2019 Dragon Award Winners

The 2019 Dragon Awards ceremony was held September 1 – here are the winners.

Best Science Fiction Novel

  • A Star-Wheeled Sky by Brad R. Torgersen

Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

  • House of Assassins by Larry Correia

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

  • Bloodwitch by Susan Dennard

Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel

  • Uncompromising Honor by David Weber

Best Alternate History Novel

  • Black Chamber by S.M. Stirling

Best Media Tie-In Novel

  • Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn

Best Horror Novel

  • Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

Best Comic Book

  • Saga by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples

Best Graphic Novel

  • X-Men: Grand Design – Second Genesis by Ed Piskor

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

  • Good Omens, Amazon Prime

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

  • Avengers: Endgame by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game

  • Red Dead Redemption 2 by Rockstar Games

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game

  • Harry Potter: Wizards Unite by Niantic, WB Games San Francisco

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game

  • Betrayal Legacy by Avalon Hill Games

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game

  • Call of Cthulhu: Masks of Nyarlathotep Slipcase Set by Chaosium Inc.

OTHER AWARDS

These other awards were also announced during the ceremony.

EUGIE FOSTER AWARD

THE HANK REINHARDT FANDOM AWARD

  • Edward deGruy

(Spelling of name may not be correct – it was not shown on screen.) The Hank Reinhardt Georgia Fandom Award is presented for outstanding contributions to the genre by a Georgia writer, artist, or fan.

THE JULIE AWARD

  • George Perez

In 1998, Dragon Con established the Julie Award presented annually in tribute to the legendary Julie Schwartz. The Julie Award is bestowed for universal achievement spanning multiple genres, selected each year by our esteemed panel of industry professionals.

Thanks to Red Panda Fraction and Ray Radlein for livetweeting the results.

55 thoughts on “2019 Dragon Award Winners

  1. Just looking at the names and the quality of the books involved, to a casual observer with some awareness of the science fiction literary world there is a powerful impression that the Sad Puppy cabal, after their quite public and dramatic failure to subvert and secure the Hugo Awards for themselves a few years back, turned their attention to the Dragon Awards and found them far easier to subvert and secure.

    I remain glad and relieved for the integrity of the Hugo Awards, which were vigorously defended against attempts to game them. For all their flaws, the Hugo Awards seem to honestly reflect genuine literary quality and true popularity both.

  2. Just to throw some more datapoints into the mix, here are some first edition print run figures from Publishers Weekly, for a selection of Hugo-ish, Nebula-ish, Dragon-ish or generally high profile titles:

    2016 titles: The Obelisk Gate – 50k copies; Babylon’s Ashes – 150k copies; Feedback (Mira Grant) – 75k copies; Hag-Seed – 125k copies

    2017 titles: Six Wakes – 50k copies; NY2140 – 100k copies; Rise and Fall of DODO – 150k copies; The Stone Sky – 75k copies; Provenance – 100k copies; Jade City – 50k copies; Persepolis Rising – 100k copies

    2018 titles: Astounding (Nevala-Lee) – 50k copies; Red Moon – 150k copies; Uncompromising Honor (Weber) – 50k copies; The Poppy War – 75k copies

    2019 titles: Tiamat’s Wrath – 100k copies; Fall, or Dodge in Hell – 250k copies; The Dragon Republic – 75k copies; The Testaments – 500k copies; Gideon the Ninth – 100k copies; The Future of Another Timeline – 100k copies; The Gordion Protocol (Weber/Holo) – 25k copies; Exhalation – 75k copies; Star Wars: Resistance Reborn (Roanhorse) – 125k copies

    Most of the above can be found if you dig through the links here, but a handful – notably both the Weber volumes mentioned – are from articles in the print edition of the magazine, which may or may not be online.

    Numerous caveats: Those figures pertain (AFAIK) to US first edition hardbacks, and so will underrepresent authors who sell better in ebook or paperback formats; not all books listed in those calendar pages announce print-runs, and they are only a small subset of all books published, and likely omit some bestselling titles; some print-runs will surely over-estimate – or under-estimate – demand for the title, etc.

  3. @John —

    Those are interesting numbers. I have three quibbles:

    1 – You can’t really consider the Expanse books to be especially “Dragon-ish”, given that the series has also been nominated for a Hugo;

    2 – The print-run numbers reflect the hopes of the publishers rather than the actual sales successes.

    3 – Also, the Nevala-Lee doesn’t really count, since it’s non-fiction!

    But the numbers are still interesting to see. I’m especially interested to see how small the latest Weber printing is, and how large the printings are for those Muir and Stephenson books!

  4. (Apologies if this is a duplicate comment – the original version seemed to disappear as I was editing it to fix minor formatting issues.)

    @Contrarius, re. your points:

    1 – Oh absolutely – I haven’t gone back to check, but haven’t most or all of the volumes of The Expanse been in the “runners-up” for Hugo Best Novel finalists? That’s certainly enough for me to consider them “Hugo-ish”. (BTW, if anyone’s interested, the reported print run for Nemesis Games in 2015 was 50k.)

    2 – Again, you’re right. I’m not going to name the titles in question – other than to say they aren’t in my prior post, and were never nominated for any awards – but there are a couple of titles buried in those PW listings, from Big 5 imprints, that had print runs in the 50-75k range, but a year or two post-release, are still well under 1000 ratings on Goodreads. If we were to take Mark Lawrence’s 2015 research finding for epic fantasies, that 1 GR rating roughly maps to 7.7 copies sold, and assume something similar for other SF&F subgenres, then those books presumably underperformed quite a bit?

    3 – Yes, I included it mainly because I thought it an interestingly high figure for a book that might on the surface appear to be a slightly academic tome with a small readership, but clearly the publisher was aiming at a wider audience.

    4 – I’m no fan of his – the only thing of his I’ve read is the first Honor Harrington, which I disliked – but I feel I should present a couple of items in Weber’s defence:

    (i) That title with a 25k run is a collaboration, and perhaps is a reflection that these collaborations might have a positive impact on sales relative to solo books from little-known writers – AFAIK 25k is still a decent print run? – but come nowhere near to “proper” solo books from a big-name author?

    (ii) I’ve been capturing the monthly PW genre top 10 lists for a couple of years now – for, ahem, reasons – and Weber is one of the few authors who has been able to get a new title into the SF top 10 – which is dominated by classics, media tie-ins, and “mainstream” stuff like Ready Player One and The Martian – and he did it with two different books, getting to first and second place in the chart. Perhaps that indicates nothing more than having a fanbase that buys hardback books in month of release from bricks-and-mortar stores, but it’s a better record than the SF novels that were Hugo finalists in the past couple of years, of which only Death’s End and The Collapsing Empire made it into that top 10, and in both cases only to tenth place. (Obv. loads of caveats about ebook/online/paperback sales, quiet months of the year, long tails, etc, etc here.)

  5. @John —

    Interesting!

    In re: long tails — yeah, take note of those sales-rank lists I posted. Even Hugo winners from several years ago are still selling better than this year’s Dragon winners!

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