Here is the short list for this year’s Hugo Awards. For those of you who don’t know about this award, the annual award for the best in speculative fiction, voted on my members of the World Science Fiction Convention. This year I’m a member - I was hoping to attend, as it’s only over the pond in New Zealand, but I’m sure you all know why that’s not possible. It’s all gone online, not the same, but at least it’s still happening, as are the Hugo Awards. As a I am a member, I have been sent links to downloads for books, short stories, etc. I guess it’s worth joining for the books alone.
I confess I haven’t read any of them, but will hopefully be able to comment on each one I do read. It will take me a few days to download everything I want(forget the dramatic presentations, which are in the gigabytes! I’ve seen most of the long form and a couple of the short form anyway) and yesterday I did so much downloading I had a hard time backing it all up. Today I have downloaded the short stories. A couple of the books only offered an extract, so I will save myself some download on those. If the publisher is not willing to let me read the whole book, I’m not willing to give them my vote. Plenty to read!
I see there are two Aussie dwelling nominees in the New Author category. Nice! Plus an Aussie podcast,
Anyway, here ‘tis! Thanks to Locus Magazine from which I got this list. Have you read/seen any of them?
Best Novel
- The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)
- The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
- A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
- Middlegame, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
- Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novella
- To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)
- “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
- The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
- This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga)
- In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
- The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga)
Best Novelette
- “For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com 7/10/19)
- “Omphalos”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
- “Away with the Wolves”, Sarah Gailey (Uncanny 9-10/19)
- “Emergency Skin”, N.K. Jemisin (Forward)
- “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 7-8/19)
- “The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 4/19)
Best Short Story
- “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/31/19)
- “As the Last I May Know”, S.L. Huang (Tor.com 10/23/19)
- “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/19)
- “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, Nibedita Sen (Nightmare 5/19)
- “Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, Rivers Solomon (Tor.com 7/24/19)
- “A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde (Uncanny 1-2/19)
Best Series
- Winternight, Katherine Arden (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)
- The Expanse, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Luna, Ian McDonald (Tor; Gollancz)
- InCryptid, Seanan McGuire (DAW)
- Planetfall, Emma Newman (Ace; Gollancz)
- The Wormwood Trilogy, Tade Thompson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Best Related Work
- Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones (University of Illinois Press)
- The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendlesohn (Unbound)
- “2019 John W. Campbell Award Acceptance Speech”, Jeannette Ng (Dublin 2019 — An Irish Worldcon)
- The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick, Mallory O’Meara (Hanover Square)
- Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood, J. Michael Straczynski (Harper Voyager US)
- Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Best Graphic Story or Comic
- Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans (Image)
- The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson (Image Comics)
- Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)
- LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor, illustrated by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (Berger Books/Dark Horse)
- Paper Girls, Volume 6, Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson (Image)
- Mooncakes, Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker (Oni Press; Lion Forge)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
- Avengers: Endgame
- Captain Marvel
- Good Omens
- Russian Doll, Season One
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
- Us
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
- Doctor Who: “Resolution”
- The Expanse: “Cibola Burn”
- The Good Place: “The Answer”
- The Mandalorian: “Redemption”
- Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar”
- Watchmen: “This Extraordinary Being”
Best Editor, Short Form
- Neil Clarke
- Ellen Datlow
- C.C. Finlay
- Jonathan Strahan
- Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
- Sheila Williams
Best Editor, Long Form
- Sheila Gilbert
- Brit Hvide
- Diana M. Pho
- Devi Pillai
- Miriam Weinberg
- Navah Wolfe
Best Professional Artist
- Tommy Arnold
- Rovina Cai
- Galen Dara
- John Picacio
- Yuko Shimizu
- Alyssa Winans
Best Semiprozine
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies
- Escape Pod
- Fireside
- FIYAH
- Strange Horizons
- Uncanny
Best Fanzine
- The Book Smugglers
- Galactic Journey
- Journey Planet
- nerds of a feather, flock together
- Quick Sip Reviews
- The Rec Center
Best Fancast
- Be the Serpent
- The Coode Street Podcast
- Galactic Suburbia
- Our Opinions Are Correct
- Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel
- The Skiffy and Fanty Show
Best Fan Writer
- Cora Buhlert
- James Davis Nicoll
- Alasdair Stuart
- Bogi Takács
- Paul Weimer
- Adam Whitehead
Best Fan Artist
- Iain Clark
- Sara Felix
- Grace P. Fong
- Meg Frank
- Ariela Housman
- Elise Matthesen
Lodestar for Best Young Adult Book (Not a Hugo)
- The Wicked King, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Hot Key)
- Deeplight, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
- Minor Mage, T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
- Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
- Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney/Hyperion)
- Riverland, Fran Wilde (Amulet)
Astounding Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo)
- Sam Hawke*
- R.F. Kuang*
- Jenn Lyons
- Nibedita Sen*
- Tasha Suri*
- Emily Tesh
*Second year of eligibility
14 comments:
Nope, haven't heard of any of those books, but I do know one of the authors: Sam Hawke (Astounding Award for Best New Author), and I have her debut "City of Lies" which has won a bunch of awards.
Yep! And Jenn Lyons lives in Melbourne.
Hi Sue - not my kind of reading ... but great to have the list to see and note. Pity you can't attend the convention ... just frustratingly bad timing. A really interesting range of categories ... and if I had time - I'd definitely see if I could check one out via the library - perhaps next year, when I've caught my tail. Thanks for letting us know - Hilary
Thanks, Hilary! SF and fantasy are not for everyone. I will be posting about what I read over the next few weeks and perhaps some will be of interest to you.
Haven't read or even heard of any of these, but I DID see "Avengers: Endgame," LOL!
I’ve seen all but Us and Russian Doll. I will be voting for Good Omens in that list, and be very surprised if it doesn’t win.
I don't read much if any scifi. And my favourite scifi books were mainly written by authors who barely wrote scifi and when they did it was almost accidental (such as Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange).
That IS interesting, Guillaume! Is there a reason for that? Reading literary writers who, by chance, wrote something that could be regarded as science fiction? Because that one is a classic!
Not sure if there is any reason for it. I just really got into crime fiction, "serious" literature and I think the scifi novels I prefer (A Clockwork Orange, 1984) are first modern philosophical tales, scifi stories second. Scifi does not get in the way of literature and the themes are deeply philosophical but never explored with pretention.
Interesting that some authors who write this sort of fiction absolutely deny being SF writers, isn’t it? In the end, *good* SF is not only about “what if...?” but also “If this goes on...” and comments on what is happening in the real world, IMO.
For Anthony Burgess (my favourite writer, by the way), he thought little of scifi as a genre, except for the work of H.G. Wells, partially because his most famous novel, which he also thought little about, cast a very long shadow over his other works. I think Orwell wrote 1984 more as a cautionary tale than "proper" scifi. Neither of them were scifi writers, by this I mean that they did not write scifi exclusively. They were writers who sometimes happened to write in that specific genre.
I think most if not all scifi stories are constructed from two questions: "Is X theoritically possible?" (X being time travel, the existence of intelligent aliens, sentient robots, etc.)and "if X was proven to be true, then what would happen?".
Indeed! 1984 was a cautionary tale that we don’t seem to have paid much attention to, though the sales went up dramatically in late 2016. But it was definitely based on “what if...?”
My first science fiction story, for children, was a “what if...?” based on something theoretically possible. It was called Grey Goo and the theoretical possibility was that you could use nanotechnology for a food replicator(it is, I read it in New Scientist). A girl who decides to make dinner for the family and goes off to do her homework returns to the kitchen to find it overflowing with goo and the last food she programmed it to do... I also had her mother using nanotech to fix an oil spill.
Sounds like a cool story. 1984 was a "what if", although not a prophetic novel in any way. I think the novels to read in 2016 if one wanted to find parallels with Trump's election would be It Can't Happen Here and The Manchurian Candidate. The latter is easily my favourite of the two. Stephen King's Dead Zone would be fitting too.
I’ve heard of them all, not read any of those.
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