Last night I had the extreme pleasure of attending the Hugo Awards ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention and of losing two Hugos to two of the nicest, most deserving people in science fiction: my friend and teacher Nancy Kress (Best Novella for "The Erdmann Nexus") and my friend and copyfight comrade Neil Gaiman (Best Novel for "The Graveyard Book"). Indeed, this may have been the strongest Hugo ballot in a decade. The pre-award reception was practically awash in awesomesauce, and the winners were, to a one, absolute mensches and geniuses.
I've pasted in the winners below, and thrown in a link to the Hugo Awards administrators' traditional infoporn dump of stats on who nominated and voted for what. My undying thanks to all of you who put Little Brother and True Names on the ballot. I've also thrown in the text of my undelivered Little Brother acceptance speech, because I can, and because it thanks a lot of people who deserve it.
Congrats to Boing Boing reader Jeremy Kratz on wiinning the Hugo Awards logo design competition!
Once I've got a fatter network pipe (this post is going out over the VIA Rail on-train WiFi), I'll upload my Hugo photos, which includes a shot of Neal Stephenson's undelivered acceptance speech for Anathem, which was translated into Ur by Jeremy Bornstein!
Best Novel: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Best Novella:
"The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)Best Novelette:
"Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)Best Short Story:
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)John W. Campbell not-a-Hugo Award for Best New Writer: David Anthony Durham
Best Related Book:
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John
Scalzi (Subterranean Press)Best Graphic Story:
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones
Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne
Wright (Airship Entertainment)Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim
Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed
Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant
Enemy)Best Editor, Short Form:
Ellen DatlowBest Editor, Long Form:
David G. HartwellBest Professional Artist:
Donato GiancolaBest Semiprozine:
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. SegalBest Fan Writer:
Cheryl MorganBest Fanzine:
Electric Velocipede edited by John KlimaBest Fan Artist:
Frank Wu
This is one of the finest moments in my life, the fulfilment of a dream I've chased since I first put pen to paper and wrote a story, in 1977, when I was six years old. My friends know that I watch the Hugos like baseball fans watch the World Series, pounding my feet and shouting when the books and stories and writers and editors I love are recognized by the WorldCon members.
It's doubly rewarding that I receive this prize for Little Brother, a novel that is so near and dear to my heart, a novel that I tried to imbue with the hopes and fears of my comrades in the fight for technological freedom, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, ACLU, CIPPIC, and Open Rights Group to the thousands of hackers, librarians, activists, and dreamers whom I've had the fabulous privilege of working with over my career.
My sincere and everlasting thanks to my wife, Alice, who gracefully puts up with all the frustrations of living with a writer, even down to letting me get up at 5AM in our hotel room during our anniversary trip to Rome to finish this novel.
Also thanks to my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and to the people at Tor from Tom Doherty to Dot Lin and Irene Gallo and Pablo Defendini who made this book the success it is.
Especial thanks to my friend Scraps DeSelby, whose sensitive and intelligent copyediting immeasurably improved Little Brother.
Thanks to my literary agent Russell Galen and my foreign rights agents Danny and Heather Baror and my film agent Justin Manask for helping get this book into so many people.
And finally, thanks to all the readers, copyers and remixers who spread this book so quickly and so well all over the world. Without you, why bother with any of it?
The age-old dreams of universal access to all human knowledge and cheap group coordination to act on that knowledge are upon us. If we can keep the network free and open, no matter how many times the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse — child pornographers, pirates, criminals and terrorists — are presented as a pretext for shutting it down, then we can do anything.
