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
I see some names and titles I recognize in there, but none from the short and novelette categories.
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Jemisin and Chiang are really prominent names in the novelette category.
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I’ve read the Ten Excerpts… and I was honestly baffled by the fuss around it. It’s a very mediocre story, the only original thing was the narrative form. For He Can Creep is nice, well-written, but a bit of an easy way out with the cats – not much to think about afterwards 😉 I’ll be definitely reading Chiang’s story.
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I didn’t know that there was fuss around the Ten Excerpts – I just took the Hugo list and read through it without noticing anything around it.
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Well, it was a Nebula finalist in 2019, and Hugo nominee in 2020 – to me it’s still a bit of fuss 😉 I’ve read about it on several blogs and the reviews were pretty positive as well. I guess I just expected more than just a feminist commentary 😉
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Ah, that‘s fuss 👍 Well, I‘m used to having some really unconvincing stories in Award finalists
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Looks like I’m only getting slowly getting there 😁 There are some pretty solid ones, too, though – I’m surprised at how uneven the quality is for what still are the most important industry awards.
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Honestly, I‘ve been surprised positively about this year’s quality.
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The only category where I read all nominees was the short story category and my favourite won—Kuang.
Whatever else I read was just one here or there, but never the whole category…
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The Kuang story remembers me heavily of Le Guin’s Omelas. Maybe I should set up a new Omelas category for such stories 😁
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Definitely. You already have three entries with Jemisin…
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