Hugos Where?

And who says that Americans don't do irony?

Reflecting on the 2015 Hugo Awards over the course of the last week I see that my conclusion that ninety percent of what I'll read will never win a Hugo award remains true (that's meant to be a joke or at least like a joke, if not very funny).  While I sympathize with the Anti-Puppies slate, I do think such things are a very blunt tool, which may produce the desired results, but result in unintended consequences.  As an aside, what appears to be a serious analysis of the numbers can be found here.  My view remains pretty much the same, as I prefer de-escalation of conflicts rather than escalation.  Arguably research and history supports the former rather than the latter.

From my perspective I was disappointed that the Edge of Tomorrow aka Live. Die. Repeat didn't win the Hugo for best film.  I thought it was by far the best SF movie of the year, though I would acknowledge in my heart that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was more likely to win.  I was surprised to see Guardians of the Galaxy win, given it was a Sad Puppy slate nominee.  What this means is anyone's guess.  Mine would be that no one who is heavily invested in the Worldcon and the Hugos has any real interest in films, or people figure that the studios don't care if a film wins the Hugo.  Take your pick.

I was saddened to see my friend Ken Burnside's work The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF getting burnt by the Anti-Puppy slate.  Likewise the editors going down too, but recognize that YMMV, and probably does where this is concerned.

However, Orphan Black: By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried, winning a Hugo was nice.  I thought the series should have won a Hugo last year, so the unintended consequences of the Sad Puppies resulting in an award for this show was a welcome outcome.

The only other thing I have to say is that as a British person I find some of the things I'm reading in the aftermath rather puzzling.  For instance, the stuff being said about Terry Pratchett that only make sense if you think that the world revolves around America, which for me shows how much the Worldcon is at heart an American institution rather than something representing World SF.

The best thing I've read about what came out of this whole debacle is George R. R. Martin's Hugo Losers party.  Rock on George.  Him and Eric Flint, have impressed me throughout by just being plain professional.

A Week in Provence

We've just got back from our first holiday abroad in nine years.  We had a wonderful time paddling in the swimming pool, catching some rays and becoming acquainted with new friends – seen above.  Susan is still working on the other pictures she took, and I imagine will post them on Facebook in due course.

We traveled by Eurostar there and back, managing to avoid any unpleasantness with people waving Kalashnikov's around.  Despite having comfortable seats, and not doing much, apart from reading, eating and drinking, the journey was quite tiring.  As you can imagine I had a lot of emails to catch up with when we got back, having not logged onto a computer for ten days.

Provence, apart from the first day's thunderstorm, was sunny.   I even caught the sun a bit.  Since our return to London we've had unpredictable weather, with sun one day, rain the next.  Such is the joy of living in Britain.

In the Groove Five by Five

The title says it all; though hopefully I won't suffer the fate of the Colonial Marines.  I"m back from a sunny weekend in Brighton having caught the sun and everything to prove it.  We went down to celebrate my best friend Alix's birthday, which by good fortune or happenstance is the same day as my partner's.  So lots of celebrations and drinking all round – Pimm's was quaffed in large volumes.  Also got to see friends, and my godson and his sister.  So all good.

On the Sunday Alix gave me beta reader's feedback on my novel, which was most appreciated as she had put an awful lot of hard work into doing it.  Very critical, but managing to be also very constructive, leaving me feeling more confident in myself.  I've been having a lot of doubts about my ability to write an interesting story over recent months, and the discussion we had put things into perspective.

So, sitting next to me is a print out of Bad Dog with detail corrections, questions and annotations for me to work through.  I feel if this is not the end, then it must surely be the beginning of the end?

Currently I'm about halfway through redoing all the call signs and phonetic shorthand revisions, having edited 43,969 words this week.  My plan is to finish this round of edits first and then start working on incorporating Alix's edits afterwards.  So I'm going to be a very busy person indeed.

So yee-haw, and see you all on the other side.

Pluto & Reflections – WIP: 1st Aug 2015

If Pluto remained classified as a planet then these other eight worlds would have to be planets too, and there could be another thirty or forty worlds as yet undiscovered.

The last week has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride for me.  I started off at the bottom in the pit of despair (cue Mel Smith doing raspy voice) of facing another week of editing Strike Dog.  As I write this I record that I managed to edit 29,294 words, from eleven chapters, and managed to my usual couple of blogs that came to just under 700 words.  So the week ends on a high.  What a rush.  Could have done without the low though.

I did get a bit distracted by having some pieces of the puzzle of my fourth novel in the Bad Dog series click into place.  So I spent some time making notes and pulling information from my universe bible into what had been mostly a blank Scrivener document with the title Red Dogs.  As always I should add that these are working titles, who knows what the stories will be called when/if published?

Moving on I want to wade into the debate on whether Pluto is a planet or not.

I'm old, so for me Pluto has been a planet all my life and it therefore feels wrong to reclassify it as a dwarf-planet or Plutoid/Plutinoid.  However, when one looks at the evidence behind the decision to do so I can see why it was done.  The first picture explains where we are and what we know about Trans-Neptunian worlds.

However, what I find most intriguing, and an order of magnitude more important than the arguments over Pluto's status as a planet is shown in the picture above.  Pluto forms a binary system with Charon.  Unlike the Earth and Luna, where the orbit that both rotate around lies within the diameter of our planet.  Whereas the Pluto and Charon orbit around a barycenter with the other moons making Pluto unique within our Solar system.

This discovery I think more than makes up for any sentimental reasons for calling Pluto a planet.  Instead it is its own dwarf-binary system.  How awesome is that?