2015 Hugo Best Novel Longlist Discussion Thread

By JJ: We’ve spent a lot of time over the last several months reading and discussing the Hugo Best Novel finalists. This thread has been created to give us the opportunity to discuss the rest of the entries on the longlist.

Please employ your best judgment, and use rot13 to encrypt anything especially spoilery, in consideration of those who may not have gotten to read all of the entries yet.

To make a JavaScript bookmarklet for your browser that handles rot13 – so that all you have to do is highlight some text and click the bookmark to encrypt/decrypt it — go here, click on the “file suppressed” message, copy the one line of code to your clipboard, and save it as the target/URL of a Bookmark/Favorite. (Thanks to Rev. Bob for the neat trick.)

[First in a series. See also — Hugo Best Novella Longlist Discussion Thread and Hugo Best Novelette Longlist Discussion Thread.]

181 thoughts on “2015 Hugo Best Novel Longlist Discussion Thread

  1. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club was one of my absolute favorite books of last year, but unfortunately I don’t consider it SFF-nal enough for my list. Instead, I’ll start with:

    1) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
    2) City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

    So distressed that Bennett missed being a Hugo finalist this year due to shenanigans. I wanted all the discussions comparing Addison’s and Bennett’s books.

    3) Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

    More objectively, I’d probably put Maplecroft first, but I don’t deal well with snyyvatf bhg orgjrra fvfgref.

    4) A Death at the Dionysus Club by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold

    If this were a vote in a more serious competition, I’d have to reread A Death at the Dionysus Club to judge how well I think it stands alone, since it’s the second book in a series. But that possible caveat aside, I thought it was a wonderful sequel, even better than the (highly enjoyable) first book.

    5) Lock In by John Scalzi

  2. Ok, it’s days later, but I’m bumping Lock In out of my #5 (a good, solid police procedural, mind you which I still recommend) and replacing it with City of Stairs, which I have just finished. City of Stairs has the mystery, and more sensawonder. Actually, I’ll put it in 4th place, and Ancillary Justice will slip to 5 (still not sure how well it would stand on its own)

    Hope this isn’t too late, JJ. Sorry for the inconvenience….

  3. Cassy B.: Hope this isn’t too late, JJ. Sorry for the inconvenience…

    Not a problem at all! I’d like everyone who wants to vote to get a chance to do so.

    If people wish to change votes they’ve already posted, that’s fine (I’m still trying to lock down my Alternate Universe Top 5; it changes from day to day).

  4. 1. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    2. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
    3. Station Eleven, Emily etc
    4. The Martian, Andy Weir
    5. Memory of water – flawed but poetic
    5.The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    5. Lock In, John Scalzi
    5. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin

    Several chapter 5s!

  5. JJ, how long have I got? I want to finish off a couple of books but if I don’t have time I’ll just vote as-is.

  6. Meredith: how long have I got? I want to finish off a couple of books but if I don’t have time I’ll just vote as-is.

    How long will it be before you finish them?

  7. @JJ

    I think I’ve read enough of them that, in the cheerful assumption that they don’t spoon the ending (because someone would’ve mentioned it by now), I can put my top five together.

    1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi
    3. The Martian, Andy Weir
    3. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    5. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett

    ~ With the caveat that I’ve probably not read enough of City of Stairs to be entirely sure about its positioning (I’m pretty happy with where The Martian is but I’ve read a lot more of that one), and if I’d finished it then it might have ended up higher, but I definitely know I like it more than Three Body Problem which is the most important thing. I haven’t wandered off a couple of dozen times while trying to read it.

  8. Meredith: I think I’ve read enough of them that, in the cheerful assumption that they don’t spoon the ending (because someone would’ve mentioned it by now), I can put my top five together.

    No worries. I realized in the shower this morning that I’m going to have to do Australian ballot on them rather than simple totals (duh!), so it will take me a while to get that set up, and I won’t be able to start that for a few hours yet anyway.

  9. @JJ

    Then I will keep reading and if I want to inflict a revised version on you later I’m sure you’ll forgive me. 😉

  10. Am I too late? Let’s see!

    1. The Goblin Emperor

    Unique and wonderful and affecting in a way that I still can’t explain.

    2. The Southern Reach Trilogy

    I did not enjoy this work. But I admire the hell out of it, and months on I still can’t stop thinking about it. That counts for something. That counts for a lot.

    3. The Girl With All The Gifts

    I imagine lots of people saw that ending coming. I sure didn’t. It was good the whole way, and then it became great.

    4. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

    Maybe this is only here because I read it recently, but what the hell. I just enjoyed the hell out of this. It just pushed all my buttons. This is where my heart is at today.

    5. Lock In

    I admire this one more the more I think about it. Scalzi does so many things here so well. And he makes it look so easy that you can miss it.

    Not Listed:

    The Three-Body Problem because it’s a few good ideas, a great opening chapter, and a lot of clumsiness and unintentional silliness.

    Ancillary Sword because it just got crowded out, that’s all. It’s strong work and I’m kind of surprised to see it at #6, but I have a hard time weighing sequels. I think my brain discounts great stuff that was already credited to the previous books.

  11. I hope I’m not to late:

    1. Heaven’s Queen by Rachel Bach

    Never even made the longlist, but this was my hands down favourite SF novel of 2014.

    2. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

    3. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

    4. Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

    5. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

  12. I’m satisfied with The Martian‘s position relative to the others, now that I’ve finished it, but I’m still nowhere near far enough into City of Stairs to feel comfortable bumping it up. Interesting so far, though.

  13. Okay, I’m a little over halfway through City of Stairs and I’m pretty sure I want to revise it to this, if there’s time:

    1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    2. Lock In, John Scalzi
    3. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    4. The Martian, Andy Weir
    5. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie

  14. @Meredith: Traitor to Mars! 😉 Oh okay, you’ve been all-but-threatening to do this for a while now. . . .

  15. Well, this is my Top 5 right as of this moment:

    1. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    I actually thought this one was a bit better than the first. I love Space Opera and Mystery, so I’m a sucker for something which does both well.

    2. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North
    I thought this ran circles around Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. I loved this book so hard. I’m looking forward to reading her 2015 novel Touch.

    3. A Darkling Sea, James L. Cambias
    A lot of books feature aliens which bear far too much resemblance to humans, both physically and psychologically. Cambias has managed to create some amazingly-alien aliens — and a good story to boot.

    4. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    I don’t know what I was expecting — perhaps I wasn’t expecting anything, which was why this book wow’ed me so much. And that’s saying something, since I’m far more into SF than Fantasy (though this book actually blends the two pretty well).

    5. Lock In, John Scalzi
    I just now swapped this with The Martian. Ultimately, I had to give it Scalzi for his amazing worldbuilding and deftness in invisibly avoiding ever specifying the main character’s gender (though I would have liked an SFFnal, rather than mundane, solution to the mystery. Ah, well).

    The Martian, Andy Weir
    It’s light on characterization, but this book is just so damn much fun. But it’s not one I’m likely to re-read more than once, unlike some of the above. Honorable Mention.

    The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    I just don’t have the mental energy to read this more than once. It’s not my usual fare, but I felt compelled to read the whole thing, and I was still thinking about it days later. So it gets a big Honorable Mention from me… but I can’t rank it above the others.

    Enjoyed, but not enough to rank up there:
    The Goblin Emperor
    Station Eleven

    I’m glad I read The Three-Body Problem, and it’s got some really interesting aspects — but it’s just so flawed. The idea of trying to force myself to read the sequel leaves me cold.

    Cora, I share your love for Heaven’s Queen and the rest of Rachel Bach’s Paradox trilogy. Kick-ass female protagonist! Epic Space Opera! Intriguing aliens! Good characterization! Interesting plots! (But… a little too much of the romance for my taste; if I’m not the one getting laid, I really don’t want to hear the details.)

  16. Meredith, I got your changes.

    Anyone else, if you want to vote or change your vote, you’ve got til I manually run an IRV on 30 ballots. Given my mental state right now, that may be more time than you think — but best to get them posted now.

  17. @Kendall

    City of Stairs just has so much going on! The Martian was super fun, and I liked that he managed to pull off basically an entire book of technobabble without it getting dull or repetitive (although it sometimes felt like Too Much was going wrong, I think that’s because the book doesn’t convey the time-scale, really – it feels like less time goes by than actually does) but wow, CoS has some serious world-building and character chops. I’m hoping they don’t spoon the ending and make my vote look silly, but for now…

    (Also, I still need to read The Fifteen Lives of Harry August – I think that’s been recommended about as much as City of Stairs.)

  18. @Meredith: No, no, don’t defend it. 😉 Just kidding . . . it’s more my feeling overwhelmed by All The Books I Must Read, and that gets tons of recs! All I need is a movie for it to really put the pressure on (that’s what finally got me to read The Martian, heh).

    Thankfully, I have a weekend with wacky family coming up, so a good book may save me.

  19. @JJ

    Yay!

    @Kendall

    We’re all there with you with our own personal Mount File770’s..! So many books, so little time unfuzzybrained to read them…

  20. The Alternate Universe 2015 Hugo Best Novel

    And… we may have a few surprises here:

    1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    2. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    3. The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    4. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    5. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
    6. The Martian, Andy Weir
    7. Lock In, John Scalzi

    These 7 scored far and away ahead of all the other nominees.

    Among Filers, The Three-Body Problem does not seem to have lived up to its hype.

    Ancillary Sword tended to appear lower, but on a lot of ballots — enough to give it a strong push for 2nd place.

    City of Stairs benefited, I think, from a lot of people having read it after the original Hugo nomination deadline.

    And I have no explanation for the difference from the original nomination tally, but The Southern Reach Trilogy appears to be an especial favorite of Filers.

    Based on the discussion here over the last few months, however, I am unsurprised that The Goblin Emperor was the runaway favorite, coming in first on 19 of 30 ballots (the novels with the next-highest 1st-place votes all only had 3 each).

  21. Tasha Turner: So is this it for the “The Alternate Universe 2015 Hugo Best Novel”?

    People are, of course, still welcome to continue commenting on this thread.

    Stay tuned for “The Alternate Universe 2015 Hugo Best Novella”…

  22. Preparatory for the discussion of the Novella Longlist, I own Genevieve Valentine’s Dream Houses on Kindle, and can loan it to anyone with an Amazon account (if you don’t have a Kindle device, you can read it using Kindle for PC or Kindle for Android). (I’m not sure whether it will let me lend outside the U.S., but I’m willing to give it a try). I’ll need your Amazon e-mail address: either rot13‘ed and posted here, or you can send it to Mike at the e-mail address on this page and request that he forward it to me.

  23. @JJ: Thanks for doing this! I am a bit surprised TBP got as high as 5th and a little disappointed The Martian didn’t do better. Granted, 30 ballots isn’t a lot, but still interesting results.

    @Mike Glyer: Thanks for devoting a post/comments to the discussion in the first place!

    @Meredith: Indeed! 😉 Yay TGE!

  24. Go TGE!

    I’m not particularly shocked by the poor showing for 3BP. I suspect I’m closer to its natural audience than whatever the midpoint of FilePhiles is, and I only ranked it third.

  25. I still haven’t read a few of the contenders, but my main problem is that I want to rank every book I love first. Ancillary Sword: first! TGE: also first! City of Stairs: first! Europe in Autumn: first as well! The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August: fifth first!

  26. Pingback: Hugo Best Novelette Longlist Discussion Thread | File 770

  27. Pingback: Hugo Best Novella Longlist Discussion Thread | File 770

  28. Ancillary Mercy comes with several moments of slapping head and ‘how did we not see this possibility?’

Comments are closed.