The 2025 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Final Results

As always, I end my Hugo posts for the year with my takes on what won. Although, this year they haven't released the full stats yet, so it's possible I'll do another once we get the nominating data, and I can tell to what extent deserving finalists were robbed... or to what extent we were spared even worse finalists! I have also been thinking of bringing back my post on "No Award" that I did a couple times. We'll see!

Last year, I wrote that "[n]ext year's Worldcon is the U.S., so an evening ceremony will actually be in the evening, making it a lot easier for me to tune in." What I had forgotten about is that Worldcon would be in Seattle, so an 8:30 ceremony would be at 11:30. I didn't make it! I did, however, wake up at 5:00am because one of my kids crawled into bed with me and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I immediately checked my phone for the results, and texted my friend who was a finalist... not thinking about the fact that for him it was 2:00am at that point... and it had probably been a very long night! I did pull up the livestream that day, but I just jumped around until I found the bit where Jordan gave his speech.

So what did I think of the results? How did they compared to my own votes? I will say, I did really like the fancy graphs they included in the stats packet to demonstrate how the instant runoff works in ranked choice voting. They haven't released, however, the runs for placements lower than first yet, so I don't know how anything I ranked first ultimately fared.

Category	What Won	Where I Ranked It	What I Ranked #1	Where It Placed
Best Novel	The Tainted Cup	2nd	The Ministry of Time	???
I ranked this second, and actually predicted it would win: "my guess is Tainted Cup, which I think was a very solid book and thus the kind of book a lot of people might rank in second, allowing it to win on transfers." Well, I was right that it won, but if you look at the data, it had a commanding lead from the beginning, which it held onto throughout, so I was wrong about what the reason would be. My beloved Ministry of Time got the fifth-most amount of first-round votes... but it's hardly surprising. What did surprise me is there wasn't more of a direct relationship between the two finalists by Adrian Tchaikovsky; when his Service Model was eliminated, the votes did not all transfer to Alien Clay.
Best Novella	The Tusks of Extinction	1st	The Tusks of Extinction	1st
Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by the Hugo electorate. My prediction was that "something I ranked below 'No Award' will win Best Novella"! The Tusks of Extinction, though, had a small lead from the first round that it continually built upon via transfers, even though usually some other work got more transfers every time something was eliminated. Particularly, it picked up a lot of transfers from The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (this makes sense, because that was the other actually good finalist). In the last round, the elimination of The Butcher of the Forest gave more transfers to What Feasts at Night than Tusks, but this wasn't enough to put What Feasts over the edge.
Best Novelette	"The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea"	3rd	"The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video"	???
I found Best Novelette weak this year, and I predicted "Kritzer or Pinsker will win Best Novelette, with an outside chance that it's Leckie"... and yes, it was Kritzer! Thus I'm not too disappointed even though these creepypasta-style stories by Kritzer and Pinsker that keep getting nominated aren't really my bag.
Best Short Story	"Stitched to Skin Like Family Is"	6th	"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole"	???
Oof. Interestingly, both "Stitched to Skin" and "Omelas Hole" got 279 first-place votes in the first round... but as lower-ranked finalists were eliminated, "Omelas Hole" picked up noticeably fewer transfers almost every time. Evidently it was quite polarizing! I'll be very curious to see where it places once the runs for second through sixth place are released. I'm also curious about Kowal's "Marginalia," which received the third-most amount of first-place votes, but was eliminated sooner than you might expect.
Best Graphic Story or Comic	Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way	1st	Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way	1st
Finally, a work of actual quality wins Best Graphic Story! This basically crushed it, with a commanding lead it never lost. The Deep Dark was eliminated last, so clearly the voters had some sense this year.
Best Related Work	Speculative Whiteness	1st	Speculative Whiteness	1st
I did not imagine this! I predicted my friend Jordan would lose to one of the works about the Hugo Awards themselves, but instead he won!! I'm thanked in the Acknowledgements to this book, so it's basically like I won a Hugo, of course. (Where's my rocket???) If you look at the stats, Speculative Whiteness actually starts with the third-most votes in the first round, and indeed, one of the works about the Hugos themselves is in second (and briefly in first, during round two). But when the other "actually a book" finalist (Track Changes) is eliminated, Speculative Whiteness slides into the lead; "actually a book" voters for Best Related Work, unite! I didn't expect the YouTube video about the Star Wars hotel to do so well, though.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)	Dune, Part Two	5th	Flow	???
At least it wasn't Mad Max, I guess. My prediction that part two of Dune would not have the same oomph as part one was totally wrong. I will predict now that Dune, Part Three will win in 2027. Flow was robbed! (Actually, it did quite well.)
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)	Star Trek: Lower Decks: "The New Next Generation"	4th	Doctor Who: "Dot and Bubble"	???
Last year, I wrote that, "Someday Star Trek will win again!" but I didn't think it would be this year. This felt more like a win for the cumulative quality of Lower Decks rather than its somewhat mediocre finale per se. I will need to update my post about the history of Star Trek at the Hugo Awards now!
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book	Sheine Lende	2nd	Heavenly Tyrant	???
My top two choices were the top two finalists! Nice! Interestingly, Heavenly Tyrant had more first-round votes than any other finalist, but picked up very little on transfers as other finalists were eliminated. It was in a very tight race with Sheine Lende until the very end!

As always, I had a good time even when reading bad books, and am thankful for the exposure to good work I otherwise would not have come across: this year that's Agatha All Along, "The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video," The Deep Dark, Flow, I Saw the TV Glow, The Ministry of Time, The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, The Tainted Cup, "Three Faces of a Beheading," Track Changes, and The Tusks of Extinction. Some of these works I had heard of but probably never gotten around to; many I had never even heard of! In particular, I look forward to reading the sequel to The Tainted Cup when it hits paperback, and to reading more short fiction from Thomas Ha, Isabel J. Kim, and Arkady Martine.

Look forward to more posts about the 2025 awards, I think, once more data is available, and an update to my Star Trek and the Hugos post. But this is it for now!