2026 Hugo Ballot!

 

The Hugo Award Ceremony is happening next week on Sunday, August 30! Sadly, I won't be traveling to Los Angeles for this year's Worldcon. I did plenty of conference travel in the last year (I maxed out my 25-26 travel budget to go to last year's Worldcon in Seattle and then went through a lot to fund a trip to India in May). Also, this year's Worldcon also happens after school starts, which makes it even trickier for me than usual.

Despite these excuses, I bought a supporting membership, which entitles me to vote. I've been voting for the Hugos since 2017, and it's always a fun experience. I usually discover some things I may not have experienced otherwise, which was especially true this year. 

Back in 2017, I figured out Three Principles of Hugo Voting (riffing on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics):

1. Works that are more ground breaking in the field in their construction, plot, characters, setting, ideas, etc. are to be preferred as are works that are neither sequels nor works by authors who have won Hugos in recent years.
2. Works that delve more deeply into philosophical content are to be preferred.
3. Works that are just plain fun and enjoyable are to be preferred as long as such preference does not conflict with the first or second principles.

I don't know if I've ever consistently applied these principles any more than Asimov's robots ever consistently apply the three laws (maybe my "zeroth law' is "just have fun with it"). Still, I do have these principles in the back of my mind when I vote. I do find myself leaning more into my general preference for science fiction over fantasy as of late. Is that fair? I don't know, but we do seem to be tipping back toward an ascendance of fantasy the last few years, so maybe I'm trying to maintain a balance in the force of my fellow nerds.

I've already posted reviews of this year's Hugo nominees for Best Novel as well as Best Novella, Novelette, and Short Story. But inquiring minds like yours want to know: how did I vote? See below in my full Hugo ballot! I'll find out if I picked any winners on August 30!

2026 Hugo Novels

 

I have voted for the 2026 Hugo awards! I'll post my full ballot soon, but before that, here's what I thought about the six novels nominated this year. You can find these and other reviews on my Goodreads Hugo Finalists bookshelf. An overall takeaway this year is that one thing I love about reading the Hugo nominees is that it encourages me to read things I may not have otherwise picked up. And sometimes I end up loving those things. Thanks, Hugos, for keeping me an open-minded reader!

2026 Hugo Novellas, Novelettes, and Short Stories

 

I'm not quite done with my Hugo ballot (one more novel to finish...), but I wanted to take a break and make a post about the shorter fiction finalists for this year's Hugo awards. I don't think I'll rank them here. In fact, making this post is part of my process for the rankings. In any case, I'll post my entire Hugo ballot later. Happy Hugos! These and other reviews can also be found on my Goodreads 2026 Hugo shelf.

Spoiler Alert: It's okay for movies to be fun!

 

I've had a busy summer, starting with a trip to India in May and then a few trips visiting family in Minnesota (including CONvergence, where I was on a panel on the Foundation TV show) and some fun witch tourism in Salem, MA with friends. I don't want to be that asshole who complains about having too many travels, so instead I'll say that I haven't had much time or energy for blogging as of late. I haven't made a post in about two months!

To rectify this horrific calamity, I thought I'd write about something that has been rattling around in my head as I've tried to keep up with this summer's busy movie season: it's okay for movies to be fun! 

I've seen a lot of excellent "serious" movies (especially Disclosure Day, The Amazing Digital Circus, and the horror movies grinding up records and getting actual young people into theaters: Backrooms and Obsession). I'll have more to say about those in another post. I also want to get this out there before The Odyssey takes over the summer blockbuster space (I've heard a lot of hype for it, and it will probably live up to it).

These summer 2026 movies have reminded me that movies can be fun: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Masters of the Universe, and Supergirl. (Special mention of one I saw at this year's Chattanooga Film Festival: Jump Scare).

Monkey God in Space: Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

 

I saw Stewart Hotston's Project Hanuman on the new books shelf at my local library, and it seemed like very much my thing (space opera with elements of Indian mythology, and an author influenced by Iain M. Banks!). I immediately moved it toward the top of my to-read pile.

The science fictional and philosophical ideas are quite Banksian. Sometimes I just need some spacey SF in my life, and this hit the spot. It's not a perfect fit (more on that later), but overall I really enjoyed this! 

February 2026 Review of Reviews, Part Two

 

At last I am continuing with Part Two of my Review of Reviews for February 2026 (see Part One here). I figured I should post this before February is over. Here are my reviews of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn, Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov, A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia Butler, and Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany.

Iʻm also reading Michael Harriotʻs Black AF History for Black History Month. Iʻm loving it, but alas, Iʻm not quire done, so maybe Iʻll get that in the next batch.

You can find these and other reviews on my Goodreads.

ConNooga 2026!

 

This weekend I'm heading to ConNooga! With the recent end of Chattacon (RIP), ConNooga is now one of the longer running local cons here in Chattanooga, TN. Some of the friends I met at Chattacon are even coming to ConNooga this year. It will be great to introduce them to a different kind of con in Chattanooga.

Last year the ConNooga Deep Thought track made its glorious return (I forgot to do a ConNooga post last year, but here's the 2024 post). This year I'm once again participating in some Deep Thought (I mean, how embarrassing would it be for a philosophy professor and fan of Douglas Adams to not participate in Deep Thought?). 

February 2026 Review of Reviews, Part One

 

I have been reading books over the last several weeks, but I haven't been posting reviews. In my defense, the world is a madhouse of suffering and injustice (but also resistance) and the semester started last month. This all makes me kinda tired. 

Nonetheless, out of my desire to serve you, dear readers, and to close some browser tabs I've had open way too long, I'm going to post a review of reviews in a few (two? three?) parts. We'll see where the month takes me. 

Who knows? Maybe reading books and posting reviews and generally continuing to be a person is still important in these times? 

This time I'm covering Deaths' End by Cixin Liu, Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, and On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Graphic edition with Nora Krug).

If you're into that sort of thing, you can follow me and/or find all these reviews on Goodreads.

2025 Hugo Ballot

 

I meant to post a bunch of reviews along the way as I did this year's Hugo reading, but the summer sort of got in the way. Oh, well. I still may write longer reviews for some of these and post them here (I did get to some of the novels in June), but since Hugo voting was due last night, I figured I'd just post my full ballot with a few general explanations while it's fresh in my mind. You can find short reviews for most of these on my 2025 Hugo Goodreads shelf.

Note that I didn't vote in all the categories. It's just too much (it's like taking on a part-time job!), and I don't feel all that qualified to judge some of the categories. Still, I managed to vote in most of the categories this year. See the Hugo website for the full list of categories and nominees.

As usual, I'm loosely following my principles of Hugo voting that I'm most interested in works that somehow break new ground in the genre, have some philosophical element, and/or are just plain enjoyable. Maybe other Hugo voters go on vibes, which are impossible to entirely eliminate, but I try reward things that are on the whole doing something new and interesting.

I'm thrilled to be attending Worldcon this year where I'll be on a panel and doing an academic track presentation as part of the Science Fiction and Philosophy Society. Maybe I will see you in Seattle at this year's Hugo ceremony on August 16!

Double Review: The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter/The Orphaned Worlds by Michael Cobley

I have gotten behind on my reviews again. D'oh! Part of the blame is a trip I took last month, a trip on which I read these two books! So, maybe this is a good excuse for a double review post for The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter and The Orphaned Worlds by Michael Cobley.

Meanwhile, my annual reading of the Hugo finalists has begun, so look for those reviews soon! (I also will be at Worldcon again this year!)

A Long-Overdue Review of Reviews: Le Guin, Said, Howey, St. Clair, Herbert/Anderson, and Shea/Wilson

 

Dear reader, I have been somewhat remiss in recent months about posting book reviews. To be completely honest, I have been a bit remiss in writing them at all. I mark them "read" intending to write reviews later and then... just sort of run out of steam or get busy or whatever. I've had Goodreads tabs open for months... At last the time has come to remedy this self-inflicted promise to myself. So here are some short-ish reviews of Almost Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, Orientalism by Edward Said, Wool by Hugh Howey, A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair, The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and The Golden Apple by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

The Lathe of Fascism: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

 

At first I wasn't sure what to think about Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, then I started to really love it, then I lost the thread as the central science fictional premise never really made sense to me, and then it came back together toward the end with some interesting thoughts on fascism, gender, indoctrination, and war. This one is nominated for a Hugo this year, and I will be voting for that soon. So, what did I think?

Zones of Dogs: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

 

My initial reaction to Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep: a lot of really cool ideas, but something in the execution failed to grab me.

The cool ideas: 

The zones of thought are really interesting, although I'm not quite sure I completely understood the concept. In certain zones of the galaxy, some types of consciousness and technology are possible, while in other zones they are not. And "possible" in the sense of physically or scientifically possible. Logical possibility remains the terrain of science fiction, after all! And the borders between the zones can and have shifted, and nobody knows if they are natural or artificially created by mysterious aliens eons ago (perhaps as a way to keep the riff-raff in line?).

The main aliens, the Tines, are dog-like creatures who form "packs" of several individuals to form something like hive minds, which is a cool way to think about intelligence. Is this personal fusion? Or is each pack an individual person in some sense? You'd think this would give them an ability to work together in a way lonely individually-minded humans cannot, but the conglomerations can't get close to each other due to interference of the (maybe sonic?) methods they use to bind together. 

There are some cool ideas there about how we individuate minds, maybe even somewhat along the lines of the Buddhist philosopher Ratnakīrti's exploration of the coherence (or lack thereof) of the very concept of a single discrete mind separate from the rest of existence.

There are also some plant-like aliens who get around with technological assistance from a shadowy group of other aliens in the distant past. Very cool!

There's also something like a galactic internet discussion board that shows how such a system is vulnerable to misinformation, which is especially prescient for a book published in 1992.

What didn't work as well for me:

The plot starts with children being stranded on an alien planet. We learn about their struggles to survive among the Tines and the adults who embark upon a rescue mission. This is all cool. 

But then we spend A LOT of time in something approaching a Game of Thrones level of political intrigue among the Tine societies, which is interesting to a point. It also suffers from the science fiction writer's Eurocentric fallacy of assuming that the particular history of one small part of Earth (Western Europe) somehow determines the parameters of technological and social development for the entire galaxy (you also see this frequently on Star Trek, for example).

Anyway, all this intrigue became a bit too much for me, and I wanted more time exploring the cool ideas and less on all the quasi-Medieval European drama. In general, I feel like more could have been done with the cool ideas (like at one point an alien on the message board wonders whether the zones of thought have a moral meaning... and then this idea is dropped). Maybe more was done with the ideas in the other books in the series that I haven't read yet.

But your zone of thought may vary!

See also my Goodreads review.

Review of Reviews: March 2024

 

It's time for another Review of Reviews! Since it's the last day of Women's History Month, I figured I'd include reviews of books by women authors. Is it too cheesy to call it "Women's Future Month" as I have before? I'll let you decide. Anyway, here are my reviews of The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse, Houston, Houston Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr., and Primary Inversion by Catharine Asaro.

Dune Part Two: Non-Spoilery First Reactions!

 

Earlier tonight I was lucky to be able to catch the early IMAX premiere of Dune Part Two five days before its official US release date of March 1! Like a lot of Dune nerds, I've been eagerly (obsessively!) anticipating this one since 2021. For those who haven't seen it yet and who aren't Kwisatz Haderachs, here are my 100% spoiler-free initial thoughts on the film!

• The show I attended was almost entirely sold out. I think there were a few open seats in the front row, but choosing a seat off to the side didn't spare me from sitting in a full row. It's probably been four or five years since I've been in a theater so packed. I had forgotten how simultaneously exhilarating and annoying it is to share a film with a few hundred people.
• How was the film? I loved it. The reviews are not kidding. This is a masterpiece. Villeneuve's Dune adaptations will go down as some of the best science fiction films of all time. And I don't say that lightly or just because you have to either 100% love or 100% hate everything in our current click-bait culture. It really is that good.
• There were several scenes where even the near-constant shuffling and crunching and shifting of a few hundred people went entirely quiet, because every single person in the theater was too mesmerized to be annoying. Even the guy next to me put down his phone for a few minutes here and there.
• Yes, there are changes from Frank Herbert's novel. Some of them are pretty big. But I loved all of them. They work in service of adapting Dune to a visual medium in the 2020's, and there are several things that serve Villeneuve's own vision, but not in a way that detracts from Herbert's. I sometimes get annoyed by narrow-minded fans who expect a film or TV adaptation to basically just film the book. But you can't do that. You shouldn't do that. And Villeneuve doesn't--to his credit. Besides, the book is always there if you want to read it--and you should!
• I was really interested to see how the film would handle some of the weirder aspects of the book, and it succeeds admirably, splendidly, at time almost overwhelmingly. I'm almost tempted to think that Villeneuve should keep making the rest of the series when things get really weird and not stop with Dune Messiah as he intends to.
• I loved Hans Zimmer's score of the first one, and I love this one just as much. Really some of my favorite film soundtracks in... well, ever.
• The actors are all amazing. Javier Bardem and Zendaya in particular get a lot more to do in this one. Florence Pugh's Irulan does more than in the novel. Christopher Walken's Emperor is a bit understated compared to previous Emperors, but I like it. Rebecca Ferguson is always one of my favorites, and she brings the commanding presence she brought to Doctor Sleep to her role here (I would follow Jessica or Rose the Hat anywhere, whether out of fear or love or some combination of the two).
• There are some funny parts. No, really. And they work.
• The Harkonnens get to shine in their evilness even more. Austin Butler can do a lot more than Elvis impersonations. We get to see a bit of the Guild, too. The Corrinos get a decent amount of screen time, and Irulan does more than write epigraphs or the weird floating head intro to Dune (1984). The record for most Irulan still goes to Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), which is one of the things I really like about the miniseries. 
• The Bene Gesserit are as interesting and terrifying as ever, maybe even a bit more. They've always been my favorite of the many factions in Dune, although some of this is colored by my love of the later books where they play a huge part.
• The Fremen are depicted in a really interesting and more nuanced way (even more so than in the book, or at least the first book). Souhelia Yacoub as Shishakli deserves a lot of credit on this count.
• Is it long? Yes. It's almost three hours. Does it feel as long as it is? No. Not at all. As if in a spice trance, time and space have no meaning while watching Dune Part Two.
• There was at least one scene in the book that wasn't in either Dune (1984) or Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), but that does appear in Dune Part Two.
• The deep and often troubling philosophical questions of the novel are there. Much more so than in previous adaptations.
• There were a few things I wanted to see that weren't included, but most of them were more than made up for by the interesting choices of Villeneuve and the other filmmakers. My fellow Dune fans, even if you don't 100% love all the choices this film makes, I think any lover of Dune will agree the changes are interesting at the very least, or maybe they even make you rethink some aspects of the story. And after all, that's one of the great things any adaptation can do. Especially with a text and deep and multi-layered as Dune.
• So overall: if you like Dune or science fiction or just fascinating bits of well-crafted cinematic weirdness, I encourage you to check out Dune Part Two! The official US release date is 1 March 2024 and slightly before or after that worldwide.

As I did for Dune (2021), I plan to write a spoilery review of Dune Part Two after I've had a chance to think about it, and maybe see it a few more times. Will my plan succeed? Only a Kwisatz Haderach can tell!

Movie and TV Mini-Reviews: The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, and More

As the prophecy of a recent post foretold, I'm back with some short reviews of movies and TV I've been watching lately. I'm including The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, John Wick 4, Sinister, Insidious, and X. These reviews get weirdly impressionistic, so if you're looking for elaborate plot summaries and the like, you may be disappointed. Just the mood I'm in these days, I guess. Enjoy!

How the Other Bland Lives: Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman

 

"Slow, but engrossing" is how I would describe my experience reading Halfway Human. There's a lot to think about here, as with Gilman's other work (like Dark Orbit).

Ghost Grandma Goes Interstellar: On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds

 

I really enjoyed Blue Remembered Earth, and I really enjoyed this sequel, too. Both at times feel a bit overly long, I didn't always 100% understand what was going on (Reynolds has a tendency to focus on weird details while mentioning major plot points in passing), and sometimes there are so many balls in the air it's hard to say that Reynolds managed to juggle them all into a cohesive narrative. 

The Space of Minds: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

I loved Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, which is some of the most interesting science fiction I've read in recent years. I found this sequel, Children of Ruin, a bit harder to follow, but it's mainly because there's just so much going on it was easy for me to forget who's who and what was happening (maybe this one is written too much in octopus mode for my mere human intellect!). Still, I loved this book. I only rate it slightly lower in comparison to the first.

Cozy Alien Truckstop: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

 

Reading Becky Chambers is like having a nice cup of hot cocoa under a cozy blanket. As I said about one of her other books, it's not space opera, it's space chill-wave. But it also makes you think and feel new and interesting things. While this isn't the only science fiction book I've read with almost entirely non-human characters (Iain M. Banks's Look to Windward comes to mind), Chambers does really interesting things with this idea, like exploring ideas of otherness and forming relationships across lines of difference, and maybe the most amazing thing is that she does all this without giving up her patented coziness.