Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the November 19, 2021 (The voting period is extra long this year due to COVID delaying the convention till December). For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon. As I did the last four years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.
In this post, we're going to take a step away from the traditional categories and move to one of the "Not-A-Hugo" awards, the awards that aren't officially lHugos but are voted on alongside them and might as well be. I'm talking this time about the Astounding Award, which celebrates the best new writers in SciFi & Fantasy, those who have published their first genre works in the last two years (and thus can have two years of eligibility).
In a disappointing surprise, I'd actually read all six of these writers before the nominations were announced. I say disappointing because the award isn't introducing me to any new works, NOT because the nominees aren't deserving - the nominees have written some of my favorite works over the past two years honestly. So yeah these are all worth your time to some extent, but I will attempt to rank them below:
In prior years, I've established some tiebreaker rules for my voting on this award: I prefer long fiction, so if I'm trying to break a tie between writers, I favor the long-fic writer over the short-fic writer. That said, all six nominees this year are here for novels or novellas, not short fiction (although they may have written some), so this tiebreaker is irrelevant. More relevant is that if I have a tie between two writers in my mind, I will rank a person in their last year of eligibility above someone in their first - after all the latter will have another shot next year. This is a bit more relevant, as two writers are here for the second year in a row.
Anyhow, let's get to the rankings, organizing the writers by tiers again. Note that several of these authors (Lyons, Ellis) have works that were released in 2021 and technically should not be counted for awards consideration,:
Tier Three:
6. Lindsay Ellis (1st year of eligibility)
Works Considered: Axiom's End (Review Here) (not considered, the sequel Truth of the Divine)
Ellis is best known for her critical Youtube videos, which often humorously critique and analyze pop culture and movies in various ways and are highly recommended. But she's nominated here for her entry into genre, which happened with 2020's Axiom's End - a First Contact novel that isn't really humorous, but is instead an interesting alternate tale from 2007 dealing with relationships between species, within species, hierarchies, and more.
It was an interesting novel, and one that raised my interest in Ellis' work, so it makes sense for her to get this nomination, but I didn't quite love it (and I very much didn't love the sequel, but that's not up for consideration). So Ellis goes last on my ballot.
Works Considered: Axiom's End (Review Here) (not considered, the sequel Truth of the Divine)
Ellis is best known for her critical Youtube videos, which often humorously critique and analyze pop culture and movies in various ways and are highly recommended. But she's nominated here for her entry into genre, which happened with 2020's Axiom's End - a First Contact novel that isn't really humorous, but is instead an interesting alternate tale from 2007 dealing with relationships between species, within species, hierarchies, and more.
It was an interesting novel, and one that raised my interest in Ellis' work, so it makes sense for her to get this nomination, but I didn't quite love it (and I very much didn't love the sequel, but that's not up for consideration). So Ellis goes last on my ballot.
5. Emily Tesh (2nd year of eligibility):
Works Considered: Silver in the Wood (Review Here), Drowned Country (Review Here)
Tesh is nominated for the second straight this year, putting the second half of her Silver in the Wood duology of novellas up for contention. The first of the novellas was a fun M-M romantic take on the Green Man myth, which was quite enjoyable; the second introduces a fun new character....and then sidelines her for the main duo in a way that was a bit disappointing, but still was enjoyable.
Still unlike the rest of this ballot, the duology doesn't do anything particularly unique or fun or interesting for me, so Tesh winds up second to last on my ballot.
Works Considered: Silver in the Wood (Review Here), Drowned Country (Review Here)
Tesh is nominated for the second straight this year, putting the second half of her Silver in the Wood duology of novellas up for contention. The first of the novellas was a fun M-M romantic take on the Green Man myth, which was quite enjoyable; the second introduces a fun new character....and then sidelines her for the main duo in a way that was a bit disappointing, but still was enjoyable.
Still unlike the rest of this ballot, the duology doesn't do anything particularly unique or fun or interesting for me, so Tesh winds up second to last on my ballot.
Tier Two:
4. A.K. Larkwood (1st year of eligibility)
Works Considered: The Unspoken Name (Review Here)
With Tier Two in this category, we come to the authors who really did things that were fairly interesting or at least were really really fun. For Larkwood, that was her epic fantasy novel, The Unspoken Name, which is a hybrid SF/F novel featuring an orc girl protagonist, rescued from a cult devoted to a god of death by a wizard traveling the multiverse, who falls in love with another wizard girl from a people who do have other expectations for that girl. And I'm really really simplifying things (see my review for more specifics), but the dialogue is a lot of fun, the characters and world is great, and well I really enjoyed this one and have been looking forward to the sequel for a while (Scheduled for 2022).
With Tier Two in this category, we come to the authors who really did things that were fairly interesting or at least were really really fun. For Larkwood, that was her epic fantasy novel, The Unspoken Name, which is a hybrid SF/F novel featuring an orc girl protagonist, rescued from a cult devoted to a god of death by a wizard traveling the multiverse, who falls in love with another wizard girl from a people who do have other expectations for that girl. And I'm really really simplifying things (see my review for more specifics), but the dialogue is a lot of fun, the characters and world is great, and well I really enjoyed this one and have been looking forward to the sequel for a while (Scheduled for 2022).
3. Simon Jimenez (1st year of eligibility)
Works Considered: The Vanished Birds (Review Here)
Works Considered: The Vanished Birds (Review Here)
Jimenez' work that got him the nomination, The Vanished Birds, is almost as much "literary" as it is Space Opera, which is not to say anything bad about it. Instead it's a fascinating multi-character look at the costs of choices not made, of sacrifices of love for career gains, of hope and redemption, all throughout a universe controlled by an evil soulless corporation in large part. It's really well done, and tremendously interesting in how it approaches its themes, and I was glad to see Jimenez make the list of final nominees.
2. Jenn Lyons (2nd year of eligibility)
Works Considered: The Ruin of Kings (Review Here), The Name of All Things (Review Here), The Memory of Souls (Review Here) (not considered: The House of Always)
Lyons is nominated for the first three books in her 5 book epic fantasy series, "A Chorus of Dragons". As I mentioned in last year's nomination, The Ruin of Kings, book 1, is.....not great. But book 2, The Name of All Things, is tremendous fun epic fantasy, and book 3, The Memory of Souls is even better, with a cast of fascinating grey characters in a fascinating world, and some really interesting ideas dealing with reincarnation, of the identity of peoples and races, and more. So even with a mediocre first book, I really badly want to get more people into this series - it's that fun, and I've reread books 2-4 a ton over the past year just for entertainment.
I said last year that Lyons might've gotten onto the top of my ballot if the Memory of Souls was as great as book 2, and well it was, and so she does come real damn close to the first place spot. Of course, it doesn't quite make it because the remaining author on the ballot wrote one of my books of the year....
Lyons is nominated for the first three books in her 5 book epic fantasy series, "A Chorus of Dragons". As I mentioned in last year's nomination, The Ruin of Kings, book 1, is.....not great. But book 2, The Name of All Things, is tremendous fun epic fantasy, and book 3, The Memory of Souls is even better, with a cast of fascinating grey characters in a fascinating world, and some really interesting ideas dealing with reincarnation, of the identity of peoples and races, and more. So even with a mediocre first book, I really badly want to get more people into this series - it's that fun, and I've reread books 2-4 a ton over the past year just for entertainment.
I said last year that Lyons might've gotten onto the top of my ballot if the Memory of Souls was as great as book 2, and well it was, and so she does come real damn close to the first place spot. Of course, it doesn't quite make it because the remaining author on the ballot wrote one of my books of the year....
Tier One:
1. Micaiah Johnson (1st year of eligibility)
Works Considered: The Space Between Worlds (Review Here)
I nominated The Space Between Worlds for Best Novel, that's how good I think it was, and I do not regret my vote at all - so naturally Johnson's novel gets her first on my list. The novel is a piece of fascinating SciFi featuring a fascinating exploration of themes of class, race, family and love, to go along with a story featuring multiversal travel, with tremendous characters and plotting to go with its themes, and an ending that is absolutely perfect.
It's too good of a novel to be a debut novel, and yet somehow it is. It makes Johnson an absolute easy call for this spot on my ballot, as her work is easily the best on the ballot, and a tier above everything else.
Works Considered: The Space Between Worlds (Review Here)
I nominated The Space Between Worlds for Best Novel, that's how good I think it was, and I do not regret my vote at all - so naturally Johnson's novel gets her first on my list. The novel is a piece of fascinating SciFi featuring a fascinating exploration of themes of class, race, family and love, to go along with a story featuring multiversal travel, with tremendous characters and plotting to go with its themes, and an ending that is absolutely perfect.
It's too good of a novel to be a debut novel, and yet somehow it is. It makes Johnson an absolute easy call for this spot on my ballot, as her work is easily the best on the ballot, and a tier above everything else.
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