Adrian Tchaikovsky today answered a Bluesky user’s question about why he refused a BSFA Award nomination for Alien Clay last month.
Tchaikovsky did keep his novella Saturation Point in contention in the BSFA “shorter fiction” category.
And this week he also accepted three Hugo Award nominations, two in the Best Novel category, Alien Clay and Service Model, and the other for Best Series, The Tyrant Philosophers.
Nicholas Whyte’s post about the Nebula and BSFA shortlists and the Goodreads and LibraryThing stats at From the Heart of Europe shows Tchaikovsky’s Alien Clay has more than 10 times as many people rating it as all the other BSFA Award novel finalists added together, so it would have had unsurpassed reader recognition on its side in that race. (In contrast, Whyte’s study “2025 Hugo final ballot: Goodreads / LibraryThing stats” shows that among Hugo finalists Service Model ranks third and Alien Clay sixth in number of Goodreads ratings.)
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That was very gracious of him.
(This is not to say or imply that authors or artists who have won multiple awards should be expected to step back from them; it’s a personal choice, and any decision is valid.)