2018 Hugo Winners

The winners of the 2018 Hugo Awards, John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Award for Best Young Adult Book were announced on Sunday, August 19, 2018, at the 76th World Science Fiction Convention.

The administrators received and counted 2,828 valid ballots (2,810 electronic and 18 paper) from the members of the 2018 World Science Fiction Convention.

The Hugo Awards are the premier award in the science fiction genre, honoring science fiction literature and media as well as the genre’s fans. The Awards were first presented at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia (Philcon II), and they have continued to honor science fiction and fantasy notables for well over 60 years.

The winners are:

2018 Associated Awards (not Hugos)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

  • Rebecca Roanhorse

The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Award for Best Young Adult Book

  • Akata Warrior, by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking)

2018 Hugo Awards

Best Fan Artist

  • Geneva Benton

Best Fan Writer

  • Sarah Gailey

Best Fancast

  • Ditch Diggers, presented by Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace

Best Fanzine

  • File 770, edited by Mike Glyer

Best Semiprozine

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

Best Professional Artist

  • Sana Takeda

Best Editor – Short Form

  • Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

Best Editor – Long Form

  • Sheila E. Gilbert

Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form

  • The Good Place: “The Trolley Problem,” written by Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan, directed by Dean Holland (Fremulon / 3 Arts Entertainment / Universal Television)

Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form

  • Wonder Woman, screenplay by Allan Heinberg, story by Zack Snyder & Allan Heinberg and Jason Fuchs, directed by Patty Jenkins (DC Films / Warner Brothers)

Best Graphic Story

  • Monstress, Volume 2: The Blood, written by Marjorie M. Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image Comics)

Best Related Work

  • No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Best Series

  • World of the Five Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Harper Voyager / Spectrum Literary Agency)

Best Short Story

  • “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)

Best Novelette

  • “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)

Best Novella

  • All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

Best Novel

  • The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

385 thoughts on “2018 Hugo Winners

  1. @Lenore Jones / jonesnori: That’s a valid point — but also, don’t forget that the past is also, as the old Hartley quotation goes, a foreign country: This was 1960s Hong Kong, which even by the standards of British colonies was a deeply strange place. The headmistress and teachers were very much of the pre-and-post-WWII mindsets, I think.

    A couple of tidbits about how antique the schools were: (I’m thinking in particular of Peak School, then a UK-government-run elementary school near the top of Victoria Peak, close to the Peak Tram terminus.) One, we had actual inkwells at our desks — for dip pens. Two, the map of the UK on the wall was pre-1921, and thus showed all of Ireland’s 32 counties as part of Her Majesty’s Domains. (This caused me confusion, later, but OTOH alerted me to certain holes in my schooling, such as, in particular, the Opium Wars.)

    But the surrounding mindset, for all of being weirdly antiquated, was at least aware of the world, thus the comprehension that ‘Asia’ in fact extends right up to the Bosphorus Bridge (that connects Asia Minor — ahem! — to Istanbul on the European side of Turkey) and not terminating somewhere in the steppes.

  2. John Adkins on August 23, 2018 at 6:56 am said:

    I think that it is unfortunate that so many people are attributing motives/beliefs to someone as respected as Robert Silverberg without ever directly contacting him.

    We don’t need to contact him. His words are right there. He’s a professional writer and we can assume he wrote precisely what he meant.

    He did not like the tone of the acceptance speech apparently – that in and of itself does not make him racist, oppressive or any of the other things that are attributed to him.

    They were not only sexist and racist comments, but–given the vulgarities in Silverberg’s own speech as he presented the Best Novel Hugo in 2016–rather hypocritical.

    I did not hear the speech

    Perhaps you should. It was an amazing speech. Uplifting, truthful, moving, and full of zing (and shade).

  3. @XSarah, thanks! I don’t remember seeing your name before, but my brain is fogged today. If you are indeed a new commenter, welcome! If not, please forgive my memory.

    @Rick, I guess why get rid of a perfectly good desk just because nobody writes with quill pens any more? Also, Asia Minor! I knew I missed one.

  4. Mur Lafferty posted two tweets about Silverberg and the Hugo ceremony:

    1. “He sat through the entire ceremony with his arms crossed. No clapping for anyone, before or after speeches. His opinion on anything current is worthless at best, offensive at worst.”

    2. “Saw it in the background of a pic of me, got kinda hurt. I get the old guard don’t care for the new fangled Hugos but damn, be polite. Then I looked for it for other winners’ photos. It’s like his keepers put him in grump stasis after his time on stage.”

    These observations and the Jemisin snipe make Silverberg sound like somebody who doesn’t enjoy the Hugos or Hugo winners any more.

  5. @JJ

    No, only the ones from before the ceremony of all the finalists.
    If they will have been taken by the official photographer then that’s @OlavRokne if that’s any help.

  6. Patrick Morris Miller on August 23, 2018 at 11:46 am said:

    It was amazing but exhausting to this introvert. I wish I’d been able to get the full benefit of it, but I’m glad as hells I went.

    I imagine I’d have a blast if I got myself to go. Maybe when it comes back to the US. I’ll have a few years to prepare, and I’ll plan at least a week of not leaving the house for recovery after! 🙂

  7. I came to Hugo voting a couple years before the puppies. A friend gifted me a membership a year or two before the unsuccessful bid for Helsinki. I had only started seriously reading SFFH a few years previously although ~10 years prior I’d had some involvement volunteering and even being on a committee running either Readercon or Boskone (hit by truck brain damage isn’t fun).

    Over the years I’ve been gravitating away from cis white male writers and even moving away from cis white women authors as the way they included rape, slavery, torture, and generally build similar patriarchal societies ran from boring to triggering PTSD. Generally I’ve found non-cis, non-white, non-western culturally authors not only do a better job with the above issues including the trauma, not using the tropes as easy ways to motivate protagonist or prove how evil a villain is, but also build more interesting societies and more complex characters. At this point of the 200+ books I read yearly less than 10% are written by cis, white men.

    Watching the puppy kerfluffle unfold increased my commitment to nominate and vote on the Hugo’s as well as participate more online about books I like on places where the Hugo’s are discussed.

    I’m in my 50s and for many many years I didn’t feel welcome in SFFH due to abusive tropes used & lauded. Finding out I could be involved in nominating and voting opened me up to reading more SF and F which wasn’t Urban Fantasy. Finding people who have similar feelings was a surprise to me. Having people interested in my reading and thoughts still surprises me. Kevin Standlee, James Nichols, Whatever, this blog and the filers all helped me gain confidence in the value of my opinions. I thank everyone who encouraged me to read, share, nominate, vote.

  8. @ULTRAGOTHA

    They were not only sexist and racist comments, but–given the vulgarities in Silverberg’s own speech as he presented the Best Novel Hugo in 2016–rather hypocritical.

    Oh, eesh, I’d forgotten his “Big One” speech. Definitely hypocritical. I guess only men are allowed to make allusions about Hugo rockets and body parts. But thankfully it was worth watching the rest of the clip I found to hear Alyssa “Best Dressed” Wong deliver N.K. Jemisin’s speech for The Fifth Season win again.

  9. Adam-Troy Castro said this on Facebook:

    I have been provided a further listing of recent comments by Silverberg.

    Eccch. And sigh.

    Nuance is now much harder to suggest.

    I do not choose to use this as the context for a defense of and advocacy of the man’s work. I could, and at another time will. But not now.

  10. I would very much like to see a decent closeup photo of Oor Wombat’s hat bling, if someone would care to share a link of one? I’m a big fan of Elise’s work.

  11. JJ asked for a link to photos taken of the winners after the ceremony. I posted my photos in FB from the ceremony and afterwards. This link should work. At least FB says “Anyone with the link will be able to see your photo album.”

  12. @rcade: the banner probably made it to the con — the times I’ve noticed, it’s been packed with a lot of tabletop historical objects — but may not have been hung conspicuously, or at all; hanging objects in a convention hall is horribly expensive. The NBC clip (trigger warning: stupidity) has some wide-angle snippets that look like nothing at all was hanging in the exhibit hall, so the banner might have been on 8′-high pipe if it was hung at all.

  13. ULTRAGOTHA on August 23, 2018 at 3:11 pm said:

    They were not only sexist and racist comments, but–given the vulgarities in Silverberg’s own speech as he presented the Best Novel Hugo in 2016–rather hypocritical.

    Silverberg was even more hypocritical than I thought. Read this Twitter thread by @jbwhelan.

    .

    Re the WSFS Banner – It’s conserved and stored by the Worldcon Heritage Organization (Kent and Mem) and can be requested along with the Hugo trophies.

    Last year, it was too expensive to hang in the Messukeskus Exhibits Hall, so Worldcon 75 hung it off a banister that could be seen as you walked to Exhibits or the lower food court from the Registration area. There was a similar place it might have been hung in San Jose–off the balcony overlooking the main entrance–but given what little I heard about costs at the Convention Center it would not surprise me at all to find out it was too expensive to hang anywhere.

    I wonder what a free-standing banner hanger would cost? (It’s a large banner, very long.) And if it’s worth it to look into that.

    I also wonder if it’s worth getting another banner that’s wider than it is long to place maybe near registration? There’s a modern WSFS banner that goes on the head table at the Business Meeting (that I suspect Kevin Standlee purchased).

    Shipping the Hugo trophies is a large expense even in the United States. Getting them overseas is a significantly larger chunk of money. I really appreciate the Worldcons that decide to spend money on that, and understand those who can’t afford it.

  14. @Neil Ottenstein

    Thanks for the link to the photo album. I was able to see it, but not able to “like” it. So I’ll just give you a “thumbs up” here. 🙂

  15. @ULTRAGOTHA: I wonder what a free-standing banner hanger would cost? (It’s a large banner, very long.) And if it’s worth it to look into that. I’m not remembering it being that big — I’d have guessed 6′ high x 4′ wide — but a stand tall enough to show it and able to pack small would not be cheap due to the number of joints involved. (I thought it had hung from decorator poles in Spokane, but I don’t see that on the order.) It might a useful thing for SFSFC to fund (as MCFI funded a number of screens and projectors) IFF they have the money left over and someone can find something suitable.

  16. My husband’s a photographer. Depending on how long the banner is, a backdrop stand would probably work. They typically go up as high as 8′-10′, and the crosspiece is typically 10′ wide. And they pack down reasonably small.

  17. Chip, I just looked through old notes and the WSFS banner is 94 1/4 x 139 1/2 inches, per WHO. That’s a bit over 11.5 feet long (!).

    Despite suggesting the idea, I’ve no idea if WHO would want a freestanding banner hanger that large. They’d have to store it. And ship it. And Worldcon staff would have to make sure it didn’t fall over. 😉

  18. Ultragotha, for what it’s worth, you can get a backdrop pole 12′ long…. And if you’re storing a large banner, honestly, it could be wrapped around the stand; they fold down small for transport. (One of my jobs as my husband’s assistant is schlepping his photography equipment…)

    But that’s up to the WSFS.

  19. At that size, it might be simpler for Worldcons to order undraped pipe from the decorator. The gear used to fence off parts of an exhibit hall (e.g., dealers’ booths) is usually available in12′ and 16′ heights; most decorators will ask a reasonable price-per-running foot on naked pipe (e.g., $2 for 12′-high in Spokane). It comes with bases heavy enough to make it stable. (These are trivial to move when a decorator is bringing in 150 or more tables etc., but would be very difficult for WHO.) I suspect part of the issue in San Jose may have been weak coordination among WHO, exhibit-hall space planner (if there was such a role), and decorator liaison.

  20. @Nickphaeas says he thought he read an apology from Silverberg. Does anyone know where that is?

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  22. rcade on August 24, 2018 at 6:32 am said:

    Did the WSFS Banner make it to Worldcon this year? Normally I see it in photos on social media, but not this year.

    Too expensive to ‘fly’ it. The McEnery Convention Center was hideously expensive in many ways we didn’t really expect until it got too late in the process to do much about. Including assertions (I can’t confirm or deny them) that if any individual member whipped out their own personal camera (even a camera-phone) and started recording any of the major events, we’d get charged for it. This is apparently one reason that there are no recordings of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, which is a shame. Heck, even in Chicago (Chicon 7), which also had as tight a lock on things as we ever saw, individual members not on the convention committee could make recordings for their own use, which was why my wife was not allowed to be listed on the convention committee and why Tsuki Systems LLC executed a separate agreement with the Hyatt. Technically, everything she recorded, including the Business Meeting, was a personal recording of hers, notwithstanding that she’s using a piece of professional gear we purchased surplus from a TV station that was upgrading to more modern equipment.

    ULTRAGOTHA on August 24, 2018 at 3:30 pm said:

    There’s a modern WSFS banner that goes on the head table at the Business Meeting (that I suspect Kevin Standlee purchased).

    Actually, Sasquan purchased the small vinyl WORLD SCIENCE FICTION SOCIETY banner as part of the “Puppy Premium,” although that was within my area as 2015 WSFS Business Meeting Chair. It is now in the hands of Vincent Docherty who pledged to make sure it gets to Dublin. I forgot to pack the four bungee cords we use to attach it to the head table, though.

    I also have taken it upon myself to obsess over the current iteration of the Gavel of WSFS, which isn’t really that old, as it dates from when the previous one got lost between Chicago and San Antonio and we had to commission a new one. The one that got lost was one that I bought myself from an office-supply store in Yuba City, California back in 1994, and that we finally got engraved in 2002. There has been more than one Worldcon where the Gavel of WSFS sat in my home between Worldcons at the request of the management of that convention, with my job being to deliver it to their Opening Ceremonies, get it from there to the WSFS Business Meeting, and then get it to the Closing Ceremonies. (In between, it sometimes gets used for the WSFS Mark Protection Committee meetings as well.)

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  24. Congratulations to all the winner of 2018 Hugo Awards, the event was so intense for as most of my favorite personalities are nominated. I hope this year will be livelier just like the 2018 event. I’m looking forward to the next 2019 Hugo Awards

  25. I have read thoroughly NK Jemisin’s 3 novels, and from my point of view, that of a science fiction lover who has read all classics since Wells and Vernes, they are definitely unworthy of the Hugo !

  26. Pfft! Obviously the Worldcon members who actually decided what was worthy of the Hugo for the past 3 years strongly disagree. And she actually declined nomination in Best Series or they might have won another.

  27. Herve L: I have read thoroughly NK Jemisin’s 3 novels, and from my point of view, that of a science fiction lover who has read all classics since Wells and Vernes, they are definitely unworthy of the Hugo !

    How nice for you. But it’s very strange that you feel compelled to hunt down websites where her works are mentioned, just to post comments putting them down. You might consider whether there is something more meaningful you could do with your life. 🙄

  28. @Herve L

    I have read thoroughly NK Jemisin’s 3 novels, and from my point of view, that of a science fiction lover who has read all classics since Wells and Vernes, they are definitely unworthy of the Hugo !

    Yes, and? Since this post is seven months old, I am mystified as to why you’d waste your time and energy posting a waaah-I-don’t-like-it screed.

  29. Not just three Hugos, of course. It also won a Nebula (and appeared on the shortlist two other times), a Locus (and came in second once and third once), and was nominated for two World Fantasy Awards as well. But, hey, if some random bozo on the Internet says it’s bad, that must prove that all those awards and nominations were mistakes! 🙂

    Honestly, though, I remember Dune getting a lot of flack back in the day. “All that hippie eco-crap and weird religious nonsense–this isn’t science fiction!” Plus ça change…

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