325 thoughts on “2017 Hugo Award Finalists”

1. Meredith: I’ll vote in [Best Series] this time because the idea of putting No Award over Temeraire is too painful.

   Whoa. I didn’t see that one coming. 🐉

2. Those who think it shouldn’t be on the ballot at all (appealing to the spirit of the law) will vote it under No Award.

   Given that a change to the rules was implemented explicitly to make it clear that works like Hidden Figures were eligible, I’m pretty sure that the “spirit of the law” isn’t in your favor on this one.

3. I’m looking forward to a lot of good reading!

   Like many of y’all, I’ve been thinking of how to tackle some of the series I either haven’t read or that I’m behind on. I’ve decided to treat the situation somewhat how books eligible for the children’s Newbery award are handled. If an eligible book is part of a series, it is judged on it’s own merits and it has to stand on it’s own. So, for those in the best novel category: If I haven’t read the preceding books in the series, I’m not going to. I will see if the book stands on it’s own as a text. In some ways, it’s a very interesting exercise. For the series category, I’ll probably make sure I read the first book in a series, but then I’ll skip around if I still feel like reading more and see how the books hold up unless I truly feel compelled to read everything.

   Also, I’m absolutely giddy about Splendor & Misery!

4. @JJ

   For reals, the dragon thing is about 20% silly running joke and 80% dead serious truth. Dragons are just the best. Other things are cool, too, but dragons? Best.

   (Also omg how do I make the tiny dragon symbol??)

5. @Hampus: I feel pretty confident that you need not bother reading The Obelisk Gate: you will not like it any better than The Fifth Season.

   @Meredith: To get 🐉, type & #128009; . (Only, leave out the space after the & sign. I tried to get it to do a version without the space, but it insisted on converting my & amp; to an &, and then on going a step further and putting in the emoj! Sheesh.)

6. stfg “Did the rule that said that stories need to get 5% of the votes to be eligible as a finalist get changed? Because it seems that the short story with 87 votes would not meet that.”

   I think, even if the rule was still in effect, 87 votes would be sufficient, because 87 exceeds 5% of the number of ballots in the “short story” category and 5% of 1275 is 64 (please let me know if I’m misunderstanding, all).

7. Lois Tilton on April 4, 2017 at 9:40 am said:

   Only six paper ballots!

   There might have been more if Worldcon 75 hadn’t mailed the PR with the ballots so late that many people (including my wife) didn’t get it until too late to vote with a paper ballot.

   Greg Hullender on April 4, 2017 at 2:12 pm said:

   …(appealing to the spirit of the law)…

   Considering that the technical wording is deliberately worded so as to allow the members to decide what they think is sufficiently related to SF/F, I question that you understand the “spirit of the law” in the way that those who wrote and voted for it intended.

   lurkertype on April 4, 2017 at 3:08 pm said:

   Glad to see “Hidden Figures” in, though not sure it counts as fiction.

   It turns out to be irrelevant whether something is fiction or non-fiction. “Dramatic” “Fictional.” The “related subjects” clause opens the category to non-fiction works.

   Yes, really, “Dramatic Presentation” does not mean “Work of dramatized fiction.”

   JJ on April 4, 2017 at 3:47 pm said:

   The ballot in download-and-print form had been available online for a couple of months. I’m not sure why the voter chose not to avail themselves of that well in advance of the nominating deadline.

   The voter in question was my wife, who on principle would not vote because she considered that Helsinki disenfranchised her. The assumption that everyone in the world who matters has e-mail and a computer is not proven. If you want an earful on this subject, ask Lisa about this in person when she has time to get really excited about it.

   steve davidson on April 4, 2017 at 4:15 pm said:

   Hidden Figures represents a connection between the real world and fandom, and “belongs” for the same reasons that the Moon Landing belonged (and won):

   Technically, it wasn’t the moon landing itself that won the 1971 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, but the television coverage of the moon landing. (Again, “dramatic” “fictional”.)

   Meredith on April 4, 2017 at 4:51 pm said:

   Does anyone know how the administrators found tallying the nominations this year?

   The lead Administrator, Nicholas Whyte, has said nothing on the subject thus far that I have seen.

   The post-Hugo report is likely to be Very Large, particularly because it has to also include what the shortlists would have been under the older First-5-Past-the-Post system.

8. @David Goldfarb

   Thanks! 🐉 So good!

   (Now, countdown until Mike bans me for making all my comments in interpretive dragon emojis…)

9. Congrats to the finalists, especially the “Local Filer Makes Good” ones – @Mike Glyer, @Red Wombat, @Rocket Stack Rank (Greg & Eric), and uh I hope I’m not forgetting anyone.

   I’m also happy to see that Some Things I Nominated made it. And SQUEE for Tea & Jeopardy, specifically!

   I don’t plan to read 500 books in Best Series. That way lies madness. I need to think about my approach.

   – – – – –

   @Andrew M: I’ll bite:

   #1 Which actual novel do you claim isn’t actually a novel? (IMHO they’re all novels.)

   #4 What kind of rule changes do you mean? I dislike rule changes targeted for/against specific publishers or publishing models, but maybe you mean something broader, like word counts.

   Thanks.

10. The assumption that everyone in the world who matters has e-mail and a computer is not proven.

    Sometimes they’re married to someone who has a computer.

    GREAT GHU’S GHOST JUST LET HER BORROW IT DUDE.

11. @Kevin Standlee: “The assumption that…” [things that were already shot down before] I don’t believe they don’t feel like people without a computer or who don’t have an e-mail address don’t matter.

    I’m a little sympathetic (bad mailing timing on their part, etc.) in general, sure! But when you write “on principle would not vote because she considered that Helsinki disenfranchised her,” that sympathy largely goes away. Choosing not to use alternatives is not the same as disenfranchisement, no matter how much you repeat it or how much you/she may have found one or another alternative annoying. Choosing not to do something, with full knowledge it was possible, and then complaining you couldn’t do it – that’s just silly, sorry.

12. On the Vorkosigan series: I started with Memory and followed the story just fine. True, there are references to earlier stories that enriches the reading, but not catching them didn’t leave me lost.

    That said, I would suggest starting with Shards of Honor and Barrayar, the three early novellas (“The Mountains of Mourning”, “Labyrinth”, and “Borders of Infinity”), the Memory – Komarr – A Civil Campaign sequence, and the novella “Winterfair Gifts”. It sounds like a lot, but these aren’t doorstop books.

13. I assume that Lisa Standlee(?) has specific and valid reasons for not wanting to personally use a computer (I don’t know what these are, but I assume they exist), and different but also valid reasons for not wanting to read the list to someone else to vote on their behalf (I have a pretty good idea what one might be, if I was in that situation).

    I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect a Worldcon to ensure that people who prefer a paper ballot receive one in plenty of time to use it to nominate.

    Re: printing in advance, I don’t know about anyone else but I’m sure a lot of people might not think to do this until receiving the paper ballot and realising it was far too late. It also still relies on a helping hand, and as mentioned there are issues with demanding someone rely on others. I get into a quite remarkable number of fights with environmentalists on the subject.

    Also: 🐉 🐉 🐉

    🐉 🐉

14. Woo. This is what a Hugo ballot should look like.

    So happy to see GigaNotoSaurus, SF Bluestocking, Rocket Stack Rank, and Our Wombat.

    Happier to see that Puppy poo is not overwhelming the ballot and can easily be ignored.

    Looks at series and groans. I will have to do some serious planning to make any kind of halfway informed decision.

    Also: Lots of women in the print and Campbell categories!

15. If you’ve read Cordelia’s Honour (or even just Barrayar – it was my entry into the series and it worked well alone.) and the suggested novellas, you should have enough background to start with Memory and do the Memory-Komarr-A Civil Campaign trio, which vary widely in tone despite following one character’s particular arc.

    (I wold actually say that Mirror Dance is the start of that arc, but it’s also probably the toughest book of the whole series to get through – it is much darker. It’s also more Mark’s key book than Miles’s – but all you absolutely need to know about Mark to pick up the others is that he exists.)

    I kind of like that my decision to finally catch up on the last few Temeraire books almost counts as homework. I was feeling badly at how much I failed to read 2016 fiction before nominating….

16. Meredith: Also omg how do I make the tiny dragon symbol??

    Insert
    🐉 for 🐉
    🐲 for 🐲
    Make sure you include the ending semicolon; the image will render properly in preview without it, but if you submit your comment without it, it won’t show up properly in the posted comment.

17. @JJ

    Two dragon emojis? \o/ Thanks! 🐲

18. Kevin Standlee

    Considering that the technical wording is deliberately worded so as to allow the members to decide what they think is sufficiently related to SF/F, I question that you understand the “spirit of the law” in the way that those who wrote and voted for it intended.

    It’s all in how you look at it. They left the decision up to the fans, which means someone can nominate “To Kill a Mockingbird” if they want to (assuming someone comes out with a new version of it) and the admins can’t disqualify it. But, it assumes that the fans will make a sensible judgment of what sort of films really ought to be receiving an SFF award. It’s the rationale for that judgment that we’re actually talking about.

    Anyway, I don’t think anyone is going to be changing their minds at this point. I haven’t seen a new argument on this one in weeks.

19. Meredith, you may have missed all the emoji fun last year.

20. Meredith: Does anyone know how the administrators found tallying the nominations this year?

    It’s my understanding that Worldcon75 has an ace software developer who not only created an algorithm which can do some basic identification of variations which are likely the same titles/names to assist with the normalization process, he built a plug-and-play EPH module that automatically returns the correct results when given a set of ballots.

    So I think that they probably found it reasonably do-able.

21. David Goldfarb: I tried to get it to do a version without the space, but it insisted on converting my & amp; to an &, and then on going a step further and putting in the emoj!

    The way I short-circuit WordPress’ auto-hyperlinking/auto-formatting is like this:
    http://www.<i></i>.file770.com
    &#<i></i>128009;

22. I wonder if JCW will claim that he was cheated out of a Hugo when he finishes behind No Award again.

23. I go into more depth about this on my own blog, but all in all I’m very pleased with this year’s Hugo shortlist. At least one of my nominees made it in all categories except for best dramatic presentation short and fan artist.

    Regarding best series, I’ve read at least one book in every nominated series, though there are several where I bounced off or just stopped reading several books ago. I’ll have to decide whether to give those another try or just evaluate them on the basis of the books I did read.

    Regarding non-computer users and nominations, my Mom is a member of WorldCon 75 and doesn’t do computers. So she wrote down her nominations and I entered them for her. Some people might be reluctant to hand their nominations to someone else for privacy reasons, but it is doable. Though I still think, WorldCon 75 should have provided paper ballots for those who want them.

    Coincidentally, my Mom also thinks it’s a fine shortlist and looks forward to trying the works she isn’t familiar with. Though she doesn’t like fairy tale and Lovecraft retellings and doesn’t want to watch Game of Thrones.

24. @Arifel

    Please accept this prize of one full Internet. That response kept me sane for hours!

    —–

    @Lenore

    Perhaps so. But wouldn’t that mean that we should have one or two sub-novel length works that are Indy works?

    I’m not suggesting “Too much Tor! Bad! Bad! Bad!”. I’m trying to suggest that if we do have a broad range of offerings available, and if the voting pool is focused on Tor for some reason, that perhaps the result is not necessarily healthy for the genre. Although, it might be healthy for Tor’s bottom line.

    ——

    @rcade

    Re: tent pole movies – Perhaps this year’s Logan is an exception that proves the rule? Great script and great acting.

    ——

    @lurkertype

    I share the love for Person of Interest. My problem with the dramatic-short form category is that I have a hard time narrowing it down to one episode that is worthy of nomination. Then there is the additional issue that one group of people can independently support one or two episodes from Series A while the same number of people could support half a dozen episodes from Series B. The result being that Series A makes the cut while Series B does not.

    I’m less motivated to nominate under those circumstances.

    ———

    @Rev. Bob

    Can we dispense with the pretense, please? You are a filter. I am a filter. We all have our own personal array of filters that influence what we see and what we read.

    Some filters have more influence than others. There doesn’t need to be any sooper sekret handshake or decoder rings involved to acknowledge that there are some people who by dint of their reputation or their position have greater sway on what gets promoted as being “good stuff to read”.

    This year, those filters combined so that WSFS nominators pretty well avoided MilSF as well as the GrimDark subgenre. (Obelisk Gate might qualify as GrimDark.) As a fan of both, I’m a bit disappointed.

    In any case, I am disinclined to pretend that variable influences do not exist. Consider it one fiction for which I am unwilling to suspend my disbelief.

    —–
    @Hampus

    I agree with regards to most of the characters in Fifth Season. I found none of them supportable enough to care about what happens in Obelisk Gate. Fifth Season was reasonably well written (few plot holes, IMO), but I just didn’t care about the characters.

    I had a similar experience with Michael R. Fletcher’s “Beyond Redemption”. Very GrimDark, but I just really didn’t care to engage with those characters any more.

    Regards,
    Dann

25. @Meredith: Nearing your quota for dragons already?! 😉

26. I’m not sure what I’ll do on Best Series.

    Of the six, I’ve tried three (Temeraire, Rivers of London, and The Expanse), and none of them were something I particularly wanted more of.

    I don’t really want to revisit them, and even considering a field with so much reading where I’m already meh on most of the nominees is… unappealing. I think I’ll just need to see what’s in the Hugo packet, and see how my reading for all the other categories is going…

    —
    Temeraire, 1 and 2: fluffy and fun, but eh. IIRC, liked the first one well enough, but the second one felt pointless and interminable. Didn’t grab me. (Sorry, Meredith!)

    Rivers of London, book 1: Light, peppy, but never really engaged my attention. Peter Grant would be fun to have beer with, but I don’t really care what happens to him. I wish he’d shut up about how much he wants to sleep with other characters.

    Expanse, book 1: I love Daniel Abraham. Some of what I love is here, including a gut-punch moment or two. But most of it… felt like typical thriller filler – good setup, and then treading water through the whole book until the big finale. Holden’s crew really bugged me — cardboard characters, the lot of them, and Naomi as a walking sex coupon. “Redeemable for one (1) sex, at any point past the halfway mark of the book.”

    These capsule reviews brought to you by Goodreads, my official distributed memory system for things I thought about books.

27. Isn’t Too Like the Lightning available in the UK yet?

28. If there’s one good thing to come out of this year’s Hugo nominations it’s that Ted is finally at peace with his love of dinoporn.

    Wait, I mean, actually, those are excellent shortlists this time around! Not one but two stories by Alyssa Wong!

    As far as series’ goes: I’m not a fan of McGuire, the Temeraire books (sorry Meredith), Rivers of London or The Expanse. I haven’t actually read any Bujold (sorry every single Filer). But I do absolutely love the Craft Sequence (so far, reading Last First Snow currently), so that’s something, right…

    For Best Novel I’m rooting for either Ninefox Gambit or The Obelisk Gate. I’ve been enjoying Liu Cixin’s trilogy but haven’t even started on Death’s End yet. All the Birds in the Sky doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest, nor do Becky Chambers’s books either really (although my brother loves them).

    Looking forward to seeing all the nomination and voting statistics this year too.

29. Isn’t Too Like the Lightning available in the UK yet?

    Alas, no. This is a source of endless frustration.

    The hugo nom should do it, though. Write your publishers, and tell ’em what’s what!

30. Standback: The hugo nom should do it, though.

    Yeah, you’d think that Tor UK or Pan Macmillan would be all over this like Marmite on toast, especially with the Hugo news.

31. @Dann:

    I notice that despite all the fancy words in the section of your response that was directed to me, none of it provided even a whisper of a hint of a shred of a piece of evidence for anything. You certainly weren’t shy about throwing around hints of nefarious favoritism and gatekeeping the first time around, but when called on it? Nada.

    People share recommendations here all the time. This is a place where both of us have an equal ability to hold up books we like and evangelize their virtues to others. If we do that, there’s no guarantee that anyone will listen to either of us – but if we keep quiet, they definitely won’t.

    I have a Goodreads account, and I’ve connected it to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. As a result, when I update my reading status in that app, a note pops up for anyone who follows me in any of those places. Sometimes it’s minimal – I’ve started the book, reached the 74% mark, or finished it and gave it X stars. Sometimes there’s more, as when I leave an actual review. Those avenues are just as available to you as they are to me; are you using them? For that matter, am I using them to the degree I should?

    In other words, before complaining that works of a certain genre got ignored, maybe you should ask why you couldn’t (or, at least, didn’t) list even one specific work that you felt deserved a place on the list. People nominate stories, not genres, and there’s no quota system in place to guarantee spots to any subgenres. It’s not enough to say “read more MilSF and grimdark” – name some stuff! Make a case, get us interested! Or are the books you’re reading not worth the effort?

    Me, for instance – I’m a longtime fan of David Weber’s Honorverse, and I just got a good deal on its latest installment. I’m looking forward to reading it, hopefully soon. I’ve read a lot of John Ringo, too – and if the rest of the Prince Roger series ever materializes, I’m there. Hell, I’m reading MilSF right now! Scalzi’s The Human Division, to be specific; I’m about to start Part 11. I picked up the first four books of Marko Kloos’s series when they were on sale recently, and although they’re not at the top of my list, I am looking forward to checking them out. So there’s at least one person here you could influence with some MilSF recommendations…

    It’s fine to lament that excellent books didn’t get any buzz, but never forget that “word of mouth” starts with opening your own. If we don’t speak up about the works we like, we have only ourselves to blame when people remain ignorant of their existence and excellence.

32. If someone could recommend me some non-American milSF, I would be all over it.

33. rob_matic: If someone could recommend me some non-American milSF, I would be all over it.

    Have you tried Linda Nagata’s The Red series? It’s kinda American, but not the obnoxious sort.

34. Standback on April 4, 2017 at 11:13 pm said:

    Alas, no. This is a source of endless frustration.

    The hugo nom should do it, though. Write your publishers, and tell ’em what’s what!

    Here’s hoping. You would think that an ebook version would be relatively easy to be pushed out.

35. JJ on April 4, 2017 at 11:53 pm said:

    Have you tried Linda Nagata’s The Red series? It’s kinda American, but not the obnoxious sort.

    I have read and enjoyed the first two books so far.

36. rob_matic: If someone could recommend me some non-American milSF, I would be all over it… I have read and enjoyed the first two books so far.

    I can definitely recommend the third one, then.

    Does far-future MilSF work for you? Walter Jon Williams’ The Praxis? Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Central Corps? Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War?

37. I’m checking out what the audiobooks sound like for the Best Novel & Best Series (first novel of each) sound like, and I started chuckling when I got to Death’s End. The narrator is P.J. Ochlan, who narrated one of my favorite novels from last year (Waypoint Kangaroo); he did an amazing job with the snarky-yet-self-deprecating main character, the other characters, and Chen’s writing in general.

    Someone upthread said Death’s End stands alone fine, though I’m always skeptical of this for me. I’m picky about coming into a series partway, even if the setting & plot have shifted from the earlier books. Woah, it’s nearly 30 hours, and very expensive (yay I have a couple of Audible credits). Doorstopper???

    Anyway, I’ll wait to see the packet, but I may get that anyway. Hopefully Ochlan is a good fit for the book.

38. JJ on April 5, 2017 at 12:03 am said:

    Does far-future MilSF work for you? Walter Jon Williams’ The Praxis? Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Central Corps? Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War?

    I enjoyed The Praxis, so yes. I’ve now added Bonesteel and Moon to my wishlist.

    I’m basically just not keen on USMC-in-space or entire future human race is American + jingoism.

39. 3- 5 Vorkosigan books:
    1. Shards of Honor: The first in the series. Aral and Cordelia. Military SF and love story. A woman who holds her own against pretty much anyone, and the brilliant man she comes to love.
    2. The Vor Game: You get Miles as Lord Vorkosigan, and as Admiral Naismith. Plus an understanding of Emperor Gregor. Space opera, and action driven.
    3. Memory: Miles implodes, and survives it. One of her best books. Very character driven.
    4. A Civil Campaign: Ekaterin. Also one of her best books, and certainly the funniest. A terrific love story with one of the best female characters in sf. And you get to meet Mark!
    5. Gentleman Joe and the Red Queen: last book in the series. There is enough info in here to pick up on what happened in the other books in the series. But it shows the scope of the family saga, including the potential of the 3rd generation. It also, as others have mentions, allows for aging, and how that changes people.

40. @rob_matic: Unfortunately, it seems not a matter of difficulty, just interest :-/

    Nobody’s bought the UK rights yet. Apparently that’s all there is to it.

    Jo Walton said writing to publishers might help. I’m… not really sure who to write to? I should find out…

41. Kendall: Too Like the Lightning. It’s half a novel (and the two-volume story was, from the start, planned as a whole). In my view a narrative which stops in midstream, and is completely open that that’s what it’s doing, is not a story, and hence not a novel.

    And yes, word counts. We’ve discussed this here before. I think we need one category with the word-limits set to catch the natural range for stand-alone novellas, and allow magazine novellas to qualify for one of the shorter categories.

42. @Andrew M —

    Kendall: Too Like the Lightning. It’s half a novel (and the two-volume story was, from the start, planned as a whole). In my view a narrative which stops in midstream, and is completely open that that’s what it’s doing, is not a story, and hence not a novel.

    That’s the complaint I had about The Fifth Season. It won the Hugo anyway.

    I think we need one category with the word-limits set to catch the natural range for stand-alone novellas, and allow magazine novellas to qualify for one of the shorter categories.

    That seems… odd. For instance, The Gunslinger was originally published serially in The Magazine of F&SF. Would you support it qualifying as a short just because of the venue in which it was first available?

43. Andrew M: Too Like the Lightning… a narrative which stops in midstream, and is completely open that that’s what it’s doing

    Well, sure, it’s “completely open that that’s what it’s doing” after you’ve gotten to the very last page, after doggedly slogging through 432 pages trying to figure out what it is that so many people are raving about.

    I found the plot muddled, the worldbuilding insufficient, and the character development poor — but I stuck with it anyway. And then when I got to the last page, it gave me a big “Fuck You, you’re only getting half a book”. At this point, I’m pretty sure that it’s going below No Award on my ballot. And there’s no way in hell I’ve got any goodwill left for reading the second book. 🙄

44. 🚀

45. The abrupt cut in Too Like the Lightning did not bother me in the least, I thought it was in keeping with how the book felt up to that point.

    I am half convinced that it may be better left that way, without the 2nd half, but I will certainly read it and find out.

46. Dann at 9:05 pm:

    This year, those filters combined so that WSFS nominators pretty well avoided MilSF…

    I’m not a big MilSF reader, so there might be some nuances of subgenre splitting that aren’t visible to me from this far away, but I’m surprised by the implication that Ninefox Gambit doesn’t count.

47. @Standback: I usually describe Leviathan Wakes as “what a really good Traveller game should be like”.

    It does a very good job of setting up the universe and laying out the basics of the characters. What really caught me was the second book, with the introductions of Gunny Draper and Undersecretary Avasarala. (Thrilled with the casting for both of those in the series, BTW.)

    The Roci crew are central to events throughout the series, but each book is more the story of the patron or sometimes the antagonist. The crew gets a more leisurely reveal until, hmm, Nemesis Games, when the reason Naomi’s been a cipher all this time really comes home to roost.

    There are several novellas and shorts. I haven’t gotten to “The Churn” yet, but it’s the highest-recommended one of the lot. Backstory on Amos.

48. Andy H. on April 5, 2017 at 4:30 am said:

    I’m not a big MilSF reader, so there might be some nuances of subgenre splitting that aren’t visible to me from this far away, but I’m surprised by the implication that Ninefox Gambit doesn’t count.

    I know where you’re coming from, but I still think of Ninefox Gambit as space fantasy rather than milSF.

49. There was plenty of things I loved in Too Like the Lightning .

    The abrupt ending, sadly, was not three of them.

    (although for this crowd, maybe I should modify that deliberate misnumeralized expression I picked up from my brother to be “not five of them”)

50. rob_matic at 5:06 am:

    I know where you’re coming from, but I still think of Ninefox Gambit as space fantasy rather than milSF.

    But surely it’s MilSpaceFantasy, at least?

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