Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Packet Panic

Finished downloading and opened the various zip files to see what I had for the Hugo finalists.

And I'm beginning to stop panicking that I only have until July 15th to finish reading.

Well, no, I'm still panicking, but I'm at least calmly panicking.

If my counting is correct, the packet includes 25 full novels. Twenty-five. And that's not all the novels - one of the finalists for best novel was not in the packet and most of the best series didn't include all the novels in the series. There's also six full graphic novels. And just a TON of other stuff.

So after downloading and looking at everything I just gibbered to myself for awhile to try to figure out how I'm going to tackle this. I guess I'll continue reviewing most works on the blog with the Hugos 2017 Reviews tag. I only managed to post five reviews before the packet came out, but there's a few more I can get together quickly - I have been doing more reading the last week of stories that were already available for free. I'll continue to do individual reviews for most of the fiction. The art categories I will probably do as full category posts. I just spent a lot of time looking at the Fan Artists packet and have a decent idea how I'm going to vote, but I want to write it out so I can rethink everything and make sure I'm voting the way I really want to.

My biggest worry is the Best Novel category, which is going to be hard to get through in time. My second biggest worry is the Best Series category, which is going to be impossible to read in time, so I'm less worried about it. The editor categories will depend entirely on what I find in the packet, as will the 'zine categories.

All I know is that this is a freakin' huge Hugo packet. I don't recall the last couple being this big. And I want to do justice to all the finalists who made the ballot fairly.

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