Every Hugo Ever is the show exploring the history and legacy of the science fiction genre through the illustrious Hugo Awards! Each week co-hosts Jack Alexander and Samael Johnson will read and discuss the winner of the Hugo Short Story Award, ranking them one by one to discover the best of the best. With over 50 years of history, there's plenty to discover. Join us to read fascinating stories, find your new favorite author, get a fun recommendation, and figure out if we can find the through line across decades of robots, rockets, and ringworlds.
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In 1955, the first ever Hugo for a Short Story was awarded to Eric Frank Russell. Now at the end of Season 2, Jack and Sam read this inaugural winner. A military spaceship's crew is preparing for a routine inspection, when one item on the list is unknown to everyone. Captain McNaught is not losing his chance of getting a promotion over this and devises a plan. A fun story on how it feels both of its time. but pokes fun at some bureaucratic nonsense you can find in any large organization.
Recommendations:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
M*A*S*H
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This podcast is not affiliated with the Hugo Awards or Worldcon. Music provided by HookSounds.com, Pixabay.com, and Joel Steudler
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
20 Feb 2025
20 - The 2023 Chengdu Worldcon
In 2023, Worldcon took place in the Chinese city of Chengdu, the first time the event had been hosted in the country. The announcement was already met
with criticism from writers and sci-fi fans, but the event seemed to go smoothly and the Hugos were awarded as they had been for decades. Then a few months later it was discovered that the Chengdu committee has disqualified and flagged works they preemptively deemed anti-People's Republic of China, leading to botched nominees and winners. The author of Short Story Award publicly rejected her status as a winner, and so Jack and Sam discuss what happened, how easily one can be mislead into authoritarianism, and how many people had to keep making the wrong choices for this to happen at all.
Mentioned in this episode:
"Rabbit Test" by Samantha Mills (https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/)
A Breakdown of the Chengdu Scandal (https://corabuhlert.com/2024/02/15/the-2023-hugo-nomination-scandal-gets-worse/)
Emails Related to 2023 Hugo Awards Censorship (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_QqmsxQkACoYcxSx2LVqbxD39-DJI_gS/view)
“Rabbit Test” unwins the Hugo (https://samtasticbooks.com/2024/02/17/rabbit-test-unwins-the-hugo/)
Next Episode: 1955's "Allamagoosa" by Eric Frank Russell
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This podcast is not affiliated with the Hugo Awards or Worldcon. Music provided by HookSounds.com, Pixabay.com, and Joel Steudler
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
5 Feb 2025
19 - "The Very Pulse of the Machine" (1999)
Michael Swanwick successfully used his strategy of taking over the nominee slates to win the 1999 Hugo Short Story Award (where Michael Jordan was the Toastmaster?). After discussions on puppets and the necessary need to fund the arts and, you know, the government, Sam and Jack read into the story of a pair of astronauts, one very dead and the other close to being so. Stranded on the sulfuric moon of Io around Jupiter, Martha walks, hikes, and crawls to her space shuttle and safety as her air supply drains. Luckily, she has some company when her dead partner's corpse starts speaking through the radio.
Not mentioned but this story was adapted into a episode of Netflix's animated anthology, Death, Sex, and Robots
Recommendations:
Gravity directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Death Stranding developed by Kojima Productions
The Martian by Andy Weir
World War Z- Christina Eliopolis chapter by Max Brooks
Staying Alive (https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/stayingalive/Default.aspx)
Next Episode: 2023's Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills
Support Us on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/everyhugoever)
Follow us on Bluesky! (https://bsky.app/profile/everyhugoever.bsky.social)
This podcast is not affiliated with the Hugo Awards or Worldcon. Music provided by HookSounds.com, Pixabay.com, and Joel Steudler
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
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5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 42 / 100
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Quality
71
Social presence
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YouTube
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Engagement
32
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