Two more things on awards

(For those what don't read LJ on weekends, I posted some natterings on the Hugo Awards numbers yesterday).

1. Jason Sanford notes how uninspiring the fiction winners were this year. He's not wrong, and it's a flaw in any system that tries to pick a book of the year without the time and perspective to evaluate all of the works. It's a reason I'm enjoying the occasional look back at previous Hugo slates by Jo Walton.

This is more than a genre issue, of course. My daughter just suffered through her summer reading, the hot mess of a Pulitzer Prize winner called Olive Kittridge. That same year gave us Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, which was not only much better, but also featured interconnected short stories (assuming the judges were picking for theme or form). Twenty years from now, Strout will be a footnote for College Bowl players to memorize, and Lahiri will be the subject of dissertations.

(Of course, I liked the Egan and Diaz novels that won Pulitzers, so what do I know?)

2. Regardless of some of my issues with awards here and there, there's something awesome about seeing folks I've known for years (or at least known online for years) going on to greatness. On Saturday night, taraoshea won a Hugo, and murnkay won a Harvey. That's just all kinds of awesome.

Wacky political prediction of the day

So, Jon Huntsman is just about the only Republican even pretending to be intelligent on many subjects (including evolution, even though half the field previously recognized it as legit before they thought it would hurt them amongst the Tea Party voters [even though the Tea Party is supposed to be a nonpartisan group purely concerned with spending]). And he's taking flack for it like crazy in his own party as a result.

So what would happen if he pulled a reverse Zell Miller and spoke at the 2012 Democratic Convention? Mind you, Huntsman, unlike Miller, appears to be neither a conniving position-switcher nor a batguano crazy wannabe duelist, but it would still be interesting.

(Aside: The "Reverse Zell Miller" is a terrible name for a sexual position.)