2003 Nebula Awards 106
seattlenerd writes "The 2003 Nebula Awards were awarded late Saturday night in Seattle (for the first time ever) by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Winners: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford, "What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler (the previous two both published on the SCI FICTION site), and the script for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Noteworthy were comments made by GrandMaster honoree Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, who introduced Silverberg, along with guest speaker Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research. To say nothing of Cory Doctorow's acceptance speech he didn't get to make, but has made available for "alternate historians."" I was at Penguicon this weekend, along with Neil Gaiman - congrats to him on the win, and to all the others.
hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
You know. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You know. (Score:4, Insightful)
Both ways... (Score:3, Insightful)
I took it the other way. It is that the artist called himself out. In a way, after winning a Hugo (already recognized once) it's not out of the ordinary to imagine himself having won another award.
It's embarrassing enough that he thought that he could have won, but couldn't make it anyway. But to go as far as finding someone to read the acceptance speach by proxy...and then NOT win. My goodness. Well may as well tell the whole world himself.
The other way to take it? He thought his short speach to witty to deny the world it's creation.
Re:You know. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he just really wish he could have said "holy fuck, I've won a Nebula" after winning a Nebula. And thank the people who have helped him, which deserve thanking either way. It is weird on the face of it, but I'm not seeing the arrogance.
a plea (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading the awards-list makes me wish I read more sci-fi.
I recently finished a piece of horror-fiction, Michael Gruber's Tropic of Night, whose literary quality was high enough not to require the reader to make allowances for the genre. In my experience, such a requirement is a pervasive shortcoming of both the horror and sci-fi fields.
If there are astute slashDot readers out there who understand my lament, and who know an elusive sci-fi title (or two) that does manage the rare crossover, please identify.
Re:You know. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You know. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, it was on his 'blog.
Blogs are a place where people often post their casual musings, like what they'd say if XXX happened. It's not really any more arrogant than posting what you'd do if you won the lottery on slashdot.
alternative Gaiman...Pullman? (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I've read a lot of Gaiman, so whats vaguely uninteresting to me, may be new to other readers.
If we're going for younger fare, I've enjoyed what I've read so far of The Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Its not got the straight fun aspect of the Potter books, but the world from the start is a more adult and complex one.
Arrogance - was Re:You know. (Score:3, Insightful)
Futurama Vs. LOTR? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this not show the high-quality of the show, being able to be nominated in the same category as 4 other films? Of course, we weren't surprised when it was beaten by LOTR, but it was reassuring that, try as they might, FOX can't ruin the show's brilliance and reputation.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe they were working from at least a week of raw footage, yes. On any film you're going to have a LOT more stuff shot than will find its way into the final product.
What did you think was involved with editing, though? As someone who's actually done film editing, the hard part is not just cutting down a lot of material. It's selecting just the right pieces and fitting them together seamlessly (or as seamlessly as possible ... sometimes you have to make compromises).
As you may know, each scene in a film is typically filmed multiple times, from many different angles. Most of the time the scene you see on screen has been pieced together from many different such takes. Since actors aren't machines, each one is subtly different and you have to pick your cuts carefully so the separate performances blend together (this is called continuity).
Usually you have to live with some mismatches (e.g. Morpheus' hands shifting behind hs back in long shots in the first Matrix, or Gandalf's staff strap shifting about in FotR) because those are the best takes you had to work with (bonus editor points for cutting in places that distract the eye from necessary discontinuities).
Another factor in chosing cuts is pacing -- when to linger, when to move on, to heighten the intended dramatic effect. This can even have a radical effect on the actors' apparent performances. Sometimes entire scenes are reshuffled relative to the shooting script during editing.
There are a lot of other issues too -- matching this mixture of different cuts to consistent-sounding music and sound tracks in effective ways.
But the point is that editing in film isn't just about how much was or wasn't cut away. Oftentimes the unsung editor deserves just as much credit for the finished product as the director.