A bit of an odd story, about very improbable things happening much more often than they should – or concentrated in one place, but not in others.
This one has an unusual take on probability and superstition. I generally liked it, even if is not something exceptional.
N.K. Jemisin was another complete unknown to me, so good to see a new author.
6/10
Hmmm
A short story on the theme of “Sex with an Alien”.
The whole story has one single scene , the alien is certainly non humanoid.
Unfortunately the most often asked question during reading the story was “when is it over” I found it repetitive and boring. Sorry I could not give a better review. The story must have been found good by someone, since it was nominated.
This may be an experimental story, but to me it failed.
2/10
This is a nice little story, picking up from the original Frankenstein story.
Thoughtfully made, and with a nice twist. The diary form works ok, though the title gives away a part of the plot.
6/10
Schoen was a complete unknown to me, so I do not know if this is his usual style.
As stories go this one does not, to me, have a real plot. The closest to a story line is the search for archeological evidence.
The story feels like a series of disjointed images with an extremely loose connection. there is the search (see above), then an image of a generation ship (crash) landing on a moon, and finally a connection to a great machine, apparently near the center of the galaxy.
I found the conclusion a bit anticlimactic, oh, yes, this seems to be about a species (probably humanity) leaving a planet (probably Earth).
While I do not particularly like the story, I respect the author going where few have gone before, even if this did not work out for me. It must have worked for other people, since it was nominated for the Award.
3/10 from me.
All short stories, novellettes, novellas and novels have been transferred to the e-reader, so reading can be done from anywhere.
I will have to check if some of the other material is transferable, but other activities have been there for the long week end.
Finally I decided to become a “supporting member” of Worldcon2010 (Aussiecon).
This means that I have been downloading the “Hugo Voter Package” with the majority of the material nominated for the Hugo Awards. When unpacked this amounts to a whopping 700MB, including 5-6 each of Novels, Novellettes, Novellas and Short Stories, as well as a fair bit of Fan and pro magazines, fan and pro artworks.
Last year I started out with reading the novels ( the short stories had already been listened to as podcasts ) and I think that was somewhat of a mistake, since I never got to anything shorter than the novels (apart from the short stories) before the time to vote had come.
This year the plan is to go the opposite way, so I started looking at the:
Fan Artist category in the package :
Brad W. Foster,
David Howell,
Steve Stiles and
Taral Wayne
All were nominated for graphics art in different styles, except David Howell who designed the base for the 2009 Hugo award.
David Howell will be my choice of Fan Artist for the Hugo Awards 2010. I like the design a lot and I think he deserves to be recognized for the work he did.
Will I be disappointed if someone else wins ? Not at all, this just reflects my preference.
A web story by Joss Whedon.
After having heard most people rave about this little show I finally got the DVD and watched the thing.
The beginning is quite funny, but for me the fun wears off quite quickly. I find it too repetitive and to me that gets boring. I probably have heard too much hype about how hilarious this is.
I have no problem with the production as such, and it probably deserved winning in its Hugo category.
It just did not bring much *to me*.
Sorry about that, guys. Don’t let this take away any of your enjoyment of the show.
6/10 on the Lurker’s scale
From the beginning of the first new season I have always loved the episodes written by Steven Moffat, from ‘The Empty Child’/’The Doctor Dances’ over ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and the brilliant ‘Blink’ to this double episode. I am looking forward to see what he will bring to the series as show runner.
Like the other stories (when they were written) this story stands a bit by itself in the Doctor Who time line.
We find The Doctor and Donna arriving (in the 51th century) at a planet full of books. In essence it is a library of all known books, known just as The Library. Something is very wrong, since the library seems completely empty. Well, there are the books, but no people at all, just a cryptic computerized warning message ‘Count the Shadows !’ .
Another party arrives, with among others, a certain professor River Song who appears to have a past with The Doctor, in his future. It turns out she even knows the name of The Doctor, something unheard of in the series until now, of course not counting The Doctor posing as John Smith, clearly an alias.
The “monster” of this story is the invisible, but very deadly Vashta Nerada, residing in the shadows and being a kind of “piranhas of darkness”.
In the story we learn enough to know why the Vashta Nerada act like they do, and of course The Doctor, aided by professor Song saves the vast majority of the people trapped on the planet.
The Little girl, living an imaginary life, does raise the questions of “what is reality” when Doctor Moon tells her that the life she thinks of as her own is not real .
For me the story has the best of the elements creating a good Who adventure, a good “monster”, a mystery or two, some good characters accompanying the Doctor, etc.
This was my first choice in the category for the Hugo Awards 2009. ‘Dr Horrible’ won that one, and that is fine.
‘Spoilers !!’ (River Song)
9/10 on the Lurker’s scale
Hugo Nominee 2009 Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
This is Russell T. Davies’ writing at its best, aided by Graeme Harper’s directing. With all due respect for his team reviving Doctor Who Davies’ writing has not always been the best during the new Who era – probably due to the pressure of being the show runner.
While we have seen indications of inner strength in Donne Noble, this episode pulls all that to the fore. She has a little help from a friend she did not know she had : Rose. This is, for now, the culmination of the small glimpses we have had of Rose since the beginning of the season
The story finds Donna tricked into living a version of history where she did not meet the Doctor, and it is not a pretty picture. Guided by Rose from a different reality she finds her inner strength to change history back to what we know from the third season of the 10th Doctor.
The story has a good deal of fine drama, some fine character development of Donna, and a stunning conclusion, as a prelude to the two final episodes.
I consider this episode better than the two final ones, although I find those quite good as well.
This is certainly one of my favourites of the season, mainly rivaled by the double episode ‘Silence in the Library’/’Forest of the Dead’
9/10 on the lurker’s scale.
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