One more Hugo Nominees Thought

...now that I've finished Learning the World:

Neil Gaiman was robbed. [Twice, actually, since Mirrormask didn't get nominated either.]

Not that Learning the World (and, for that matter, Old Man's War) were remotely bad books; this was a very strong year in general. It's just that Anansi Boys was without doubt better than either of those and in close competition with the rest of the field.

Man, those Hugo Nominators sure don't like comedy, do they? (To Say Nothing of the Dog is the only comedic book ever to win one, and one of the few ever to be nomiated. Douglas Adams never got a best novel nomination.)

On Learning the World: An interesting book, certainly. The ending struck me as a bit odd, leading me to wonder if it's the naivety of the characters or the author at play here: a universe selected for cosmogenic star-drives isn't particularly likely to have bunches and bunches of intelligent life coming into being at the same time; all it really needs is one, maybe one per galaxy. The universes where life evolves intelligence at roughly the same time in fairly close, cosmically speaking, proximity, is one that's been selected for (even more efficiently?) cosmogenic weapons.