Some Comments on the 2024 Dragon Award Winners

The winners of the 2024 Dragons Awards were announced today at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. The full list of winners may be found here.

I’ve been following the Dragon Awards since their inception in 2016, so I guess  I’m committed/cursed to cover the Dragon Awards at this point. Though I skipped covering the nominations this year, because I was on route to Worldcon in Glasgow when Dragon Con announced them and my travel laptop is so slow that posting to the blog while travelling wasn’t really possible. Plus, I have a backlog of things I need to cover and am also busy with translation work and other stuff, so I never got around to covering the Dragon Award finalists this year.

So I’ll just refer you to Camestros Felapton’s coverage of the 2024 Dragon Award finalists as well as of a minor scandal which erupted when one of the finalists in the Best Illustrative Category was disqualified for having used generative AI to design the cover, even though the Dragon Awards did not specify that AI covers were not eligible. Plus, it seems other covers on the ballot used AI as well, but were not as honest about it as the disqualified finalist. Much as I dislike generative AI, stating your policy on AI and disqualifying finalists after the fact is not a good look, though on par for the shambolic nature of the Dragons.

Anyway, since I don’t have a lot of time to deal with this stuff right now, let’s delve right into the categories:

Best Science Fiction Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel goes to Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Now a lot of people seem to view Starter Villain as a lesser Scalzi, but it was a Hugo finalist this year and its Dragon win isn’t a huge surprise, since John Scalzi is very popular and the Dragons are a popular vote award. Besides, John Scalzi winning a Dragon Award will also royally annoy those far right writers and fans who decided to position the Dragons as an alternative to the Hugos, where the real nutty nuggets could win.

The rest of the ballot mostly doesn’t look very surprising either. The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was also a Hugo finalist this year and System Collapse by Martha Wells would have made the ballot, if Wells hadn’t declined the nomination. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu and These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs were both novels which got a lot of positive buzz. I’m not familiar with Beyond the Ranges by John Ringo and James Aidee, but John Ringo and his co-authors have been popular with Dragon Award voters, particularly in the now defunct military science fiction category. The only surprise finalist in this category is Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen, a self-published science fiction novel by an author who seems to be more notable for weird conspiracy theories about how feminism is to blame for the US obesity epidemic than for his writing. Still, we’ve seen self-published authors with enthusiastic fans make the Dragon ballot before.

Best Fantasy Novel

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel is Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. This isn’t a surprise at all, because Rebecca Yarros is a hugely popular breakout romantasy author and her novels Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are Twilight/Da Vinci Code/Fifty Shades of Gray level mega-bestsellers. In fact, I’m surprised that Rebecca Yarros didn’t even make the longlist for the Astounding Award let alone the ballot this year, unless she wasn’t eligible. Because like her work or not – and I have to admit that I haven’t read it – she’s huge.

The rest of the ballot also doesn’t hold any surprises. He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan also made the Hugo longlist this year, plus Shelley Parker-Chan won the Astounding Award in 2022. House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky and The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang got a lot of positive buzz and My Brother’s Keeper is a new novel by Tim Powers, who is always worth checking out. Rounding out the ballot, there is Three Kinds of Lucky by Kim Harrison, who is a hugely popular urban fantasy author who came up during the massive urban fantasy boom of the early 2000s.

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

The 2023 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult and Middle Grade Novel goes to Midnight at the Houdini by Delilah S. Dawson. Again, this isn’t a hugely surprising win, because Delilak S. Dawson is a very popular and this is probably the best known finalist in this category.

I’m not the target audience for YA and middle grade books and I have to admit that the only other author in this category I’ve ever heard of is Shami Stovall, a self-published/small press author who was a finalist in the same category last year.

Best Alternate History Novel

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel is All the Dead Shall Weep by Charlaine Harris. Once again, this isn’t a surprising winner at all, since Charlaine Harris is hugely popular as the author of the Southern Vampire Chronicles series that the True Blood TV series was based upon. There was a time during the heyday of that TV series that Charlaine Harris has ten books on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time. Even if the SFF community never really acknowledged Charlaine Harris, probably because she started out as a mystery writer, in the wider world she’s as well known as George R.R. Martin.

The rest of the ballot isn’t overly surprising either. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford was a mainstream hit and just won the Sidewise Award. Meanwhile, Harry Turtledove and the late Eric Flint (plus co-authors) are probably the best known authors of alternate history in recent times and Tom Kratman is a Baen author with a big fanbase. The only book I wasn’t familiar with is Devil’s Battle by Taylor Anderson, though apparently the series hit the New York Times besteller list, so it’s clearly popular. In fact, the most surprising thing about the alternate history category of the Dragons may be why it still exists, when all the other smaller subgenre categories like post-apocalyptic fiction, military SFF or media tie-in have long been eliminated.

Best Horror Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel goes to Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig. Once more, this win isn’t even remotely surprising, because Chuck Wendig is a very popular horror author. Plus, his Dragon win will also infuriate the usual suspects who hate him, because he dared to put gay characters into a Star Wars novel.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due got a lot of acclaim and also won this year’s Stoker Award. The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw got a lot of positive attention and F. Paul Wilson is a very popular author with a big following. The remaining two finalists in this category were a bit surprising, at least to me. The Hollow Dead by Darcy Coates appears a paranormal cozy mystery rather than a horror novel, but since there is no category for paranormal mysteries, this category was probably the best fit. Dead Storm Rising by Shane Gries, finally, would have felt more at home in the defunct military SFF or post-apocalyptic fiction categories, but since those no longer exist, it ended up in the horror category. However, considering that the first ever Dragon Award winner for  Best Horror Novel was a religiously tinged space opera rather than an actual horror novel, this isn’t too shocking.

Best Illustrative Book Cover

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Illustrative Cover is Kelly Chong’s cover for Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen. This is a beautiful cover and a highly worthy winner.

Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel goes to Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda. This isn’t a huge surprise, since Monstress is also a multiple Hugo winner in this category and has some of the most beautiful artwork in comics right now.

A look at the rest of the ballot shows that this category is very DC heavy with Batman, Nightwing, Canary and Wonder Woman all nominated, while X-Men Forever holds up the Marvel flag.  It’s also notable that this is the first time in three years that the winner in this category was not a Dune graphic novel.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series is Fallout. This is another unsurprising winner, because Fallout was very popular and also a lot of fun.

The rest of the ballot is basically a rundown of popular SFF TV series that aired during the eligibility period. We have 3 Body Problem, Ahsoka, Loki, Good Omens, House of the Dragon, Star Trek: Strange New World and For All Mankind. The only finalist in this category that’s remotely surprising is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a kaiju series. And even that one got a lot of buzz and besides, you can never go wrong with kaiju.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie goes to Dune, Part 2. I guess you can’t have a Dragon Award ballot without Dune somewhere and I vastly prefer the movie to the tie-in graphic novels. I also fully expect to see Dune, Part 2 on the Hugo ballot next year, if not winning.

The rest of the ballot consists of Barbie, Godzilla Minus One (which could win an Oscar, but can’t manage to win any of the genre awards) and Furiosa, none of which are very surprising finalist. The two finalists which do surprise me a little are Wonka and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, because no one seemed to like either film very much and both are prequels to stories that didn’t need a prequel.

Best Digital Game

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Digital Game is Baldur’s Gate 3, which also won the Hugo Award in this category. No surprise there, it’s so popular that even I have heard of it.

Best Tabletop Game

The 2023 Dragon Award for Best Tabletop Game goes to D&D The Deck of Many Things. This is another unsurprising winner, because it is D&D, which is hugely popular and the thousand pound gorilla of SFF tabletop games.

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All in all, after nine years the Dragon Awards do exactly what they were intended to do, namely award broadly popular SFF works with big fanbases. We still see some of the more offbeat finalists that characterised the early years of the award on occasion, but they no longer win. Camestros Felapton pointed out that Dragon Award ballot was quite Baen heavy this year (no surprise, since Baen traditionally has a big presence at Dragon Con), though it’s notable that no Baen title won.

So in short, the Dragons have became exactly the sort popular vote/popular winners award that the puppy-adjacent organisers envisioned back in 2016. However, I suspect they wouldn’t be too happy with the winners, which are heavy on the girl cooties (Rebecca Yarros, Charlaine Harris, Delilah S. Dawson) and on male authors the puppies dislike (John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig).

Finally – and this is an unintentional, if not unexpected result – the Dragons have also become the award for urban fantasy and romantasy series that sell like the proverbial hotcakes, even though the SFF community and other genre awards like to pretend these books don’t exist. And personally, this makes me happy, because I have always been irked by how the Hugos and Nebulas tend to ignore urban fantasy and romantasy, even though I have zero interest in Iron Flame.

ETA: Camestros Felapton briefly weighs in on the 2024 Dragon Award winners and also shares some stats regarding the gender breakdown of the winners. He also notes that all winners in the Best Science Fiction Novel category so far have been men and that Timothy Zahn is the author with the highest number of Dragon Award wins, followed by David Weber and T. Kingfisher.

At Women Write About Comics, Doris V. Sutherland shares a write-up of the 2024 Dragon Award winners as well as a summary of the uproar regarding the disqualification of Cedar Sanderson’s cover for the anthology The Goblin Market

At Whatever, John Scalzi briefly shares his joy at winning the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Starter Villain. This is already his second Dragon Award win BTW, following his win in 2020 in the same category for The Last Emperox.

ETA 2: Responses from the puppy sphere and SFF’s far right in general to the 2024 Dragon Awards have been fairly muted, but those I found are not happy.

On Twitter, Jon Del Arroz declares that the Dragon Awards are just as rigged as the Hugos and that the Sad Puppies accomplished nothing. The first part of that statement is the usual nonsense, the second part is an example of rare insight.

A Substack newsletter called Fandom Pulse has a longer article, also apparently written by Del Arroz, lamenting what he views as the decline of the Dragon Awards due to John Scalzi and Chuck Wendig winning, which he blames on Tor Books, even though only one of the winners, Starter Villain by John Scalzi, was actually published by Tor. The remaining fiction winners were published by Del Rey, Saga Press, Entangled Publishing and Delacorte Press. The article also focusses solely on the wins for John Scalzi and Chuck Wendig as well as Monstress in the comic category, all of whom are described as Hugo favourites, even though Chuck Wendig was only ever a finalist for what was then the Campbell Award (now the Astounding Award, which is famously not a Hugo) in 2013, where he lost to Mur Lafferty. There is no mention of the wins for Rebecca Yarros, Charlaine Harris and Delilah S. Dawson at all, probably because they don’t fit the point the author is trying to make.

Last but not least, two other awards also announced their winners at Dragon Con. The winner of the 2024 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction is “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones, which was also a Hugo finalist this year.

Meanwhile, the winner of the 2024 Mike Resnick Memorial Award for the best unpublished science fiction short story by a new author is “When I was Your Age” by Sam Brown.