As I am way behind with everything, still, I don’t have anywhere near as many Hugo recommendations as I would like this year, but here are a few for you to think about. I’ll start at the bottom of the ballot.

I note that the Campbell Award list on Writertopia is not 100% accurate as the poor folks who run it get no help from Dell Magazines. I do know that Madeline Ashby is not eligible. My ballot will probably be: Gwenda Bond, Tim Maughan, Sofia Samatar, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Helen Marshall.

Fancast — In addition to Small Blue Planet you should all be listening to The Writer and the Critic, and to SF Crossing the Gulf. The Coode Street Podcast and Galactic Suburbia will also be on my ballot.

Fan Writer is hard these days because you never know who is getting paid for what. I rather suspect that Foz Meadows does not get paid for the posts that she writes for Huffington Post. She’s done some good stuff on her own blog too, so I’m nominating her anyway. In contrast I believe that doing io9 is a full time job for Charlie Jane Anders, so much as I love her she’ll not be on my ballot unless I hear otherwise. I’d be interested to know whether Liz Bourke gets paid for her Sleeps With Monsters column at Tor.com, and if she doesn’t then next year I’ll probably be encouraging you all to nominate Alex Dally MacFarlane for her new Post-Binary Gender column.

Clarkesworld is not eligible for Semiprozine these days because Neil is (just) earning enough money from it to make it professional. However, he is still eligible individually for Editor: Short Form, as is Sean Wallace.

In Editor: Long Form I’d like to see both Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris make the ballot because what Angry Robot has achieved in a very short time is quite miraculous. I’ve also seen some suggestions that Tim Holman has toiled in obscurity for far too long, which is entirely true.

I’m totally out of touch with art, so I shall be checking the various recommendation sites around. I note that Larry Rostant, whom I have nominated in the past, is a Guest of Honor at FantasyCon this year which is long overdue. I will again be nominating Julie Dillon for being fabulous, and J.H. Williams III for his work on Batwoman. Joey Hi-Fi will also be on my ballot.

Dramatic Presentation: Long Form has to go to Iron Man 3. That isn’t up for debate. I don’t think I have seen any other 2013 movies, though I may get around to Pacific Rim in time to vote for it. I suspect there isn’t much else movie-wise I’d deem Hugo-worthy, much as I love admiring Thor & Loki. However, I am going to nominate An Adventure in Space and Time in this category as it is just long enough.

Dramatic Presentation: Short Form will be full of Moffat things. I shall wait for the final ballot and vote for No Award.

Graphic Novel will probably go to Saga again, though I’d prefer to see it go to J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman as a thank you for their work on Batwoman and a small protest against their being forced off the book by intrusive management. I’ll also be voting for the season finale of Young Avengers, a two part story called “Resolution”, because I’m sappy like that. There will probably be some Gail Simone in there too; I’m just not sure what.

Related Work is really hard this year because there is so much good stuff. Afrofutrism by Ytasha Womack is a wonderful book. I also really liked The Riddles of the Hobbit by Adam Roberts. Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook is indeed a wonder. I’m going to nominate Adventure Rocketship #1 because of the great music essays. There’s also Jonathan Clements’ fine Anime: A History, parts of which are based on articles he wrote for Salon Futura. That’s five already, and I have a nagging feeling that I am forgetting something.

I am way behind on short fiction. The only things I know I am voting for are “Zero Hours” by Tim Maughan (Short Story) and “The Lady Astronaut From Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Novelette). I know that some people have been talking about nominating audio fiction in multiple categories because last year’s daft ruling seemed to suggest that was OK, but this year’s Administrators are different people and may not follow that rule. You only get five nominations in each category. My advice would be not to waste them by nominating the same work in more than one category, just in case. In the meantime I’ll be going back through Mothership, We See A Different Frontier and the 2013 issues of Clarkesworld looking for good stuff.

As for Novel, top of my list is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, closely followed by River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. I loved Ocean At The End of the Lane too, but nominating Neil seems a bit pointless given that several billion other people will be doing it. I’d also love to nominate Hild by Nicola Griffith, but the fantastic content is very small indeed. So I will probably end up with The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord, A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, and Mortal Fire by Elizabeth Knox. There are works that I would love to read before I nominate, most obviously Lavie Tidhar’s Violent Century. The short list for the Kitschies Red Tentacle is also very interesting. But the chances are I won’t have time, so I’ll just vote for things I have read, which is what you should all be doing. No one has to have “read everything” in order to take part, because reading everything is impossible.

Updates:

Liz Batty noted via Twitter that Young Avengers “Resolution” includes 2014 work, so is not eligible. She suggests nominating this collected volume from the series instead, which I shall do.

Also via Twitter, Foz Meadows confirms that Huffington Post does not pay.

And in comments below Justin Landon suggests that most Tor.com columns are paid.