On Saturday at Seattle WorldCon, the Hugo Awards judges announced their decision, awarding the prize for best novel to Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup. Go to the Hugo Awards web site for all the short-listed titles in every category. I suppose they’ll post the winners there soon?
If you love mystery novels of the Sherlock-and-Watson odd couple variety, AND you love fantasy, Bennett’s novel is the book for you. See my review of it HERE.
Meanwhile, I’m reading through the list of short-listed nominees for the World Fantasy Awards, but they will not be named until late October. Look for my reviews of all the novels, coming soon. Bennett’s novel is among them!
QUICK ADDENDUM: As of Aug. 17th, my search for “Hugo Awards 2025” on the internet led to–no information on the Hugo site BUT on the Seattle WorldCon site. . . one search engine returned the awards list, and another still hadn’t put up the page with the list, that I could find. This is a bit strange, I think. Is it me? Is it internet enshittification? It may be me. . .😵💫
Thanks to Alice from Pixabay for this fun royalty-free illustration.
In my last post, I wondered about the big speculative fiction awards and what it means that their “best novel” awards tilt so heavily to those sold by established publishing companies. Some of the short-listed novels this year were indie-published, though–that is, they were published by very small presses or by the author herself.
In the past, indie-published novels–and especially self-published novels–were sneered at. A writer who self-published a novel would be pitied or scorned as a victim of vanity publishing–taken advantage of by predatory “publishing” companies that printed a book cheaply, charged a fortune to the naive writer, forced the writer to buy a lot of copies, and dumped them on her with no editorial or marketing services.
Scams of this type still exist, along with many other scammy, scummy publishing practices. Have you ever thought of writing your own fantasy or SF? Make sure you get to know this well-respected site that helps writers avoid traps for the unwary: Writer Beware, an invaluable service to writers everywhere, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
But in the past few decades, many writers have escaped the bounds of traditional publishing. This trend comes as traditional publishing companies have increasingly fallen under the control of conglomerates whose main focus is not books; as these conglomerates have consolidated so that now there are only four or five big traditional publishers, with a corresponding shrinkage of their lists; as the conglomerates have focused increasingly on safe bets like known writers, or writers with big existing platforms (huge numbers of social media followers, for example), and celebrity writers; as the conglomerates have increasingly cut their marketing budgets for all but a few superstar performers. It’s pretty similar to what has happened in the recording industry. As a result, a lot of writers have struck out on their own, with mixed results for most. If the writer is not adept at marketing, her work tends to go unnoticed by readers. And every writer could use an editor! (Well, maybe not Shakespeare. His admirers enthused, “Shakespeare never blotted a line!” To which his colleague Ben Jonson snidely remarked, “Would he had blotted a thousand”–I guess Ben thought even the immortal Will could have used an editor.) All of the tasks of marketing and vetting fall to the writer herself, and that does not work out well for many. On the other hand, many indie-published writers do well, to the great benefit of readers.
FOR YOU, the READER–how do you discover indie-published books you’d like to read? There are ways to do that. Here are just a few speculative fiction indie-published resources:
Commercial sites for book-lovers publish lists of this type. For example, the Amazon-owned site Goodreads publishes this one for SF readers.
Booksellers themselves: My new favorite bookseller platform, Bookshop.org, publishes lists like this, and other sites do as well (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, etc.)
Your friendly librarian. I can’t stress this enough. Librarians know their stuff, and they are trained to find stuff out.
This blog presents a useful list of small presses that publish speculative fiction.
Big review sites like Kirkus Reviews publish lists of indie fantasy and SF. Here’s one.
There are sites helping indie authors promote their books, such as this one for SF.
Finally: more DYI attempts within a short timeframe, such as this SF and fantasy book sale happening right now. Full disclosure, shameless self-promotion: I’m in this one! So are a lot of other people, though, so take a look.
What is it about awards and the striving for prizes? We humans get a big thrill out of the drama of it all. My recent posts have covered some of the biggest speculative fiction awards. I’ve been reading the nominated novels and making my own decisions, then seeing how they measure against the judges’. It’s fun. It’s the love of the horse-race.
But is that a good way to read, and to get reading recommendations? Speaking for myself, the short-lists for these awards have given me a marvelous TBR of science fiction and fantasy. These are not, of course, the only good books. They may not even be the best books. The lists are subject to flawed systems of judgment, for one thing. For the most part, the books on the lists are so-called “trad published” books. (They’re all pretty great books.)
What about the indie-published books out there? Some of the awards lists do include them, and I tip my hat to that decision process. As an indie-published author myself, I can tell you that with a few lucky exceptions, many readers don’t even know most indie-published books exist. Indie authors may or may not be good marketers of their works, and they sure don’t have the marketing resources of a publishing company to draw upon. Increasingly, though, that kind of marketing support is hard to come by, even for the authors these companies publish. They might reserve their big marketing bucks for proven best-sellers or books by celebrities (and those may or may not be good books, may or may not actually be written by those celebrities–it’s the name recognition that sells the books). Still, one function of a publishing company is to serve as a gate-keeper, weeding out the trash from the treasure and presenting readers with only the treasure. With indie-published books, the authors are on their own to make their case to the readers, and the readers are on their own to wade through the ocean of stuff on offer to find the treasure and sift it from the trash. And then, of course, one reader’s trash is another reader’s treasure! In spite of the odds, I’m happy to see that some indie-published novels do make it onto these awards lists. In a coming post, I hope to give a guide to finding good indie-published SF and fantasy.
THE LOCUS AWARDS
Last year, I spent several posts on the Locus Awards, and I haven’t done that this year. The Locus list is just too massive. I only review books I’ve read myself. Also, some items on that list aren’t the type of work or genre I read (horror, for example). I wouldn’t be able to offer anything interesting to say about those. But this year’s Locus Awards winners and short-listed novels do offer one more wonderful resource for readers. Subscribers to Locus Magazine vote on these awards, and they are all readers who know and love SF and fantasy. Others can vote as well, although their votes aren’t weighted as heavily. Here are the winners and short-listed novels in the two categories I do read, SF and fantasy, as well as the First Novel list. I haven’t read all of these books, but I can see I need to work on that!
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
WINNER: The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar (Clash)
Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom; Solaris) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Nebula Awards short list HERE.
The Mercy of Gods, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Bezzle, Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra UK)
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Kinning, Nisi Shawl (Tor)
Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Hugo Awards short list HERE.
Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom; Tor UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Arthur C. Clarke Awards HERE, and mentioned in one of my posts about the Hugo Awards short list HERE.
Space Oddity, Catherynne M. Valente (Saga; Corsair UK)
Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD; Fourth Estate UK)
FANTASY NOVEL
WINNER: A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Nebula short list HERE, and mentioned in one of my posts about the Hugo short list HERE.
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, Peter S. Beagle (Saga)
The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Hugo Awards short list HERE. It is also short-listed for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards in the best novel category. See my upcoming post this fall.
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–I am reading this right now as I plow through all of the World Fantasy Awards nominees. Look for my post about that this fall.
Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Nebula short list HERE.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, TJ Klune (Tor; Tor UK)
The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed (Solaris UK)
Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
FIRST NOVEL
WINNER: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Nebula short list/award HERE, and HERE, and mentioned in one of my posts about the Hugo short listHERE.
The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader; Sceptre UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Arthur C. Clarke short list HERE, and mentioned in one of my posts about the Hugo short listHERE.
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks (Flatiron; Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Sargassa, Sophie Burnham (DAW)
Lady Eve’s Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow (Solaris UK)
The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra UK) Reviewed in one of my posts about the Nebula short list HERE.
Hammajang Luck, Makana Yamamoto (Gollancz; Harper Voyager US 2025)
OTHER AWARDS
I could spend my entire life reading books nominated for awards! HERE is a handy list of major awards. If you are looking for great SF and fantasy to read, the nominees for these awards are a great starting point. For example, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Alien Clay got a special mention by the Philip K. Dick Awards this year. Other great reads are listed among the nominees for the British Fantasy Awards, the British SF Association Awards (Alien Clay was nominated for best novel there, too), and more–and that’s not even mentioning awards for short fiction, young adult fiction, films, and other categories I don’t often deal with in this blog.
Many Other Ways to Choose Good Reading
Getting bored with the horse-race approach? Consider these–also consider I’m recommending them via a U.S. base, so all of them may not work for you if you live elsewhere in the world:
Best-seller lists: New York Times, other major media.
Book review sections of newspapers and magazines, such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and major newspapers, as well as in specialized publications such as Locus Magazine.
Recommendations by bookseller platforms like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and the like–and my new favorite source for e-books, bookshop.org, which allows you to give an indie bookstore credit for each ebook you purchase (available in the U.S. and U.K.). You can also order print books through Bookshop. If you use these platforms, they may recommend other books you’ll like, based on your purchase patterns and also what their algorithms tell them about you. I distrust these algorithms myself, having seen too much of the pay-to-play inside of one of these platforms, which shall be nameless, but they may work for you.
Websites and blogs. (Like this one!)
Newsletters with curated reading lists. I publish one myself. It’s a lot about me, but I do include lists of other authors to read. If you’d like to subscribe, send a message to shrikepublications@outlook.com.
Clubs and societies of SF and fantasy fans, from the huge to the local.
Social media groups of like-minded readers. I’m partial to Bluesky, which has great conversations about books. Follow me at jmcfwiseman@bsky.social and other book-lovers you’ll find there. Search for the BookSky posts especially. There are other groups and posts at Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, Goodreads, and on and on.
A fantastic resource: your public library! ASK A LIBRARIAN! Even better, check out books there for free. (I’m U.S-based, so I’m referring to the system here–yours may differ.)
And of course, if you’re anything like me, you and your reader friends have a lot of opinions to share. Word of mouth, baby!
Thanks for the royalty-free illustration at the top of this post: Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Fantastes 
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