RogerBW's Blog

2015 Hugo Awards: what happened in the end 23 August 2015

Now that the awards have been made, here are my reactions.

(Also, hurrah, Helsinki in 2017!)

Numbers are taken from the official record. Something like my preferred voting strategy seems to have prevailed: all of the puppy nominees are below No Award, except in Dramatic Presentation. I won't go over the No Awards in detail, or the cases where the only non-slate nominee was the winner, though I note that five No Awards equals the total previous No Awards ever given by the Hugos.

Best Novel

Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor Books)

Rather surprising; I was torn between Ancillary Sword or The Goblin Emperor but I thought this a much inferior work.

Best Graphic Story

Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt (Marvel Comics)

Is this simply Marvel reaching a wider audience than other publishers? I wouldn't have thought that was true any more. I thought this was all right, but twice as good as anything else here?

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

Guardians of the Galaxy. Again, a popularity thing, I guess. Though:

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

Orphan Black: "By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried" written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)

Very much to my surprise. Other people have finally stopped indiscriminately loving Doctor Who, apparently. (But even that was more popular than Game of Thrones.)

Best Semiprozine

Lightspeed Magazine John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant

For me nothing much to choose between them; for the voters, a strong preference here.

Best Fancast

Galactic Suburbia Podcast Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)

Still means little to me, and a very close race.

Best Fan Artist

Elizabeth Leggett

By a mile. Well, yeah, she's a pro artist who does stuff for fan publications rather than an amateur artist.

Everything Else

Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Laura Mixon, Julie Dillon and Wesley Chu join the "winner by being only sensible nominee" club, probably with pretty mixed feelings. The supplied Chu was so ghastly that it caused me to start the In Brief, Avoid category in my reviews, for works on which I actively recommend people not waste their time. Maybe the first one was better. I hope so.

Looking down the nominees that didn't make the top five, the first novel I know about is The Martian (which I didn't nominate because I thought it wouldn't be eligible, having been published in 2011). And Weir might have been in contention for the Campbell, too. There are some interesting-looking Related Works which I may track down at some point.

So are the Hugos saved? Eh, the same people will probably do the same thing next year.

See also:
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Thoughts on the 2015 Hugo Awards
The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
Hugo 2015: Novelette
Hugo 2015: Lightspeed 44, John Joseph Adams
Hugo 2015: Beneath Ceaseless Skies 157, Scott H. Andrews
2015 Hugo Awards: final thoughts


  1. Posted by Chris Suslowicz at 04:48pm on 23 August 2015

    Yes, I'd voted Ancillary Sword and The Goblin Emperor ahead of The Three-Body problem, and would have preferred one of the first two to win (I found it almost impossible to decide but eventually plumped for Space Opera over Fantasy).

    At least the various slates got handed their heads. (Dramatic Long doesn't count as it would have been unaffected by the various shenanigans and I did vote in that category.)

    We just need EPH to pass this year and next year and hopefully that will put a stop to the rigging attempts.

    Chris.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 04:51pm on 23 August 2015

    Aye. I don't think I'm a member of 2016, but I'll certainly be nominating again for 2017.

  3. Posted by Chris Suslowicz at 11:14am on 24 August 2015

    ...and Lo! EPH has been duly passed, despite various attempts to kill it by parliamentary means, FUD, etc.

    Also, the 4/6 amendment (reduce nominations to 4 per person, extend shortlist to 6 entries) got through as well.

    If the awards survive next years efforts on the part of the puppies and EPH is confirmed, slate voting should be impossible after that.

  4. Posted by RogerBW at 11:29am on 24 August 2015

    I have lost track of the various proposals, but I seem to remember EPH being a reasonable one; I might have believed the people saying it was too complicated for the average fan, if they hadn't all been on the same political side.

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