Posts Tagged ‘Hugo’

News

[News] Hugo Nominations are out!

Escape pod logo beside the Hugo logo, 2021 Hugo awards Best SemiproZine FINALIST and Best Editor Short Form Nominees Mur Lafferty and SB Divya(I’m writing this early , so this will be edited with full nomination list soon)

Holy crap, y’all.

The Hugo Award nominations were announced today, and I can finally announce that not only did Escape Pod get nominated for Best Semiprozine, BUT also my brilliant co-editor S.B. Divya and I are nominated for Best Editor(s), Short Form!

In further amazing news, our sister magazine, Podcastle, was also nominated for Semiprozine!

There is so much amazing speculative fiction happening right now, if I stop to think about how our magazine is in the same fighting class as sites like Fiyah, Strange Horizons, and F&SF, I might actually get frightened and freeze up. I would love to go back in time and tell Young Mur what her career would turn out to be, but I don’t think she’d believe me.

I’ll be honest, though. The Escape Pod nomination isn’t that shocking because our team is phenomenal. I kind of hold on tight while Divya’s hard science brilliance shines and Benjamin C. Kinney’s management of our immensely talented and diverse associate editor team deftly handles all the incoming stories. With the thoughtful host spots of Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart (who has a slew of his own good news to share today!) and the skill of producers Summer Brooks and Adam Pracht, the magazine we create is a thing of beauty.

But credit also goes to our authors. We couldn’t bring our audience amazing content every week if you didn’t trust us with your stories.

The editor nod is just … still not real yet. Let me work on processing that.

Luckily I have time to process because the Hugos ceremony isn’t until December. Just … eight… more… months. (Thanks, Covid.)

News

News! Escape Pod is a finalist for the Hugo Award!

I’m thrilled to announce that the magazine I co-edit with S.B. Divya, Escape Pod, is a nominee for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine! While I’m bummed to be missing WorldCon this year (it’s going to be virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic), I’m so honored to be part of this magazine’s team that creates such amazing work week after week. Thanks to the audience and the whole team!

Consuming media

My Award Eligibility Post for 2019

It’s that special time of year again, where we try to remember what the heck we spent the last 12 months doing. I’ve been quiet, head-down on the writing front, but I have still been podcasting and editing. So here is my eligibility post for 2020.

  • Escape Pod – eligible for any semi-prozine category
  • S.B. Divya and Mur Lafferty – eligible for any short form editor category
  • Ditch Diggers – eligible for any podcast/fancast category
  • I Should Be Writing – eligible for any podcast/fancast category

As for my endorsements, I am not endorsing much adult fiction, partly because I’m on the jury for the Philip K. Dick award and am keeping my opinions of original paperbacks to myself, but here are some of the other categories I feel strongly about.

Fan Writer: Alasdair Stuart continues to do amazing work from his newsletter to his in depth host spots on various Escape Artists podcasts. Jason Sanford is also doing a great job at keeping track of the news in SF.

Dramatic Work (short): I love seeing clipping. on the Hugo ballot because it shows how much we as a genre are willing to stretch ourselves. This year they did a full EP release alongside Rivers Solomon’s (Hugo-eligible!) novella The Deep, on which they share writing credit. (The EP is different from their Hugo-nominated single “The Deep.” But it contains that single, so I don’t know if that messes with eligibility or not.)

Dramatic Work (long): I find it amusing that The Witcher is so polarizing. I am firmly on the “loved it” side. It wasn’t perfect, and the disability representation seems to go from empowering to stereotypical (I am not a disability critic/scholar, so I invite you to read this criticism) but I really enjoyed it regardless. I also loved The Umbrella Academy as a whole season as well, and it looks like it’s not going to go the same direction as the comic did, which I really hated.

Graphic Story: I really enjoyed Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. It shows that some stories we think of as tired cliches are masterful stories in the hands of an excellent storyteller. Kids get sucked into their own RPG game, but it’s so much more than that. (The title can give you a hint what the genre of this comic is.)

Lodestar (YA- not a Hugo): Neal Shusterman has written his YA trilogy masterpiece Arc of the Scythe underneath the radar of SF circles, but the final book, The Toll, came out last year, and it was as good as the first two. The series follows people who live in a government-free, eternal-life utopia ruled by a benevolent AI and Scythes, people who legally kill in order to a) control the population and b) remind people that life has meaning when it has a chance to end. All of the fascinating plotlines come to head including the introduction of a non-binary salvage captain.

I’m sure there’s more, but I will blog them as time goes on.

 

 

 

Consuming media, Podcasts, Projects

Writing Podcast News For Your Ear Holes

It’s been a banner few weeks! In the past 10 days or so, I’ve managed to get back onto a weekly schedule, writing podcast-wise. I guess this means my ADHD treatment is working, which is awesome.

So the new podcast plan: I’ll be doing ISBW and Ditch Diggers in alternating weeks. This week had ISBW #373 released on Monday, and next week will feature Ditch Diggers #38 with Tobias Buckell about “The Power of ‘No'”. I have episodes planned through May, and my brain fog has lifted, for the most part, which is making this planning so much easier.

(If you’re a Patreon subscriber, you get the podcasts as soon as I edit them, instead of waiting for release day. All the supporters got the Ditch Diggers episode today, for example.)

More writing podcast news outside the Murverse:

New writing podcast: Get To Work HurleyGet To Work, Hurley: Frequent Ditch Digger guest host Kameron Hurley has her own writing podcast now! She produced this podcast as a Patreon supporter goal, and she’s doing it for everyone who wants to listen. Episode one just dropped, and she’s as fun and natural on the mic as she is when she guest hosts Ditch Diggers.

New writing podcast: Critiki PartyThe CriTiki Party: This is an interesting idea for a writing podcast that my old friend, Travis Heermann, let me know about. Listeners can submit work that will be read aloud and critiqued on the podcast. If you wonder how to give a good critique, or just want to see how people critique common errors made by beginning writers, then check it out.

Other Recommendations:

Do you not have enough writing and SF podcasts in your life already? Of course not! There are some other fine podcasts also are finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast, and if you want to check them out, here they all are!

 

News, Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #37: Listener Request & HUGO HUGO HUGO

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:17 — 46.8MB)

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Show Notes:

  • Mur and Matt come to you live from the mud room of Morgan Freeman’s trophy solarium (because they haven’t earned the right to go inside yet).
  • Ditch Diggers has been nominated for a Hugo Award! You did it! Mur and Matt will go up against the likes of The Coode Street Podcast and Tea & Jeopardy in Helsinki for Best Fancast (even though we’re all professionals. Because there’s only one podcast category)! Thank you to all Ditch Diggers listeners who supported the show and don’t forget to vote for Mur and Matt for the Hugo itself!
  • It’s listener’s choice! Mur and Matt select questions from their listeners to address in detail as the topic of the show.
  • First up, for those who write many kinds of things, which writing medium/format to focus on when you being pursuing freelance writing as a serious job. Blogging? Books? Screenwriting? Should you focus on one thing or two things or all of them?
  • Secondly, Mur and Matt talk about writing prep, everything from outlining to creating playlists. What’s necessary for the task ahead and how much is too much?
  • Regular Twitter and email Q&A.

Here are all the Hugo finalists, with the most important category first! (Bold categories have guest-hosted Ditch Diggers!) (more…)

News

Make that HUGO NOMINATED Ditch Diggers!

The news is out, it’s very exciting, so exciting we may vomit.

Ditch Diggers got nominated for BEST FANCAST Hugo Award!

I have been sitting on this news for two weeks, freaking out quietly. I didn’t really believe it, and since I’m writing this on Monday I am secretly* worrying that in the next 24 hours something will happen to take it away from us. It happens, after all.

Matt and I are very proud of what we’ve turned Ditch Diggers into, and we are so grateful for the nomination. I’ll be representing us in Finland at WorldCon 75, and we’ll be working hard to keep the awesome content coming in the meantime!

*I know, I’m blogging so it’s not so secret…

Podcasts, Projects

ISBW #372: Metacast: State of the world, state of Mur

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (20.1MB)

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(I know Friday evening is probably the worst time ever to release a podcast. But I wanted to release one more Hugo nomination reminder! Deadline tonight!)

I discuss where politics fall within the topic of this show, what I’ve been up to, some challenges, and some future stuff. Little bit of catching up.

Also, it’s the last night to nominate for the Hugos! Please consider Ditch Diggers for Fancast, and I’m also eligible for Best Semi-pro zine (Mothership Zeta) and short fiction editor (Also for Mothership Zeta). And then I have to put in my plug for Splendor and Misery for Short Dramatic performance because WOW. (I’m not associated with Clipping at all, I just love it so much and would love to see an album on the ballot. I don’t usually endorse because I know how crappy I feel when others endorse and I’m not included in the endorsement, or when people flat out tell me that they purposefully didn’t vote for me, so I keep most of my votes private.)

Remember: Thanks for your support, listening, and patronage. And if you decide not to do those things after this podcast, it’s your call.

Consuming media

For your Hugo Consideration (Best Dramatic Presentation: Short)

Tony-winner Daveed Diggs (from Hamilton and the hip hop group clipping.) is a science fiction fan. He’s a fan of Afrofuturism, having studied works by N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, and Samuel R, Delaney. After he left Hamilton he began work on a concept album called Splendor and Misery.

Splendor & Misery is an Afrofuturist, dystopian concept album that follows the survivor of a slave uprising on an interstellar cargo ship. As he struggles alone and lost, the AI on the ship falls in love with him.

Many of the songs have Diggs’ signature rapid fire lyrics, and I found it helpful to read the discussion at Genius.com to catch all of the lyrics and find some of the more obscure literary references. And there you can learn about the baffling coded track “Interlude 02”:

Foxtrot, Uniform, Whiskey, Romeo
Whiskey, Charlie, Oscar, X-Ray
Echo, India, Uniform
[Beep]
Delta, Lima, Quebec, Foxtrot
Echo, India, Quebec, India
Foxtrot, Uniform, Whiskey, Romeo
Whiskey, Charlie, Oscar, X-Ray
Echo, India, Uniform
[Beep]
Delta, Lima

The key to decoding this is hidden elsewhere on the album.

It’s an amazing experience to listen to, and I haven’t grown tired of it yet. So if you have any slot open on your Hugo ballot for Best Dramatic Presentation: Short, I fully think this is worthy of a nomination.

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