(The eagle-eyed will spot that this photo has nothing to do with the Hugo Awards. But I think it’s pretty. It’s the sort of photograph that causes my husband to sigh and say, “Oh, another arty one.” He doesn’t like small points of focus. I think they’re fabulous.)

I made up my mind to go to AussieCon4 this year, bought my membership, bought my flights to Melbourne, and then gleefully downloaded the electronic Hugo packet – copies of most of the works nominated for the Hugo Awards this year. The awards are presented at AussieCon and members are eligible to vote, so the idea of the packet is that you have access to all the works so you can make an informed vote. I am frantically reading through lots of glorious stories so I’m ready to vote by the end of July – I already know there’s going to be a lot of tough decisions in each category.

I had already read some of the short stories/novelettes (I listened to Eugie Foster’s Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast on Escape Pod, which was fantastic), and one of the novels (Robert Sawyer’s Wake), so I have a bit of a head start.

I’ve read all of the novelettes now, and I really enjoyed quite a few of them, including Nicola Griffith’s It Takes Two and Eugie Foster’s story. I’ve also read one of the novellas, The Women of Nell Gwynne’s by Kage Baker, which I did like but didn’t feel there was much to it (in a way that I can’t really articulate better than that).

I’m listening to The City & The City by China Mieville at the moment, and am halfway through reading Vishnu at the Cat Circus by Ian McDonald. Next I think I want to try a few of the graphic novels, but haven’t figured out a comfortable way of reading PDFs. Perhaps there’s any easy way to put them on my iPod.