Tag: speculative fiction

A Word About Awards

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment

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 list HERE.
  • 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 list HERE.
  • 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.
  • The West Passage, Jared Pechaček (Tordotcom)
  • The Spice Gate, Prashanth Srivatsa (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)
  • Womb City, Tlotlo Tsamaase (Erewhon)
  • 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

2025 Hugo Awards: the last two finalists

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy2 Comments

The Hugo Awards for 2025 will be announced on August 16, 2025 at Seattle WorldCon.

The finalists for best novel:

  • The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, Hodderscape UK)
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press, Sceptre)
  • A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Tor)
  • Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom)–mentioned in this post
  • Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US, Tor UK)–reviewed in this post
  • Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW)

Disclaimer: I review only the novels. Go to the Hugo Awards site to find all the other finalists in all the other categories.

And now, wow, two finalists from the same author, Adrian Tchaikovsky. I know nothing about awards and this awards process.* All I do is read and enjoy books. But is this going to be like the Oscars, where two Best Actor nominees from the same film cancel each other out? I hope not, because both of these novels are superb. (*Actually, if you really want to figure some of this out, HERE is a post that demystifies the process.) Neither of the two Tchaikovsky novels has won any of the year’s big speculative fiction awards yet, but they are both great candidates for this one, and both have been double nominees for two of them (Hugo and Locus). If that’s not enough, Tchaikovsky’s series The Tyrant Philosophers is also nominated in the Hugo best series category. Tchaikovsky has quite a history with the Hugo Awards. See his statement HERE about the China controversy.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom)

Find it HERE.

This Tchaikovsky novel, one of the nominees for the 2025 Hugo Award for best novel, was also short-listed for both the 2025 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2025 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel. See my review HERE. It’s a delightful novel from the point of view of a robot in the C-3PO mode, but it makes a serious point sorely needed by our world, teetering on the cusp of AI takeover. What is the difference between following a procedure and thinking? What happens when the world is run almost solely by procedure? Readers of speculative fiction are encountering a lot of robot lit these days, everything from the novel that did win this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award (Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot, reviewed HERE) to kiddie fare like the Pixar animated film Wall-E and the beloved children’s book The Wild Robot (for the animated movie, see HERE). Tchaikovsky’s novel is a brilliant addition.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US, Tor UK)

Find out more HERE.

Here’s the other Tchaikovsky novel nominated for this year’s 2025 Hugo Award for best novel. It was also short-listed for the 2025 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel. It is an astounding novel of the prison camp/dystopian fascist society type, and it is powerful. But it is more than that. The main character, an exobiologist/ exoecologist named Arton Daghdev, has been sent on a one -way highly dangerous trip to a penal planet. Other colleagues have gotten there before him, some have died in transit, and still others have been executed. Daghdev’s crime is to oppose Earth’s fascist government, especially its received wisdom about science. Manifest Destiny writ large drives Earth’s space exploration, and all science must support the government-approved doctrine of human intelligence that undergirds it. This perversion of science bears the Orwellian name of Scientific Philanthropy.

When Daghdev arrives on the planet Kiln, he realizes that humanity has finally discovered another intelligence. He also quickly understands that its biology does not conform to the orthodoxy Earth’s government demands: that all intelligent life must point to humanity at the pinnacle. So the secret of Kiln is being kept under wraps. Daghdev’s task, one of the less dangerous at the colony, is to help the camp’s superiors develop a plausible-sounding theory forcing Kiln’s alien biology into conformity with Earth’s approved narrative about intelligence. “Our work,” he tells the reader, “is to biology what faking a set of books for the Taxation Mandate is to accountancy. There’s the initial survey [of the alien culture]. . .and then there’s the official record.” If Daghdev does not perform this task to the satisfaction of the petty bureaucrat in charge of the colony, his chances look grim. Then again, everyone’s chances on Kiln look grim.

Tchaikovsky’s novel delves into a problem that has dogged humanity ever since the dawn of the age of science, and still does. Here in the U.S., we might recall the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, where a court in Tennessee tried to suppress the teaching of evolution, so shocked were certain parts of the public to think that humans might have evolved from earlier hominids. Lest anyone delude themselves into thinking this controversy is a dead part of history, I will just point you to recent U.S. news and book bannings. However, even after evolution became an almost universally acknowledged theory about how human beings and human intelligence evolved, there were still people out there trying to subvert it. People still publish that old diagram of a series of knuckle-dragging apes culminating in an upright human, while evolution is more like a shrub or tree with many branchings–and that itself is a huge over-simplification. Sorry, scientists!

NOPE

Tchaikovsky’s novel is not just about the dangers of totalitarianism but also about the dangers and temptations of human beings misunderstanding their relationship with nature. It’s an exciting book about alien discoveries, alien planets, and the fiendish puzzle of busting out of a seemingly hyper-max prison (and into what? a land that will kill you?). It’s also about the human stain, human hubris. Human clay, in other words, transposed to an alien setting. It’s a wonderful novel. I sped through it, and now I am re-reading it more closely.

AND NOW–it’s time to wait for the judges’ decision on Aug. 16th. Meanwhile, there are more awards lists to repurpose into your very own 2025 speculative fiction reading list, and I’ll be reporting on those soon.

Hugo Awards 2025: Two More Finalists

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy1 Comment

The Hugo Awards for 2025 will be announced on August 16, 2025 at Seattle WorldCon.

The finalists for best novel:

  • The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, Hodderscape UK)
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press, Sceptre)
  • A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Tor)–mentioned in this post
  • Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom)
  • Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US, Tor UK)
  • Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW)–mentioned in this post

Disclaimer: I review only the novels. Go to the Hugo Awards web site to find the finalists in other categories.

Today’s will be an easy post for me to write, because I have already reviewed the two books I’m mentioning. I do have a few things to add, though, and if you missed my earlier posts with the reviews and you are following/reading these novels, I will link to them in this post.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Tor)

Learn more HERE.

T. Kingfisher is the pen name of the author Ursula Vernon, who writes under both names for different audiences–T. Kingfisher for adults/young adults, and Ursula Vernon for children. She is a force! See her web site–here it is again–to enter her kingdom of delights. A Sorceress Comes to Call is fantasy, but it appeals to Bridgerton/Regency romance and cozy house mystery readers as well. See my review HERE. A Sorceress Comes to Call was short-listed for the 2025 Nebula Awards and won the 2025 Locus award for best fantasy novel. It is so much fun to read.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW)

Find it HERE.

This novel is simply amazing. Not only is it highly entertaining, but it also deals with important issues–a great combination. See my review for it HERE, as one of my posts about novels short-listed for the 2025 Nebula Awards, and my mention HERE, when it won the 2025 Nebula Award for best novel. It also won the 2025 Locus Award for best first novel. Now here it is, short-listed for the Hugos too. Here’s a fascinating conversation with the author.

NEXT UP: The last two short-listed novels for the 2025 Hugo Awards.