I started voting for the Hugos in 2016 for two main reasons. I wanted to take more part in science fiction fandom, and I found the Sad and Rabid Puppies to be really obnoxious. Luckily the Puppies have since taken their pack elsewhere, but I'm still excited about taking part in fandom and being part of science fiction history and all that.
Like a lot of humans on planet Earth during the last few months, I'm having trouble getting as much done as usual due to a pandemic and various economic and political crises (including ongoing racial injustice here in the US). One thing I have managed to do is keep a pandemic journal, which I post here with memes.
Unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to vote in as many Hugo categories as I have in previous years. I think considering everything, I still did pretty well. I still got all the main literature categories as well as related work, TV, movies, and fan writer. Apologies to the categories and works I didn't get to. I trust that you are all awesome and worthy. Maybe I'll do better in 2021.
Back in 2017 I was trying to figure out how to go about voting for the Hugos, and I came up with Three Principles of Hugo Voting in a bit of a riff on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (both triads of principles are almost impossible to follow consistently).
- Works that are more ground breaking in the field in their construction, plot, characters, setting, ideas, etc. are to be preferred as are works that are neither sequels nor works by authors who have won Hugos in recent years.
- Works that delve more deeply into philosophical content are to be preferred.
- Works that are just plain fun and enjoyable are to be preferred as long as such preference does not conflict with the first or second principles.
Will I be able to consistently apply these principles? Let's find out!
Best Novel
This is the highest profile category. I admit I wasn't super excited about the novels when I first saw the 2020 Hugo nominations. I wasn't a big fan of other work I've read by Charlie Jane Anders and Seanan McGuire. And I hadn't read any of the others before the nominations were announced. The only one that sounded interesting to me was Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire.
I managed to read four of the novels. I peeked at a few pages of the Anders and McGuire nominees, which both sound more interesting now than I originally gave them credit for. Oh, well.
I loved A Memory Called Empire so much that I couldn't imagine anything coming close to beating it. Which is exactly what happened, although I ended up liking the others I read more than expected. Anyway, here's how I voted.
1. A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
- Like I said, this is my #1 choice by a pretty large margin. A space opera with understandable political intrigue, deep philosophical questions about identity, science fictional riffs on Aztec and Byzantine empires, and more... See everything I loved about it in my review.
2. The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
- I did not expect to rank this as highly as I did, although it's a distant second. Military SF isn't my thing, but Hurley got me thinking some pretty deep thoughts about metaphysics and politics. It also has a somewhat unconventional structure. So, it hits the first two of my Three Principles of Hugo Voting. See my review.
3. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)
- From my review: "... a beautifully written portal fantasy with some interesting ideas, but it's light on world building for my tastes..."
4. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
- This is a weird book that many readers loved. Necromancers... in space! And more! Although there was a lot I liked, I couldn't quite love it. But I didn't hate it, either. See my review.
Left off my ballot...
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novella
I started with the novellas this year, and I'm glad I did! Novellas let you delve into a story but without getting bogged down.
You can see what I thought of all the novellas here. It was hard to rank them, but I decided to go with The Deep as #1, mostly because I found its history as a collaborative work of art to be particularly interesting. It's also beautifully written and contains some deep ruminations about identity in the African diaspora through a fantasy story about mer-folk type people in the Atlantic.
Last year I finally became a fan of Becky Chambers with her novel Record of a Spaceborn Few, and I found her novella as well as Ted Chiang's nominee to be among the most explicitly philosophical of the bunch this year. Clark's nominee is really great. Nothing wrong with it, it's just up against some solid competition. The only one I didn't really care for (or at least I didn't see the hype) was This is How You Lose the Time War. I managed to read all of the novellas except McGuire's, which is a sequel.
1. The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery)
2. To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)
3. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador))
4. The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
5. This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)
Left off my ballot...
In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novelette
Honestly I think this was my favorite category this year. See my post with more detailed reviews here. I really enjoyed each and every nominee. It would be totally cool with me if any of these wins the Hugo. But alas! I had to rank them, and this ranking was the most difficult of any category for me. I decided to rank Chiang's nominee #1, mostly because it's the most explicitly philosophical, although Pinsker's clever horror story raises interesting questions about the nature of creativity, too. I loved Jemisin's story, and probably would have ranked it higher if she hadn't won so many Hugos recently. Carroll's is pretty much written for cat lovers like me, Yoachim's story is beautiful, and Gailey's is a lot of fun. Again, all the nominees are great. I really had to apply my criteria to make some decisions.
1. “Omphalos”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador))
2. “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2019)
3. Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin (Forward Collection (Amazon))
4. “For He Can Creep”, by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, 10 July 2019)
5. “The Archronology of Love”, by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed, April 2019)
6. “Away With the Wolves”, by Sarah Gailey (Uncanny Magazine: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy Special Issue, September/October 2019)
Best Short Story
Like the novelettes, I liked all the short story nominees this year even if I didn't love all of them quite as much as I loved all the novelettes. See what I thought about each story here. Ranking these was difficult, but I decided to put Ramdas's story in at #1 mostly for the way it skillfully evoked a terrible historical event (the 1943 Bengal famine), but with a fantastic twist. Sen's story has a unique structure (it's a horror story via annotated bibliography), while Huang's and Harrow's both raise some interesting philosophical issues. Solomon's and Wilde's didn't work as well for me, but I liked them alright and they had interesting ideas.
1. “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)
2. “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)
3. “As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
4. “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 2019)
5. “Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)
6. “A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2019)
I'll get to other categories in part two, including Best Related Work, TV and movies, and Best Fan Writer. Stay tuned!
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