By JJ: Introduction: [Quoted from JJ’s study of the award’s first winners] “The argument, from both the Puppies, and the Dragon Awards organizers (the Venn Diagram of which is unknown), is that the Dragon Awards, unlike the Hugos, truly represent ALL the fans, and not just some small minority of fans, and I’m looking at the Dragon Awards Finalists and how they rate on LibraryThing, GoodReads, and Amazon.”
- Best Science Fiction Novel
- Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey – 246 LT / 13,057 GR / 507 A
- Death’s End by Cixin Liu – 325 LT / 10,308 GR / 379 A
- The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi – 302 LT / 8,943 GR / 437 A
- A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers – 288 LT / 7,216 GR / 272 A
- Rise by Brian Guthrie – 4 LT / 74 GR / 30 A
- Space Tripping by Patrick Edwards – 3 LT / 32 GR / 6 A
- Escaping Infinity by Richard Paolinelli – 1 LT / 23 GR / 23 A
- The Secret Kings by Brian Niemeier – 1 LT / 13 GR / 18 A
- Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)
- Blood of the Earth by Faith Hunter – 75 LT / 2,858 GR / 325 A
- Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge by Larry Correia and John Ringo – 36 LT / 1,606 GR / 451 A
- Beast Master by Shayne Silvers – 1 LT / 553 GR / 369 A
- Dangerous Ways by R.R. Virdi – 0 LT / 345 GR / 35 A
- Wings of Justice by Michael-Scott Earle – 1 LT / 64 GR / 43 A
- The Heartstone Thief by Pippa DaCosta – 1 LT / 62 GR / 22 A
- A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day – 0 LT / 37 GR / 56 A
- Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel
- A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas – 278 LT / 65,412 GR / 1,262 A
- The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan – 521 LT / 25,928 GR / 730 A
- Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray – 116 LT / 2,443 GR / 95 A
- It’s All Fun and Games by Dave Barrett – 21 LT / 159 GR / 83 A
- Firebrand by A.J. Hartley – 9 LT / 74 GR / 8 A
- Swan Knight’s Son by John C. Wright – 0 LT / 62 GR / 72 A
- Rachel and the Many Splendored Dreamland by L. Jagi Lamplighter – 0 LT / 31 GR / 13 A
- Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
- Starship Liberator by B.V. Larson and David Vandyke – 4 LT / 491 GR / 191 A
- Cartwright’s Cavaliers by Mark Wandrey – 2 LT / 431 GR / 190 A
- Iron Dragoons by Richard Fox – 0 LT / 252 GR / 108 A
- The Span of Empire by Eric Flint and David Carrico – 13 LT / 168 GR / 44 A
- Caine’s Mutiny by Charles E. Gannon – 13 LT / 124 GR / 26 A
- Star Realms: Rescue Run by Jon Del Arroz – 0 LT / 68 GR / 71 A
- Allies and Enemies: Exiles by Amy J. Murphy – 1 LT / 30 GR / 29 A
- Invasion: Resistance by J.F. Holmes – 0 LT / 2 GR / 45 A
- Best Alternate History Novel
- The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville – 269 LT / 2,400 GR / 58 A
- Breath of Earth by Beth Cato – 57 LT / 390 GR / 31 A
- 1636: The Ottoman Onslaught by Eric Flint – 32 LT / 361 GR / 115 A
- Fallout: The Hot War by Harry Turtledove – 24 LT / 322 GR / 85 A
- Witchy Eye by D.J. Butler – 9 LT / 112 GR / 70 A
- No Gods, Only Daimons by Kai Wai Cheah – 0 LT / 33 GR / 31 A
- A Change in Crime by D.R. Perry – 0 LT / 10 GR / 3 A
- Another Girl, Another Planet by Lou Antonelli – 1 LT / 8 GR / 12 A
- Best Apocalyptic Novel
- The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin – 401 LT / 12,215 GR / 248 A
- American War by Omar El Akkad – 282 LT / 6,123 GR / 172 A
- Walkaway by Cory Doctorow – 154 LT / 1,307 GR / 84 A
- A Place Outside the Wild by Daniel Humphreys – 2 LT / 86 GR / 116 A
- The Seventh Age: Dawn by Rick Heinz – 5 LT / 54 GR / 56 A
- ZK: Falling by J.F. Holmes – 0 LT / 52 GR / 31 A
- Codename: Unsub by Declan Finn and Allan Yoskowitz – 0 LT / 6 GR / 4 A
- Best Horror Novel
- The Changeling by Victor LaValle – 60 LT / 686 GR / 52 A
- Nothing Left to Lose by Dan Wells – 13 LT / 346 GR / 21 A
- The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood – 23 LT / 210 GR / 8 A
- A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau – 8 LT / 82 GR / 45 A
- The Bleak December by Kevin G. Summers – 4 LT / 23 GR / 43 A
- Donn’s Hill by Caryn Larrinaga – 0 LT / 21 GR / 20 A
- Live and Let Bite by Declan Finn – 0 LT / 9 GR / 14 A
- Blood of Invidia by Tom Tinney and Morgen Batten – 0 LT / 4 GR / 8 A
2017 Best Novel Hugo Finalists
- All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders – 843 LT / 17,718 GR / 317 A
- The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin – 401 LT / 12,215 GR / 248 A
- Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu – 325 LT / 10,308 GR / 379 A
- A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers – 288 LT / 7,216 GR / 272 A
- Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee – 297 LT / 4,222 GR / 199 A
- Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer – 347 LT / 2,856 GR / 117 AT / 2,856 GR / 117 A
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Interesting comparisons!
Btw, that very bottom line got scrambled a little.
Nothing represents all of all readers as they can’t. What is obvious is the Hugos do the best job of being representive of those fans who actually think intelligently about the genres of fantasy and science fiction and fantasy.
Good Reads which is owned by Amazon is all about making sure that books sell; Library Thing is more for the obsessive collectors among the greater pool of book readers; and Dragon Awards, well, the End User License suggests strongly someone doesn’t like the Hugos.
OGH, is it possible to add the Locus Awards in as well? My hunch is they’ll closely mirror the Hugos.
The following info has probably been posted previously, but it bears repeating anywhere these awards get mentioned:
The Dragons’ own rules clearly specify that the award administrators can essentially nominate or award any books they like, for any reason they may feel like doing it, and they can alter vote counts however they see fit.
Specific quotes from the rules, all caps theirs:
1. “DRAGON CON reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend voting should any virus, bug, non-authorized human intervention, fraud or other causes beyond its control corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness or proper conduct of the voting process”
2. “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”
3. “If, for any reason, this Award is not capable of running as planned by any cause which, in the sole opinion of the DRAGON CON, corrupts or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Award, or, if due to any technical, production or other error, more prizes are claimed or awarded than are described in these Rules, 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”
4. “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”
5. “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. “
Lazarus Long once said that ‘Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.’ Heonlein wasn’t much of a poker player if he indeed believed that true as Dragon Con makes it that clear in what Contrarius quotes above that this is a rigged game not being played by any games theory I’d want to play under.
It’s not just a rigged game, it’s a rigged process where there are no rules whatsoever. Even a given game, say poker to use use a well-known film trope, plays within the rules of that game. Here they can start out playing poker, switch to backgammon and have Yakko Warner decide what to play next. It really makes me wonder why they’re bothering to do this.
A side observation (since everyone else seems perfectly capable of observing the obvious): the numbers for the YA stuff is pretty interesting. Two books with better numbers than any of the Hugo finalists.
If nothing else, I think this helps make the case that there should be a YA not-a-Hugo award.
Xtifr: I’ve had local booksellers tell me that YA fiction outsells any other genre fiction by sometimes as much as twenty times what the bestselling mystery title, the next bestselling genre, does.
It certainly helps that YA titles traditionally have been substainally cheaper for most tiles than other hardcover genre titles. (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O is a staggering $34.95!) Certainly there’s a lot of outstanding YA fiction that’s either sf or fantasy.
@Cat Eldridge —
That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Somebody gets to append “Award Winner” to their name and pose with a pretty trophy (it is pretty, despite being mass-produced), and the vast majority of John Q. Reading Public won’t know any different from any of the other awards out there.
Yeah it’s obvious that some writers crave an Award. I’m more curious why a clique at Dragon Con wanted to this. It’ll get about as much press coverage to the Locus Awards or the Bram Stoken Award does which to say not much.
The legitimacy of the Dragon Award is questionable at best and completely
invalid if anyone cares about the process by which an Award is selected.
Dragon Award rules: More like Calvinball, or more like Fizzbin? Discuss.
Entirely possible that the administrator(s) — whoever s/he or they is/are* — added the actual popular titles to make it look halfway relevant. Jemison, Scalzi, et al.
And I’m pretty sure none of the Pups voted for a guy name of Omar El Akkad. His book “The American War” is described thusly
“It’s 2075, and America has been beset by flooding linked to climate change. The President has banned the use of fossil fuels. The southern states have broken away, looking to protect the coal mining industry. A rabid civil war is taking place. A weakened America sees new empires in China and the Middle East meddling in its affairs — and Mexico has annexed most parts of the Southwest, from Texas to California.” With Southern Cause terrorists.
Reviews say it’s hella dystopian and downbeat and a little too close to home/plausible. Not sure I have the spoons, but you go, Omar.
*The complete lack of transparency is enough to break the English language. Not good for a literary award.
Administrators adding titles would certainly explain the … bent … distribution in several categories, e.g. votes dropping by a factor averaging ~30 (UUSWAE, no calculation) between 4th and 5th place in science-fiction.
Is it cruel of me to delight in John C. Rong and his consort showing up dead last?
Chip Hitchcock adks if . Is it cruel of me to delight in John C. Rong and his consort showing up dead last?
A bit. But they richly deserve as the reality is that no bloc of voters can win an Award if the Authorities decide that it shouldn’t win. They’ve met the opponent that doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone other than themselves.
There is a fun interview with Jon Del Arroz at The Outhousers:
And it lead me to this wonderful article about Del Arroz:
How Not To Apply For A Job At Marvel Comics
@lurkertype
The nomination for Omar El Akkad is actually the oddest on the Dragon Awards shortlist, since “American War” is literary SFF and more the sort of thing you would expect to find on the Clarke or even the Sharke shortlist than nominated for a Dragon Award.
The statistics in the main post are easier to read in spreadsheet form, but WordPress doesn’t play nicely with tables.
@lurkertype
I just put American War on hold at my library, so we’ll see.
@Hampus
That’s hilarious. It’s mind-boggling how Jon Del Arroz doesn’t realize how many bridges he is pre-emptively burning.
JJ: they’re perfectly readable on the new iPad I purchased this past week. I got four years of my iPad 2 before, according to a local Apple repair shop, the motherboard died.
WordPress doesn’t play well with many things though it added finally added pdfs to supported media formats recently. I’m the admin for supportpeterbeagle.com and I’ve had to ftp court briefs to the site and link to them as urls. A pain in the ass.
I’m surprised how low LibraryThing numbers were. It’s based here in Portland, Maine and the local media is always noting how fantastic their user numbers are.
First I’d heard of Del Arroz was a post to the BayCon FB (since vanished, if it’s not just FB being FB) about being nominated for the “prestigious ward”. (I may have the wrong adjective, I do not have the wrong noun.)
Cat Eldridge: they’re perfectly readable
What I mean by “readable” is “easy to compare numbers among entries”.
In the pure text format of the main post, the numbers don’t align, so it’s not what I consider to be easily readable for purposes of “compare and contrast”. It’s much easier to do that in the spreadsheet.
Great find, Hampus. That was the laugh I needed today.
Bonnie McDaniel: It’s mind-boggling how Jon Del Arroz doesn’t realize how many bridges he is pre-emptively burning.
I think he is well aware of how many bridges he is burning. He doesn’t care.
Everything he has been doing on the internet in the last few months, from his ongoing harassment of Cat Rambo and Paul Weimer and Irene Gallo and the Tor.com Blog and Baycon, to bragging about getting 4chan to do a DDOS on File770, to trying to get Tor.com and Marvel to hire him as a writer, to his ridiculous pronouncements which make him look utterly clueless and incompetent to everyone outside the Puppyish enclave — it’s all just posturing to play to his selected demographic.
Like Brad T., he has chosen to play to a niche audience, based on his calculations that he will be able to springboard a massively successful SFF writing career from it.
And I think that, like Brad T., his calculations are way off — by an exponential factor. Outrage marketing for an auther, while it may boost sales in the short-term, will not be successful as a long-term career choice.
It will be interesting to watch his continual flailing as he eventually figures that out.
@Cora: Yeah, everything I read about it screamed “literary”, which I thought was something the Dragons purport to avoid.
Jonny d, that special snowflake/cupcake, bringing cray-cray back. At least he’s mildly amusing for a while till he slides into complete obscurity.
That is really interesting about the award rules. – I would very much like to know who at Dragon Con HQ is in the group that runs this. I wouldn’t get so conspiratorial about the non-Puppy noms. I personally nominated American War, as well as the Mieville book. Maybe there are just so few nominations that a tiny number of people can succeed in getting something in – though not everything I nominated made it – I had also put in Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne. My best guess is that people who are visiting the Con page during the summer are those who are planning to attend and are watching the site to see new info. The Dragon Award nomination page was posted there. To me, the YA, movies, TV and comics categories indicate that actual fans/Dragon Con members are voting. If you are interested in figuring out what is going on, think it is likely located in the SF lit track, which is just one of many tracks at the Con. Here is their website: http://scifilit.dragoncon.org/?page_id=16
@Hampus Well TOR is going to feel less special knowing that insulting while offering his services is how he applies for all jobs.
Poor John probably thinks he’s being Draco Malfoy when he’s struggling to get to Vincent Crabbe level.
Ooh, snap!
@Hampus
Blimey. I really can’t tell if that’s deliberate idiocy to feign speaking truth to power and playing the victim or whether he doesn’t realise he’s being an idiot. I’m not sure which would be worse.
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I didn’t finish American War, but I could actually see Puppies being into the portion I read. It’s about the South being its own country, and a civil war that’s all about economics and not race whatsoever.