105 thoughts on “Dublin 2019 Announces Hugo and Retro Hugo Finalists”

1. Congratulations to all the nominees!

   Lot of great nominees this year. There’s a ton of them that I’d be thrilled to see win, across a wide swathe of categories.

2. Huge congratulations to all the finalists!
   This is going to be a fantastic year 😀

3. Yes, lots of great stuff — I’m especially fond of Retro Professional Artist this year.

4. Yay! Lady Business is back on the Best Fanzine ballot. 🙂

   (and thanks to the folks who put us there, too)

5. Congratulations to the finalists! I’m really looking forward to my reading/watching this year!

6. Congrats to all the finalists! Some personal woo-hoo’s below. Given my minimal reading for many months now ;-( I will have a lot to do; well, good, maybe this’ll kickstart my brain back into reading more!

   John W. Campbell Best New Writer: Prasad
   Art Book: Dillon’s Daydreamer’s Journey (which I supported on Kickstarter) & the Earthsea book (not an art book, sigh, but the category definition’s foolishly vague)
   Fan Writer: James Davis Nicoll
   Fanzine: nerds of a feather, flock together & Rocket Stack Rank
   Semiprozine: Beneath Ceaseless Skies & the Uncanny juggernaut
   Retro Artist: Finlay
   Artist: Picacio, Vess, Jones
   Editor Long: Gilbert & Redfearn
   Editor Short: Harris & the Thomas juggernaut
   Retro Dramatic Long: this version of “Phantom of the Opera” is SFF??? (haven’t seen it)
   Dramagic Long: Annihilation, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther
   Retro Graphic Story: they all sound fun and, er, retro 😉
   Graphic Story: Monstress vol. 3 & Paper Girls vol. 4; oh great, more Saga /s
   Retro Novella: “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” is funny to see here, given the previous nomination for “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe”
   Novella: Artificial Condition, Beneath the Sugar Sky
   Novel: Some are on my to-read list already, like Novik’s & Roanhorse’s

   Congratulations to all the finalists! 😀 Yes, all!

7. Lots of stuff to start reading.

   That lists not going to please the “only women are allowed to win a Hugo crowd.” 4 male nominees in the fiction categories.

8. Congrats to the finalists! Really excited to read and view the ones I haven’t already.

9. There’s some good stuff here, but I also think that there’s a whole lot of “second verse, same as the first”, and I’m disappointed that nominators aren’t stretching themselves a bit more to find new and different things to recognize.

   I am pleased that the Fan Writer finalists are mostly people who are being recognized for unpaid / non-pro work.

10. @nickpheas

    4 male nominees in the fiction categories.
    
    Yeah, I noticed that too. But hey, for how many years was the nomination list male-only? Anyway, nearly all the great stuff I read last year was written by women.

11. More Doctor Who….

    And two Good Place episodes. I love The Good Place and all, but that’s 4 slots out of 6, taken up by 2 shows. They should reduce it to one episode-per-show, as opposed to 2.

    Good nominees otherwise. (I agree with Earthsea being out of place. They oughta refine that category if they want it to stay. Make a harder line against illustrated books and graphic stories.) I guess On a Sunbeam was eligible after all. There’s hope for Mister Miracle yet!

12. @JJ

    Well, Boots Riley’s “Sorry To Bother You” made it. Also Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer,” in the Dramatic Presentation lists. Those definitely strike me as being offbeat nominations.

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14. The three-part Hobbit Duology is also a pretty interesting, offbeat choice. I definitely recommend it as well worth watching.

15. Bonnie McDaniel: Boots Riley’s “Sorry To Bother You” made it. Also Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer,” in the Dramatic Presentation lists. Those definitely strike me as being offbeat nominations.

    Yes, and I’m pleased to see Rios, Tobler, Groell, and Redfearn in the Editor categories, and Jones, Shimuzu, and Vess in Pro Artist — all people who’ve been doing exceptional work for years with no Hugo recognition (Groell has been a finalist once, the others not at all).

16. I note that some other “best-of” lists for novels are just 25% to 35% male, including my own Hugo nominations this year.

    This is consistent with either a) many more women writing speculative fiction and/or b) many men abandoning the field. (Or it might be something else entirely.) But it’s not just the Hugo Awards. It’s broader than that, across novels, novellas, and novelettes. Whatever it is, though, it’s real; we’ve seen it for at least three years now, and it’s significant (against 50/50 participation) at more than the one-in-a-million level.

    I don’t think this can be waved away by saying, “well, women were underrepresented for many years” unless one believes that that was okay. If anyone is underrepresented, the field is poorer for it.

17. Given the huge number of illustrations and the collaboration between Vess and Le Guin, I have no problem with The Books of Earthsea being a finalist in the art book category, and, indeed, nominated it in that category.

    Happy to see Dirty Computer nominated in the BDP Short Form category.

    I’ve now got a ridiculous number of books on hold at the DC Public Library, in multiple formats. Hopefully I’ll come to the top of the list soon enough to actually get through them all before voting closes.

18. Random observations
    A double for P Djeli Clarke!
    Novel is a great set but I’m particularly jazzed for The Calculating Stars and Space Opera.
    I thought “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho was a total longshot when I nommed it in novelette as I’d not seen much buzz about it…nice to be wrong!
    Novella – while tor.com produce some great novellas there were some great stories at that length in the online venues like Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies and I’d love to see them getting a look in as well.
    There’s a LOT of returnees in the Campbell. Delighted to have an excuse to get around to City of Brass now though.
    A particular hurrah! to James Davis Nicoll in fan writer
    Series – it’s great to get a series that’s not primarily novels in Xuya, good to see the category can recognise different types of series.
    The series seem to be shorter and/or I’ve already read more of them, compared to last year’s set of epics. (If I hadn’t already read the Laundry novels and tried Toby Daye I might think differently though!)

19. Where to begin?

    Novels: Nothing too surprising here. Three the same as the Nebulas. Four in series (the Kowal is the first of its series, but it wears its in-seriesness very much on its sleeve). (Indeed, I’m not sure if the Roanhorse is in the first of a series as well, in which case five.) I have read three of them, started a fourth – was waiting for the paperback for the Novik, but won’t be able to any longer. The Roanhorse is not yet on sale over here.

    I haven’t been following short fiction this year, so I’ll just pause to note that at least three of the novellas are also in series. Are any of the novelettes in series?

    Series: Actually I think this one is working quite well, and the series in question are the sort for which the award is made, where it’s the world which is the most interesting feature, so that one might well want to honour the series even if no particular story stands out. Though I find the prospect of something by Seanan McGuire being nominated every year a bit disturbing.

    Jumping ahead to the other prose fiction categories;

    Campbell: Four repeats from last year. Have they (apart from Arden, who has completed a series) done anything notably new? (Of course, Andy Weir sets a precedent of being nominated on the basis of the previous year’s work, but he was a special case, as he was puppied out of an award in his first eligible year.)

    Lodestar: I have heard of two of these. Any information gratefully received. I can’t say that anything especially notable is missing, though.

20. Greg et al: The Hugos have a tendency to pick up particular authors and run with them. This has always been the case, but it perhaps more so now, owing to factors like the growth in importance of series, the fact that people are writing faster, and the growth of the field, which means that not only can one not read everything, one cannot even read everything that is widely discussed and highly recommended, so will focus more on one’s favourites.

    In the past Hugo favourites tended to be men (though not exclusively; see Bujold, L., and Willis, C.), whereas right now they are largely women.

    I think the basic reasons for the increase in number of women nominated are straightforward – more women writing in the field, more women writing outside narrow subgenres, women’s work being more widely promoted and taken more seriously – but this tendency of the Hugos may be amplifying the effect beyond what purely statistical considerations would suggest.

21. Surprised to see “Binti: The Night Masquerade” under novella. I thought it was too long for this category. Does anyone have the word count?

22. Phileas: I believe you’ll find the answer in this comment by JJ — https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-10-12-18-good-pixels-make-good-scrolls/comment-page-1/#comment-908255

23. Phileas: Surprised to see “Binti: The Night Masquerade” under novella. I thought it was too long for this category. Does anyone have the word count?

    It’s 47,885 words, and the Hugo has a +/- 20% leeway, so it’s just under the 48,000-word wire.

24. @ Andrew M, Trail of Lightning is the first book in a series. I read it for the Compton Crook Award, and the trade paperback copy BSFS had had the first chapter of the 2d book in the back.

    It’s nice to see some variety in some of the categories, esp. the fan ones. I’m a little surprised Claire Brialey didn’t wind up a finalist in fan writer and Banana Wings in fanzine, but, iirc, Banana Wings is still paper only, which would limit its reach a bit.

25. It’s still weird to me to be able to point at nominees on the final ballot and say, “I had a hand in putting that there!”

    As others have said: This is a strong field. Some really good things on that list. A few things that weren’t to my liking (but that were still well-written).

    Gratz to all the nominees.

    I look forward to arguing about our vote with my wife (we’re sharing a Supporting membership this year).

26. @cathy: As did the hardcover my (U.S.) library had.

    @Mark: I had a similar thought about Series. On the one hand I’m glad to see some excellent series that I enjoyed on the ballot (including three that I nominated), but on the other hand I’m a bit disappointed that I won’t get to discover anything new in that category like I did last year.

    And yeah, not to criticize the great work that the Tor.com novella line puts out but I liked a bunch of non-Tor.com novellas as well. Notable that the bias we see in the shorter categories towards freely available work doesn’t seem to reach here.

27. Andrew M.: It seems as though you’re counting Spinning Silver as part of a series, presumably with Uprooted. I’ve seen a few other places online where people seem to be making this assumption today, but I don’t think it’s warranted; they don’t share characters or settings, and they seem to have pretty different magic systems. They’re two books by the same author and in the same subgenre, but I don’t think they’re set in the same narrative universe, any more than most of Robin McKinley’s fairy tale retellings are.

28. Noting the T. Kingfisher nomination, I’m sure they probably have, but has anyone in the past won Hugos under both their real name and a pen name?

29. Congrats to all the finalists!

    I’m surprised at the repeats in the Campbell. Especially since at least one of this year’s finalists in another category was eligible but didn’t make the list. I guess I won’t have to do much reading in order to vote. 😉

    I’m pleasantly surprised that I’ve got at least some familiarity with all but one of the series finalists. That will make this Hugo voting season a little less frantic!

30. Darren Garrison: I’m still thinking about the answer to your question. In the meantime I note that C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner won a Retro Hugo last year for “The Twonky” which was (1) published under their pen name Lewis Padgett, but (2) was a Retro Hugo nominee under their real names.

31. I’m mulling over whether I’m glad Earthsea didn’t get a nod in Best Series (because, old and newer stuff should have a chance after all the Bujold) or sad (because I love it).

    We just happen to have Record of a Spaceborn Few checked out of the library right now, so that’s one Novel finalist I can get under my belt fairly soon.

32. @Andrew M. @Andy H.

    I’m virtually certain that Spinning Silver is a standalone.

    Space Opera also seems to be standalone.

    Calculating Stars and Trail of Lightning are first in a series (sometimes that can feel like a standalone, sometimes decidedly not)

    Record of a Spaceborn Few is set in the Wayfarer’s universe, but near as I can tell, follows a whole new group of characters in a different part of the universe.

    Revenant Gun seems to be the only one that is really dependent on an earlier work.

    The only one I’ve read is Revenant Gun though, so grains of salt needed.

33. Congratulations, James!

    From a point of view simply of my own workload, I’m pleased to see that I’ve read 67% of the Best Novels, about half of each of the shorter fiction categories, and all of the Series. (I only just recently got all the way to the end of The Memoirs of Lady Trent from last year!)

    @Mark: Record of a Spaceborn Few involves the family of a character from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but it can be regarded as a standalone in the sense that you don’t need to have read the earlier book, and neither has spoilers for the other.

34. @Mark: I’ve read all except for Space Opera and concur. YMMV, but I thought that The Calculating Stars would work fine absent sequels. Trail of Lightning a bit less so but the main plot is still resolved. (Caveat: I don’t remember exactly where Trail ended because of chapter 1 of the sequel being included at the back of the book.)

    Failure to stand alone is actually a bigger issue in Novella this year, in my opinion; neither Beneath the Sugar Sky nor Binti: The Night Masquerade work without knowing who everybody is from prior installments. And obviously I’d recommend reading All Systems Red before Artificial Condition, although (1) I’d recommend reading it regardless and (2) it’s been a year since I’ve read the latter so I don’t recall quite how well it recaps.

35. @ Darren. Beyond this Horizon by Anson McDonald (Heinlein) won the retro-Hugo last year.

36. Spinning Silver not in a series, good. But Trail of Lightning is, so it still comes out at four.

    I’m not worried about ease of reading; I’m just noting the extent to which series fiction is coming to dominate the Hugos. Which is a bit odd, given that the Series award was introduced to cope with the alleged problem that series fiction is not properly represented.

37. @Other Mark (and others)

    I too concur. Spinning Silver is completely standalone. Ditto Space Opera. Calculating Stars finishes in such a way that it’s clear you’re getting a sequel, but is reasonably satisfying as a single book. Spaceborn Few is enhanced by having read the others but is self-contained as a story. Haven’t read Trail of Lightning but a sequel is announced, and obviously Eleventy Fox Gambit doesn’t work on its own.

38. @Goobergunch:

    And yeah, not to criticize the great work that the Tor.com novella line puts out but I liked a bunch of non-Tor.com novellas as well. Notable that the bias we see in the shorter categories towards freely available work doesn’t seem to reach here.

    I think a lot of “free and short” does well for Best Short Story and for Best Novelette because, well, they’re intensely shareable. Novellas are kind of long for that.

    Personally, my only surprise is that the print magazines aren’t making a stronger showing on novellas — they’ve got regular audiences, reading quite a small number of novellas in a given year, and Asimov’s and Analog even have a bunch of theirs up for free via their Reader Polls.

39. So Related Work is already going to be a tough vote just because of how different the finalists are but I’m having trouble with this:

    A related work is supposed to be “either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text”.

    AO3 is primarily a fanfiction archive. What are the nonfictional aspects of AO3 that I should be considering here? I am totally in support of honoring AO3/OTW but I’m having a really hard time figuring out how it fits in this category. (Not that any other category would be an obvious fit either.)

40. Wow, glad to see “Sorry to Bother You” nominated!

    I haven’t had much time to read this year, sadly, so I’m way behind, but the novel list seems pretty durn solid and includes books on my TBR.

41. 3.3.6: Best Related Work. Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or,if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.

    Goobergunch: As you noted, Related Work is not necessarily just for non-fiction. I would argue that AO3 is “related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom” (all three) and that it is “noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text” – that it isn’t a finalist for any particular piece of fanfiction, but more for being a community resource and a repository for many communities underneath the singular umbrella of AO3.

42. re. Trail of Lightning‘s standaloneness – having just finished reading it (not in time for it to make consideration for my ballot, but before its nomination was announced) I would say that though it ends with an obvious lead-in to a sequel, the main plot threads are all tied up, and it just about stands alone.

    re. AO3 as Best Related Work – I agree with Joe Sherry that the noteworthy part of AO3 is its function as a community resource, making fanworks (not just fanfiction, but art, vids, fannish original fiction, and fannish commentary all reside there) available and searchable on a single site in a way that they never were previously. Very few if any of the works hosted on AO3 are even close to the standard of a Hugo or Nebula award winner or nominee, but the quality of the individual works is not why I put the site on my ballot.

43. Lindsay Ellis’ nomination surely means that documentaries are eligible for Best Related Work now instead of Dramatic Presentation, right? The Apollo 11 precedent is bunk now?

    Does this mean that Apollo 11, this year’s doc, could potentially be nominated for Best Related Work (fitting) ?

44. @Goobergunch

    Notable that the bias we see in the shorter categories towards freely available work doesn’t seem to reach here.

    I have a theory that the bias is actually against paying anything for stories one doesn’t plan to read. A person who has no problem paying $3.99 for a Tor novella may baulk at paying $0.99 for an anthology if he/she only wants to read a single story out of it. Or paying for a back-issue of a magazine just to read one story.

    I think the print magazines need to find a way to list the stories individually on Kindle Unlimited (or something like that) so readers can find a way to get at them even if they don’t subscribe. It would probably need Amazon’s help to really make this work. (E.g. automatically split the royalties between the magazine and the authors.)

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46. How is the Tintin comic genre!?

47. Hampus Eckerman: Isn’t there a tendency to treat all fictional comics as genre?

    That may not line up with literary analysis, or be helpful, that’s just how I perceive most fans as interacting with them.

48. @Hampus
    Well, he did go to the moon once.

49. @both Joes: Thanks, that helped clarify things a lot.

    @Standback:

    Novellas are kind of long for that.

    I think this also may combo with the trend towards nominating longer novellas—I can handle a short novella on a webpage but that becomes a lot less pleasant up near the 40K word mark.

    @Greg Hullender: Could be! I use my library pretty heavily so I personally tend to worry about that less, but I’m probably the outlier.

50. Andrew M on April 2, 2019 at 11:57 am said:

    Which is a bit odd, given that the Series award was introduced to cope with the alleged problem that series fiction is not properly represented.

    I think Best Series wasn’t meant to remove series works from the other fiction categories, so much as it was meant to honor the different skillset in creating a series. That the overarching work is more than just the sum of the parts.

    Andrew M:
    Seanan McGuire is an incredibly prolific and popular author. She has written 240,000+ words in the Toby Daye series in two years plus all the OTHER writing that was published last year. The reason she shows up on the Hugo ballot so often is that she has that many works, she’s good, and Hugo nominators really like her stuff. No one would blink, I don’t think, if she showed up on the ballot every time she wrote a book if she was writing one book every other year. But she writes a lot more than that, so shows up more frequently.

    Yes, JJ, it would be nice if nominators would stretch their wings a bit. But they obviously like Toby Daye.

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