2019 Hugo Awards

The winners of the 2019 Hugo Awards were presented August 18 at a ceremony in Dublin, Ireland.

Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte reported there were 3,097 total votes cast (3,089 online, 8 paper ballots). The voting statistics are online here [PDF file].

Best Novel

  • The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

Best Novella

  • Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

Best Novelette

  • “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho (B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, 29 November 2018)

Best Short Story

  • “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine, February 2018)

Best Series

  • Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)

Best Related Work

  • Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Best Graphic Story

  • Monstress, Volume 3: Haven, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda (Image Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, screenplay by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman (Sony)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

  • The Good Place: “Janet(s),” written by Josh Siegal & Dylan Morgan, directed by Morgan Sackett (NBC) 

Best Professional Editor, Short Form

  • Gardner Dozois

Best Professional Editor, Long Form

  • Navah Wolfe

Best Professional Artist

  • Charles Vess 

Best Semiprozine

  • Uncanny Magazine, publishers/editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, managing editor Michi Trota, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue editors-in-chief Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien

Best Fanzine

  • Lady Business, editors Ira, Jodie, KJ, Renay & Susan

Best Fancast

  • Our Opinions Are Correct, hosted by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders

Best Fan Writer

  • Foz Meadows

Best Fan Artist

  • Likhain (Mia Sereno)

Best Art Book

  • The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, illustrated by Charles Vess, written by Ursula K. Le Guin (Saga Press /Gollancz)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

  • Jeannette Ng (2nd year of eligibility)

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

  • Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt / Macmillan Children’s Books)

Closing note: There was a distracting mistake placed onscreen by the closed captioning service early in the ceremonies. Chair James Bacon immediately apologized for it on the convention’s Facebook page:

I would like to apologise for the problems with the closed captioning. I am dreadfully sorry for my decisions that led to us using a system that failed. I would lI would like to apologise for the problems with the closed captioning during the Hugo Awards ceremony. I am dreadfully sorry for my decisions that led to us using a system that failed.  I would like to apologise to anybody who we have upset by this and we totally understand that our members and community will be disappointed in this failure for which I accept total responsibility. I am very sorry and am ready to apologise personally to those who were hurt.

Sometimes we put too much trust in new technology and that was my failing tonight. Artificial intelligence still has a way to go in coping with human expression in all its variety. The poor transcription was stopped, but not before it undercut a number of very important speeches. Stopping it also deprived some of our audience of access to the later speeches. We are working on producing the corrected archival version of the ceremony which will be available online.

My sincerest apologies,
James Bacon

59 thoughts on “2019 Hugo Awards

  1. Not saying that AO3 didn’t deserve to win, but even if only a couple of hundred contributors to AO3 voted for it in the Hugos, (and it looked like there were at least that many standing up in the auditorium to receive congratulations), then they basically awarded it to themselves

    That’s exactly what you’re saying. Like fans shouldn’t have any appreciation of a site where fan art and writing is available without [many] strings, and is findable, thanks to their excellent tagging and search features.

  2. I think the issue is/was not whether fans should appreciate this web site, which people seem to agree is a great resource for its users, but whether it was appropriate to express that appreciation with the “Best Related Work” Hugo. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with that category going forward.

  3. Ctein, I am finding Otter much better than any other system I’ve used before. Have you tried it?

  4. Congratulations to the winners, and to everyone who made the ballot and the longlist. It was a truly stellar field this year.

    I saw someone comment that no doubt many short stories on the theme of “dog magicians” were immediately inspired by the awful subtitling software.

  5. @Hampus Eckerman:Would be nice if the next Worldcons could support character encoding from outside the anglosphere. I’m appalled at that error. Extended ASCII (covering all of Western Europe, even/extending-to Croatia and Iceland) has been around for at least 30 years; I know there are simpleminded systems (e.g. MS Notepad) that don’t support entering marked characters, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen one that couldn’t store and print them. (Yes, this is personal; it was one of my professional responsibilities.) The caron (?) is harder for old systems, but I’m not sure why anyone would be using a system that old — it’s not as if fans are taking unused cycles off of big iron (as we did in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period) instead of having home machines that self-obsolete way too soon.

    @Meredith/Lis/…: in the not-woke DC of ~60 years ago, “Telephone” was the only term I heard — but I only heard it once that I remember, so that’s not a strong datum.

    @Paddy: (beyond @PJ Evans’s response): Nonsense. The PDF linked at the head of this story shows 2025 ballots expressing an opinion on this category, including over 700 who put AO3 first; “a couple of hundred people” couldn’t have “voted themselves a Hugo” without broader support — including from people who first favored other works but liked AO3 enough to keep it ahead of the Le Guin assemblage.

    Fortunately, the error on the Whelan book didn’t affect the final ballot — but I wonder how long it will be before a similar error does cost someone a nomination. My guess is that it won’t be soon as this sounds like an unusual combination of circumstances (a ~kickstarted work, on the cusp of a year, being good enough to get almost-enough nominations in a category with the fewest overall nominaters), but I hope the small group of people who take on this huge load are thinking about whether/how to sharpen their checking. Involving more people seems obvious — but obviously wrong given the long practice of not listing also-rans until after the awards are given. Public many-eying was mentioned as one of the advantages of the proposed elimination round would help, but there are enough people opposed that I don’t see it passing soon.

  6. Dear Anna,

    Huh. No, I wasn’t familiar with that one. I see the pay service allows for “custom vocabularies.” I guess I should give the free one a try and see how good its recognition is compared to Dragon and Apple; if I like that, I can blow $10 on a month of the pay service to try it out.

    Thanks!

    pax / Ctein

  7. @Laura: One proof that the book didn’t exist in 2017 would be the publisher’s updates on the Kickstarter campaign page, which tell the story pretty clearly. You could also get backers like me to testify that they didn’t receive it until well into 2018.

  8. @David
    One would hope that Admin would look that far if it had been in the top six. As Chip said, an argument in favor of 3-stage voting.

  9. Pingback: An Irish Worldcon, Part 4: Sunday | Secret Panda

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