David Steffen has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to publish Long List Anthology Volume 7, designed to celebrate more of the fiction loved by the Hugo Award voting audience.

The Hugo Awards are one of the most prominent awards in speculative fiction publishing.  Nominations are cast by the fans to decide the few stories that end up on the final ballot.  After the Hugo Award ceremony every year, WSFS publishes a longer list of nominated works, works that were loved by many fans who chose to use their votes on this story.  For many years I personally used this longer list of nominated works as a recommended reading list and always found some really great and memorable stories in there.  The purpose of this anthology is to get those stories to more readers by collecting them together in a book for easy perusal.  The anthology is a collection of eclectic tastes, rather than from the tastes of an individual editor, and so has a more varied flavor than a typical “Best Of” anthology.

The starting point for Volume 7 is the 2021 Hugo voting report. Steffen notes, “This project is not endorsed by nor affiliated with the Hugo awards, WSFS, Worldcon, or any associated entities. The Hugo name is used with permission.”

In addition, this year Steffen will include fiction from some authors on the longer nomination list for the Astounding Award For Best New Writer. 

Here are the 13 short stories that will be published if the base amount is raised. Another 10 novelettes will be added if the stretch goal is achieved.

Short Stories (Base Goal: $2000)

• “The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” by Cora Buhlert
• “This Is New Gehesran Calling” by Rebecca Fraimow
• “The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly” by Alix E. Harrow
• “50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know” by Ken Liu
• “A Being Together Amongst Strangers” by Arkady Martine
• “Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise” by Lauren Ring (Astounding Award nomination)
• “The Eight-Thousanders” by Jason Sanford
• “AirBody” by Sameem Siddiqui (Astounding Award nomination)
• “In This, At Least, We Are Alike” by Caitlin Starling (Astounding Award nomination)
• “My Country is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou
• “Sinew and Steel and What They Told” by Carrie Vaughn
• “The Salt Witch” by Martha Wells
• “Open House On Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell (Hugo Finalist)

Novelettes (Stretch goal for $3400)

• “The Bahrain Underground Bazaar” by Nadia Afifi
• “If You Take My Meaning” by Charlie Jane Anders
• “On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa With Gun and Camera” by Elizabeth Bear
• “An Important Failure” by Rebecca Campbell
• “Exile’s End” by Carolyn Ives Gilman
• “City of Red Midnight: A Hikayat” by Usman T. Malik
• “Yellow and the Perception of Reality” by Maureen McHugh
• “Color, Heat, and the Wreck of the Argo” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “To Sail the Black” by A.C. Wise
• “A Stick of Clay, In the Hands of God, is Infinite Potential” by Neon Yang

Steffen, who edits Diabolical Plots, explains that the Hugo finalist “Open House On Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell is being included in the collection because it’s the first story ever published by Diabolical Plots to appear on either the Hugo short- or longlist.

The cover art is an original commission by Elaine Ho.  The teaser image shown above is a small part of it. The full art will be revealed as the campaign progresses.

Backers have already pledged $1,391 of the $2,000 goal with 22 days left in the campaign.

[Thanks to JJ for the link.]