So, nominees for the Hugo awards have been announced. Here’s my thoughts:

Nominees for Best Novel

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Michael Chabon (I haven’t read this one yet)
• Brasyl Ian McDonald (haven’t gotten to this one, either)
• Rollback Robert J. Sawyer (nope, haven’t read it)
• The Last Colony John Scalzi (I’ve read Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades…but not this one)
• Halting State Charles Stross (you guessed it; haven’t read it)

And I’m not even touching novellas and short stories. Seriously, am I that far behind in my science fiction reading? My reading stack contains books that were nominated for Nebulas and Hugos back in 2005 and 2006.

I blame my slippage on apportioning too much of my time to the worlds of Harry Potter and the Starks, respectively, not that I begrudge any time spent within those wonderful fictional universes. It was just proportionately misaligned.

In the time I was trudging through Half-Blood Prince and Storm of Swords, amazing science fiction novels were gracing the shelves, and I was carelessly ignoring them. Either I’m a fool, or a drone, in any case, I have a monumental task ahead of me. I need to get caught up on all of the fantastic science fiction that’s been written in the past couple of years, starting with the Hugo nominees for this year.

Any other suggestions? Yikes. I don’t even know where to go next.