Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Today, December 18, the winners will be named. But if you like you may post here who'll win according to your intuition

Novel: The City We Became
Novella: Ring Shout
Novelette: The Inaccessibility of Heaven
Short Story: The Mermaid Astronaut
Series: Murderbot Diaries
Related Work: FIYAHCON
Graphic Story: [i have no idea]
DP Long: The Old Guard?
DP Short: The Good Place

A great list, Kalin!
My list
Novel: Piranesi
Novella: Ring Shout
Novelette: The Pill
Short Story: A Guide for Working Breeds
Series: Murderbot Diaries
Related Work: FIYAHCON

I'm afraid Best Novel will go to Network Effect, although Piranesi is obviously best of the bunch.
Novella will most likely be Ring Shout, yeah.
Novelette should be The Pill, and perhaps even will be.
Short Story... man, I don't know. Metal Like Blood in the Dark was best, but I doubt it will win. I'm guessing... The Mermaid Astronaut?

Novel: Network Effect
Novella: Ring Shout
Novelette: The Pill
Short Story: A Guide for Working Breeds
Series: Murderbot Diaries
Graphic Story: Parable of the Sower
Related Work: FIYAHCon
Dramatic Long: Palm Springs
Dramatic Short: The Good Place finale
Fancast: Coode Street
Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
Lodestar: Elatsoe
Astounding: Emily Tesh


I'm not very confident about most of my guesses. :-P

My feelings are with Antti's: Network Effect will win, but Piranesi really should. IMHO, it totally outclassed all the others. I just read Ring Shout, totally agree it will win. I don't know about the others, except that Murderbot will take the series win.

My entire list is a pessimistic take on recent Hugo voting patterns. Ring Shout was not great. Network Effect is also likely alongside Jemisin. I voted Harrow but Piranesi would be a great winner too. But this thread wasn't asking us what we think *should* win. :)

I’m doing pretty good so far. 😁

Top three awards all match my ballot, so I'm happy.

Aw, I’m glad you’re happy! I’m ….not happy. Haha😝 Very few of my first choices won. I was really hoping Harrow or Piranesi would take best novel and Micaiah Johnson the astounding award.

I'm pleasantly surprised. A lot of my predictions didn't come to pass but ones I was hoping would win did. I think the best novella won, and am verrrrry happy Coode Street and Beowulf won.

Harrow was a real longshot, being a sequel that didn't win for its first volume. And Micaiah Johnson could be back on the ballot next year.

Honestly, it doesn't help chances when publishers provide only excerpts or only badly formatted PDFs to voters in the packet. Piranesi and Space Between Worlds were both like that this year. Speaking for me, it meant I didn't read the latter and couldn't vote for Johnson.

That’s a good point. They provided a link for NetGalley for Space Between Worlds. You might still be able to get it. Not sure. I’ll be really interested to see the rankings for each category. I’m really curious what came in second and how close they were to the winners.

Well, I had three top spots agree with what I liked, and another three were my 2nd or 3rd pick. I did not vote in Novella and a bunch of other categories. The only disappointment was Wells beating Scalzi for the Best Series. While I liked and ranked both series, I thought Scalzi was better. I also had "The Pill" at the top spot, but liked the winner too.

Some comments on the winners:

Best Short Story: Metal Like Blood in the Dark. I'm amazed that my favourite won this category: I thought it had very little chances. I guess T. Kingfisher is a name to keep in mind, come next year's predictions; she won the Lodestone, too, for Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

Best Novelette: Two Truths and a Lie. Not my favourite, but I can live with it. The story is weird fiction bordering on horror, which is an unusual choice for a winner.

Best Novella: Empress of Salt and Fortune. Well, the novella category was really poor this year, so there were worse choices. Seems like the voters appreciated the emotional tones and the atmosphere of the book, and were willing to disregard the fact that the plot made no sense. Nghi Vo seems to have a solid fan base.

Best Novel: Network Effect. It was as I predicted. Piranesi really should have won, but Wells has such an army of fans, it was nigh-impossible for her not to win. The series win for Murderbot Diaries was also a near-certainty. In fact I will already predict that Fugitive Telemetry will win Best Novella in 2022, despite it being formulaic and uninspired work.

Also worth noting the publishers:
Best novel: Tor.com (well, half the books were by Tor, so not completely surprising...)
Best novella: Tordotcom (inevitable, since all the nominees in this category were published by Tordotcom)
Best novelette: Tor.com (the only Tor work in this category!)
Best short story: Uncanny Magazine (I'm not sure how they dropped a ball on this one).

So another thing to remember in next year's predictions: pick the one published by Tor.

It is fan to see that after 3 years of closely following fandom and researching Hugos I failed so miserably in my predictions.

Antti wrote: "So another thing to remember in next year's predictions: pick the one published by Tor."

I mentioned that elsewhere that Tor dominates last few years while Baen almost banned, but among novels Orbit and Saga still have strong nominees.

I will say, I don’t think of Martha Wells as having an army of supporters the way I see it with Seanan McGuire….where they will nominate and vote anything no matter what. I think Murderbot is truly adored by many. I give a lot of credit to Tor. They are really brilliant with marketing. The Tor free e-book club is really generous, but I see it really paying off for them. They gave away the first four murderbot novellas a year or two ago. Which was super exciting and amazing! But it also got everyone to read them and talk about them. A truly brilliant move!

Kristenelle wrote: "I will say, I don’t think of Martha Wells as having an army of supporters the way I see it with Seanan McGuire…."

I guess it is a question of information bubbles we are all in - here on GR in different groups I've read a lot of fans of Murderbot, but just a few of McGuire's Children, which were nominated in novellas each year... at the same time again here we have Maas winning best fantasy in 2020 and 2021 but I've never heard her praised

As for Tor's marketing and authors who work for them - yes they are very good

Oleksandr wrote: "I guess it is a question of information bubbles we are all in - here on GR in different groups I've read a lot of fans of Murderbot, but just a few of McGuire's Children, which were nominated in novellas each year... at the same time again here we have Maas winning best fantasy in 2020 and 2021 but I've never heard her praised"

That's my impression as well. Everybody seems to praise Murderbot, no matter where I look in the groups I'm in. I think McGuire and Maas are more beloved in groups that tend a bit more in the YA direction.

Antti wrote: " I guess T. Kingfisher is a name to keep in mind, come next year's predictions; she won the Lodestone, too, for Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking."

I'd never heard of her until I found The Hollow Places. It's an audio read to fill in a horror challenge I have for this year, so I'll be reading it within the next week. I'll let you know what I think.

The detailed stats for Hugo ballots are out: http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/...

Don't have time to comment on it right now but there is some interesting stuff. What do you all think?

Can somebody explain what it is with the pass 1, 2, 3 ...?

I don’t thoroughly understand it, but it is how the ranked voting works. So the first pass is what would win if there wasn’t any ranked choice. It is everyone’s first choice. Then they look at everyone’s second choice and so on. So the actual winner is who got the most highest rankings.

The passes are due to runoff voting: first they count the first-place votes, and the nomination with the least votes gets eliminated. Then every ballot that had the eliminated nominee as first-place are recounted according to their second-place nomination, and so on.

I don't quite understand why Piranesi's votes are missing from the 2nd pass: I assume is just a mistake.

The most interesting voting happened in Novelette category: Helicopter Story had the most first-place votes, but got very little second to sixth place votes. There were a lot of voters who didn't include Fall's story on their ticket, and a lot who had only that.

I was wondering about that too, Antti. Looks like Network Effect won by a good margin but second and third we’re pretty close.

I’m really happy that Micaiah Johnson came in second for astounding award…and pretty close too! Maybe she has a shot at winning next year.

So if I vote for something as first place and no vote as second place, once my first place choice is eliminated, am I a no-vote or simply a non-vote since "no vote" was eliminated on the first pass?

Tom: nonvote.

except that total no award votes can't exceed votes for a winner. that's why there's a comparison between the winner and no award in the rightmost column . it's so damn confusing.

And here are the nomination stats which show the runners up which didn't quite make it into the final shortlists.

http://www.thehugoawards.org/wp-conte...

Kalin wrote: "And here are the nomination stats which show the runners up which didn't quite make it into the final shortlists.."

No Tchaikovsky in top-16, was in our noms for novel and novella

Yup, it's not about quality SF writing but about hype and marketing. I'm curious how it looks next year. "Shards of Earth" is in several top 10 lists of critics for this year. It wouldn't surprise me if he'll get no recognition at the Hugos.

Gabi wrote: "Yup, it's not about quality SF writing but about hype and marketing. I'm curious how it looks next year. "Shards of Earth" is in several top 10 lists of critics for this year. It wouldn't surprise ..."

In 2022 noms we can be surprised - notable inflow of Chinese fans this year (600+) means they may nominate in 2022 and SF goes over fantasy in China, therefore it is possible that the list will surprise us

Yes but the works still have to be in English, afaik. I doubt a lot of those 2k Chengdu voters read SFF in English.

Kalin wrote: "Yes but the works still have to be in English, afaik. I doubt a lot of those 2k Chengdu voters read SFF in English."

True, but [1] knowing that some author could rush their Chinese translations and [2] Hugo is fame competition, voting for authors not books worked in the past, usually the most famous being 1955 winner They'd Rather Be Right

It could mean we get to discover a slate of new authors rather than the same names who have been repeat nominees for the past five years.

I just hope if there is bloc voting it doesn't end up like the sad puppies with a regressive political agenda. The guest of honor situation in Chengdu is NOT promising.

Kalin wrote: "I just hope if there is bloc voting it doesn't end up like the sad puppies with a regressive political agenda. The guest of honor situation in Chengdu is NOT promising."

Definitely. I guess that because this year WorldCon was unusually late and there was no sure sign that Chengdu wins, and next year nom deadline is still mid-March, there is a high chance that 2022 will be more or less 'usual', but in 2023 risks are up significantly. As for GOH I hope that with a strong campaign closer to the date the list may be changed (and made less gender-biased as well). BTW will be happy to hear suggestions about how to proceed with the campaign

Kalin wrote: "The guest of honor situation in Chengdu is NOT promising"

I haven't really followed SF news, but quick googling gives me the names of the GoHs (Sergei Lukianenko, Robert Sawyer and Liu Cixin). Liu Cixin seems like an... is there a stronger word than "obvious"?... choice, Sawyer seems uncontroversial, but Lykianenko is naturally anything but. I've heard he actively supports the annexation of Crimea and seems to be pretty much a pro-Putin hardliner in his other views as well, from what I can tell. Is this what you were referring to?

Ah, the politics of the Hugo’s. This was my first year as a member. I reviewed the last decade of Hugo politics and was disappointed. I did not investigate earlier decades, so I do not know if it is business as usual.

Antti wrote: "Kalin wrote: "The guest of honor situation in Chengdu is NOT promising"

I haven't really followed SF news, but quick googling gives me the names of the GoHs (Sergei Lukianenko, Robert Sawyer and L..."

We need to remember that we can't necessarily hold those under repressive regimes to the same standards as those who live with free speech protections. I know Cixin Liu has been criticized for saying things in favor of the Chinese government....but he has to. If you read his novels you know that he isn't actually in favor of what his government does.

Antti wrote: "Lykianenko is naturally anything but. I've heard he actively supports the annexation of Crimea and seems to be pretty much a pro-Putin hardliner in his other views as well, from what I can tell. Is this what you were referring to?"

Yes, but I don't know much about him. I'm going off what Z said over on File 770.

About Liu Cixin I agree that despite he said a lot on highly questionable stuff in his interview - he lives in China and even high profile people aren't 'protected' there - from Nobel laureate to a tennis star - see here as an example https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021...

Sergei Lukianenko on other hand is openly pro-Putin and not only anti-Ukrainian and anti-Georgian with often using slurs, but e.g. actively supported https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dima_Ya...
which already led to death of quite a few children

Also on Liu Cixin and clearing up his translation: https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-a-...

Allan wrote: "Antti wrote: " I guess T. Kingfisher is a name to keep in mind, come next year's predictions; she won the Lodestone, too, for Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking."

I'd never heard of her until I fo..."

Just finished The Hollow Places. While it had a modern style, it was pretty creepy. The one drawback for me was the characters' reactions being accepting & flippant of a really strange circumstance. That took away some of the scariness for me, but it still wasn't bad.

Oleksandr wrote: "Also on Liu Cixin and clearing up his translation: https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-a-......"

Wow, that's so interesting. I hadn't heard that before. I wonder if he has addressed it at all? I have no idea how I feel about it.

Edit: I found this. It doesn't add much but kind of makes it sound like it was an executive decision Tor made? https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/91...

Publishers make those kinds of calls about translations all the time.

...said Zhu Shiyu, a fan from Jiangsu Province. "The editors don't have the right to force their own interpretation of a piece of work."

Yes, they do.

Okay, this explains something I had vaguely wondered: when TBP was translated into Finnish, I heard the publishers mention casually-yet-smugly how their translation was actually done right, unlike the English translation. And I was somewhat confused, since I had enjoyed the English translation, and didn't see what was so bad about it. But they most likely referred to this.

About translations I agree that different cultures means that direct translation doesn't work. Most writers read mostly books on their native language, so if in these books something considered normal - they often unconsciously follow the style. Say on Soviet media (books and cinema) words like fuck or ass where strictly no-no, so where replaced in all translations. 30 year passed since the USSR fell but even now it is much less usual sign than in English books