Hugo Awards Voting Completed!

Little My by Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson's Little My perfectly captures my feeling about finalizing my voting for this year's Hugo Awards! Gloria and I are headed to Helsinki next month to see who all wins, but I sigh my relief that voting is ended and that I no longer have to struggle with rankings in some very tough categories. If you voted, you'll know exactly what I mean.

In the best novel category I think I changed my rankings below my top choice at least a half-dozen times. My struggle for #2 was a continual battle between Nora K. Jemisin's magnificent sequel to her Hugo Award-winning The Fifth Season, titled The Obelisk Gate, and Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning, a book that I spent the better part of two weeks trying to wrap my head around. (Thanks Ada Palmer for a long Twitter discussion about my questions). In the end, even though I suspect that The Obelisk Gate stands little chance of winning with after NKJ won last year, I ranked her book second since I loved it so, Palmer's book third, Yoon Ha Lee's challenging immersion experience Ninefox Gambit fourth and Cixin Li's book last because honestly, I just find his work utterly mind-numbing, even as I hear everyone's argument that it's brilliant. As many of you will note, there is a missing book here. I just cannot abide All the Birds in the Sky. (I will never understand the book's popularity. See my review here.) If it wins, which I know it may, I shall just weep because my first choice was Becky Chamber's lovely A Closed and Common Orbit, a book about artificial intelligence that renders AI complex and interesting, all in another joyous Becky Chambers book. I loved that book. Sidra and Owl are marvelous. You can read my review of A Closed and Common Orbit here.

In the best novella category it should surprise no one that I place Every Heart a Doorway as my top choice. This is a such a well-written book and whatever quibbles I may have with the plot working as part-mystery, my concerns are overwritten by my absolute love of the concept of this book- what happens when children who have been to one of these portal worlds have to come back to this world and live here with all their memories of that other world they ventured to. I was never satisfied with C.S. Lewis's Narnia world rules where Susan just comes home, puts on makeup, hits puberty and it's "bye-bye, Narnia, I'm all grown up now." So I loved this book. Kai Ashanti Wilson's A Taste of Honey, whose Wildeeps series I now need to read more of, was my second choice. And that's one theme of this years voting for me- discovering authors I simply have to read more of. Carrie Vaughn, Fran Wilde... I discovered so many new writers to love.

The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde was my favorite novelette from start to finish of nominations and voting this year. And I just found out from Gloria that the audiobook of the novelette is terrific, so I have to go back and listen to it. Audiobooks were my salvation this year, allowing me to listen to so many books while doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, and while driving. Of course, they were also the source of feelings of withdrawal (more on that later).

In the short story category, the most haunting and emotionally evocative story for me was Carrie Vaughn's luminous That Game We Played During the War. As much as I utterly adore Amal El-Mohtar's Seasons of Iron and Glass and everything that story represents about women saving themselves, Carrie Vaughn's short story just pierced my heart. It is such a beautiful evocation of sadness, depression and communication.

Skipping ahead to best long form dramatic presentation, can I state once again that as a PhD chemist, the idea that Hidden Figures is nominated for what is pretty much a science fiction award is so annoying I want to break things. Think about it. Women doing astrophysics nominated for a science fiction award. No, no, no. So I warred with myself ever since the ballot was released in April. I didn't rank it. I ranked it first. I ranked it at the bottom of the ballot. Then I got mean and pragmatic at the last moment (thanks in part to Gloria's texting me about my ballot, which she saw) and said, "an award is an award, and this film deserves awards and maybe people won't even know what a Hugo Award is," and ranked it first. Arrival, with it's potent message about how we communicate, was my second choice. For short form, my top choice is the Black Mirror episode San Junipero.

The Campbell Award for Best New Author was always down to Ada Palmer for me. While I struggled with Too Like the Lightning, there is no denying how awesomely written the book is. I already have Seven Surrenders, the sequel, on my Kindle, ready to start reading when I'm caught up on Net Galley duty.

And finally, there's the hardest of hard choices. Best Series. Wow was this tough. I went into it thinking October Daye! October Daye! October Daye! And, by the tiniest, of razor thin edges, I remained October Daye! I have so much love for Rivers of London. Like, I am addicted to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narration of that series. Now if I look back and read any of them, I hear Kobna's voice. I seriously was tweeting just the other day that I am so sorely tempted to marathon them all over again. I was sooooo sad when I finished those audiobooks. And then there is Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, which I haven't finished yet but I am totally sold on the uniqueness of his created world. I haven't found a character to love as much as Toby or Peter Grant, but maybe I haven't been reading long enough yet. The choice between these three series was soooooo hard. I'm not really much of a Naomi Novik fan, other than Uprooted which was a standalone, nor am I sold on Lois Bujold McMaster's series. But wow, those three top choices were grueling. It came down to which series was more advanced, under the assumption (weak as it may be) that it would finish sooner and have fewer shots at winning if this category remains, which I would hope to be the case. So in that instance, Max Gladstone has said 10-13 books are anticipated and Ruin of Angels, out later this year, will be Book 6 in the Craft Sequence. Ben Aaronovitch hasn't said much about the length of the Rivers of London series. Book 6, The Hanging Tree, released last year and The Furthest Station, a novella, releases this year (already published in a special edition from Subterranean Press). And so that's how I ranked them. My beloved October Daye first, Rivers of London second, and Craft Sequence third. It was almost like a Sophie's Choice scenario.

So who did you vote for on this year's ballot?