Tag: speculative fiction awards

Speculative Fiction Awards Season Coming Up!

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment

Every year around this time, I start getting notifications about the major speculative fiction awards and their lists of nominees. Reading through these short-lists of nominees is an excellent way to discover some great new books, often by authors you either don’t know or know you should know.

In previous years, I’ve reviewed the short-listed novels for the Nebula and Hugo Awards, the two most well-known speculative fiction awards with the longest history–and then two others. I’ve read and reviewed the short-listed novels of the Locus Award (a problem because there’s too much there, and they include horror, which I don’t read). I’ve read the short list several years running of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and I’ve always found that list an excellent source of books I want to read. Last year, I included the World Fantasy Award.

One more piece of information about these awards posts: with a few exceptions, I only read nominated novels. The awards nominations include so much other wonderful stuff–short fiction, poetry, movies, more. But this blog is MOSTLY about novels, and novels are long. Even though I’m a fast reader, it takes me a while to read them all. And I don’t review any novel I haven’t read, cover to cover. So I stick (mostly) to novels.

This year I plan to review the 2026 short-listed Best Novel nominees for:

  • The Philip K. Dick Award, sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. This list is new to me this year–nominees already announced, award to be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference in Seattle, April 3, 2026
  • The Nebula Awards, as always–nominees to be listed on March 15, award to be presented at the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) annual conference in Chicago, June 3-7
  • The Hugo Awards, as always–nominations close on March 28, 2026, award to be presented at 2026 Worldcon (LACon V), Aug. 27-31
  • The World Fantasy Awards, as I did last year–nominations close on April 20, 2026, award to be presented at The World Fantasy Convention in Oakland, CA, Oct. 22-27

Since The Philip K. Dick Award is coming up fairly soon, and first, I am reviewing the short-listed novels in the next few weeks. They are:

About the Philip K. Dick Award

Named in honor of SF great Philip K. Dick, the nominees are selected by the Philadelphia SF Club, and the award is hosted and presented at Norwescon’s annual meeting.

Some of these books are long! If you want to read the nominees ahead of the award, get reading!

Next up: My review of William Alexander’s Sunward.

WARNING: Since the advent of ChatGPT and other AI “tools” for “writers,” scammers have been flooding book-buying channels with AI-slop “books.” Beware. In the case of a book meant to provide information, AI-generated books can actually hurt you by providing false, hallucinated information. For example, an AI foraging guide to wild plants can actually kill you by misidentifying poisonous plants.

But what about regular books? What about novels? They sock you between the eyes with bad generic writing. And they are almost always a cash grab by lazy posers out to make a buck. Your buck.

Here is an excellent guide to identifying and avoiding AI-generated books: https://www.kentonlibrary.org/blogs/post/buyer-beware-identifying-ai-slop-books/ As always, when in doubt–ask a librarian. They are the human beings who KNOW and best of all, KNOW HOW TO FIND OUT.

Here’s my promise. This blog will never use AI to “write” any of its content. Just today, I read a blog article that was so bad, I was sure it must have been generated by AI. It seems to have been written by an actual person. So–no guarantees! I, an actual human, apologize in advance (don’t you hate that horrible canned phrase?) for any bad writing you might see here.

But readers! Keep yourself safe from AI. Your body, and also your brain cells and eyeballs, will thank you.