MSFL's Hugo Nominee Recommendations List, 2023
It's that time of year again. Time to look at 2022 and decide which books are worth considering for awards.
As it happens, I've already missed the deadline for Nebula nominations. But there's plenty of time for the Locus, Hugo, and Dragon awards. Here are my recommendations for Hugo Award nominations. The reader can translate those over to Locus or Dragon as the reader sees fit.
Astounding Award: The Astounding Award for Best New Writer is never easy to figure out. There are so many deserving new writers that sneak past one's radar. Nevertheless, a few names stand out. The most obvious one is Sequoia Nagamatsu for her debut novel, How High We Go In The Dark. That novel is popular enough to vie for the Hugo for Best Novel outright, so it certainly puts Nagamatsu on the radar. Next after that is Sunyi Dean for her debut novel The Book Eaters, which has garnered a great deal of praise. Xiran Jay Zhao was already on my radar back in 2022, and this is her final year of eligibility, so her name recognition alone stands out. It would not surprise me in the least if she won this year. Chicago native Jamnia Nassim was named an Otherwise fellow in 2022 for her book, The Bruising of Quilwa, so those of us familiar with Wiscon will remember her. Saara El-Afri is eligible for her debut book, The Final Strife, and Gigi Ganguly is eligible for her novel, One Arm Shorter Than The Other.
Lodestar Award: The Loadstar Award for Best Young Adult Fiction is another tricky subcategory, but two books stand out far above the others. The first of these is Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn. It has an astonishing 21,624 reviews on Goodreads with a super-high 4.45 average rating. Nothing else comes close. But right behind that one is When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. Ostensibly, this is her first "adult" novel, yet the protagonist is a young girl. Barnhill has a considerably better chance at winning a Lodestar than a Hugo for Best Novel. After these I would recommend Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor, Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi, and The Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron. I would like to put in an additional good word for two other works: One is Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak by Charlie Jane Anders. This is a sequel to Victories Greater Than Death, but doesn't seem to have made as big a splash as the first book in the (now) trilogy. The other is Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods by Cathrynne M. Valente. Since Valente is a favorite of mine, I would like to see her succeed, but Osmo got only 73 reviews on Goodreads (avg. score 4.33), even though it was published in April of 2022.
Best Fan Writer: This category has so many hardworking people that it's hard to get a final list. Fortunately, there are some familiar names who are easy to recognize. Top of the list is Chris Barclay, a regular columnist for File770. He keeps me better informed than anyone else out there right now. Cora Buhlert, even from afar in Germany, keeps me informed about the world of indie publishing (and her Masters of the Universe collectibles posts are kinda cute). Charles Payseur's Quick Sip Reviews is always worthwhile, and Jim C. Hines' blog has insights I always appreciate. One familiar name, Alisdair Stuart, has dropped off a bit with me, as his newsletters keep covering tangent subjects I'm really not interested in. One surprising name that made the Nerds of a Feather recommended list is Marissa Lingen, who to my mind is better situated for a Hugo for Short Story rather than Fan Writer. Nevertheless, it seems her blog has caught enough attention to give her some crossover appeal. Kudos go out to Graeme Barber, a.k.a. "Pocgamer," for having a blog that really impressed me this year.
Best Fan Artist: As usual, the category of Best Fan Artist is chock full of near-professional work that is mouth-wateringly good. I whittled down the extensive list of highly qualified candidates, but only managed to get the total down to nine. When I cut deep to these final five names, it was like cutting off a limb. I cannot stress enough how hard it was to omit certain names here. That having been said, here are the final five, listed in alphabetical order by first name (there is no rank, they're all equally good). Iryna Iaroshenko, Jessica Holmes, Laya Rose, Marika Bailey, Matthew Dunn, and Rosie Thorns.
Best Fancast: Podcasts are something I know well. And, I don't mind adding here, that my own podcast for the Milwaukee Science Fiction League, Starship Fonzie, is eligible! (Not for the first time, it was eligible back in 2022 as well, but this is the first time I feel I've put in a year's worth of quality production, or quality enough production.) Top of the list, though, is Octothorpe, and Hugo, Girl! Both these podcasts are the ones I always look forward to for convention news and entertainment, respectively. Octothorpe's coverage of fan conventions is something I crave, and which no other podcast produces. Kudos to Alison, John, and Liz for this amazing show. And Hugo, Girl! is something I've very much gushed about before, and deservedly so! Haley Zapal, Amy Salley, Lori Anderson always make me laugh and put a smile on my face. And, of course, we have The Coode Street Podcast, where Jonathan Strahan and Locus Magazine's own Gary K. Wolfe break down what's happening in sci fi currently, and what happened historically, in a way that no other podcast does. For topic discussions, none is better than Our Opinions Are Correct with Charlie Jane Anders and Analee Newitz. In fact, that podcast flew under my radar last year because Charlie Jane and Analee were MC's for Chicon 8 last year, and I thought for sure that would mean they would not win for best fancast (sometimes MC's don't campaign during the ceremony they're hosting). But they won, and it was well earned. They're in the running again, this time without any MC'ing in the way. Look out. Among podcasts that discuss written sci fi past and present, check out Hugo Girl!'s brother podcast, Hugos There, which examines a selection from among past Hugo winners for review & discussion. And other good podcasts for discussing SFF include the old favorites of The Skiffy and Fanty Show and Sword and Laser. For writing how-to podcasts, the best are Worldbuilding For Masochists, and Mur Lafferty's Ditch Diggers. Although, to be fair, both Ditch Diggers, and Mur's other writing podcast, I Should Be Writing, have fallen off towards the end of 2022 becasue Mur has been crunched for time.
Podcasts that I've recently discovered, and are worth checking out, include SFF Yeah! with Jen Northington and Sharifah Williams, and the YouTube podcast SFF180 with Thomas Wagner. Also check out the YouTube podcast Chronicles Of Noria.
Best Fanzine: For fanzines, there are really three subcategories: reviews, news, and story publishing. A rare few fanzines are a combination of two or more, such as Black Nerd Problems or Journey Planet. For reviews, Charles Payseur's Quick Sip Reviews is always worthwhile, For news, nothing beats Mike Glyer's File 770. The other standards are Nerds of a Feather and Ladybusiness. Alisdair Stuart's zine The Full Lid used to have more interesting news of genre interest, but that's dropped off a bit lately (in my opinion). As for story publishing, nothing pops up on the radar right now. A.I. story generation has made even semi-pro zines buckle under the weight of so many new submissions. An amateur-press story-zine simply can't compete anymore.
Best Semiprozine: There's a newer kid on the block that's shaking up the semiprozine landscape. The Deadlands began in 2021 as a horror magazine centering on death, and it's risen to become one of the best story zines out there. Uncanny Magazine, which normally dominates year after year, had only six short stories make the Locus recommended list. The Deadlands had seven, tying it with Strange Horizons for most on the list this year. But Uncanny also had three novelettes make the Locus list, while The Deadlands had none in that category. Fiyah and F&SF had four short stories each make the list. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has recused itself from the Hugos this year.
Best Professional Artist: I'm really excited about some of the artists this year, but I'm a little disappointed that the usual avenues I take to discover the best artists were not paved well this time. Nerds of a Feather, whose recommendations I lean on, offered up artist after artist whose work qualified for 2021, but not 2022. Some of the artists it listed didn't even have any examples of recent artwork at all. Ladybusiness, which maintains an ongoing Google doc of qualifying entries for each category, only had a handful of names. So I was left to explore some of the work on my own. The most amazing cover I've seen this year comes from Dan Dos Santos, who did the cover for Patricia Briggs' novel, Soul Taken. Kittichai Rueangchaichan (Razaras), who did the cover art for Charlie Jane Anders' book, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, does an incredible job of capturing the beauty of the human face in a way so captivating it takes my breath away. Manzi Jackson did the compelling cover art for the anthology, Africa Risen. Micah Epstein did the cover for Tasha Suri's novel, Oleander Sword. I discovered the art of Elaine Ho when I saw her cover for Uncanny Magazine #46. She is being overlooked, damn it! And last but not least, Tommy Arnold is back for his cover for Tamsyn Muir's book, Nona the Ninth.
Best Editor, Long Form: Here, I'm going to grouse again at how difficult this category is. Even Nerds of a Feather and Ladybusiness can't parse out who is a qualifying entry, and there remains no good database with which fans can reasonably evaluate potential candidates. What usually happens is that fans throw up the names who edited their favorite novels, and just let the Hugo rules committee sort it out. If I were to do that, I would say Jennifer Jackson at Knopf for editing Emily St. John Mandel's book, Sea of Tranquility. Yet ESJM (yes, Emily deserves to go by her initials) has editors in the U.K. and Canada as well. Do we list them? And an editor needs FOUR edited works to qualify. Now that I have a name, Jennifer Jackson, which I got by flipping to the acknowledgements at the BACK of Emily St. John Mandel's PRINTED novel, how do I find out if Ms. Jackson has three more qualifying novels? It's damned near impossible. A much better fan resource is needed for this category, and it's needed soon!
IF we were to have such a resource, Ladybusiness would likely be the repository of it. They already have a Google sheet that's shared openly. So, if you know of an editor with 4 qualifying books, please ADD THAT NAME! It makes it so much easier for the rest of us when this monumental feat is crowdsourced.
That having been said, let me mention Betsy Wollheim, who edited Brendan P. Bellecourt's book, Absynthe. And Patrick Rothfuss, the editor behind John Scalzi's book, The Kaiju Preservation Society. I don't know if either has three other qualifying works, but they're worth a look.
Ladybusiness' Google sheet only lists four names for Best Editor Long Form, and only three of those have qualifying works listed (as of this writing). Those names are: Lee Harris, Tor/Macmillan, who edited Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire; Lindsey Hall, Tor/Macmillan, who edited Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher and The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean; and Chris Morgan, Tor/Macmillan, who edited You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo and Gods and Dragons by Kevin J Anderson.
Best Editor, Short Form: I look to how successful the short stories have been at making the locus list to determine who are the best editors in this category. So the editor-in-chief of The Deadlands is certainly the first that comes to mind. E. Catherine Tobler has done an amazing job in 2022! But the magazines are not the only places with good editors. Africa Risen has clearly been a dominant force in the anthology category, and that means the editing prowess of Ochenogowe Donald Ekpeki has again been proven. Both he and Sheree Renee Thomas of F&SF deserve high praise. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas have again done a marvelous job at Uncanny, and Scott H. Andrews has done excellent work at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Gautam Bhatia, Romie Stott, and the entire team at Strange Horizons deserve high praise. And Fiyah Magazine continues to put out high quality work, thanks to DaVaun Sanders and his colleagues.
Best Related Work: There are always wonderful surprises in this category every year. This year, two volumes jump out. The first is Still Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton. Wil has become everybody's favorite sci fi buddy, especially for Trekkies, and I'm looking forward to reading his book. The other is Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins. Anyone who has been a fan of the Discworld will surely appreciate this biography. Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of D&D by Ben Riggs is a book I've been dying to read ever since it was featured on NPR. In the video subcategory, American Masters: Elsa Sjunneson, was a wonderful PBS documentary. And Southeast Asians Roast Raya and the Last Dragon, hosted by Xiran Jay Zhao, is an amazing YouTube video made possible due to the input of many people who helped make the project happen. This video grew out of the fracas that took place over Lindsay Ellis making one crack about Raya and the Last Dragon. I defended her on this blog back in April of 2021. But if you want to see the video, watch it here.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Usually this category goes to a movie, although sometimes it can go to an entire season of a television show. This category is therefore relatively easy, because we all have our favorite films or shows in a given year. That having been said, there was SO MUCH this past year that it's hard to whittle down. I will try to do so in parts.
For movies, hands-down, the most surprizing and amazing was Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. It blew everyone away, and nothing has ever come along quite like it. Jordan Peele's Nope and the underrated movie The Adam Project were endorsed in the Milwaukee Science Fiction League's January meeting. Guillero Del Toro's stop-motion masterpiece, Pinocchio deserves serious consideration. And there were many big-budget films designed to wow people, but only wowed them 85%. These included Avatar: The Way of Water, Wakanda Forever, and Lightyear. Turning Red was probably underrated. Other blockbuster productions were enjoyable, but formulaic. These included Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love & Thunder, and Jurassic World: Dominion.
For television series, Andor is near the top of every list. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was in a category all its own. The Sandman! Enough said! Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk were well received. Other great series included Obi-Wan Kenobi, Stranger Things 4, and Wednesday.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: This gets trickier, because there were so many great episodes. But here's a try: For Andor, the episode "One Way Out" is probably the best one. Star Trek Discovery's best episode was probably "Species Ten-C". The opening episode of Hulu's series Kindred, based on the novel by Octavia Butler, is definitely worth consideration. HBO's His Dark Materials was good throughout the entire season, but episode 5, "No Way Out" was probably the best one. The Expanse gets one last shot at a Hugo, and the episode "Babylon's Ashes" is probably the best one for that. Love, Death and Robots had two episodes I'm recommending, "Kill, Team, Kill" and "Jibaro." And Station Eleven had an episode called "Who's There?" that was very good.
Best Graphic Story: As usual, I'm a little bit lost in this category. Nevertheless, some things stand out to me as an infrequent comic book reader, and I'll share them here. First up, Dune: The Graphic Novel. Book 1 was released back in 2020, but Book 2 was released in 2022. (Book 3 is planned for Spring of 2024.) This adaptation is spearheaded by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the official keepers of the franchise, so you know it's good. Next is Saga: Vol. 10. Saga has been described as a Romeo & Juliet meets Star Wars with a little Game of Thrones blended in. After that, Wonder Woman: Historia. This comes in Books 1, 2, and 3, but I'm putting the entire set in as a single bloc for voting purposes. Eat the Rich by Sarah Gailey sounds interesting, and not just for the title. The Many Deaths of Laila Starr is mentioned to me by multiple sources, as is Lore Olympus.
Best Series: Tamsyn Muir probably has the best chance of winning this category with her Locked Tomb Trilogy, ending with Nona the Ninth. And what's not to like? Interplanetary necromancers doing battle with skeleton armies? Sign me up! After that, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time trilogy qualifies with Children of Memory. Nnedi Okorafor has a chance to win both a Lodestar and a Hugo with her series, The Nsibidi Scripts, the current volume being Akata Woman. The next one that stands out for me is Ken Liu's The Dandelion Dynasty, the current volume of which is Speaking Bones. And Premee Mohammed's trilogy Beneath the Rising qualifies with Void Ascendant.
Best Short Story: I have a history of getting the nominees almost exactly wrong in this category. But I'll list my favorites here anyway. Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills blew me away, and came at just the right time in history. Marissa Lingen wrote a very nice tale with The Plasticity of Youth. A story called Lily, the Immortal by Lylie Lee Baker really touched me. I was also impressed by a story by Ochenogowe Donald Ekpeki called Destiny Delayed. Finally, Naomi Kritzer came through for me again with her story, The Dragon Project.
Best Novelette: I do love this category, because every year I discover something truly extraordinary. This year it was Gene Doucette and his humorously compelling story, Primordial Soup and Salad (Lightspeed). Adam-Troy Castro was not a new discovery for me, but his semi-autobiographical story about his wife's passing, My Future Self, Refused (Lightspeed) really moved me. I remember interviewing him for Starship Fonzie, and he related how his wife's passing influenced another story he'd written. We commiserated over mutual passing of loved ones (his wife, my father). Clearly, his thanatopsis was good for one more great tale.
Only one novelette got recommended in Nerds of a Feather, Ladybusiness' Google Sheet, and the Locus list, and that was Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition), by Tlotlo Tsamaase in the anthology Africa Risen. Three other stories made 2 out of 3 of the lists: The Backbone of the World by Steven Graham Jones (Trespass), Patterns in Stone and Stars by M.V. Melcer (GigaNotoSaurus), and Save Changes by Jannele Monáe, et. al., published in the anthology The Memory Librarian (Harper Voyager).
Comments
Post a Comment