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Fans are welcome to share their Hugo nominating ballots in the comments.
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The actual word count on “The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe” is 36,700 words. I edited it and have an electronic word count.
Cheryl S.: I love fiction that starts in media res; the uncertainty and the need to piece together scant information intrigues me. That’s probably why I was drawn in immediately and stayed invested throughout. If it’s not working for you after the first few chapters, I’d give it up, because it starts as it means to go on. But it might help to, as I think others have suggested, read The Battle of Candle Arc first if you’re going to try again.
I generally love stories that start in media res, in which you figure out the world based on clues as the action proceeds; that wasn’t my problem with it. I thought that both Ninefox Gambit and “The Jewel and her Lapidary” suffered from the same problem: the author has come up with elaborate worldbuilding, but the only way they could figure out how to communicate it to the reader was by infodumping.
I do appreciate those of you who suggested reading the short story before trying it again, and I will do that.
I never pick up a book without hoping that I will love it — especially when so many other people have raved about it. It’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing when I don’t even like, and don’t want to finish, something that so many other people have loved.
Yay for the lurkers popping up with their ballots. 🙂
I always enjoy discussions where people have radically different opinions about a book. Not always positive vs negative, either, the ones where both people felt the same way about it but for very different reasons are great too.
Hey all, thanks for the discussion of Ninefox Gambit. If it ends up on the ballot I’ll check out the stories that were recommended and give the book another fair read.
Likewise! It probably helps books too because the difference of opinion generates more discussion and hence more interest.
My best novel nominations:
Rosewater, Tade Thompson.
Into Everywhere, Paul McAuley
Infomocracy, Malka Older
The Race, Nina Allan
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar
I’d planned to wait 24 hours after the last short-fiction nomination post, but Eric reminded me that we’re driving to Whistler (British Columbia, Canada) early tomorrow morning to go skiing with his relatives. That means we need to post the summary for short fiction tonight. It has been 12 hours since anyone posted a new set of short-fiction nominations, and we got submissions from about fifty people, so that’s pretty good.
So here it is: have a look at the Annotated 2016 File770 List for Short Fiction.
This comprises the top-15 lists for Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story–a little more than 15 in some cases due to ties. In general, this is an elite list of stories; most of them have multiple recommendations from different sources.
Greg Hullender: While I don’t begrudge RSR its clicks — you did the work, after all — it would do more to facilitate our discussion if somebody put a tally in the comments here.
@Kurt Busiek: Don’t get me wrong; similar names that don’t make it a big ol’ mystery are nice for readers. Obviously they’re not trying to hide it from us (unlike sometimes). 🙂 “Nom du guerre”. . . .
@Greg Hullender: I expected a short summary here as well, but regardless, thanks for doing the work on tallying short fiction noms!
Hmm, “Every Heart a Doorway” was quite the run-away favorite. 🙂 Yay!
That’s only the totals for 3 categories, and it’s pretty much unreadable. Would someone else be willing to volunteer to provide complete totals here on File 770? (ordinarily I would do it myself, but I’m working on a project with a deadline).
Here’s the RSR summary for the top 15 Filer nominations in novellas, novelettes and short stories. We wanted to include links to the stories and recommendations (reviewers, anthologists, reader polls) so the easiest way was to use our template that auto-generates tables from our spreadsheet and produced a post. However, per Mike’s request, I hacked the spreadsheet to emit a minimal list formatted for a comment. Folks who want the story and recommendation links can find them in the RSR post.
Novellas
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (21)
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson (14)
Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold (11)
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (10)
The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell (10)
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson (9)
Cold-Forged Flame by Marie Brennan (8)
Brushwork by Aliya Whiteley (7)
Runtime by S.B. Divya (7)
The Coward’s Option by Adam-Troy Castro (6)
This Census-Taker by China Miéville (6)
What We Hold Onto by Jay O’Connell (6)
The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley (5)
The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (5)
The Devil You Know by K.J. Parker (4)
The Vanishing Kind by Lavie Tidhar (4)
Novelettes
The Tomato Thief by Ursula Vernon (11)
Foxfire, Foxfire by Yoon Ha Lee (10)
Touring With the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman (10)
You’ll Surely Drown Here if You Stay by Alyssa Wong (10)
Blood Grains Speak Through Memories by Jason Sanford (8)
The Dancer on the Stairs by Sarah Tolmie (8)
Polyglossia by Tamara Vardomskaya (7)
Everyone from Themis Sends Letters Home by Genevieve Valentine (6)
Finnegan’s Field by Angela Slatter (5)
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (5)
Teenagers from Outer Space by Dale Bailey (5)
The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allan (5)
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente (5)
The Jewel and her Lapidary by Fran Wilde (5)
A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark (4)
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker (4)
Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man by Suzanne Palmer (4)
Short Stories
Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo (10)
Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies by Brooke Bolander (9)
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar (8)
That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn (8)
Terminal by Lavie Tidhar (6)
And Then, One Day, The Air Was Full of Voices by Margaret Ronald (5)
Things With Beards by Sam J. Miller (5)
43 Responses to “In Memory of Dr. Alexandra Nako” by Barbara A. Barnett (4)
Das Steingeschöpf by G.V. Anderson (4)
Laws of Night and Silk by Seth Dickinson (4)
The High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell (4)
Touch Me All Over by Betsy James (4)
A Good Home by Karin Lowachee (3)
Between Dragons and their Wrath by An Owomoyela (3)
Elves of Antarctica by Paul McAuley (3)
Everything That Isn’t Winter by Margaret Killjoy (3)
Razorback by Ursula Vernon (3)
Seven Birthdays by Ken Liu (3)
The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin (3)
The Mutants Men Don’t See by James Alan Gardner (3)
The Story of Kao Yu by Peter S. Beagle (3)
Three Points Masculine by An Owomoyela (3)
I’ve got a spare evening and a brain that likes doing repetitive tasks while listening to audiobooks, so I’ll get on the tally of the other categories and post it here in a few hours.
@Eric
Thanks!
@Arifel
Thanks in advance!
—
Some interesting results there. I remember looking at last year’s tallies v eventual longlist and concluding that the straw poll was a decent-but-not-definite predictor of the result, but there were clearly some works that got unusual attention here but not elsewhere – which is entirely to be expected, of course. The one I remember best is that there was a clear Wombat Effect 🙂 We may be seeing that again with The Tomato Thief. You could also wonder if the coverage of Red in Tooth and Cog at the Nebulas has got it more eyeballs here than in the general nominating population (I hope not though, I nommed it!)
I’ll be really jazzed if The Dancer on the Stairs makes it, but again that had a few fans reccing it here so could that skew the results? (Again, I hope not)
Novella is showing a near-shutout by Tor.com, but there are some magazine and independent novellas further down the list which is encouraging.
Of course the big question is how EPH will effect things?
Good question. (I suppose someone could apply EPH to these data, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.)
The answer that is likely in the light of what evidence we have now, and is to be desired (since EPH was designed not to perturb results massively in normal years), is ‘not much’. Moreover, it’s quite likely that any perturbation that does arise from EPH will be cancelled out by 5/6. Thus, if the conventional method of counting for Novella would have produced four Tor.com novellas plus Penric (not improbable), and EPH displaces one of the Tor.com novellas in favour of a magazine novella (certainly could happen), then 5/6 might well let the missing Tor.com novella back in.
I had already been doing a tallying but this was part of an overall piece I was doing trying to include as many from different blogs, sites, social media and friends etc. So won’t post here.
But one thing I found interesting was that Death’s End, The Fireman, Sleeping Giants and Dark Matter were big sellers and appearead on the top critics lists:
http://www.bookscrolling.com/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-2016-year-end-list-aggregation/
But have had very few best novel nominations I have yet to find listed (although Neuvel does quite well in the new writer nods). As last year there was not such a significant disparity I will be interested to see which is a better predictor.
@KVM
I hope you’ll drop a link in to that article when you’ve finished.
@Andrew M
“Not much” is probably right. I just had a quick look at everyone’s novella category and I could only find one ballot that was five tor.com novellas. Obviously they were extremely popular but most people seem to have considered other sources as well, so there’s no “tor.com bloc” for EPH to act on.
I probably missed a lot of things, and had I remembered them, probably would have nominated them over some of the things I did nominate, but this is what I came up with before the deadline. Here is my nominating ballot:
Best Novel:
– The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
– Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal
– An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows
– Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
– Revenger by Alastair Rynolds
Best Novella:
– Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
– A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
– Down and Out in Purgatory by Tim Powers
– The Dream-Quest of Velitt Boe by Kij Johnson
– The Heart Is Eaten Last by Kameron Hurley
Best Novelette:
– The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
– You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong
– The Terracotta Bride by Zen Cho
– Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman
– Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
Best Short Story:
– A Salvaging of Ghosts by Aliette de Bodard
– A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong
– You Are Not the Hero of this Story by Caroline M. Yoachim
– Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo
– Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
Best Related Work:
– The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley
– Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia Butler by Gerry Canavan
– Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy and the World’s Pain by Mark
Scroggins
– Nobody Owns the Moon: The Ethics of Space Exploration by Tony
Milligan
– An Asimov Companion: Characters, Places and Terms in the
Robot/Empire/Foundation Metaseries by Donald Palumbo
Best Graphic Story:
– Pretty Deadly, Volume 2: The Bear by Kelly Sue DeConnick
– Saga, Volume 6 by Brian K. Vaughn
– Ms. Marvel, Volume 5: Super Famous by G. Willow Wilson
– Sex Criminals, Volume 3: Three the Hard Way by Matt Fraction
– Rat Queens, Volume 3, Demons by Kurtis J. Wiebe
Best Long Dramatic Presentation:
– Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
– Arrival
– Captain America: Civil War
– Ghostbusters
– Hidden Figures
Best Short Dramatic Presentation:
– Manifest; Luke Cage
– Leviathan Wakes; The Expanse
– The Upside Down; Stranger Things
– Battle of the Bastards; Game of Thrones
– New York’s Finest; Daredevil
Best Long Form Editor:
– Miriam Weinberg
– Marco Palmieri
– Diana Pho
– Joe Monti
– Navah Wolfe
Best Short Form Editor:
– Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas
– Sheila Williams
– C.C. Finlay
– David Steffan
– Sean Wallace
Best Pro Artist:
– Jeph Jaques
– Fiona Staples
– Elizabeth Leggett
– Tess Fowler
– Julie Dillon
Best Semiprozine:
– Uncanny Magazine
– Lightspeed Magazine
– Daily Science Fiction
– Strange Horizons
– Shimmer
Best Fanzine:
– Lady Business
– Rocket Stack Rank
– Chaos Horizon
– Galactic Journey
– Journey Planet
Best Fancast:
– Galactic Suburbia
– Under Discussion: The UnderGopher’s Podcast
– Down and Safe
– The Audio Guide to Babylon 5
– Verity!
Best Fan Writer:
– Natalie Luhrs
– Camestros Felapton
– Alexandra Pierce
– Alexandra Erin
– Foz Meadows
Best Fan Artist:
– likhain
– Liz Argail
– Grace Fong
Best Series:
– Expanse by James S.A. Corey
– Fairyland by Catherynne Valente
– Xuya by Aliette de Bodard
– God’s War by Kameron Hurley
– Magic ex Libris by Jim C. Hines
Campbell Award for Best New Writer:
– Carrie Patel
– Kelly Robson
– N.S. Dolkart
– Charlotte Ashley
– Natasha Pulley
@Andrew M
The right way to do EPH on the data is to run the algorithm until it produces an empty list, outputting the EPH score of each item at the point it was discarded. Then you can look at the resulting list (in reverse order) to see what the top 5, top 6, top 15, etc. would have been under EPH.
Maybe I’ll do it when we get back from Whistler.
OK, here’s the numbers I’ve compiled. For each topic, I’ll post either a top 10 (including ties at the bottom), or all of the results with more than three nominations, whichever is fewer. The number of nominators in the category is in brackets at the top. Please excuse slightly horrendous formatting, copying from Excel to a comment box turns out to be not very user friendly…
I’ll do five per post, and upload the raw data to a google doc that I’ll link at the end.
Best Novel (45)
Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee, (21)
The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemison, (17)
All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, (11)
Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer, (11)
Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff, (10)
City of Blades, Robert Jackson Bennet, (8)
A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers, (7)
Informocracy, Malka Older, (6)
Necessity, Jo Walton, (5)
Borderline, Mishell Baker, (4)
Summer In Orcus, T. Kingfisher, (4)
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar, (4)
The Invisible Library, Genevieve Cogman, (4)
Rosewater, Tade Thompson, (4)
Best Related Work (21)
The Geek Feminist Revolution, Kameron Hurley, (10)
Words are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, Ursula K Leguin, (7)
The View from the Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman, (5)
Trolling the Rabid Puppies, Chuck Tingle, (5)
Bandersnatch, Diana Pavlac Glyer, (5)
Writing Women Characters into Epic Fantasy Without Quotas, Kate Elliott, (5)
Making Conversation, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, (4)
Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK 1930-1980, Rob Hansen, (3)
Best Graphic Story (18)
Monstress Volume 1, M Liu and S Takeda, (7)
Stand Still, Stay Silent, Minna Sundberg, (4)
Black Panther: A Nation under our Feet Vol. 1, Ta-Nehisi Coates, (4)
Saga Volume 6, Vaughan and Staples, (4)
Paper Girls Vol 1, Brian K. Vaughan, (3)
Best Dramatic Presentation: Long (30)
Arrival, (20)
Rogue One, (14)
Hidden Figures, (8)
Moana, (6)
Stranger Things S1, (6)
Expanse S1, (6)
Doctor Strange, (5)
Kubo and the Two Strings, (5)
Zootopia, (4)
Ghostbusters, (3)
Star Trek Beyond, (3)
Captain America: Civil War, (3)
Deadpool, (3)
Best Dramatic Presentation: Short (19)
Game of Thrones: The Door, (4)
The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes, (3)
Luke Cage: Manifest, (3)
Outlander: Dragonfly in Amber, (3)
Doctor Who: The Return of Doctor Mysterio, (3)
Looooong tail on this category, as I guess you’d expect…!
Next five. Aaron I missed you, sorry :<
Editor Short, (25)
John Joseph Adams, (10)
Jonathan Strahan, (9)
CC Finlay, (8)
Sheila Williams, (5)
Neil Clarke, (5)
Ann Vandermeer, (4)
Rashida J. Smith, (4)
Michael Damian Thomas and Lynne M. Thomas, (3)
Lee Harris, (3)
Scott Andrews, (3)
Editor Long (11)
Devi Pillai, (7)
Navah Wolfe, (4)
Liz Gorinsky, (4)
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, (4)
Miriam Weinberg, (3)
Jonathan Oliver, (3)
Anne Sowards, (3)
Professional Artist, (16)
Galen Dara, (8)
Victo Ngai, (7)
Sana Takeda, (4)
Cynthia Sheppard, (4)
Chris McGrath, (4)
Julie Dillon, (3)
Jeffrey Alan Love, (3)
Semiprozine (21)
Strange Horizons, (19)
Uncanny, (12)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, (12)
Giganotosaurus, (6)
Interzone, (5)
Mothership Zeta, (5)
The Book Smugglers, (3)
Shimmer, (3)
Fanzine (18)
Rocket Stack Rank, (8)
Nerds of a feather, (7)
Lady Business, (7)
Galactic Journey, (6)
James Nicoll Reviews, (3)
Black Gate, (3)
@Mark
Perhaps, but her two works on the list, The Tomato Thief and Razorback, were recommended by Rocket Stack Rank and by SFRevu, so it’s not just that she’s got a friendly audience. (Okay, I’m a Filer too, but I’m a paragon of objectivity.) 🙂
Red in Tooth and Cog actually got three recommendations: RSR, SFRevu, and Richard Horton. So, yes, I’m sure it benefited from the publicity, but it’s a very strong story in its own right.
One thing I learned from this is that a lot of filers read Giganotosaurus. I’m not sure I can bring myself to read a 12th magazine regularly (especially one that’s not SFWA-qualifying), but I’d be happy to read and review occasional stories from there (or other venues) that people call my attention to. It seems a shame that a story was so good that 7 different Filers recommended it, and yet (from what I can tell) no critical reviewer ever even read it.
Third set.
Best Fancast, (12)
Tea and Jeopardy, (5)
Fangirl Happy Hour, (3)
Verity!, (3)
Best Fan Writer, (25)
Camestros Felapton, (13)
Abigail Nussbaum, (10)
Mike Glyer, (6)
Chuck Tingle, (6)
Charles Payseur, (4)
James Davis Nicoll, (4)
Adam Whitehead, (3)
Alexandra Erin, (3)
Cora Buhlert, (3)
Best Fan Artist, (11)
Likhain, (5)
Megan Lara, (4)
Elicia Donze/Euclase, (4)
Best Series (38)
Thessaly, Jo Walton, (12)
Vorkosigan Saga, Lois MM Bujold, (11)
The Craft Sequence, Max Gladstone, (9)
Memoirs of Lady Trent, Marie Brennan, (7)
The Expanse, James SA Corey, (7)
Rivers of London, Ben Aaranovitch, (7)
Temeraire, Naomi Novik, (6)
Fractured Europe, Dave Hutchinson, (6)
Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson, (5)
World of Five Gods, Lois MM Bujold, (4)
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, (4)
The Young Wizards, Diane Duane, (4)
Best New Writer (Campbell)(30)
Ada Palmer, (11)
Laurie Penny, (10)
Malka Older, (8)
K.B. Wagers, (8)
Kelly Robson, (7)
Tamara Vadomskaya, (7)
Sylvain Neuvel, (6)
Natasha Pulley, (6)
Scott Hawkins, (5)
Arkady Martine, (4)
Benjamin C. Kinney, (4)
And here’s the date file. I’ve turned on editing for now because we are all sensible adults on the internet and I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes which others might feel generous enough to correct. If it gets trashed I’ll reupload as a read only.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5J8wShMi__VZ24tU0s2dkFRLWM/view?usp=sharing
Thanks Arifel: very interesting. Possible File 770 effects for Rocket Stack Rank and Camestros, I suspect; can’t see any other obvious ones. (Unless Chuck Tingle for BFW is one, since the possibility has been discussed here, and he himself was pushing for BRW, not for that one.)
Best Series has a bit more coherence than I expected. It’s particularly striking how well Thessaly is doing.
Some things I voted for that didn’t make the File 770 Top Ten Longlists:
Novels:
– The Power; Naomi Alderman. Honestly, I think one would get my vote for best I’ve read of 2016 at the moment, but due to a late U.S. release it’s pretty much inevitable that it’s not going to get in this year. On the other hand, it’ll be eligible again next year.
– The City of Woven Streets; Emmi Itaranta. This was one of many vying for slots four and five on my list, but I do think it’s a good book that deserves love.
Graphic Story:
– All-New Wolverine, Vol. 1: The Four Sisters; Tom Taylor and David Lopez. It was good.
Dramatic Short:
– San Junipero; Black Mirror. Really surprised this didn’t get more notice. By the time I hear about an TV episode, it generally has a lot of buzz …
– Chapter Seven: The Bathtub; Stranger Things / – Chapter Eight: The Upside Down; Stranger Things. It’s looking like Stranger Things may have gotten a bit shafted in Dramatic Short because of people choosing to nominate the whole season in Dramatic Long instead. I’m not a big fan of doing that for series in general, for a number of reasons.
Fancast:
– Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men. Between this and All-New Wolverine, I’m starting to suspect I’m an X-Man Fan or something.
Series:
– Alpennia; Heather Rose Jones
– Raksura; Martha Wells
– Fairyland; Catherynne M. Valente
– Dagger and the Coin; Daniel Abraham
– Shadow Campaigns; Django Wexler
Wow. NONE of my series nominations made the F770T10LL (although most got a nod from at least one other person.) I would not have expected that.
@Andrew M Yes, I thought the Thessaly result was really interesting, as I assumed the Vorkosigan Saga would be a runaway first place. You’ll notice that it’s also the only series on the list where the eligible novel (Necessity) is picking up a comparable number of votes. The only other significant Best Series – Best Single work crossover in this data is Penric and the Shaman/World of Five Gods (where I’d guess the novella is outperforming the series because Bujold’s other series is picking up more votes, and because nominating it requires defining the series very broadly). We’ll see what ends up on the final ballot and how manageable it turns out to be to read, but that’s quite a promising sign that the category will work in a way which is complementary but different to the best novel award
I haven’t personally read past The Just City in the Thessaly series as I found it a bit dry and weird, but having discovered and loved Among Others quite recently it might be time to revisit in a state of Walton love…
@Kyra If I added you and Aaron to the Best Series data then Fairyland and The Dagger and the Coin would end up tied for 10th along with the other 4 vote works (as would Xuya and Magic Ex Libris).
Another surprisingly missing work I’ve not seen anyone note yet is Everfair by Nisi Shawl which made the Nebula shortlist but hasn’t graced a single F770 ballot so far.
Polyglossia by Tamara Vardomskaya was recommended and linked by someone here in File 770, and I know it went on my list because of that link. Word of mouth works! Or would that be Word of Blog?
On the plus side, it looks like I’ll have some good new books to read in a few weeks!
Thanks to Arifel for the aggregation.
I wonder what (if any) historical correlation there is between Filers and the ultimate finalists. (honest question, FWIW)
Regards,
Dann
@Dann
I wrote about that upthread. Based on last year’s straw poll and the puppy-free longlists that a couple of people worked out, there was a reasonable correlation but by no means definitive, and with some obvious cases of things that were filer favourites but didn’t do so well in the real thing. We’ve had less data than last year though, I think the thread got at least a hundred entries back then.
@ Greg Hullender:
GigaNotoSaurus only publishes one story a month, so it wouldn’t be that large an additional investment of time. I’ve found that the quality of stories published there is consistently good although it isn’t SFWA-qualifying. Rashida Smith has good taste (well, other than rejecting my submissions a few times).
@Arifel
Great work, thank you so much.
I’m interested in the comparison with the Nebula. Obelisk Gate, All The Birds in the Sky and Ninefox Gambit make the Nebula and the top of the filer list, but Borderline and Everfair both did badly here despite the Nebula nom. I remember Borderline getting a lot of attention but personally I thought it was fun but flawed, so maybe that’s what other people concluded. I didn’t get to Everfair, and I don’t remember that much chat about it here.
There’s a pretty strong similarity with the Nebulas in novella, except they missed Penric and Lychford and we apparently didn’t like The Liar. (The Liar seemed like a very US-specific story to me, so maybe the more international crowd here explains that? Ditto Lychford being rather British)
Much less crossover in novelette, with only Blood Grains and You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay from the Nebula list getting significant mentions here, with Jewel and her Lapidary a bit further behind.
In short story, Red in Tooth and Cog should be a correlation but technically isn’t… plus Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies and Seasons of Glass and Iron are nebula finalists who do very well here as well.
We may need a re-tally on the numbers Greg and Eric posted as well. Someone had Time Cookie Wars on their short ballot (a story I enjoyed too) but I don’t see it in the rollup numbers. Unless it’s out of eligibility at least one was missed which means recounting all. I’d volunteer but am buried at the moment. Maybe tonight if no one else has got to it.
Arifel: Many thanks for tallying these votes — the results are fascinating.
@Mark
Sorry about that. I think I saw that response. It probably didn’t stick as my thought was about influence over a much longer time frame rather that just looking at 2015.
Regards,
Dann
@Dann
If you meant correlation between filers nominations and results, then last year was the first time the straw poll was taken so no historical time frames are available. If you meant actual filers winning Hugos, then I answered the wrong question….
Dann: We did a 2016 version of this post and Nicholas Whyte toted up the results — it should be easy to find.
As I recall there was a reasonably high correlation in some categories — perhaps not surprising, because a lot of people shared their ballots.
Oops!!!
Never mind my re-tally comment. I just went back to start pulling the numbers and Time Cookie Wars was a “Runner Up”. Nothing to see here, move along…
🙁
What Did You Nominate for the 2016 Hugos?
We did a reasonably-good job picking last year’s Novel finalists*:
*Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch, #3) – Ann Leckie; Orbit, October (33)
*Uprooted – Naomi Novik; Del Rey, May (20)
*The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) – N. K. Jemisin; Orbit, August (18)
Radiance – Catherynne M. Valente; Tor, October (9)
Bryony and Roses – T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon); Self-published, May (8)
The Just City (Thessaly #1) – Jo Walton; Tor, January (8)
Karen Memory – Elizabeth Bear; Tor, February (8)
*Seveneves – Neal Stephenson; Harper Collins, May (7) (slated entry)
.
.
.
*The Aeronaut’s Windlass (The Cinder Spires #1) – Jim Butcher; Roc, September (1) (slated entry)
@Stoic Cynic
These are only the top-15 lists anyway. Filers nominated 46 unique novellas, 64 unique novelettes, and 88 unique short stories.
I was molesting Radiance’s very attractive paper edition* on a visit to Waterstones post-wheelchair appointment, but I don’t recall whether it sounded like my thing from the discussions of it here… I’ll have to do some searching through the archives.
I nominated Everfair, by the way, but of course I wasn’t discussing much of anything in the run-up. Too busy reading to try and catch up. And taking a lot of naps. Stupid winter.
The internet commentariat forming a community is a fairly recent development in File 770’s lifetime, I think, so there wouldn’t be much info for the longterm. Perhaps OGH remembers File 770 recommending something(s) in the past that ended up getting nominated, and that would probably count towards File 770’s longterm influence/reflection of Worldcon fandom as a whole, but the Filer community as a group haven’t been around that long.
Ursula Vernon is, of course, exceptionally popular with Filers – but was nominated and won for Digger long before we all started stalking our favourite Wombat’s work all over the internet (and on a personal note, I was very excited to rediscover an artist I’d found years before and promptly forgotten the name of because I’m terrible at names; I’d been guiltily using downloads from DeviantArt as desktop backgrounds when I was a teenager and her art got promoted regularly). She has support from the wider Worldcon community, just perhaps not quite as dedicated as it is round these parts.
I suspect other Filer’s past and present might also benefit from a Filer halo for their work – I know I’ve been keeping an eye out for Kurt Busiek’s, for example, and Graydon’s battle sheep and Heather Rose Jone’s Alpennia series are quite popular, and my eternal frustration at Laura Resnick’s lack of kindle publications in the UK still stands, although whether any of that’s enough to help get a nomination is another matter – but we’ve been lucky with the talent available so I don’t think it leads to anything untoward. Just perhaps a lack of correlation with the final ballot here and there.
*I don’t really read paper anymore because they’re usually too difficult to hold, but I’m considering the merits of having a bookcase full of my absolute favourites that also have nice covers just so I can pet them on the regular and maybe loan them to very trustworthy people occasionally. Books are just nice objects and I miss them. I grew up in a library masquerading as a house (or a house masquerading as a library) and it feels wrong not to have many.
Meredith: That makes sense. A writer’s next challenge, after getting published, is getting their book/story in front of an audience. If that happens, the work can find its own level in the awards conversation. File 770 commenters do a lot to bring more readers to works they like. Once a work is part of the conversation, the cohort of fans who like it may decide to vote for it. People here have pretty independent opinions but they share them, and that gets more eyes on books, following which (to mix a metaphor) the cream can rise to the top.
Not long after I got my first Hugo nominations in the ought-Eighties I thought “I must use this power for good.” I was really impressed by an Alexis Gilliland novel, wrote it a great review, and figured things would take off from them. The book wasn’t nominated, didn’t even get that many votes. In a way I found that reassuring, and at any rate, I can testify my fanzine was never any kind of a kingmaker for the Hugo Awards.
@Mike Glyer
Yes, exactly – and thank you for the historical info!
JJ– Aww, I just saw your comment about Castle Hangnail and Orcus. Thank you!
(I think I’ve fixed the thing that stopped me subscribing to threads… let’s see.)
I’ll limit myself to my choices for Best Related Work: 1) “There is No Defense,” Barry Malzberg (GALAXY’S EDGE, May 2016), 2) Roger Hill and Wally Wood, WALLY WOOD: GALAXY ART AND BEYOND (IDW Publishing), 3) Gahan Wilson, GAHAN WILSON’S OUT THERE (Fantagraphics), and 4) J. David Spurlock and Frank Frazetta, THE SENSUOUS FRAZETTA (Vanguard).
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RedWombat: Aww, I just saw your comment about Castle Hangnail and Orcus. Thank you!
You made me read YA and like it, damn you! 😉
(That is no small feat.)
I had a hard time with novels this year – I felt like last year I spent a lot more time reading current releases than I’d have liked, so I didn’t worry too much. I also had a hard time with the shorter categories, for the same reason.
Novel:
– The Obelisk Gate; N.K. Jemisin
– Ninefox Gambit; Yoon Ha Lee; Solaris Books
Novella:
– Cold-Forged Flame; Marie Brennan; TOR
– The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe; Kij Johnson
– The Ballad of Black Tom; Victor LaValle
Fan Writer:
– Camestros Felapton
– John O’Neill
– Abigail Nussbaum
– Greg Hullander
Series:
– Dagger and the Coin; Daniel Abraham; The Spider’s War
– Commonwealth; Peter F. Hamilton; Night Without Stars
– Laundry Files; Charles Stross; The Nightmare Stacks
– Polity; Neal Asher; War Factory
– The Commonweal; Graydon Saunders; Safely You Deliver; self-published
@Eric Wong: Thanks for the easier-to-skim lists!
@Arifel: Thanks so much for lists! Two run-away leads in Best Novel. Ditto “Arrival,” and clearly Strange Horizons is very well liked here.