As Kate notes, I am a paid-up member of this year's Worldcon, and thus entitled to nominate works for the Hugo Awards. Of course, there are a zillion categories, and I'm not entirely sure what to nominate for any of them.
So, if you are a reader or watcher of science fiction and/or fantasy, this is your opportunity to influence my nominations. If there's a book, story, tv show, movie, editor, or artist that you really, really want to see on the ballot, drop me a comment and let me know. I'll look at the work, if I have time, and give it proper consideration.
If you are a person who cares deeply about the racial or gender make-up of the nominees, this is your cheapest chance to influence that (you could always buy your own membership, and nominate things yourself). If there are books or stories by female authors, or authors from euphemistically named backgrounds, that you think are deserving but I might not have seen, tell me, and I will make an effort to read and consider them. The short fiction categories usually don't require all that many nominations to reach the final ballot (the last few years, short stories have made it on with fewer than 20 votes), so if you want to pack the ballot, here's your chance to influence my reading in your preferred direction.
(If you'd like to bribe me to nominate books or stories without reading them first, drop me an email, and we can talk. I don't come cheap, though.)
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Have you read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother? It's technically a YA book, but really really good. It's a fast read (partly because it's YA) even though it is novel length. Try not to get too paranoid about the government tracking you, though!
I second Little Brother. Also, I doubt Wall-E needs mentioning for the movie category. As for TV- Heroes was a huge disappointment but if you're a fan of Lost- "The Constant" is a good twist on time traveling.
Ken McLeod's book "The Execution Channel" came out last summer (and has a cover blurg by Cory Doctorow). It's not my favorite of his books, but I liked it. Excellent paranoia w/ looming apocolypse, etc.
um, that would be cover blurb, not cover blurg.
"cover blurg" is to Amanda Blurg as "cover blurb" is to Amanda Blurb. Google her.
None of the half dozen most satisfying books that I read in 2008 are eligible for Hugo Best Novel.
"The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", Max Shulman, Doubleday, Sep 1951 [even though there's a great Chem Lab story in "Love of Two Chemists"]
"City Rats", Peter Z. Mantarakis, PublishAmerica, (c) 2003, [even though he's a Caltech alum (M.S. Astrophysics) whose name occurs in 3 Harry Turtledove novels]
"Fade Out: The Final Calamitous Days of MGM", Peter Bart, Doubleday, Oct 1991 [even though it has wonderful insider's view of the filiming of "2010"]
"Three Cups of Tea", lent my copy to my wife, so can't immediately give you author/pub/date [even though the author is a genuine hero in an anvironment as hostile and strange as many alien worlds in SF]
"Signal Zero: The True Story of a Professor Who Became a Street Cop", George Kirkham, Lippincott, 1976 [even though the deconstruction of academe in the gritty Real World sometimes reads like an Analog story]
"Minimum Description Length: Theory and Applications", ed. Peter D. Grunwald, Jae Myung, and Mark A. Pitt. MIT Press, 2005 [even though the breakthrough that they describe about axiomatizing Occam's Razor will trickle down into science fiction starting about 2010]
Maybe next time I'll mention favorite short fiction...
I would recommend "The Ninth Circle" by Alex Bell in the Novella category - I found it to be the best book I read last year.
My rec for best novel is Newtons Sleep, now available free online at http://randomstatic.net/newtonssleep.php