Hugo Recs: Zines and Casts

BEST SEMIPROZINE

This is a slightly odd category basically its for zines that pay money but don’t make very much money. There’s an impcoplete list of eligible publications that I recommend nominators check out. On to my picks:

Beneath Ceaseless Skies — This zine publishes a few stories a month of consistently good quality including some of my favorites of the year. Here’s their eligibility post featuring a list list of all the stories they published in 2019.

Strange Horizons publishes both excellent fiction and non-fiction. The stuff they publish consistently gives me feelings and/or thinky thoughts. For fiction published in 2019 see here and for non-fiction see here

BEST FANZINE

The Rec Center — This weekly email newsletter contains articles about fandom, fun tumbler posts and of course crowd sourced fic recs. I look forward to getting it in my inbox every Friday.

Yuletide -- fairestcat pointed out that Yuletide, an annual small fandoms fic exchange, is eligible in this category and I love the idea! I read so much good fic from this year's Yuletide, it was great. I’d love to see this transformative fandom tradition honored by the Hugos.

BEST FANCAST

Claire Rousseau — I’m not great at Booktube, something about my auditory processing disorder makes it hard for me to focus on these videos. However I try to always watch my friend Claire’s videos because they are really good! I especially want to highlight Genrewise an awesome news section that she launched last year. Claire always gathers really interesting news and her often squeeful delivery is just right.

Fanslpaning— I really enjoy this fortnightly podcast about transformative fandom. I love putting Flourish and Elizbeth’s smart conversations in my ears. In 2019 they ran a fascinating survey on shipping culture which the devoted two episodes and several articles to. The podcast also covered fandom culture, interactions between fans and media corporations, and data science. It's always something I find super interesting.