Sidewise Awards Contenders for 2019 and 2020

The nominees for the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History for calendar years 2019 and 2020 have been announced. 

2019 SHORT FORM

  • Seanan McGuire: “Any Way the Wind Blows,” Tor.com, 6/19
  • Christopher G. Nuttall, “Drang Nach Osten,” Trouble in the Wind, edited by Chris Kennedy and James Young, Theogony Books, 2019
  • Christopher G. Nuttall, “The Kaiserin of the Seas,” To Slip the Surly Bonds, edited by Chris Kennedy and James Young, Theogony Books, 2019
  • William Stroock, “The Blue and the Red: Palmerston’s Ironclads,” Those in Peril, edited by Chris Kennedy and James Young, Theogony Books, 2019
  • Harry Turtledove, Christmas Truce, Asimov’s, 11/19

2019 LONG FORM

  • K. Chess, Famous Men Who Never Lived, Tin House, 2019
  • Jared Kavanagh, Walking through Dreams, Sea Lion Press, 2019
  • John Laband, The Fall of Rorke’s Drift, Greenhill, 2019
  • Annalee Newitz, Future of Another Timeline, Tor, 2019

2020 SHORT FORM

  • Andrew J. Harvey: “1827: Napoleon in Australia,” Alternate Australias, edited by Jared Kavanagh, Sea Lion Press, 2020
  • Matthew Kresal: “Moonshot,” Alternate Australias, edited by Jared Kavanagh, Sea Lion Press, 2020
  • Sean McMullen, “Wheel of Echoes,” Analog, 1/20

2020 LONG FORM

  • Dennis Bock, The Good German, Patrick Crean Editions, 2020
  • Junior Burke, The Cold Last Swim, Gibson House Press, 2020
  • Mary Robinette Kowal, The Relentless Moon, Tor, 2020
  • Charles Rosenberg, The Day Lincoln Lost, Hanover Square, 2020
  • Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Doors of Eden, Pan McMillan, 2020

In addition, several of the judges wanted to call attention to Elektra Hammond’s 2019 short story “O-Rings,” which appeared in the anthology Alternate Peace, which is ineligible for nomination since Sidewise Administrator Steven H Silver was the anthology’s editor.

The winners will be announced during this year’s Worldcon, DisCon III. The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate historical fiction.

This year’s panel of judges was made up of Karen Hellekson, Matt Mitrovich, Olav Rokne, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver. Silver also noted, “We regret that earlier this year long-time Sidewise Award judge Jim Rittenhouse passed away.”

The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were conceived in late 1995 to honor the best allohistorical genre publications of the year. The first awards were announced in summer 1996 and honored works from 1995. The award takes its name from Murray Leinster’s 1934 short story “Sidewise in Time,” in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines.

6 thoughts on “Sidewise Awards Contenders for 2019 and 2020

  1. A alternate history I really enjoyed reading is “The Wandering Warriors” by Alan Smale and Rick Wilber (2018).

  2. So glad to see Tchaikovsky’s “The Doors of Eden” getting a nomination. I like alt-history stories that go really far back in time, and this one goes really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY far back.

  3. @Jeffrey Jones
    I like that one also. It’s very alternate, with that premise.

    Hello from 1 Sep 9937!

  4. Doors of Eden is great, bold, swiping stuff. I was a bit sad it didn’t make the Hugo shortlist.

  5. Congrats to all the finalists. Nice to see Chris Nuttall getting some attention.

    Regards,
    Dann
    In the storm, the tree is glad of the root, Not of the branch. – Protesilaus – from Harrow the Ninth

  6. I really like The Doors of Eden it’s got some of the most imaginative alternate worlds I’ve seen and reminds me that prehistory completely trumps history in the number of years there are.

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