The 2014 Award Consideration Post
Posted on January 2, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
The beginning of the year is the start of the Hugo Award nomination window (and the Nebulas have been nominating for a while) so it is once again time to list out the works I have eligible for consideration this year, for Hugos, Nebulas and other awards.
I am going to note up top that this year my award consideration post is complicated by the fact that The Human Division, my novel for the year, is comprised of “episodes” of varying length, each of which were sold individually. I’m going to have a suggestion about this, which I will get to after the listings. Bear with me.
Best Novel
The Human Division, Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor, May 2013
Best Novella
“The B-Team,” Tor Books, January 2013*
“Earth Below, Sky Above,” Tor Books, April 2013
Best Novelette
“We Only Need the Heads,” Tor Books, January 2013
“Tales From the Clarke,” Tor Books. February 2013
“The Dog King,” Tor Books, February 2013*
“The Observers,” Tor Books, March 2013
“A Problem of Proportion,” Tor Books, March 2013*
Best Short Story
“Walk the Plank,” Tor Books, January 2013
“A Voice in the Wilderness,” Tor Books, February 2013
“The Back Channel,” Tor Books, February 2013*
“The Sound of Rebellion,” March 2013
“This Must Be the Place,” March 2013
“The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads,” April 2013
“Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today,” May 2013*
“Muse of Fire,” Subterranean Press, September 2013
Best Related Work
The Mallet of Loving Correction, Subterranean Press, William Schafer, editor, September 2013
And now, some thoughts:
1. As most of you know, last year I won the Hugo Award for Best Novel (for Redshirts). Please consider nominating someone other than me and The Human Division for the Hugo category this year (two suggestions: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, and The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skylar White; I blurbed both of them last year and think them well worth your consideration).
2. With that said, I am really proud of the individual “episodes” of The Human Division, all of which were designed to be stand-alone reads in the Old Man’s War universe. I would be delighted if you would consider these episodes in the appropriate short fiction Hugo categories. The episodes I think are of special note I have marked above with asterisks.
3. Those of you nominating for the Nebulas (or other awards), should you feel like nominating The Human Division as a novel, that would be swell. If you’d prefer to nominate individual episodes in appropriate short fiction categories, well, that would be swell, too.
4. “Muse of Fire” was published in audio in 2012, but as Mary Robinette Kowal discovered last year with “The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” audio work is apparently not (currently) eligible in the short fiction Hugo categories; it has to be published in print. Well, “Muse” was published in print the last September, so there you have it (“The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” incidentally, also published in print this year).
5. Hey! Mallet! It’s a good book!
Note to other award-eligible authors/creators/editors: For the last few years I’ve opened up a thread here to let you suggest your own eligible works, and I’ll be doing that this year as well. Look for it to go up tomorrow morning.
That’s a good idea for handling the nominations :) and I, at least, am registered for Worldcon this year, it being in my native country an’ all this year.
Interestingly, I’d identify other THD chapters as my favourites: ‘We Only Need The Heads’ in novelettes for its grim humour, and ‘This Must Be The Place’ for its – to me – engaging and reflective qualities. But I don’t suppose that’s a problem!
Sooz:
Definitely not a problem!
John – you need to get cracking for next year: helm a movie, write and direct a television episode, edit one of the magazines and a couple of kick-butt anthologies AND produce another novel in serialized fashion. While you might not win in any Hugo category, I suspect that an “All Scalzi” nominating ballot would certainly provide as much attention as a single win….
Steve Davidson:
In fact, in 2014 I will have a novel, a video game and a graphic novel come out, which will be eligible to different categories (novel, related work and graphic novel, respectively). So you never know.
Well, I’m not eligible to nominate, but I will say that out of all your novels I think THD is the best and deserves a Hugo more than Redshirts (which was also good, just not quite THD). The individual stories were great, but it was the larger story arc throughout the book that made me love it so much and has me eager for the next installment of whatever is going to happen to the B-team. :)
Older daughter got caught in the Common App crash last night as she and a million other 17-year-olds ignored parental warnings and pushed the January 1 deadline for many colleges, but it got sorted out (hours later). Same thing happened for kids who applied on an early-decision deadline day in the fall, but systems were supposed to have been stress-tested this time around.
Congratulations on having so many nomination-worthy writings. I have to seek out “Earth Below, Sky Above” now, not only because I like novellas generally, but because at my advanced age I’m finding that I have to transform myself into a lyricist, in service of a tune that’s been written for a few years already, with the help of the program Finale: SATB plus piano and flute, something appropriate for a high-class middle-school choral group, as my younger daughter used to sing in. One of the few lines I’ve decided is good is “sky above us, and Earth below” (with “sky a-” before the bar line, i.e., fitting a musical anacrusis) – which I arrived at possibly independently, or perhaps after seeing mention of your title here months ago.
Now for the mild critique: “The Human Division, my novel for the year, is comprised of ‘episodes’ of varying length…” If you’d written “comprises episodes of varying length” it would be both more concise and more correct.
Thanks for posting this. This is the first year I can nominate, and I’ve spent the last week trying to put together a list of potential candidates. This helps me greatly.
so, in line with this and most recent holiday…. “Come on ring those bells…”
I am not a nominator this year, but if I were I would nominate Muse of Fire. One of the most off-the-wall stories I have read, as well as one of the very best.
I’m impressed with the sheer volume of work you’ve completed and published in 2013.
[Deleted because it’s in the wrong thread. Try again, JvP – JS]
“Muse of Fire” is still not available for Canucks. Darn. I am very sad as I am a complete-ist and must have all Scalzi works.
Sorry. Resubmitting to proper thread. Note to self: never post in the morning before having that crucial first cup of coffee.
Got hooked on the old mans war season, so much so that I have both book and kindle editions, but feel that some of the “odds and ends” characters could also deserve entrys or short stories in the human division book. The sergeant who messes around the recruits could be a whole series by himself…! Enough short story’s are a novel.