Hugo Winners!

I didn’t actually attend the Hugo Award ceremony — my tolerance for speeches, even happy speeches, being quite low. My brother and I went out to dinner instead. But of course I was curious about the winners, so this morning I checked the website and here they are — some surprises, plenty of predictable results —

BEST NOVEL — The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This was the real surprise for me! I truly thought Uprooted was the shoo-in for this one. Well, even though I didn’t get through it, I did think Jemisin’s book had an unusual and fascinating structure and was very well written. Chaos Horizon is already musing about this win, which is fast work!

BEST NOVELLA — Binti by Nnedi Okorafor — I didn’t like this one, but since it won the Nebula, I wasn’t surprised it won the Hugo, too.

BEST NOVELETTE — “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu — ditto; I mean, I knew it had a lot of fans and the setting was so unusual and original that I kind of expected it to win, even though I didn’t care for it personally.

BEST SHORT STORY — “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer — such a charming story, and I do look forward to trying the novel of Kritzer’s I have on my TBR pile.

BEST RELATED WORK — No Award — no surprise there

BEST GRAPHIC STORY — The Sandman: Overture written by Neil Gaiman, art by J.H. Williams III — definitely no surprise; anything else would have been truly astonishing.

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM — The Martian — of course, although the Star Wars movie was so popular I guess that one might have won.

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM — Jessica Jones: “AKA Smile” — I didn’t know anything about any of these entries.

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM — Ellen Datlow

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM — Sheila E. Gilbert

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST — Abigail Larson

BEST SEMIPROZINE — Uncanny Magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Michi Trota, and Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

BEST FANZINE — File 770 edited by Mike Glyer — of course.

BEST FANCAST — No Award

BEST FAN WRITER — Mike Glyer

BEST FAN ARTIST — Steve Stiles

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer — Andy Weir — again, of course. And I hear he got an astronaut to accept the award for him; very cool.

Interesting times for the Hugo Award; I’ll be following the next few years with some attention even if I don’t have time to read enough current works to nominate or vote, which is starting to look likely with my deadlines!