I have a long rambling rant about all of the horrible things that happened during the ceremony (nothing at all to do with any of nominees or winners), which I will condense down with links to other more coherent rants for posting later. More important than that, the winners of the 2020 Hugo Awards, which are nominated by and voted upon by the members of the World Science Fiction Society (aka, people who have a supporting or attending membership to WorldCon, this year held virtually but hosted in New Zealand). As I’ve mentioned before, the Hugo Awards are something I’ve followed since I was a teenage, when I got hold of an anthology called The Hugo Winners.

Since it is an award that is voted on by fans, for a lot of us (particularly those of us who aren’t just fans, but also creators of science fiction and fantasy works), the award carries a lot of emotional weight. If you’ve read my earlier posts about them, you know that once the ballot comes out, I spend a lot of time reading, viewing, or listening to the things nominated, and usually agonize over my ballot until the last minute.

The last two years it wasn’t exactly the last minute — I submitted my final ballot a bit over 24 hours before the deadline.

Anyway, here’s the full list, winners and runners-up. I’ll have comments below.

Best Novel

WINNER: A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)

The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
Middlegame, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)

Best Novella

WINNER: This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga)

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)
“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga)

Best Novelette

WINNER: “Emergency Skin”, N.K. Jemisin (Forward)

“For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com 7/10/19)
“Omphalos”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
“Away with the Wolves”, Sarah Gailey (Uncanny 9-10/19)
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 7-8/19)
“The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 4/19)

Best Short Story

WINNER: “As the Last I May Know”, S.L. Huang (Tor.com 10/23/19)

“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/31/19)
“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/19)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, Nibedita Sen (Nightmare 5/19)
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, Rivers Solomon (Tor.com 7/24/19)
“A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde (Uncanny 1-2/19)

Best Series

WINNER: The Expanse, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Winternight, Katherine Arden (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)
Luna, Ian McDonald (Tor; Gollancz)
InCryptid, Seanan McGuire (DAW)
Planetfall, Emma Newman (Ace; Gollancz)
The Wormwood Trilogy, Tade Thompson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Best Related Work

WINNER: “2019 John W. Campbell Award Acceptance Speech”, Jeannette Ng (Dublin 2019 — An Irish Worldcon)

Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones (University of Illinois Press)
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendlesohn (Unbound)
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick, Mallory O’Meara (Hanover Square)
Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood, J. Michael Straczynski (Harper Voyager US)
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin

Best Graphic Story or Comic

WINNER: LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor, illustrated by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (Berger Books/Dark Horse)

Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans (Image)
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson (Image Comics)
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)
Paper Girls, Volume 6, Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson (Image)
Mooncakes, Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker (Oni Press; Lion Forge)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

WINNER: Good Omens

Avengers: Endgame
Captain Marvel
Russian Doll, Season One
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Us

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

WINNER: The Good Place: “The Answer”

Doctor Who: “Resolution”
The Expanse: “Cibola Burn”
The Mandalorian: “Redemption”
Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar”
Watchmen: “This Extraordinary Being”

Best Editor, Short Form

WINNER: Ellen Datlow

Neil Clarke
C.C. Finlay
Jonathan Strahan
Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form

WINNER: Navah Wolfe

Sheila Gilbert
Brit Hvide
Diana M. Pho
Devi Pillai
Miriam Weinberg

Best Professional Artist

WINNER: John Picacio

Tommy Arnold
Rovina Cai
Galen Dara
Yuko Shimizu
Alyssa Winans

Best Semiprozine

WINNER: Uncanny

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Escape Pod
Fireside
FIYAH
Strange Horizons

Best Fanzine

WINNER: The Book Smugglers

Galactic Journey
Journey Planet
nerds of a feather, flock together
Quick Sip Reviews
The Rec Center

Best Fancast

WINNER: Our Opinions Are Correct

Be the Serpent
The Coode Street Podcast
Galactic Suburbia
Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel
The Skiffy and Fanty Show

Best Fan Writer

WINNER: Bogi Takács

Cora Buhlert
James Davis Nicoll
Alasdair Stuart
Paul Weimer
Adam Whitehead

Best Fan Artist

WINNER: Elise Matthesen

Iain Clark
Sara Felix
Grace P. Fong
Meg Frank
Ariela Housman

Lodestar for Best Young Adult Book (Not a Hugo)

WINNER: Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)

The Wicked King, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Hot Key)
Deeplight, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
Minor Mage, T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney/Hyperion)
Riverland, Fran Wilde (Amulet)

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo)

WINNER: R.F. Kuang

Sam Hawke
Jenn Lyons
Nibedita Sen
Tasha Suri
Emily Tesh

Congratulations to all of the winners!

This year, seven of the winners were entries that I put in first place on my ballot, so obviously I’ve pretty pleased with the outcome. For the fourth year in a row, the Novel that won was in second place on my ballot, again, an outcome I like.

Like last year, Best Novel was a very difficult category for me. Two of the entries were books I nominated. One of the entries I hadn’t nominated was a book which I had purchased before the short list came out, but hadn’t read before the nomination phase. Another was a book that was already on my wishlist. All six were good, but it very different ways. So it was just agony trying to decide how to rank them.

Fan Writer was similar. When the short list was announced (in an online livestream that I watched as it was happening), I literally screamed in glee. Three of the nominees were people I had nominated, and the other three were fan writers whose work I followed and were in contention for my nomination while I was working on that ballot. They are all six wonderful people who write (and in some cases podcast) really helpful and interesting things. As more than one person observed, all six of them are people who spend a lot of time and effort recommending good things for fans to check out. (And the winner, Bogi Takács, used ems acceptance speech to recommend a bunch of other writers and project fans should check out!) And… well, two of those that I nominated are people with whom I regularly interact with on line. So I was sweating bullets ranking that category. I really wanted all six to win!

Neil Gaiman gave an incredibly touching acceptance speech for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) winner Good Omens—informing us that the reason, some years ago, that Terry Pratchett (his co-author of the original book, and whose deathbed request led Neil to make the series) had declined a Discworld novel’s nomination wasn’t because he didn’t want a Hugo, but rather because he knew he couldn’t lose gracefully. He won a lot of other awards, and was sometimes nominated but didn’t win them, so it wasn’t that he was afraid of losing. As Neil said, the Hugos are the Sci Fi fans award, and it was the one award that mattered too much to him. Terry was certain that Hugo voters would never vote for a funny book as Best Novel, and Terry’s novels were always funny. Anyway, Neil closed by thanking everyone for giving Terry a Hugo. Good Omens the series was at number one on my ballot, and I have enthused about it to anyone that will sit still for it for a while.

R.F. Kuang’s speech was particularly good (and since the Astounding Award was early in the ceremony, set a get tone for the night). I thought Jeannette Ng’s speech accepting the Best Related Work Award for her other acceptance speech last year was incredible. And was such a sharp contrast of the shenanigans of the M.C. and one of his cronies. But again, that’s a post for later in the week.

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone gave an incredible joint acceptance speech (in parallel zoom windows). Their story, This Is How You Lose a Time War has been at the top of my list since June, 2019. I first heard Amal read an excerpt from in at a reading at Locus Awards Weekend that year, I bought a copy the next day and started reading it. And re-read it a few times over the next months. The same story one a Nebula Award and a Locus Award earlier this year, so I’m not the only person who loved the story.

I could keep going forever. I really am extremely pleased with the winners in every category but Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), but I also know a number of people whose opinions I respect who do like it. So I highly recommend all the winners but that one (if you ask my favorite TV series that were nominated this time that didn’t win in order: Watchmen, Mandolorian, Expanse, and Doctor Who). And except for a couple of the Dramatic Presentation entries, I adored, or admired, or at least thought all of the runners-up merited being above No Award. So I would have been quite happy if they had won the award. You should look into them and see if you think they might appeal to you.

This was a great slate of nominees. The winners all deserve a round of a applause, as do the runners up!

Congratulations!

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I have a lot of links to stories and posts and threads about what went wrong at the ceremony that will be in that later post. If you don’t know but are curious, Cora Buhlert wrote a very nice explanation from the point of view of a nominee watching the ceremony with family members (and as a nominee, also being able to see the other nominees on the related zoom): Some Reflections on the 2020 Hugo Ceremony a.k.a. Reminiscing with George.