Hugo Nominee Novels List Completed

202 sterling examples of science fiction and fantasy goodness now grace the page here

(It’s not as simple as multiply the number of years times four: the awards were not given out consistently from 1953 – they just started being given out in 1953. And a couple of years skipped awards or given out one for the novel category. Not to mention the couple of ties for nomination – which means that there were six works on the short list in years there were ties. Further complicating that is – if there was a tie for first, two novels got the award and there would only be three remaining nominees – unless there was a tie for nominations, in which case there would still be four nominees…)

But that doesn’t really matter all that much (except to over-worked and under-appreciate concom members who are responsible for tallying).

What does matter is – there’s your “speculative fiction library”. Stick Silverberg’s The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology the front end and this years contenders on the back end, and you’ll have a very good representation of the field.

Before you start shouting about who is under-represented, not-represented or over-represented – shut up!

These are the folks who made it to the list. For better or for worse, they are the de facto representatives of the field. If you were to read everything displayed here, you’d be prepared to teach a class on the subject; you’d have background, you’d be familiar with the tropes and themes, the evolutionary nature of the ’spec-fic’ genre and would be pretty darned-well read to boot (not to mention all of the really cool, useful and interesting scientific esoterica you’d pick up along the way).

You’d also be much more qualified to to render judgment on the list in toto or in part (though the list in toto might be a bit difficult to read).

Not that you can’t render judgment without having read everything on the list. Lord knows some have already done so. But you’d be in a better position to annoy folks who disagree with you and you just might be able to raise the discussion beyond the level of “you’re stupid and you suck!”. Maybe.

I think it’s a fine list. I’d like to see us go back and re-work the Retro-Hugos so that we can fill in the years 1926 thru 1953, but that’s a quibble.

I’d also like to see the list be MUCH more complete by being able to include ALL of the nominated works for a given year, not just the shortlist and the winners. (That information has been much more readily available for later years – a visible demonstration of WSFS’s quest for openness and transparency.)

Last, but not least: if you are going to start reading the back list of Hugo Award history – please order them here, lol.