2018 Dragon Awards


The 2018 Dragon Awards were presented September 2 at Dragon Con.

Best Science Fiction Novel

  • Artemis by Andy Weir

Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

  • Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

  • Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel

  • A Call to Vengeance by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, and Thomas Pope

Best Alternate History Novel

  • Uncharted by Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt

Best Media Tie-In Novel

  • Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray

Best Horror Novel

  • Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Best Comic Book

  • Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron and James Harren, Marvel Comics

Best Graphic Novel

  • Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius M. Gopez, Dynamite Entertainment

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

  • Game of Thrones, HBO

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

  • Black Panther directed by Ryan Coogler

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game

  • Middle-earth: Shadow of War by Monolith Productions

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game

  • Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery by Jam City

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game

  • Red Dragon Inn 6: Villains by Slugfest Games

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game

  • Magic: The Gathering Unstable by Wizards of the Coast

The award presenters included Larry Niven, Steven Barnes, Katherine Kurtz, Eric Flint, Cat Rambo, Laurell K. Hamilton, Paul Jenkins, Emily Goodman, Peter Kalamis, Bill Fawcett, and Michael Capps.

[Thanks to Red Panda Fraction for livetweeting the event, and Cora Buhlert and Mark Hepworth.]

68 thoughts on “2018 Dragon Awards

  1. Robert Kroese hangs out on puppy blogs and Chris Kennedy’s outfit does seem to be somewhat puppy adjacent, since the Castalia blog occasionally promotes their books and two of his authors also were on the sad/rabid puppies Hugo slate in the past, while another of his authors was in an anthology edited by MZW. The statement about politics free fun SF on their website also sounds a bit puppyish.

    However, if there is a connection between Michael Anderle, Craig Martelle, Pippa DaCosta, Aleron Kong or Shayne Silvers and the puppies, I’m not aware of it.

  2. Greg Hullender: That’s because each time the Dragon Awards come up, JJ and a few others actively lobby people not to vote. It’s not, as she implies, just a matter of her personally choosing not to vote. They pressure others not to vote and not to talk about it if they did vote. That’s a boycott.

    This is a flat-out lie by you, Greg. Either provide evidence for these claims of yours (which of course you can’t, because they’re not true), or retract them.

    I have talked about why I don’t participate. I have explained why I believe the Dragon Awards to be a farce. I have contradicted you every time you have made ridiculous claims about what you say are “facts” but are in fact just nonsensical things you have made up.

    But I have never said that I am “boycotting” the awards, and I have never pressured anyone else to do so, nor have I said that people who do participate should not talk about it.

    I’ve been trying to figure out why you keep making all these defenses of the Dragon Awards which are clearly made-up “facts” and bogus claims, even though you profess to be a person of logic and reason. It’s just bizarre. I have finally come to the conclusion that you got to be buddies with someone at LibertyCon who’s involved with the Dragon Awards, and who begged you to help them try to get some credibility for the awards. I can’t think of any other reason for your repeated utterly irrational rhetoric and behavior involving these awards. It makes me think that next you will be advocating for the validity of the science of astrology.

  3. I have still not seen anyone calling for a boycott of the Dragon Awards or calling for others not to vote. Personal opinions are a plenty though.

    Myself, I see the nomination process more as a crowd sourcing for finalists to be selected from, not as a process with straight on vote counting. If one has that perspective in mind, it becomes less important with transparency on exactly how many voted for this or that.

    I did not nominate or vote mostly because there is no time to evaluate all finalists and I find it a bit unfair to vote without that.

  4. As regards Kevin Anderson, I have found him to be a generally readable author of light and enjoyable fiction, often of the type that leans semi-humorously into genre tropes like his “Dan Shambles, Zombie P. I.” books. And I seem to recall that his early novel Climbing Olympus was generally well-regarded critically back in the day. He’s also been quite nice every time I’ve dealt with him in the past.

    He’s not an “automatic buy” for me (Dan Shambles aside), but I have bought and enjoyed quite a few of his works. I don’t think any of them would ever have troubled my Hugo nomination ballots, but I am happy to give them the Radlein Award of Here Have Some of My Money.

  5. @Greg,

    Citation needed.

    (Various commenters here, including JJ, have made their views on the Dragon awards clear. But I have not seen anyone here call for a boycott of the Dragon awards. If you have any such evidence, please show us it.

    Anyone who has given even a cursory look at the way the Dragon awards are organised will see that their process is opaque and susceptible to ballot stuffing. The short window for voting doesn’t allow sufficient time for a fair evaluation of the finalists, so it is likely to be a name-recognition contest. And there’s also the organisers’ statement that they will invalidate suspicious looking ballots without notice.

    All of that contributes to an unwillingness to get involved, because why bother if your vote can be discarded on an admin’s whim? Why bother if your vote is likely to be drowned out by ballot stuffing?.

    An unwillingness to get involved is not a boycott.)

  6. Congrats to all! Stu Jones and I (finalist, best sci fi novel [It Takes Death To Reach A Star]) were there and quite content to lose to Andy Weir.

    One thing we will say is that there was a disconnect between the hard core sci fi fans in the audience and their clear choices (by the whooping during the nomination reads) and the winners who appeared to be voted for by the general public. As such, two thirds of the winners were not there to collect the award which made for an anti climax. I would perhaps advocate for a separate line of awards for us “unknowns”. A term I find amusing as every popular author was unknown once.

    We met with Pat (the founder) and their new PR guy and the intention is to use the Dragon Award to promote all of the nominees post con; which is appreciated.

    Overall, we were just happy to be there and will continue to build our audience. Happy writing all.

  7. @Gareth worthington

    Nope, nothing wrong with losing to Andy Weir at all.
    Your comments about a disconnect are interesting, as other regular DC attendees have said some finalists don’t represent them very well whereas the winners do better. I wonder if the disconnect (if any) actually lies between the SF track fans and DC attendees in general.

  8. (rolls eyes at the guy claiming that hard-core science fiction fans don’t vote for Andy Weir, David Weber, and Claudia Gray) 🙄

  9. I admit I was surprised THE SEA PEOPLES was nominated for a Dragon award– it’s the 14th (and second-to-last) book in a very long-running series. I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t win; books of that type are at an inherent disadvantage, other things being equal.

    I have higher hopes for BLACK CHAMBER. Not necessarily because of inherent quality — I always think the book I’ve just finished is my best — but because as the first book of a series and one without a cliffhanger and with a complete narrative arc, it’s simply more accessible to non-completists.

    As for the Dragon Awards process, it’s transparent if you assume the people running it are telling the truth, which I do because I know and trust several of them.

    I’m an antinomian as far as literary quality goes. While you can objectively assess an author’s command of some elements of technique — whether they keep details consistent and don’t have unintended ambiguities in p.o.v., for example — actual -quality-beyond that level is simply a matter of taste and hence purely subjective. I like Mary Kowal’s or Poul Anderson’s work more than I like, shall we say, Henry James — and that says absolutely nothing about any essential virtue in those three authors.

  10. Stephen M. Stirling: As for the Dragon Awards process, it’s transparent if you assume the people running it are telling the truth, which I do because I know and trust several of them.

    Which is fine for you, but there’s been no statement anywhere of who’s running the Dragon Awards. This is just one more reason why the Awards are completely opaque. Given how badly the rules and process are set up, how poorly the Awards have been publicized and administered, and how the promised published nominating and voting results have never materialized, the administrators have not really done anything to earn public trust — rather, the exact opposite is the case.

  11. @Stephen M. Stirling: That’s not what transparent means. In essence, you’re basically admitting it’s opaque, but saying that this is okay since you have special knowledge (you know several of the people and trust them).

    And that’s fine! For you.

    But it’s not at all “transparent” by any reasonable definition of the word. 😉 Let’s not pretend it is. Check out many other awards to see what various levels of transparency look like.

  12. @Stephen M. Stirling —

    As for the Dragon Awards process, it’s transparent if you assume the people running it are telling the truth, which I do because I know and trust several of them.

    Unfortunately, the only real transparency in the Dragon process is in the parts of the rules which specifically state that the admins can change any result for any reason whatsoever.

    In case you’ve missed these parts before, here are quoted excerpts (caps theirs):

    “DRAGON CON reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend voting[….] All decisions regarding the voting process or acceptance of votes shall be final and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal.”

    “SELECTION OF WINNERS: All decisions regarding the voting process and selection of winners shall be made by DRAGON CON in its sole discretion, shall be final, and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal”

    “DRAGON CON reserves the right, at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend this Award and determine the winners from entries received prior to the date such action is taken, or as otherwise deemed fair and equitable by DRAGON CON. All decisions of the DRAGON CON and its agents regarding the administration of this Award shall be final and binding.”

    “If DRAGON CON believes, in its sole discretion, that a violation of these Rules has occurred, it may edit or modify any submission, posting or e-mails”

    “THE DRAGON CON GROUP DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE MATERIAL, INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, FACILITIES, SERVICES OR OTHER CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR ANY WEB WEBSITES LINKED TO THE WEBSITE IN TERMS OF THEIR CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE.”

    Those parts are absolutely transparent.

  13. That simply means they’ve made provision for swift action if think they’re getting fake votes or some claque is trying to game the system, without being subject to guerilla ‘lawfare’ by the same miscreants.

    Which seems reasonable enough to me. It’s a fiction award, not the courts. They’ve said how they’re running it, and anyone who doesn’t like it can go and do the other thing. Or run their own 85K member convention, if they can.

    As for publicity and so forth, this is only the third year for the Dragon Awards. The Hugos have been going for decades and look what a dog’s breakfast they’ve become, matching the perennial and increasing chaos of WorldCons.

    The Dragon Awards are a straightforward popularity contest, with no-to-low barriers to entry, and the numbers involved are already too big to be readily manipulated.

  14. The Hugos have been going for decades and look what a dog’s breakfast they’ve become, matching the perennial and increasing chaos of WorldCons.

    It’s always nice to know which opinions aren’t worth the photons they’re written with. And who I can ignore.
    *plonk*

  15. @Stephen —

    That simply means they’ve made provision for swift action if think they’re getting fake votes or some claque is trying to game the system, without being subject to guerilla ‘lawfare’ by the same miscreants.

    That’s wishful thinking, Stephen. The rules specifically state that the admins can change the results however they wish, at any time they wish. Now, you claimed earlier that you trust the admins to tell us the truth — and that’s exactly what they’re telling us. You should believe what they’re saying.

    anyone who doesn’t like it can go and do the other thing. Or run their own 85K member convention, if they can.

    Right. Absolutely true. And, of course, we’re all allowed to point out how meaningless such “awards” are as well, when the only true transparency is in rules clearly stating that the admins can make it up as they go.

    The Dragon Awards are a straightforward popularity contest

    That isn’t what the rules say, Stephen. If you believe otherwise, maybe you could point out anywhere in the rules that actually states that the winners are determined by the number of votes cast?

    the numbers involved are already too big to be readily manipulated.

    That is only true IF the votes are actually used to determine the winners, and IF there is only one vote allowed per person. And there is no evidence at all to support either claim.

  16. Stephen M. Stirling: the numbers involved are already too big to be readily manipulated

    Firstly, no one knows what the numbers are, because the promised statistics have never been released. Secondly, when the process allows one person with 100 different e-mail addresses to nominate and vote, any claims about “numbers” seem pretty silly, don’t they? The fact that small special interest groups are still getting basically unknown self-published works onto the ballot certainly contradicts your claim.

     
    Stephen M. Stirling: The Hugos have been going for decades and look what a dog’s breakfast they’ve become, matching the perennial and increasing chaos of WorldCons.

    Boy, those grapes must be sour enough to make vinegar.

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