Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

As I noted elsewhere, I've started the long (73 books! I don't plan to read all) series of 1632 Universe / Ring of Fire by Eric Flint, who passed away last summer. I liked the books, so I visited his website to see the preferred reading order and then was reading some of his blog posts from the period of Sad/Rabid Puppies debacle. He was in a unique position - he wrote chiefly from Baen books, which were considered much more pro-puppies but he was also an open socialist and labor activist.

Sadly, his site was closed (I guess the annual maintenance fee wasn't paid) but the articles can be read on a Wayback machine, so here are the links if you're interested:
web.archive.org/web/20220811205656/ht... - Do We Really Have to Keep Feeding Stupid and his Cousin Ignoramous?
web.archive.org/web/20220812015136/ht...- Some Comments on the Hugos and Other SF Awards
web.archive.org/web/20220811205657/ht... -T he Divergence Between Popularity and Awards in Fantasy and Science Fiction

A side note - I made hyperlinks, pretty and all but GR forbade their publishing, I cut off http so only the address remained and it posted them happily

I didn't realize he had passed... too bad, I really liked his stuff.

1632 is definitely worth reading the 'main' books (as long as there are main books to read). I really enoyed the 6 or 7 of them I've read. I didn't keep up with all the various side lights and published fan fiction (via the Grantville Gazette), but well worth a bit of reading.

Sorry to go off topic, just wanted to post that :)

Also, I pretty much agree with Mr. Flint 100% ;)

Those were interesting reads, Acorn, thanks for sharing them.

One of his most salient points for me is that tying literary awards to an annual cycle of publication is, when it comes down to it, very silly and arbitrary.

What makes this problem still worse is the very unfortunate linking of the major awards to an annual cycle. That annual cycle for handing out literary or artistic awards was always a bad idea. It automatically injected a completely arbitrary element into the awards, since the annual cycle has no intrinsic relationship whatsoever to literary or artistic merit. It was perfectly possible to have some years with a relatively mediocre output of work mixed in with years where there was a super-abundance. But it didn’t matter. The rigid annual structure meant that an award—one and only one, for “best” this or that—had to be given each year.

I couldn't agree more. And yet, I *still* love participating in the Hugos, at least at this point in my life.

I also think he makes a good point about the fact that 75% of the literary categories in the Nebulas, Hugos, Locus awards (etc.) are for short fiction (novella, novelette, short story) and only 25% for the absolute standard of fiction publishing today (novels). And, for almost all authors, the only economically viable form of writing. The fact that publishers barely ever accept short novels between 40-80k words anymore, so there is a space between novellas and long novels, which used to comprise the bulk of H/N nominations, that is no longer publishable.

Both the Hugo and the Nebula give out four literary awards. (I’m not including here the more recent dramatic awards, just the purely literary categories.) Those awards are given for best short story, best novelette, best novella, and best novel. In other words, three out of four awards—75% of the total—are given for short fiction.

Forty or fifty years ago, that made perfect sense. It was an accurate reflection of the reality of the field for working authors. F&SF in those days was primarily a short form genre, whether you measured that in terms of income generated or number of readers.

But that is no longer true. Today, F&SF is overwhelmingly a novel market. Short fiction doesn’t generate more than 1% or 2% of all income for writers. And even measured in terms of readership, short fiction doesn’t account for more than 5% of the market.

I certainly see the arbitrariness of defining a year, but people love lists and other artistic awards are that way, e.g. the Academy Awards. The year can provide the reader with more data - 60s old school, 70s New Wave, etc. - and it can define the book, like 2001:A Space Odyssey is both defined by its era & also helps define its era.

I have a trend chart of average listed book length by year. In the 50s and early 60s, it hovered right around 200 pages. Then it began a steady rise to 400 in the late 90s, followed by two volatile decades averaging about 450, never dropping below 350. I believe that the rise was caused by the attitudes of the 60s and 70s, free form creativity where authors were less hindered by conservative publishers. Ignoring Retros, the first few nominated books over 300 pages were: The Sirens of Titan, A Canticle for Liebowitz & Cat’s Cradle. Heinlein broke the 400 threshold in 1962 with Stranger in a Strange Land & of course Dune blew everyone out at over 500. Then nothing came close until 4 years later with Stand On Zanzibar, followed closely by The Sheep Look Up, Time Enough for Love & Gravity’s Rainbow. My point is the unchaining of creativity and the fact that the genie couldn’t be put back into the bottle afterwards.

I do find it interesting that many of the earlier books would today be considered novellas. I’m currently reading Remake by Connie Willis, Hugo nominee from 1996, which clocked in at 176 pages, yet it's considered a novel. The word counts are confusing because they aren't shown anywhere.

I don't think it's just the unchaining of creativity, because length isn't inherently in sync with creativity. A book can be long and poorly edited, or bloated, (hello Wheel of Time). There are also publishing industry pressures that have had a dramatic impact on book length over the decades. In the 50s and 60s, even many of the the novels we have on our H/N list were in fact first published serially in the magazines of the day, and only later published as a discrete volume. Nowadays, individual books are the main attraction and magazine readership lags way behind. Publisher demand longform SFF writing and will not consider publishing shorter works. That sort of pressure also is why we have so many trilogies -- because multiple volume stories sell better than standalones.

Allan wrote: "I do find it interesting that many of the earlier books would today be considered novellas. I’m currently reading Remake by Connie Willis, Hugo nominee from 1996, which clocked in at 176 pages, yet it's considered a novel. The word counts are confusing because they aren't shown anywhere."

It can definitely be confusing. I was just listening to a recent Coode Street podcast episode and Jonathan Strahan made a PSA "for anyone planning to nominate this coming year" that Nicola Griffith's Spear is, in fact, eligible in the novel category, not novella, despite appearances.

I also think some of page increases is in font size... I'm reading a Baen book published not too long ago, and it's 600+ pages.. but the font is 2x the size of a 60s published ace paperback of short stories that ran 200 pages.. add tot he the blank pages for chapter breaks and the increase in spaced out dialogue, and you get a similar amount of pages.

I mean sure, there's epic 1000 page tomes out there, but I don't it's quite a different as it seems.

Fonts, spacing, margins all matter to the final count of pages, but if we take ebook versions we can discount all these issues and still the number of symbols is usually larger

Allan wrote: "I certainly see the arbitrariness of defining a year, but people love lists and other artistic awards are that way, e.g. the Academy Awards. The year can provide the reader with more data - 60s old...I have a trend chart of average listed book length by year. In the 50s and early 60s, it hovered right around 200 pages. Then it began a steady rise to 400 in the late 90s, followed by two volatile decades averaging about 450, never dropping below 350. I believe that the rise was caused by the attitudes of the 60s and 70s, free form creativity where authors were less hindered by conservative publishers."

Allan, I think you are right about all of this. I do wonder about font size changes across the decades and how larger font sizes may have increased the page number. But I do not know that font size actually increased. Generally, I don't pay too much attention to the size of fonts. One exception was about 30 years ago, when there was a Gordon Dickson paperback (a thick one) where the font was so small that I couldn't even easily read it. It was one of the Dorsai novels.

I'm reviving this thread to share an essay on Hugo Book Club Blog which I found interesting:

https://hugoclub.blogspot.com/2023/05...

"So why is there no national award recognizing the best science fiction published by authors from the United States?

It could be argued that this is a reflection of American exceptionalism or imperialism.

The Hugo Award — when it was established in 1953 — may have billed itself as celebrating the world’s greatest science fiction, but that was for a limited definition of “world.” This was a “world” that extended no further north than Toronto, no further east than London, and no further south or west than Los Angeles. American cultural hegemony was baked into the DNA of the award.

An American national SFF award was not seen as necessary, because the Hugos existed."

What do you all think?

I think that’s all obviously true.

Kalin,

Such a good summary: "The Hugo Award — when it was established in 1953 — may have billed itself as celebrating the world’s greatest science fiction, but that was for a limited definition of “world.” This was a “world” that extended no further north than Toronto, no further east than London, and no further south or west than Los Angeles. American cultural hegemony was baked into the DNA of the award."

It makes me think of the "World" Series (baseball). There have been forms of international tournaments since 1938, the Baseball World Cup starting in 1988, and finally the World Baseball Classic in 2006. The latter is not annual, however, it's about every 3 years. The so-called World Series remains, but is the championship of (American) Major League Baseball.

I see no reason why it should not be so. Americans should have their own "World Series" award & let the Hugo become an international award. Hugo Gernsback himself was born in Luxembourg and moved to the US when he was 20 years old, later becoming a naturalized citizen. Or keep the Hugo and start a new, truly international award. For those of us who are limited to reading in a single language, it might make international titles more accessible.

Kalin wrote: "It could be argued that this is a reflection of American exceptionalism or imperialism.

What do you all think?."

While true I'd say it is just one facet. Firstly, I'd say it is more of English language books than just 'American' meaning the US. Yes, the latter dominated it throughout the award's history, but there were quite a few Brits, Arthur C. Clarke being the most obvious example and even translations even in the early 60s - Sylva. Still, the case of Adrian Tchaikovsky, who was popular for quite some time before finally getting a Hugo nomination clearly shows that the present nominating fandom is still mostly in the USA.

Secondly, I'd argue that the average quality of top-tier English language SFF is higher than what I know about other countries' SFF, even if the latter have gems like Kim Bo-Young to name just one. It is a bit like music if the style is narrow enough - as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm a fan of rockabilly and the wealth of 1954-1960 US rockabilly recordings is greater than the rest of the world combined - I do not think this is a result of American imperialism, it just happened this way.

Oleksandr wrote: "A side note - I made hyperlinks, pretty and all but GR forbade their publishing, I cut off http so only the address remained and it posted them happily"

I clicked on your links, not realizing, http was not there, and they worked fine. Just FYI

I thought the Hugo short list was going to be announced in June?

They don't have their shit together. File770 wrote about it earlier today.

Kalin wrote: "They don't have their shit together. File770 wrote about it earlier today."

Another side of the fannish nature of the award I guess. Yes, this year it is abysmal but for years before they have been able to make a software project that automatized the process - the main issues it seems are with misclassifications (e.g. novella or novelette), misspellings and ineligibility. Most of it can be initially sorted by a program and then humans just check out... but no, each year it seems they use ad hoc programs to sort it out

I’m baffled that there isn’t a standardized method everyone uses or that the different conventions don’t seem to communicate and help each other.

Kristenelle wrote: "I’m baffled that there isn’t a standardized method everyone uses or that the different conventions don’t seem to communicate and help each other."

But isn't this the one in China so they are just figuring out how to do it?

Kateblue wrote: "But isn't this the one in China so they are just figuring out how to do it?."

Yes, it is and it is their debut as a receiving country. However, what I meant was that the WorldCons are organized by the World Science Fiction Society and they could have organized the creation of software to tabulate all nominees to be used by every WorldCon

Oleksandr wrote: "WorldCons are organized by the World Science Fiction Society and they could have organized the creation of software to tabulate all nominees to be used by every WorldCon"

Yes, that does seem like a prudent step. Wonder why they didn't

There was an announcement that the ballot will finally be released tomorrow. I saw an incomplete leak of the ballot from a few days ago and the very first entry made me see red. It seems like the Chinese nominees are more on the down-ballot sections though (short story, editor, zines); the big categories are still dominated by western writers.

I saw that too. It will be interesting to see how similar the actual ballot will be.

I've checked file770 and they mention the leak, but I haven't seen it. I guess I'll wait for the tomorrow's official post

You can pull the leak off the wayback machine.

The list is out https://locusmag.com/2023/07/2023-hug...

I made a new thread to discuss

Kalin wrote: "I made a new thread to discuss"

Great!

Feels like a weak result to me. Legends & Lattes was ok, but it was clearly a good time softie. Had any of us picked up on The Spare Man? It feels like a political choice; the reviews are middling and it feels like another softie. One review describes it as "disgustingly fluffy." I didn't read Dr Moreau, but I don't recall anyone here being over the top about it, more so disappointed. Personally, Moreno-Garcia's books fall short for me. That pretty much leaves Kaiju as the only legit sci-fi book on the list. I'm glad Scalzi got the nomination, I think he deserved it, even if it's not his best.