2020 Hugo Ballot, Part Two: Related Work, Dramatic Presentations, and Fan Writer

As I mentioned in Part One (which covered novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories), with the pandemic and everything, I didn't manage to vote in as many categories for this year's Hugo Awards as usual. But that's okay. I think I did pretty well, all things considered. 

Also in my defense, that's a loooooot of categories. I'm sure there are people who carefully consider every nominee in every category, but it's hard for me to imagine. I feel like I had an extra part-time job the last month (a fun part-time job for sure, but it does take time). Maybe for some Hugo voters it's a full-time job? Or maybe some voters sensibly start earlier than June? Not procrastinating? Shudder the thought!

Without further ado, here's how I voted for Best Related Work, Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), and Best Fan Writer.

Best Related Work

I mentioned this last year, but if there are any close possible worlds in which I would get nominated for a Hugo, it would probably be in either this category or Fan Writer, although the excellent nominees in both categories this year show me that I have a long way to go to reach any of those possible worlds. 

There's some really great stuff in this category this year, which made for some tough choices.

1.“2019 John W. Campbell Award Acceptance Speech”, by Jeannette Ng

• It was a hard choice given how much I liked the other nominees, but for #1 I went with Ng's speech (which I saw streaming last year) because it connects the past of the genre with ideas for a better future. And that seems like something worth celebrating.

2. Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, produced and directed by Arwen Curry

• I was thrilled to learn about this, and I was lucky to see it when it aired on PBS last year and again the other day streaming as part of the Hugo packet. My love of Ursula Le Guin is vast, so I loved this documentary. My only criticism is that, while it touched on her influences from feminism and anarchism, it didn't delve into her influences from philosophical Daoism, a topic I've presented on before (I also hope to publish something on the topic soon... stay tuned).

3. The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn (Unbound)

• I read a few chapters from the Hugo packet. Here's what I said on Goodreads: "Despite my lukewarm opinion and many criticisms of Heinlein, I've always had the sense that he's more complicated than either his critics or his fans give him credit for. From what I've read, this book seems like a detailed exploration of those complexities based on solid scholarship. I might have to read the rest of it sometime."

4. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood, by J. Michael Straczynski (Harper Voyager US)

• Stracynski is perhaps best known as the creator of Bablyon 5 and co-creator of Sense8, and this is a really well-written, engaging auto-biography. From Goodreads: "I read a couple chapters from the 2020 Hugo packet, but I might pick this up for real sometime. It seems like a difficult, yet inspiring story about a writer I and many others admire."

5. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick, by Mallory O’Meara (Hanover Square)

• A cool idea: an attempt to unearth the biography of one of the few women (even up until today) to create a major Hollywood movie monster. From Goodreads: "I read the introduction from the 2020 Hugo packet. Seems like a really interesting book. Maybe I'll pick it up sometime."

6. Joanna Russ, by Gwyneth Jones (University of Illinois Press (Modern Masters of Science Fiction))

• From Goodreads: "I read a bit from the 2020 Hugo packet. I'm not sure if this reflects the whole book, but these excerpts seemed heavy on summary and very light on analysis."

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

This is basically the movie category, but they've opened that up in recent years to occasionally include seasons of TV shows. I used to see a lot of movies back before the pandemic, and I just so happened to see the two TV shows nominated, so this year I was in the strange position of having seen everything nominated before the nominees were released.

Obviously Jordan Peele's Us is my #1 pick given how much I loved that movie (my students enjoyed it, too, when we covered it in my philosophy and horror course). Last place was also easy: the Avengers movies are fun, but in my opinion they don't need a Hugo (their billions of dollars and cultural juggernaut status should be enough). 

Good Omens was just so much fun and a great adaptation of the book that raises interesting thoughts about friendship and the value of learning to love the little things. I really enjoyed Russian Doll, which uses time loops to tell a story about moral development (time loops seem to be a big thing lately, as seen in the very recent Hulu movie Palm Springs, which I may write about later). Captain Marvel is a Marvel movie, sure, but it has space opera elements and does one thing with superheroes that I need to be better about recognizing: it shows people whose power is discounted by others that they can be heroes, too. And there's that awesome cat. 

Oh, Star Wars. I loved The Last Jedi, but the more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed by the ways that The Rise of Skywalker tried to walk back almost everything cool about the previous film (poor Rose!). The Last Jedi stuck with me since 2017, but now that it's been several months since I saw The Rise of Skywalker, all I really remember about the end of this 42-year saga are some cool action sequences, seeing Lando, and the end of Leia's and Rey's character arcs (and I admit it, I teared up at those parts).

1. Us, written and directed by Jordan Peele (Monkeypaw Productions/Universal Pictures)

2. Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios/Narrativia/The Blank Corporation)

3. Russian Doll (Season One), created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler, directed by Leslye Headland, Jamie Babbit and Natasha Lyonne (3 Arts Entertainment/Jax Media/Netflix/Paper Kite Productions/Universal Television)

4. Captain Marvel, screenplay by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Walt Disney Pictures/Marvel Studios/Animal Logic (Australia))

5. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, screenplay by Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams, directed by J.J. Abrams (Walt Disney Pictures/Lucasfilm/Bad Robot)

6. Avengers: Endgame, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Studios)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

The TV category! Are we still living in the Golden Age of Television? I don't know, but there's some pretty good stuff here. I've been a fan of The Expanse and The Good Place for years, but much to my shame, haven't really kept up with the new Doctor Who (I think I just like Tom Baker too much, but also New Who is just too much to catch up on at this point.). 

The biggest surprise here: I loved HBO's Watchmen. I'm not a big comics fan, but someday I hope to read that one. The movie was okay, but somewhat forgettable. The HBO show took a couple episodes to grow on me, but once I got to episode 6, "This Extraordinary Being," I could tell this was something magnificent. That episode provides by far the most reasonable superhero origin story I've ever seen, and like the whole show, deals with the history of racist violence in America in a frank and devastating way I wouldn't have thought possible in a comic book TV show. And as if that wasn't enough, episodes like "A God Walks into Abar," somehow make a science fictionally godlike character emotionally poignant while having a mind- and time-bending existence. Phenomenal. I wouldn't have believed this before I watched it last month, but improbably these are the #1 and #2 spots for me. Nobody is more surprised about this than me.

The Expanse has been pretty consistently awesome, and the finale of episode 4 is no exception. It really makes me want to finish the books sometime (I've only read the first two). I love The Good Place, but I personally would've nominated the finale episode, which wraps things up with the suggestion that death (i.e., death with no afterlife) might not be the worst thing, which is both emotionally and philosophically deep. But "The Answer" is an interesting treatment of Chidi's character.

I loooooove Baby Yoda. But I have to admit that the rest of The Mandalorian (aka, The Baby Yoda Show) is just okay (and that one episode with the comedians was just bad). "Redemption" was a pretty solid episode, but it needed more Baby Yoda (but to be fair, that's my complaint about every episode).

1. Watchmen: “This Extraordinary Being”, written by Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson, directed by Stephen Williams (HBO)

2. Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar”, written by Jeff Jensen and Damon Lindelof, directed by Nicole Kassell (HBO)

3. The Expanse: “Cibola Burn”, written by Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck and Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner (Amazon Prime Video)

4. The Good Place: “The Answer”, written by Daniel Schofield, directed by Valeria Migliassi Collins (Fremulon/3 Arts Entertainment/Universal Television)

5. The Mandalorian: “Redemption”, written by Jon Favreau, directed by Taika Waititi (Disney+)

Left off my ballot (sorry, Whovians): Doctor Who: “Resolution”, written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Wayne Yip (BBC)

Best Fan Writer

Along with Related Work, I probably feel the most personal kinship with this category. I lack the connections, focus, and dedication of this year's nominees, but I am a fan writer (you're reading my fan writing right now!).

In my day job as a philosophy professor, I'm expected to do "service to the profession," which means things like reviewing submissions to journals, organizing conference panels, serving on committees of professional organizations, and the like (things I usually don't get paid for, but that I do as part of my job in a way that's complicated to explain to non-academics).

While I browsed each excellent nominee's Hugo packet, I started to think about their service to the genre. The genre greatly benefits from these services rendered. And although these writers don't often get paid for this work, I learned from Alasdair Stuart's packet that there is occasionally a little money in it (they're more likely to be paid for it than I am for my academic service, anyway). But fan writers greatly enhance the genre, often providing reviews, statistics, recommendations, rethinking of classics, commentaries on the state of the genre, and so on.

So, this was the primary metric I used to make the difficult choices about the following ranking, although I should reiterate that I found all of this year's nominees to be rendering excellent service to the genre.

1. Bogi Takács

2. Cora Buhlert

3. Paul Weimer

4. Alasdair Stuart

5. Adam Whitehead

6. James Davis Nicoll

And that's all I've got in me this year. There are many other excellent categories filled with well-deserving nominees. You can see them all here.

I don't think I'll manage the virtual Worldcon this year, but on second thought, signing up for an online con at the last minute is a great deal more likely than flying off to New Zealand at the last minute ever has been for someone of my geographic location and economic means, so you never know. In any case, I hope to see other fans online and/or in person at a Worldcon in the future!

Good luck and congratulations to all of this year's Hugo nominees!