325 thoughts on “2017 Hugo Award Finalists”

1. Contrarius:

   I think Too Like the Lightning is different from The Fifth Season . T5S does resolve some things at the end; we get some sense of what is going on, which had been unclear until then, though it also includes hooks for the rest of the series. Too Like the Lightning just stops. It’s the difference between a series, even a tightly knit one, and what is straightforwardly a work appearing in parts.

   As for novellas, the distinction I have in mind is purely in terms of word count. By ‘stand-alone novellas’ and ‘magazine novellas’ I meant works of the typical length for those categories, which do tend to differ (magazine novellas clustering about 20,000 words, stand-alone novellas running from 25,000 up to 45,000 or beyond); enough, I think, to be considered different art forms. The Gunslinger isn’t a novella by any count anyway, but I suppose a long-form novella could be published serially in a magazine, and it would still count as long form.

2. @Andrew M —

   I think Too Like the Lightning is different from The Fifth Season . T5S does resolve some things at the end; we get some sense of what is going on, which had been unclear until then, though it also includes hooks for the rest of the series. Too Like the Lightning just stops. It’s the difference between a series, even a tightly knit one, and what is straightforwardly a work appearing in parts.

   I strongly disagree with you — in fact, I wrote a bit of a rant about it in my Fifth Season review. But, of course, we’re allowed to disagree. 😉

   Also remember, Too Like the Lightning is in many aspects quite an homage to lit of earlier times, when serialization would perhaps not be considered such a crime.

   As for novellas, the distinction I have in mind is purely in terms of word count. By ‘stand-alone novellas’ and ‘magazine novellas’ I meant works of the typical length for those categories, which do tend to differ (magazine novellas clustering about 20,000 words, stand-alone novellas running from 25,000 up to 45,000 or beyond)

   It seems to me that you’re getting into some pretty fine distinctions there.

   The current breakdown:

   Novel — >40,000
   Novella — 17,500-40,000
   Novelette — 7500-17,500
   Short — <7500

   Would you want to break the categories at 10,000 word increments? Say, short novella 17,500-30,000, long novella 30,000-40,000? Would that really be warranted? Do you really think that would do what you want it to?

3. Dann and Rev Bob:

   As I’ve said before, I’m always doubtful about the idea that the Hugos ignore some subgenres, because it seems to me that they tend to ignore all subgenres. (Tend: exceptions can doubtless be found.) Hugo winners, especially, and finalists to a lesser extent, are mostly not core works of well defined subgenres; they are works of which you cannot say much beyond ‘it’s science fiction’ or ‘it’s fantasy’, and in some cases (as with three, perhaps four, of this year’s finalists) not even one of them.

   Ninefox Gambit is an example: it reads like MilSF to me (it’s not real science, but then neither is hyperspatial travel), being about military personnel fighting battles in space. It’s not typical MilSF, but the Hugos regularly look for things that stand out in some way and are not typical of their genre.

   I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the Hugos to give equal coverage to the whole field, because it’s such a large and diverse field that one awards process can’t cover it all. What I think the Hugos are generally good at is finding significant works that stand out in some way, as works that are typical of subgenres (which may be equally satisfying to their readers) often don’t.

   I have sometimes suggested there should be a ‘dog show’ award, with the Best in Show chosen from the winners of Best in Class; that would ensure more breadth of coverage. Not for the Hugos, though; it requires a different kind of approach. Perhaps the Dragons could add an overall winner to their class winners?

4. @Contrarius:

   I wouldn’t mind seeing Short Story go up to about 10K, Novelette from there to about 22-25K, and Novella up to maybe 45-50K. 40K just seems uncommonly short for “novel” to me, especially in the Age of Doorstops.

   Edit, @Andrew M:

   I do not fundamentally disagree in any respect, except perhaps the Best in Show idea. I don’t see a need for a “here, have a bonus trophy” award, in the Hugos or elsewhere.

5. @Rev Bob —

   40K just seems uncommonly short for “novel” to me, especially in the Age of Doorstops.

   That’s a fairly standard definition, though. Perhaps just add a new category for “long novel”?

6. @Rev_Bob
   Those boundries look reasonable.
   Scalzi was saying the other day that even his early novels, which feel thin, are about 70k. Most of the Tor novella lines seem to run to 180 pages and would surely have been considered novels when books were serialized in four issues of Astounding.

7. Yes, Rev Bob’s proposal is what I had in mind. I think 20,000 word stories are better placed to compete with 15,000 word stories, typically published in the same venues, than with 40,000 word stories which reach a much larger audience.

   Works of 45,000 words are now quite often being sold as ‘novellas’. We regularly come up against the problem that works sold as novellas, which people initially think would be good candidates for Best Novella, turn out to be novels in Hugo terms. The third Penric story turns out to be a novel, though it is a direct continuation of a series of novellas.

   And I’m not accusing Too Like the Lighting of any crime: I’m just saying it isn’t a novel. Yes, serialisation was the norm in olden times; three of last year’s Retro-Hugo novel finalists were serialised. But no one would have called the first episode of Slan a novel (or a novella, or whatever its length justified).

8. @Andrew M —

   Yes, Rev Bob’s proposal is what I had in mind. I think 20,000 word stories are better placed to compete with 15,000 word stories, typically published in the same venues, than with 40,000 word stories which reach a much larger audience.

   But remember that you’re dealing with fairly standard industry definitions here. I think it would be more sensible to add categories than to change definitions within categories.

   And I’m not accusing Too Like the Lighting of any crime: I’m just saying it isn’t a novel.

   Phhht. It’s a novel just as much as The Fifth Season or The Two Towers were.

9. Though I still think, WorldCon 75 should have provided paper ballots for those who want them.

   Worldcon 75 provided this paper ballot. Google found that page on Jan. 31, seven weeks before the deadline. I think the issue is when some people were mailed them.

10. NickPheas: -Most of the Tor novella lines seem to run to 180 pages and would surely have been considered novels when books were serialized in four issues of Astounding.

    Back before the Novella category was added in 1968, many of the Best Novel finalists and winners were — by word count — novellas*. And yes, I suspect that’s a function of how so many of the “novels” at that time were originally published as magazine serials… and possibly a function of novel publishing size standards at the time.

    * It would be interesting to see a breakdown of all the Best Novel finalists from 1953 to 1967 by word count — but as far as I’m aware, no one has done one, because of the paucity of e-book versions of most of those finalists. However, it’s pretty obvious by page count that some of them fall short of 40,000 words.

11. > “That’s a fairly standard definition, though.”

    But a rather outdated one. SFF books 40,000 to 60,000 words in length pretty much vanished sometime during the early 80’s. Between the e-book revolution and the YA explosion, they are just now finally making a comeback, but even so attitudes about books have changed in the interim. Most people now would probably consider an SFF book under 50,000 words to be a novella.

12. @Kyra —

    But a rather outdated one.

    Still pretty standard.

    The Write Practice — “A novel is usually defined as anything over 40,000 words.”
    ManuscriptAgency — “A manuscript over 40,000 words is considered to be a novel.”
    AbsoluteWrite — ” Everyone so far seems to say 40,000 words is the minimum for it to be called a “novel.”
    Indefeasible — “The minimum amount to be considered a Novel is 40,000 words otherwise it’s considered a Novella.”
    LitReactor — ” Also remember (because there are a bunch of new novel imprints opening their doors), a novella is 40k or less. ”
    SFWA — 40,000 words

    And so on.

    As I said — I think it would be easier (and more sensible) to add subcategories (short novel, long novel; short novella, long novella) rather than to actually change categories that have already been established for years.

13. But everyone knows The Two Towers is not a novel. It is 2 books of a 6 book novel. Presumably The Lord of the Rings did not win the 1966 Hugo for Best All-time Series because it is not a series, it is a novel.

14. I don’t personally find that a book not containing the end to its story gets in the way of its being a great novel; I would give a Hugo to Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand right now if I could. I didn’t enjoy Too Like the Lightning — I disliked spending time with the narrator, and I didn’t find the religious plots interesting — but I do think that on a writing and worldbuilding level it’s a worthy Hugo finalist. (And I thought The Fifth Season was the best Best Novel winner in at least a decade.)

15. @Niall —

    But everyone knows The Two Towers is not a novel…. Presumably The Lord of the Rings did not win the 1966 Hugo for Best All-time Series because it is not a series, it is a novel.

    Actually, it likely didn’t win because the Hugo was focused nearly exclusively on sf rather than f at the time. It was nominated, which means the Hugo committee agreed that it was eligible as a series.

16. Well, I could say that the admins don’t second-guess voters on things like that, but I’m not sure that was so definitely established in the 60’s. So, perhaps just say that any serially published entity is a series, but that doesn’t settle what it’s a series of.

    I’d think it was uncontroversial that some serially published entities are series of distinct stories (e.g. the Harry Potter series) and others aren’t (e.g. The Old Curiosity Shop). It”s just that there are debates about where to draw the line. If I understand Ada Palmer’s case rightly, she wrote Too Like the Lightning/Seven Surrenders as one work, and the publishers chopped it in half. She wasn’t planning on this as an end, even a subsidiary end. (Whereas Jemisin presumably was writing in the knowledge that this was a point at which people would have to wait.) Which I think is a reason for not seeing it as a novel.

17. Jonathan Strahan popped in here a few threads back to note that The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe – which he edited, so he would know – was about 36,500 words (he was more precise than that, I just don’t recall the exact number). This seems pretty typical of the half-dozen Tor.com print novellas I’ve read, so I would infer that most of them are actually under the 40K word threshold, or at least only barely above it.

    On a more general note, my bookshelves are filled with accomplished novels from the 60s, 70s, and 80s – even from the 90s – that clocked in at 200-250 pages. Not every story needs 1000 pages to be told.

18. @Andrew —

    Well, I could say that the admins don’t second-guess voters on things like that

    On the contrary. The admins declare potential nominees ineligible all the time — for instance, five would-be nominees this year alone.

    So, perhaps just say that any serially published entity is a series, but that doesn’t settle what it’s a series of.

    Now you’re just picking nits. On a quick search I can’t find the old rules, but the admins that year definitely decided against including it in the Best Novel category per a discussion I saw on reddit.

    It”s just that there are debates about where to draw the line.
    Right. And as I mentioned earlier (errr, I think I mentioned it here — maybe somewhere else!), I generally hate it when a book doesn’t have a complete intra-book story arc. So I have no problem, personally, if you think Palmer’s book should be penalized for that, just as I penalized Jemisin’s book for doing the same thing. But I still acknowledged that Jemisin’s book deserved to be in the category.

    Whereas Jemisin presumably was writing in the knowledge that this was a point at which people would have to wait.

    You know what assumptions do, right? 😉

    Which I think is a reason for not seeing it as a novel.

    And, again — the Hugo committee didn’t buy that reasoning for Lord of the Rings, so there’s no reason for them to buy it in this case either.

    I think your best bet would be to compare this case to Willis’s Blackout/All Clear, which won in the novel category despite being published separately. But they were both published in the same year, whereas Palmer’s work was not.

19. As for novellas, the important question, I’d have thought, is how publishers see them. I’ve checked Penric’s Mission and The Last Days of New Paris, both of which are over the limit, and they both say ‘A Novella’ on the title page.

    Tor.com treats 40,000 as a theoretical maximum, but says it is prepared to go a bit higher – it clearly doesn’t regard that as an impenetrable limit beyond which a story becomes a different kind of work.

    I wouldn’t actually object to a new category for short novellas – as the stories would be relatively short, it wouldn’t add too much to the burden on voters. I think, however, it would be hard to get it passed: there’s a widespread sense that there’s too much short fiction in the Hugos anyway, showing them to be out of touch with the market, etc., etc. – which I think is a misconception of their aim, but is a powerful way of thinking nevertheless. And in any case, keeping the cut-off at 40,000, in the middle of a range of books which seem indistinguishable, does not strike me as a good idea.

20. The admins declare potential nominees ineligible all the time — for instance, five would-be nominees this year alone.

    Three. They rule on straightforward matters like ‘no qualifying publications’, but not on ‘is it science fiction?’, ‘is it related?’, etc. I have never heard of them ruling against the voters’ wishes on ‘is this a novel?’ (though they might do so on grounds of length, I suppose).

    On a quick search I can’t find the old rules, but the admins that year definitely decided against including it in the Best Novel category per a discussion I saw on reddit.

    In 1956? I don’t believe there were any rules at that time, nor was there a nominating procedure (introduced 1959), so I’m not sure what there would have been to rule on – unless it actually got more votes than any other candidate, and so was in line to win. If that happened, and it was ruled out of order, I’d expect it to be a lot better known than it is.

    And, again — the Hugo committee didn’t buy that reasoning for Lord of the Rings — or for Blackout/All Clear — so there’s no reason for them to buy it in this case either.

    On the contrary, the admins’ judgement – or acceptance of the voters’ judgement – on Blackout/All Clear totally confirms my point. They accepted that the two-volume entity was a novel, rather than seeing each volume as a novel. Same with The Wheel of Time. If at some earlier point they made a contrary ruling about The Lord of the Rings, then clearly they have changed their position (or become more ready to defer to the voters).

21. I’m partway into “Rosemary and Rue” and there is nothing so far suggesting that this will turn out to be Hugo-worthy. Is there a later book in the series that will show me why it was nominated? Just within the urban fantasy sub-genre, the world-building is insignificant compared to Rivers of London, and world-building is the first thing I look for when thinking about the Hugos.

22. @Andrew M: “And in any case, keeping the cut-off at 40,000, in the middle of a range of books which seem indistinguishable, does not strike me as a good idea.”

    This. To my mind, if the author has to break a piece up with chapter numbers and give it an independent table of contents, that’s fundamentally different from a work that is short enough not to require such handling. Every Heart a Doorway is a Book, whether its word count classes it as a Novel or a Novella. Same goes for Stephen King’s The Mist, whether one encounters it as the first story in Skeleton Crew or as a standalone work (as it was reprinted when the movie came out). Plus, there’s the price factor. If a publisher wants to slap covers on a story and charge me ten bucks for it (eighteen if I want ’em to kill a tree), I’d appreciate it being a Book worthy of the category.

    Something in the 35K range is, IMO, a bit short for a Book, but tolerable as such. I would be quite upset if someone tried to pawn something closer to 25K off on me as such – and yet, they’re classed as the same thing. I disagree with that, not violently but vehemently. I haven’t exactly tested the precise border, but it’s definitely there.

    As far as the list of markets that say “40K = novel,” I am not a market. I am a reader, free to make my own decisions and to have my own opinions. One of those opinions is that neither the Holy Writ of Tradition nor the Siren Song of Groupthink constitutes a compelling argument for preserving the existing divisions. Publishing has changed a great deal; novels have gotten fat. Perhaps an answer is to apply the machete in a different place: 30-50K is a Novella/Short Novel, longer is a Novel, and shorter works become Short Story (sub-15K) and Novelette (15-30K).

    Yes, those are arbitrary numbers. Of course they are, and as noted earlier, I haven’t performed stress tests to check them with academic rigor. They at least feel closer to how I react to works, and that’s what I’m concerned with. Others who react differently are, of course, free to be wrong. 😀

23. Standback on April 4, 2017 at 2:19 pm said:

    But, hearing an association between Walton and Bujold immediately intensifies my interest in finally reading Bujold!

    Walton adores Bujold’s work. She has an entire series on Tor.com with her excellent reviews of all the books.

24. I think the word ‘novelette’ may be a bit of a problem here, actually. ‘Novella’ has become part of the ordinary language, and seems to have shifted its meaning somewhat in doing so, but ‘novelette’ is still a technical term of SF publishing, understood in terms of its historic definition*. So trying to make people call a work of 20,000 words a novelette may be tricky. I don’t know what else to call it, though.

    *At one time it had another meaning. I recently read a philosophical paper published in 1951 which referred repeatedly to ‘cheap novelettes’ as a kind of work lacking in literary value. I’m not sure what the author meant, but I doubt it was stories of less that 17,500 words.

25. @Andrew —

    In 1956?

    The all-time series award was 1966, not 56. I’m talking about the controversy that went on at that time.

    On the contrary, the admins’ judgement – or acceptance of the voters’ judgement – on Blackout/All Clear totally confirms my point.

    I edited my post to remove Willis’s book — you jumped on the unedited version. See my last paragraph in my edited post, which takes it into account. The most important dividing line between Willis and Palmer or Tolkien is that both Willis books were pubbed in the same year — but the others weren’t.

26. I should add to my post above, that if you decide to read Jo Walton’s commentary on Bujold’s books, there are spoilers galore. I’d recommend reading the books first.

27. The all-time series award was 1966, not 56. I’m talking about the controversy that went on at that time.

    Yes, but there can’t possibly have been an issue as to whether The Lord of the Rings was eligible for Best Novel in that year, as it wasn’t published in 1965. They accepted it – or deferred to the voters’ judgement to accept it – as a series. They did not positively rule against accepting it as a novel.

    The most important dividing line between Willis and Palmer or Tolkien is that both Willis books were pubbed in the same year — but the others weren’t.

    But The Wheel of Time was not published in one year.

    The most straightforward way to explain the admins’ actions is that they defer to the voters each time. They have deferred to the voters this time as well, as is right. My judgement, as a voter, is different: I did not nominate it because I don’t think it is a novel; I would have preferred to nominate the two-volume work next year (which its shortlisting this year makes impossible). It will still be possible, I guess, to nominate the second part, with a secret intention that the honour should really belong to the whole.

28. @Andrew — Just to add more confusion to the discussion, here’s an interesting section from the Hugo site: http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/

    Serialized Works

    Works such as TV series, comics and sometimes even whole novels are sometimes published in multiple parts making up a complete story arc. The individual elements of such a story arc are always eligible for their year of publication. However, voters may want to nominate a complete story arc. In such cases it is the publication date of the final installment of the series that counts for eligibility purposes.

    If an individual installment of a story arc achieves a nomination on its own then the complete story arc will probably be ruled ineligible if nominated. This is because the voters have clearly indicated that the installment stands on its own as a complete work and is not part of a longer work. (The same would apply if, for example, book 1 of a trilogy were to be nominated on its own.)

    Especially note the sentence reading “The individual elements of such a story arc are always eligible for their year of publication.”

    But further reading these paragraphs, this would appear to indicate that if you nominate one episode of a TV series, you can’t nominate the entire season — which I believe is actually done all the time. And this principle might also apply to book series?

    Things that make me go hmmmm.

    Yes, but there can’t possibly have been an issue as to whether The Lord of the Rings was eligible for Best Novel in that year, as it wasn’t published in 1965.

    Yes, actually, there could. Read the Hugo info I just quoted above. With a serialized work, eligibility is determined by the publication date of the LAST installment in the serial work — not the first.

29. The individual elements of such a story arc are always eligible for their year of publication

    But that seems not to blend perfectly with

    This is because the voters have clearly indicated that the installment stands on its own as a complete work and is not part of a longer work.

    I take it ‘eligible’ means ‘won’t be thrown out’, but still nominating an instalment is taken to imply a judgement about what sort of a work it is.

    this would appear to indicate that if you nominate one episode of a TV series, you can’t nominate the entire season — which I believe is actually done all the time

    If an episode and a whole series both get enough votes for shortlisting, the writers will be asked which they want to appear on the ballot. Yes, the same applies to book series – that is, earlier shortlisting of a volume rules out the whole work being nominated for Best Novel (though not for Best Series, which is a whole ‘nother kind of thing).

30. Yes, actually, there could. Read the Hugo info I just quoted above. With a serialized work, eligibility is determined by the publication date of the LAST installment in the serial work — not the first.

    In response to the illegal US publication? That’s possible, I suppose. (Last instalment is irrelevant, the whole thing was published in 1965, though the UK publication was ten years earlier.) Could anyone who was around then enlighten us on this?

31. @Andrew —

    If an episode and a whole series both get enough votes for shortlisting, the writers will be asked which they want to appear on the ballot. Yes, the same applies to book series – that is, earlier shortlisting of a volume rules out the whole work being nominated for Best Novel (though not for Best Series, which is a whole ‘nother kind of thing).

    So, as I understand it, readers could nominate Too Like the Lightning this year and Seven Surrenders next year, but they couldn’t nominate TLTL this year and then nominate the aggregate of the two books as a single novel next year. Which still leaves the issue of TV series unresolved in my mind, but that can remain a mystery for now. 😉

32. A few weeks ago, I constructed a histogram of story word lengths. Orange are short stories, green are novelettes, and blue are novellas. These are taken from all the short fiction ever reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank, so just over two years’ worth. (The numbers on the x-axis are maxima. So 7,500 is how many stories had more than 5,000 words but not more than 7,500.

    It suggests that 25,000 words is a special cutoff. But so are 7,500 and 10,000. I think many magazines that do publish novellas have a 25,000-word cutoff, so that’s probably where that break comes from.

    If we really wanted to change the definitions in a way that rationalized the data, I could imagine using 10,000 as the upper bound for short story, 25,000 as the upper bound for a novelette, and then set (say) 75,000 as the upper bound for novella.

    But that sure would invalidate a whole lot of history.

33. @Andrew —

    In response to the illegal US publication? That’s possible, I suppose. (Last instalment is irrelevant, the whole thing was published in 1965, though the UK publication was ten years earlier.) Could anyone who was around then enlighten us on this?

    Right. I just read up on this. It appears that the first legal publication in the US, in a revised version, was 1965, making it eligible for the Hugo Novel award in 1966.

    see Reynolds, Pat. “The Lord of the Rings: The Tale of a Text”. The Tolkien Society.

34. I’m partway into “Rosemary and Rue” and there is nothing so far suggesting that this will turn out to be Hugo-worthy. Is there a later book in the series that will show me why it was nominated?

    I read that book when it was getting All The Buzz, was similarly unimpressed, and never read further in the series. The author has, however, written a number of other books I like a great deal.

    I’ve been told once or twice that later books in the series are better, but I obviously couldn’t attest to it.

35. I don’t see the need to put the upper limit so high: if something novel-like turns up that happens to be extremely short, I don’t object to its counting as a novel. I’d say put the limit at the upper bound of where things published as novellas are likely to be, perhaps 50,000 to give a bit of wiggle room.

    The rest I’d agree with – if magazines have 25,000 as an upper limit, while Tor.com have 30,000 as an (advisory) lower limit, it seems clear we are dealing with two kinds of work. If there were a better word for the middle category, though, it might be good to use it instead of ‘novelette’. But I can’t think of one. ( I think ‘novelette’ could actually be doubly deceptive; to insiders it suggests ‘less than 17,000 words’; to outsiders it suggests a little novel, not a long short story. Further to my earlier query, Wikipedia claims it can mean ‘A novella, especially with trivial or sentimental themes’.)

36. Re: paper vs electronic ballots

    Once upon a time, I was deeply active in the SCA’s heraldic research and commentary system– I think my participation started back in the mid 80s. The system had been set up originally structured similarly to old-fashioned APAs (no doubt because of the demographics and interests of the people who set it up). Each month, several dozen people would print out, photocopy, and mail a multi-page letter to each person in that several dozen person group.

    Email and other electronic communication venues were rapidly embraced by the majority of the people participating in the heraldic commentary system (there being a reason why it had the reputation for being the nerdiest subculture in the SCA). But circulation of commentary continued to be required to be done in paper long past the point of absurdity because there was one (1) long-time commenter who not only did not have e-mail, but was still typing up his commentary on a typewriter. Even when electronic commentary became a permissible form, commenters were required to mail hard copies to any participant who preferred that format.

    I’d pretty much dropped out of the system by the time it finally caught up with the late 20th century and not only shifted entirely to electronic communication, but set up an automated comment-integration interface that made it easy to see all the relevant commentary on a particular topic at once. (And also to break free of the monthly-bolus-of-commentary model.)

    I have a certain sympathy for ensuring that systems do not technologically disenfranchise people, but I think that there are better approaches than anchoring the whole system to the lowest tech level potentially in use.

37. Greg Hullender: No, nothing need be lost to history. Just treat it the way historians do with Gregorian and Julian dates. 🙂

38. @Andrew M
    The reason to set it so high is that there’s currently (so I’m told) an almost complete lack of published works between 50,000 and 90,000 words–more or less. The unit-standard SFF novel is now about 100,000 words.

39. @Greg Hullender: (50-90 gap)

    Huh. That’s interesting. I’m not shocked by 100K as the new normal, but I am a bit surprised by that gap. One could make a good case for a 70K category break with that.

    I’m reminded of how Smashwords handles length: sub-20K, 20K+, 50K+, and 100K+. If you’ve already noticed that the last three categories overlap, give yourself a gold star; their interface indeed does not allow one to make a list of 20-50K works.

    I wonder how amenable they might be to exposing some sort of aggregate data on their collection. I’d expect it to be quite interesting, particularly when compared to the gap you report – is the gap organic or a result of publisher decisions?

40. *raises hand glumly* 50K-60K is my story length sweet spot, which means a lot of self-pub. People call them novellas and I’ve mostly given up correcting.

41. According to a recent post from Scalzi Redshirts was 75K. (He actually says 55K, but that’s not counting the codas, which rather oddly he seems to think of as not really part of the novel.)

    I’d prefer the cut off point to be near the lower end of the blank area, so as to ensure that all but one of the categories consist of things I can read quite quickly. (Though the series and YA awards rather mess that up anyway.)

    Which reminds me: what are typical lengths for young people’s fiction? Since the YA award has been set up so as not to make it ineligible for the regular Hugos, the question which category it would fall into still arises.

42. > “Which reminds me: what are typical lengths for young people’s fiction?”

    Very flexible. A huge chunk of YA is shorter than adult fiction and runs somewhere between 55,000 and 80,000 words. However, many of the most popular works of YA SFF are longer — and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix famously came in at more than 250,000 words (although bear in mind that the first Harry Potter book was a more typical 77,000.)

    All of these would still be novels under current rules, however.

43. Contrarius on April 5, 2017 at 9:13 am said:

    The all-time series award was 1966, not 56. I’m talking about the controversy that went on at that time….

    I edited my post to remove Willis’s book — you jumped on the unedited version. See my last paragraph in my edited post, which takes it into account. The most important dividing line between Willis and Palmer or Tolkien is that both Willis books were pubbed in the same year — but the others weren’t.

    Irrelevant, actually. Rules were significantly different in the 1960s, as in nearly nonexistant. (For example, a “Best All Time Series” category can’t be added today by committee fiat, because the Special Category is limited to the previous calendar year like all of the other categories.) Blackout/All Clear qualified as a serialized work under the rules as they stood at the time (and are about the same today) even if the first installment had been published in a previous calendar year.

    It’s pretty likely that Lord of the Rings, if published today as a new work, would be considered as a serialized multi-part novel. But things were different fifty years ago. Be careful about applying today’s rules to yesterday’s conditions.

    Contrarius on April 5, 2017 at 9:24 am said:

    this would appear to indicate that if you nominate one episode of a TV series, you can’t nominate the entire season — which I believe is actually done all the time.

    You can nominate whatever you want; however, it seems likely to me that if the entire series makes the ballot as a single long-form unit, then individual short form episodes that are part of that series will not.

    Yes, actually, there could. Read the Hugo info I just quoted above. With a serialized work, eligibility is determined by the publication date of the LAST installment in the serial work — not the first.

    You appear to think that the same rules that are in today’s WSFS Constitution were there in 1965. They were not. The rules were significantly different back then.

    Also, you need to be very careful when looking at the general discussion on the Hugo Awards web site (much of which I co-wrote) with the precise technical wording in the WSFS Constitution. If there’s ever a difference, the actual rules apply, not the more general discussion.

    Now, I was only a couple of weeks old during the 1965 Worldcon, so I wasn’t around for the argument, but I’ve never before heard about a controversy that had people trying to nominate the first legal US edition of LOTR as a single serialized novel. (But it wouldn’t have been eligible that way; the rule allowing first US publication to restart eligibility wasn’t adopted until a few years ago.) That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but I would have thought that there would have been better records of it if it had, and I would have heard of it from the people who came before me in this area of Hugo Award rules lore.

44. @Kevin —

    Irrelevant, actually.

    Actually, not irrelevant. I was establishing precedent, not claiming that the rules were necessarily the same then as now.

    Blackout/All Clear qualified as a serialized work under the rules as they stood at the time (and are about the same today) even if the first installment had been published in a previous calendar year.

    But, according to current Hugo rules, they could just as easily have been nominated separately, which would have been more natural if published in different years.

    Now, I was only a couple of weeks old during the 1965 Worldcon, so I wasn’t around for the argument, but I’ve never before heard about a controversy that had people trying to nominate the first legal US edition of LOTR as a single serialized novel.

    The statement was made by pornokitsch on reddit. I have no independent verification, though they prefaced their comments with “I found a book on the history of the Hugos and found this little oddity.”

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/2q9sun/the_1966_hugo_awards_had_a_category_for_best/

45. But it wouldn’t have been eligible that way; the rule allowing first US publication to restart eligibility wasn’t adopted until a few years ago.

    That occurred to me, but then it also occurred to me that if there were hardly any rules then, this might not have mattered.

46. Now, I was only a couple of weeks old during the 1965 Worldcon, so I wasn’t around for the argument, but I’ve never before heard about a controversy that had people trying to nominate the first legal US edition of LOTR as a single serialized novel.

    I’d think it would show up in fanzines of the time, given the way fans like to argue.

47. If there were a better word for the middle category, though, it might be good to use it instead of ‘novelette’. But I can’t think of one.

    Story.
    Long story.

    I realize they’re all stories, but we rarely use the term — a novel’s a novel, a novella’s a novella, a book’s a book. The word novelette exists because pulp publishers wanted to jazz up their contents page and make longer stories sound cooler, but we’re not driven by that part of the industry any more and haven’t been for a long time.

    If the Hugo categories were Short Story, Story, Novella and Novel, we’d understand it.

    Heck, if they were Short Story, Story, Long Story and Novel, we’d understand that too, but since Novella is currently a marketing category, that wouldn’t happen.

    Neither will my other suggestion, but I like it better than Novelette nonetheless.

48. My preferred categories would be:

    Leaflet
    Pamphlet
    Booklet
    Scroll
    Monograph
    Folio
    Tiny Novel
    Quarto
    Tract
    Codex
    Medium Novel
    Octavo
    Book
    Volume
    Long Novel
    Tome
    Omnibus
    Magnum Opus
    Doorstop

49. The reason to set it so high is that there’s currently (so I’m told) an almost complete lack of published works between 50,000 and 90,000 words–more or less. The unit-standard SFF novel is now about 100,000 words.

    I’d like to see data on that. Scalzi’s talked about how most of his novels are around 70-75,000 words, and he’s successful enough that if that’s true, you wouldn’t want to define his novels as non-novels.

    STARDUST and THE GRAVEYARD BOOK are both between 60-70K, so there’s another popular writer working in that length.

    And even if the sweet spot for SF novels is around 100K today, you’d be retroactively kicking out a lot of books we think of as novels. And the pendulum will swing; it may not do to be too tight in a range around current tastes.

    Kyra – I like that list, but would add an additional category at each end: Page and Abomination.

50. I, for one, certainly would be eager to vote for Best Abomination.

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