2013 HUGOS: Scalzi's Redshirts Wins Best Novel

In a not too surprising result, John Scalzi's comedic sci-fi novel Redshirts won the Award for Best Novel at the 2013 Hugo Awards at Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas this weekend. I had blogged about the nominations list when they were announced in April and lamented that his book was the only title I had even heard of. I didn't say then but I still think that James S.A. Corey's Caliban's War was the best science fiction book released in 2012. On the strength of the fact that all three of her books in her "Newsflesh" series have been nominated, I picked up Mira Grant's Feed and read it in electronic form. It was fine but I don't feel the desire to finish the series.

Anyway, Scalzi is very well-known in the sci-fi community and relatively prolific. He just finished serving a term as President of the Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA), which runs the Hugo's, so it is somewhat fitting that he won. As he points out in his very popular blog, Whatever, he was also entering Susan Lucci category because even though he had previously won 2 Hugo awards, he was already at 0 for 6 in nominations in the fiction categories. including 3 nominations for Best Novel (Old Man's War, The Last Colony, Zoe's War). Generally his work is a bit too "light" for my taste but Old Man's War is a brilliant concept, reasonably well-executed and his books do bring something rare to science fiction, which is humor. I may just check out Redshirts (in paperback) sometime soon.