2020 Hugo Award Winners: Novels, Novellas, Novelettes, Short Stories

The 2020 Hugo Award Winners have been announced at ConZealand

None of my favorites have won, which proves once again that I have a different taste and opinion than average Hugo voters.

I extract only a few categories which are interesting for me. Here are all the winners and finalists from short to long story (links in the title lead to freely available online publications):

Best Short Story

Though I didn’t find a 5 star story in this category, my favorite is “Do Not Look Back, My Lion” by Alix E. Harrow shortly followed by “Blood is Another Word for Hunger” by Rivers Solomon.

• Winner: ★★★+☆☆ • As the Last I May Know • 2019 • Alternate History short story by S.L. Huang • review
• ★★★★☆ • Do Not Look Back, My Lion • 2019 • High Fantasy short story by Alix E. Harrow • review
• ★★★★☆ • Blood Is Another Word for Hunger • 2019 • Weird short story by Rivers Solomon • review
• ★★★+☆☆ • And Now His Lordship Is Laughing  • 2019 • Magical realism short story by Shiv Ramdas • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★★☆☆ • A Catalog of Storms • 2019 • Surreal fantasy short story by Fran Wilde • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★☆☆☆ • Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island • 2019 • Horror short story by Nibedita Sen • also Nebula finalist • review

Best Novelette

My favorite is Chiang’s story “Omphalos” which is just a notch better than the cute cat story “For he can creep”. Most of the other stories were nice reads, but I don’t consider them as award worthy.

• Winner: ★★★☆☆ • Emergency Skin • 2019 • Transhuman SF novelette by N.K. Jemisin • review
• ★★★★☆ • Omphalos • 2019 • Speculative fiction novelette by Ted Chiang • review
• ★★★★☆ • For He Can Creep • 2019 • Fairy tale by Siobhan Carroll • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★★+☆☆ • Away With the Wolves • 2019 • Fantasy novelette by Sarah Gailey • review
• ★★★☆☆ • The Archronology of Love • 2019 • SF novelette by Caroline M. Yoachim • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★☆☆☆ • The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye • 2019 • Weird fiction novelette by Sarah Pinsker • also Hugo finalist • review

Best Novella

I was especially disappointed by the multi award winner “This Is How You Lose the Time War” which I had to DNF. My bets were on Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” from his great collection “Exhalation“.

• Winner: ☆☆☆☆☆ (DNF at around 50%) • This Is How You Lose the Time War • 2019 • Time travel novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★★★★ • The Haunting of Tram Car 015 • 2019 • Urban Fantasy novella by P. Djèlí Clark • also Hugo finalist • review
• ★★★★★ • Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom • 2019 • Near Future SF novella by Ted Chiang • review, also Nebula
• ★★★★★ • The Deep • 2019 • Fantasy novella by Rivers Solomon • also Nebula finalist • review
• ★★+☆☆☆ • To Be Taught, If Fortunate • 2019 • SF novella by Becky Chambers • also Locus finalist • review
• In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)

Best Novel

• Winner: A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK), also Nebula
• The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
• Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing), also Nebula
• The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
• Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK), also Nebula