Views from Medina Road

I'm generally pleased with the results of the Hugo Awards. (As it turned out, the results were out on the web before I could even check my e-mail, very early last Saturday morning.) Especially for Robert Reed, an exceptional and under-recognized author, in spite of his prolificity, for a story that happened to be my favorite in the category anyway. I did manage to finish reading not only all the Hugo nominated novels before the results were announced, but also all the stories in the short fiction categories, the last few of which I only read last week. Reed was my favorite novella; and McDonald my favorite novelette (though Ryman was close). I'm afraid I also liked Reed in the short story category, though I liked Tim Pratt's story a lot too and am pleased to see him snatch the award from the obvious favorite Neil Gaiman (whose story I also liked). It was a decent ballot this year; the only fiction nomination that made my furrow my eyebrow being Mike Resnick's novelette, which struck as a completely competent story that could have appeared in a 1950s issue of Galaxy Magazine. (Really, was there anything in it that couldn't have been written 50 years ago?)

I'm gathering from a couple email tipsters that the Hugo boffins have submitted an amendment to establish the Best Website category as a permanent one, subject to some sort of constraint that eligible sites must archive contents in their original forms, so that voters can fairly judge the website etc etc. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out...

It's been HOT here in Southern California, especially in my neck of the woods, that is Woodland Hills, which had the honor of being singled out in an article last week in the Los Angeles Times about micro-climates, how the temperature can be 75 F along the coast at Malibu, and fully 40 degrees higher (yes, that would be 115 F) just 12 miles north in... Woodland Hills. (But it's -- really, it is -- a dry heat.)