In filling in my Hugo ballot last night I was reminded of a few things that may be of interest to those of you looking for good work to fill out some of the categories.

Most people will, I suspect, have Novel filled, and in any case it is a bit late to start reading anything now. However, I want to put in a good word for Signal to Noise by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, which I thought was an astonishingly good debut.

Short Story is also fairly easy to fill, and the story I want you to consider isn’t, as far as I know, available online, which doesn’t help. However, I absolutely love “The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is original to his Collected Fiction (Tachyon).

In Related Work I obviously would love to see Letters to Tiptree get a nod. I have a letter in it, after all. I don’t get a share of the shiny if it wins, but I think it is a great project and would be very happy to see it get yet more awards.

Also in Related Work I’d like you to consider Idyl — I’m Age, a collection of comic strips written and drawn by Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Jeff won’t get to a Hugo because she’s dead, but she surely deserves one. She was nominated once in Fan Artist and three times in Professional Artist, but has only won a World Fantasy Award and the Spectrum Grand Master.

The plot of Agents of SHIELD appears to have gone off the rails somewhat of late, but I still think that “4,722 Hours”, in which Jemma Simmons is stranded on an alien planet, is one of the best single episodes of a TV series I have seen in a long time.

I’m kind of assuming that The Expanse Season 1 will be a long-form nominee next year, but just in case we have four episodes to pick from. My favorite of those is “QCB”, the one featuring the assault on the Martian warship, the Donnager.

This is your annual reminder that Clarkesworld is no longer a semiprozine, but that Neil Clarke is eligible for Editor: Short Form.

Two publications that I would like to see considered in Semiprozine are Holdfast Magazine, and Tähtivaeltaja, the amazing Finnish magazine from Toni Jerrman.

I have realized that I hardly ever read fanzines these days. There is too much else to read.

I do listen to podcasts, however. There are lots of good talking head shows, but if you’d like to put something different on the ballot why not give a listen to Ray Gunn and Starbust, a remarkably good audio comedy conceived and written by my friend Holly Rose.

And finally, something I would love to be able to put on my ballot but can’t because I don’t see how I will get to see it in time. Reading Twitter this morning I chanced upon a post from the magnificent Indian feminist magazine, The Ladies Finger. It is all about Bollywood movies that aim for a Game of Thrones vibe. The one that caught my eye was Rudhramadevi, which is about an actual 13th Century Indian queen, and which gets the thumbs up for feminist content from the article’s author, Deepika Sarma.

The historical Rudhramadevi was raised as a boy by her father, but revealed herself as a woman on claiming the throne at age 14. She ruled for 30 years, dying in a battle against a rebel chief.

Anushka Shetty, who starred in the movie, seems to specialize in warrior women. I’m now wondering if she’s candidate for the Xena reboot.

Anyway, here’s a statue of the the original Rudhramadevi. The statue is located in Chandupatla, the village which was the site of the battle where she died.

Photo credit: By Satishk01 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.

And here’s the movie trailer. (The review is right, the CGI is shoddy, but it definitely has the fantasy epic look.)