Our Imposter Syndrome cancels out our Dunning-Kruger

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

8 Comments

  1. emily
    July 18, 2022 @ 1:56 pm

    A Closed and Common Orbit was absolutely the best book of the series. This was a pleasant enough finale but also a clear sign that yeah, we’re done here, we should move on. IMO. It would feel wrong to me for this one to get a Best Novel nod (And it already has a Best Series.)

    I’m not playing the hugos game this year but the only other person in my orbit that I’ve seen post a vote list was quite similar to yours, only flipping 4 and 5.

    Reply

    • Elizabeth Sandifer
      July 18, 2022 @ 2:07 pm

      There’s still plenty to debate about the merits of Best Series, but it sure is nice as a “whoops your books all missed the top prize” fix. (I bet Locked Tomb will snag one, for instance.)

      Reply

  2. Camestros Felapton
    July 18, 2022 @ 4:46 pm

    I think She Who Became the Sun has a reasonable chance of winning but is likely to be beaten by Light From Uncommon Stars. I’d expected Light From Uncommon Stars to be more twee given some of the reviews and synopsis but there’s an awful lot going on in that book – not all of which works but which pushes it further from sweet weird and more into just weird (in a good way).

    Reply

  3. Austin Loomis
    July 18, 2022 @ 5:48 pm

    I suspect this widespread queer infantilism is no small part of where the corrosive “no kink at pride” and “anti” discourse comes from.

    I never thought of that, and I’m still not sure what I think of it, but I can see it, and I’ve dropped it on the A Thing of Vikings discord to find out if it looks likely to them. (Ironic, as it’s for a fic that drops a children’s cartoon, a Dreamworks cartoon no less, into a more or less “real” history and watches the butterflies go wild.)

    Reply

    • Rich
      July 18, 2022 @ 7:38 pm

      It is truly an embarrassment that “She Who Became the Sun” is on the ballot.
      It’s a fine historical novel.
      But the Hugo’s is an award for speculative fiction. It should go to a Speculative fiction story.

      Reply

      • Camestros Felapton
        July 18, 2022 @ 8:02 pm

        Alternate History is a long-standing sub-genre in speculative fiction even if we discount the (light) fantastical elements in “She Who Became the Sun”. If “The Man in the High Castle Counts” then why doesn’t “She Who Became the Sun”?

        Reply

        • taiey
          July 18, 2022 @ 9:01 pm

          also a bunch of the characters have magic powers

          Reply

      • Elizabeth Sandifer
        July 18, 2022 @ 8:42 pm

        I disagree completely. I think the specfic elements are actually quite central to the book, even if the reason why they’re central doesn’t snap into place until very late in the book. On a basic level, the fact that the Mandate of Heaven is a real and literal thing is very important to the book. But more to the point, the explanation of the Mandate of Heaven that the Prince of Radiance gives—the one about seeing the pattern of the world—is absolutely central to who Zhu is as a person, even if the mechanic isn’t explained until the end.

        You probably could rebrand the book as literary fiction and still have it succeed, but it’s absolutely a fantasy novel, and that matters to it.

        Reply

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