There are various posts popping up here and there discussing Hugo nominations, and urging people to nominate now before the mid-March deadline comes and goes. Cheryl has a worthwhile piece, and Nial Harrison is doing it too. Because there’s nothing like following a trend, I thought I might post my thoughts and recommendations here, for the 0.00025 of you who might be interested.
Best Novel
The main category, the real deal, what it’s all about, so we might as well start here. I used to have a real prejudice about nominating fantasy for the Hugo – there isn’t really any other award that’s just for SF any more – but I’ve gotten over that. For my money, the best novel of the year was Sean Stewart’s extraordinary tale of perfect pop songs, dysfunctional families and dead people, but I also loved Geoff Ryman’s smart, savvy SF novel Air. Were it solely up to me, I’d have one of those two win. That said, I was also very impressed with Wolfe’s two-volume fantasy, McDonald’s fine novel of near-future India, and Stan Robinson’s uneven but undeniably powerful and passionate attempt to rebuild our world in the face of disaster. That’d be my five for the list, were it not for Harrison’s novel which, as Cheryl points out, is eligible this year. I’d add it at #6, and I think you’d end up with a damn fine list.
- Perfect Circle, Sean Stewart
- Air, Geoff Ryman
- The Wizard Knight, Gene Wolfe
- River of Gods, Ian McDonald
- Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson
- Light, M. John Harrison
Best Novella
Hmmm. For the purposes of this post, we’re talking a single story of between 17,500 words and 40,000 words (give or take 20%). Having just finished up Best Short Novels for the year, I’ve got some pretty definite ideas about this category. Mainly what struck me was that it wasn’t quite as strong a year as 2003, though it was good. Greg Feeley had two very good novellas, Charlie Stross had three good ones, and Steve Baxter had a bunch. I was very impressed with Bob Silverberg’s Between Worlds which had four strong SF novellas, and was the original SF anthology of the year. Thinking about it, I probably liked Brad Denton’s story the most, but these five were all terrific.
- Denton, Bradley, “Sergeant Chip”
- Feeley, Gregory, “Arabian Wine”
- Baxter, Stephen, Mayflower II
- Kelly, James Patrick, “The Wreck of the Godspeed”
- Stross, Charles, “The Concrete Jungle”