The 2024 Hugo finalists were announced today – on Good Friday, which is a really terrible time to do this. I thought that John Scalzi had persuaded the powers that be that announcing Hugo finalists on a long holiday weekend is a terrible idea, but apparently that lesson has been forgotten. The fact that it’s also the end of the month and the quarter, which is again a super-busy time, and that the EU is switching to daylight savings time this weekend doesn’t help either.
Last year, we got an early preview of the Hugo finalists due to one of the many screw-ups of the Chengdu Worldcon. This year, everybody who’s in the Hugo finalist Discord server got an early preview due to an e-mail with an invite link to the server going out a day before the official announcement, which made me excited for what looked like a most excellent Hugo ballot.
So – since this is a busy weekend for me – let’s delve right into the individual categories:
Best Novel
Translation State by Ann Leckie and Witch King by Martha Wells were the latest novels by two very popular writers and also made the Nebula ballot, so I’m not at all surprised to see them here. Both novels were also on my personal Hugo ballot.
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh was another of my personal nominees and I’m very glad to see it made the ballot.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty was on my personal longlist, but didn’t make my ballot in the end. Nonetheless, I’m glad to see it nominated.
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera got a lot of buzz last year and is also a Nebula finalist. I haven’t yet read it, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.
John Scalzi is a hugely popular author with multiple Hugo nominations and wins under his belt. Nonetheless, I’m a little surprised to see Starter Villain make the ballot, because the critical response to that novel was somewhat mixed with many folks thinking it was a weaker work by Scalzi.
Martha Wells also would have made the ballot with System Collapse, the latest Murderbot novel, but as with the Nebulas, she chose to withdraw, which is a classy move IMO.
A Chinese novel, Cosmo Wings by Jiang Bo, also received enough nominations to make the ballot, but was disqualified due to having been published in 2024. Coincidentally, this means that Cosmo Wings will actually be eligible next year. And since this novel was clearly popular enough to receive enough nominations to make the Hugo ballot, maybe a US or UK publishers will pick it up and have it translated – hint, hint.
Indeed, the influx of Chinese fans from last year did leave an impact on the ballot in several categories. Of course, every member of the Chengdu Worldcon still had nominating rights, so this shouldn’t be too unexpected. It will be interesting to see if Chinese fans will continue to participate and if we will continue to see more Chinese works on the ballot going forward.
All in all, this is a very good list. Three of my personal nominees made the ballot. I suspect one of the other two will be further down the longlist, while the final one was a longshot.
Publisherwise, one finalist was published by Tor, three by Tordotcom (which is not the same as Tor, though they are part of the same publishing conglomerate), the remaining two were published by Orbit and Harper Voyager respectively.
Will this stop the “But only Tor gets nominated” conspiracy theories? Probably not, since those are no more rooted in reality than conspiracy theories usually are. I also suspect that the folks who complain about not enough men getting nominated for Hugos these days will not be happy with the nominations for John Scalzi and Vajra Chandrasekera.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 author of colour, 2 international authors*.
Best Novella
In this category, we have an interesting mix of returning favourites and new finalists.
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher and The Mimmicking of Known Successes by Malka Older definitely fall under returning favourites. They’re both very good stories, too.
Nghi Vo is another returning favourite in this category, though I haven’t yet read Mammoths at the Gates. And while Arkady Martine has never been nominated in the novella category before, she won Best Novel twice in the past four years, so she definitely counts as a returning favourite. Rose/House was also on my ballot BTW.
We also have two Chinese finalists in this category, “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet” by He Xi and “Seeds of Mercury” by Wang Jinkang, both translated by Alex Woodend. I’m not familiar with either of these novellas, but I’m looking forward to checking them out.
With regard to publishers, one finalist was published by Tor, two by Tordotcom, one by Subterranean and two appeared in the anthology Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers. So the Tor/Tordotcom dominance in this category appears to be broken.
Diversity count: 4 women, 3 men (including the translator), 4 authors of colour, 2 international authors.
Best Novelette
In this category, we have yet another mix of returning favourites and new finalists.
I really enjoyed “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer, which was on my personal ballot and is also a Nebula finalist in this category.
“Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C.L. Polk is another story I enjoyed and am glad to see nominated. It was on my personal longlist, but did not make my ballot in the end.
Sarah Pinsker has been nominated several times in the various short fiction categories and her stories are always worth reading. I don’t think I read her nominated novelette “One Man’s Treasure”, though I look forward to checking it out.
Nghi Vo puts in a second appearance on the ballot with “On the Fox Roads”, which I haven’t yet read either.
I AM AI by Ai Jiang got a lot of buzz last year and is also a Nebula finalist. Again, I haven’t read it yet.
Finally, we’ve got another Chinese finalist with “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jin. Once again, I haven’t read this story yet.
There also was a withdrawal in this category, because Chinese author Hai Ya, who won this category in a landslide last year with “The Space Time Painter” withdrew his novelette “The Far North”.
Regarding publishers, we have two stories published in Uncanny, two at Tor.com, one in Clarkesworld and one is a standalone novelette, so there’s a nice mix.
Diversity count: 6 women (including the translator), 1 non-binary, 5 authors/translators of colour, 2 international authors.
Best Short Story
This category is yet another mix of familiar and new names. There also is zero overlap with my personal ballot.
Naomi Kritzer makes her second appearance on the ballot with “Better Living Through Algorithms”, a story I enjoyed and which was on my personal longlist, but didn’t make my ballot in the end
“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark is another story I enjoyed, but didn’t nominate.
“The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard completely passed me by for some reason, though I usually enjoy her work, so I look forward to reading it.
“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones is another story I haven’t read, though I look forward to checking it out.
Finally, we have two more Chinese finalists, “Answerless Journey” by Han Song, translated by Alex Woodend, and “Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times” by Baoshu, which does not appear to have an English translation at this time. Again, I haven’t read either of these, though I look forward to checking them out.
With regard to publishers, two stories hail from Uncanny, one each from Clarkesworld and Nightmare Magazine, one is from the Chinese Galaxy’s Edge magazine (not to be confused with the English language magazine of the same name) and one from the anthology Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers.
Diversity count: 3 women, 4 men (including the translator), 4 authors of colour, 3 international authors
Best Series
The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie came out just before the Best Series Hugo was introduced and so never got a chance at a category it would likely have won. However, Translation State is set in the same universe, starring a secondary character from the first trilogy, so Imperial Radch gets another shot.
Seanan McGuire has been a steady presence in this category since its inception due to being extremely prolific. Of her various series, October Daye is probably my favourite, so I’m happy to see it on the ballot.
The Universe of Xuya by Aliette de Bodard has been nominated in this category before as well. I usually enjoy the Xuya stories as well, though they’re only a series if you squint really hard.
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross is another series we’ve seen in this category before. I’m afraid this series didn’t work for me the last time around, but I’ll give it another try.
Adrian Tchaikovsky actually won in this category last year with Children of Time, but has since disavowed his Hugo win due to the shenangigans of Dave McCarty and the Chengdu Hugo team. This year, he’s back with another series, The Final Architecture trilogy and I’m glad he’s getting another shot at Hugo glory.
I haven’t read The Last Binding by Freya Marske, though I look forward to checking it out.
With regard to publishers, we have a wild mix with Tordotcom (who actually dominate more than Tor prime), Orbit, DAW, Gollancz and a bunch of short fiction publishers.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 author of colour, 4 international authors
Best Graphic Story or Comic
This category has the tendency to get a little stale with the same long-running series getting nominated over and over again.
This year, however, we have only one returning favourite, Volume 11 of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. This one was also on my ballot.
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha and Nicola Scott comes closest to holding up the flag for American superhero comics. It’s also a very good book.
As for the remaining four finalists, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of any of them, though I’m excited to check them out.
That said, of course I have heard of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, though I’m not familiar with the comic adaptation.
Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith and Boulet completely passed me by. According to the blurb, it’s a middle grade graphic novel retelling of Beowulf, which sounds really cool actually. Zach Weinersmith also shows further down the ballot in Best Related.
I’ve enjoyed several works by Paul Cornell in various media, but I hadn’t heard of his graphic novel The Witches of World War II with art by Valeria Burzo before. It appears to be an alternate history about a coven of witches trying to use their magic to stop the Nazis and World War II, though apparently it’s based an real events, because a British coven really did try to do something like this in 1940. Anyway, this sounds like a fascinating story.
Only two of the six finalists in this category were published by traditional comic publishers, Image and DC respectively. The others were published by graphic novel imprints, but then graphic storytelling is increasingly moving away towards that format.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.
Best Related
I guess everybody knows my strong preference for well-researched non-fiction in this category by now, so I’m pleased that five of six finalists in this category are actually books.
The late Maureen Kincaid Speller was an always insightful critic, so I’m glad to see the collection A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller by Maureen Kincaid Speller, edited by Nina Allan, on the ballot.
Volumes 2 and 3 of Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History, edited by Yang Feng, are the sequels to the first volume which was nominated in this category last year and most worthy they are, too.
All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays by Niall Harrison does exactly what it says on the tin. I haven’t this collection yet, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I like to see in this category.
A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith is an illustrated popular science book about how feasible it is to colonise Mars. I wasn’t familiar with this book at all, though again it absolutely fits into this category.
The Culture: The Drawings by Iain M. Banks is an art book collecting drawings that the late Iain M. Banks did of spacecraft, locations, etc… of his Culture series. Again, I had no idea that this book existed, but it’s most fitting finalist.
Finally, we have a podcast or rather videocast named Discover X nominated in this category. Discover X appears to be a collection of interviews with various SMOFs and SFF professionaly done by Tina Wong at last year’s Chengdu Worldcon.
Discover X was initially nominated in Best Fancast, but since it is a professional project, it was moved into Best Related. This isn’t the first time a professional podcast was nominated in Best Related. Writing Excuses was nominated in this category several times approx. 10 years ago. I’m not very happy with podcasts nominated in Best Related, but since there is no professional podcast (procast?) category, there really is no other place to put them. And podcasts are among the less edgy of the many edge finalists we’ve seen in this category in recent years.
There also was a withdrawl is this category, because Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood was nominated for a viral tweet promoting the Hugo-winning novella This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which pushed the book up various bestseller lists due to Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood’s many Twitter followers. Now the Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood affair is a perfect example of how word of mouth works and can catapult a work into the stratosphere. Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood also appears to be a great person and it was very classy of them to decline a nomination. However, this nomination also illustrates why the Best Related Work needs to be reformed and the definition tightened. Because how on Earth can you compare a single tweet, even one which sold thousands of books, with a 400 page non-fiction book?
And even if we limited Best Related to non-fiction books and long essays, we’d still get a wide range of potential finalists as this year’s ballot shows.
Diversity count: 4 women, 4 men, 2 writers/podcasters of colour, a whopping 6 international writers/podcasters.
Best Dramatic Presentation Long
Not a lot of surprises in this category, but many popular movies.
Barbie was the most popular film of 2023 and also actually good, so I’m not surprised at all to see it nominated.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a lot of fun and was also very positively received in the SFF community, though it’s apparently considered a commercial flop due to being steamrolled the Super Mario Bros Movie, which came out around the same time. Nonetheless, it’s not surprise to see this film nominated. Barbie and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves were also both on my personal ballot.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the 2019 Hugo winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and was also an Oscar nominee. It’s also a very good film, so I’m not surprised to see it nominated.
Nimona is an adaption of a popular graphic novel, which just missed the ballot the year it was eligible. It also was an Oscar nominee and critical success and therefore isn’t a surprising finalist.
Now I really, really dislike Poor Things and will no award it, but it was an Oscar nominee in multiple categories and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, so its nomination was probably inevitable. Though I’m glad we dodged the bullet of having Oppenheimer on the ballot as well, which wasn’t that unlikely, since we have had several science fact movies (Hidden Figures, Apollo 13, The Right Stuff) nominated in this category before.
Finally, we have The Wandering Earth II, a highly popular Chinese film based on the eponymous novel by Liu Cixin. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s not an unexpected finalist at all.
ETA: The team behind The Wandering Earth II are also clearly happy about the nomination and posted this celebratory tweet on Weibo, China’s Twitter/BlueSky/Threads equivalent.
Conspicuous by their absence are Godzilla Minus One and The Boy and the Heron. Both came out around new year in the US, so people may have been confused about their eligibility. Indeed, these two might need an eligibility extension.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.
Best Dramatic Presentation Short
The episode “Long, Long Time” from The Last of Us is a sweet and heartbreaking unlikely gay love story between a steroetypical prepper living his best post-apocalyptic life and a cultured urbane man who stumbled into one of his traps. “Long, Long Time” was probably the most outstanding 45 minutes of TV that aired last year and also appeared on the ballots of various mainstream awards like the Emmys or the Golden Globes. In short, this is an absolutely worthy finalist and likely winner. This episode was also on my ballot.
“Glorious Purpose”, the series finale of Loki, provided the perfect ending to Loki’s journey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This one was also on my ballot.
After two years of absence, Doctor Who is back on the Hugo ballot with the specials “The Giggle” and “Wild Blue Yonder”. “The Giggle” was indeed a very good episode with some great performances by David Tennant, Neil Patrick Harris, Catherine Tate and Ncuti Gatwa. I haven’t watched “Wild Blue Yonder” yet.
The various incarnations of Star Trek used to be a constant presence on the Hugo ballot, but since its return in 2017, Star Trek hasn’t gotten as much Hugo love as it once did. This year now, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is represented twice on the ballot with what are possibly its most gimmicky episodes, the musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody” and “These Old Scientists”, which was a crossover with the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks. I actually did have an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on my ballot, though it wasn’t either of these.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.
Best Game or Interactive Work
This is a brand-new category and one I can’t say much about, because I’m not a gamer. That said, even I have heard of Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. Chants of Semnaar is also a Nebula finalist in this category and supposedly very good. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with Alan Wake 2 and DREDGE at all, though one of the DREDGE developers joined the Hugo finalist Discord and seems to be a very nice person.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.
Best Editor Long
This is another category with the tendency to get stale, because there are only so many editors working in SFF. However, this year we have some new names on the ballot.
Lindsay Hall, who also won last year, Ruoxi Chen, Lee Harris of Tordotcom and Yao Haijun of Science Fiction World have all been on the ballot before. David Thomas Moore of Rebellion Publishing and Kelly Lonesome of Tor Nightfire are both new to this category. There also was a withdrawal by Natasha Bardon of Harper Voyager UK and Magpie Books.
ETA: Natasha Bardon has given her reasons for withdrawing at Instagram. Basically, she feels unable to accept a nomination because she fears a repetition of last year’s shenanigans. Natasha Bardon was also the editor of Babel by R.F. Kuang, the most high profile random disqualification of last year, which may well have influenced her decision.
Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 2 editors of colour, 2 international editors.
Best Editor Short
Scott H. Andrews of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld, Jonathan Strahan of Lightspeed and Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas of Uncanny have all been on the ballot in this category before.
Yang Feng of Eight Light Minutes Culture was a finalist in this category last year and return this year. Liu Weijia of Science Fiction World is a first time finalist in this category.
Diversity count: 2 women, 5 men, 2 editors of colour, 3 international editors
Best Professional Artist
We have a great mix of artists in this category, including a few new names.
For starters, I’m happy to see my friend Alyssa Winans on the ballot again. Rovina Cai is another artist who has been nominated in this category before and also won in 2021 and 2022. Galen Dara and Dan Dos Santos have also been on the ballot before, though it’s been a few years. Micaela Alcaino, a UK based artist, was a new name for me, though I’ve definitely admired her work before. Tristan Elwell is another artist I wasn’t familiar with before now, though I like his work.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 4 artists of colour, 2 international artists
Best Semiprozine
This category often consists of “the usual suspects”, which is why it’s pleasant when there has been some shake-up.
Uncanny has been on the ballot every year since its inception and has won most of them and is clearly the eight hundred pound gorilla in this category. However, they do excellent work, to.
Strange Horizons has also been nominated countless times (well, not really, but I’m not going to count how many times they’ve been on the ballot), but have yet to win. Maybe this is their year at last.
Escape Pod has been on a ballot a few times as well and is holding up the flag for audio fiction. Like Strange Horizons, they have yet to win.
FIYAH Literary Magazine is one of the most exciting new genre magazines to burst onto the scene in recent years and highly deserving 2021 winner in this category.
khoréo (apologies that WordPress butchered the title again) is another exciting newish magazine focussed on SFF from South East Asia. This is their second year on the ballot.
Finally, GigaNotoSaurus has been around for more than ten years and has been doing great work all that time, but they don’t get a lot of Hugo love, probably because they only publish a single longer story per issue. I’m really happy to see them recognised.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make magazines.
ETA 04-12-2024: Andy Rose interviews LaShawn Wanak, editor of GigaNotoSaurus, for the radio station 89.9 FM in Madison, Wisconsin.
Best Fanzine
We have several returning favourites in this category. Like all of the fan categories, it’s also a category that’s full of people I consider friends.
nerds of a feather and Journey Planet both have several nominations and one win each under their belt. I’m also happy to see my friends Olav and Amanda on the ballot again with the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog. After a year of absence, my good pal Alasdair Stuart is also back on the ballot with The Full Lid.
Black Nerd Problems made the Hugo longlist, but just missed the shortlist several times in recent years. They do great work and I’m glad they finally made the ballot.
Idea by Geri Sullivan was completely new to me. It seems to be a PDF zine with a print edition and thus a more traditional type of fanzine than what we normally see in this category. It’s always nice to see more traditional zines make the Hugo ballot and I’m looking forward to checking them out.
Sadly, my good friends of Galactic Journey did not make the ballot this year. But then there are a lot of great fanzines out there and new blood on the ballot is always welcome. Besides, there’s always next year.
And speaking of Galactic Journey, here is my latest article for them where I look at the non-Conan works of Robert E. Howard that came back into print in the late 1960s following the runaway success of the Lancer Conan reprints.
Earlier this month, I also reviewed The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, a delightful fantasy novel from 1969, which nowadays is mostly remembered for being one of the more obscure works in Appendix N of the original Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master Handbook, as well as Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a stonecold classic, which I review from the POV of someone who knew survivors of the firebombing of Dresden on February 14, 1945.
So check out what we do at Galactic Journey and maybe consider nominating us next year.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make fanzines.
Best Fancast
Again, we have a nice mix of returning favourites and newcomers in the category.
For starters, I’m happy to see my good friends of Octothorpe, my other good friends of Worldbuilding for Masochists and yet another good friend of Hugos There on the ballot again.
The Coode Street Podcast, meanwhile, is the elder statesman in this category and has been on the ballot almost every year since its inception. Coincidentally, I was on a different podcast with Gary K. Wolfe, one half of the Coode Street team, on the day after the nominations were announced.
Publishing Rodeo is a new entry in this category and I’m excited to check them out.
Finally, we have a Chinese fancast on the ballot with Science Fiction Fans Buma. We almost would have had two more Chinese podcasts on the ballot, but Discover X and Diu Diu Sci Fi Radio were both found to be ineligible due to being professional productions. And before any conspiracy theories arise, this is perfectly normal and within the rules, because the fancast category is only for fan productions, not professional productions. Discover X was moved into Best Related, where professional non-fiction podcasts usually. Diu Diu Sci Fi Radio apparently did not have sufficient nominations to be moved into Best Related.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to produce podcasts.
ETA: Dirk Knudsen wrote a lovely profile of Seath Heasley of Hugos There for The Hillsboro Herald. That’s Hillsboro in Oregon, since there are several in the US and beyond.
Best Fan Writer
This is another category that’s close to my heart for obvious reasons and also one that’s full of friends.
After last year’s shenanigans, I’m really, really glad to see my friend Paul Weimer back on the Hugo ballot. I’m also glad to see my friends Jason Sanford, Alasdair Stuart and James Davis Nicoll nominated, since they all do great work.
All of the four above are reviewers, interviewers and non-fiction writers. However, Best Fan Writer is not limited to non-fiction writers, but also open to fiction. And hence we have two stalwarts of Twitter micro-fiction on the ballot, Bitter Karella of The Midnight Society and Örjan Westin of Micro-SFF. Coincidentally, Örjan Westin is likely also the first Swedish Hugo finalist ever.
Another good friend of mine, Camestros Felapton, received enough nominations to make the ballot but declined for reasons he explains here.
Diversity count: 1 woman, 5 men, 3 international writers
Personally, I think this is an excellent ballot and it will be very hard to rank the finalists. However, there have been some complaints that the Fan Writer category is also very male and entirely white this year. This is not wrong and indeed there are some excellent fan writers of colour out there whom I’d love to see on the ballot one day, such as Arturo Serrano, Ann Michelle Harris, Wendy Browne, Arthur Liu, RiverFlow, Juan Sanmiguel, Aigner Loren Wilson, etc…
That said, we still have a great Fan Writer ballot this year.
Best Fan Artist
This year’s Best Fan Artist ballot is very similar to last year’s. Iain J. Clark, Laya Rose, Alison Scott and España Sheriff are all back from last year. Sara Felix wasn’t on the ballot last year, but has had several previous nominations. Dante Luiz has been nominated as part of the Strange Horizons editorial collective before, but this is his first solo nomination. They’re all fine artists who do good work.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 artist of colour, 5 international artists
Lodestar
I’m not the target demographic for YA and freely admit that this is a category I often have issues with – such as the year when three books on the ballot had the exact same character set-up and plot, only set in different worlds, and it wasn’t even that exciting the first time around. Or the year (may have been the same year) where my late Mom had a Worldcon membership and exclaimed in exasperation after trying to make her way through the Lodestar finalists, “I pity the poor kids who have to read this stuff.” My answer was, “Mom, the kids enjoy those books. You’re over seventy and obviously not the target audience.”
That said, I’m actually pleased with this year’s Lodestar ballot, since the books appear to be an interesting and also diverse bunch. Plus, I have enjoyed previous works by several of the authors.
Promises Stronger than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders is the third book in her Unstoppable series. The first two books in the series were also nominated for the Lodestar and enjoyed them both.
Frances Hardinge is one of the comparatively few YA authors whose books I unreservedly enjoy, so I’m glad to see Unraveller nominated, especially after it was disqualified last year due to confusion about the publication date. This was also on my personal ballot.
Naomi Kritzer makes her third appearance on this year’s Hugo and not-technically-a-Hugo ballot with Liberty’s Daughter. I haven’t read this book yet, but I enjoyed Naomi Kritzer’s previous CatNet YA novels.
Garth Nix is a big name in YA and middle grade fiction, but The Sinister Booksellers of Bath is his first appearance on the Hugo/Lodestar ballot. It sounds interesting and has a great title, so I look forward to checking it out.
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose got a lot of buzz last year. I haven’t read, but again I look forward to checking it out.
Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark completely escaped my notice, though I have enjoyed much of Clark’s adult fiction and look forward to reading it.
There are some complaints that several books on the Lodestar ballot are not technically YA. Abeni’s Song is apparently considered middle grade, while two others are not explicitly marketed as YA.
However, the ethos behind the Hugos and also the not-technically-a-Hugo awards has always been that the nominators determine what goes into which category and that the administrator honours this decision, unless it directly clashes with the rules. However, the WSFS constitution does not actually define what counts as YA. So books that feel like YA due to the content and the age and behaviour of the characters may be nominated for the Lodestar, even if they are not explicitly marketed as YA. This is what happened with Naomi Novik’s Scholomance books. They may not be marketed as YA, but they sure as hell feel like it. And since the Hugos have no middle grade category, middle grade books go into the Lodestar as well.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 2 authors of colour, 2 international authors
Astounding
Ai Jiang burst onto the scene in the past years and is also a finalist for Best Novelette this year, so it’s no surprise to see her on the ballot.
I really enjoyed Hannah Kaner’s debut novel Godkiller, so I’m glad to see her nominated for the Astounding Award.
Sunyi Dean’s debut novel The Book Eaters certainly made a splash in 2022 and I’m happy to see her on the ballot. Sunyi Dean is also a finalist for Best Fancast with her co-host.
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu is part of the mini-trend of science fiction mysteries as well as a Hamlet adaptation and got a lot of buzz last year. I enjoyed the novel a lot.
Moniquill Blackgoose is a Lodestar finalist this year and reappears in the other not-technically-a-Hugo category, the Astounding Award. There were some questions regarding her eligibility, since Moniquill Blackgoose had a quite prolific career writing SFF erotica under another name going back several years. However, the Astounding rules specify a certain payment and print run/sales threshold, otherwise even a poem or a short story printed in a high school paper would count towards Astounding eligibility. Moniquill Blackgoose’s previous publications did not meet that threshold according to this comment by the Glasgow Hugo team at File 770. The Compton Crook apparently has different rules and decided that Moniquill Blackgoose was not eligible.
Finally, another one of last year’s random disqualified nominees Xiran Jay Zhao makes an appearance on the ballot, even though 2023 was theoretically their second and last of Astounding eligibility. However, Dell Magazines, who sponsors the award, have decided to extend their eligiblity by one year due to Xiran Jay Zhao being unfairly denied their deserved spot on the ballot last year.
This is one time where the fact that the Astounding Award (and the Lodestar) are not technically Hugo Awards has a positive effect. For while Hugo eligiblity can and has been extended, e.g. for movies which played at a few festivals but did not get a wide theatrical release until the following year, this decision would have to be made at last year’s WSFS Business Meeting in Chengdu, when we did not yet know about the random disqualifications Dell Magazines, however, could unilaterally decide to extend Zhao’s eligibility, because the Astounding is their award and not beholden to WSFS rules.
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 non-binary, 5 authors of colour, 4 international authors
***
And that’s it for the 2024 Hugo finalists. Personally, I think it’s a very good ballot with comparatively few finalists which are not to my taste. And every year, there are finalists which are not to my taste.
I’m also pleased to see several Chinese works make the ballot, though it remains to be seen whether this is a transitory phenomenon or whether we will see more Chinese participation and more international participation in the Hugos in general going forward. Because there is a whole world of wonderful SFF out there that’s not currently available in English.
So far, I haven’t seen a lot of Hugo finalist commentary around the web. Camestros Felapton has a few comments on the Hugo finalists and there’s also some discussion going on in the comments.
An SFF writer named A.P. Howell also comments on the 2024 Hugo finalists and is pleased that Xiran Jay Zhao had their Astounding eligibility extended by another year. Nonetheless, Howell still doesn’t trust the Hugos very much after last year’s scandal, which is of course her good right.
That said, no one who was part of last year’s Hugo team is involved with this year’s Hugos and they will very likely never be involved with the Hugos again. And, as I’ve said before, the reason this scandal came to light at all is because the Hugos are one of the most transparent awards in existence.
Meanwhile, e.g. the administrators of the Dragon Awards, administrators whose identities are unknown, have the right to determine finalists without paying any heed to the actual nominations according to the rules of their award. I’m not saying that they do this, but they absolutely have the right. The Dragon Awards have also never released exact voting and participation numbers. And this is just one example. Very few awards are as transparent as the Hugo and yet you have people screaming that the Hugos are finished and that they will never trust them again (including one person who was happy enough to accept a Hugo nomination barely a month after they declared the Hugos tainted forever), when other awards could be doing similar shenanigans behind the scenes (again, I’m not saying that they are – most likely they’re not) and no one would ever know.
ETA 04-07-2024: 2023 Hugo winner for Best Fan Writer Chris M. Barkley shares his thoughts on the 2024 Hugo finalists at File 770.
ETA 04-01-2024: Best Novel finalist John Scalzi comments on finding himself a Hugo finalist again for Starter Villain and also comments on Natasha Bardon’s reasons for declining a Best Editor nomination. John Scalzi also points out that even though he was the one who criticised announcing the Hugo finalists over the Easter weekend, he can understand why it was done on Good Friday this year.
ETA 04-01-2024: Best Fanzine finalist nerds of a feather have also released a statement about their Hugo nomination in the light of what happened last year.
ETA 04-02-2024: At Women Write About Comics (which would be a great Best Fanzine finalist – hint, hint), Doris V. Sutherland weighs in on the 2024 Hugo finalist announcement and also recaps the 2023 Hugo nomination scandal for those who missed it.
Talking of the 2023 Hugo nomination scandal, a certain person named Dave has been refused a membership to Levitation, the 2024 Eastercon in Telford, UK, and was escorted off the premises by security after they refused to honour this decision con committee. A second person of controversial interest was allowed to remain under certain conditions. We do not know who this person is, but we suspect their first name may be Ben. I should not feel Schadenfreude at this, but I do.
I’ll keep the comments open for now, but if things get rude or people start fighting each other, I reserve the right to close them.
*I define “international” as a writer/creator living outside the US. If we include writers who are first or second generation immigrants, there would be several more. I’ve also stopped counting LGBTQ+ finalists for the diversity count, because it’s very difficult to determine, since not everybody is out. Apologies if I’ve accidentally misgendered anybody.
sending...
Thanks, Cora 🙂
You’re very welcome and congratulations again.
Alan Wake 2 is about a writer whose inability to complete a draft risks destroying the world, so I find it a delightful nom for what is still primarily a literary award. 🙂 (It’s also got a surprisingly solid spec-fic narrative, which was a nice surprise.)
That sounds indeed fun. In 2021, when they did a trial run for a Best Game Hugo, there were demos available, so I look forward to checking this one out.
A certain Ben Y is a visible member. Unlike Dave M, he had joined in advance, and he did accept certain conditions on his presence whereas DM just attempted to join as a member on the day. I presume that DM booked accommodation in the area, but I’ve not seen him.
It is, by the way, Örjan Westin’s second time on the ballot.
I do not feel sorry for DM buying a plane ticket and booking a hotel without knowing if he’d even get into the con. Maybe there are things to see and do in Telford that don’t involve Eastercon, though there doesn’t seem to be a lot there.
Regarding Örjan Westin, I guess I was a little unclear. This is his second year as a Hugo finalist, but he still is as far as I know the only Swedish person ever to be nominated.
I read and enjoyed both Liberty’s Daughter and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, despite not being the target audience for either.
I think the Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood nomination was for a series of tweets, rather than a single tweet–but length aside, how do you compare a bunch of enthusiastic “hey, read this, it’s wonderful” tweets with serious critical essays with Iain Banks’ illustrations of his Culture universe? This is also the category that has at different times been stretched to include a cookbook and a convention restaurant guides, both of which were, yes, nonfiction related to fandom. I think the essential problem is that when it isn’t “there ought to be a specific category for this and there isn’t yet” (graphic novels, for a while), “best related work” can turn into “I really liked this thing, and want to give it an award.”
I loved the CatNet books, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy Liberty’s Daughter. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath sounds interesting as well.
That convention restaurant guide was actually in book form (I have a copy somewhere) and really useful as well. I had a spare copy and gave it to a friend who frequently travels to Helsinki. She was very grateful. But yes, even what counts as non-fiction is a wide range from art books via cookbooks and popular science books to academic studies of the genre.
Personally, I’m in favour of creating a new Hugo category for “Best Fannish Thing” or “Best Miscellany” to catch all of those weird and wonderful edge cases that don’t really fit anywhere else. Because I do feel sorry for someone who laboured for years to research and write an in-depth biography or study of something SFF-related, only to loose to a tweet or a speech written on the fly.
As for Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood, they wouldn’t have been a bad choice for Best Fan Writer.
Three sets of awards competed for news on Friday. The Philip K. Dick Award was always going to be announced on Easter weekend because of its link to Norwescon. Two of them could have made another choice. The Hugo finalists you noted. And then there were the Chesley Award winners which just disappeared into the background noise. I don’t know what ASFA was thinking when they made that choice.
I saw the Chesley Announcement at File 770, but it was completely buried. The Philip K. Dick Award and the BSFA Awards really had no choice, because they are tied to specific cons. But the Hugos and Chesleys did.
Mike, would you consider using cuts on your F770 posts so only the first paragraph or so appears? People can more quickly flip down through posts to find ones of interest, and new ones do not get buried so quickly. Some posts (the Pixel Scrolls, today’s ballads post) are so long that I lose patience scrolling past to find the next one. People could still click through to get the full posts, and I think for the most part they would.
While there are a few types of posts I use cuts for — galleries of Marvel comic variant covers, for one — overall I don’t see the sense of organizing things around the assumption that people find it inconvenient to read the contents. Why else are they there?
However, there is a way to get what you’re asking — sign up for the subscriber notifications. They quote only the first couple dozen words of each post. When the matter is of interest one can click through. Otherwise, skip it.
I, for one, come to the File 770 homepage to glimpse at the new headlines and select those I will want to investigate in more detail. Or to see where and what new comments are (still haven’t been able to teach my browser to interpret RSS), where the scrolling gets extremely annoying on the phone.
But I am long aware Mike is not going to change his model, even if it could lower the server load somewhat. Well, worse things happen.
Really good thoughts! And as a gamer, the video game category is about what I expect, good stuff all around, generally.
Quick note, I believe Xiran Jay Zhao uses they/them? But now I’m unsure – may need a double check.
Glad you liked the post and good to hear that the video game finalists also meet the approval of a gamer like yourself.
Xiran Jay Zhao does indeed use they/them. Did a stray wrong pronoun somehow find its way into the post? Cause I just checked and couldn’t find any.
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The Compton Crook is simply for best first novel, apparently with no exceptions for self-published, and Moniquill Blackgoose did have a novel (Cygenic) published in 2020 under the Monique Poirier name.
I’m not that familiar with the Compton Crook Award beyond the name, but clearly they have different rules than the Astounding Award, so an author can still be Astounding eligible, but not eligible for the Compton Crook.
The Compton Crook Award is run by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, which is not that far from me. They run Balticon in Maryland each year. I hadn’t been aware of the eligibility differences between them and Astounding until now. Incidentally, they abbreviate as BSFS, which as I recall drew the ire of some members of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) some years ago and they seemed to think for a while that BSFS’s name was some kind of cheap attempt to steal BSFA thunder. It had to be pointed out to them that Baltimore has been a city for a long time and BSFS has been around almost as many years as BSFA (each over 50 years). That’s how I remember it, anyway.
Thanks for the background information. I knew of the existence of the Compton Crook Award, the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Balticon and the city of Baltimore, but necessarily how they are connected.
Good Friday seems to be one of the unevenly distributed holidays (UK has a bank holiday for it but the US doesn’t shut down schools for it, we just have Easter Sunday as a business holiday) such that I keep being surprised as a non-Christian in the US that it’s a thing when I see my UK friends posting about stuff they do with their kids on their day off. But since it’s a long weekend in enough places, the committee should have done their due diligence!
Easter is a four day weekend here in Germany and Good Friday is a so-called “quiet holiday”, where almost everything is closed. Shops are closed anyway, dancing is forbidden and clubs are closed, there are no sports events, movie theatres may not show certain movies or are closed altogether, even the Easter fairs close down. It’s basically a day off, where you can do very little. Hiking, bike tours and visiting relatives are about the only things you can do. Since church membership has been on the decline for decades and the number of members of other religions as well as non-religious people is growing, there is a steady conflict about these outdated rules, because somebody else’s religious beliefs should not dictate what I can do with my free time.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Netherlands, the shops are open on Good Friday – cue lots of cross-border traffic – and no one is stopping you from dancing or going to a club or whatever.
Thanks for the overview!
I am glad to see that my opinion on Related Work is still represented among the Hugo stakeholders.
Some typos, mostly harmlessly self-correcting, but “shenanGigans” got a bit annoying.
Regarding that asterisk: it would have been better to put the explanatory paragraph up front rather than to the very back, where few people are going to scroll there and back without the aid of hyperlinks. And if you are defining “international” to mean “non-US”, it would have been better to use it outright without alias: I had long lived under the impression that the Anglophonia is Hugos’ core area, and only the realisation that the Canadian JDN must count as “international” made me suspect something is unusual.
As for “otherwise even a poem printed in a high school paper would count towards Astounding eligibility” — no, it is an Astounding rule that “poetry, even if it is SF/F and appears in a qualifying publication” is ineligible. No wimpy rhymes for the Big Three!
Where were those “complaints that the Fan Writer category” is not diverse enough? Bluesky et al., I suppose?
Sadly, we fans of SFF-related non-fiction, preferably in book form, are a minority among Hugo voters these days.
The complaints about the lack of diversity in the Fan Writer were on BlueSky or Twitter and came from a person who has had these complaints every year for as long as I can remember. They’re not wrong, though I strongly suspect that there are some sour grapes involved as well. Besides, if you want more diversity in the Fan Writer category, be the diversity you want to see and promote more diverse fan writers.
As for how I define “international writer”, first of all, it’s my definition (which is why I put the asterisk) and secondly, even non-US anglophone person from the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, etc… has a harder time getting Hugo recognition than someone from the US, simply because Worldcon and the North American publishing industry are so very US-centric. That’s how you get something like a job ad from a major SFF publisher, which notes that they welcome people of all races, genders, ethnic origins and sexual orientations as long as they live in New York City. Also note that we see a lot more British, Irish, Canadian, Australian, etc… finalists, when Worldcon is in those countries.
Besides, the US is focussed mainly on race as a category, so Hugo finalists and winners like Thomas Olde Heuvelt from the Netherlands, Simone Heller from Germany, Maya Hahto from Finland or myself are all classified as “white”, because we are, without taking into account that as people from continental Europe, there are additional hurdles to Hugo recognition for us than there are for a white US citizen. Ditto for people from Africa compared to African-Americans, people from Asia compared to Asian-Americans, etc… Even in Europe, there are a lot of countries who have never had a Hugo finalist, let alone winner, in spite of having an SFF culture. That’s why I find listing the number of international finalists useful.
Even if poetry does not count towards Astounding eligibility, a short story in a high school paper or fanzine would still disqualify a lot of potential finalists. Connie Willis lost her Astounding, then Campbell Award, eligiblity to a pretty much fictional article about Bigfoot or aliens or whatever in some kind of tabloid. Of course, we can argue whether someone with a self-publishing career of several years or someone who published novels in other genres really counts as a new writer, regardless what the Astounding rules say. And I have voted accordingly and no awarded Astounding/Campbell finalists, because to me they were not new writers.
“However, the ethos behind the Hugos and also the not-technically-a-Hugo awards has always been that the nominators determine what goes into which category and that the administrator honours this decision, unless it directly clashes with the rules. However, the WSFS constitution does not actually define what counts as YA. So books that feel like YA due to the content and the age and behaviour of the characters may be nominated for the Lodestar, even if they are not explicitly marketed as YA. This is what happened with Naomi Novik’s Scholomance books. They may not be marketed as YA, but they sure as hell feel like it. And since the Hugos have no middle grade category, middle grade books go into the Lodestar as well.”
This is all true, but it still feels wrong to me. I think there ought to be a solid definition in the Constitution for YA, but I’m not confident it would go forward. I’d love to be wrong, but my incendiary belief is that the last handful of years have shown that evaluating young adult fiction may be a bad fit for Worldcon, and that the prominence of both books for younger audiences and books for older audiences that get in by “feeling” like YA show a lack of vested interest in the genre. If there were, then I think that there would be more of an effort to select the best books aiming for the teen reader rather than what appeals to the purview of an adult reader.
Most awards for young adult books are juried awards voted on by librarians who work with young people, and know their reading tastes and what fits best with that demographic (e.g. all the YALSA awards). Public vote awards for YA include stuff like…the Goodreads’ Choice Awards. The Andre Norton Award has had a better shake, but that’s an award explicitly including both middle grade and young adult works, plus it’s voted on entirely by writers. What we’re seeing with the Lodestar, I think, is the central flaw in its implementation: it’s asking the participants of a fan con with an increasing average age (as painful as that is to admit, but I think DM and his buddies/enablers should make us more readily able to admit that), to decide the best books of a genre that, though it can and often appeals to multiple demographics, by necessity has to first and foremost appeal to young people. I’m sure that many past their 30s read and enjoy newer YA books, but surely they’d rather read books made for their age group, right? That’s probably why the category’s felt like an afterthought, why it doesn’t feel like a selection built by YA fans. It prioritizes what “feels like” rather than “is.”
I dunno, I was excited when the category came into existence, but I was also a lot younger then. I don’t think it’s been all that successful in its aims or in bringing young blood to Worldcon, and it might be time to bring it to pasture.
I agree that the Lodestar is probably a bad fit for Worldcon, simply because the majority of Hugo voters are not the target audience for YA and often not that familiar with the genre either. Part of the problem is also that YA as a category in the modern sense didn’t really exist when most Hugo voters were younger, so they just pick books they think they would have enjoyed as teenagers.
A clearer definition of what counts as YA would probably not keep people from nominating adult SFF with a YA feel, though it would give the Hugo administrators clearer guidelines. Though again, you’d have to decide how to define it. Only books published by dedicated children’s and YA imprints? Only books clearly labeled as YA? Also, the Hugo (and Lodestar) categories are defined fairly loosely to offer space to edge cases and a stricter definition of YA goes against this.
That said, I do think a fan/reader voted award for YA SFF is valuable, simply because most YA and children’s books awards are voted upon by librarians, teachers, etc… whose tastes don’t necessarily align with those of teenagers either. However, Worldcon probably isn’t the best venue to host such an award.
Scalzi: I would guess this nomination was also driven by the Chinese fans. His books translate well across cultures.
That’s quite possible, since Scalzi’s work is popular in China (and not just there).
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Well, I finally found time to read your insights on the 2024 Hugo Award Finalists and, as always, found them to be insightful and illuminating.
Following on the Semi-Prozine category; I made a point in my File 770 Finalist column that I thought that this category is ill-named and practically obsolete. If I had enough gumption and patience, I would weather a few years of suffering in the WSFS Business Meeting to just combine this category with the Best Editor -Short Form and establish a Best Professional Magazine/Fiction Award.
I also agree that the eligibility rules on Best Related Work also needs to be reformed as well. I yearn for the good old days when only books were nominated. Ah well…
Best Wishes,
Chris B.
Thanks, Chris. I enjoyed your insights as well.
As for Semiprozine, that’s also not a battle I want to fight right, especially since I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I may eventually take up the cause of Best Related, when there is a good solution to the current dilemma. And we will probably have to find a way to capture those edge case finalists that the electorate clearly loves and many of whom are highly worthy, they’re just not even remotely non-fiction books.