Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Brandon Sanderson => Topic started by: Shrain on August 27, 2006, 09:12:43 PM
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Well, for those of us who didn't get to fly out to LA for the con (*sigh*), I thought I would post the results of this year's Hugo Awards ceremony (http://www.locusmag.com/2006/News/08_HugoCampbellWinners.html). This seemed like the place to put it since the WorldCon thread's here and we've been rooting for one of our own.
Speaking of which... Sorry you didn't get the Campbell, EUOL. :-/ But, hey, there's still next year!
Looks like Serenity made off with the award for best movie--er, "Dramatic Presentation: Long Form." Hooray! And I'm sure Jeffe's pleased with the winner for the Short Form. Say, I wonder who accepted the award for Serenity... Well, when all the con people get back, maybe we'll get the inside scoop on the whole thing. Hope everyone has a safe trip back!
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I was really pulling for George RR Martin in the Novel category. Sorry to see he didn't win.
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I saw the breakdown. I didn't just lose, I got spanked! Just like everyone else. Skalzi dominated.
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I hadn't heard of John Scalzi before, but I had heard of his book Old Man's War which was previously nominated for a Hugo. He's a little older and more published than EUOL, so I guess it's not surprising he won. Scalzi is also a professional blogger which probably helps his fan base.
Couurse, now that he's won, this clears the way for EUOL to win.
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I already gave my opinion on Old Man's War, and I'm very happy that Spin won the novel Hugo.
However, Scalzi's acceptance speech was the most gracious speech given all night. What a nice guy! He'll be a credit to the field for decades to come.
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What did he say?
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> However, Scalzi's acceptance speech was the most
> gracious speech given all night.
Agreed.
Basically, he said that you're known by the company you keep, and he was happy to be in the company of the other nominees. He said that after being nominated, he went and read the books by the other nominees, and was impressed by how good they were. He not only named the other nominees, he named their books, and encouraged everyone to go buy those books.
When he finished, I turned to a friend sitting next to me and said, "Now that was a classy speech."
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I got to chat with him for a while, and he really is a stand-up guy. I hope that he goes really far in the business, since he treats people with such respect. The best Evil Nemesis I've ever had.
I will be posting images of my Scalzi award as soon as I have them.
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Scalzi's blog is one of my regular reads actually. He's had some bang up articles on life as a newbie writer. (Alas, I did not know you were up against him, although to be fair, I only just found Elantris a few weeks ago.)
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Heh. He was nominated for the Hugo AND the Campbell. That pretty much guaranteed him a win on the Campbell. There was a gap of around 140 votes (out of only about 300) which separated him from the rest of us.
Though, interestingly, Scalzi got the Hugo nomination because Gaiman withdrew Anansi Boys from the running.
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I saw Gaiman's reasoning for withdrawing Anansi Boys on his blog, and I think it was very gracious of him to have done that. He's got 3 Hugos already, he said, and it was only fair to let someone else win this year, and besides, Anansi Boys was more fantasy than science fiction, and he figured he'd already had his science fiction honored by the Hugos.
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I am continually mystified. I read Gaiman's "American Gods" and it was slow, painfully self-aware, and pretentious. I finished it dragged along behind the unfulfilled hope that it would, soon, get better.
Did I read the wrong book of his?
I also watched "mirrormask" because it received so much press in tandem with Serenity in a lot of the articles I read. It was certainly well done but, again, it's like the guy is trying a little too hard to put "themes" and "lessons" into his work.
Did that movie do him justice?
Am I just crazy for thinking that his massive rep is undeserved?
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Mrm. I think a lot of Gaiman's rep comes from his run on the comic book, The Sandman. You can collect 'em in graphic novels--they run the gamut from horror to mythopaeic fantasy, wherein gods and faery tale figures rub shoulders with ordinary people on a regular basis. Pretty good stuff, and a definite change of pace for the industry at the time, which was saturated with superheroes. The indy comics hadn't really picked up at that point, so for a lot of people, Sandman is groundbreaking.
I think Neverwhere is his best novel to date, followed shortly by Stardust and Anansi Boys in a too-close-to-call tie....
I myself wasn't much for American Gods, but my BF, who is a big Odin fan, loved it.
There's also a YA book, Coraline, which left me a little cold, not being Addams Family enough for me, and which is essentially Mirrormask Mark I.
Also, there is a kid's book, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, which is awesome.
Good Omens, a book he did with Terry Pratchett, is very good, although sometimes people who are fans of either Pratchett or Gaiman, but not both, are turned off by the mixture of the two. It's a very funny Apocalypse story. Maybe not everybody's cup of tea.
This is what I've read, and the mileage varies for me. There are some people who rave about his short stories, none of which I've read. And
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thing is, Gaiman didn't just "have a run" on sandman, he *created* Sandman. A brilliant setting/character set
and I think most people would disagree with Skar on American Gods, including Fell (http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=545). I dont' think I liked it nearly so much as Fell, but "painfully self-aware" and "pretentious" are not how I'd describe it. I did find it was a bit longer than it needed to be, but I didn't feel like it was obvious in any of it's ideas. Of course it was "thematic." The characters were gods. They had domains.
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I'm gonna play My Anal Nerd Card, and say that he re-created Sandman. From what I hear, he went to Karen Berger, asked if he could co-opt a defunct DC character, and got full creative reign.
But other than that....yeah, you are right, the entire modern run of Sandman, as we know it, is his. I didn't mean to make it seem otherwise. :)
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I'm going to out-nerd you and make it clear that you've enver read the golden/silver age Sandman stories -- Wesley Dodds and Dream aren't anything at all like each other. Except the "artifact" that looks like Mr. Dodd's mask.
Hence, Gaiman *did* create Sandman out of whole cloth, from scratch. Not a resurrection.
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I couldn't get very far into American Gods, myself.
Neil Gaiman is the closest thing SF fandom has to a rock star. And he's a very cool guy in person. He did an excellent job MCing the Hugos in Boston. Anytime his name is on a ballot, the other people are going to have a hard time competing.
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There is a reference to Wesley Dodds (I'm pretty certain on this--it's the sleeping sickness issue, wherein he can't sleep, has insomnia, and takes to the streets) in the first Sandman arc. Yeah, they look nothing like each other, and Dream is waaay more powerful and interesting a character. But Neil did co-opt the name, if not the character.
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Oh, yeah, here in the Sandman annotations:
ftp://theory.lcs.mit.edu/pub/people/wald/sandman/sandman.01
Page 18 panel 3: Unity's child will become important later.
Panel 4-6: Wesley Dodds was the Golden Age Sandman. The dreams are a
retcon. The costume is correct; it is Dodds' first costume. Later he will don
a purple and gold outfit and acquire a sidekick, Sandy. Dodds will be referred
to again.
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from
http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/lore/sandfaq1.html#1.7
[1.7] Question: To what extent is The Sandman based on the Golden or Kirby Sandman characters?
In "The Origin of the Comic You Are Now Holding" (Sandman #4) Neil Gaiman says his only early exposure to the Golden Age Sandman was a copy of Justice League America #47 where the Sandman took part in defeating Anti-Matter Man. The issue was part of a box of comics that mysteriously appeared (and later disappeared) when he was almost seven.
The Kirby Sandman made a very brief appearance in the first draft of the Black Orchid story, (He was suggested as a potential character for a dream sequence.) While he had read the 70s Sandman, Gaiman says that he was uncomfortable with the series. He did, however, mention a possible new treatment of the character to Karen Berger in September 1987. Several months later, Berger offered him a Sandman series under the condition that it had to be a new Sandman. The name stayed the same but the rest changed.
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well, congrats to Brandon for receiving the Scalzi (SCALZI!!!!!!!!) Award. It was quite humorous when Dan and I got him to sign it!!
The "Companion" recieved the Hugo for Serenity. The entire audience just about passed out.
As far as American Gods goes, I liked it a lot other than one of the short stories thrown in the middle of it.
Bookstore Guy (the artist formerly known as Diamante)
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I'm entirely unclear how co-opting the name is taking the character. There are at least 4 different Sandman characters through comics, 2 Captain Marvels, and so on. They're all very different.
Heck, if using the same name makes you ripping off, then we should just hit them all up. After all, comics didn't invent the name "sandman"
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When he finished, I turned to a friend sitting next to me and said, "Now that was a classy speech."
Thats exactly what I said to the guys sitting next to me.
He is totally trying to take over our minds!!!
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I'm entirely unclear how co-opting the name is taking the character. There are at least 4 different Sandman characters through comics, 2 Captain Marvels, and so on. They're all very different.
Heck, if using the same name makes you ripping off, then we should just hit them all up. After all, comics didn't invent the name "sandman"
I'm not sure, maybe I'm misinterpretting you, but I think we may be arguing the same point from two different angles.
I never said that Neil was ripping off the old Sandman, nor do I think that new Sandman is anybody's creation but Neil's. I did say that he re-created the character, by which I meant, that he took an old name, made a character, and gave it a brand new history. This history is tied in very minimally with the Golden Age Sandman. I may have stated that in a confusing manner though. :)
(Also, sorry to derail from Brandon's congrats and the topic of the Hugos.)
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Eh. De-railing is very common around here, and this is a very interesting conversation, in my opinion.
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It does get at the very heart of creating, imo
My point of contention is that Nothing is borrowed from the golden age Sandman except the name. Nothing. He didn't "re-create," he created for the first time. There's no spin from the original at all, and the connection to the original isn't worth mentioning except to clear up confusion of names
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So, I take it that if I want to read the thing by Gaiman that most people like the best I should read the Sandman comic book series?
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actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea. If you dont' like American Gods *or* Sandman, you probably won't like much of anything he does.
You're more open minded than I am. If I don't like a book I'm not likely to try and read the same author again. I think there are too many out there to try to stick with one that's failed to deliver so far. The only reason I ever plan to read more Jordan books is to work out why people like him so much. He's already failed too much to get me to try another on the basis of entertainment.
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SuperE: Alright, it was semantically injudicious of me to stick to "re-create" when all I meant was there were Sandman before Gaiman's Sandman, and that you'd have to be daft and blind to confuse 'em all. :)
Skar: Sandman is the work that made him famous, yeah. At least among the comics crowd, but a lot of people kept handing it off to their non-comics reading friends, going, "Ya gotta read this." At least one of my girl friends has a crush on Dream because I made her borrow my graphic novels.
I have to admit when I first picked up Sandman, it was because Dave McKean was doing the covers. I read a small portion of the graphic novel of Preludes and Nocturnes, easily the most horror driven of the batch, I think, and it was not my cup of tea at first. And then I hit issue 7 or 8--SuperE and other fans will know which one I refer to, if I mention it's the one where Sandman's sister shows up. And that was it.
I read them very much out of order, but at the time I didn't have internet access, and Dragon's Keep in Provo (where I got my comics at the time) was having a hard time getting the graphic novels in. I was just too impatient, so I ended up reading the Kindly Ones (the penultimate arc, if you count the Wake as the last) in single issues about the time I got my hands on Season of Mists (third). This should totally have spoiled a lot of things for me, but instead, I just wanted to find out where the missing pieces of the story went. I don't particularly recommend this, but you may find your mileage varying over the series, because he does play with a lot of different themes and sub-genres.
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American Gods is my vote for the best novel written in the past ten years. I'd probably go even further back than that. If you didn't like it, I'd recommend Sandman or Neverwhere, which are pretty similar to each other but vastly different from American Gods. Also, read Coraline to your boys, Skar--it will scare them, and they will love it.
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I haven't read Sandman.
That out of the way, my biggest recommendation for Gaiman is either Neverwhere or Anansi Boys, with Coraline as a third. I hated American Gods (and I'm a big norse mythology fan) but I just could not get past the sexual content and language. To be fair, I didn't end up finishing the book because I was so bothered by content and not drawn in at all by the characters. If you are looking for a fun take on norse mythology, I'd recommend Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones instead.
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As long as we're recommending books and authors, my biggest find at Worldcon was Naomi Novik, author of a trilogy beginning with His Majesty's Dragon. It's a historical fantasy that essentially takes Master and Commander and adds dragons. Really excellent stuff.
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Arg! Don't listen to him! She's an agent of the Scalzi.
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Thanks for the recommendations.
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Just to get a reaction from EUOL -
I attended a meeting with Naomi Novik and was very impressed. I even found out how she got a Stephen King cover quote. Her book is quite entertaining.
Old Man's War is a good novel, and I was impressed with Mr. Scalzi himself.
Could it be that Fell and myself have become agents of a dual Scalzi-Novik conspiracy?
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"-- Meeting Brandon Sanderson and his sneaky friends who got me to sign a piece of LEGO (the explanation for that will come at a later point, when I get pictures). This year was Brandon's first chance at the Campbell; I hope he gets another next year. His work certainly deserves it."
something I found at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/
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John is not the only one waiting for pictures.
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Hmmm. Legos, eh? I am ... intrigued. Does this scrawled upon lego has something to do with this "Steveing" we keep hearing about??
Oh, and this was a cool excerpt from an earlier part of Scalzi's blog:
"Brandon Sanderson, the other first-year nominee, has made quite a splash."
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Legos...Scalzi...Steveing...I deny it all!!!!
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Hrm. That *almost* sounds like some unfortunate rich nerd's name.
Lego Scalzi Steveing. Poor bloke.
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I was actually going to suggest that this isn't a particularly "brandon" topic but more of a "books" topic. But you're just talking silly, so I dont' care any mroe.
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Scalziiii!!!!!!!
Also,
Novik!!!!!
Hum. Doesn't work as well.
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Is there a close-up pic of the Scalzi award? I can't see it very well in the pics I've seen.
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I sent the pics to EUOL last night, but here's the link:
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y45/RaisinFish/WorldCon06/
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Yes...I saw those pictures already. Thanks.
I'm interested in seeing a close-up of the award itself. It's hard to make out the details in those pictures.
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I sent the pics to EUOL last night, but here's the link:
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y45/RaisinFish/WorldCon06/
Hey, 'Lego' my Hugo! heh. I love it! Which boy scout thought to bring along some legos to create a geeky simulacrum of the coveted Hugo??
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downtown Disney has Lego-land that's where the Lego's were purchased. In order to find Scalzi I used my "Scalzi-Summoning" power which worked every day we were there...creepy...
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"Scalzi summoning" is fun--you can try it at home! Just say something bad about the man or his writing, something you would be embarassed for him to overhear, and magically he will appear before you! Or behind you, as is usually the case, so that you have time to finish putting your foot in your mouth before he says anything.
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Ooh boy. I've been unwittingly "summoning" Robert Jordan a lot lately, especially after reading his latest in the Wheel of Words. He's probably on a plane right now on his way here.