The Hugo Award shortlist is out, and it has some good stuff on it. In the best novel category, I’m torn between Ancillary Mercy (that whole series has been a revelation) and The Fifth Season, while among the novellas I’ve been generally impressed with Nnedi Okorafor, who has been waking me up to a fresh perspective.

So there’s no shortage of good writing in the list, but at the same time, the Rabid Puppies have injected a lot of crap in there, too. It’s as if they can’t make up their minds: do they want to build credibility by nominating already popular works, taking credit for promoting well-written material, as Scalzi points out, or do they want to make a mockery of the whole process, since they know they’re not going to win? It’s a weird game they’re trying to play.

So they simultaneously promoted a Neil Gaiman graphic story, and a Chuck Tingle short story. Which is it going to be, guys? Are you making a play to see your point of view seriously represented, or are you just playing games with the nominations?

I think the joker strategy won out, given the large number of nominations from the publisher Castalia House, Vox Day’s little dreck mill. I wonder when they’re going to give Chuck Tingle a contract?

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Bonus! I can read Space Raptor Butt Invasion for free through Kindle Unlimited, so I ordered a copy. Look what Amazon tells me are recommended now, based on that purchase: John Wright and Vox Day. Such perfect bedfellows.

I just liked this image.

There’s something I’ve been missing in the superhero movie genre — characters who aren’t defined entirely by their superpowers. There’s always been some of that, of course: the whole point of Spiderman, for instance, is that he’s a teenager struggling with responsibilities, and Batman is the grim vigilante. Sometimes the personalities are getting lost in the milling crowd of magical abilities vying to be expressed in glorious CGI, though.

And what about Superman? He was vastly overpowered to the point where his multitude of unstoppable powers were utterly boring, and got in the way of the story. But the one thing that did make him interesting was that he was the personification of kindness and decency, something that’s been lost in the movies, at least since the Christopher Reeve version.

Sometimes the comics still remind us of that core of his character, though. So here’s a little story about Superman’s cat.

It’s not the superpowers, it’s what you do with them that makes for a good story.