Do you know what the Hugo Awards are? They’re the annual award for best sci-fi and fantasy writing and this year they were full of controversy because they were sort of hijacked. The people voting had the opportunity to vote for “no award” in each category and I suspected that might be the case since it was one of the only ways to show their displeasure at the hijacking, and so last night as the awards began I tweeted this:
And by my logic that means that I won a shit-ton of Hugo Awards last night. And so did you if you are a nobody in the sci-fi world! WE WON! And we also lost. Because I use those award lists to find new things to read and they’re also helpful to get publishing houses to invest money into buying sci-fi books and finding new authors and then we all win when we have new stuff to read.
So instead of gloating about my well-deserved *cough* awards I’m going to instead accept them in the names of a few sci-fi/fantasy authors I’ve enjoyed recently and if they’re new to you then you can check them out. And then you do the same for me and tell me the sci-fi/fantasy authors I need to check out. And then we all win again!
Here are a few of my favorites off the top of a my head:
John Scalzi, Pat Rothfuss, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman, Jeremy Whitley’s Princeless collection, Sydney Padua (Seriously, go read The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage RIGHT THIS SECOND. Then give it to your young daughter because she’ll love it too.)
Your turn. Who should I be reading? Bonus points if I’ve never heard of them before.
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And now, the weekly wrap-up…
Shit I made in my shop (Named “EIGHT POUNDS OF UNCUT COCAINE” so that your credit card bill will be more interesting.):
- As requested, #WheresRory shirts to confuse everyone around you.
Shit-you-may-or-may-not-want-to-see:
- Tinder in Brooklyn. I’ve never been so glad to be married.
- Have you checked out #WheresRory lately? Because it just keeps getting more fantastic.
- My new favorite song:
This week’s wrap-up is brought to you by Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, the third book by award-winning New York Times best-selling author Kathleen Flinn. It’s a fabulous memoir about Kathleen’s sweet, but quirky family having sweet, but quirky adventures. They’re like The Waltons but in Michigan, and were poor, grew vegetables and they all read encyclopedias for fun. As an added bonus, you’ll find recipes, plus bigamy and bootlegging. Her first book was The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry about attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and falling in love with her husband.