Normally I make this post pretty shortly after the results are announced. But one of the things I like to do in it is go over the nominating statistics for each category, commenting just not on what won, but also what was on the longlist.
If you follow the Hugo Awards, you'll know that this year the voting statistics came out pretty shortly after the award ceremony, as normal... but the release of the nominating statistics were dragged out on and on and on.
Well, they finally came out last week, and it was a shitshow. Charlie Stross has a fairly good summary at his blog, but the short short version is that a number of works were eliminated for "eligibility" issues... with absolutely no explanation of what those eligibility issues might actually be. It is pretty hard to infer any explanation other than political censorship, though as Ada Palmer points out at her blog, this was almost certainly preemptive self-censorship rather than any kind of official ruling from the Communist Party of China.
But anyway, at last I am here to tell you what I think of the results,
and how they compared to my own votes.
| Category | What Won | Where I Ranked It | What I Ranked #1 | Where It Placed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best Novel | Nettle and Bone | 1st | Nettle and Bone | 1st |
| Well, thank God sanity prevailed. Legends & Lattes, to the detriment of literature everywhere, made it to second place, but it could have been worst. Famously, this is the category where R. F. Kuang's Babel clearly had enough nominations to make the ballot (it's third on the official report) and was ruled "not eligible" for no reason. A lot of people had been surprised it didn't make the ballot (it had won the Nebula after all) and it turned out there was very much a reason for this. Without this spurious action, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (which placed fifth) would not have made the ballot. Interesting to note that sixth-place finalist Nona the Ninth actually got the third most nominations (ignoring Babel). | ||||
| Best Novella | Where the Drowned Girls Go | [UNRANKED] | What Moves the Dead | 4th |
| What Moves the Dead in fourth!??! What the fungus?!!?!! A Wayward Children novella in first!??!??!! Is there something wrong with people?!!?!!??!!! I found this very dispiriting. Note that Drowned Girls actually came in seventh on nominations, only making it onto the ballot because Becky Chambers declined nomination for the second "Monk and Robot" novella. Well, I think anyway. Who knows what the hell is up with these fudged nominating statistics. | ||||
| Best Novelette | "The Space-Time Painter" | [UNRANKED] | "If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You" | 2nd |
| I know the con was held in China, but it still seems pretty improbable that the winning story was the one with no official English translation! At least "Speaking to God" came in second and "Difference Between Love and Time" last. (The Chinese novella "Colour the World" by Congyun "Mu Ming" Gu received the second-most nominations but was ruled ineligible for no given reason. I have read this and thought it was very good, and it probably would have received my second-place vote if it had been listed.) | ||||
| Best Short Story | "Rabbit Test" | 1st | "Rabbit Test" | 1st |
| Not only did this story justly win first, it's also one of the most decisive victories in Hugo history, getting a majority of first-round votes with no need for instant-runoff voting. | ||||
| Best Graphic Story or Comic | Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams | 5th | Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow | 4th |
| I wrote, "I am going to go out on a limb and claim this will be Tom King's year to
finally win it... but he came in sixth last year, so what do I know?" Well, Tom King came in fourth, so I did not know much, and the story that won isn't one I could have predicted at all. At least it wasn't Dune: The Novel: The Film: The Graphic Novel? | ||||
| Best Related Work | Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes | 1st | Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes | 1st |
| I (and everyone else) saw this one coming. I can't argue. The longlist, as usual, looks goofy but the actual final ballot was decent. | ||||
| Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) | Everything Everywhere All at Once | 1st | Everything Everywhere All at Once | 1st |
| Four categories where the voters and I agreed? I think this is a record. Thanks to two ineligibility rulings and one declined nomination, only a couple more nominations would have put ninth-place Ms. Marvel season one on the ballot. | ||||
| Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | The Expanse: "Babylon's Ashes" | 5th | Stranger Things: "Dear Billy" | 3rd |
| The Expanse always wins, so not too surprising. I would have thought Stranger Things would come in second, but I guess Andor (which did) is more to the core sensibility of the Hugo voter. Last year, I wrote that I was sure a Strange New Worlds episode would make the ballot, but "A Quality of Mercy" was down in tenth, and "Spock Amok" (which I nominated) in twelfth. But surely "Those Old Scientists" will make it next year? | ||||
| Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book | Akata Woman | 3rd | In the Serpent's Wake | 4th |
| A weak ballot this year, so I find it hard to be fussed. | ||||
Oh, and hopefully the concom doesn't preemptively censor the ballot.
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