Even though I am once again very out of the loop regarding the Hugo Awards, I’m still happy I caught the livestream of the announcement. There have been a number of reasons why I haven’t been involved, including that it has been an absolute clusterfuck in recent years. The 2023 Awards in China are the main culprit, but there was also a controversy about AI usage last year, which you can read about here.

Timing of this is kinda crazy, because I’m reading Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee right now. Lee withdrew his book from consideration for the Lodestar Award, the ‘Hugo’ for YA books, due to the AI usage last year. Enjoying it so far and regret taking so long to read it.

But anyway, it seems that this year’s Hugo Awards went quite well. (Though I am hearing there were some accessibility issues at the convention which need to be called out, I don’t know enough to comment though.) And you know what, I’ve missed getting hyped for the Awards and Worldcon. I’ve also been missing my usual Hugo related posts, so maybe I’ll try and get back into it next year if no bullshit happens.

This year though, here is a very, very quick overview my thoughts on the ceremony:

Coffeeshop in an alternate Universe sounds interesting

Ursula Vernon’s animal facts are fun. And disturbing. Loved the bit about the Greenland Shark.

Technical issues were handled with good humor.

Love the game music.

So many good speeches calling out a lot of the issues in the USA.

Not surprised by Clair Obscur winning Best Game.

Go Scalzi!

And I’ll provide a bit more insight on the winners of the Best Short Story and the Best Novelette Awards, since I have spoken about these stories before.

In My Country by Thomas Ha won Best Short Story. This was the only short story to be nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus this year, and it won the Locus. It was beaten in the Nebula ballot by Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything by Effie Seiberg , which was also nominated for a Hugo and came in second. Both are great stories, and I think this is a well deserved win for Ha.

Never Eaten Vegetables by H. H. Pak won Best Novelette in a landslide. It received 413 1st place primary votes, with the next novelette only getting 295. Whilst Vegetables wasn’t my favourite novelette out of all the ballots, I think it was my favourite out of the Hugos, and again it is a very worthy winner.

In both these categories, it is crazy how close the fight for the final spot on the ballot was in the nomination stage. Barbershops of the Floating City by Angela Liu needed just one more nomination to replace Missing Helen on the Short Story ballot, and 3 Days, 9 Months and 27 Years by John Scalzi was somehow even closer to replacing Kaiju Agonistas in the Novelette category.

There were a lot of close races in the nominating stage, including in the Novella and Novel category. I’d highly recommend going through the voting stats, it’s really interesting. Here is a link to the stats. And of course, a link to the finalists and winners.

That was my extremely quick overview of the Hugo Awards. Congratz to all the winners, especially Alix E. Harrow, who took home the Best Novel Award for The Everlasting. Hopefully next year I’ll have more Hugo content for you all.

~ Jayde.