Congratulations to the Hugo Award nominees!

The Hugo Award shortlists were announced this morning. There are some excellent works on the ballot, a number of which I nominated myself, but of particular excitement is the Fancast category (a provisional category this year – long may she prosper!), where my friends Alex, Alisa and Tansy (and producer Finchy!) are recognised with their feminist SF podcast, Galactic Suburbia! Well done to the GS team! Also featuring in this category is the Coode Street podcast with West Aussie Jonathan Strahan (who is also recognised in Best Professional Editor Short Form) – yay for the Aussies!

So many other great works on the ballot that I won’t try to applaud them all, other than to say congratulations everyone!

Living in the future

Today was another demonstration on why I love living in the future. The 2011 Hugo Awards were announced, all the world away in Reno, USA, but a bunch of us from all over the world got to enjoy them live as they were announced, thanks to the wonders of the interwebby thingy. With Twitter our staple device, we also jumped into live blogging from the auditorium and a live video stream of the ceremony (with less than a minute or so lag time from the twitter/blog feed). The live stream played up terribly on the laptop, but Lord Mortis on Twitter (a Perth techie) suggested the UStream app on the iPad, which worked an absolute treat. So there was me, iPad propped up next to me with the video feed streaming, lappie holding the liveblog and Twitter, side-by-side on the screen, and my iPhone for checking email and other Twitter streams if I felt like it, without having to leave the #hugos stream (which got fairly thick and fast towards the end as more and more people joined in and started retweeting awards). Kevin Standlee said there were over 700 people following the liveblog at one point, and I think as many watching the UStream. You can still watch the whole thing (as well as the “Just a minute” entertainment, hosted by the very awesome Paul Cornell, that aired the day before) on the Worldcon1 UStream channel.

Now last year, I was in Melbourne for Worldcon (Aussiecon 4), but for various reasons (including a not very well baby), I didn’t make it to the Hugos. I was a bit upset about that, but participated in a similar way online (and we had Neil Gaiman join us last year!). Living in the future is AMAZING – bring on the teleport I say! But if we can’t be there in person, being there online, with hundreds of other folk just like us, is the next best thing.

And wonder of wonders, the kids barely interrupted the two hour long session at all – was great!