The candidates for Best Novel were 5th, 15th, 18th, 24th, 25th, and 36th on my previous list.
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Ruin | 26,433 | 4.10 | 195 | 3.95 |
| Tade Thompson – The Rosewater Insurrection | 3,788 | 4.05 | 75 | 3.78 |
| Emma Newman – Atlas Alone | 3,457 | 4.07 | 66 | 4.19 |
| Gareth L Powell – Fleet of Knives | 1,633 | 4.02 | 44 | 3.93 |
| Juliet E. McKenna – The Green Man's Foe | 147 | 4.4 | 10 | – |
Last year's winner was third out of five on this ranking.
Four of the candidates for Best Short Fiction are available for standalone purchase:
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone – This is How You Lose the Time War | 74,407 | 4.05 | 421 | 3.82 |
| Becky Chambers – To Be Taught, If Fortunate | 27,772 | 4.25 | 235 | 4.15 |
| Tade Thompson – The Survival of Molly Southbourne | 1,454 | 3.67 | 35 | 3.3 |
| Gareth L. Powell – Ragged Alice | 969 | 3.53 | 31 | 3.45 |
Interesting to see that the two top novellas have both outsold the top novel. (The other two candidates are “Jolene”, by Fiona Moore, and “For Your Own Good”, by Ian Whates.)
And finally for now, four of the five Best Non-Fiction candidates are available for purchase:
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Farah Mendlesohn – The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein | 154 | 4.08 | 32 | 4 |
| Gareth L. Powell – About Writing | 125 | 4.47 | 7 | 4 |
| Adam Roberts – HG Wells: A Literary Life | 4 | 5 | 6 | – |
| Glyn Morgan & C. Palmer-Patel (eds) – Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction | 13 | 4 | 1 | – |
The other is “Away Day: Star Trek and the Utopia of Merit”, by Jo Lindsay Walton, an online essay. (I have to say that I am not sure that I will fork out £75 for a book of essays.)
One of the joys of growing up in an area of NW London very close to Elstree was that quite a lot of TV was filmed near where I lived. Gasp at the cognitive dissonance as the background view of Stanmore High Street seamlessly morphs into Colindale down the Edgware Road with barely a second to go. It put me in good stead for coping with Morse’s geography of Oxford, and the mysterious temporary change of use of many well known shops. A bit like a real life version of Mr Benn.