2024's Hugo Award Winners Announced

Slashdot reader Dave Knott writes: After once again being plagued by controversy, this time due to a thwarted ballot-stuffing campaign, the 2024 Hugo Awards have been awarded at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

This year's winners are:

* Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
* Best Novella: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
* Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Series: Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
* Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
* Best Related Work: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar
* Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
* Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
* Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
* Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
* Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
* Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
* Best Fancast: Octothorpe, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
* Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
* Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
* Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
* Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Xiran Jay Zhao

Simplistic solution - read what you want

[will4]

Avoiding fiction genres, storylines, characters, time periods that you do not like helps to separate out the fiction you don't like to read.

I'd like to read the Hugo award winners, and am yet to find a rating guide to exclude genres, plots and character types for them.

It helps avoid those award winner stories which are about a character who one aspect of them defines their entire existence, all interactions with other characters, their job, their political viewpoints, their relationships, their speech patterns, their habits, their thoughts, ...

Those one-dimensional characters do not usually lead to good fiction.
--
Terror from Tiny Town movie excluded.

Re:It's sad. This award used to mean something.

[Elfich47]

Science Fiction has always been woke. And that is because it has always been looking forward into the possibilities of what Mankind was possible of.

Hint for you: Star Trek was woke from the beginning.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> Hint for you: Star Trek was woke from the beginning.

That's the definition from fifteen years ago.

Now Transhumanism is woke and Locutus of Borg seems like an ideal to that crowd.

(cue NPC march meme)

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Roddenberry's Trek (and the sequels/spinoffs inspired by Roddenberry) always had a line it wouldn't cross. His Trek never embraced transhumanism. See: Khan and the Borg.

Star Trek fully embraced the idea of humans being able to explore the universe while still retaining their core humanity.

Re:

[r1348]

...and still being very liberal about inter-species banging.

Re: It's sad. This award used to mean something.

[firewrought]

Traditional sci-fi (including Star Trek) has also been optimistic, brave, introspective, questioning, and humanist... all progressive virtues to be sure, but woke is different: wokeness elevates social justice and group identity status and dominance narratives above all other considerations and to the detriment of traditional liberal values.

or...

[skam240]

but woke is different: wokeness elevates social justice and group identity status and dominance narratives above all other considerations and to the detriment of traditional liberal values.

Or in reality it's just whatever is pissing off conservatives at any given moment nowadays. Feel free to keep pretending it still has some sort of concise meaning though!

Re:

[DaftVader]

The original meaning of woke was being aware of the struggles of other peoples, minority groups mainly. Making people aware of those struggles is a laudable goal. However, overzealous pursuit of this led to the term woke being used critically, even by those with left wing views. Since then there has been a push back, largely successful such that anyone who uses the word woke is now viewed as some red-faced right wing Trump supporter. Consequently, left wing people are quite afraid to use the term now.

Mu

Re:

[skam240]

Over zealous use? I had never even heard of the term until conservatives got a hold of it as it was used almost exclusively in the black community.

I don't agree 100%

[aepervius]

I have read a lot of books, I spent about 75% of my free timer from youth to teenager to adult , to old man reading books, especially SF and fantasy. By now I have read thousand upon thousands of books , from the classical and golden age to more recent Hugo. I even had a notebook where I had notices, e.g. the timelines for all you zombies, etc... I see a few things clashing. I have seen a distinct sliding toward a certain type of SF, as opposed to other type, but this is more in a shift in *themes* than a q

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between "woke" and "progressive". Progressive ideals have traditionally embodied seeing beyond race and viewing everyone through the same lens. It eschews the idea of shedding biases and recognizes that we're all more alike than we are different. Woke ideals put race, gender, sexual orientation, and trans/cis under an extremely powerful microscope, which ends up focusing more on how we're different than we are the same. The concept of intersectionality within wokeism takes that to a

Progressive, not Woke

[Roger W Moore]

Science Fiction has always been woke.

Some, but by no means all, of it was progressive in a clever and intelligent way.. It used the SciFi setting to construct analogies, or even complete reversals, of the societal issues of the day. This is the power of SciFi - it lets us explore those issues from a radically different perspective that escapes all the prejudices we have about the actual societal issues. It did not tell you the "right" answer, instead it presented both sides and then gave you the room to think for yourself and let you come to your own conclusions. The characters acted in character even when that was "wrong" (look at how Worf killed Duras in ST:TNG), the writers respected the universe making the story work with both characters and universe to create an enjoyable, entertaining story that helped people become more understanding and receptive to the issues being explored.

Today's "woke" is not the same. Yes, it explores progressive issues but it does this with all the sublty and grace of a 2-by-4 to the head. There is no rarely any attempt to construct an analogy - they just use the issues as is. Anyone who disagrees with them is portrayed as an idiot and never argues for what their character clearly believes. Those in the designated "right" are portrayed as perfect and flawless.. Characters and the universe's established lore are changed as neeed to make things work regardless of how utterly inconsistent this is with established lore and characters because nothing can get in the way of "the message".

Now some of this is probably due to incredibly bad and lazy writing although it is strange how it seems to primarily affect SciFi shows that are pushing woke messaging like Dr Who, New Trek and Star Wars. However, much of it seems to be because the writers are too scared, or too stupid to present any sort of counter argument to the message they want to send. If you want an example of how to explore today's issues in a progressive, rather than woke, way just look at Orville. It does a good job of characters presenting both sides of issues and the "good guys" do not always get their way so you get to then explore the effects of that. It does get a little heavy-handed at times and the writing is not as inventive as ST-TNG and the ilk but it does a great job overall and definitely shows that you can do what SciFi used to do with todays issues...you just have to dump the 2x4 "woke" approach and do it in a more subtle, balanced way to give your audience room to think for themselves. Afterall if you can't trust your audience to let them think for themselves then why should your audience trust you to entertain and engage them?

Re:Progressive, not Woke

[ArchieBunker]

Consider Kirk kissing Uhura. That was so scandalous in the 1960s that some stations wouldn't even air the episode. You're looking at the past with the bias of current day.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Also, remember the episode with the "Yangs" and the "Kohms"? About as subtle as a brick to the face.

Or that episode where the aliens had black AND white faces and hated the ones with white and black faces.

I think a lot of people watched star trek as kids and saw Capn' Kirk shootin' stuff and rolling around in the dirt punchin' aliens and gettin' some hot alien princess action. The wildly unsubtle brick-to-the-face politics that the series was written for just went over their heads completely.

I'm not old eno

Re:

[at_slashdot]

The difference is that nowadays that would be called sexist (also a superior taking advantage of a position of power) and would be canceled.

Re:

[skam240]

Now some of this is probably due to incredibly bad and lazy writing although it is strange how it seems to primarily affect SciFi shows that are pushing woke messaging like Dr Who, New Trek and Star Wars

Have you considered that in the context of sci fi a lot of the "anti woke" stuff has been directed at perfectly straight female characters in a genre with a fan base still awfully heavy on men who arent terribly successful with ladies?

In other words I would suggest a lot of it is a combination of (as you said) bad writing and incel rage. No one yells and cry's over Vin Diesel's horrible acting in his sci fi movies after all and somehow the ladies in modern Star Wars movies get singled out amongst near unive

Re:

[skam240]

Instead, they approach the story from a very adversarial and often antagonistic angle while attempting to minimize or even vilify the original male characters and supplant them with strong female characters.

As someone who does actually watch a lot of Sci-fi only about 1 and 10 times do I empathise at all with the rabid anti-"woke" folks. Most of the time the core problem is bad writing or simply incels and social conservatives complaining about the mere presence of someone who doesnt live their lives the way they think they should.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

No one yells and cry's

Indeed. Bad writing and/or acting starring a straight, white, cis male protagonist is just good, old fashioned bad TV and no one cares about it. Stick anyone else in as a protagonist and all the usual idiots flip their collective shit about "woke".

Re:

[Roger W Moore]

Have you considered that in the context of sci fi a lot of the "anti woke" stuff has been directed at perfectly straight female characters

There was no such backlash against characters like Sarah Connor (Terminator) or Ripley (Alien/s) etc. so there are plenty of examples where there are strong female leads in SciFi who are original, well-written characters in an original setting where there is zero backlash and indeed strong admiration from fans of all descriptions. Where was the "incel rage" for films like this? I do not think the rage from some fans is "incel rage" it is from seeing a show that they know and love being radically altered to

Re:

[skam240]

There was no such backlash against characters like Sarah Connor (Terminator) or Ripley (Alien/s) etc.

What a wonderful point! Yes, when a movie is well written most culture warriors and incels don't care about messaging anymore.

It's funny how that works. It's almost as if the core problem is bad writing and not their culture war nonsense at all.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Today's "woke" is not the same. Yes, it explores progressive issues but it does this with all the sublty and grace of a 2-by-4 to the head.

You mean like the Trek universe episodes "The Omega Glory" and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". About a subtle as a brick to the face repeatedly.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I love how posting actual evidence of incredibly unsubtle hammering on social issues in old sci-fi is met with downmods. -1 World is not how I want it to be.

Re:

[timeOday]

Science Fiction has always been woke. And that is because it has always been looking forward into the possibilities of what Mankind was possible of.

You equate wokeness with the future, but why? The only major word ideology not entering (or already in) a steep demographic decline is (checks the stats...) Islam.

It's great to temper the worst tendencies of humanity. But when you get so far away from reality that you don't even value survival (as in, procreation) then your values are not the future.

Don'

Re:

[hey!]

Star Trek -- sure. Science Fiction as a whole -- it's complicated.

Early science fiction and fantasy mines politically tinged social anxieties -- female sexuality for Stoker's *Dracula*; colonialism for Wells' *War of the World* (what if someone does to *us* what we do others?); labor relations in R.U.R. (the story that coined the word "robot").

But through most of the pulp era, writers didn't have much of an ax to grind; they were trying to sell stories in a very limited market to a small number of editors.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

You wouldn't have a lot of great stories if they had, like *The Stars My Destination* or *The Man in the High Castle*.

I wouldn't call "The man in the High Castle" a good story: like many Phillip K Dick works it's three quarters of a great story then inexplicably ends. There's the other Dick genre of course where he gives the impression that he starts writing and chewing pills and the last quarter of the book rambles off into an incoherent hallucination as the drugs kick in.

Though in fairness that worked rea

Re:

[hey!]

Yeah, sometimes being inconclusive is an artistic crutch that makes you sound like you have more to say than you actually do. Almost everyone agrees 2001 is a great movie but opinions are divided on 2010; but 2010 is hobbled by having to provide answers to questions 2001 raised. It couldn't possibly leave you with the same feeling.

Re:

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

> Science Fiction has always been woke. Read much Heinlein did you?

Re: It's sad. This award used to mean something.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I was just thinking today Wizard of Oz was woke. Female protagonist, who starts weak and buffetted by forces beyond her control, gets stronger and takes care of business at the end. Female antagonist. Female mentor. And the one powerful man in the story is more like an Absolutely Fabulous man, an incompetent bumbler.

At least, it would have been if the producers had had an attitude of "this is for your own good, America!"

Re:

[XXongo]

And in the end, it only existed in Dorothy's mind after experiencing tornado-induced head trauma!

Only in the movie version. The books had no such "it was all a dream" ending.

Re:

[UsuallyReasonable]

Oh yeah Robert A. Heinlein, very woke. I get the feeling you don't actually know what the word means.

Re:

[DarenN]

How much Heinlein have you read? Stranger in a Strange Land was very controversial. Heinlein is much more complex than a one dimensional reading of Starship Troopers would suggest. It's one of the reasons that his writing is so enduring. Much of his writing is exploring the potential impacts of politics or technology on people and veers wildly from Libertarian (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), authoritarian-democratic (Starship Troopers), to communalist (Stranger in a Strange Land) and explored transhumanism,

Re:

[UsuallyReasonable]

I guess it's easy, when something isn't true, to assign potential responses to people. But it's bogus.

Re:

[ageoffri]

When you dig into what happened with Sad Puppies, the answer is it was the overreaction of the entrenched junta. They tried to convince everyone that the Hugo awards were all sunshine and puppies. The math proved that they hadn't been for a long time.

Now if you want to talk about the Rabid Puppies, they can only be called a hate group.

Re:

[Geoffrey.landis]

The worst problem that the Sad Puppies did was in failing to disassociate themselves from the Rabid Puppies immediately, unequivocally, and vigorously.

The sad puppies wanted to reform the Hugos. Turns out they made some bad mistakes, but that was their intent. The Rabid Puppies wanted to destroy them.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Awards shows and stuff have always been corrupt - we just see behind the curtain now.

Hell, even the Nobel Peace Prize jumped the shark almost two decades ago.

The exception might be a local effort with no big payday on the other side. Follow the money works more than Occam's Razor.

Re:

[skam240]

Eh, just because it was a bit corrupt doesnt mean the corruption is all encompassing. This is just a literary award here.

I personally still value it because consumer reviews have turned to crap with all the anti-"woke" stuff and I just dont care about idiots political agendas when I'm looking for a new book to read.

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

Your ilk shit a brick when they read Dangerous Visions. Lol.

Novel? Novella? Novelette?

[93 Escort Wagon]

What if I'm in the mood for a Novelette Pro Ultra? Or a Novel Mini?

Re: Novel? Novella? Novelette?

[RightwingNutjob]

Is there a category for best scifi men's room graffiti? Here's my entry:

For a good time, upload your consciousness to the Pr0ngasmotr0n 8000. Payment in crypto only.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

For a good time, upload your consciousness to the Pr0ngasmotr0n 8000. Payment in crypto only.

For the sake of symmetry - and the unwritten rules of "l33t" - I suggest the spelling be slightly modified to "Pr0ngasmot0rn".

how about some slashdotter reviews?

[cats-paw]

Can we skip the wokeism and voting commentary and just go straight to the meaningful comments about the actual books by people who have actually read them ?

I know it's asking a lot, but you know ... that'd be great !

Re:how about some slashdotter reviews?

[serviscope_minor]

Have you read a city on Mars? It's a work of absolute turbo nerdery. I loved it!

It's really interesting because it goes into so many aspects of space settlements from the physics to biology, to ethics, WMDs and the law. They have researched the problems really deeply. Also it's clear the authors are both nerds and have gone in way deeper than you usually get in non fiction books.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

I read SMBC-comics.com daily and have yet to be disappointed.

Re:

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Unfortunately, no such comments exist.

Re:

[quonset]

No point! It's all woketard content anyway

Just remember, every time you say "woke", God makes another Drag Queen [imgur.com].

if you want to read a good book.

[mrthoughtful]

Too late for the awards but The book of elsewhere by China Mieville and Keane Reeves was pretty good for me. Definitely meets Mieville's literacy, but follows Reeve's comic book storyline. Cat you scotty was funny - if poorly pronounced.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Definitely meets Mieville's literacy,

Impenetrable and confusing? I kid but only sort of. I read and rather enjoyed "the city and the city" bu it's definitely the kind of book you need to work at.

Re: if you want to read a good book

[mrthoughtful]

well - there's a thing where some authors like to patronise by explaining everything, which I find hard to enjoy (being patronised at)- then others who expand my vocabulary but expect me to use a dictionary or the net to learn some new words. Mieville is definitely in the latter camp. His rich literary re style demands a careful read also - but these features he shared with such masters as JL Borges - and I won't fault him for that. - moreover one doesn't *need* to look up all the words but I do, and I fee

Not generally worth it

[cfalcon]

Remember with the "sad puppies", where some right winger organized some fans to put some good stories up, and they REFUSED TO VOTE AT ALL?

It's been pure politics for years. Disregard anything they output, it's just never gonna be relevant again.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

>some right winger organized some fans to put some good stories up,

Typically, right-wing stuff is about selling the ideology and the stories are absolute shit. Like Christian movies, books, and whatever else, it's about the self-wank and propping up the tribe's beliefs and that doesn't sell at all outside the tribe. Lefties do it too sometimes. A political nutjob is a political nutjob.

By contrast, Heinlein was pretty right-wing libertarian towards the latter part of his career, but he wrote good stuff

Re:

[ishmaelflood]

"Time Enough for Love"? As an example. Silly old man's sex fantasies would be a better title.

Re:

[caseih]

Yes the Sci Fi genre has been pretty spotty over the many decades. I really enjoyed the first Ringworld book. Each subsequent book was a little worse. I remember something about sex vampires? Was pretty bad. I think he even had some species that use sex as a form of hello. The overall plot was interesting, but it was tiring with all these old man sex fantasies scattered through it all.

A similar pattern happened to Clarke's Rama series. Rendezvous with Rama was great hard sci fi. After that it went d

Re:

[XXongo]

A similar pattern happened to Clarke's Rama series. Rendezvous with Rama was great hard sci fi. After that it went downhill. I can't even remember what happened in the subsequent books. Contrived conflict, politics, and sex took over from the exploration theme.

Only the original, Rendezvous with Rama, was actually by Clarke. The sequels were by Gentry Lee.

A useless list these days

[Revek]

There is no chance they were chosen on quality and every chance they were picked to serve some personal agendas.

Re:

[ishmaelflood]

When the Sad Puppies thing blew up I deliberately went out to read the short list of novels for every year for the last 10 years. I generally found the short list was a pretty good collection of books, although there were a few I couldn't stand, mostly from Tor.

Re:

[ageoffri]

Which shows the Sad Puppies were right. Tor was the leader of the selection process going wonky.

Re:

[arctor]

"There is no chance they were chosen on quality and every chance they were picked to serve some personal agendas."

The Hugos became irrelevant when the 5th Season won over Seveneves.

completely, unquestionably on merit

[argStyopa]

By my count that makes 9 years in a row that the best novel has been won by a woman. Since 3 Body Problem?

What AMAZING odds!

It's gotten too exhausting to sift through the BS.

[Eunomion]

They're selecting a lot of mediocrities due to features that are either artistically irrelevant or flat-out commercially driven. Hugo is no longer an interesting indicator of quality for the fan of the relevant genres.