Tag Archives: hugos 2023

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I signed off yesterday’s post saying that I hope to post analysis of the 2023 Hugo nomination statistics, which indeed went live within minutes of my making the post.

However, it’s clear from the published results and from the volume of commentary elsewhere that I can’t add anything helpful or useful to the discussion. I don’t have any more information than anyone else, and I need to concentrate on my responsibilities as WSFS DH for Glasgow 2024 and Hugo Administrator for Seattle in 2025.

So no comment it is.

2023 Hugo final ballot – quick take and details

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The Hugo final ballot statistics are out! Though the nominations stats are not yet available.

There were some notably close results:

  • Chris Barkley won Best Fan Writer by *one* vote
  • Zero Gravity Newspaper beat Journey Planet by 8 votes in Best Fanzine
  • Strange Horizons lost to Uncanny Magazine by 18 on the last count for Best Semiprozine, despite having led throughout

The only possible closer vote in the final ballot is a tie, which has happened only once since 1993, when The City & The City and The Windup Girl both won Best Novel in 2010. Between 1953 and 1993 there were ten tied results for the Hugos – two in 1953, one each in 1966, 1968, 1973 and 1974, two again in 1977 and one each in 1989 and 1993. Plus also the Campbell Award in 1974, for a total of twelve. We also had a tie in the 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) in 2020, which I think is the only tied result for the Retros ever.

Other results this year were much more one-sided, very few going to all stages of the count. Best Short Story (“Rabbit Test”), Best Related Work (the Terry Pratchett biography), and Best Professional Artist (Enzhe Zhao) were all decided on first preferences, and Everything Everywhere All at Once got exactly 50% of the first preferences for Best Related Work (but of course had to got to a second count). Rob Wilkins’ biography of Terry Pratchett got a massive 59.7% of first prefs in Best Related Work.

Camestros Felapton crunched the numbers, and there are only 11 first-count wins on record from this century, five of which were “No Awards” in 2015, and another three were the Lord of the Rings films in 2002, 2003 and 2004. (The other three were Naomi Novik winning the then Campbell Award in 2007, Sarah Webb winning Best Fan Artist in 2014, and “Cat Pictures Please” winning Best Short Story in 2016.)

But we have had them much more often in the Retro Hugos : John W. Campbell for Best Editor (Long) in 1996, 2001, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020, Margaret Brundage for Best Professional Artist in 2020, “Foundation” for Best Novelette in 2018, Fantasia  for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form in 2016, “The War of the Worlds” for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, in 2014, “The Nine Billion Names of God” for Best Short Story in 2004, and three other than John Campbell in 1996 – Animal Farm in Best Novella, “First Contact” in Best Novelette and Bill Rotsler in Best Fan Artist. That’s fifteen in total, twelve this century.

1674 final ballot votes is the lowest since 2010. It is only the third time since my records begin in 1971 that that nomination votes have exceeded final ballot votes; the other two occasions were 2016, which was a side-effect of the Puppy wars, and 1994, when the previous year’s convention made a determined effort to get members to nominate.

“No Award” votes are significantly higher for Best Series than any other category – 12.2% of first preferences (next highest is 7.0% in Fan Artist); 21.2% in the runoff (next highest is 11.1% in Fanzine). I have to say that this confirms me in my view that the problem with the Best Series category is not that it needs various tweaks relating to eligibility, but that it exists in the first place.

Best Novel had the highest participation, 1068 (63.8%); and Best Fancast had the lowest, 572 (34.1%), still comfortably ahead of the old 25% threshold, which has anyway now been abolished – it would have applied this year, but no category was anywhere near the danger zone.

To the details. I note below whenever a result was decided by less than 20 votes. I voted for four of the winners, which is a little more than usual.

Best Novel
Nettle and Bone beat both The Island of Dr Moreau and The Kaiju Preservation Society on the fifth pass; Legends and Lattes then beat The Island of Dr Moreau for second place; The Kaiju Preservation Society beat The Island of Dr Moreau for third place; The Island of Dr Moreau (my own choice) finally won fourth place ahead of The Spare Man, which came fifth with Nona the Ninth sixth.

Best Novella
The Drowned Girls beat both Ogres and Even Though I Knew the End on the fifth pass; Ogres beat Even Though I Knew the End for second place, Even Though I Knew the End came from behind to beat What Moves the Dead by only 19 votes for third place, What Moves the Dead (my own choice) beat Into the Riverlands for fourth place, Into the Riverlands beat A Mirror Mended for fifth place, and A Mirror Mended took sixth.

Best Novelette
“The Space-Time Painter” beat “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” on the sixth count, by 112 votes; “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” beat “A Dream of Electric Mothers” by 15 votes for second place; “A Dream of Electric Mothers” beat “Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” for third place; “We Built This City” sneaked ahead in a tight field to beat “The Difference Between Love and Time” for fourth place; “Murder by Pixel” (my own choice) beat “The Difference Between Love and Time” for fifth place; and “The Difference Between Love and Time” came sixth.

Best Short Story
As noted above, “Rabbit Test” won on the first count, with “Zhurong on Mars” next but a very long way behind. “D.I.Y.” beat “Resurrection” for second place, “Zhurong on Mars” beat “Resurrection” for third place and finally “Resurrection” beat “The White Cliff” for fourth place. “The White Cliff” beat “Razor’s Edge” for fifth place and “Razor’s Edge” came sixth. For once, I too voted for the winner.

Best Series
Children of Time won a convincing victory on the fourth round, with October Daye, the Scholomance and Rivers of London still in the field. As noted above, this was also the category in which No Award had by far its best performance. Rivers of London beat The Locked Tomb by 16 votes for second place; The Scholomance beat October Daye by 10 votes for third place; The Locked Tomb beat October Daye for fourth place, October Daye beat the Founders Trilogy for fifth place and the Founders Trilogy came sixth, beating No Award by the relatively slim margin of 313 votes to 213. As noted previously, I voted No Award in this category but put Children of Time second.

Best Graphic Story or Comic
Cyberpunk 2077, which I hated but is massively popular in China, won on the third pass with everything except No Award and Once and Future still in the picture. The Dune adaptation beat Saga for second place by 5 votes; Monsters beat Supergirl for third place also by 5 votes; Supergirl (my own choice) beat Saga for fourth place by 17 votes; Once and Future beat Saga by 20 votes for fifth place, and finally Saga, which had been within five votes of taking second place, came sixth.

Best Related Work
As noted above, Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes won a stinking first-round victory with almost 60% of the votes cast. The other placings, in order, with the runner-up for each place winning the next one, and no results particularly close, were Chinese Science Fiction, An Oral History, Volume 1 in second place, Blood, Sweat & Chrome third, Still Just a Geek fourth, Ghost of Workshops Past fifth and the Buffalo World Outreach Project sixth. Here too I voted for the winner.

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
As previously noted, Everything Everywhere All at Once got exactly half of the first preference votes and was easily brought over the threshold by the elimination of No Award. The other placings, in order, with the runner-up for each place winning the next one, and only one close result, were: Turning Red second; Nope third; Severance fourth by 8 votes; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (my own choice) fifth and Avatar: The Way of Water sixth.

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
The Expanse: “Babylon’s Ashes” won on the fourth count with Andor: “One Way Out”, Stranger Things: “Chapter Four: Dear Billy” and She-Hulk: “Whose Show is This?” still in the game. The other placings, in order, with the runner-up for each place winning the next one, and several close results, were: Andor: “One Way Out” second, Stranger Things: “Chapter Four: Dear Billy” third by 19 votes, Andor: Rix Road” fourth by 9 votes, For All Mankind: “Stranger in a Strange Land” (my own choice) fifth by 18 votes, and She-Hulk: “Whose Show is This?” sixth.

Best Editor, Long Form
This only went to five counts, but that was because of a double elimination; Lindsey Hall won a convincing victory over Haijun Yao. The other placings, in order, with the runner-up for each place winning the next one, and only one close result, were: Haijun Yao second, Lee Harris third, Ruoxi Chen fourth by 12 votes, Sarah Peed fifth and Han Yan sixth. I have my doubts about the existence of this category, but it was really very nice to see Lindsey Hall’s joy as she accepted the award on the night.

Best Editor, Short Form
Neil Clarke won on the third count, with Xu Wang, Feng Yang, Sheree Thomas and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki still in the picture. This was one category where Chinese finalists did not get many transfers from non-Chinese finalists. Sheree Thomas beat Xu Wang for second place; Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki beat Scott H. Andrews for third place, after Xu Wang was eliminated by a 5-vote margin on the penultimate count; Scott H. Andrews beat Xu Wang for fourth place; Xu Wang beat Feng Yang by 15 votes for fifth place; and Feng Yang came sixth.

Best Professional Artist
As noted, Enzhe Zhao pulled off a first-round victory, with Alyssa Winans the least far behind of the others. Kuri Huang beat Jian Zhang for second place; Sija Hong beat Alissa Winans for third place; Alyssa Winans beat Jian Zhang for fourth place; Jian Zhang beat Paul Lewin for fifth place; and Paul Lewin came sixth, with none of the results particularly close. I actually found myself chatting to Kuri Huang and Sija Hong on the way to the ceremony, which was nice as I had myself voted for Sija Hong.

Best Semiprozine
Strange Horizons led on all counts except the last, when Uncanny Magazine got enough transfers from FIYAH to win by 18 votes, the only result of the night where the winner did not also have the most first preference votes. Strange Horizons then pulled off a rare first-round victory for second place, with FIYAH the least far behind; FIYAH beat Escape Pod for third place, Escape Pod beat khōréō for fourth place, PodCastle beat khōréō for fifth place and khōréō took sixth place, none of them terribly close.

Best Fanzine
In the first home victory announced on the evening, Zero Gravity Newspaper was nip and tuck with Journey Planet but eventually won by 8 votes. Journey Planet beat Chinese Academic SF Express for second place; Nerds of a Feather beat Chinese Academic SF Express by 11 votes for third place; Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog beat Chinese Academic SF Express for fourth place; and finally Chinese Academic SF Express beat Galactic Journey for fifth place with Galactic Journey coming sixth.

Best Fancast
Hugo, Girl! won an impressive second-round victory on the first count, with Coode Street Podcast next in line. Hugos There, which had actually had the fewest first preferences, took second place ahead of Coode Street Podcast by 13 votes. Coode Street Podcast came third, 19 votes ahead of Octothorpe. Octothorpe beat Worldbuilding for Masochists for fourth place, Worldbuilding for Masochists beat Kalanadi for fifth place and Kalanadi came sixth.

Best Fan Writer
As noted, Chris Barkley beat RiverFlow by just one vote, the closest result of the night and probably of the decade. He had been ahead throughout, and transfers from Arthur Liu were not quite enough to make the difference. RiverFlow beat Arthur Liu for second place; Arthur Liu won a convincing third place with both Bitter Karella and Örjan Westin still in the game; Bitter Karella beat Jason Sanford for fourth place, Jason Sanford beat Örjan Westin for fifth place and Örjan Westin came sixth.

Best Fan Artist
Richard Man (my own choice) won on the fifth round, with Iain Clark and Laya Rose still in. The other placings, in order, with the runner-up for each place winning the next one, and no close results, were Iain Clark second, Lara Rose third, Alison Scott fourth, España Sherriff fifth, and Orion Smith sixth.

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
Akata Woman won a fifth-round victory with The Golden Enclaves and Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods still in the game. The Golden Enclaves beat Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods for second place; Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak beat The Serpent’s Wake for third place; The Serpent’s Wake beat Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods for fourth place; and Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods (my own choice) finally beat Bloodmarked for fifth place, with Bloodmarked coming sixth.

Astounding Award for Best New Writer
Travis Baldree was close to a first round victory and clinched it on the second round, with Isabel J. Kim the least far behind. Isabel J. Kim (my own choice) came from behind to beat Everina Maxwell by 17 votes for second place, narrowly avoiding elimination in favour of Maijia Liu by 2 votes in the penultimate round. Everina Maxwell beat Maijia Liu for third place, Maijia Liu beat Naseem Jamnia for fourth place, Naseem Janina beat Weimu Xin by 7 votes for fifth place and Weimu Xin got sixth place. Personally I thought Weimu Xin’s stories were excellent, but they were only made available in Chinese, and I fear that not many non-Chinese voters will have bothered to run them through the translation sites.

Looking forward to seeing the nomination statistics.

Chengdu Worldcon 3: Panels and events

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Apart from the Doctor Who panel, previously mentioned, I moderated one other panel discussion, was a participant in another and attended another two at Chengdu Worldcon. (I also spent a lot of time with Vince Docherty staffing the Glasgow 2024 desk.) Brief notes here from those panels, with photographs from the official convention photographer, and also from the opening ceremony and the Hugo ceremony (I missed the closing ceremony as I had booked an early evening flight, assuming that it would be in the afternoon).

The panel that I moderated was on the topic, “What Should I Have Read in 2023?” We had a really multinational group – left to right, Yasser Bahjatt from Saudi Arabia, Vince Docherty who is a citizen of the world, Lisa Trombi from the USA, Pierre Gevart from France and Dip Ghosh from India. You will note that none of us is Chinese; after the five panellists had given their recommended reads, I turned it over to the audience to recommend what we had missed in terms of local talent. Unfortunately I was too busy moderating to keep notes, so I hope someone else did. Pictures here, from roughly #650 to #800.

Vince Docherty and I both spent a lot of our time at the convention staffing the Glasgow 2024 desk. There were moments that we had to take a break, however, and one of those was for the presentation on future Worldcons. Photos are here, from roughly #340 to #500, but they seem to have got jumbled out of order as the first pictures on the page from this panel are of the last person to speak, which was me. Vince spoke on behalf of Glasgow 2024 next year, and I spoke for the Dublin 2029 bid.

The first panel that I actually attended was a reflection on Brian Aldiss’s early visits to China, with Wendy Aldiss playing a clip from his audio diary arriving in Beijing and showing some of the photographs he had taken with the other British guests on his trip. Who were they? Oh, nobody you’d have heard of, just Iris Murdoch and David Attenborough. Aldiss writes about his time in Chengdu in The Twinkling of an Eye with clear affection but also a clear gaze.

Wu Xiankui, now the president of the writers’ organisation of Sichuan province and an inaugural winner of China’s Galaxy Award back in 1986, remembered that he had been Brian Aldiss’s gofer on one of the early visits. Hua Long showed us the fanzines and newspapers in which Aldiss’s visits to China had been reported, and publisher Yao Xue talked about his available work in China. The moderator was Yan Ru, China’s Doctor Who superfan.

Shots from the panel are visible on this page starting at image 277 and ending at image 400. There’s a good shot of me in the audience here, but this is a nice one of the panel, followed by one of Wendy and the Helliconia trilogy.

The other panel that I attended was on “The Joy of being a First Time Hugo nominee”, chaired by Chris Barkley (who was a first-time finalist last year, and went on to win this year), with four other first-timers including Richard Man (who also went on to win), Wole Talabi, Marie Vibbert and Kuri Huang. I got to know all of them in the course of the convention (I knew Chris already). Photos from the panel here, roughly from #200 to #360.

This is the first year since 2018 that I have not myself been involved with administering the Hugo Awards, and I must say that I found it very helpful to step back and get the (overwhelmingly positive) feedback from the people who are most affected about what it means to them. Sometimes when you are wrangling statistics and eligibility criteria you can get decoupled from the human dimension, and I stood up in the audience to say so.

At all of the above panels, interpreters at the back of the room were providing simultaneous translation via earpieces. I believe that this was not the case for the majority of panels; as reported previously, the Doctor Who in China panel had a sole translator whispering into my ear (and my neighbour’s).

Simultaneous translation was also provided for the opening ceremony and the Hugos. We foreign guests were assembled at the foyer of the Sheraton and then bussed over to the formal entrance of the convention hall for both. (A lot of people also went to the Galaxy Awards in the Sheraton on the Thursday night, but I gave it a miss.) The opening ceremony was really dazzling, with a set of fantastic dance performances, an illusionist and a choir singing the convention official anthem, all introduced by noted Chinese anchorwoman Tian Wei, whose CCTV “World Insight” show I have guested on a few times.

Not on any of the recordings that I have seen, but still memorable, was a moment when Liu Cixin was talking to two twenty-somethings whose class had written to him as kids ten years ago, telling him and us how his work had inspired him. Liu was visibly tearing up with emotion.

Here is the best of the dances, an amazing performance with masks and aerial ballet:

And here is the convention anthem which closed the ceremony, with apologies to those who it has been earworming for the last ten days. At the end, and I am not making this up, the curtains at the back of the stage parted to reveal a flock of glowing drones, flying over the lake outside, in formation, in the shape of a spinning planet with rings, followed by various panda shapes. Actually that brief description doesn’t do justice to it; watch for yourself.

Someone was heard to mutter, “Winnipeg would not have been like this.” It may have been me.

On the Hugos. Alison Scott, a finalist for Best Fan Artist, and her colleagues at Octothorpe, which was up for Best Fancast, had appointed me as their acceptor in case they won, so I attended the Hugo pre-reception, the ceremony and the after-party in that capacity. (This is not secret and they discuss it on the latest episode at 15:12.) All my previous times attending the pre-reception and after-party had been at conventions when I was on the Committee and/or the Hugo team, so it was a learning experience.

In summary, the pre-reception was the least satisfactory that I have been to, the Hugo ceremony had its good and less good points, and the after-party was the best that I have attended.

To deal briefly with the pre-reception at the Sheraton: there was no booze and, more important, no substantial food, for a bunch of anxious people who had been told to turn up at 5pm (after a rehearsal earlier in the afternoon), knowing that the ceremony would not end until after 9. (9.20, as it turned out.) I nipped out immediately to grab some fried chicken for myself in the hotel foyer, but as a consequence I missed the group photos for the two categories where I was involved. Snacks were eventually provided as we went into the ceremony, but it’s rather difficult to eat discreetly in the theatre, and of course we did not know that they would be available until we got there. The pre-Hugo reception does need at least some decent savoury finger food to keep people going. I had some great conversations, though, and will cover those in my next post.

Going into the ceremony, I was surprised to find that I had been seated far away from the main bloc of finalists, among a bunch of people who were not directly connected to the awards at all. I (correctly) did not expect either Alison or Octothorpe to win, but it is a bit off for that message to be delivered by way of seating plan. Another acceptor had been seated even further away than me, and that did surprise me, as I thought they had a much better chance of winning (and indeed they did; they have already written up their experience of the ceremony elsewhere and did not mention this incident, so I won’t identify them here). Both of us sneaked over to vacant seats in the main bloc as soon as we could, to sit with our buddies and enjoy the show. (And in my friend’s case, to accept a Hugo.) I am sure it was thoughtlessness rather than malice, but it was not the best start to the ceremony for me; and the leading Chinese magazine SF World had a similar but worse experience.

Apart from that, it was all very nice and collegial, starting with some shamanistic drumming to get us all in the mood, category announcements interspersed with video clips and more dance performances, and the Big Heart Award going to the much deserving Bobbi Armbruster. The whole thing came in at about 2h20m; I’m not a pare-it-to-the-bone purist and this was fine for me. I have my doubts about the Best Professional Editor (Long Form) category, but having been talking to Lindsey Hall earlier in the day, I was thrilled for her when she won it. The convention produced a short video featuring the names of finalists (which minimises the risk of the mispronunciation problems that have come up before). There was a good bit of business with a runner bringing the envelope with the results to the announcer on stage – an excellent idea from the points of view of both stagecraft and security. However we did also have an awkward moment where the hosts talked over an acceptance video, and there was the Riverflow incident which most of us did not find out about until afterwards.

I’ll write up the actual results when we get the full figures. The whole ceremony is online here: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1eN411x7hh/ You’ll see me in shot for some of the winner announcements.

The after-party, however, was sheer joy. Booze: check. Food: check. Fun: definite check. Traditional crafts, decent food, a great atmosphere, lots of people posing with their Hugos (or other people’s), I had previously attended the Hugo Losers Parties in 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2022, and three of those four were very disappointing – in two cases because of lack of decent catering, and in one case because many people were shut out. 2017 was great fun, but in a venue that was crammed to the gills, probably dangerously so. This year, we had adequate space, more than adequate food and drink, and enjoyable entertainment (with the decibels at a level that my middle-aged ears were able to cope with). I stretched my legs walking back to the hotel with Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf afterwards, and stayed up in the Sheraton bar until far too late. With more financial resources available than most European or American conventions, Chengdu were able to achieve magic on occasion.

Again, I’ll report in my next post on some of the conversations I had over the course of the evening, but I’ll finish here with a video clip of Chinese dancers performing ancient Scottish choreography.

2023 Hugos: Best Series – why I voted No Award

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I voted No Award for this year’s Hugo Award for Best Series. I think the category is a bad idea in principle which is now showing its limitations in practice. My objections are as follows:

  1. The Hugos ought to celebrate the best activity of the previous year, and only the previous year. For some of the other categories (Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast), earlier work is taken into account to determine eligibility, but the award is clearly for achievements of the previous calendar year. Best Series is inevitably an award for a multi-year set of activities.
  2. It is impossible for the diligent reader to read all of the work nominated for Best Series in a given year. By giving the award we are deliberately engineering a situation where voters cast their votes based on imperfect knowledge of the finalists.
  3. We are now seeing repeat nominations for series that have been unsuccessful finalists before. I feel sympathy for authors who must feel that they are waiting for their turn, but that’s not the way an awards system should run.

The arguments made in favour of creating the category are now out of date. (See the Minutes of the 2016 WSFS Business Meeting, pages 136-140. I align myself completely with the minority report of Mark Olson at the end.) The proposers in 2016 said:

Looking at Best Novel finalists over the past decade or so, series novels represent a majority of the nominees, yet only a handful of the winners, with later installments particularly disadvantaged. Clearly, the Hugo nominators feel that high quality work is being done in series novels, yet the Hugo voters have a taste for standalone novels, or at least novels that can be approached without any background. This represents a change from earlier eras, when the publishing field was smaller and readers tended to be able to consume a higher proportion of it. In decades past, series novels managed to hold their own against standalones, even dominating the Best Novel category at times.

That was in 2016, the year the first volume of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy won Best Novel. Every winner of Best Novel since then has been part of a series. Four of the six have been later installments rather than the first book – to name them, Jemisin’s own The Obelisk Gate (2017) and The Stone Sky (2018), Martha Wells’ Network Effect (2021) and Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace (2022). So the taste of Hugo voters appears to have changed again. If anything, it is the standalone novels that could complain of being discriminated against. (Having said that, five of this year’s six finalists appear to be standalones.)

A weaker argument, though one that is sometimes made, for having a Best Series category is that it supposedly reflects the publishing market. The Hugos cannot, do not and should not cover everything that goes on in the genre. They should and usually do celebrate the achievements of the previous calendar year, and that should be as determined by fans, not the real or imagined wishes of the publishing industry.

I voted against ratifying Best Series in Helsinki in 2017, and I would have voted to sunset it if I’d been in Washington DC in 2021. At least the awful amendments proposed in Chicago last year, which would have excluded popular and long-running series and created many headaches for administrators, were rejected. But if there’s ever a move to scrap the category again, I’ll support it. And if there is one thing I can do this year to accelerate the abolition of the category in a future year, it’s to vote No Award.

So, on to my vote in this year’s category.

7) October Daye, by Seanan McGuire. I have rehearsed previously why I bounced off this and don’t need to do so again here.

6) The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir. I really bounced off the first two books of this series, but surprised myself by liking the first part of the third book, until the action returned to the setting of the previous two and I got lost again.

5) The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Other way round here; I really liked the first two books, and found the third a crashing disappointment.

4) The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett. The publisher kindly made all three volumes available to voters, and I had time to read two of them before the deadline. Well put together fantasy with a complex magical system, but I preferred his previous trilogy.

3) Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich. I didn’t read or reread any of these before voting closed, but I really enjoyed the books of the series that I have previously read.

2) Children of Time Trilogy, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I read all three of theses and thought that they were brilliant. Fantastic aliens, good grasp of inter-species and intra-species politics, superb world-building. I hope it wins. (I don’t have strong expectations for No Award.)

1 ) No Award, as explained above.

On the latest Octothorpe, John Coxon makes the point (at 21:30) that this year’s Best Series ballot contains some items – he specifies the Children of Time trilogy, and the first volume of the Founders trilogy – that are better than anything on the Best Novel list. I think that’s true, but it doesn’t change my view about keeping Best Novel and deleting Best Series.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: The Astounding Award for Best New Writer

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I’ve often observed of past ballots in this category (now the Astounding Award, previously the John W. Campbell Award) that we voters are given apples and oranges to choose between; this year tennis balls have been added to the mix, as one of the finalists has submitted no work in English at all to the Hugo voter packet, and another has submitted one translated piece and one longer piece that is not translated.

Of course it is crucially important that the Hugos become more open to non-English-speaking cultures and submissions, and it’s also important to note that there is nothing in the constitution about the Hugo voter packet; as I have observed before, it is a privilege and not a right. The keen voter (like me) will run a non-English-language work through one or more of the many free online translators and will attempt to form a fair impression. Future Hugo administrators could think about ways of lowering the barriers to entry and reading here – perhaps the administering WorldCon could support professional translations, though that has costs in time as well as money.

(And if you are about to tell me how cool it would be to get fans to crowdsource translations of Hugo packet stories and other important WSFS documents for free, I have just three things to say to you: No. No. And no.)

Anyway, I’ve done my best to form a fair opinion of the two Chinese-language finalists here, and am casting my vote as follows:

6) 刘麦加 / Liu Maijia. Has submitted a short story with English translation ,《左⼿边》/ “LEFT”, and a short novel without English translation, 麦克斯先生很好》/ “Maxwell”.

I read “LEFT” with interest. The second paragraph of its second section is:

“从知道她存在的第一天开始，就很累……” 我自然知道自己现在是什么样子。不记得多少天没有睡过一个整觉，每天靠咖啡度日，身上的睡袍已经快一个月没有脱下。蒋老师的身子稍稍往旁边撤了点，我怀疑他是闻到了我两个星期没洗澡而发出的味道。“From the day I found out about her existence, it has been exhausting…” I naturally knew what I looked like now. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep. I survived each day on coffee, and it had been almost a month since I took off my robe. Professor Jiang moved slightly away from me, which I suspected he had caught a whiff of my two-week-old unwashed scent.
Translation supplied in packet

It’s a story about moving away from western concepts of science using the Chinese language as a basis for understanding, a notion which I also remember T.H. White using in The Master long long ago. Breaking the monopoly of English is of course an important question in the wider scheme of things. I didn’t feel it was all that well executed, though; the emotional punch is missing, the wise old professor has a cute-not-cute obsession with Western hard liquor, and although the scenes set in Boston are given a little local colour, I don’t think we find out where exactly in China the scenes set there are meant to be.

I started “Maxwell” as well. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

从城市外三百公里开始，一直向南延伸到海岸线，是斯格林的世界。Beginning three hundred kilometers outside of the city and stretching south to the coastline is the world of Skrin.
DeepL translation

We’re given a summary, which says:

After experiencing a precipitous deterioration of the Earth’s environment and the era of advanced technology, humanity won the AI-war. At the same time, the technocracy went into a cul-de-sac. Overnight, all cyborg humans became “Robotic Skeletons “devoid of citizenship rights. The war with AI nearly destroyed all power facilities. Earth’s resources continued to diminish. Citizens were forced to settle in four 3D cities, awaiting a miraculous invention from the Cloud that would reshape human civilization with unlimited energy.
In 2115, a new round of federal presidential elections was underway. The support rate for the obscure mayoral candidate, Yino Feng, was far from optimistic. Citizen Seven, in order to witness the desired conclusion of their favorite anime, ventured on the edge of federal law. Meanwhile, outside of the city, a young Skeletons boy finally had the opportunity to join the survival battle for the power generator……

It doesn’t sound much like my kind of thing, and after running the first couple of chapters through translation, it still didn’t feel much like my kind of thing.

Liu seems to have published two earlier novels and two short story collections, but as far as I can tell they are not science fiction, so would not affect her Astounding eligibility.

5) Everina Maxwell. Was on the ballot last year and submitted her first novel, Winter’s Orbit, for the packet then; I reviewed it here. This year she has submitted a second novel, Ocean’s Echo. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

He was an army officer, stocky, with a bald head and an evidently lofty rank—Tennal couldn’t read rank tabs, but he felt a stab of apprehension from the miles of gold braid encrusting his uniform. But the officer’s nominal rank didn’t matter. The moment he stepped in the room, a vivid glare of light flooded Tennal’s head, drowning out even the pounding of the engines. Tennal couldn’t see. He couldn’t think.

It’s another queer space opera romance, where the super politically connected Bad Boy is thrown together with the Good Boy trying to overcome his controversial family heritage, in a world where mind-control skills are just sufficiently developed for the plot, and you can see where it’s going from the third chapter. I liked it more than the previous book though. You can get it here.

4) Travis Baldree. As already mentioned separately and under Best Novel, the author is a well-known gaming figure and he has submitted Legends and Lattes, his Best Novel contender, also as his contribution to the Astounding folder of the packet, which makes perfect sense. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

The hob hauled in his box of tools and placed it inside the big doorway.

It is about an Orc warrior who decides that she will set up a coffee shop in a fantasy city. There are hilarious capers as she encounters jealous enemies, magical interference with the brewing process (both positive and negative) and love. I honestly don’t think it’s very deep but it’s good fun. You can get it here.

3) Naseem Jamnia. Has submitted a short novel, The Bruising of Qilwa, the second paragraph of whose third section (“Year Three”) is:

“I thought she didn’t even like Kofi.” Afsoneh wore a rose-patterned scarf around her hair, which she’d decided to cut short into a bob and not regrow.

This is a story in an alternate history Persia, dealing with the consequences of Arab invasions which worked out differently than in our timeline, with magical medicine and a very liberal take on gender. It’s pretty heavily loaded with colonial and other tropes, but I think it does manage to carry that burden with a very believable protagonist. The Persian contribution to the Islamic Golden Age is a topic that has long fascinated me, and this is a worthy fictional treatment of it. You can get it here.

(I also salute all of these authors for submitting submit shorter work rather than 750-page novels to the packet in this category. The longest submission this year is Maxwell’s, at less than 500 pages.)

2) Xin Weimu. Has supplied three stories in Chinese with no translation. I ran them all through the online translators and was rather impressed, starting with the shortest of them, 哈农练指法 / “Hanon’s exercises” – a pianist who has found a tech enhancement to drastically improve his performance but at a terrible cost. It’s Faust, of course, but from a fresh angle. The second paragraph of the third section is:

每天邵彬都会搞错什么节奏。正在备战利盖蒂大奖赛的大四女生在他第五次打断演奏的时候哭了出来：“可您说得太快了，我来不及消化！”音乐鉴赏专栏的编辑收到他的新稿呆了半晌，客客气气地回复说：“稿子当然无可挑剔，不过我们说好的截稿时间是两个月后，我知道您平时忙，不用写那么急的。”他换了身行头出去跑步，才稍稍压下了那种晕车似的恶心感觉，但不知不觉跑到30公里，还是平地绊了一跤，喘得被路人围上来询问，才慢慢平复了呼吸。Every day Shao Bin got something wrong. A senior girl preparing for the Ligeti Grand Prix cried out, when he interrupted her for the fifth time: “But you’re talking too fast, I can’t take it in!” The editor of the Music Appreciation column was dumbfounded when he received Shao Bin’s new article and replied politely, “Of course it’s impeccable, but our agreed deadline is not for another two months, and I know you’re usually busy, so you don’t have to write so urgently.” He changed his clothes and went out for a run, slightly suppressing his nauseous motion sickness; but he unwittingly ran for 30 kilometers, and then tripped flat on the ground, gasping for breath and surrounded by inquiring passers-by, before slowly calming down his breathing.
my translation

The second story, 明天就出发 / “Leaving Tomorrow”, concerns time-travellers from two centuries after the bulk of humanity decided to leave Earth, uneasily interacting with the Holocaust. This is tricky ground, but I thought that Xin navigated it well, and there is quite a lot between the lines if you look for it. The second paragraph of the third section is:

时空学院将这座星球上的人分成了两半。一半人能倒着背出三大本管控时空旅行的法律，一说起什么“祖父悖论”、“希特勒悖论”就引经据典、头头是道，一聊到出差或休假，就是天马行空地任意挑选。另一半人则和发明时空旅行以前的祖先那样，日复一日缓慢向前。他们有的仿佛忘了时空旅行的存在，有的则成了时空旅行题材的新闻、学术著作、文艺作品最忠实的受众。The Time Academy divides the people of this planet into two halves. Half of them can recite the three major laws governing time travel backwards, and when it comes to the “Grandfather Paradox” or the “Hitler Paradox”, they can quote from the classics, and when it comes to business trips or vacations, they can pick and choose whatever they want. The other half, like their ancestors before the invention of time travel, move slowly from day to day. Some of them seem to have forgotten about the existence of time travel, while others have become the most faithful recipients of time-travel-themed news, academic writings, and literary works.
DeepL translation

The third story, 血肉之锤 / “Hammer of Flesh”, is a really inventive story of Chinese workers in 1880s America whose experiments with robotics fail to preserve them from racism. One of the non-robot characters is also non-binary. There’s a lot here and I hope someone gives it a professional translation soon. The second paragraph of the third section is:

五金店的顾客络绎不绝，从买剪刀锤头、润滑钟表，到替换搅拌机齿轮、改装蒸汽车轮胎，傅九对任何要求都欣然答允。他的精湛技艺全都写在粗粝的双手上——出生在广东台山的工匠世家，去村里秀才家念书，都是靠给对方修房子作为学费，直到十八岁出洋闯荡，不知何时就传出“什么都能造”的美名。单身的金山客少有能在异国成家的，他却颇为顺利地结了婚，赶上太平洋铁路招募技术工人，便暂别怀着孕的妻子，去华工苦力聚集的路段奔波。There was an endless stream of customers in the hardware store. From buying scissors and hammer heads, lubricating clocks, to replacing mixer gears and modifying steam vehicle tires, Fu Jiu readily agreed to any request. His superb skills were all written on his rough hands – he was born in a family of craftsmen in Taishan, Guangdong. He went to the village scholar’s home to study, and built houses for them as tuition fees. He was known as “the one who can make everything” until he moved abroad at the age on eighteen. It is rare for anyone from Jinshan to start a family in a foreign country, but he got married soon and well. When the Pacific Railway was recruiting skilled workers, he left his pregnant wife for a while and went to the section where Chinese laborers gathered.
My translation

I am not blaming anyone, because I am very well aware of the limited resources of time, money and goodwill available to the Hugo team in any year, but it is really unfortunate that no translation was provided for Xin’s work – I think voters who do not take the effort to deploy the available online tools will miss a treat.

1) Isabel J. Kim. Has supplied a booklet of ten short stories published in 2021 and 2022. They are all really good. Most of them are about death. Most of them are about multiple or shared identities. Several of them combine the themes of death and multiple or shared identities. Several of them reflect the author’s Korean background. The second paragraph of the third story, “You, Me, Her, You, Her, I”, is:

“It’s what you would have wanted, right, Val?” her father had said, looking at the arm you are currently controlling.

Some of these stories made me uncomfortable, but all of them made me think. I expect that Travis Baldree, who has a lot of name recognition, will win this category, but if voters actually read the packet, I think they will incline towards Kim, whose work is really way ahead of the others.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Short Story

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Of the fiction categories, this has the most Chinese-language finalists; they are all recognisably sfnal, in the same genre, if perhaps a little old-fashioned compared to the English-language finalists. Each of these has one cool idea, which drives the story, and they are all decent pieces of work. My personal ranking is as follows:

6) 白色悬崖，鲁般 / “The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban

岩里说完，原本一直保持笔直的上半身渐渐放松了下来，重新躺回长椅的靠背上。After Yanli finished speaking, he gradually relaxed his upper body from its upright position and lay back on the backrest of the bench.
(my translation)

Perhaps here I felt the cultural gap at its greatest. The topic of the story is death with dignity, of producing a simulated virtual environment for those who are about to go; in Belgium, where we’ve had legal euthanasia since 2002, we think about these things in a different way and the story’s big idea doesn’t quite land right; it didn’t also have the emotional punch that I anticipated for this topic.

(And on a technicality, the English translation provided is rather poor, but you can see what is meant without too much effort.)

5) 还魂，任青 / “Resurrection”, by Ren Qing 

Second paragraph of third section:

还魂尸坐在桌边，连吃了三碗，雪白的背部一耸一耸。吃完饭，他抱着膝盖，蜷缩在椅子上，不言不语。The synthetic sat at the table and ate three bowls in a row, his pale back shrugging with each bite. After dinner, he curled up in a chair, hugging his knees, saying nothing.
(translated by Blake Stone-Banks)

Another story about death, but here there’s a whole industry of bringing people back, partially alive, for a second go. Nothing terribly wrong with it, but Silverberg’s “Born with the Dead” did it better back in 1974.

4) “DIY”, by John Wiswell 

Second paragraph of third section:

It was midafternoon. Noah was in his bedroom with the blinds drawn like an appropriately pissy teenager, hunched over his concentrator rig. A concentrator is one of those “baby’s first levitation” kits, a series of glass rods with minor magical charge that can float briefly in the air. Noah repurposed the kit to draw water from the air itself. After a week of tedious experiments, he had a cup one quarter full of water. Or was that three-quarters empty?

A story of kids using bulletin boards and magic. I felt it rather uneasily merged two different kinds of world-building, and did not quite work for me.

3) 命悬一线，江波 / “On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo

Second paragraph of third section (in Chinese, the supplied English translation has different line breaks):

通讯恢复了。Communication was restored.
(translation supplied by author.)

A Chinese space mission comes to the rescue of the Americans and Russians in the International Space Station, and you kinda know what’s going to happen as soon as it becomes clear that one of the Americans is a cute woman; and yet the narrative pace, even in translation, is tremendous and I found myself getting really invested in it as we got to the climax. Perhaps the most old-fashioned of the stories in this category, but rather well done.

2) 火星上的祝融，王侃瑜 / “Zhurong on Mars”, Regina Kanyu Wang

Second paragraph of third section:

祝融发现，人类虽然消耗了资源、增加了熵值，让周遭环境变得更混乱，却也使火星更有趣。某种程度上，祝融也在做同样的事情，伊利用人类走后无人利用的资源，让整座奥林帕斯山的熵值大大增加，那么伊是否可以算作生命？Zhurong realized that, although life consumed resources, increased entropy, and caused the environment to become more chaotic, they also made Mars more interesting. To a certain degree, Zhurong was doing the same thing. E used the resources left behind by humans and greatly increased the entropy of Olympus Mons. Did that mean e was a form of life?
(translation by S. Qiouyi Lu. The original Chinese text uses a literary gender-neutral third-person pronoun 伊yī for Zhurong, translated here using the neopronoun e. Zhurong is the god of fire in Chinese mythology.)

This is also a story which uses an old trope – the AIs who are left behind after humanity has quit the scene, familiar from Zelazny’s “For a Breath I Tarry” and Aldiss’s “But Who Can Replace a Man?”, but this time set on Mars, with call-outs to Chinese mythology. It’s rather deep for such a short piece, and I enjoyed it a lot.

1) “Rabbit Test”, Samantha Mills

Second paragraph of third section:

Grace doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, and certainly isn’t laughing. She waits for Sal at the coffee shop, and every sip of spark makes her stomach roil with nerves.

I thought this was tremendous – a story about a near-future USA where abortion rights have been gruesomely restricted, a scenario which unfortunately seems less and less unrealistic, interleaved with well-researched historical reflections. An angry and timely piece that has my vote.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Novelette

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6) “The Difference Between Love and Time“, by Catherynne M. Valente

Second paragraph of third section:

I’ve seen them everywhere. Still do. The space/time continuum gets around.

I’m afraid that these abstract tales of romance involving ineffable archetypes don’t do much for me. It will probably win the award.

5) 时空画师，海漄 / “The Space-Time Painter”, by Hai Ya

Second paragraph of third section:

功夫不负有心人，此后周宁又数次目击鬼影。鬼影形成的原因仍然笼罩在一团迷雾之中。它随机出现在地库附近，预示着之前的推测不无道理。周宁单枪匹马，举步维艰地摸索着真相，明明已经锁定了它的轮廓，却又无法更进一步，他渐渐开始焦躁起来。因此，当这晚再次遇见鬼影，并与它捉迷藏似的追逐了好一阵之后，周宁终于爆发了。眼看着它即将再次没入墙面，周宁抢先一步，试图将其拦截。这本是他情急之下的条件反射，自然也不可能有什么效果，鬼影很快便消失不见了。His hard work paid off, and Zhou Ning saw the ghost several times after that. The reason for its appearance remained murky. It randomly appeared near the basement, indicating that the previous speculation was not unreasonable. Zhou Ning groped for the truth alone, and with difficulty. He had already established its outline, but he couldn’t go any further. He gradually became anxious. So one night, after what seemed to be a long game of hide and seek with it, Zhou Ning finally exploded into action. Seeing that it was about to disappear into the wall once again, Zhou Ning attempted to cut ahead of it and stop it. This was a conditioned desperate reflex, and naturally, it had no effect, and the ghost quickly disappeared.
(My translation)

Great that we have a Chinese-language story in the top six in this category, but this is a fairly standard haunted museum tale, with some nice local Beijing colour which however doesn’t elevate it past fifth place for me. (No translation was provided, but it’s easy enough to run the text through the online resources.)

4) “A Dream of Electric Mothers”, by Wole Talabi

Third paragraph (there are no sections):

“Are you okay?” I ask my colleague, the honorable minister of information and culture, who is fiddling with his bronze-framed spectacles nervously as we exit the white-walled womb of the secure ministerial conference room. He was one of only two dissenting votes in the cabinet and the only cabinet member I have ever engaged with more than a professional politeness since I was appointed by the Alaafin three months ago. This is the first consultation I will be a part of, but the records show that he voted against the previous four as well. I have come to like him, but I find his apparent resistance to the consultation curious, especially since he is the one that will be responsible for the report and official broadcast once we are done.

Interesting speculation of combining ancient wisdom with information technology in an alternative history West Africa.

3) “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You“, by John Chu

Second paragraph of third section:

He always fights as though his only hope is to win on points. That doesn’t matter so much. One time, someone lands a lucky punch and breaks his hand on Tom of Finland Guy’s body. The guy’s face is flushed. He winces and howls in pain. Everyone backs away from him then runs away. The punch itself doesn’t even register on Tom of Finland Guy. He just stares at his midsection.

This has by far the best title of anything nominated in any category for this year’s Hugos. It’s a fun and passionate story about having a crush on the guy in the gym, who turns out to have divine superpowers.

2) “We Built This City“, by Marie Vibbert

Second paragraph of third section:

Her mother bursts into the room the second she arrives, a tiny tornado with a gray buzz cut. “Are you okay? Did anyone get violent?”

It’s odd how little sf we get that addresses the future of labour relations. This is a nicely observed vignette of a dystopian future city on the edge of nowhere, where the maintenance workers are in conflict with the management.

1) “Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness“, by SL Huang

Second paragraph of third section:

Only, at the same time “Sylvie” was driving Ron Harrison into a panic, someone named Sylvie was sending very similar messages to a hedge fund manager in Connecticut, a museum curator in British Columbia, and a political consultant in Florida, along with thirteen other men identified so far. Millions of messages over dozens of services, spanning across a full decade.

I thought this was very good, a reflection on the current state of AI, told in the authentic voice of an investigative journalist, getting in a few digs of social commentary as well, with hyperlinks to genuine media articles. It gets my vote.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Novella

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I do generally like the novella category, which often unleashes some corking good fiction at digestible length. As usual, this year has some great stuff, and I found it difficult to rank them. But rank them I must.

6) A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I knock my head ungently against the wall and order myself to get it together. Luckily, or unluckily, I’ve been in enough perilous situations by now that I don’t waste too much time panicking or regretting my life choices or shouting SHITSHITSHIT in all caps. I’ve developed a simple system.

Characters are fairy-tale archetypes exploring the possibility of different destinies. It’s a neat idea, but was a bit fresher last year, and I found the violence a bit squicky. You can get it here.

5) Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Eleanor herself smiled warmly at Cora as she walked around the bulk of her desk and settled in her leather-backed chair, gesturing for Cora to sit in one of the more modest chairs on the other side of the desk. Cora settled without a word of complaint, her still-damp nightgown sticking to her skin, while her hair sent rivulets of water down her back. The upholstery might get wet, but Eleanor wouldn’t care about that. Caring about things getting wet wasn’t very nonsensical, and Eleanor’s devotion to the Nonsense still waiting for her on the other side of her own door was one of the school’s few true constants.

Next in the sequence of the Wayward Children stories, where it turns out that there is another, much nastier school for the children who have slipped between worlds. I enjoyed but wondered a bit about the longevity of the schools within the premise, and felt it was getting a bit too entangled with its own mythology. You can get it here.

4) Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“The Hollow Hand,” Khanh said, his voice remarkably calm, and Lao Bingyi scowled.

A very nicely done story drawing from the wuxia tradition, a travel narrative with lots of sub-narratives. There’s a particularly good discussion of heroic women who are not also beautiful. I could practically smell the landscape. You can get it here.

3) Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Second paragraph of third section:

Stunned silence from them. And then… a medley of reactions; quite the range, now you think back on it. Because some still have that core in them, hammered there by church and village life before they did whatever each one did to make them outlaw. Some are shocked that you could even lift a hand against the Masters, let alone shed so much of that vast reservoir of blood that it might kill one. Taboos like that, beat into you from earliest childhood, they don’t get shaken free so easily. Garett, the oldest of them, is pale and shaking his head, and Nell Wilso sucks at her toothless gums. But some of the others, their eyes are lit up. They’re the ones whose crimes were against the property, not of humans but of ogres. They lost that reverence, and maybe they’ve dreamed of doing just what you did every night since. And right then you’re in no position to appreciate it, lost in a welter of guilt and panic, but it’s the first time people look at you like that. Not fond, not exasperated. You’re not the prodigal son or the lovable rogue right then. You’re the hero who slays the monster.

As previously reported, dystopian agricultural future where an elite minority of big people (the ‘ogres’ of the title) holds the majority of humanity in brutal slavery, and our protagonist discovers the awful truth and begins the overthrow of the system. You can get it here.

2) Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I knocked the right rhythm — not shave and a haircut but close. I stood still as the peephole opened and a light flashed in my eyes. The wall opened, and Sylvia let me onto the landing before a long flight of stairs leading down into the earth.

Really inventive story of lesbian love in magic-infested noir Chicago, and the price of your soul. Vivid plotting and description. You can get it here.

1) What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Did Denton insult you?” he asked, once we were out of earshot of the parlor. I could tell he was genuinely worried. “He’s a good man, but you know they don’t have sworn soldiers in America. I’ll have a word with him if he did.”

I thought this was tremendous – a rewriting of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” with a lot more background and indeed plot. I’m not familiar with the original story, but nonetheless this grabbed my attention and gets my vote. You can get it here.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Novel

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6) Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Nona didn’t want to be just good-looking and dumb; she wanted to be useful. She was dimly aware that she was not what anyone had wanted. This was why she had gone out and got herself a job, even though it wasn’t a paying one.

I completely bounced off the previous two books in this series, both of which were Hugo finalists. But to my surprise, I started off really enjoying this one, as the title character tries to put together her lost memories in a dangerous and violent society not too far from our own. But it lost me again at the end; once she returns to the world of Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, it became boring and confusing, and also there’s a parallel narrative thread which wasn’t integrated into the plot at all, as far as I could see. You can get it here.

5) The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The offices for KPS the name of the organization on the card Tom gave me were on Thirty-seventh, in the same building as the Costa Rican consulate, on the fifth floor. The office apparently shared a waiting room with a small medical practice. I had been in the waiting room for less than a minute when Avella came to get me to take me to her personal office. There was no one else in the KPS office. I guess they, like most everyone else, were working from home.

Very readable and engaging story which I read to the end, a parallel universe with Godzillas; but as usual with Scalzi, all of the characters sound exactly the same (and indeed exactly like Scalzi himself in real life) and the social commentary is paper thin. You can get it here.

4) Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The hob hauled in his box of tools and placed it inside the big doorway.

By a well-known gaming figure, this is about an Orc warrior who decides that she will set up a coffee shop in a fantasy city. There are hilarious capers as she encounters jealous enemies, magical interference with the brewing process (both positive and negative) and love. I honestly don’t think it’s very deep but it’s good fun. You can get it here.

3) The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her grandmother had taught her that, when Tesla’s rage turned a room incandescent red, the best thing to do was to stay very, very still. The time her elementary school science teacher had marked her correct answer anout the most recent supernova as wrong “because it wasn’t in the textbook” had impressed in Tesla’s mind how effective that stillness could be. It was also the first time she used any version of “I want to speak to the manager” when she asked to go to the principal’s office in a voice that was, in hindsight, too cold and flat for a ten-year-old.

This was very interesting – a detective novel set on an Earth to Mars space cruise. Intricate plotting, lots of good stuff about gender diversity and invisible disabilities, and a very cute dog. And cocktail recipes. I was not quite sure about the ending, though. You can get it here.

2) Nettle and Bone, T. Kingfisher

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“I saw you,” said the voice. She squinted against the light and saw the speaker. A man. Perfectly ordinary looking, in the gray-brown garb that everyone wore, here on the edge of the desert. There was nothing that stood out about him, except that he was shouting at her.

As usual with Ursula Vernon, a cracking good read: it’s about a discarded princess who goes on an epic fantasy quest with a gang of unlikely henchbeings. Lots of funny lines and social commentary. Very enjoyable. You can get it here.

1) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Melquiades claimed the mere thought such a thing might be possible was sacrilege: holiness could not reside in a flower or a drop of rain. Offerings to spirits were the devil’s work.

I thought this was really interesting, a reframing of H.G. Wells in the context of the historical Maya resistance to Mexican rule in the Yucatan. There was a twist three quarters of the way through that I should have seen coming, but didn’t. Not especially excited about any of these, but this one gets my vote. You can get it here.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Fan Artist and Best Professional Artist

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Not too much commentary here: I know what I like and what I don’t like, and I also know that my tastes don’t always correspond to the wider electorate.

Best Fan Artist

Slightly surprised here that none of the finalists is living in China – this is often a low-turnout category at nominations stage. Anyway, here we go:

6) Orion Smith

Sorry, this didn’t do much for me.
5) España Sherriff

Not much to judge from in the packet.
4) Iain Clarke

I generally like his stuff a lot, but I liked other submissions more this year.
3) Alison Scott

This is the most interesting piece, a moody tribute to Jan Pieńkowski (partly AI-generated).
2) Laya Rose

This was the only art in the packet that really grabbed me.
1) Richard Man

Very unusual to have a photographer in this category, but his series of portraits of leading figures in the SF community is very charming and evocative.

Best Professional Artist

A much stronger Chinese presence here, some of it of really gorgeous quality.

6) Paul Lewin.

Only one piece submitted, and it’s OK, but others are better,
5) Kuri Huang

Gorgeous use of colours and movement. Not quite so sure about the human figures.
4) Jian Zhiang

Breathtaking future machinery, reminiscent of Chris Foss. A bit sterile.
3) Enzhe Zhao

More future machinery, but this time with a little bit more humanity to put it in scale.
2) Alissa Wynans

Nicely framed studies of human or animal figures in a lush fantastic background.
1) Silja Hong

This gorgeous set of images really did take my breath away.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Graphic Story or Comic

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6) Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, and Krzysztof Ostrowski

Second frame of third page:

I could not understand what this was about at all. I could not follow the plot (if there was one) or get the characters sorted out in my head. You can get it here.

5) Monstress vol. 7: Devourer, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Second frame of Chapter Thirty-Eight (the third chapter in this volume):

Lots of people love this series, and I’m sorry, but I don’t; the art is gorgeous, but I have lost track of the plot by now, and I find the violence too squicky. You can get it here.

4) DUNE: The Official Movie Graphic Novel, by Lilah Sturges, Drew Johnson, and Zid

Second frame of third page:

This is quite nicely done, but lacks both the visual grandeur of the film and the narrative detail of the book (even though of course it has more narrative detail than the film, and more visual grandeur than the book). Dune already has two Hugos anyway. But you can get it here.

3) Once & Future Vol 4: Monarchies in the UK, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamara Bonvillain

Second frame of third chapter:

I had actually read this last year, because I have been enjoying this series so much: King Arthur comes back as an undead demon revenant, and our hero, his grandmother and his girlfriend are desperately mobilising a small group of allies across the real and unreal realms. Cracking humour, great characterisation; maybe a bit less tied into the underlying mythos than previous volumes, maybe that’s not a bad thing. You can get it here.

2) Saga, Vol 10, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan

Second frame of third part:

After the brutal end to volume 9, and the subsequent three-year pause in publication, I wondered how the authors would manage to pick it up. I need not have worried; time has passed for the main characters as well, and we see a lot of the story from the viewpoint of Hazel, the little girl whose parents have been at the centre of Saga up to now. Lots here about smuggling, blended families, evil galactic plots and so on. Ends yet again on a cliff-hanger. Not sure how this will appeal to those who have not read the previous nine volumes. (Six of which were Hugo finalists, the first winning in 2013.) You can get it here.

1) Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, by Tom King, Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes

Second frame of third chapter:

I came to this without any expectations, and was thoroughly won over. I’m not especially familiar with the mythology of Superman, still less Supergirl, and in any case I suspect that this off-earth adventure of cosmic vengeance may not be a typical Supergirl story. But I thought it was brilliant: a super script and plot, gorgeous art making the most of the potential of the comics format, and a thoroughly satisfactory characterisation of Supergirl and her pal Ruth. I felt that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is head and shoulders above the rest of the field. You can get it here.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Best Related Work

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This is one of my favourite categories for the Hugos, and this year I think there is a clear winner.

6) Buffalito World Outreach Project, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Second paragraph of third chapter (the Bengali translation):

প্রবেশ ফটকে লেখা ছিল,The marquee out front read
“বিস্ময়কর কনরয়,
মহান সম্মোহনগুরু”
THE AMAZING CONROY,
MASTER HYPNOTIST
লোকদের নজর কাড়ার এক সংকোচহীন এবং আতিরক্তপ্রচেষ্টা। সেটি অবশ্য কাজেও দিয়েছিল। আমার শো’য়ের দর্শক যেদিন তুলনামূলক অল্প হতো, সেদিনও পর্যাপ্ত সংখ্যাক লোক হতো, আর দর্শক বেশি হলে তো রা জায়গা ভরে যেত। জিব্রান্ত্রর মতো ভেনুগুলোতে যেকোনো ধরণের চাহিদা নিরন্তর, আর সেখানে একজন মঞ্চ সম্মোহকারী ভালো উপার্জন করতে পারে।and cycled through a googol of colorful hues in a blatant attempt to remain eye-catching. It worked. My smallest audiences were decent, and the large ones packed the place. Venues like Gibrahl are always hungry for any kind of entertainment, and a stage hypnotist can make a good buck.

A single short story translated into into thirty languages, including “Croation” [sic] and two varieties of Spanish. I absolutely support its eligibility for the category – to be eligible, a nominee “if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and … is not eligible in any other category.” The story “Buffalo Dogs” itself was first published in 2001, so it is not eligible for this year’s Best Short Story or Best Novelette categories (at 7800 words it’s on the cusp between them). And the whole point of Buffalito World Outreach Project is that it’s noteworthy not for the primary text but because of the translations. You can get it here.

However, to adapt Dr Johnson, this is a case of being impressed that the thing has been done at all, rather than wondering if it has been done well. I am glad that this has been done, but the other five finalists are more worthy winners.

(Also, although Lawrence M. Schoen is the finalist, what about the thirty or so people who did the translating?)

5) Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, by Kyle Buchanan

Second paragraph of third chapter:

So, would Mad Max work just as well if it were a TV show?

A detailed account of the making of Mad Max: Fury Road, featuring interviews with many many people from the cast and crew. It’s the unabashed writing of a super-fan (and top NYT reporter), who holds both the film and the director/producer George Miller in the highest regard. I was not so blown away by the film myself, and I confess I lasted only fifty pages into an intense book about a subject which doesn’t interest me all that much. You can get it here.

4) Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir, by Wil Wheaton

Second paragraph of third chapter, with footnote:

In addition to the things we Star Trek people usually do at conventions (signing autographs, posing for pictures, answering questions, and saying “Engage!”), I took a group of people from the ACME Comedy Theatre with me to perform a sketch comedy show. The entire convention experience is chronicled in “The Saga of SpongeBob Vega$Pants,” which is the centerpiece of my first collection of essays, Dancing Barefoot.*

* I’m so proud of this little book. I often look back at my early writing and cringe (you’ve probably cringed with me a few times just in this text) but Barefoot is nothing but joyful memories and the very best I could do at the time. I don’t encounter copies of it very often (its entire run was less than five thousand), but it is where I started, and it will always have a very special place in my heart.

Again, a book on a subject that I am not all that invested in (Wil Wheaton), written by an author who is deeply and passionately committed to that subject (Wil Wheaton). In fact this is an update of an autobiographical book first published in 2004, with explanatory footnotes telling us how his life and attitudes changed between then and 2021, with Star Trek: The Next Generation probably the single topic with most coverage but plenty else as well (for instance, there’s a gruelling account of a family medical emergency).

I found the result is a bit unsatisfactory; the structure is choppy, as most of the content is recycled from Wheaton’s blog, and some of the content is repeated, usually more than once, especially the question of how lousy his parents were. And there is a running joke, which gets old rather fast, about how much he hates his editor for the crime of, er, editing. But I give a couple of plus points for actually having the footnotes at the bottom of each page rather than the end of the book. You can get it here.

3) Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing, by S.L. Huang

Second to fourth paragraphs of third section:

Milford, I was told.
Milford.
And again Milford

I generally prefer my Best Related Work nominees and finalists to be books, but I am still rating this blog post ahead of two serious non-fiction monographs. It’s a straightforward analysis of how the standard model of writer training workshops among the sf community emerged from the Cold War, and how it doesn’t really work all that well for non-white aspiring writers. This is an important topic, but not a huge one, and the blog post deals with it efficiently and succinctly. You can read it here.

2) Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History, Vol 1, ed. Yang Feng

Second paragraph of English introduction to third chapter (an interview with Liu Shahe [1932-2019], who is much better known as a poet and calligrapher than an sf fan):

Liu Shahe was not trained in the humanities; he studied agriculture at Sichuan University. Amongst the older generation of Sichuanese writers, he was one of the rare people with a profound interest in natural science. He was also curious about the unknown. When Shi Bo, the editor-in-chief of The Journal of UFO Research visited him in Chengdu, he had an entire speech about dozens of examples of humans encountering UFOs, convinced that extraterrestrial civilizations existed.

English-speakers have been given enough information through the Hugo packet to make it clear that this is a major and important compendium of interviews with seven crucial people in the history of the development of science fiction in China. Unfortunately only one is a woman (Yang Xiao), but this is clearly a work in progress. Not easily available outside China, other than through the Hugo packet.

1) Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Granny Pratchett, Terry’s paternal grandmother, rolled her own cigarettes. Then, having smoked them, she would take the butts from the ashtray, pick the paper apart and return any strands of unburnt tobacco to the tin where she kept her supply. Waste not, want not. As Terry wrote in a short essay about her in 2004, ‘As a child this fascinated me, because you didn’t need to be a mathematician to see that this meant there must have been some shreds of tobacco she’d been smoking for decades, if not longer.’

As I wrote when this was up for the BSFA Award (which it won), this is a very good book about a very important subject. A lot of us know parts of the Terry Pratchett story – I first heard him speak in public in Cambridge in, I think, 1987, and last saw him at the 2010 Discworld Convention, and spoke to him a couple of times in between. It’s lovely to have it all between two covers, with the laughs and the tears, and with Rob also explaining the complicated nature of his relationship with Terry over the years, beginning as amanuensis and ending as nurse. I am voting for it and I expect that others will do so as well. You can get it here.

Here is a nice photo that I took of Rob Wilkins with Aliette de Bodard, the evening that they both won BSFA Awards in April. (The two winners who I myself voted for.)

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Hugos 2023: Lodestar Award for Best YA Book

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I griped previously about the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category having too many finalists where you needed to know the rest of the series to really understand them, and the same goes for the Lodestar Award; two of the six are sequels, two more are threequels, as it were, and one is the fourth in a sequence. It is great that people enjoy these series so much, and that’s why we have the Best Series category (which has only one overlap here). But it makes it more difficult for voters who may not have read previous instalments to assess the success of the latest volume. I don’t think it is worthwhile to tweak the rules in any way on this, I’m just saying that I wish voters would nominate books that stand better on their own. Having said that, some of these stand better on their own than others.

6) Bloodmarked, by Tracy Deonn

Second paragraph of third chapter:

To my left, William glances at the kneeling sorcerers, then back to me. Right. Now is the time to use the protocol I’ve studied. I clear my throat. “Rise, Mage Seneschal Varelian of the High Council and noble members of the Round Table Mageguard.”

I thought that the notion of the Round Table turning up in Chapel Hill as a phenomenon among university students was a load of rubbish when I read the first volume in 2021, and I think so still. I gave this 50 pages before tossing it aside.

5) The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I expect ordinarily it was a grand, dramatic space. There was a tiled mosaic floor beneath our feet, and statues lining up alongside a pool running the length of the room with a fountain at one end and a skylight overhead. There should have been an illusion of sky up there, made more believable by looking at it in the rippling water, but instead it was only the blank empty void, and the pool was still and pitch-dark, with nothing to reflect. The fountain spout was still letting a few drops fall occasionally like a leaking faucet, every unpredictable drop too-loud and echoing. This had to be the oldest part of the enclave, the one that had been built when London itself was just lurching its way towards becoming a city, and it was clearly meant to make you think of the glory that was Rome. Instead it felt like Pompeii just before the flames, a thin blanket of ash already laid down and more coming.

I was colossally disappointed with this, the third in the Scholomance series (which is also up in Best Series). I had put the first volume top of my ballot in 2021, and the second volume second last year. But I felt it would have been better left as a two-parter. Our heroine traipses around the world, through different magical enclaves which are completely indistinguishable whether in Portugal or China, and engages in a quest to rescue the man she loves while also dealing with other emotional entanglements. Compared with the previous two books, I felt it completely lost focus.

4) Akata Woman, by Nnedi Okorafor

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Please, please, please,” Sunny had said last week to her frowning parents. They knew about her and Orlu, but that didn’t mean they were open to it. “It’s just dinner. Nowhere else.”

I am sorry to keep sounding grumpy. But this was a case where I had quite enjoyed the second book, when I read it way back in 2018, having missed the first; and this seemed to me a rather unspectacular magical training school story, if set in a slightly different culture.

3) Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, by Charlie Jane Anders

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her barge descends past a dozen towers, blaring with candy-colored lights. Holographic gameplay swirls around the rooftops and cartoon icons run around under a skyline dominated by the crimson curlicues of the nearby Royal Space Academy. Even with Rachael’s Joiner set to “maximum introvert” mode, the shouts of a half-million players and spectators still ring out, and she can smell the fried Scanthian parsnips and bottles of snah-snah juice that everybody uses to fuel marathon gaming sessions.

Getting less grumpy now, as this sequel seemed to me independently enjoyable even if you haven’t read (or can’t remember) last year’s Victories Greater than Death. Six teens turn out to be vital to the future of humanity, and must confront various potentially fatal challenges for high stakes while dealing with the usual agonies of relationships and (interestingly) creativity.

2) In the Serpent’s Wake, by Rachel Hartman

Already reviewed.

1) Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods, by Catherynne M. Valente

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Even at an hour before midnight in Littlebridge, even with shadows as thick as coat sleeves hanging all round. You could still see the red leaves fluttering on the trees. And the red glass in the fancy windows and the red sheen on the moon reflected in the deep black water. The riverbanks ran over with red leaves, red rose hips, red zinnias, red squashes growing wild for anyone to take.

Fantasy of a boy called to save his people with a bunch of unlikely allies, which charmed me with Valente’s approach to integrating folklore with her own narrative, with vivid descriptions of people and places, and also just by not being a sequel. Gets my vote this year.

In general I have felt that the Lodestar Award has delivered more quality to the ballot, and on a good year the finalists en bloc are competitive with the Best Novel Hugo. I did not feel that this was an especially good year.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, by Tom King, Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes

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Second frame of third chapter:

Working through this year’s Hugo finalists, I came to this without any expectations, and was thoroughly won over. I’m not especially familiar with the mythology of Superman, still less Supergirl, and in any case I suspect that this off-earth adventure of cosmic vengeance may not be a typical Supergirl story. But I thought it was brilliant: a super script and plot, gorgeous art making the most of the potential of the comics format, and a thoroughly satisfactory characterisation of Supergirl and her pal Ruth. The two Hugo-shortlisted comics I had already read were both new instalments in favourite series of mine, but I felt that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is head and shoulders above both. I’ll read the other finalists but I’ll be surprised if I like any of them more than this. You can get it here.

Hugos 2023: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

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I took advantage of downtime during this holiday to watch the finalists for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) that I had not already seen. The experience has given me pause for thought about the category as a whole, which I will write up some other time, but anyway here are my votes:

6) The Expanse: “Babylon’s Ashes”

This is the last episode of the sixth series of an TV show, itself based on a series of novels. I have read only the first of the novels and sen only the episodes which were previous Hugo finalists (two of which won). I found the plot and characters completely incomprehensible. I am sure that it made for a satisfying climax for those who followed it from the beginning, but it made no sense to me at all. (And what was the deal with the weird kids?) I did like Dominique Tipper as Naomi Nagata.

5) Andor: “Rix Road”

I actually did watch the whole of Andor, and enjoyed it, but again I think that the final episode of the series will be pretty incomprehensible to anyone who has not seen the previous eleven. Fiona Shaw is great in everything, of course.

4) Stranger Things: “Chapter Four: Dear Billy”

This was the middle episode of the seven in the fourth series of Stranger Things, which as with Andor I generally enjoyed, but with reservations; my middle-aged brain found the plot difficult to follow, and the episodes are very long – this one is 78 minutes, and the finale was almost 100. But the imagery, cinematography and especially the use of Kate Bush made this an impressive watching experience. Well done to Sadie Sink, still in her teens when this was filmed, for carrying off the central performance.

3) Andor: “One Way Out”

This was my favourite episode of Andor, and I don’t think I was alone. It’s the story of a prison break, which imposes its own dramatic tension on the characters and keeps you on the edge of your seat for forty minutes, with some spectacular filming and special effects as well. Unlike the season final, I think this does stand on its own as a drama. Great stuff.

2) She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: “Whose Show Is This?”

Another series finale, again of a show where I had not seen any of the other episodes, but I really enjoyed this. There are only two things you really need to know about the title character, and they are both conveniently in the title of the series, so there’s not too much to catch up on. But what makes this episode really entertaining is that the protagonists breaks the fourth wall and intimidates the Marvel writers into changing the ending of the episode. Tatiana Maslany was great in Orphan Black, Jameela Jamil was great in The Good Place, and they are both great here.

1) For All Mankind: “Stranger in a Strange Land”

The only episode I had previously seen of this alternate history of space exploration was last year’s Hugo finalist, “The Grey”, which kills off two important characters, so you know you are playing for high stakes. This year’s episode is yet another series finale, but I found it much easier to get into than The Expanse (or even Andor); it’s absolutely clear who everyone is – here’s a North Korean astronaut stranded on Mars; here’s an American astronaut who is stranded and pregnant; here’s a senior NASA official who’s been secretly helping the Russians; here is the president of the United States coming out as a lesbian; here’s a shocking act of domestic terrorism (actually I found this a little implausible, I would have thought that security at important government buildings would be tougher). Great stuff and perhaps I’ll watch the rest some time. For all my griping about incomprehensible series finales, I have to concede that they got my top two as well as my bottom two votes this year.

As I said, I have Thoughts about this category as a whole, but that is for another day.

2023 Hugos:
Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar Award for Best YA Book | Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The hob hauled in his box of tools and placed it inside the big doorway.

First of the Best Novel finalists for this year’s Hugos that I have read since the ballot was announced (three of the six were Clarke submissions which I’ve already written up, rather briefly). By a well-known gaming figure, this is about an Orc warrior who decides that she will set up a coffee shop in a fantasy city. There are hilarious capers as she encounters jealous enemies, magical interference with the brewing process (both positive and negative) and love. I honestly don’t think it’s very deep but it’s good fun. You can get it here.

Two graphic novels: Saga, Vol 10, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan; Once & Future Vol 4: Monarchies in the UK, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamara Bonvillain

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Two Hugo finalists in the Best Graphic Story or Comic category.

Second frame of third part of Saga, Vol 10:

After the brutal end to volume 9, and the subsequent three-year pause in publication, I wondered how the authors would manage to pick it up. I need not have worried; time has passed for the main characters as well, and we see a lot of the story from the viewpoint of Hazel, the little girl whose parents have been at the centre of Saga up to now. Lots here about smuggling, blended families, evil galactic plots and so on. Ends yet again on a cliff-hanger. I’ll give this a high vote, but not sure how it would appeal to those who have not read the previous nine volumes. (Six of which were Hugo finalists, the first winning in 2013.) You can get it here.

Second frame of third chapter of Once & Future Vol 4: Monarchies in the UK:

I had actually read this last year, because I have been enjoying this series so much: King Arthur comes back as an undead demon revenant, and our hero, his grandmother and his girlfriend are desperately mobilising a small group of allies across the real and unreal realms. Cracking humour, great characterisation; maybe a bit less tied into the underlying mythos than previous volumes, maybe that’s not a bad thing. Will also get a high vote from me. You can get it here.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (brief note)

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Melquiades claimed the mere thought such a thing might be possible was sacrilege: holiness could not reside in a flower or a drop of rain. Offerings to spirits were the devil’s work.

I thought this was really interesting, a reframing of H.G. Wells in the context of the historical Maya resistance to Mexican rule in the Yucatan. There was a twist three quarters of the way through that I should have seen coming, but didn’t. Hugo finalist. You can get it here.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (brief note)

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The offices for KPS the name of the organization on the card Tom gave me were on Thirty-seventh, in the same building as the Costa Rican consulate, on the fifth floor. The office apparently shared a waiting room with a small medical practice. I had been in the waiting room for less than a minute when Avella came to get me to take me to her personal office. There was no one else in the KPS office. I guess they, like most everyone else, were working from home.

Very readable and engaging story which I read to the end, a parallel universe with Godzillas; but as usual with Scalzi, all of the characters sound exactly the same (and indeed exactly like Scalzi himself in real life) and the social commentary is paper thin. You can get it here.

In the Serpent’s Wake, by Rachel Hartman

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her father, the old count, had always had protégés—young priests, mostly, some of whom became bishops or advisers to Count Pesavolta. It had never occurred to Marga that she might have a protégé of her own, or that she’d want one. But looking at Tess—curious and eager, smart enough to have taught herself Quootla, resourceful enough to have found the Continental Serpent on her own—was like looking at herself at that age. There were things Marga needed to tell that young self.

Putting my money where my mouth is, I bought and read this, the book on the Hugo ballot with the best page-to-dollar ratio. I was glad to see it because I hugely enjoyed the previous book in the series, Tess of the Road, but did not write it up in 2020 because I was on the Hugos that year too. In the Serpent’s Wake takes Tess on a polar expedition led by a hilariously unperceptive aristocratic lady, where they tour also colonialism and rape culture. It didn’t move me quite as much as the previous book – seemed to be a lot of circumpolar circling – but I still enjoyed it a lot. Hartman’s imagined world is richly drawn and internally consistent. Worth getting all four books in the series for the YA reader in your life. You can get this one here.

A Hugo shopping list; and while we are waiting for the Hugo voter package…

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…please bear in mind that it is a privilege, not a right.

There is nothing about the Hugo voter package in the WSFS constitution. It depends entirely on the goodwill of creators to produce the works, and also the goodwill of volunteers to assemble it. It’s probably the most laborious of any of the tasks involved with Hugo administration, and definitely one of the most thankless. (I hope that I have thanked those who have done it for me.)

I’ve had my share of Hugo-related tensions over the years, but among the most annoying are the entitled complaints of people who expect the Hugo voter packet to be designed for them and their specifications. To be very clear, I’m not talking about accessibility here – people with visual difficulties deserve consideration from publishers and Hugo administrators alike – but about those who demand the free reading material but then can’t be bothered to install the free software. (And then there are those who “forget” to download it in time and still want to get hold of it after the deadline has passed, and get all miffed when we have the audacity to honour the terms of our agreement with publishers, and say no.)

Inevitably some creators will provide their material poorly formatted, or in a form that some people don’t like, and readers will blame Worldcon for it. Inevitably the packet will be released later than had been hoped, because nobody in their right mind does the packet more than once, and it always takes longer than first expected. Inevitably other things go wrong. (My top complaint about creators – those who expect us to download sample copies of their work from NetGalley. Hardly anyone will bother to try, and those few who do try usually find that it doesn’t work.) The fact it that we are lucky to get the Hugo packet at all, and it frustrates me when I see commentary that doesn’t take that into account. My best wishes to those dealing with this year’s challenges.

While we are waiting for this year’s packet, I urge you to start buying (or borrowing) Hugo finalist books, rather than wait until you can get them for free. Creators deserve your money. One possible approach, if you want to be efficient about this, is to work through them from cheapest to most expensive. If you want to be super efficient, you could work through them in order of value measured by the number of pages per dollar, pound or euro. How to calculate that, you ask? Well, as it happens I’ve crunched those numbers for Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Graphic Story, Best Related Work (for four of the six finalists, the other two being an online essay and a Chinese website) and the Lodestar Award, and I can share it with you here. (Prices are from Amazon.com on Kindle, but links go to Amazon.co.uk hard copy, for Reasons.)

CategoryTitlePrice ¹pagespp/$
RelatedBuffalito World Outreach Project, Lawrence M. Schoen$6.73764²113.5²
LodestarIn the Serpent’s Wake, Rachel Hartman$7.0450371.4
LodestarAkata Woman, Nnedi Okorafor$7.0741658.8
GraphicSupergirl: Woman of Tomorrow$3.8122358.5
NovelThe Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia$6.0232153.3
LodestarBloodmarked, Tracy Deonn$11.3557350.5
LodestarThe Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik$9.2639142.2
NovelThe Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi$6.5025639.4
LodestarDreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, Charlie Jane Anders$8.1931738.7
RelatedTerry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, Rob Wilkins$11.4243037.7
LodestarOsmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods, Catherynne M. Valente$11.1841336.9
NovelLegends & Lattes, Travis Baldree$9.4731833.6
NovelNona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir$14.1746733.0
NovelThe Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal$11.9836830.7
NovelNettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher$9.3226228.1
RelatedStill Just a Geek, Wil Wheaton$16.6946227.7
RelatedBlood, Sweat & Chrome, Kyle Buchanan$15.8742827.0
NovellaWhat Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher$7.6316521.6
NovellaWhere the Drowned Girls Go, Seanan McGuire$10.3715014.5
GraphicMonstress vol. 7: Devourer$12.1317314.3
NovellaA Mirror Mended, Alix E. Harrow$9.8212813.0
NovellaEven Though I Knew the End, C.L. Polk$10.3913312.8
GraphicCyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams$5.296412.1
GraphicSaga, Vol. 10$14.9016911.3
NovellaOgres, Adrian Tchaikovsky$9.6410210.6
GraphicOnce & Future Vol 4: Monarchy in the UK$15.3415710.2
NovellaInto the Riverlands, Nghi Vo$10.331009.7
GraphicDune: The Official Movie Graphic Novel$13.761208.7
¹ As checked recently on Amazon.com for the Kindle version, which is generally what I read. Other regions and formats will likely be broadly similar.
² Buffalito World Outreach Project consists of thirty translations of a single story. Taking that into account, the number of pages of original content per dollar would put it at the other end of this table.

NB that the above list totals 7,500 pages, not counting the Buffalito World Outreach Project, nor the other two Best Related Work finalists, nor anything from the other categories. That’s why I am getting reading now…

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal (brief note)

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her grandmother had taught her that, when Tesla’s rage turned a room incandescent red, the best thing to do was to stay very, very still. The time her elementary school science teacher had marked her correct answer anout the most recent supernova as wrong “because it wasn’t in the textbook” had impressed in Tesla’s mind how effective that stillness could be. It was also the first time she used any version of “I want to speak to the manager” when she asked to go to the principal’s office in a voice that was, in hindsight, too cold and flat for a ten-year-old.

This was very interesting – a detective novel set on an Earth to Mars space cruise. Intricate plotting, lots of good stuff about gender diversity and invisible disabilities, and a very cute dog. And cocktail recipes. I was not quite sure about the ending, though. You can get it here.