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Hugo Nominations and Awards - Now onto 2021 Nominations


lady narcissa

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What ate the current eligibility rules in cases where the two volumes of a series are published in the same year? Will it be considered a single novel like Blackout/All Clear was several years ago or will it be moved to the best series category? 

I am asking this because given current hype I am pretty sure Mary Kowal's two Lady Astronaut novels from this year will be nominated and probably win a Hugo of some kind. 

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17 hours ago, LugaJetboyGirl-irra said:

Well, why don't you stop complaining and suggest some damn nominations, then? This is a thread for 2019 Hugo nominations! 

Not that hard to see who will be nominated.

Robinson has Red Moon coming out. Becky Chambers has a new novel out.

Mary Robinette Kowal has a new novel out. John Scalzi as well, sequel to Collapsing Empire.

Yoon Ha Lee has a new novel out, first two books in the series made the nominees list.

Richard Morgan has a new big SF novel coming out called Thin Air, I hope that will be very good and possibly a nominee but he's never been a Hugo voter sweetheart, so it's unlikely to even make the list. His Kovacs trilogy was the most acclaimed SF series in the early 00's and none of the 3 books were even nominated.

As for my own picks, as I said in the thread that was just closed, I would have replaced all 6 of the 2018 nominees with other higly acclaimed authors, I stated there which ones I would have picked.

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1 hour ago, Calibandar said:

As for my own picks, as I said in the thread that was just closed, I would have replaced all 6 of the 2018 nominees with other higly acclaimed authors, I stated there which ones I would have picked.

Gaiman, Williams, Bakker, Hobb, Beagle, and Tchaikovky, that it?

I've trust Tchaikovsky will write two or three pieces between now and the end of the year, considering how ridiculous his ouput is, but the others are not publishing anything this year, or have I missed something?

Speaking of odd writers, I've seen some good buzz around Vandermeer's Borne, maybe he could have a shot. Then again there was nice feedback about Benett's divine cities and Gladstone's Craft, yet they fail to appear in those shortlists. Except maybe series category, but they finish last)

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6 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I can never remember what I read that came out what where when. Grey Sister for sure, though i know the Hugo tend to skew SciFi. I'll have to poke through my read list.

You're going to make me read this.  I remember how much you loved it.  Read my Margaret Killjoy books.  I'll even mail or kindle them to you.  I liked them that much.  Remind me, is this second in the series?  NVM, I have the power of google and I'll go check.  :P

My short story game is weak this year, but the term just started.  This is when I usually get caught up on stories and novelettes.  I always have 5-10 idle minutes in lab or class.  I have 3 issues of FSF magazine to go back and read.  

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The Tea Master and the Detective is a novella by Aliette de Bodard I really liked and see as a strong candidate for the ballot. It seemed to have had a good reception as well, but since it is Subterranean rather than Tor.com I don't know how wide the reach for it has been.

Embers of War by Gareth L Powell is perhaps too nice and classic to make the ballot. But its themes of redemption and atonement could help it as well as the location of worldcon.

 

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4 hours ago, Calibandar said:

 

As for my own picks, as I said in the thread that was just closed, I would have replaced all 6 of the 2018 nominees with other higly acclaimed authors, I stated there which ones I would have picked.

Dude. I don't care about what others will probably nominate or what you would have nominated last year. Tell us some actual books that you have read from 2018 that you think we should nominate. This is your chance to actually impact the nomination process.

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20 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I can never remember what I read that came out what where when.

Same. That's why I find the recommended reading lists that places like Locus publish to be very useful. Even though they don't appear until the new year, they serve as a "Oh yeah, that did come out last year" reminder.

 

And then there's books like Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, which came out in the UK in 2017 and in the US in 2018. I put it on my Hugo noms this year and will probably do so again next year because why not take advantage of the grey area?

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I'd just like to request that if recommendations are made that the author as well as the title be named.  Also, if its a short story or something not sold under its title name that you name the publication its included in.  Some people have done this but sometimes its just titles being named and while a person might be eventually able to track down what has been listed, it certainly helps the recommended work if more information is provided.  While maybe the majority of people reading this thread might be familiar with the titles, not everyone is.

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A few Novellete recommendations:

The Donner Party by Dale Bailey (F&SF January 2018) - best short fiction I've read from this year, creepy, chilling and highly memorable. But it's not for the squeamish, the name isn't a coincidence. ;)

The Nearest by Greg Egan (Tor.com) - he should be nominated every year, it's a travesty the Hugo voters seem to have forgotten him

The Ghoul Goes West by Dale Bailey (Tor.com)

The Barrens by Stephanie Feldman (F&SF May 2018)

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This might be the wrong thread for this but I recently tried reading this year's winner (Jemisin) and got stuck in "the fifth season". I just wasn't feeling it at all and the second person parts really jarred with me. 

The series has won three years in a row so I assumed it would be great but I really don't see it and there is no thread here discussing the series. 

Am I missing something? Does the book/series get better as it goes along? (I'm about half way through "The fifth season"). Is there a thread discussing the series that I'm missing somehow?

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1 minute ago, Bankmannen said:

This might be the wrong thread for this but I recently tried reading this year's winner (Jemisin) and got stuck in "the fifth season". I just wasn't feeling it at all and the second person parts really jarred with me. 

The series has won three years in a row so I assumed it would be great but I really don't see it and there is no thread here discussing the series. 

Am I missing something? Does the book/series get better as it goes along? (I'm about half way through "The fifth season"). Is there a thread discussing the series that I'm missing somehow?

Here is an archived thread on the first book, and here is another that's still live on all three books.

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@Calibandar:

I wanted to answer some of your thoughts from the previous thread with my own reactions to those that I have read:

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I'd bring in Robin Hobb's Assassin's Fate

I loved the (current?) conclusion to the Realm of the Elderlings, it was poignant and satisfying in the best way. Having said that, you'd need to read at least 8 previous books or better yet, 15, to experience the full impact. As such, there is no way that it could have been a finalist for the novel Hugo. I agree that the fact that it didn't get the "Best Series" nod was very disappointing. Not that I don't love Bujold's "Five Gods" series and think that it was unworthy, mind you. But this year, I definitely would have picked Hobb over all comers. She is yet another woman, though ;).

 

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Bakker's The Unholy Consult for sure.

I kinda lost interest in the series after "The White-Luck Warrior", so...

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Tad Williams' The Witchwood Crown perhaps

I have waited for the return to Osten Ard for so long and was very disappointed by this. Most of what I loved in the original series seems to be gone.

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City of Miracles perhaps.

Yea, it and/or the trilogy itself definitely should have been among the finalists, if it had been up to me.

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In Calabria by Peter Beagle.

Eh, it was well-written, but self-indulgent May-September romances with unconvincing action plots and a thin veneer of supernatural aren't my thing, I guess.

Didn't yet get to the rest, but definitely intend to. However, from where I stand, it is mostly about taste differences - both between me and you and either of us and the Hugo voters. I do think that reaction to the Puppy stuff did have an effect on nominations, as well as British authors' habitual disadvantage, but from the finalists that I have read, none of them are completely unreasonable and they make for an enjoyable reading list, on the whole, which, for me, is the true purpose of the Hugos. I fully expect the things to balance themselves out in the next few years, provided that the quality is there. Heck, if certain  popular authors get over their writing blocks in the same year, it can get very crowded indeed!

I loved "All systems Red" and was rooting for it to win, and I fully agree that "The Stone Sky" was worthy, and I enjoyed it immensely, even though I was rooting for "The Raven Stratagem". In "Related Works", it was the last chance to honor Le Guin, even though I am sad to see my beloved Iain M. Banks - or his biography, in this case, get the shaft yet again. Speaking of the real travesty here, BTW, which is that he never won and was seldom nominated despite being active before all that pesky female domination and was IMHO brilliant  ;). I didn't keep abreast of the shorter works this year, so no opinions there.

 

On 8/25/2018 at 6:30 AM, Lily Valley said:

Brook Bollander's The Only Harmless Great Thing is a fantastic novella about an alternate history where elephants were used to mine uranium.  She has really honed her craft over the last few years.

Just checked this out, so we'll see. I wasn't impressed by her previous work despite the buzz, but here is to hoping...

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Yoon Ha Lee's third book Revenant Gun is out.  I really enjoyed the first two.

I thought that this one was markedly weaker than the other 2 and that it didn't provide a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, but YMMV.

So, um... from things published this year other than the above, I read and loved "Artificial Condition" by Martha Wells, "Children of Blood and Bone" by Tomi Adeyemi which I liked, but thought to be a little too derivative of "The Last Airbender" animation series, by which it was inspired, "The Girl in the Tower" by Katherine Arden, that I was greatly disappointed in after the excellent first book, "The Hyena and the Hawk" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I think that "The Echoes of the Fall" fantasy trilogy that it is the  conclusion to wholly deserves to be a series Hugo finalist, "Starless" by Jacqueline Carey that starts pretty well and then turns into ye olde fantasy quest cliche... that's probably it so far. I am on the waiting list for Tchaikovsky's "The Expert System's Brother", Robert  Jackson Bennett's "Foundryside", and "The Rogue Protocol" by Martha Wells. 

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5 minutes ago, Maia said:

I loved the (current?) conclusion to the Realm of the Elderlings, it was poignant and satisfying in the best way. Having said that, you'd need to read at least 8 previous books or better yet, 15, to experience the full impact. As such, there is no way that it could have been a finalist for the novel Hugo. I agree that the fact that it didn't get the "Best Series" nod was very disappointing. Not that I don't love Bujold's "Five Gods" series and think that it was unworthy, mind you. But this year, I definitely would have picked Hobb over all comers. She is yet another woman, though ;). 

Looking at the nominations stats for best series, Hobb's wasn't even in the Top 15, which is weird.

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19 minutes ago, David Selig said:

Looking at the nominations stats for best series, Hobb's wasn't even in the Top 15, which is weird.

Has Hobb ever really had much attention with the Hugo's? She's a popular author and well received critically,, but this rarely seems to translate into awards, at least if memory serves. I'd have to look it up to be certain

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29 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Has Hobb ever really had much attention with the Hugo's? She's a popular author and well received critically,, but this rarely seems to translate into awards, at least if memory serves. I'd have to look it up to be certain

I can spare you the trouble, off the top of my head I can recall that she has never been nominated for any book.

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1 minute ago, Calibandar said:

I can spare you the trouble, off the top of my head I can recall that she has never been nominated for any book.

She was finalist of Nebula and Hugo for short stories written as Megan Lindholm in 1990. (A Touch of Lavender, and Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man)

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