The 2017 Hugo Awards voter packet is now available for download by Supporting, Attending, Youth and First Worldcon members of Worldcon 75. The packet is an electronic collection that helps voters become better informed about the pool of finalists. Works included are made available by finalists and their publishers.
The voter packet contains complete texts of many Hugo-nominated works, preview versions of some works, and directions for finding some finalists’ works online. The packet itself can be accessed by members directly from their online ballots with personalized links.
Nicholas Whyte, Hugo administrator for Worldcon 75, said:
This year’s voter packet is the most extensive and complete collection since the packet’s inception in its present form 10 years ago. We are deeply appreciative of the publishers, authors, artists, editors, and other creators who have generously provided their works to this year’s Hugo Voter Packet, and ask that voters who feel the same way consider posting on social media to thank the publishers, editors, and creators who have participated in the packet.
In most ballot categories there are separate downloads for each of the three most common ebook formats (EPUB, MOBI, and PDF). In the few cases where a publisher has provided only a PDF version of a work, the PDF has been included in each of the different format packets so that members will not have to do extra downloading. The exceptions to this are the Dramatic Presentation, Artist, Graphic Story, Fancast, and Editor Long Form categories, where there is only a PDF download.
The Hugo Voter Packet will be available for download until the voting deadline at 11:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time on 15 July 2017 (2:59 am EDT, 07:59 BST, 09:59 EEST). As in previous years, Worldcon 75 asks that voters honor publishers’ and creators’ request that they reserve these copies for their personal use only, and that they do not share these works with non-members of Worldcon 75.
Here is an overview of the packet contents:
- Novel: 5 full novels and 1 excerpt
- Novella: 6 full novellas
- Novelette: 6 full novelettes
- Short Story: 6 full short stories
- Related Work: 4 full long works, 1 full short work, and 1 excerpt
- Graphic Story: 6 full works in PDF form only
- Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): a PDF document summarizing the Finalists, with hyperlinks to each work’s video trailer, official website, IMdb entry, and Wikipedia entry.
- Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): a PDF document summarizing the Finalists, with hyperlinks to each work’s video trailer, official website, IMdb entry, and Wikipedia entry. In the case of the Clipping musical work, links are included to listen for free on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and Bandcamp.
- Editor – Short Form: submissions from 6 editors
- Editor – Long Form: submissions from 6 editors
- Professional Artist: image galleries for 6 artists, with citations of where and when each work was published, and a PDF document with links to all the artists’ websites
- Semiprozine: submissions from 6 semiprozines
- Fanzine: submissions from 6 fanzines
- Fancast: PDF submissions for 6 fancasts with episode summaries and links to online podcasts
- Fan Writer: submissions from 5 fan writers and 1 PDF document with a link to an online submission from a 6th fan writer
- Fan Artist: image galleries for 6 artists, and a PDF document with links to all the artists’ websites
- Series: 2 full series, 1 novel for each of 2 series, 1 excerpt for each of 2 series, and a PDF document for each series which lists all the works in the series and includes some hyperlinks to bonus related online content.
- John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: 3 novels, 2 novellas, and 9 short stories for 6 authors
Readers who do not have membership in Worldcon 75 can still access a great deal of Finalist material at no cost; see this page for links: Where To Find The 2017 Hugo Finalists For Free Online.
Those wishing to purchase membership to Worldcon 75 may still do so. Supporting membership is €35 / $40; Adult Attending membership is €195 / $215; and First-Time Adult Attending membership is €95 / $110. All three of these membership levels are eligible to receive the Hugo Voter’s Packet. Worldcon 75 Membership Page.
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Kendall: At some point I missed an announcement about Elizabeth Leggett replacing Mansik Yang.
That would be because it was at the bottom of the e-mail which you abandoned immediately after reading the first line, to excitedly go download the packet. 😉
@JJ: HOLY CARP IT IS! LOL, I totally missed that in the e-mail. Okay, blush, but they shouldn’t have buried it. I started falling asleep reading that e-mail. “Packet, blah, blah…zzz…PACKET?! clicky clicky!” Or something like that is what I read/did.
@Kurt, ah, you’re right. They’re relatively unobtrusive ones, which is both good, and why I missed them on a very brief scroll.
—-
If the October Daye books are on a 55 day expiry… then it’s a bit disappointing simply because I doubt I’ll get through the whole set before the awards and was hoping to get to them later, but ultimately you can’t complain about something for free! If using Netgalley provides a compromise between making the books available and publishers not worrying about loss of sales, and so encourages publishers to put full works in the packet, then I’m all for it.
I don’t know a good way of advising people not to read the John C Wright short story in the packet which doesn’t also draw attention to it and thus lead more people to read it, but…you don’t want to read it and you’ll be happier if you don’t.
@Camestros
Tell everyone the file infects you with brainworms?
Oh wait, I opened the file didn’t I….
@Camestros: While I don’t particularly want to read the story, I would love to read your review of it 🙂
Ah, I see you have already put your thoughts on it on your blog.
@Camestros: I feel a little dirty just having read your summary of it.
Well I started with that one in the hope that it would be a comedy goldmine…and it was just distilled nastiness. Ugh.
Is anyone else having trouble downloading the October Daye files? I keep getting an error message when I try to download the epubs.
Contrarius: Is anyone else having trouble downloading the October Daye files? I keep getting an error message when I try to download the epubs.
I just tried downloading a fresh copy of all 3 Series files, and they all downloaded fine, including the EPUB — and the date on the MOBI zip has changed, and it looks like they’ve fixed the problem where the MOBI zip contained EPUB short fiction. Now it contains the short fiction in MOBI format.
@JJ —
Thanks for the report. Looks like it’s something particular to me, then.
I haven’t tried the mobi yet — I want to download to my laptop instead of my Kindle (and my Kindle is also currently out of juice) — but I keep getting this error message: Error getting License. License Server Communication Problem:
E_ACT_NOT_READY
I’ve used ADE plenty in the past, so I don’t know what the deal is. Sigh. I’ll try playing with the Kindle option.
Contrarius: ADE has.. interesting timing problems, at times.
First, the code in the ACSM that you downloaded (which is essentially just a couple of crypto blobs and a final download URL) is time-constrained and if you open the ACSM in ADE “too long” after the download (my prior experimentation indicates that this is 5-10 minutes), the crypto-blobs are no longer valid.
Second, it may be set up with “no more than N devices” and (alas) “device” actually means “ACSM download attempts seen my Adobe entitlement servers” and if that’s been exceeded…
Thirdly, it is all predicated on Adobe’s entitlement servers being up pretty much “when you do the download”.
Disclaimer: I have only poked at this with packet sniffers because I have occasionally had weird problems (a very small set of books from one ebook provider failing to load, now having lead to “device limit exceeded” even if the books aren’t on any devices).
@Camestros
I had no intention of reading it, thanks to having read other works by him – but you tempted me into reading your summary and now I must go take a shower to clean off even the thought of it. Eeeeuw.
In happier news, I’m five or so chapters into Obelisk Gate and remembering why I liked the first book so much.
Contrarius: If ADE sometimes has weird timing problems, you might want to make sure your computer’s clock is correct.
@Bruce —
LOL. Thanks for the thought, but my computer’s clock is fine. ;-D
I dunno what the deal is. I downloaded the newest ADE version just in case it was a version problem, but I’m still getting the same error. I did manage to get the bundle opened on my phone through Kindle-for-iPhone, but the Kindle itself is still charging (on a trickle charger) and the file is still not showing up in Kindle-for-Mac. I also downloaded the file directly from Amazon once Netgalley had emailed it to my phone, but the Kindle-for-Mac app refuses to open the file because of the file protection.
Anyway, none of this is really essential. I’ve already got most of the October Daye books in audio format, and in fact I’ve already listened to most of them. It’s just annoying to have a glitch like this!
update: Thanks to the troubleshooting files at the Adobe site (RTFM!), I finally figured out that my ADE authorization data had become corrupted. That was a simple fix, and now I can read the Daye file on my laptop through ADE. Also got the file to work on my Kindle, but not yet on Kindle-for-Mac. That one may be hopeless!
@Mark:
Regarding The Women of Harry Potter, per the Tor.com website, there are currently six posts by Gailey shown, one of the dated 2017 and the five others dated as 2016. Five in the packet matches the number from 2016 listed on the website.
http://www.tor.com/tag/women-of-harry-potter/
@Camestros et al:
I am about to embark on my short story reading, and apparently feel the need to attempt reading all the finalists. This leaves me with a quandary regarding the JCW. I’m not sure yet if I’ll DNF once I feel the desire to pitch my screen across the room, or if I will read it aloud to my cats. (I’m leaning toward dramatic reading with necessary breaks and/or shouty rants 😛 )
Robert Reynolds: Regarding The Women of Harry Potter, per the Tor.com website, there are currently six posts by Gailey shown, one of the dated 2017 and the five others dated as 2016. Five in the packet matches the number from 2016 listed on the website.
The sixth post, published in 2017, would not be eligible as part of the finalist entry, so I’m sure that’s why it’s not in the packet.
While I found the series interesting to read, I admit that I found the subtance of it very slight in comparison with the other Related Work Finalists.
Contrarius, sorry, I misunderstood your post and thought you were having trouble downloading the packet from Worldcon’s site.
I really dislike the Adobe Digital Editions interface, and find it frequently glitchy with DRMed files. I recommend that you Google “Apprentice Alf”. He recommends that you use only ADE 2.0.1 to download books and do not upgrade to 3.0, and explains how to extend the lifespan of date-sensitive e-books.
@JJ —
No problem — I got it figured out eventually! As for the rest, Calibre is my friend. 🙂
Are the October Daye files going to vanish in a puff of smoke come the voting date? Do I have to learn some new wizardry to preserve them? I’ve looked at Apprentice Alf before and I do NOT have the spoons (or the hardware) to do it. So if some nice Filer who’s also a Helsinki member was to figure out how for me to get copies mo’ betta, I would be very grateful. I mean, not that my gratitude is worth a lot, but I could like proofread something for you or send supportive emails or whatevs. Gah, I hate PDFs and ADE and here’s both.
Chuck Tingle’s submission (heh) is a delight. The Storify of his Tweets is in there, as is a link to his Rabid website, links to news coverage, plus two Tinglers relating to the Hugos and very meta. I’m still voting OGH #1, but Chuck will not be below NA this year.
Meanwhile, kudos to Max Gladstone for giving us all 5 novels of The Craft Sequence and Seanan McGuire for giving us all of Toby Daye (even in an annoying way). Boo to the submissions that were only excerpts; I think that’s pretty damn shortsighted of the publishers. Probably won’t matter in the Vorkosigan case, but it looks bad for Peter Grant, Temeraire, and the Belt.
Double boo and a clawing of eyes to publishers of Mieville and Chambers who insisted on putting in a PDF (ugh ugh) and watermarking every page of it (just terrible). It’s not going to help their chances when people decide to read all the nice epubs and mobis of the other entries first and maybe never get to theirs. Gaahhhh.
Working with limited disk space, I haven’t unzipped the comics yet, but those are faster to read anyway.
In addition to general appreciation, this is the first year there’s been anything for DP. So extra kudos for rounding up links to material about those.
How would an internet rando find you, lurkertype?
To anyone interested in Netgallery, expirations and the like, I came across the following on the Netgallery website. It may be of use to you, though I cannot vouch for its accuracy:
https://netgalley.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/54710-when-i-downloaded-the-title-i-noticed-an-expirati
@Camestros Felapton: I had planned on reading maybe 10 words of Wright’s story; I’ll cut it down to nine, thanks. 😉
@lurkertype: More likely, kudos to Gladstone’s & McGuire’s publishers. 😉
I love the “Peter Grant” books; I hope folks try them out, but I’m surprised and bummed the sample is so short (3 chapters?) (bummed for other folks). It seems like a lot of people have read (at least some of) the “Temeraire” books, so I wouldn’t count it out. I expect some “love the show” knock-on effect for the “Expanse” series. But I’m horrible at handicapping these things! Plus, Gladstone’s gotten a lot of praise for his books anyway. Basically, I’m rambling.
Re. unzip’ing the comics, image-heavy PDFs tend not to compress much (depends on how they’re made) – and in this case, the ZIP’d up version is about the same size as unZIP’d. So you can unZIP them and delete the ZIP file, if you want, and you’ll wind up using basically no more disk space. They were only ZIP’d to make it a one-click download, methinks – which is handy! – but it doesn’t save any space in this case.
Regarding watermarks, I was amused at the varying watermarks in the comics PDFs. Marvel clearly believes there’s a selection committee (well, you could call us a committee of the whole, but no, there’s no Hugo selection committee in reality), from the test of their watermark (“Hugo Awards – Selection Committee”). The Image Comics ones say “Hugo Awards Review Copy.”
BTW I hadn’t realized all six finalists were from only two publishers (Marvel & Image) until I looked at the PDFs. I didn’t pay attention to the company names in parens when the finalists were announced.
#LordIWasBornARamblingMan
I find it odd that Seanan McGuire and Del Rey chose to provide full (albeit expiring) copies of her entire series, but Aaronovitch and Del Rey chose to provide a watermarked excerpt (really, Del Rey? Are you afraid it will diminish the sales of the books if a 3 chapter excerpt gets out in the wild?) Fortunately, I already have a copy of Rivers of London.
I haven’t looked at all of the PDF only submissions, but I’m pleased to report that all the ones I have looked at are more or less readable on my Kobo Glo HD (i.e, watermarks are quite annoying), unlike many of the PDFs of years past which were sized for Letter/A4 and had registration marks and the print was too small to read.
@Bruce A: No mystery, as the “October Daye” books are from DAW, not Del Rey. One of the only two long form editors to provide excerpts in the Editor Long Form folder was Sheila Gilbert – from DAW.
D’oh! I had picked up the first 5 October Daye books recently, and just finished #4, and still managed to conflate DAW and Del Rey.
@Robert Reynolds
Aha, that link was very useful. According to it, an “expiration date” is when the files become inaccessible on your device if you’ve downloaded them, and “archive date” is the last day to download a file from netgalley, i.e. the download links will disappear on that day.
My entry in the netgalley shelf says “Archive Date 16 Jul 2017” which simply means you have to download by voting day, which is perfectly reasonable.
I originally sent my book to kindle, but I’ve now also downloaded it to Adobe Digital Editions to see what happens (I don’t normally use it b/c it’s glitchy as hell just like JJ says), and the file info shows that I can view it until 13/7/17 (i.e. expiration date 55 days from now).
That article also has an entry suggesting that files sent to kindle don’t expire – which I suppose means that they’re relying on Amazon’s DRM to make sure you don’t distribute the files, but are happy for you to keep them.
So the conclusion is: if you’re going to need an epub, download it by voting day (well, duh) and you will get 55 days to read it from the day you download. If you’re going to use the ‘send to kindle’ option, do it whenever but definitely by voting day.
Mark: That article also has an entry suggesting that files sent to kindle don’t expire
Nope, I can verify that NetGalley Kindle files do expire — at least, my Kindle DX has refused to open a couple of them that I know of, after the date.
However, Apprentice Alf is still able to do things with files after they’ve expired.
Glad to hear that at least the PDFs don’t have tiny print, but I think giant watermarks on every page are worse, particularly if you’re a fast reader and you like your screen dim. I shall hereby cease from complaining (as much) about the packet that had the password-protected small print novels sans watermarks.
Del Rey isn’t covering itself with glory, much unlike the founders.
You’d think Marvel would know we aren’t a committee by now.
I noticed the unZip’d versions of the epub weren’t basically any bigger than the zip. Which, yeah, collection — but it would’ve been nice if we hadn’t had to download and then delete things we already have. I mean, I’ve got a paperback copy of the first P. Grant book, I didn’t need to waste time faffing about with a watermarked excerpt. And I’m sure many people would have preferred not to waste time with the Puppy nominees.
@JJ
Sigh, is it too much to ask that a random article off the internet be correct? Next thing I’ll be finding that amazon reviews aren’t totally reliable, and advice off forums is sometimes wrong!
Mark: Next thing I’ll be finding that amazon reviews aren’t totally reliable, and advice off forums is sometimes wrong!
… also, people posting on File770 might not be doing so under their real names!
I much prefer to download a small number of zips and then delete some files, rather than going through dozens of links in order to figure out which ones I have and click on the ones I want.
(But yes, both epub, mobi and pdf have internal compression in the format, so zipping them up again generally doesn’t save any space.)
lurkertype, please check your Junk Mailbox for A Message from Cattimothy House CEO Timothy T. T. Cat.
Also, you should be careful about that, you never know what sort of bizarre internet randos will take it upon themselves to contact you. 😉
It’ll be brain bleach I’ll bet. He’s been cooking up lots for me.
That’s the great thing about e-mails entitled “A Message from Cattimothy House CEO Timothy T. T. Cat”, isn’t it?
Filers will be sure to realize that it’s not a trojan attachment which launches randomw-
Okay, maybe I didn’t think this fully through. 😉
Ooh, email from Timothy!
I hope it doesn’t have a viru!@#$%^GHJKL
The October Daye series in mobi can only be downloaded to Kindles, and maybe mobile devices; it won’t work for Kindle-for-PC (or Mac) because it requires a send-to-Kindle email address.
Haven’t checked to see if the mobile app version would allow an email, which might make it show up in one’s K4PC reader; a quick look at various forum discussions says “probably not,” but there may have been changes in how the app software works that didn’t trickle back to the forums.
Can confirm that the epub version works nicely with the Apprentice Alf tools in Calibre.
@Erica
Having sent it to my kindle paperwhite, the file also appears as available in my kindle for android and can be downloaded.
I’ve just checked, and you can set an email for your mobile app.
I haven’t checked whether it appears on kindle for PC though.
@Erica —
Once you do the “send-to-Kindle” with your email address, you can then download the file to your computer from the archive that Amazon keeps. Once you have the file physically on your computer, you can then transfer it to your Kindle-for-Mac library. HOWEVER, in this case, the Kindle-for-Mac app was still not able to read the file because of the DRM.
Which is why God invented Calibre.
Calibre was not able to strip the .mobi DRM, but it did strip the .epub’s DRM just fine. So I converted that stripped file to .mobi and moved it over to my Kindle-for-Mac library, and now I’m a happy camper. 🙂
I did get the file sent to my iphone from Netgalley just fine. You just have to enter a send-to-Kindle address that’s specific for your phone.
So that’s what he was doing with his smartphone in the cinema!
https://camestrosfelapton.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/timothytextinginmovies.jpg
Now you’ll have to sue him!
Sigh. After Hugo Reading Season, I really am going to have to buckle down and learn Calibre. Real Soon Now.
Also I seem to have an anti-squirrel manifesto on my computer now.
The last time I sued him I won and then I had to loan him the money to pay my damages and his legal fees.
@lurkertype —
The initial setup and customization of Calibre are a little awkward, but actually using it is a breeze. I love to use it to keep things organized and centralized (I don’t have to go searching through multiple reading apps to know whether I’ve got a specific book), sync with Goodreads, and convert books to whatever format I prefer at the time.
Problem is I’d have to use the husband’s PC and he’s on it most hours we’re awake. 🙂 But not having to remember if I have a book on Kindle, Nook, or Google would be swell. If they’re free, I usually go ahead and get it for all of them.
(I have an XP laptop available but of course it’s increasingly obsolete.)
I love that the Best Series part of the packet has reading order info for the series! Plus in at least a few cases, links to short fiction online. 🙂
(Yes, I’m still exploring the packet; I noticed this early on, but methinks I forgot to mention/praise it.)
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How silly. I just realized the Leviathan Wakes PDF I have from years ago (which I knew was complete) is from the 2012 Hugo packet when it was a Best Novel finalist. So in 2012, Orbit gave voters the full PDF with only a watermark on page 1 (yes, it’s only on page 1)…
…but now, when “The Expanse” is nominated for Best Series, they gave us ~1/5th of the book with watermarks on every page. I wonder if this is a purposeful policy shift or there’s just no institutional memory over there. (Neither would surprise me, especially the latter; many companies are bad at remembering what they did 5 years before; the place I work can’t always remember things from last year!)
In other news, I discovered Acrobat Pro’s “remove watermark,” which worked great on one novella and one novel, but not on Novik’s PDF (oddly, it acted like it was working). No biggie: I have several Temeraire books in print, plus a PDF of book 1 from some give-away they did after book 5 came out, though I forget why they were giving that away. (My older, no-watermark His Majesty’s Dragon PDF is not from a Hugo packet.)
In other, other news, I enjoyed Penric and the Shaman and plan to buy the next couple, though the Best Novella line-up is so good, “Penric” probably won’t be near the top – but that’s a testament to a great list that’s tough to rank. No disrespect to Bujold – I’m hooked on this series.
And yay, for short fiction, I only have two novellas left to read. They’re the two I’m least looking forward to, unfortunately – Johnson’s & Miéville’s (for different reasons), but I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
#HugoPacketRambling
@Kendall
Yes, Orbit had a deliberate policy shift in 2014.