Last night at the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) the Hugo Award ceremony took place. Usually I am not all that excited about the Hugos because there usually aren’t any works of fiction or drama or magazines or editors or people that interest me on the ballot. However, this year was different in many respects and a lot of wonderful and deserving authors and magazines were competing.
There were, to my knowledge, three people of color who won awards last evening. David Anthony Durham got the John Campbell Award for Best New Writer (which isn’t strictly a Hugo but is awarded at the ceremony), Ted Chiang won best short story for “Exhalation” (Eclipse Two), and Frank Wu won Best Fan Artist.
There were a number of talented women who won as well, including Ann Vandermeer (along with Stephen H Segal) for Weird Tales (yay best semiprozine!). Check out the full list here.
It’s times like this that my cool feelings toward the Hugos begin to thaw. It gives me hope that the outreach many have been wokring on (including Best Fan Writer Cheryl Morgan) to raise awareness and get more people involved in the Hugos is starting to pay off. I have some ideas on how it can be improved even further and shall put my evil plans to work soon. In the meantime, let’s celebrate these fine writers and artist, because they definitely deserve the accolades.
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There is also Maurissa Tancharoen among the writers of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – with extra points for the song on how the hero’s romantic interest is never Asian in the musical commentary on the DVD.