The 2015 Hugo & Other SFF Awards Eligible Works Thread

Yay!

I'm a Hugo voter so I'm definitely looking for reading links, especially for the shorter categories. My own eligible works --

Novels

• Zero Sum Game (downloadable free from Unglue.it)
• Half Life

These are book 1 and book 2 in a contemporary SF series. Thrillers with lots of math.

Short Story

• Hunting Monsters
  

Read free at the link. Fantasy / dark fairy tale subversion.

The Campbell Award
I am eligible for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer as S.L. Huang.

I have an eligible work under the short story category:

"Mrs. Yaga", published at The Book Smugglers (as above!)

I can't for the life of me figure out if I'm eligible for the Campbell Award or not.

I'm interested to follow this, but I doubt my work is eligible on genre (space opera erotic romance) and year published (first in 2012, republished 2014 because of an Amazon glitch.) So I'll have to wait until I have a mainstream SFF to merit a membership and voting, I'm afraid.

I have several short stories eligible this year.

These two are available for free:
Vessels for Destruction
The Spider Thief and The Sorcerer

Also eligible are:
The Collections Agent (available in ebook format)
"Legacy" - Beast Within 4: Gears & Growls (print anthology available from Amazon)

I will state that any story that is SF or Fantasy (and even some that kind of aren't) is eligible for a Hugo, provided it was first published in the US in 2014.

Filigree, your work would be eligible because space opera, but you're probably right it's not eligible for this year due to when it was first published.

3.2.1:
Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

3.2.2:
A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be
eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation.

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Emphasis added. Space opera, no matter how erotic, is in the field of Science Fiction or Fantasy.

Yeah, it was the year thing that derailed me. Better luck next time, and kudos to the author who have eligible work!

If anyone hasn't read Ancillary Sword yet, it's quite good. I recommend you read Ancillary Justice (last year's everything winner) first. Both by Anne Leckie. Both Space Opera.

I also read My Real Children by Jo Walton. It's about a woman's life. She makes a choice when young and subsequent chapters go back and forh between her life with one choice and her life with the other. I'm still digesting it. I liked it but I'm not sure I can come up with coherent thoughts yet. Except to say that exposition can indeed be done very well.

knight_tour said:

I know my publisher submitted The Immortality Game for consideration for the John W Campbell award. I would love to learn if there is any way to have it considered for a Hugo, since I had thought that was only for trade published novels.

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Hugos, as noted above, “are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.” It doesn’t matter if the work in question is published by an indie publisher, a Big 5 publisher, or is self-published at Amazon, on your blog, or on clay tablets. If it was first published in 2014 it’s eligible this year.

Hugos are nominated and voted on by people who have either supporting or attending memberships to the World Science Fiction convention. Every single person who has an eligible membership on the applicable date can nominate up to five entries in each category. Every single member who has an eligible membership on a later applicable date can vote for the finalists who make it to the actual ballot.

There is no other nomination process. It’s all down to the members of the convention. Hugo voting is very transparent. The voting is done with the Instant Runoff Voting (Australian) method. You can see the complete results of the entire process from last year (published right after the awards are given at the Convention) here. (Warning, .pdf)


For eligible works published in 2014, members of Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention that will be held in Spokane, Washington on August 19 – 23, 2015 are the ones who will vote. If (generic) you want a membership so you can nominate and vote here is the membership information.

Supporting memberships for this year are $40. That gets you nomination and voting privileges for the Hugos and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, voting privileges to determine the site of the 2017 WorldCon (Helsinki, Washington DC, Montreal or Japan—Go Team Helsinki!!) all the official publications, and whatever Hugo Voting Packet gets put together for this year. Usually the Hugo voting packet is a copy of every written work that makes the final ballot, along with samples and links to the Best Artist, Best Podcast, and Best Fan Writer categories, but sometimes (as happened last year*) the publishers will offer samples of the work in question instead of the whole thing. Still a good bargain for $40.


Note that there are TWO John W. Campbell awards.

The “John W. Campbell Memorial Award” is for Best Science Fiction Novel, for which one’s publisher sends in nominations.


The “John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer” is administered by the same people who do the Hugo awards, and members of WorldCon nominate and vote on it, also. It is infamously Not A Hugo (tm), but the nomination and voting process is identical, and the finalists appear on the bottom of the Hugo Ballot.



(Note, I am not associated with WorldCon in any way except as an attending member. I probably will volunteer to do something at the con but am not on the committee and do not speak for WorldCon nor the World Science Fiction Society.

Yes, I realize repeated a lot of zanzjan's info.)

*Orbit, who published three of the five Best Novel finalists, offered substantial samples of the novels in the packet. They later put all three on deep discount sale in their e-editions during the voting period**. Tor, who published one of the nominees, put the entire Wheel of Time series in the Voting packet. The entire series was a finalist on the Best Novel ballot. Baen, who published the fifth nominee, which was the third book in a trilogy, put all three of the books in the packet. So you never know from year to year what will be in the packet, but it’s always been a good bargain for the price, in my opinion.

**This didn’t hurt Orbit’s authors’ chances of winning. Ancillary Justice won (as it did every other award last year), Neptune’s Brood came in second and Parasite came in third.

I'm still working on my fiction lists, but here are some incomplete recommendations in other categories:

Best Related Work: Invisible, edited by Jim C. Hines (who has offered a free review copy to Hugo voters if you email him)

Best Fan Writer (excluding for the moment worthy people who have already won): Liz Bourke, Natalie Luhrs, Chuck Wendig
In particular, I appreciate Liz Bourke for her excellently-written reviews, Natalie Luhrs for both her thought-provoking commentary and her work-intensive link roundups, and Chuck Wendig for his sense about the publishing business.

Best Semiprozine (also excluding for the moment magazines who have already won): Strange Horizons, The Book Smugglers (disclaimer: I was published with the latter this year, but I voted for them in the appropriate category last year without that being the case, so I feel comfortable recommending them!)

Ultragotha, you gave some great info, so thank you! I signed up as a supporting member, but I can't find info on how to nominate. I'd like to nominate Stephan Martiniere for best artist for the cover art he did on my book, and I'd like to nominate my book for the John W.Campbell award for new author, if I can learn how to do it.

Nominations aren't open yet.

The Hugo Administrators will e-mail all of us instructions and Personal Identification Numbers for on-line nominations (and an address for paper nominations) when the time comes. Which will, if the past is any guide, probably be sometime in February.

You can't nominate your book for best new author. Your book is not an author. ;-)

You can nominate your book for Best Novel. You can nominate yourself for Best New Author, provided you meet the criteria.

You'll have five nomination spots to fill in for each category so you can nominate other people, too. This thread, and there are others out there too, is a good place to start looking at what's eligible. Which is what folks are doing now--getting ducks in a row for when nomination for all the various awards DO open.

Zanzjan posted a link to the Hugo Voting FAQ in the OP. Take a look there for other answers.

Is anyone going to WorldCon, BTW? I'll be there and would love to have an AW meet-up!

ULTRAGOTHA said:

Nominations aren't open yet.

The Hugo Administrators will e-mail all of us instructions and Personal Identification Numbers for on-line nominations (and an address for paper nominations) when the time comes. Which will, if the past is any guide, probably be sometime in February.

You can't nominate your book for best new author. Your book is not an author. ;-)

You can nominate your book for Best Novel. You can nominate yourself for Best New Author, provided you meet the criteria.

You'll have five nomination spots to fill in for each category so you can nominate other people, too. This thread, and there are others out there too, is a good place to start looking at what's eligible. Which is what folks are doing now--getting ducks in a row for when nomination for all the various awards DO open.

Zanzjan posted a link to the Hugo Voting FAQ in the OP. Take a look there for other answers.

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Thank you. I assume that relatively unknown new works like mine have next to no chance of getting a nomination due to the voters having no idea it exists. Do you have any good recommendations on how to let the voters know to look at things like the cover art for my book? I don't see any organized method of allowing the voters to view all the nominations. It sounds as if simply waiting for the Hugo folks to tell the voters when to vote means it will be too late, as the voters will not bother with unknown works at that point.

A couple recommendations:

Novelette category: The Magician and Laplace’s Demon by Tom Crosshill
Oh my gosh, this is so freakin' good I CAN'T EVEN. And the statistics talk! *swoons*

Novel: I only just started The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), but I'm already pretty sure it's going to end up on my ballot.

I was told that the Best Artist categories is for the artist's entire year's work rather than for a single cover, so I hope voters will consider nominating Stephan Martiniere, because he had a particularly great year. I asked him today and he said he is happy for me to nominate his work this year. I know of at least two fantastic covers, both for my book and for Shield and Crocus.

I'm interested in some good lists of short stories. Last year only four nominees garnered the 5% of all nominations needed to make the final ballot.

I think that was because there were so very, very many good short stories being published all over the place and it was hard to find all of them to know what to nominate. And also hard for the nominators to come together behind the top five or ten.

I really hope this year that more than four short stories get 5% of the nominations.

I've got a couple of things available:

Novella: Trading Rosemary (Masque Books)

Short story: The Mussel Eater (Book Smugglers)

Because someone asked: yep, second year of Campbell eligibility here.

Wow, good memory! Martinière's been a finalist four times and won in 2008.

zanzjan said:

knight_tour, I'm fairly certain Martiniere has ended up on the ballot in the Professional Artist category at least once already.

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Yep, I have been a huge fan for years, which is why I chose him to do my cover. I just feel his work this year has been especially strong, and he told me himself his piece for Shield and Crocus is one of his favorites. And I agree that it's breathtaking.

I see everyone adding official links, and since I had only assumed people would know mine is in my signature line, I'll add mine here:
The Immortality Game

I have two eligible works out this year:

Otherbound, a novel from Amulet Books. As it's speculative YA, it's eligible for both the regular "novel" awards and the Norton award that's given alongside the Nebulas.

For anyone wanting to consider Otherbound for the Andre Norton Award, please email me at [email protected] for an e-copy (and confirm that you're a SFWA member).

"The Masks of Sigma City," a novella in the Superpow anthology from Red Penny Papers.