Entering the Lists

The Locus Recommended Reading List is a widely-respected memory jogger that many fans consult while filling out their Hugo Award nominating ballots. It’s wide-ranging: this year’s list included 61 novels in various categories, plus other books and dozens of novellas, novelettes and short stories.

Diana’s book did it, so I was personally curious how rare it is for something to make the Hugo ballot that wasn’t on the Locus list. This year there were four “unlisted” fiction and related book nominees.

Best Novel
Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)
The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Short Story
“Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s May-June 2007)

Best Related Book (from the Locus Non-Fiction and Art book categories)
The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Glyer; appendix by David Bratman (Kent State University Press)

Last year was a different story. Only the 2007 Hugo-nominated novelette “All the Things You Are” by Mike Resnick (Jim Baen’s Universe Oct 2006) was absent from the Locus list.