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Showing posts from May, 2014

The 2014 Hugo Awards: The Hugo Voter Packet

As has become traditional, the Hugo award administrators have published the Hugo voters packet, which includes ebook copies of many of the nominated works and samplers from many of the nominated people.  This includes myself and the other nominees in the best fan writer category (as well as Strange Horizons , nominated in the best semiprozine category).  I was a little mortified to discover that while the contributions by my fellow fan writer nominees ran to less than twenty pages, mine was more than twice as long, but I guess that won't come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog.  (For those of you who are curious, the posts I selected for inclusion in the voter packet are my reviews of Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks , the first season of Elementary , Star Trek Into Darkness , and A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar .) If you're a member of LonCon 3, you can download the voter packet here with your membership number and PIN (which you should have received by em

Just Following Orders: Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD's First Season

Coulson: You're going to lose Loki: Why? Coulson: It's in your nature. Loki: Your heroes are scattered.  Your floating fortress falls from the sky.  Where is my disadvantage? Coulson: You lack conviction The Avengers , 2012 Sam Wilson: How do we know the good guys from the bad guys? Captain America: If they're shooting at you, they're bad. Captain America: The Winter Soldier , 2014 What a long, strange trip it's been this year for Marvel's Agents of SHIELD .  Starting the TV season as one of the fall's most hyped and anticipated new shows, the expansion of the wildly successful Marvel cinematic universe into television, it quickly became one of the year's most beleaguered new series.  As the show hemorrhaged viewers exasperated with its tedious storytelling and boring characters, SHIELD 's producers and stars seemed determined to make a bad situation worse , accusing disappointed viewers of not being "real" SF fans, and pr