Hugo Awards 2021 - Update

I don't have a lot to report, since I've been busy "in real life" and haven't done as much reading/watching/playing as I wanted to do.

I've now read one of the novels and I'm working on a second. Along with the second novel, I also read some of the works in the Best Series category as well. In fact, I sat down yesterday and read four novellas in one day, then started the novel. I'm talking about the Murderbot series, which became a literal "can't put it down" for me. I was up until midnight last night reading Network Effect and haven't quite finished. I only stopped because my eyes refused to focus.

The other novel I read was The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, which was exactly as great as I was expecting. There was at least one moment I saw telegraphed a little early, but it was still a nice twist when it happened. I can tell the final ordering of the finalists is going to be a difficult decision already.

In the Video Game Category, I've played a little more of the two games I got free copies of. Both of them are interesting and have decent gameplay, but judging this category is going to be tough. The games are apples and oranges - like putting a fantasy novel up against a hard sci-fi novel up against an alternate universe novel - they are all very different in goals and gameplay and the like, so it will be a subjective decision for those who vote in the category. But then, aren't they all?

I also skimmed the art categories to give myself a first impression, but none of them jumped out and grabbed me in the "I would use this as my computer wallpaper" way. All were good, but I didn't see any that spoke directly to my heart (which has happened with Hugo finalist art before for me). So I'll give it a few more days/weeks then look again.

I'll keep chipping away at the finalists over the next few months (voting closes Nov 19th). I'll update regularly with general thoughts and hopefully with more on each category as I finish.