, and others looked like they wished there would be a sofa to hide behind.

7/10. on the Lurker’s scale

The Babylon Podcast is back after the holidays

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The last month the Babylon Podcast has been off, ok, they had a few holiday gifts, so we did not miss it all together.

The editor of the podcast has compiled a set of filk episodes, some good fun with B5 as the subject.

Tim has selected some fine moments from the 2008 Babylon Podcast, with a few mixups etc.

The first Live feed recording on January 7th was canceled, and so was the one on the 14th, the recording was made in the Los Angeles studio, and could not be heard live.

Waiting for the edited podcast was well worth it, however. The news of Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s departure from this world was honored, including an amusing anecdote from Jeffrey Willerth.

We had a beautiful interview with Ed Wasser who plays the mysterious, evil Mr. Morden. He was close to unstoppable in his enthusiasm and has obviously had a great experience with B5.