Hugo Awards 2024: General and Some Novellas

This is the fifth year that I have been a reader and a voter for the Hugo Award, a practice I began when I fulfilled a long-time dream and attended a World Science Fiction Convention. Finances and geography, among other things, have conspired to keep me away in the years since, but maybe I will manage another one this decade. I have been aware of the Hugos since I started reading science fiction at an early and wonderfully impressionable age, and it’s always a thrill to be part of rewarding quality work, honoring the year’s best work in a community that I have cared about longer than I have had words to express such a thing.

I think that’s why last year’s wounding of the awards by trusted insiders hurt so badly. The Hugos are a community trust, and people who had been deeply involved for years, who were thought to be reliable and fair holders of that trust, turned out not to be, and there was apparently no recourse. I hope that during this year’s ceremonies on August 11, the Glasgow convention will find some way to acknowledge the harm done. (I suspect that they will take the insider view that each convention is separate; I think this looks rather different from the outside.)

This year’s awards have already been marked by a clumsy attempt to cast fraudulent votes. It’s good that the team caught the attempted fraud, but the fact that bad actors could send in 10% of the total vote is a sign that the Hugos continue to be vulnerable along several axes. It’s also long past time for Worldcon committees to find a way to have an outside auditor vouch for the integrity of the whole award process.

One of the best parts of being part of the Hugo process is the readers’ packet. This is a collection of samples of the work of almost every Hugo finalist, and its availability to every voter is an example of the generosity of publishers, the hard work of finalists, and the dedication of the volunteer staffers who put it together quickly and ensure its accessibility. How do voters make reasonably informed picks for the 18 categories and two not-a-Hugo awards? They lean heavily on the readers’ packet that includes samples of artists’ work, statements by editors about what they worked on and how they practice their craft, access to games, and written work ranging from excerpts to full novels. This year’s packet also included a complete feature-length movie, access to lengthy written series, and whole collections of graphic works. The packet is a trove of delight, and a testimony to the regard that publishers and producers have for the Hugo Award and its voters.

Each Worldcon is still making its own decisions about software; that means new processes for users every time, even if there is a certain degree of continuity in the underlying code. For example, this year a login via e-mail link took a voter to a page that required a click on “Authorize” that looked very much like purchasing a new membership. It wasn’t, but this particular process was by no means intuitive. On the plus side, the electronic ballot had a button that would send to a voter’s e-mail address the current state of their ballot; on the minus side, once voting closed it was no longer possible to get a final version. Hugo voting has been overwhelmingly online for at least a decade; these are wheels that shouldn’t need re-inventing.

Inevitably, trying to be a thorough and conscientious Hugo voter is a substantial commitment of time. Six finalists for each of 20 awards is a lot of consideration, even if it’s just looking through materials provided in the readers’ packet. Some years I have read (or less commonly, seen) a decent number of the finalists before they are announced and am somewhat ahead of the game. 2024 was not one of those years. The only book-length finalist I had read was The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, a nominee for the Best Young Adult Book not-a-Hugo. By the end of the voting period, it was still the only one I read in that category, so I gave it my top vote. It’s a good book!

Similar fates awaited the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (not-a-Hugo) and Best Graphic Story or Comic. I’m glad that Doreen read the graphic works, and her reviews have pointed me toward some good stuff. I’ve never made room in my life for podcasts, and I don’t really play computer games, so I don’t vote in either of those categories. Unusually for me, I had seen half of the finalists in Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, so I felt halfway ok about my voting in that category.

For Best Editor (short and long), Best Artist (fan and pro), Best Fan Writer, and Best Zines (semi-pro and fan), I relied entirely on what the finalists provided to the readers’ pack. Among the editors, I leaned toward the Chinese finalists because I think this is their only chance to win. Best Series is a bit of a funny beast. I think it’s a good and necessary category, given the importance of series to fantasy and science fiction, but inevitably it’s also not just recognizing work from one year. Among this year’s six finalists, I had read significant chunks of two, bits of two more, and nothing at all in the other two. I leaned toward what I had read and hoped that readers of other series would balance out my vote if the series I haven’t read are much better.

I usually write separate reviews for each finalist in Best Novella, but I am consolidating a bit this year with just brief notes on the three novella finalists I liked least.

Life Does Not Allow Us To Meet by He Xi, translated by Alex Woodend. Doreen didn’t like it. I didn’t finish it. Sorry.

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. I think it was the Watership Down reference that permanently put me out of this story. Sometime in a far-ish future, humanity has destroyed Earth’s ability to support life and the remaining people have escaped to a series of platforms erected in the upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere. (The planet is never called Jupiter, but there’s no interstellar travel, and only one planet answers the description.) They have a material standard of living — and many of the manners — of England in the early 20th century, in a setting that would require technology for gravity control, some kind of shielding against Jupiter’s immense electromagnetic fields, and something to hold a breathable atmosphere around the platforms. To say nothing of the capability for space travel and construction to transport enough earthly creatures for a sustainable settlement out past Mars. Ostensibly the people have been away from Earth for so long and have forgotten so much that their academics debate basic facts about how ecosystems worked, but one character describes a book that’s clearly Watership Down as if it might be a key to unlocking crucial lost knowledge. The plot is a possible murder mystery that’s tied into academic politics that are vicious because they turn out not to have low stakes after all. I couldn’t believe in the setting, and I could only just barely believe in the characters. I did finish it. (Doreen liked this novella a little bit better, but not a whole lot better.)

Seeds of Mercury by Wang Jinkang, translated by Alex Woodend. When I considered this year’s finalists for Best Short Story, I wrote that the Chinese entries read like representatives of a tradition that had never had the New Wave, which of course that they are. Seeds of Mercury also reads like science fiction of the 1950s or early 1960s (though of course Stranger in a Strange Land dates to 1961, so it’s not as if the mold wasn’t cracking earlier) because it’s about a nifty idea, explored through characters that are more types than individuals, pursued to some kind of resolution. The idea in this novella is that a scientist has created life that isn’t carbon-based, life that needs temperatures higher than any natural environment on Earth but well suited to conditions on Mercury. The story follows, after a fashion, this life’s evolution on fast forward, and its interaction with the traces left by the humans who took them to Mercury. It’s moderately interesting, if predictable once the premises are established. I skimmed a lot, but I finished this one too. (Doreen was kinda meh about it too, though she wound up ranking it higher than I did.)

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Hugo voting is now closed, and the winners will be announced on August 11. This is the fourth bit of Hugo-related writing that I have done this year.