Hugos 2024: Ballots for Dramatic Presentation and Graphic Story

Finally, we have my nominations and votes in the "visual" categories: comics, tv, and film. (I have linked the titles if I have written a review elsewhere.)

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

6. Doctor Who, special #3: "The Giggle", written by Russell T Davies, directed by Chanya Button

Of the four episodes of Doctor Who to air in 2023, this is the one I would be least likely to submit for the Hugo Awards. It certainly had some strong moments, and I am not as against the "bigeneration" as some, but it did not come together for me.

5. Loki 2x6: "Glorious Purpose", written by Eric Martin, directed by Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson

 

Longtime readers of my Hugo rankings will know of my absolute dedication to my bizarre tendency of refusing to watch any episodes of serialized streaming shows other than the ones that are the actual finalists, which means that I watched this, the twelfth and final episode of Loki, having seen only one previous episode, the fourth, back in 2022. As a result, there were a lot of character beats that totally went over my head, but I was able to (mostly) work out what was going on, and it seemed pretty interesting. I can imagine myself watching more of the show, which is more than I can say for most Marvel stuff on Disney Plus. I struggled to rank this versus "The Giggle" but decided that if this didn't land for me, it wasn't its fault I don't think.

 

4. The Last of Us 1x3: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin, directed by Peter Hoar

 

I gather The Last of Us is a postapocalyptic show about fungus zombies (I did copyedit an essay about it earlier this summer), and that it's pretty serialized, but this one stands on its own fairly well, as most of it is an extended flashback about two side characters, one of them a doomsday prepper played by Nick Offerman, following them from the early days of the apocalypse in 2003 up to the present in 2023. I thought it was a very well done depiction of a lonely man who finally found a situation in which he might thrive—I've only really seen Offerman in Parks and Rec, so this was my first experience of his (considerable) dramatic chops. Since it stood alone much better, I was happy to place it above Loki, but I wasn't about to place it above the very good episodes of any of the shows that I actually watch!

(When I uploaded the above screenshot I was reminded of my consistent objection throughout the episode that it was very clearly not filmed in Massachusetts.)

 

3. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x07: "Those Old Scientists", written by Kathryn Lyn & Bill Wolkoff, directed by Jonathan Frakes

 

I was not surprised to see this as a finalist: a crossover between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks is exactly the kind of fan-pleasing thing that Hugo nominators love. But it was indeed a worthy finalist; lots of great jokes of course but also some surprisingly dramatic moments. I liked the way Boimler's future knowledge played into the season character arc of Nurse Chapel's attempt to have a relationship with Mister Spock.

 

2. Doctor Who, special #2: "Wild Blue Yonder", written by Russell T Davies, directed by Tom Kingsley

 

In one sense, this is a weird anniversary special. The Doctor Who specials on either side of it are celebratory, in the sense that they bring back beloved characters and old concepts from Doctor Who's long history. But I really like that on getting David Tennant and Catherine Tate to come back to Doctor Who, Russell T Davies's instinct was to do a low-key episode that required them to act the shit out of it. This is Doctor Who at its best, and the kind of thing I'd happily see win.

1. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x09: "Subspace Rhapsody", written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff, directed by Dermott Downs 

 

If ever something was destined to win me over, surely it was a musical episode of Star Trek. But this was a particularly good execution of that premise; its placement as the second-last episode of the season means it isn't a fun interlude, but the culmination of several key character throughlines. Christina Chong is a powerhouse singer, and her character of La'an cemented herself as my favorite with this episode; Celia Rose Gooding excels in Uhura's big musical number, which also brought their character into focus for me; Ethan Peck's song as Spock was surprisingly clever and good. Lots of good jokes too, of course, and the final musical number is excellent.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

6. The Wandering Earth II; directed by Frant Gwo; script by Yang Zhixue, Frant Gwo, Gong Geer, and Ye Ruchang

 

This is a Chinese movie; it's actually a prequel to the first Wandering Earth movie (2019), which is itself based on a Liu Cixin short story. The premise of the movie is that the sun is expanding, so they have to stick giant engines on the Earth and fly it out of the solar system. It's long on spectacle; its 160 minutes revolve around three big crises across decades: a terrorist attack on a space elevator, a solar storm on the moon, and the explosion of the moon. Various characters' stories weave through these crises, most prominently a heroic astronaut (and his family) and a computer scientist (whose dead daughter has been uploaded into a computer). Perhaps unsurprisingly, this latter subplot was the most interesting part of the movie, which was long on (admittedly well rendered) spectacle but short on anything else. I am glad this is a finalist, because it's the kind of thing the Hugos should be recognizing, but it's not the kind of thing I feel inclined to vote for. Very obviously inferior to Barbie and everything else on the list this year.

 

5. Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, script by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

I feel a bit weird ranking this where I ranked it, and I wonder if I was set up by the buzz around this film—or maybe as a man I am just doomed to not get very much out of it. I mean, I did like it a lot. Amazing visual design, good jokes, and fun songs, plus I particularly enjoyed the performance of America Ferrera. I thought the movie had a lot of great moments when it came to being a woman but I did find the message of the movie kind of muddled in that I didn't really understand what it was trying to say using the Kens. Obviously they were wrong to try to impose patriarchy... but it wasn't very obvious to me that they were wrong to rebel to begin with. Anyway, it was good fun and I enjoyed it but not as much as I wanted to.

4. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor among Thieves; directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein; script by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and Michael Gilio

As opposed to Barbie, which wasn't as good as I expected, this was way better than I expected it to be! I thought it was going to be bad, but it was way better than it had any right to be. My favorite movie trope is probably "group of disparate people come together to accomplish something against impossible odds" and this is an excellently executed example of it. Excellent jokes, charming acting (a friend said that Chris Pine is the best Chris and I think she is probably right, but the rest of the cast is also great), good character moments, fun twists and hijinks, and (surprisingly for a modern action movie) no long tedious action sequences. I really enjoyed this movie.

3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson; script by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham

The first Spider-Verse film was an unexpected pleasure for me. This one is still excellent in some ways... but not quite as good in others. Utterly beautiful, doing amazing stuff with the medium of animation I've never seen anywhere else. Great score. Good jokes (if not as many as I remember from the first one). Neat character work with Miles and also Gwen, really getting a lot out of both visual and voice performances. I was a little skeptical of marrying up Miles's personal plot with a threat-to-the-multiverse plot, but the movie actually did a good job of that. This would easily rank above Nimona... except it's half a story! I had known it would end on a cliffhanger, but I had expected more of a Empire Strikes Back here's-a-hook-to-the-next-one cliffhanger, not a you-need-to-watch-the-next-one-to-get-anything-out-of-it cliffhanger. (That said, it's a very good cliffhanger with a very good twist!) But anyway, I feel compelled to ding it one spot. The next one doesn't even have a schedule release date yet!

2. Nimona, directed by Nick Bruno & Troy Quaye, script by Robert L. Baird & Lloyd Taylor

This is one of those cases where I begin to doubt my ability to rank things. I definitely think Nimona is better than D&D, and I definitely enjoyed D&D more than Barbie. But is Nimona better than Barbie? That doesn't seem right! But I guess that's the reason I try to think of these things as a series of one-on-one matches (I build the rankings as I watch things, rather than wait until the end), so I just have to make a series of small judgment calls. Anyway, this took me a bit to get into, but once I figured out what vibe it was going for, I found that it was both funny and had some good stuff to say about what we count as "monsters." Good reveal at the end.

1. Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, script by Tony McNamara

I think for certain people this is going to be a bit of a "hot take" but I really enjoyed this move. You have an inkling of what is going on from the beginning but only figure out the precise details as you go, so I will avoid too many spoilers, but basically a mad scientist in the 1890s (though, pleasingly to this pedantic Victorianist, no one ever uses the word "scientist") reanimates a woman's dead body. She has the mind of a child in the body of an adult. The film uses this concept to explore ideas about sex and gender. I (of course) kept thinking about John Berger, who tells us that, "To be born a woman is to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women is developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space." Poor Things explores these concepts by giving us an adult woman who has not had the tutelage necessary to understanding. How do others see her and how does she come to see herself?

The whole thing has this veneer of unreality laid on top of it, too; excellent use of visuals that call attention to themselves as visuals, which is of course what you would want in a film about how men see women, and how women come to see themselves. I think what I was most unprepared for, though, was how funny the movie was. I wouldn't categorize it as a comedy, but all the reviews and discourse I'd heard led me to expect it to be fairly po-faced, but it had several excellent laugh-out-loud jokes. The film has a ridiculous premise, but it totally leans into that and manages to use it to posit some serious things. I think this movie probably has a smaller circle of people who would enjoy it than D&D, but for me it was more of an achievement, so I gave it the edge easily.

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Best Graphic Story or Comic

6. The Three-Body Problem, #01–14; script by Cai Jin and Kaishu; art by Caojijiuridong and Shuixiongchon

This is the first fourteen installments of an adaptation of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, and has since been transformed into a Netflix show. Based on my seven-year-old memory of the novel, it seems to be fairly straightforward and faithful, but I don't know that it ever rises above the level of competence. The art is fine, but I found myself wishing the part focusing on the "Three-Body" game had been weirder. The best part, like in the novel, is the cynical cigarette-smoking cop who thinks the whole thing is bullshit.

 

5. Saga, Volume Eleven, script by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples

 

Saga itself is great, of course, but this doesn't feel like one of its greater installments, though it has a lot of nice moments. The world of Saga is pretty complicated at this point—which is one of its strengths—but that means it does not benefit from the fact that my reading has been stretched out across over seven years! Who are all these side characters? I look forward to my inevitable reread when it's completed, but for now I mostly grok the story of Alana and Hazel, which I enjoy but is continually being interrupted. Anyway, all that is to say, I am glad I am continuing to read this, and I can see why it keeps getting nominated, but I wouldn't give it an award.

4. Bea Wolf, script by Zach Weinersmith, art by Boulet

 

This is a retelling of the first part of Beowulf in comics form, in modernized English with vaguely Anglo-Saxon alliteration—except it's all about kids. The mead hall is awesome treehouse, Grendel is a mean teacher who hates fun, the warriors are all kids playing outside. It's very well done in the sense you have to admire the cleverness of it all... but I feel like my admiration is entirely technical; I was never swept up in this. Like, wow what a good job they did... but why? But still, neat stuff. So, I place it above Saga in that I can see why to someone else it's award-worthy, but below Witches of World War II in that it's not something that grabbed me.

 

3. The Witches of World War II, script by Paul Cornell, art by Valeria Burzo

This is a very solid comic, the exact kind of thing that you would want to be a finalist in Best Graphic Story, but it seems to me so rarely is. A nice original graphic novel, with solid writing and good art, and an interesting sf&fnal premise. I enjoyed reading this a lot, and I would happily see it win.

2. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons; script by Kelly Sue DeConnick; art by Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott

This was the first Hugo finalist I read this year, and as soon as I read it, I felt like it was the one to beat in Best Graphic Story. In my experience, the franchise comics in this category are either excellent (last year's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow) or excruciating (last year's Dune), with little middle ground. This is definitely in the former category; absolutely beautiful art, with something interesting to say to boot. Transcends its origins easily.

1. Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

This is an Egyptian graphic novel originally published in Arabic, now translated into English; the title means "your wish is my command." It's set in a version of our world where people can make, sell, and buy wishes (they come in bottles or cans). The wishes are of varying quality: first-class wishes always come true as you want and are very powerful; third-class wishes can backfire on you if the wish takes you literally but doesn't adhere to what you actually want. The book begins with a stall owner trying to sell three first-class wishes he wants to get rid of (he's a devout Muslim, and using wishes is against Islamic precepts), and follows three overlapping stories of the people who come into possession of each of the three. Clever, inventive worldbuilding, good comedy, but also some real pathos and emotion; I particularly liked the middle story, about how wishes might fit in with depression and talk therapy, but was also a good metaphor for how we handle depression in our world. I said Wonder Woman Historia was the one to beat... and this one beat it! While Historia is magisterial, this really resonated with me in a lot of ways. But I'd be happy for either to win!

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Overall Thoughts

As someone who watches both Strange New Worlds and Doctor Who, I of course appreciated the finalists in Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). These are Star Trek's third and fourth nominations since the beginning of the Paramount+ era... will it finally win? I feel like it might have a good shot. "The Giggle" is a bit of a goofy choice, to be honest, but I can't quibble with "Wild Blue Yonder." I liked both Loki and Last of Us well enough. I also thought Long Form was a strong category—an interesting, diverse set of finalists... only one of which was a superhero film! And that is one of the most distinctive superhero films of our time. All stuff I had not seen and was glad to be exposed to.

I also feel like this was probably the best, most interesting Graphic Story ballot probably ever. Again, neat stuff, none of it too similar to each other or to past finalists.

What will win? Well, I think Star Trek for Short Form, Barbie for Long Form, and god knows what for Graphic Story—the voters always manage to baffle me on that one even when the nominations are good.

Hugos 2019: Saga, Book Three by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Comic hardcover, 464 pages
Published 2019 (contents: 2016-18)
Acquired and read June 2019

Saga, Book Three

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Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Artist: Fiona Staples
Lettering+Design: Fonografiks

Book Three of Saga continues the space epic, as Marko, Alana, Hazel, and their companions spend time on a doomed comet, on an abortion planet, and a water world. As always, Vaughan and Staples's work is propulsive, never immobile. One issue leads into the next into the next; one situation's resolution sets up the next problem. I found that this one was brought down mildly by some commentary on current events that was a little too direct and obvious for good sf (apparently in a magical space universe, people discuss trans identities and abortion rights the exact same way as in the 2010s U.S.), but the twists and turns of the characters are good. The themes that came to the fore in this volume were the appropriate use of force-- something Marko has really struggled with all along, and is brought to a beautiful climax here-- and the responsibilities of family-- there's some good contrast between Alana and Marko's approach to their child(ren?) and Prince Robot's. There are some real sad moments, and some real uplifting ones, and some disturbing moments. I'm sad that the series is going on an extended hiatus after this, because I want it to keep going now!

This deluxe edition has some nice stuff from Vaughan and Staples about the genesis of the series, which goes back to a universe he imagined in math class as a kid. And of course I loved Fonografiks's discussion of what typeface to use for the logo!

My 2018 Hugo Awards Ballot: Visual Categories

I recently finished going through all the materials for the 2018 Hugo Awards; here are the ballots I submitted to Worldcon 76 San Jose, with commentary, in the two Hugo categories for "Dramatic Presentations" and the "Best Graphic Story" category (i.e., comic books). I'll start with the story I ranked the lowest and move upwards. Links are to longer reviews when I have written such a thing, or where the story is freely and legally available on the Internet. (Note that if you're reading this before August 22, not all of those reviews will actually be live yet.)

Best Graphic Story

7. Monstress: The Blood, script by Marjorie M. Liu, art by Sana Takeda

There are definitely things to like and love about Monstress, but I find the mythological backstory largely impenetrable. Or maybe I just don't want to put the work into penetrating it, but that seems almost as damning. The book is utterly gorgeous though, and it's populated by amazing characters, fascinatingly dark concepts, and a deep sense of history and culture. I just wished I cared about the overarching story Liu and Takeda are telling more than I do; based on the first volume, Monstress could be amazing, but based on the second it isn't quite.

6. Bitch Planet: President Bitch, script by Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Valentine De Landro with Taki Soma

Sometimes you can jump into the middle of an ongoing comic series; sometimes you're clearly not meant to. This was one of the latter times. President Bitch collects issues #6-10 of Bitch Planet, a series about a prison planet for women in a dystopian future where women can be jailed for "noncompliance" at the drop of a hat. The book makes no attempt to introduce characters and concepts for people who haven't read book one, and I found myself struggling to follow along, but enjoying it when I could figure it out. There's some sharp satire here, and Valentine De Landro (who I knew from a poor fill-in on Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) is an excellent artist, with a good sense of page design. Ranking this versus Monstress was tough. Both seem like series that aren't quite delivering on their potential, but I gave Bitch Planet the benefit of the doubt since it's more likely the problem was mine in not reading the first volume.

5. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book One by Emil Ferris

This is an excellent book, a really absorbing masterwork, so good it's hard to believe it's Emil Ferris's first graphic novel. Karen is a pre-teen girl growing up in 1960s Chicago, and as the title indicates, her favorite thing is monsters-- she's obsessed with schlocky horror comics and movies. At the same time she has to navigate being a pariah at her Catholic school, she also must survive racism, deal with her mother's cancer, and investigate the murder of her glamorous German neighbor. The book is amazingly drawn, all done in ballpoint pen on looseleaf; you're reading Karen's journal's account of the events of the story. There's a lot of collage/montage, with Ferris's artwork blending the realistic with the fantastic, and the use of color is astonishing at times. Who knew pen could be so beautiful? A prolonged series of flashbacks to the Holocaust are captivating. I have little idea where this honking enormous book is going (the second half is due this fall, I believe), but I really want to know. My main issue with it is that I'm 99% certain it's not actually science fiction or fantasy! All of the fantastic elements thus far are pretty clearly Karen's imagination. How much should that influence my rankings? But I definitely enjoyed it more than Monstress or Bitch Planet, and that's enough for me to give it the edge over them for now, despite its lack of clear sfnal content.

4. No Award

I really struggle with when to deploy "No Award"; however it seems pretty clear that a work that's not actually science fiction or fantasy shouldn't win a Hugo Award (at least not in this category). That said, I'd still rather My Favorite Thing Is Monsters win than Monstress or Bitch Planet, so that bumps them down below No Award as well, which feels a bit mean, but oh well.

3. Saga, Volume Seven, art by Fiona Staples, script by Brian K. Vaughan

Last year I read the first six volumes of Saga basically in one go, so it's a little weird to just read one volume by itself; I had to do a lot of mental re-orienting on its expansive cast of characters. Anyway, I don't think this is the best volume of Saga, but it's still good. (Volume six had more thematic depth, for example.) Sometimes I think Brian K. Vaughan is over-reliant on shock deaths to the extent that they cease to shock, but then at other times I am genuinely shocked, so there you go. It's good stuff with some nice twists outside of the deaths: surprising things are done to/by Marko, Alana, and Sir Robot here. I do wonder what kind of long-term plan there could possible be-- how can our heroes find peace if the galaxy cannot?-- but I'm here for the ride as long as it lasts. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters and this are probably about equally ranked, so I'm giving the edge to Saga since it's actually sf.

2. Paper Girls 3, script by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Cliff Chiang

Last year, I resolved a mental tie between two Vaughan comics by going with the familiar and choosing Saga, but this year I'm going the other way around. Like I said above, volume seven wasn't the best volume of Saga (even though it was still good), but volume 3 very much is the best volume of Paper Girls, and that seems worth rewarding as the comic hits its stride.

1. Black Bolt: Hard Time, script by Saldin Ahmed, art by Christian Ward with Frazer Irving

I was dreading reading this, because Marvel's push of the Inhumans is the least interesting thing about Marvel by a long shot, and Black Bolt is the King of the Inhumans. But it turns out that if you take the King of the Inhumans and put him into space prison, allow him to speak, and team him up with the Absorbing Man, a hood from Brooklyn who used to fight Thor, he suddenly becomes enormously interesting! Well, interesting enough to hang an enjoyable story off, anyway. This is fun and well-done, a prison break narrative featuring superheroes and -villains; in addition to Blackagar Boltagon and Carl "Crusher" Creel the Absorbing Man, there's an old alien man (apparently a Hulk villain), a kid with many eyes, and a Skrull pirate who refuses to shapeshift because she likes herself the way she is. Christian Ward's art is sometimes a little difficult to follow, but usually incredible, handling conversation and surreal space torture with equal aplomb. The best issue is the one where Black Bolt and Creel are trapped in a room together as the air runs out, and Creel reveals that amidst his superpowers, he has an all-too-human tragic backstory-- but also hopes and dreams. Funny and touching. All this plus Lockjaw! My Favorite Things Is Monsters is probably actually the better comic, but this one is clearly sf, giving it the edge for me. Who knew I could be made to care about an Inhuman? I think this is one of those ongoings that gets cancelled after twelve issues, so one more collection will see the series off; I'll have to check it out from the library.

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

7. Blade Runner 2049, screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, directed by Denis Villeneuve

I rewatched Blade Runner in the afternoon one day (on the big screen at the Tampa Theatre!) and then watched 2049 the same evening (at home). I'm not a Blade Runner fanboy, but 2049 doesn't really hold up by comparison. Some beautiful shots, but I was surprised that the sequel left LA... three different times! And the shots of LA itself felt too expansive compared to Ridley Scott's crowded original. The original is so urban and so confined. The actual plot of the film was too straightforward, too long, too societal, and too unambiguous. Deckard is a rapist stone-cold killer in the original who ends up being saved by the "villain" at the climax; there's little like that here. A sequel doesn't have to be like the original, of course, but it ought to be enough like it to justify making it a sequel to begin with, and based on my wife's reaction, I don't think you'd get much out of it on its own, either. Villeneuve did a way better job with Arrival last year.

6. No Award

It's just like, c'mon man, I'd be embarrassed if Blade Runner 2049 won. It's not a very good movie, and I'm surprised it's on the ballot. 

5. Wonder Woman, screenplay by Allan Heinberg, directed by Patty Jenkins

I gave this one a miss in theatres after Man of Steel and the promotion for Batman v Superman convinced me that DC's attempt at a "cinematic universe" was not for me, but finally watched it once it was nominated for the Hugos. I found it a pretty typical 2010s superhero film, with the occasional flash of brilliance, such as Diana's charge across No Man's Land, or the gas attack on the Belgian village. On the other hand, I didn't find the "romance" particularly convincing, even by the standards of this genre. The action sometimes felt weightless, and having watched Superman: The Movie (1978) just a week prior, I found myself wishing modern blockbusters were less visually grim. Gal Gadot was excellent.

4. Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson

This is one of two films on this list I saw in theatres, before it became a Hugo finalist. I came out uncertain as to what I thought, and given I haven't rewatched it, that means I still don't know what I think. It seemed to me that The Last Jedi was trying to be three different movies that weren't integrated with one another in a coherent fashion, and often important things happened abruptly. I liked Rey's story, and what was done with Snoke and Kylo Ren, and there were some cool battles, but Finn's emotional throughline was poorly handled, I think. I don't know, rating this versus Wonder Woman is tough-- I feel like Wonder Woman is generic, whereas The Last Jedi tried to play with the genre but didn't have good enough handle on it to pull that off. So which is more worthy? I guess I'll give the edge to ambition.

3. Thor: Ragnarok, written by Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost, directed by Taika Waititi

I have been a devoted fan of the Thor films since seeing the first one in theatres; I know it's popular to hate on Thor: The Dark World, but I dig it too-- surely its ending battle is the best one in any Marvel film, because it understands the silliness of it all. Well, I enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok as well, which has silliness in spades. It does kind of have that vibe of when a new writer takes over an ongoing comic series and suddenly everything from the previous run is disposed of without ceremony, and when it gets away with that, it works, but there are parts where it jars. (I didn't like seeing the Warriors Three go down like mooks, for example.) But I always enjoy Thor's love-hate relationship with Loki, which this handles well, and there's a lot of fun to be had, especially when Thor takes up with a band of ineffectual revolutionaries. Also it might be the only Marvel movie with a good score?

2. The Shape of Water, screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor, directed by Guillermo del Toro

I'm really torn between this and Get Out; as things in award categories so often are, they're hard to compare-- a horror film with sf elements vs. a dark historical fantasy. One wants you to be afraid, the other wants you to feel something; one is very much naturalistic, one is lush and vivid and colorful. I ended up giving the edge to Get Out because sometimes Shape of Water was a bit too simplistic. Like, one guy is racist and homophobic in the space of fifteen seconds. He's bad. I get it. But on the whole, it's a great film, with excellent performances and some real beautiful imagery; del Toro really relishes the early 1960s setting. Ask me again after the deadline and I might be wishing I'd ranked this first.

1. Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele

Get Out pretty much consumed the humanities academic facebooksphere when it came out, but despite having some sense of what it was about, I was off base enough that the film was still quite enjoyable. A lot of people I've talked to have been surprised that it's a Hugo nominee, given that it's horror. But of course, texts can belong to many genres at once, and in the case of Get Out, the sf element is integral to the horror: I was really impressed with how once you realize what's going on, almost every oddity throughout the film, big and small, suddenly makes a great deal of sense. Also Jordan Peele understands that there's nothing so serious it won't be improved by jokes.

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

6. The Good Place, Chapter 13: "Michael's Gambit," written and directed by Michael Schur

I can intuit that this episode is significant, possibly even mind-blowing, to the ongoing story of The Good Place if you've been watching it all along. However, I have not been, and so I was like, "Oh, interesting." Outside of that, I'm not sure this episode had a lot going for it, though; the idea that four friends in heaven have to decide which two of them have to go to hell ought to have been more funny or more dramatic. Or both.

5. Doctor Who 11x00: "Twice Upon a Time," written by Steven Moffat, directed by Rachel Talalay

I am, to be honest, somewhat baffled that the 2017 Christmas special was the only Doctor Who episode to make it onto the ballot this year; I can think of several episodes from series 10 that were better than this, including "Extremis" (which I myself nominated) and "The Pilot" and "Thin Ice" and "Oxygen" and the series finale. "Twice Upon a Time" is mildly diverting, but squanders a potentially interesting premise (a meeting between the first and twelfth Doctors as each is on the verge of regeneration). The final speech shows that not even Peter Capaldi and Rachel Talalay can save yet another long speech from the pen of Steven Moffat; I wish the regenerations could be less of spectacles than they have become.

4. The Good Place, Chapter 19: "The Trolley Problem," written by Josh Siegel & Dylan Morgan, directed by Dean Holland

This episode was more comprehensible as a standalone story, but more importantly, it had better jokes than chapter 13 of The Good Place, mostly those revolving around the ways Ted Danson's character makes two others continuously reenact the famous philosophical quandary of the trolley problem in a real-seeming simulation, complete with fake people who have real feelings, in real time. On the other hand, there were a surprising number of comic bits that fell flat for me, given the talent involved (series co-creator Michael Schur is also the co-creator of Parks and Recreation, which you all know I have been enjoying watching). Anyway, this was okay, and so was "Twice Upon a Time," and I feel like my inclination to rank it fourth is more about sticking it to "Twice Upon a Time" than appreciating "The Trolley Problem" on its own merits.

3. "The Deep" by Clipping.

I don't listen to hip-hop, but between this song and last year's album Splendor & Misery, I appreciate the artistry of Clipping. when I hear it. This song is about an underwater race made up of the children of pregnant African women thrown off slave ships; in the near future, they discover the surface world when corporations come looking for oil. (The underwater civilization is apparently from the work of a 1990s electronica duo.) Only five minutes long, which makes it hard to rank high, but it packs a punch.

2. Black Mirror 4x01: "USS Callister," written by Charlie Brooker & William Bridges, directed by Toby Haynes

This is the second episode I've seen of Black Mirror, after last year's Hugo finalist "San Junipero." This wasn't as good as that, but I still really enjoyed it. It seems like it's going one way, but then there's a clever swerve about twenty minutes in, and it suddenly becomes a different story. It seems at first like it's going to critique Star Trek tropes, but it actually almost reaffirms them. Horrifying at times, good jokes at others, with some neat details and twists I didn't anticipate.

1. Star Trek: Discovery 1x07: "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," written by Aron Eli Coleite & Jesse Alexander, directed by David M. Barrett

I actually nominated this, my favorite episode of Discovery's first season, and a poster child for what the series does at its best: rework the tropes of Star Trek for people who have seen them plenty, plus throw in some heartwarming emotional moments. (Read my review of the whole first season linked above if you want more details.) I couldn't decide if I liked this or "USS Callister" more, but it would be really nice for Star Trek to win a Hugo again, so I used that as my arbitrary tiebreaker; it last won in 1995 for the Next Generation finale "All Good Things..."

Overall Thoughts

Best Graphic Story continues to be a strong category; my placement of "No Award" is a bit misleading. Any of my top three I'd happily see win. I also understand why people like Monstress and Bitch Planet even if these particular volumes didn't do it for me, and it wouldn't bother me if they won either, despite where I ranked them! I suspect my ranking of Black Bolt first will be in a definite minority (I mean, I'm as surprised as anyone); my guess is either Saga or Monstress for the win.

I also found the long-form Dramatic Presentations better than last year's. Thankfully there's a lot less 1980s nostalgia this year. A whole two non-franchise films! Three legitimately strong films, and I know Last Jedi and Wonder Woman have their fans, too. Last year it was pretty obvious to me that Arrival would crush it, but this year things are less clear. A sizeable minority love Get Out, but I suspect it's not to everyone's taste; it definitely won't be The Last Jedi; Ragnarok is not particularly serious. That leaves Wonder Woman or Shape of Water, I suspect. (But who knows. Maybe with the way instant preference voting works, Ragnarok will be everyone's second choice and thus win it?)

Short form was kind of weird: the Discovery episode and "USS Callister" seem kind of obvious as finalists, but two episodes of a sitcom? A (admittedly good) hip-hop track? A mediocre Doctor Who episode? Given the wealth of quality science fiction and fantasy on tv today, these are really the best six? No The Expanse or Legion or The Handmaid's Tale? (I suspect the issue is that with serialized shows, there's no one episode that draws a lot of nominations.) This category will definitely be won by "USS Callister," but I couldn't even begin to guess how the ranking will break down after that.

Hugos 2017: Saga, Book Two by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan

The past couple weeks have seen a few Doctor Who reviews of mine appear at USF, all of Big Finish's recent trilogy featuring the Season Nineteen TARDIS team of the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa: The Star Men, The Contingency Club, and Zaltys. Read 'em!

Comic hardcover, 464 pages
Published 2017 (contents: 2014-16)
Acquired May 2017
Read July 2017

Saga, Book Two

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Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Artist: Fiona Staples
Lettering+Design: Fonografiks

My Hugo blogging comes to a belated end with the second Saga compilation-- appropriately enough, I guess, as I started this whole adventure with the first one. Saga, Book Two is "more of the same" in a way that makes it hard to say anything about it that you don't say about the first one. Like: more weird space creatures, more romance, more sex, more grossness, more occasional heart-warming moments, more senseless brutality. If anything's changed, it's that Fiona Staples has got even better at what she does. The visuals of this series are just splendid, communicating character and story seemingly effortlessly while also being quite nice to look at. (And she does her own coloring! And she handwrites the captions!)

In this set of adventures, Marko, Alana, Hazel, and family/company live on one planet for a while while Alana tries out an acting career (and Marko flirts with a dance teacher), terrorists kidnap the characters, and Hazel spends some time in a prison camp while her parents search for her. Big jumps of time are covered here, more than in Book One, but Saga effortlessly mixes the crude and the cosmic in a way like nothing else... though maybe at times Staples and Brian Vaughan could go a little less crude. If there's anything not to like, it's that interesting side characters are brutally killed off with such regularity that at a certain point you stop caring about new characters because you don't expect them to make it, and you're more often right than not (though they do mislead you a couple times based on this expectation). I really enjoy the weird melange of characters here, as well as Vaughan and Staples's continual resistance to imposing a status quo. Though at times I'll admit I want it to slow down, so both I and the characters can process things. But that's clearly not going to happen! This phase of Vaughan's career is all about the speed. And let's be fair, he (and Staples) are good at it.

Next Week: Back to the "deboot" version of the Legion of Super-Heroes, in Superman and the Legion!

Hugos 2017 [Prelude]: Saga, Book One by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Comic hardcover, 504 pages
Published 2014 (contents: 2012-14)
Acquired December 2014
Read April 2017

Saga, Book One

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Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Artist: Fiona Staples
Lettering+Design: Fonografiks

For years now I've been claiming I was going to vote in the Hugos, the fan award for the best in science fiction and fantasy. I'm almost never up-to-date in the field, and the Hugos seem like a fun way to find out what's at the top these days. Plus, you get to make lists! Ever year I find some kind of excuse: too busy, too many racists in the finalists, and so on. But this year, I resolved I would finally do it. I'll be chronicling my Hugo journey here on this blog, as I try to read all the finalists for Best Novel, Best Graphic Story, Best Related Work, Best Short Story, Best Novella, and Best Novelette prior to the July 15th deadline.

Saga, Book One isn't a finalist for the Hugos this year, but Volume 6 is, which gives me the impetus to finally read Book One, which collects Volumes 1-3, and which I've had for a few years now. I've heard Saga compared to an adult version of Star Wars, and it really is in a way that few space operas are. Like, you could call Battlestar Galactica or The Expanse "adult" versions of Star Wars, but they're not really-- they're too "grounded." Star Wars isn't really science fiction (in some senses of sf, anyway), it's space fantasy: it's got ghosts and magic and bizarre, implausible aliens. Saga has these in spades: its aliens are humans with animal parts, or maybe even just animals, and its robots look like humans with tvs for heads, and one of the main characters is a ghost, and there's a cat who says "LYING" whenever it hears someone lie. But it's adult: there's swearing and viscera and sex and all the gory details of pregnancy and prostitution.

Yet it's not the immature kind of "adult": the sex and violence and so one give the story weight and heft, and elevate it into something fully itself. Saga may remind you of Star Wars or Romeo and Juliet or Battlestar Galactica in some ways, but it's not trying to be any of them. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples have created something really unique, with star-crossed romance (the main characters are from the opposite sides of a deadly war), pathos (there's a bit with Lying Cat that was just heart-wrenching), and the right amount of kookiness (the main characters bond over a cheap paperback romance novel that turns out to have a deeper meaning).

Despite the darkness of it, it's beautiful: Fiona Staples I don't think had done much before Saga, but as in Y: The Last Man, Brian Vaughan has found the perfect artistic collaborator for the story he's telling. Horrifying creatures, human emotion, forbidding vistas, beautiful emptiness, all are rendered perfectly by Staples. A lot of depth comes from the narration, which hits the balance between corniness and insight, and is hand-written by Staples herself, the perfect finishing touch. Everything about the book is beautifully done, down to the page and font design by Fonografiks. (The deluxe hardcover has a very in-depth making-of feature, which I really enjoyed. Both Vaughan and Staples have fascinating processes.)

The sprawling story (seriously, there's not just our main characters, and their daughter, but also the parents of one of them, and a ghost, and the bounty hunter chasing them and his companions, and a robot prince, and a pair of investigative journalists, and probably others I'm forgetting) moves in genuinely inventive and surprising ways across in first eighteen issues, and I finished it eager to see where it would go next.

Next Week: Visiting a Broken Earth, in N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season!