Best Novel
- Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee [My Review]
- A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers [My Review]
- Death's End by Cixin Liu [My Review]
- All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders [My Review]
- Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer [My Review]
- The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin [My Review]
Predicted Winner: Ninefox Gambit, though A Closed and Common Orbit or All the Birds in the Sky also seem to be faring well. But what do I know. My predictions are always wrong.
Best NovellaI'm skipping this category this year. Relatively long stories combined with an extra finalist this year contributed to this decision, but really, I just wanted to start reading The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and the prospect of spending a couple weeks sifting through a bunch of stories that I have historically not enjoyed very much wasn't doing much for me. I have read Penric and the Shaman and enjoyed it quite a bit, but even for that, I was a bigger fan of Bujold's other Penric novella, Penric's Mission (which, I'm told, was disqualified because it was a hair over the wordcount limit for Novella, but still).
Best Novelette- Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman
- The Tomato Thief by Ursula Vernon
- You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong
- The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
- The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen
- No Award
Predicted Winner: The Tomato Thief
Best Short Story- That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn
- Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
- Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies by Brooke Bolander
- The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin
- An Unimaginable Light by John C. Wright
- A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong
Predicted Winner: The City Born Great? I mean, have I ever gotten one of these predictions correct?
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form I didn't explicitly post about this category, but I've already covered 2016 in movies pretty thoroughly. In general, I love the first two entries in my rankings, but there's a steep dropoff after that. This isn't particularly unusual for this category, and there's always one or two movies that would have been great nominees but didn't make the cut (this year, I was hoping The Witch would get some love, but it's not the type of movie Hugo voters tend to go for, I guess. Will be interested to see the nomination stats...)Predicted Winner: Arrival, though Hidden Figures seems to have a fair amount of buzz...
Best SeriesA fascinating category, for sure, but one that has significant logistical hurdles. I've read the entire Vorkosigan Saga and am really pulling for it, but is it realistic to expect people will read all of these books before voting? Especially considering that the best entries are pretty deep into the series? I mean, I obviously recommend this, but this has to be difficult if you've not already read these series. I've never been that into The Expanse but I've only read the first novel. Is it fair to judge the series on that one novel? There's only a couple of weeks left before voting closes and that's simply not enough time to read more of that plus 4 other series of books (or even the first novel in each). Ultimately, I don't feel like it'd be fair to vote in this category without giving each of the series a fair shake, which to me means reading more than one novel in each series (at minimum). I gather that this is somewhat unusual and that some voters are more than willing to give up on a book/series after only a tiny sample (or not reading at all). But that's not really my style.
Predicted Winner: Vorkosigan Saga, please?
So this marks the end of my Hugo journey this year. Look for a recap when the Awards are announced in August, but otherwise, we now return you to our normal wanking about movies (coming soon: a Martial Arts Movie Omnibus post!)
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