Open Discussion — What's worth considering for the ballot in 2027?

The following list will be updated over the next few months as we read, watch, and listen to Hugo-eligible works for 2027. These are not necessarily what we plan to nominate, but rather works that at we enjoyed and believe to be worth consideration. We appreciate any additional suggestions in the comments.

Updated on March 27, 2026

Novel
The Subtle Art of Folding Space - John Chu

Sublimation - Isabel J. Kim

Ode to the Half-Broken - Suzanne Palmer

Novella

Obstetrix - Naomi Kritzer

Short Story

The River Speaks My Name by Ocoxōchitl la Coyota

Best Poetry

The Person Who Reminds the Other Person to Cast a Spell by Bogi Takács

Semiprozine

Strange Horizons

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 

"Matinee" (Wonder Man S01E01) - Written by Andrew Guest

"The Hedge Knight" (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms S01E01) - Written by Ira Parker based on the work of George R.R. Martin

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) ,

Small Prophets (BBC)

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die - written by Matthew Robinson and directed by Gore Verbinski

Best Editor - Long Form

Jenni Hill (Orbit Books UK)

Best Editor - Short Form

Scott H. Andrews

Emily Hockaday
Shingai Njeri Kagunda & Eleanor R. Wood

Fan Writer

Jacqueline Nyathi

Arturo Serrano
Brian Collins

Alasdair Stuart

Jason Sanford
Roseanna Pendlebury

Joachim Boaz

Runalong Womble

Alex Brown
Trish Matson

Fanzine

Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog

Journey Planet

Ancillary Review Of Books

Science Fiction Ruminations

Fancast

Hugos There

If This Goes On, Don't Panic

Skiffy and Fanty

Meal of Thorns

Fear of a Melmac Planet

In his Hugo-winning 1998 personal history of science fiction The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, Thomas M. Disch wrote “America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend to believe."

This observation rings troublingly true when it comes to immigrants and immigration. Science fiction has a long history of offering tales of lonely, lost aliens who build a new life for themselves on Earth and serve as thinly-veiled metaphors for foreign nationals who arrive at US borders.

Indeed, the lies some Americans tell about immigrants to their country can be seen writ large in their science fiction.

The sitcom Aliens in the Family featured an early
cameo by future star James Van Der Beek, who
ends up eaten by the family pet.
(Image via muppetwiki) 

There have been literally hundreds of published or performed stories about aliens lost on Earth, most of which serve as a parable about immigration in some way. Everything from The Cat From Outer Space, to the sitcom Aliens In The Family offers uncomfortable subtext about those uprooting themselves in search of a better life.

The trope has its origins in the late 1800s, with Thomas Blot’s The Man From Mars: His Morals, Politics and Religion, an odd little work that offers anecdotes about the strange customs of a highly advanced civilization. But the alien travellers of early utopian novels were generally used as a didactic tool to tell the reader what the “ideal” human society might look like. Just as importantly, these alien visitors were not planning to stay on Earth, and thus were portrayed as nonthreatening, long-term, to the country’s citizens.

Although not technically an alien, Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1963 Hugo winner Stranger in a Strange Land, was raised in a culture with different norms than those of contemporaneous Americans. Although some of the gender representation in the novel is highly questionable, the depiction of immigration is far more progressive than one might expect. Smith arrives on Earth, is relatively quick to understand local customs, and then offers valuable insights gained from his bi-cultural experiences.

Published just two years later, Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell To Earth also presents a parable about the threat of immigration, but interestingly the warning is about the danger to the immigrant. The novel portrays alien Thomas Jerome Newton as losing his culture, losing his way, and being utterly assimilated into a culture that consumes him. Likewise, Zenna Henderson’s “The People” stories, which feature a group of extra-terrestrial refugees living in an Anabaptist commune in Pennsylvania puts the focus on the difficulties these refugees face in their interactions with their Anglo-Saxon neighbors.

Every sitcom alien has a favourite
weird food. My Favourite Martian
ate gold.
(Image via moriareviews.com)

In more mainstream media, however, there are more troubling works. My Favourite Martian, which ran from 1963-1966, features a stranded extraterrestrial living in Los Angeles. The visitor, named Tim, leans into tropes that would become familiar in such sitcoms; weird foreign food, strange customs, and lack of understanding of normative US cultural practices of the era. Moreover, the series often features the extraterrestrial character only proving his worth through magical powers; leaning into the idea that a newcomer must go above and beyond to justify their presence and prove their harmlessness, or risk erasure.

Since the late 1970s, these stories have taken on a darker tone that aligns with right-wing narratives about migrants.

Depicting a lone alien stuck in Boulder, Colorado, the television series Mork and Mindy was one of the highest-rated comedies of the late 1970s. Featuring the late Robin Williams as the titular alien Mork from the planet Ork, much of the humour was derived from a sense of cultural dislocation. Although the series is gentler in its implicit xenophobia, it still depicts Mork the migrant as having less work ethic than his US counterparts, an inability to work well with authority figures, and difficulty understanding everyday life. It’s worth noting that Mork’s obsession with eggs may have been inspired by increased levels of migration from Mexico and Japan — those being the two countries on Earth whose citizens eat the most eggs per capita.

Another example of this type of narrative is The Brother from Another Planet, John Sayles’ 1984 cult classic about a Black-presenting alien fleeing from his erstwhile enslavers. Although the titular Brother is more of a refugee metaphor than an economic migrant like many of the others discussed here, the alien is presented as bringing value to the American community in which he finds refuge. Portrayed with empathy by Joe Morton, the alien Brother does not speak the language of his adoptive home, but the movie uses fewer problematic tropes than many contemporary works.

In the 1980s, prompted in part by the success of Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, there was a wave of stories about lost aliens on Earth. Given that it was a decade in which right-wing politicians weaponized economic uncertainty, job competition, and cultural change to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment, it is no surprise that many of these narratives display some degree of xenophobia.

(Image via alftv.com)

The television series ALF (an abbreviation of “Alien Life Form”) ran on NBC for four seasons from 1986 to 1990, with an additional television movie airing in 1996. Featuring an alien named Gordon Shumway from a planet named Melmac whose spacecraft crashes in California, the series focuses on the cultural clashes between Shumway and the family he ends up living with. Shumway becomes a safe proxy for otherness, allowing the show to make coded racist jokes without confronting prejudice directly. The alien is often depicted as lacking privacy boundaries, having a weird odour, and not always sharing American values — comedy that echoed the anti-immigrant talking points of xenophobic politicians like Jesse Helms. Notably, the alien’s culinary preference for eating peoples’ pets has a direct analogue in recent right-wing smear campaigns against immigrants in the Midwest United States. Much of the series’ framing normalizes exclusion while softening its impact through sitcom conventions.

It is worth noting however, that ALF does engage with the anxiety that many undocumented migrants face around law enforcement. A running theme within the series is that of a shadowy and malevolent government agency tasked with rounding up aliens and confining them in undisclosed locations under harsh conditions without benefit of due process. This fictional agency may have predated the real-world ICE, but it still resonates today.

As a story about an illegal migrant to the United States, the currently-airing series Resident Alien’s premise is steeped in xenophobia. The alien in question, Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk) is sent to Earth to destroy all human life. Although the protagonist eventually rejects his original mission, this set-up still mirrors the reprehensible claims made by pundits that all or most immigrants hide harmful intentions. This is a propaganda-based narrative that clearly continues to resonate in too many countries. Fans of the show will defend the character of Vanderspeigle, noting that he ends up trying to assimilate to the broader American culture, but the fact that he is the only non-aggressive member of his species brings to mind the old racist trope of calling someone “one of the good ones.” Interestingly, Resident Alien creator Chris Sheridan is himself an immigrant, having been born in the Philippines before moving to the United States as a child.

Much has been made in critical analysis of science fiction of the relationship between the word Robot, derived as it is from the Czech word robota — literally forced labour. But the etymology of the word “Alien” is equally revelatory about the subtext inherent in our science fiction. The word came to English from Latin (by way of French), based on the possessive form of the word alius, literally meaning “other.” It seems fitting, then, that the majority of such stories connote the othering of migrants.

Science fiction does not just echo cultural attitudes toward migration, it helps to construct and normalize them, wrapping suspicion and exclusion in the comforting guise of entertainment. If, as Disch suggests, the genre is uniquely suited to telling the lies Americans prefer to believe, then serious questions should be asked about what the genre suggests about those who come to this planet in search of a better life. We might also question why stories about successful and mutually beneficial migration, celebrating diversity and inclusion, seem less likely to be published and performed.

The Compromise Candidate (Hugo Cinema 1990)

This blog post is the thirty-third in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

The 48th World Science Fiction Convention held in The Hague, Netherlands was the most international Worldcon to date. Fans arrived from 31 countries, flying in from five different continents. The United States still represented the largest number of attendees (1,618 fans from the USA), but as far as we can tell this was the first time that they were not an outright majority at the convention.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen cost 
almost $50 million to make and earned
only eight million. It's chaotic, and far from 
Terry Gilliam's best work.
(Image via Variety)

There had been a sense in 1990 that the world had changed, and that science fiction was undergoing a dramatic shift in popularity. As August approached, registrants began to wonder whether they would be joined by fans from the former Soviet Union, since the Berlin Wall had fallen and more people would have the freedom to travel within Europe. In the end there were at least 21 fans at the convention from former Soviet republics.

Fans from the Anglosphere greeted the prospect of a more international Worldcon with optimism and positivity. In the lead up to the convention, Forrest J. Ackerman noted that, “this is truly an international gathering,” adding that he hoped to hear people in the hallways speaking Japanese, Russian, Finnish, and Hungarian. New York-based conrunner Neil Belsky, who had helped bring the con to the Netherlands, proclaimed that the convention’s attendees proved that the genre was transcending borders of language or culture. For example, there were discussions at the business meeting about creating a Hugo category for translated works. It’s worth noting that these reactions were markedly different from the xenophobia that had greeted the 1970 Worldcon in Germany, which had prompted a xenophobic backlash that had briefly excluded all non-English-language works from the Hugos.

With this evident uptick in interest from outside the United States, there was speculation that the Hugo ballot might see more works by international authors. But as per usual, category after category was dominated by American authors and fans, and just as predictably there was nobody from the winning movie on-hand to accept the award for best dramatic presentation.

Best Dramatic Presentation offered a smorgasbord of big-budget American Hollywood fare. The two highest-grossing movies of the year, Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had earned nods. Academy Award Best Picture nominee Field of Dreams was on the ballot, as was James Cameron’s underwater alien movie, The Abyss. Rounding out the list was box office disaster, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

It’s a mostly credible shortlist, with few real omissions. We might argue that Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has had a greater cultural impact than a t least one movie on the shortlist. And writing in Critical Wave, Brian Aldiss complained that Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi’s comedy-drama My 20th Century deserved consideration, “especially after it won the Cannes Film Festival award.” Back To The Future 2, The Little Mermaid, and The Navigator all narrowly missed the shortlist. Critically ridiculed, The Final Frontier became the only Star Trek movie featuring the original cast not to earn a Hugo nod.

Terry Gilliam's filmmaking shows clear inspiration
from the work of previous Hugo-finalist Karel Zeman.
(Image via IMDB.)

Overall, we felt like the shortlist provides a fair representation of the year’s science fiction and fantasy cinema. And for perhaps only the second meeting of our cinema club, most members remember seeing many of these films in a theatre. The one movie that many of us felt was not worthy of nomination was Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The long-winded movie introduces audiences to an aging fabulist who entertains children by recounting unbelievable exploits such as journeys to the Moon, getting swallowed by a sea monster, and being dragged across war-torn Europe with eccentric companions. Although the movie has moments that work, Gilliam’s self-indulgent flaws as a filmmaker are magnified by the chaos of the plot. Kim Newman of the fanzine Vector dismissed The Adventures of Baron Munchausen as an inconsistent and frustrating movie, and made an apt observation that the work owed an enormous debt to Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman. The gender representation is dreadful, as every woman in the movie is either a goddess, a temptress, or someone to be rescued. One can see the seeds of Gilliam’s more recent political statements in his earlier work.

Almost equally chaotic and stylized — but far more successful — was Tim Burton’s Batman. The highest-grossing movie of the year brought the comic book character to the big screen for the first time in almost 30 years. It succeeded largely on the charisma of its stars, a superb soundtrack, the exuberant production design, and on general vibes. But the plot — involving poisoned beauty products and some kind of city held hostage — is meandering and slightly confusing. However, this didn’t prevent the movie from hitting the cultural zeitgeist at the right moment, and its presence in both fandom and among the broader public was inescapable.

The only old-school science fiction movie on the shortlist this year may have been James Cameron’s The Abyss. Following the crew of an underwater mining operation who encounter alien life in the deepest parts of the ocean, it pits jingoistic militarism against American labourers and scientists. Some themes of the movie have aged well, but the gender politics surrounding the blue-collar protagonist Virgil (Ed Harris) and his ex-wife oceanographer Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) are regressive at best. The fact that director James Cameron was in the middle of a divorce while making the movie is fairly evident. Contemporaneous reviews of the movie are unforgiving. David Ansen in Newsweek panned James Cameron’s underwater adventure: “The Abyss is pretty damn silly — a portentous deux ex machina that leaves too many questions unanswered and evokes too many other films.”

Field of Dreams may be the most Baby Boomer-coded
movie ever made, weaving in dozens of signposts
to historical events of particular significance to
those born in the USA between 1945 and 1960, including
a book banning scene in an elementary school.
It’s like someone tried to adapt Billy Joel’s
We Didn’t Start The Fire into a feature-length movie.
(Image via Film89.co.uk)

Based on a novel by Edmontonian W.P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams is an unusual inclusion on the Hugo Award shortlist — and one that was not without controversy. Following a farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) who is guided by unseen voices that tell him to build a baseball diamond in his corn field, it’s a saccharine road trip through mystical Americana culminating in the resurrection of famous baseball players. At times, the corniness isn’t contained to the farming. Some contemporaneous fans seemed to think that it was “bereft of internal consistency, not science fiction, not a Hugo movie,” while others argued that the magical realism of the story made it award worthy. In his review, SFF author John Varley wrote, “Who is the voice? Shit, I dunno. I don’t care. There are so many possible interpretations of the impossible events, and the movie makes no attempt to favor any of them.” For all this, the movie remains intensely likeable and charming, though many of our cinema-watching group agreed that it did not belong on the Hugo ballot.

The final movie on the shortlist was the capstone of the Indiana Jones franchise: The Last Crusade. In this third outing for the swashbuckler, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) teams up with his father Dr. Henry Jones (Sean Connery, best-known for starring in Zardoz) in a quest to retrieve the cup that Jesus Christ drank from at the last supper. What elevates the movie is a combination of chemistry between the two leads, a nice plot twist featuring love interest Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody), and a solid emotional core. Upon revisiting it, many of us felt that the movie has held up better than any other in the Indiana Jones saga; surpassing even the original. “To say that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade may be the best film ever made for 12 year olds is not a backhanded compliment … more cerebral than the first two Indiana Jones films and less schmaltzy than the second, this literate adventure should make big bucks by entertaining and enlightening kids and adults,” Variety raved.

Interestingly, the 1990 Hugo Award race demonstrated the importance of ranked ballot voting, as Field of Dreams was well in the lead on the first ballot; receiving 110 first-preference votes to only 83 for Indiana Jones. But Field of Dreams was the second-preference movie for very few voters; picking up only one vote on the second ballot, and another 13 on the second ballot. Last Crusade, however, was a second choice for almost everyone, and earned the award as the compromise candidate; the movie that everyone liked, and few people rejected out of hand.

As the decade came to a close, the Hugos recognized probably the best science fiction or fantasy movie of the year, while offering a fairly reasonable short list that represented the preoccupations of fandom. It was overall a good year.

The True North Strong And Speculative

In a year that saw concerted attacks on Canadian identity, it is particularly troubling to see that one of the country’s important literary institutions — On Spec Magazine — shut its doors and published its final issue.

The magazine’s impact cannot be overstated, but somehow, neither the magazine nor its editors have ever appeared on a Hugo Award shortlist. Given that its final issue was published in the autumn of 2025, this year will be the last that they will be eligible for most major SFF awards. As far as we can tell, the magazine has only appeared on the long-list once in 2025, placing eleventh.

There are many factors behind this omission; in recent years online-first magazines have dominated the Hugo shortlists while physically printed magazines have lagged. The magazine is less available outside of Canada, and at the last two Worldcons Canadians made up only about three per cent of Hugo voters. Despite these impediments to receiving a well-earned valedictory Hugo nod, we urge all our friends in the Worldcon community this year to consider nominating On Spec for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award, and to consider nominating Diane Walton for Best Editor - Short Form.

Cory Doctorow, whose first story was published in the magazine put it succinctly: “More than any other publication, anthology or project, On Spec defined and refined Canadian sf. It was always on the leading edge, always editorially daring, and always brilliant. Losing On Spec is a huge blow to our field. It deserves recognition.”

Cory Doctorow's first published story was in 
the winter 1990 issue of On Spec.
(Image via On Spec)

On Spec was founded in 1989, after a group of writers observed that there was no paying market in Canada for short-form speculative fiction. Some writers even complained that editors outside of the country would ask for their draft stories be made “less Canadian” before they could be accepted or published. It was a team that included Colin Bamsey, Jena Bamsey, Matt Bamsey, Tim Hammell, Ray Lirette, Marianne Nielsen, Paul Rogers, Hazel Sangster, Larry Scott, Phyllis Schuell, Diane Walton, Donna Weis and Lyle Weis, as well as an advisory board consisting of Douglas Barbour, Candas Jane Dorsey, J. Brian Clarke, Pauline Gedge and Monica Hughes.

From the outset, this founding group strived to create a magazine that reflected Canada’s multicultural identity and to include marginalized perspectives within speculative storytelling.

“For a lot of writers, Canadian or otherwise, publication in On Spec was an important signpost and the beginning of many Canadian and international careers,” editor and novelist Hayden Trenholm said about the magazine. “Recognizing it now would be a tribute to three decades of editorial accomplishment and to the hundreds of writers for whom On Spec meant: OMG, I really am a writer!”

For more than three decades, On Spec Magazine was the premier English-language publication for speculative fiction in Canada. Despite being a primarily Canadian publication, its influence on the genre has been felt across borders; it has helped launch the careers of notables such as Julie Czerneda, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts, and Karl Schroeder; and it fostered a uniquely Canadian science fictional voice. Over the years, it has published works by almost every important science fiction writer in the country; everyone from Candas Jane Dorsey (Winter 1999 issue), Robert J. Sawyer (Summer 1993 issue), Derek Künsken (Autumn 2006 issue), Dave Duncan (Spring 1989 issue), Fiona Moore (Autumn 2016 issue), Michèle Laframboise (Spring 2022 issue), and WP Kinsella (Winter 1994 issue).

On Spec was founded at the convention ConText'89
Authors and editors who attended ConText'89.
Back row L-R: Charles de Lint, Kathryn Sinclair,
Dave Duncan, Lyle Weis, Robert Runté, J Brian Clarke,
Michael Skeet, HA Hargreaves, Doug Barbour,
Yves Meynard, Karl Schroeder, William Gibson, John Park.
Middle Row: Candas Jane Dorsey, Catherine Girczyc,
Marianne Nielsen, Judith Merril, Phyllis Gotlieb,
Nicole Luiken, Lexie Pakulak, Alice Major.
Front Row: Gerry Truscott, Diane Walton, Jena Snyder,
David Kirkpatrick, Sally McBride,
Leslie Gadallah, Eileen Kernaghan, Monica Hughes.

"On Spec was my before-and-after," said Derek Künsken. "Before On Spec sent me my very first acceptance, I felt like an aspiring writer. After that acceptance, I felt like I'd become something new. I didn't understand the impact and reach of On Spec until I saw my story reviewed online and requested for consideration by a year's best editor. On Spec helped me find other Canadian writers who are friends and colleagues and critiquers to this day."

But moreover, they published excellent works that may have not gotten the attention they deserved outside of Canada. We can still remember picking up the 1993 story Kissing Hitler by Erik Jon Spigel, a work whose commentary on the distortion and misremembering of history only seems more prescient today than when it was first published. Or Leah Bobet’s 2006 story Bliss, a brilliant little story about drug addiction that incisively lampoons middle-class fearmongering.

Almost as much as their publication history, the team from On Spec are known for the amount of community outreach that they’ve done. For most of their run, there wasn’t a science fiction convention in Western Canada without a presence from the staff of the magazine. They’d have tables in dealers’ halls, and their editors would conduct story reviews and writing workshops. They didn’t just publish science fiction and fantasy; they nurtured the community and young writers. The convention scene in Canada would have been much poorer without On Spec’s efforts.

For thirty-five years, On Spec has served as a cornerstone of Canadian speculative fiction and an internationally respected semiprozine. It’s high time that they got on the Hugo Award shortlist.

This is a year in which Canadian identity is under attack, and this is the last chance to do so. Please consider On Spec for your Hugo nominating ballot.

Midwife Crisis (or Regressive Theocracy For Fun and Prophet)

In a year that has been difficult for many in North America, Naomi Kritzer’s new novella Obstetrix reminds us of the solace and strength that can be found through stories. The book, which bills itself as a rebuke to fundamentalist interpretations of religion, is at its core a celebration of the importance of literature (and fantastical literature in this instance) and how it can keep us grounded in times of adversity and stress.

Although it focuses less on
reproductive rights, Obstetrix
still provides commentary
on modern misogyny.
(Image via MacMillan)

Set in a near-future United States where women’s access to reproductive rights have faced further erosion, Obstetrix follows obstetrician Dr. Elizabeth Gwynn. The book’s setup centres on Gwynn’s criminal charges for performing a medically necessary abortion, forcing her to flee North Dakota. This suggests that Kritzer has set her sights on a work criticizing the broad-scale rising tide of authoritarian right-wing misogynist politics in her home country. However, the story quickly narrows its focus and policy issues take a back seat.

Within the first chapter, Gwynn is kidnapped by an eschatological sect and imprisoned in a compound run by fundamentalists with a narrow interpretation of the Bible. These Christian cultists force their children to get married at the age of 14, and expect every married woman to bear children on a regular basis. Gwynn’s role is to serve as their captive obstetrician, handling the complications of childbirth alongside other medical issues that arise on the compound.

Rather than offer us an over-the-top cult, Kritzer depicts a group based on a fairly mundane, bland, and terrifying version of Christianity that is removed from the American mainstream by degrees, rather than leaps and bounds. Their misogynistic control of women is fairly easy to find textual support for in the King James Bible, and the close-minded censorship and rejection of literature is not much different than many Christian groups that sprung up throughout America’s Second Great Awakening. The cult is scary precisely because its most fervent adherents could well be people we all know.

Kritzer has clearly spent some effort thinking about how a person of Gwynn’s educational and professional background might go about solving problems. For example, her approaches to handling the psychological pressures of dealing with the insanity of a fundamentalist sect are informed by medical practice and experience dealing with newborns and distraught new parents.

Since the cult has prohibited all books (even the Bible can only be read by the cult leader Father John), the captive Gwynn first finds comfort in trying to recount passages from a favourite novel titled, The Onyx Dagger. She then builds a semblance of community with select other women in the camp by sharing stories from the book. These other characters go on to play an important role in the denouement.

If anything is likely to keep Obstetrix from the Hugo ballot it’s that the award has often been likelier to recognize works that are more overt in their fantastical elements. This is instead a near-future dystopia that is sometimes indistinguishable from present-day U.S. What little technological progress may have taken place is largely outside of the purview of the story.

Given the turmoil in Kritzer’s home town of Minneapolis this winter, it is interesting that this book — which had to have been written prior to the chaotic deployment of armed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — seems to speak so directly to the present moment. If anything, events are outpacing the fiction we turn to as a source of comfort in these trying times.

Hugo Framed Roger Rabbit (Hugo Cinema 1989)

This blog post is the thirty-second in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

The Hugo Awards ceremony held the evening of Saturday, Sept. 2, 1989 at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Boston was one of the most lavish to date. Given that it was the 50th anniversary of the first World Science Fiction Convention, organizers had pulled out all the stops to make the event memorable.

Fred Pohl at the 1989 Hugo Awards.
(Image via File 770)

Master of Ceremonies Fred Pohl spoke from a lectern emblazoned with gold leaf laurel wreaths around the number “50.” Iconic author Isaac Asimov, who had long been a Worldcon mainstay, made what would be his final appearance at a Hugo Awards ceremony.

Given the splendor of the occasion, it is nice to note that when Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was honoured with the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, the film’s producer Frank Marshall was on hand to receive the trophy. Contemporaneous accounts note that the big-name Hollywood mogul accepted the award with enthusiasm and participated in the evening’s fannish activities “with good humour.” It indicated a growing respect for the Hugo Award in Hollywood.

The win for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had been widely expected and was one of the most decisive victories in any category in the history of the Hugo Awards. In the final tally, the movie had 560 first-place votes … while the runner up Big earned just 94. At a Worldcon panel on cinema the day before the ceremonies, Edward Bryant, Terry Erdmann, Craig Miller, Lee Orlando, and Evelyn Leeper had all predicted that the seamless blend of live action and animation would earn the movie a Hugo Award. Unusually, the movie was screened after the awards ceremony — and most of the audience stayed.

Working both as a satire of Hollywood self-seriousness and as a slightly bonkers noir detective story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? remains entertaining and enjoyable 40 years after its release. If our cinema club had one complaint about the movie it’s that it was more of an oddball fantasy than science fiction. But those complaints are overshadowed by technical achievements. Given that this was near the end of the era of film compositing done entirely by hand, it might be difficult to convey to modern audiences just how incredible Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is as a piece of cinema craft. To better understand the level of planning and attention to detail required to seamlessly merge live action acting with animated elements, it’s helpful to look at other contemporaneous movies like Cool World that attempted the same trick. Such a comparison highlights the subtleties like the shadows cast on — and by — the animated elements, as well as the effect that the animated elements seem to have on objects in their presence. Even if — as Variety Magazine noted — the movie “loses freshness and oomph as it goes along,” Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was a very reasonable choice to take home the trophy.

Animator Richard Williams won an Academy
Award for his work on Roger Rabbit.
(Image via USA Today)

The rest of the shortlist was a bit of a mixed bag. There was Penny Marshall’s Big, which helped launch Tom Hanks to stardom; Ron Howard and George Lucas’s fantasy epic Willow; Rockne S. O'Bannon's buddy cop movie Alien Nation; and Tim Burton’s ghost story Beetlejuice. Most of the members of our club felt that several of these films did not warrant inclusion on the shortlist.

Penny Marshall’s Big retains some of its charm, but has aged poorly. Tom Hanks’ performance as a kid stuck in an adult body is engaging and amusing, and it’s clear why this movie helped launch him to stardom. But the movie’s romance is very cringy, and glosses over consent, power imbalance, and workplace ethics in a way that would not be accepted by modern audiences. What felt whimsical in 1988 now feels creepy and uncomfortable.

Our viewing group was divided over Willow; although some of us enjoyed the fable-like atmosphere and solid performances from Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis, others felt the movie represents possibly the nadir of George Lucas’ worst storytelling instincts. Either way, the movie’s leaden dialogue, clumsy pacing, and derivative worldbuilding adds up to less than what one should expect from a Hugo finalist.

When it was first shown, fan Evelyn Leeper was dismissive of Beetlejuice in her review, writing that “typical of Tim Burton movies, it has no plot.” Although the movie is stylish, and Geena Davis anchors it by offering a grounded and compelling performance, something is missing overall. The movie promises wackiness that it does not deliver, and suggests lines of conflict that are never fully explored. Is the villain of the movie Beetlejuice, or is it the family who moved in? Beetlejuice is again less than what one would expect from a Hugo finalist.

Disney was planning to remake Alien Nation in 2024,
but scrapped the project as being pro-immigrant
is now too controversial a position. 
(Image via Variety)

Alien Nation was a sleeper hit when it hit cinemas in 1988, and was well-enough regarded that it launched both a spin-off television series, and the career of Farscape-creator Rockne S. O’Bannon. The movie is essentially Rush Hour with aliens; a buddy cop story in which a racist old white police detective is partnered with a recently promoted extra-terrestrial gumshoe. Both leads James Caan and Mandy Patinkin take their roles with a level of seriousness that elevates the whole thing. The movie had some pacing flaws, and some cliched moments, but is strengthened by a refreshingly inclusive subtext. O’Bannon’s script implies that America’s strength is its acceptance of people regardless of difference. At least one member of our cinema club felt that this film should have been the winner simply because it was a well-made, old-school science fiction film.

Despite the mixed bag of nominees, there was a crowded and untapped field of SFF movies and television shows for Hugo voters to choose their nominations from. We are thus wondering why other films were left off the shortlist.

Steve De Jarnatt’s apocalyptic masterpiece Miracle Mile had gone under the radar for most. Iconic TV series Red Dwarf had an excellent pilot episode in the UK. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 hit the airwaves. And despite some issues with its second season, Star Trek: The Next Generation had a couple of great episodes such as Elementary, Dear Data.

There are two movies however, whose omission from the Hugo shortlist are especially notable: They Live, and Akira. John Carpenter’s They Live — an anticapitalist tale of aliens undermining American democracy — probably deserved consideration for the Hugo. It’s a movie with enduring value due to its metaphors about seeing structures of power through different lenses. Although it’s a lower-budget film, it’s directed with attention to detail and offers some superb camera work. In addition, Roddy Piper and Keith David have great on-screen chemistry.

Akira remains an iconic classic of science fiction
and should have been a Hugo contender either when
it hit Japanese cinemas in 1989 or on its American
release the next year. 
(Image via Criterion)

Animated cyberpunk action film Akira was a cultural juggernaut in Japan, and redefined what was possible in animated science fiction. Based on a successful graphic novel, it plays with systems of military power in a Tokyo transformed by nuclear blasts. It is as iconic a science fiction movie as has ever been made, and clearly deserved consideration for the Hugo Award. For many of our group, it was the movie that should have won. 

The 50th anniversary of the World Science Fiction Convention saw an extraordinary Hugo Award ceremony. Even if we had quibbles about the shortlist, it’s difficult not to celebrate what an extraordinary year it was for science fiction and for sci-fi cinema.

Wild Animals Of The Wildest West

This review contains mild spoilers for the book Outlaw Planet

M.R. Carey's latest novel
is the third (and best) in his
Pandeminium series. 

M.R. Carey’s Outlaw Planet features an anthropomorphic dog gunslinger striding across a post-apocalyptic Wild West-analogue landscape wielding a talking gun and fighting anthropomorphic bear outlaws and anthropomorphic raccoon military bad guys.

The result is a rollicking, entertaining, and occasionally ludicrous novel that does not take itself too seriously. And although some readers might enjoy Outlaw Planet as simple pulp entertainment, it has much more complexity and depth on offer than might be obvious at first glance.

Screenwriter and teacher John Truby notes that the traditional western didn’t die; rather, the fight for a new frontier moved into outer space, and includes genre favourites like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy,. Truby wrote in The Anatomy of Genres, “If science fiction is social philosophy in fiction form, and crime and comedy are applied moral philosophy, the western gives us a philosophy of history,” and this is evident in Outlaw Planet, as the book offers both ideas about a philosophy of history and broader ideas about social philosophy.

The setting (the titular “outlaw planet”) is a nation similar to the antebellum United States. It’s populated with the sapient descendants of numerous mammal species; everything from dog people and cat people to weasel people and even moose people. As the story begins, readers are introduced to Elizebeth (aka “Dog-Bitch Bess”), a young woman of canine lineage who sets out from the prosperous southern coast out into the untamed wilds of the west in search of her destiny. As she reaches the frontierlands, her nation plunges into civil war.

Featureless white ceramic towers litter the landscape of this Western setting, vibrating with an ominous hum — and as it turns out, resetting the minds of everyone who lives there to restart their civil war over and over again.

It slowly emerges over the course of 500 pages that this planet’s analogue of the United States Civil War has been engineered by shadowy figures as part of a multi-generational experiment to figure out what species of sapient mammal makes the best soldiers for their much larger war. It’s a lot to fit into one book, and our biggest criticism of Outlaw Planet is that it might be overlong.

The subtext of this setting is timely. From our perspective, it seems like the United States is trapped in an endless cycle of conflict, replaying the tensions that eight score and five years ago led the nation to its first civil war. America’s mass-media ecosystem is complicit in misinforming the public, and pitting the masses against each other while faceless corporate overlords profit from the resulting tensions. Consequently, the setting of Outlaw Planet that features mass media organizations broadcasting falsehoods from featureless skyscrapers and pitting citizens against each other is somewhat apt as a metaphor. Or maybe we’re reading too much into things.

At its heart, the book succeeds primarily because of well-developed character work. Even when the protagonists Bess and her gun Wakeful Slim have lost their moral compass, they’re written with believable empathy and the reader understands their bad choices. Supporting characters — such as elderly warrior Mur Ghrent and young shaman Dima Saraband — may not be fully fleshed out, but they aren’t reduced to a series of cliches either.

As a non-American, author M.R. Carey does not 
seem to be swayed by the mythologized version
of Westward Expansion or "Manifest Destiny"
that many United States residents are taught.
(Image via Wikipedia)

One of the interesting details in this setting is that the only characters recognizable as standard-issue human beings belong to semi-nomadic bands living in western lands that are slowly being expropriated (stolen) by settlers. We are not of Indigenous ancestry, so we cannot speak definitively about whether this depiction passes muster. It is interesting to note that members of these Indigenous-analogue groups are the only characters in the book who truly know how the World really works. Indeed, Indigenous knowledge is depicted as being vital.

The book acts as a stealth sequel to Carey’s previous two novels, Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds. Outlaw Planet is not marketed as the third part of the Pandominion trilogy, with the publisher’s website even describing it as a “standalone” novel. The previous novels had introduced the Pandominion, a multi-planetary empire stretched across billions of parallel Earths with sapient species having evolved on different Earths from almost every mammalian lineage. This empire — and its fracturing during the events of Bridge of Worlds — is referenced early in the book, and eventually becomes crucial to the outcome of Outlaw Planet.

Over the past few decades, numerous writers best known for work in comic books have attempted to make a transition to writing prose novels. The results have been mixed at best; even influential comic book figures like Alan Moore, John Byrne, and Warren Ellis have often found limited success on book store shelves, and although Neil Gaiman has sold a lot of books and graphic novels, his career is the exception rather than the rule. Even the legendary Stan Lee’s attempt at prose (a series of novels called The Zodiac Legacy) is not well remembered. It is clearly a different set of skills that is required for success as a purely text-based author as opposed to one whose work involves words and pictures in sequential panels. M.R. Carey, the Liverpudlian author of Outlaw Planet seems to be a worthy exception, having begun writing successful novels only after a multi-decade career as a high-profile comic book author.

Outlaw Planet is a delightfully weird fusion of western and big multiversal sci-fi adventure, and it’s one that we sort of hope earns Carey his first Hugo nod in best series.