All Done With Hugo Voting 2026!

Woohoo, I am done with all the Hugo voting I plan to do this year! No, I have not voted in every category: I do not vote on material I have not experienced or read so, as with almost every year, I skipped the Best Game Or Interactive Work category entirely. I did read all the shorter literary nominees, perused the offerings from visual artists and listened to each of the podcasts, so made informed decisions on each of those. You can read most of my thoughts (and my co-writer Doug’s) via the Hugo Finalist tag at The Frumious Consortium.

In news of games I have played, I finally relearned Oh My Goods! and got to try it out with Jms. Since the original is out of print, I bought the “Big Box” version (which is still a much smaller box than most other board games) from a game store on-line. The downside to this is that I had to figure out which cards were for the base game and which for the expansions, since they only came in two unmarked piles that were much larger than the original set of three. I spent quite a bit of time sorting through them instead of just jumping in, as I’ve previously enjoyed doing with the base game.

One advantage this set has over the original, however, is the inclusion of little wooden cubes for goods. While I’d previously just used turned-over cards to represent production, that hack does introduce an element of artificial scarcity to the game’s marketplace mechanic, so the cubes are a welcome addition.

If you’ve never heard of OMG!, it’s basically Catan in card form, only it doesn’t take a billion years to complete a game, thank goodness. Jms is definitely a push-your-luck kind of player, while I tend to strategize more conservatively. Our game the other night was interrupted but we’ll definitely aim for a full game soon to see whose play style will come out on top. OMG! is a fun introduction/alternative to more complicated worker placement/production chain games. Honestly, it’s about the right mental weight for me when it comes to board/card games: thinky, but not so much that it feels like actual work.

Interestingly, this game comes with both a campaign and solo modes, courtesy of the expansions. I’m not sure if I’ll find the time for either in the foreseeable future, but it’s nice knowing that both are available. My preference for buying games with a solo mode has been further vindicated by this recent article on BoardGameWire, reporting on how solo play has become a huge part of modern tabletop gaming.

As promised in my last newsletter, I finally got tickets to see The Odyssey in IMAX. They’re for next week tho, as finding decent tickets has been a challenge given how popular it’s been. Jms is excited to go with me, and I’m planning to finally read Emily Wilson’s translation around then, despite the fact that she continues to double down on her extremely illiberal criticism of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation. It’s become increasingly clear that she doesn’t understand film as media, tho I’m still hoping that watching the movie will make sense of the truly bizarre accusations she’s been leveling at it.

Anyway, I did read some really great books this week, including Juno Dawson’s Survival Show, a gripping tale of a dystopian near-future where the winners of a reality competition are catapulted into superstardom as pop idols. The losers, however, are executed on live TV. The chilling extrapolation from current events makes this story especially convincing, while Ms Dawson’s writing style and choices ensure that her Young Adult novel is a deeply satisfying read.

Another great read, and the last in my Hugo slate for Graphic Story this year, was Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford’s The Space Cat. It’s a charming tale based on the exploits of Ms Okorafor’s actual cat Peri, who in this book also has the ability to travel through outer space. This was the highest ranked choice on my Hugo slate this year, because it did what it set out to do extraordinarily well.

And honestly, I feel like a lot of people who venture into criticism, professional or otherwise, forget that evaluation should come from a place of whether the art in question fulfils what the artist means for it to embody, not what the critic wants it to be. There are, ofc, many valid critiques to be had and made outside of that, but the art of criticism, if you will, begins with an understanding of the two-way conversation between art and society in general. From there, criticism must choose to engage honestly with its subject. I can read a savage review — I’m certain I’ve written my fair share — but they must always deal honestly with why the critique is being made. All criticism is personal in that it reveals as much about the critic as it does the thing being criticized: anyone telling you otherwise is either stupid or a liar. Good criticism looks at its own biases and reckons with them fairly instead of leaning into snobbery or any other form of gatekeeping in order to avoid self-reflection.

This is all stuff I’ll be discussing in greater detail in a future column, I’m sure, lol. But for now, it’s late (I had another extremely low energy Thursday,) so I will see you in six, friends!

Currently Playing (Music): Haydn’s 99th Symphony; my Declan Rice and 2026 Energy playlists; The Magnus Archives; BTS’ Arirang; Charli xcx’s Music, Fashion, Film; Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love; Ariana Grande’s petal.

Currently Playing (Games): Metazooa by Trainwreck Labs; Learned League trivia; NYT Connections & Wordle; Gremco Industries’ Parseword; Irox Games’ Bongo Cat; Greg Stafford’s Pendragon; Michael Szerencsy’s Outliers; Hyper Cats’ Studios’ Haru Cats; Alexander Pfister’s Oh My Goods!

Currently Reading/Writing (Games): Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.

Currently Reading or Just Read (Books): It’s About Time by Carol J Perry; Survival Show by Juno Dawson; Pomona Afton Can Totally Catch A Killer by Bellamy Rose; A Wizard Of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Ursula K LeGuin, adapted by Fred Fordham; The Four Selves Oracle by Toni Savory & Carrie Paris; The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford.