Star Wars was inescapable in fandom. At the 1981 Worldcon, Paul Cullen dressed up as Luke Skywalker. (Image via Fanac.org) This blog post is the twenty fourth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here. The sequel to Star Wars was a cultural juggernaut within fandom, anticipated with such intensity that whole issues of fanzines were dedicated to parsing out casting rumours and speculating about the plot. Most contemporaneous fan reviews hold up well today: “This movie moves so fast, is filled with ..read more

The editors of this fanzine are grateful for the Hugo nomination. Thanks to the Scots Language Centre, we were able to have our best blog posts of 2023 translated into Scots, which is an Indigenous language of Scotland, is recognized by the Scottish government, and which UNESCO has classed as a vulnerable language. According to the most recent census, 30 per cent of the Scottish population speak Scots (a total of 1,541,693 people). Given that this Worldcon is taking place in Scotland, it is important to recognize that it is a country that has a rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and that ..read more

Canadian media theorist an weel-kent cultural icon Marshall McLuhan aince descrived art as “a distant early warning system that can always be relied upon to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” Babel – the split new novel fae Astounding Award winner R.F.Kuang – seems tae fit this defineetion. It micht be the maist McLunan-like leewark ever wrutten an-aw. (Eemage bi gait o Goodreads)  Set in 1830s Ingland, Babel follaes a Cantonee orphant cryed Robin Swift that’s taen on tae wirk for Oxfuird’s depairtment for owersettins, in a warld whaur the owersettin o ..read more

This blog post is a pairt o the Hugo Book Club Blog’s picture-hoose club, that’s been wirkin year bi year throu aw the Hugo-finalist big screen an televeesion follae-ups. In the early 1970s, NBC executive Paul L. Klein set oot hoo the muckle netwarks makkit televeesion programming. The three American netwarks at the croun o the causay in thae days (ABC, CBS an NBC) held that fowk didna watch parteeclar programmes, but raither televeesion jist, an sae the successfae ettle wisna tae mak heich-quality shaws, but jist tae mak shaws that scunnert the least nummer o TV watchers intae chengin sides ..read more

Chan Davis (1929-2022) wis weel kent tae fans o lee-science in the 1940s an 1950s. He wis a fanzine editor, an early filker, kent for his daffin at Worldcon, an a ongauin screivar wi Astounding Science Fiction. But the publict in general is mair likely tae mind o him as a mathematician…an as a political presonar. Gien his jotters fae the Versity o Michigan in 1954, an the jyle for a saxmonth in 1960, on chairges o contemption o the Congress brocht bi the Hoose Comatee anent Unamerican Haunling, Davis haes lang wantit for the kind o vizzie that screivar Dr Steve Batterson plenishes throu his ..read more

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy makes light of universal translation, providing the protagonist with a fish that lives in his ear and translates. (Image via BBC) In the fourth season of the British science fiction comedy Red Dwarf, starship captain Arnold Rimmer orders that greetings be broadcast in all known languages — “including Welsh.” The joke highlights the sometimes ambivalent relationship that science fiction has with the reality of linguistic diversity. More than 3,000 languages on the planet have fewer than 1,000 living speakers and are at risk of disappearing fo ..read more

If science fiction has siblings, one of them would be the labour union movement. Both are children of the We're pleased to be guest editing the fanzine Journey Planet. industrial revolution, when technological progress was creating new types of work and new types of workers, forcing people to confront what that meant. Both are focused on the impacts of change and how we adapt. From William Morris' News From Nowhere to Ursula K. le Guin's The Dispossessed, the genre has played with what work means and how humans collaborate in times of change. We invite people to explore the (sometime ..read more

Even if you haven't read anything that Vernor Vinge wrote, you've likely read something that was inspired by his work. He was a titan in his field and his work spoke to fans around the globe. This blog would likely not exist without Vernor Vinge’s novel A Deepness In The Sky. (Photo by Olav Rokne) When he died yesterday, his influence could be found in almost every corner of science fiction. Vinge began writing science fiction when he was a teenager, penning the story “Bookworm Run!” while a senior in high school in 1962. It’s a story that appeared in print four years later, about ..read more

 The following list will be updated over the next few months as we read, watch, and listen to Hugo-eligible works for 2025. These are not necessarily what we plan to nominate, but rather works that at least one member of the Edmonton Hugo Book Club has enjoyed and believes to be worth consideration. We appreciate any additional suggestions in the comments. Updated on February 4, 2024  Items marked with a “*” are ones for which there was significant disagreement within the book club.  Novel Womb City — Tlotlo Tsamaase Novella The Siege of Burning Grass — Premee Mohamed Novele ..read more

There’s a graveyard in the publishing world that’s full of authorized sequels and companion novels to famous works. Neither Scarlett nor Rhett Butler’s People are talked about decades following their release or in as fond terms as Gone With The Wind. Return to Wuthering Heights seems to have existed just to cash in on Emily Brontë’s original. The less said about the sequel to Catcher In The Rye, the better. (Image via Goodreads) In that context, it seems foolhardy for an author to try and tackle a novel like George Orwell’s 1984, a book that is often ranked among the most important ..read more