I’m not even going to make excuses for this week’s lack of writing productivity. I did do some other stuff, though, like cooking some meals, getting my daughter all ready for 8th grade, baking some things, playing No Man’s Sky and finally watching Stranger Things. I’ve also been trying to get through a little more of my summer reading list while trying to figure out my fall plan, so I’ve been reading a good bit. I even recorded a little bit for a Cabbages and Kings podcast about this year’s Clarke Award shortlist, where I talk a little about why I loved The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet so much. I feel as if I’ve been busy, just not writing. I didn’t even get started on this until late Sunday and only then because our planned evening excursion to see the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream outdoors was aborted due to a storm.

Last weekend, of course, was this year’s Hugo Awards ceremony at MidAmeriCon, which I didn’t get to attend. I did watch the live stream of the actual event, however, and it was nice to see Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies lose again (in pretty much every conceivable way, to be honest). What I was struck by, personally, was how different the atmosphere seemed this time around. Last year, the Puppies and their slates managed to cast a pall around the whole proceeding, and numerous No Awards didn’t do much to alleviate things. This year, most people seemed to be having fun, and there were only two No Awards among a whole bunch of deserving winners.

Cora Buhlert’s Hugo posts are worth checking out if you want the full scoop, as she does a great job of collecting all the various posts on these things.

The longlists and votecounts for this year’s Hugos were released right after the ceremony.

Chaos Horizon did some immediate analysis that suggests that the Puppies may be losing interest in this game.

Almost Diamonds has a de-Puppied shortlist.

Due to the Puppies once again interfering with the real awards, George R.R. Martin once again handed out Alfies at the Hugo losers’ party.

N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season took home the award for Best Novel, which it richly deserves. I was genuinely surprised to see it win against Uprooted, which has won pretty much every other award there is, and the popular Seveneves and well-liked Ancillary Mercy, but it was definitely my top vote.

Michi Trota of Uncanny Magazine became the first Filipina to win a Hugo, and her acceptance speech was wonderful.

At Book Riot, Troy L. Wiggins explains why N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo wins are a victory for black readers.

Chuck Tingle dealt with his Hugo loss exactly how one could expect:

And Tor.com takes a look at what this year’s winners will be working on next.

There’s still nine more days on the Hath No Fury Kickstarter campaign, and they’re well into stretch goals at this point. This is shaping up to be an excellent anthology, and $10 gets you a digital copy of it.

The project was featured this week at Geeks of Doom, and editors Melanie Meadors and J.M. Martin also appeared on the A Kind Voice podcast to talk about it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmmartin/hath-no-fury-an-anthology-where-women-take-the-lea

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time won the Clarke Award.

Lady Business has introduced a new feature, Raiders of the Lost ARC, which kicks off with Courtney Schafer sharing some underappreciated novels of the 1980s.

Maria Dahvana Headley and Victor LaValle talked Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the book’s 200th anniversary.

Malka Older was on Midnight in Karachi, and I cannot wait til November’s elections to be over so I can maybe start reading Infomocracy.

Brain Pickings dug up a recording of Neil Gaiman reading “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury.”

I loved Effie Seiberg’s short “Thundergod in Therapy” when I read it months ago, so I was pleased to see it on Podcastle this week.

Feminist Fiction and Tor.com both had posts on rape in fantasy this week. The general message, as always, is do better.

From LitHub, “There Is No Secret to Writing People Who Don’t Look Like You” has been going viral this week. It’s well worth a read for any writing types.

Bitch Media talked about the limits of celebrity feminism. Turns out celebrity feminists have been plain old fallible humans all along.

This Pornokitsch review of No Man’s Sky manages to touch on pretty much everything that I find so wonderfully enchanting about the game.

Even if you hated Ghostbusters, you have to admit that its VFX were excellent:

I will have more thoughts on Stranger Things coming out this week, but in the meantime I’m just glad I’m not the only one who really fell in love with Barb: