By which I mean, submitted my ballot for the Hugos.
There were only a couple of categories that I really had to agonize over: I finally voted for Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars” over “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal, but it was So. Damn. Close.
That was the category with the highest signal-to-noise ratio: four of the five stories were ones I could see myself voting for, if it wasn’t for the stellar (so to speak) two leading the category.
(And then there was the stupid one about the elf who finds Jeebus, with the prose style that wouldn’t be out of place in Dragon magazine’s slush pile.)
My favorite of all the fiction entries was “Wakulla Springs” by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages. It had a sense of place I could sink into, characters I cared about, and just a subtle bit of weird that was always there and felt organic.
The other hard call was Best Related Work between Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It , edited by Sigrid Ellis & Michael Damian Thomas(was there ever a book so perfectly placed to be Relevant To My Interests?) and the essay “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley.
Like any collection, “Queers Dig Time Lords” had stronger and weaker essays (or perhaps merely ones that did and did not resonate with my particular experience), while “We Have Always Fought” was a diamond: small but polished and very nearly flawless. Ultimately, I resolved it by voting for “Queers” with “Fought” as my second choice, and voting for Hurley in the Best Fan Writer category.
Yay, compromise!