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Day: July 18, 2019

Thoughtful Thursday: 2019 Hugo Awards: Novels & Novellas

The 2019 Hugo Awards will be presented at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland, on August 18. The Hugo Award finalists are chosen by readers who are voting members of Worldcon. This week we’ll talk about the novels and novellas. We discussed other categories in previous columns.

Click the title links below to read our reviews and on the author links to visit our page for the author. Most of these works are, not surprisingly, the same ones nominated for the Nebula Awards.

Who do you think will win the Hugo Award in these categories?

July 18th, 2019. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 13 comments |

Revenant Gun: Saving the best for last

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

The finale to Yoon Ha Lee’s MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE trilogy, Hugo-nominated Revenant Gun (2018) tells the story of what remains of the Hexarchate ten years after Kel Cheris/Jedao threw it headfirst into civil war. On one side of the war, the Protectorate attempts to reunite the former Hexarchate and restore its violent calendrical (magic) system. On the other side of the war is the Compact, Cheris’s newborn state founded on a completely different calendrical system that simultaneously ends the gory human sacrifices of the Hexarchate and grants its subjects a higher level of individual choice and control over the system’s calendrical effects.

July 18th, 2019. Kevin Wei´s rating: 4.5 | Yoon Ha Lee | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Ophiuchi Hotline: Full of interesting ideas

The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley

Dr. Lilo Alexandr-Calypso, a brilliant geneticist who lives on the moon, has broken the law by fiddling with the human genome. Just as she’s about to be executed, she is saved by a group of vigilantes who want to use her skills to help them free the Earth from the alien invaders who’ve taken over and kicked the humans off.

Lilo doesn’t want to serve anyone, but their leader, a former president of Earth, has captured a clone of her and says that either she or the clone will be executed for Lilo’s crime.

July 18th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | John Varley | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |