2017 Hugo Award Winners

The winners of the 2017 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer were announced by Worldcon 75 on August 11.

Best Novel

  • The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)

Best Novella

  • Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com publishing)

Best Novelette

  • The Tomato Thief”, by Ursula Vernon (Apex Magazine, January 2016)

Best Short Story

  • Seasons of Glass and Iron”, by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, Saga Press)

Best Related Work

  • Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)

Best Graphic Story

  • Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening, written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

  • Arrival, screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a short story by Ted Chiang, directed by Denis Villeneuve (21 Laps Entertainment/FilmNation Entertainment/Lava Bear Films)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

  • The Expanse: “Leviathan Wakes”, written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, directed by Terry McDonough (SyFy)

Best Editor – Short Form

  • Ellen Datlow

Best Editor – Long Form

  • Liz Gorinsky

Best Professional Artist

  • Julie Dillon

Best Semiprozine

  • Uncanny Magazine, edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Michi Trota, Julia Rios, and podcast produced by Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

Best Fanzine

  • Lady Business, edited by Clare, Ira, Jodie, KJ, Renay, and Susan

Best Fancast

  • Tea and Jeopardy, presented by Emma Newman with Peter Newman

Best Fan Writer

  • Abigail Nussbaum

Best Fan Artist

  • Elizabeth Leggett

Best Series

  • The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

  • Ada Palmer (1st year of eligibility)

HUGO BASE. Designed by Eeva Jokinen. Photo by Cheryl Morgan.

Also presented during the Hugo Ceremony:

Big Heart Award

Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf

First Fandom Hall of Fame Award

Les and Es Cole

First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame

Jim Harmon

Sam Moskowitz Archive Award

Jon Swartz

Seiun Awards

Best Translated Long Story

  • United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas / tr. Naoya Nakahara (Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.)

Best Tranlated Short Story

(2 winners)

  • “Backward, Turn Backward” by James Tiptree, Jr. / tr. Kazuko Onoda (Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.)

and

  • “Simulacrum” by Ken Liu / tr. Furusawa Yoshimichi (Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.)

Atorox Award

atorox

Atorox Award

  • “The Temple of Heavenly Tears” by Maiju Ihalainen

The Atorox Award goes to the best Finnish sf short story published in the previous year.

Atorox the robot appeared in a series of stories by Aarne Haapakoski (1904–1961), one of the first sf writers in Finland.

74 thoughts on “2017 Hugo Award Winners

  1. Congratulations to the winners!

    @David Goldfarb: I agree with you that The Vision wasn’t consistent with what I know of the history of the character (though I haven’t really been following him for years, unless you count the movies). I personally ranked the series #2 after Monstress, but it only worked for me as an Elseworlds-type story. I was a huge Vision fan back in the 1980s, and I probably would have hated it then, even as an out-of-continuity story.

    @Khitty Hawk: I was sorry that Too Like the Lightning didn’t do better, but I already knew from comments here and elsewhere that it was a tremendously polarizing book that people seemed to either love or hate. I was delighted that Ada Palmer won the Campbell, though.

  2. Wait: searching for Nicoll missed my name misspelled and could not have found Young People. Gosh. It’s (and this is not sarcasm) an honour to be nominated, although I expect I won’t ever be a finalist again.

    (it’s not that I am filled with an unquenchable hunger for accolades. It’s just I’m tied for Hugo nominations with the guy who drives me to weekly gaming and I may just slightly competitive)

  3. Some of those races were incredibly tight. A Closed and Common Orbit was still at 24% of the remaining vote when it got eliminated at pass 4, then Ninefox Gambit had 32% next pass, and then All the Birds in the Sky with 49% at the last pass. Fan Writer was choppier, but Abigail/Chuck/Mike are all above 32% on pass 4.

    Then on the flip side you’ve got Arrival or the Vorkosigan Saga, which won on pass 5 (i.e., outvoted the next two combined at that pass), and nearly got there on pass 4. Ada Palmer came close to a pass 5 win also.

    I should possibly stop playing with numbers and go to sleep.

  4. Linda S, I’m one of the reasons Ada Palmer didn’t win Novel but did win the Campbell. I didn’t like Too Like The Lightning — it didn’t work for me. (Ninefox Gambit was my top pick.) But I recognized the craft and skill that went into the story, and so despite ranking her fifth or sixth on my Novel ballot I ranked her first or second on my Campbell ballot.

  5. @Hampus: “I have a real hard time understanding what people saw in Black Panther or Ms Marvel. One was confusing with unlikeable characters and the other standard fare.”

    What I particularly enjoy about Ms. Marvel is the window into a culture that I am not a part of, coupled with enough “standard fare” heroism to make that culture accessible. For instance, the attempt to “clone” herself to meet all of her responsibilities is gloriously big-hearted and naive all at once. She’s a fundamentally good person who’s trying to do the most good she can, and she learns from her mistakes in doing so. Sometimes she needs an intervention, and that’s not a weakness… it’s a consequence of adults who should know better forgetting that she’s a teenager with sharply limited spoons and several non-superhero responsibilities.

    If only this were standard fare in more comics! Maybe it suffers when isolated from wider context, as with other series books?

  6. Ms. Marvel just makes me happy; its nomination got me to read the first collection a few years back, and I’ve kept up with it ever since. Even when there are problems with the plot (Civil War II), I just enjoy the characters.

    James Nicoll: I nominated you…

  7. I’m extremely happy that Ada Palmer won a Campbell and I say that after having seen her perform in the acapella group Sassafrass here at Worldcon. Their versions of the norse creation myths were wonderful. Like a piece if magic.

    We had to leave early, but I have to buy the record. This was one of my highlights of Worldcon. So yes, award worthy. In so many different ways.

  8. Andrew: Will there be a Longlist short work anthology produced this year?

    I’m pretty sure that I saw David Steffen mention that he is hoping to do one again this year, but is waiting to see the nomination results to see whether it’s feasible.

    I am unable to find where I saw this, but I subscribe to his newsletter, so that may be where I read it.

  9. Pingback: AMAZING NEWS FROM FANDOM 8/13/2017 - Amazing Stories

  10. Huge congrats to all the winners and all the worthy finalists.

    I’ve been travelling this week, so I just got a chance to watch the parts of the BM that I cared most about, where they decided on 3SV (no), EPH+ (no), and suspending EPH+(no). There was one thing that was said repeatedly which I believe is a mistake. I’m posting this argument here because I don’t know where else to put it but I’d love it if anyone has pointers for where I should put it so that it will get read by the people who care. I’ll probably also cross-post it in a few other marginally-appropriate places before I find the right place.

    So, the idea that I think is mistaken is that this year’s outcome shows that under EPH, bullet voting works.

    The category in question is best ELF, best editor long form. In the final elimination round, Vox Day had 83 ballots and 83.00 points; Miriam Weinberg had 131 ballots and 54.25 points; and Patrick Nielsen Hayden had 118 ballots and 65.42 points. Weinberg and Hayden went into the cage match because they had the lowest points among the final 7; Weinberg won because she had more ballots than PNH; and so Vox Day survived. People have drawn the conclusion that this shows that bullet voting works, because VD would not have been among the top 6 under the old rules, and PNH would have.

    But consider what would have happened if 82 of the 83 VD voters had voted a slate — say, Vox Day, Loco Prentiss, Vinnie Von Ritas, Cav E. Temptor, and Poe Stock. Initially, each of the slate would have had 16.4 points except VD who would have had one more, 17.4. As soon as all the ELFs with fewer points were eliminated, two of the slated ELFs (say, Cav and Poe) would have cage-matched and one of them would have been eliminated, leaving the remaining ones with 20.5 points. That would have happened again, putting the remainder to 27.33; then again, putting the remainder to 41; and finally, VD would have been the only puppy standing with his full 83 points. At no point would any of them have faced Weinberg or PNH

    What’s more, even if one of the puppies had faced down Weinberg or PNH, it would have not been VD up for elimination, as he would have stayed one step ahead of his fellow puppies. So the other puppy would have been easily dispatched by MW/PNH, and VD’s points would have surged just as if he had been the one highlandering his fellow canine.

    The upshot is that, under EPH, it is /not/ the fact that the puppies bullet voted that gave them an advantage; that was merely incidental. Their advantage came from the fact that their choices did not overlap with those of other voters. Arguably, in this case, EPH was doing exactly what it was designed to do: increasing the diversity of nominators who had some finalist who they supported. The fact that PNH had 118 ballots but only 65 points means that a majority of PNH nominators supported some other finalist or finalists. Eliminating PNH left only perhaps a score of voters without a finalist they supported; eliminating VD would have left over four score without.

    tl;dr: in EPH, there is no incentive to bullet vote by leaving weak candidates off your ballot; but there is an incentive to “free ride” by leaving people who can win without your vote off your ballot.

    (Note: some degree of “free rider” incentive is an inevitable feature of all proportional representation voting methods. EPH’s “free rider” incentive is actually relatively weak. And in the end, the “free-rider” problem is inherently self-limiting, because the more likely you think it is that other people will try to free-ride, the less of an incentive you have to do so yourself.)

  11. Jameson Quinn: What you say is that if you want an unpopular candidate to be a finalist under EPH, then there is incentive to not vote for “hostages”, those that might have gotten on the ballot anyhow.

  12. Hampus: correct. But there is not an incentive for bullet voting in most cases, including for “puppies”.

    (Technical hairsplitting to follow.)

    Imagine if voters came from non-overlapping tribes, and within each tribe X, the chances of nominating any work XA were independent of whether a nominator had also nominated work XB. In that case, EPH would generally give each tribe finalist slots proportional to their size, and fill those slots with the most-loved tribal works. Bullet voting would very likely not be an effective strategy for any tribe or individual.

    The only time bullet voting could work in that kind of world would be for those individuals with cross-tribal allegiance, who nevertheless value one tribe above the other. Those voters would be advised to ignore their secondary tribe, even if it meant nominating just one work from their primary tribe.

    On the other hand, somebody with cross-tribe allegiance who valued both tribes equally would not have as much of a reason to bullet vote.

    Of course, that vision of fandom as a landscape of warring tribes is pretty dystopic. The ideal is to all be one big tribe. And I think that EPH works pretty well in that scenario too.

  13. I also thought that the idea that EPH encourages bullet voting in general was a misconception. I mean it obviously enfluenced the griefers to nominate that way. But for everyone else, you don’t really know that anyone else would bullet the same thing you are or vote for that and weaker candidates.

  14. @Laura: “I also thought that the idea that EPH encourages bullet voting in general was a misconception.”

    Same here, and it was frustrating to hear that (ETA: at the biz meeting), especially since – even if true – it felt to me like a “missing the forest for the trees” kind of thing. So, EPH and one candidate this year, or no EPH and they would’ve continued as before, with a near-sweep of the ballot (as seen in past years) . . . hmm, even if EPH rewarded bullet voting I’d rather have that than rewarding a full slate! 😉 But good to hear that’s not actually the case.

    @Jameson Quinn: Thanks for stopping by to clear things up and give more details/examples!

    Of course, that vision of fandom as a landscape of warring tribes is pretty dystopic. The ideal is to all be one big tribe. And I think that EPH works pretty well in that scenario too.

    I like that ideal! 😉

  15. Well, fandom has certainly always had infighting and factionalism. The Futurians were banned from the first Worldcon. If anything, we’ve been bending over backwards to be nice to the Puppies. A few Noah Wards is pretty mild, relatively speaking. 🙂

    But yeah, I’m glad Quinn came along to clear up the bullet ballot thing. Now that I stop to think about it, well, duh, EPH ends up turning every ballot into a bullet ballot at some point during the process, once the weaker candidates have been eliminated.

  16. Yes, the fact that EPH makes the griefers believe they need to bullet vote is a feature, not a bug! And even then they fell short. Between that, 5&6, and misunderstandings on eligibility there were at least 5 actual contenders in all categories. I still think some sort of longlist stage would be the final piece of the puzzle. But I can’t blame anyone for not really wanting to mess around with what worked pretty dang well.

  17. The only way I could see fandom nominating as tribes is linguistic – if there are people nominating works in their (non-English) native language then there could be a situation where there are multiple groups of nominators who don’t have any overlap in their nominations.

    And that is a situation that EPH would work very well for.

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