If it were just a case of Starship Sofa winning because a plurality of voters preferred it to other nominees (several of which rate higher in my personal aesthetic tastes), I would have a slightly different reaction -- which I'm guessing might be shared by a larger demographic of potential Hugo voters. "Times are changing. It's difficult to apply some award categories set up forty years ago to evolving forms of media presentation and to a larger voting population that may not share the aesthetic values that predominated in the first fifty years of s-f fandom."
Setting aside the issue of whether *blatant* solicitation of a subscriber-base for votes may affect the way a longtime fan feels about the awards, I have only my usual reaction to this year's results: agreement that some winners are work (or people) deserving acclamation as "the best in the field," disappointment at the selection of some winners, and no opinion about others (covering categories where I'm not as well-read as I might be).
Congratulations to
pnh, who helmed a good and relevant book to publication, two years ago -- and another one this year. (I managed to alienate pnh considerably with some nitpicking shortly after the publication of the first one, but am attempting to absorb his response in an ongoing attempt to evolve into a more well-tempered Crab.)Footnote: I didn't remember until I read through the Hugo balloting results that pnh was also the editor on Robert Wilson's excellent Julian Comstock, also nominated this year for best novel. This is a great and clever book about life in 22nd Century America, after the world's oil-driven technologies and economies collapse. It has some resonance with Edgar Pangborn's Davy -- and a little bit of the flavor of John Barth's Sotweed Factor thrown into the mix. I can only wish we had more s-f novels that are this readable being published.
10-24-10 Footnote 2: I see, belatedly, that the N-H website says Julian Comstock was edited by
tnh rather than pnh. 
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