vivdunstan

I'm going to the 2017 Worldcon sci-fi and fantasy convention that this year is being held in Helsinki, Finland. I've been to quite a few Worldcons in the past, and have been a supporting member as well for many other years. Being at least a supporting member gets me the right to the vote in the Hugo Awards, including getting a downloadable free voter packet of many of the shortlisted nominees. So masses of novels, novellas, short stories, graphic novels and comics etc.

The 2017 voter packet was released to Worldcon members yesterday, and I downloaded it to my laptop last night. I'm going to try to read as many of the fiction and non fiction books as possible, especially those I can read on my Kindle or in ePub format on my iPad in iBooks. The shortlisted novels lean heavily this year towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum, whereas the novellas are much more fantasy-based. I prefer the latter, but will try to give them all a go. And I'm also planning to judge as many of the related work non-fiction shortlist books as possible, and also the graphic novels / comics.

I'm particularly hoping that my time in Finland will open my eyes up to Nordic sci-fi, fantasy and horror fiction. I'd obviously need to read it in English translation, but hopefully by the end of the con I will have a long list of new things - new for me anyway - to read.

Meanwhile the Hugo voter packet will definitely keep me occupied for the next few months. Once I've finished my current Scottish historical novel in progress anyway.

I will report back here about how my Hugo awards reading goes.