Re: Worst Hugos Ever?

Rich Horton wrote:
> Adam-Troy Castro wondered what I thought the Worst Hugos Ever were.
> Here's my cut:
> 
> Everybody assumes THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT has to come first. Well,
> sure. I read it several years ago, out of duty, and it really is very
> bad. Although I will say two things about it. 1 -- it is actually very
> ambitious. It just doesn't realize its ambitions very well. And 2 --
> check out the other choices from 1954 sometime. With one glaring but
> anomalous exception -- THE FELLOW****P OF THE RING -- there really
> wasn't that much to choose from. And let's be honest -- would that
> many mostly American voters have seen Tolkien's novel yet? And did
> voters go for such outright fantasy very readily back then? The answer
> in both cases, I think, is no. (Let alone that THE FELLOW****P OF THE
> RING wasn't even really a completed work.) People tend to choose
> something like Poul Anderson's BRAIN WAVE as the alternate choice, and
> while that's better than THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT, it's not an enduring
> classic either.
> 
> Other nominees, among novels ...
> 
> STRANGER IS A STRANGE LAND, of course. But you have to admit that it's
> a fascinating book in many ways. And very influential, if perhaps not
> always for good. And, to be honest, the other choices that year
> weren't obviously brilliant.
> 
> This is a bit unfair, as I never actually finished the book, but I
> tend to think that Fritz Leiber's THE WANDERER was a really poor
> choice. I tried to read the book once and got bored, but I suspect it
> is at least decent -- Leiber was a great writer -- but surely not
> Hugo-worthy, and there were other choices that year, such as DAVY and
> THE PLANET BUYER (the first of what became NORSTRILIA). 
> 
> FOUNDATION'S EDGE isn't an awful novel, either, but it's far from
> great. It was clearly a "we love Isaac" award, fair enough in a sense,
> but the winner should have been either COURT****P RITE, THE PRIDE OF
> CHANUR, or THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR. (Or even FRIDAY!)
> 
> I love Lois McMaster Bujold's work, and I really enjoyed THE VOR GAME
> -- but I certainly didn't think it Hugo worthy. And it beat out THE
> FALL OF HYPERION, and EARTH, and QUEEN OF ANGELS (the last of which
> was probably my choice). 
> 
> I have a curious relation****p with the 1997 awards -- I read none of
> the books on the shortlist, then or since, so I can't really comment.
> I know I had a satisfying list of five nominees that year, none of
> which made it. But I will say that, love Joe Haldeman's work though I
> do, nothing I have read about FOREVER PEACE makes me think it a worthy
> winner.
> 
> I suppose I could join the chorus condemning the 2001 award to HARRY
> POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, but I actually don't think that that
> terrible an award. No, I didn't vote for it -- I voted for THE SKY
> ROAD -- but it's pretty enjoyable. And I felt that people were more
> likely to complain that it won because a) it's YA, or b) it's fantasy,
> or c) it's a bestseller; or d) the writer is not "One of Us"; than to
> complain that it's not as good as some of the other books published
> that year. Which seems wrongheaded to me.
> 
> Now in 2003 the award went to Robert J. Sawyer's HOMINIDS, a truly bad
> book. 

I seem to be alone here in this opinion, but I very much liked Hominids, 
and the rest of its trilogy. I liked the exploration of a very different 
but still human society, among other things.



-- 
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us 
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
         -- Galileo Galilei