45 Comments on “The 2014 Hugo Award Winners”

1. Indeed so; a very strong slate indeed and my congratulations to the indubitably worthy winners!

2. I was surprised that all of my favorites in the fiction categories won. In most other categories, my favorites didn’t fare as well, but in most cases the winner was right up there in my rankings.

3. Congratulations! Nearly all of these were among my favourites as well.

   Full results are already out:
   http://www.loncon3.org/hugos/2014%20Hugo%20awards%20full%20details.pdf

4. Fantastic. I already have my pre-order for Ancillary Sword for my Nook. Well deserved. I also do love my GOT.

5. Most of my choices won too, including Time. Go Leckie!
   And No Award beat out Vox Day in the novelettes. My day is complete.

6. So, can you share your side of Charlie Stross’s story?

7. Yay – happy with most of the winners, very nice to see Ancillary Justice win. Equoid is super-creepy and deserved it (rest of the Novella field I thought was weak, I didn’t even get through Six Gun Snow White), the other two written fiction I’m not so sold on – Lady Astronaut was I thought my third choice in that category (the last place story lost to “no Award” with 60%:40% split of the vote, for what it’s worth – they did get a slice of pie though) and Water was a bit preachy.

   Nice to see Time win – such an unconventional way to tell a graphic story, funny acceptance speech, too.

   John, you got named as part of the inspiration for Equoid by Charlie, by the way.

   We have Always fought – ugh. Definitely polemic, I think the history is off, extrapolating from a very very small set of outlying examples to go “Look, see” is not very good history. Way back when, I did my dissertation on craft gilds in London, based on the City Letter Books, which recorded names of gild members. There were a few gild members who were women, but a very very small percentage – about 0.3% from memory. If you look hard enough, you can find examples of women fighting, but you run into extrapolation risk – and these cases are so exceptional that you’d expect more documentary evidence for them, not less. Very effective writing, very dodgy scholarship. And very “political” acceptance speech. Though maybe you need to throw a few bombs about if you’re trying to change things.

   Rest of the slate I have no strong feelings one way or another. I felt Mornington Crescent was a total momentum killer at that point in the ceremony, though.

8. Woohoo!! I was really pulling for Ancillary Justice and was afraid that the Wheel of Time fan base would overwhelm it.

9. I <3 Ginjer Buchanan. <3<3<3

10. Although I got a supporting membership, I only had time this year to read one nominated work, so I didn’t vote. I’m tickled to notice that it won.

    Congratulations to all the winners!

    I was always uncertain how to vote on the “best editor” categories. I have no idea how to judge. I still don’t know.

11. Off to buy Ancillary Justice as we speak.

12. Not The Reddit Chris S

    I would be surprised if the Letter Books you refer to constitute a reliable source of information as to the membership of the Medieval Guilds, or the role of women in those Guilds; after all, they are the records of the Chamberlains of London, primarily during the reign of the Plantagenets though extending to the Tudors.

    They are notorious for omitting what many historians would regard as matters of national importance; for example the fall of the Plantagenets and their replacement by the Tudors isn’t even mentioned:

    http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33639

    so I think it is implausible to regard them as an all encompassing record of what was happening in the City.

    People do get confused between the government of the City of London and the Livery Companies themselves because for centuries leading members of the Livery Companies have been elected, in our own admittedly bizarre fashion, to the government of the City. The Chamberlain, then and now, is responsible for financial matters of revenue and expenditure in the City; those of us who live in the City make payments to the Chamberlain as our predecessors did in the 13th century, but that has nothing to do with membership of the Livery Companies.

    This is not to say that I regard ‘We have always fought’ as perfect, but its imperfections are not demonstrated by the Letter Books, unless, of course, you wish to argue that Henry Tudor didn’t overthrow Richard III because if he had it would have been recorded therein…

13. @Lis Riba:

    Charles Stross’ version here.

14. Also, I noticed that most of the winners are women! How cool.

15. Congrats to all the winners. I was happy to see Hurley get an award. I’m not a historian, but I’d like to see the resurgence of this idea that it’s ludicrous to have women in combat (or doing anything else dangerous or interesting) in a fantasy novel crawl back under the rock from whence it spawned.

16. One of the things I was looking for in the full results was whether the decision by the publishers to only release an excerpt had hurt any of the nominees. Obviously, with the excerpted works taking the first three places, it was not a fatal decision, but would it have made an impact in a closer race?

    I can’t really draw a conclusion. The voters for the excerpted works seemed to avoid the complete works and vice versa. Only 13 percent of voters that ranked Ancillary justice number 1 voted for one of the complete works as their second pick (47% and 30% went to Neptune’s Brood and Parasite respectively). Only 23 percent of voters that had picked Ancillary and Neptune for first and second (in any order) voted for one of the complete works for third place (this is even less than the 28% of those voters listing either only those two works and those that had voted no award third; 49% voted for the remaining excerpted work, Parasite). Meanwhile, only 28% of first place Warbound voters, and first place Parasite & second place Warbound voters (the latter represented only 19 voters) voted for either Ancillary Justice or Neptune’s brood, as their next preference (48% went to the other complete work, WoT; 24% didn’t have anything else on their ballot, except maybe a no award).

    It would have been interesting to see how many voted for the two complete works and then didn’t have a preference beyond those two, but I don’t think we can extract that from the information available. Looking beyond the data, at blog posts, it seems that differences in the fan bases probably had a much greater effect than the publisher’s decision on whether to release an excerpt or the complete work (for example, the author of Warbound basically endorsed WoT).

17. Iridium,

    I didn’t have a problem with the excerpted works- my university’s inter-library loan was able to come through with the books (either before or after the nominating period)

18. @Not the Reddit Chris S.:

    Water was a bit preachy.

    I’m definitely curious as to why you thought that – I’m whitey mcwhiterson, but I’m queer & bilingual from a strongly heterosexist and abusive (and bilingual!) family background, & I thought TWTFOYFN was beautiful in its honesty & precision & representation of abuse and, separately, multilingual families. It just felt real to me, and the shock of recognition was incredibly welcome – I suspect trying to understand other perspectives would be a good exercise for me :-)

19. Reblogged this on Working with Words.

20. I can’t speak for other voters but, when I found out that 3 of the novel nominees were not going to be included in their entirety in the Hugo package, I immediately went to my library’s website and put them on hold. I read things in the Hugo package while I was waiting. I got all three novels in time to read them before voting closed.

21. @Stevie – um, if you’re not listed in the letterbooks, you’re not a member of the main gilds – that’s the whole point. Maybe if you’re in one of the fringe gilds, you might not be in them. but the point is, they are the books of record. The comings and goings of kings are not in there, as they aren’t for that purpose – they’re the records of the City, and not supposed to be a newspaper or broader in intent. They are more like the minutes of a company than anything else – external events would only be reflected in the impact on the company, they’re not a direct concern. I don’t know why you expect them to be a complete history – they do what they set out to do, nothing more, nothing less.

    @kaberett – Water just seemed a bit too pat, somehow – I can’t really quantify it, as it is beautifully written, something somehow seemed missing. It’s a great concept, but…just didn’t quite work for me.

22. Oh, wait, you mean the slate of “works that won”, not the slate of “works recommended as a slate by a certain collection of right-wing…”. Never mind, then :-)

    There was so much good work nominated, and I was disappointed to see in the detailed-results section that Chris Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” had been nominated for Best Short-form Dramatic and missed getting in by three votes. If I’d thought of it I’d certainly have voted for it, sigh. The dude’s in SPACE, performing a song I’d always liked about a science-fictional topic, with a name inspired by one of the biggest SF movies of my childhood, and he’s floating around in zero-g, because this is the ****ing future! (And yeah, he might not have won, because GoT and Dr.Who are always serious competitors, but still!)

23. @Pam Adams and @anelie64 (if you were responding to me), I also got the three books from the library and evaluated the nominees without regard to their status in the voter packet. I am sorry for being unclear about my interest, which was more of an intellectual exercise of figuring out whether the attitude (which I disagreed with) of many commentators on Orbit’s announcement (http://www.orbitbooks.net/2014/05/13/hugo-voter-packet/) would bear out in the final vote numbers.

    I was not able to find evidence in the final vote tally that would make me feel confident either way. If the voters for the three excerpted works spread their votes more evenly and the voters for the two complete works mostly stayed with the complete works, that would have been evidence that a large contingent of voters were doing so based on packet availability. However, the two complete works were evidently not to the taste of the fans of the excerpted works and the Warbound author basically endorsed the WoT, so the whole experiment was kind-of ruined. I’ll bet that some percentage of voters do not read outside the packet. I’ll bet that Orbit’s data scientists would love to know what percentage. This year, due to the vast difference between Orbit’s books and the complete books, their policy did not have an impact on the final results. One has to wonder, though, if Neptune’s Brood would have come in 2nd, if Parasite had been complete (Ancillary Justice absolutely ran away with it, so I doubt that it would have lost even if it had been the only excerpted work).

24. Almost 2am, everybody else in the house is asleep, and I am cheering at the screen. I’m excited about Leckie, and Stross, and Julie Dillon, and a ton of the other incredibly deserving winners. Any lingering doubts floating out there about the noms this year should be put to rest.

    But I’m cheering for Kameron Hurley. Her “We Have Always Fought” is one of the best pieces I’ve read in years. In fact, it was the first time I’d read her, and I immediately went out and read the Bel Dame books. I don’t see myself being done trying to get every friend of mine to read “We Have Always Fought” anytime soon; it’s important to one’s human experience to have this discussion. It’s a freaking BLOG ENTRY with a HUGO. That alone should make you sit up, especially Whatever readers. Well done, Ms. Hurley. Well done!

25. I’m very pleased with the number of voters and the range of votes. I’m also one of the – apparently – few who didn’t rate Ancillary Justice (I preferred Neptune’s Brood). As I bought AJ, I will re-read it and see if it comes over differently to me on re-reading. (Which is not to say I think my opinion is invalid – no winner ever gets 100% – I’m just a bit puzzled that it left me cold.)

26. Not The Reddit Chris S

    As I pointed out earlier, the Chamberlain of London was and is the finance officer of the City, and if you haven’t grasped by now that the City is not a company, nor in any way resembles a company, then you really do need to spend some time in the Guildhall Library where they will be delighted to bring you up to speed.

    Having established that the City of London is not a company and the records of the Chamberlain of London are not the records of the Guilds, or the Livery Companies as they are now known, the Corporation of London phrases it thus:

    ‘​The livery companies and the City of London have grown up together, developing and adapting over the centuries to help sustain London’s pre-eminence as a financial and business centre. They share many common goals and objectives and work.’

    The London Guilds predate the Norman Conquest, and whilst guild members certainly paid to belong to the Guilds they made those payments to the Guilds themselves, not the Chamberlain of London. The Guilds themselves may have made payments to the Chamberlain but that is an entirely different matter; you are looking for data which one would not particularly expect to be present in those particular records, and when it fails to be there you claim that its absence is proof of something else entirely. This is not a rational conclusion.

    Incidentally, my mother was career WAAF during and after WWII; women pilots transferred planes but didn’t serve as aircrew in combat, but most men in the RAF didn’t serve as aircrew in combat either. Both men and women shared the joys of attacks on airbases…

27. Interesting. Last year, after the nominees were announced, the only nominated novel I actually got round to reading before the awards was Redshirts.

    This year, the only one of the best novel nominees I got round to reading after they were announced was Ancillary Justice.

    I will try to use my power only for good.

28. Congrats to the winners.

    Still think the retro Hugos were suspect since they didn’t include the biggest SF legacy of 1938 — Superman. No nods to Siegel and Shuster?

29. S&S weren’t forgotten:

    http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/announcing-the-winners-of-the-1939-retro-hugo-awards

    (scroll down)

30. As much as I love ‘Frozen’, I never would have believed it would win a Hugo. The fact that it got as many votes as it did was heartwarming. ‘Gravity’ was a worthy winner, and I say that as someone who saw all three flicks (‘Pacific Rim’ was ok, but I find giant robot stories meh. YMMV, of course.)
    So, thoughtful, incredibly well done claustrophobic story with Sandra Bullock, an animated fantasy starring a queen with PTSD who has fewer lines on screen than the reindeer (it seemed that way sometimes) and giant robots. Wow. THAT’s breadth for you.

31. Jon Metzer — good to see that. The Hugo link:
    http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1939-retro-hugo-awards/

    didn’t include the mention of the Special Committee award.

32. And for that matter, neither the Loncon nor Locus Retro-Hugo coverages list the award.

33. Yay for The Lady Astronaut of Mars! I loved that novelette. It was so rich and perfect.

34. Extremely happy that Kameron Hurley won twice. I love her stuff, fiction and non-fiction. Now she needs to win for her fiction.

35. @ Stevie it was over 20 years ago, but as I recall there were over 1800 names of people who were approved for guild membership. I think 3 were women. The records were sufficiently detailed enough to trace some families three generations _ as London was bad for life expectancy, that’s what you might expect to see. History is messy and the records tend to favour the richer gilds – goldsmiths, grocers etc, but there is enough to draw some conclusions. Its unlikely that all the records showing women were somehow lost.

    The city also spent a lot of time avoiding politics, as that would seriously damage your life expectancy, and tried to avoid the king as he’d usually shake them down when he needed cash…so ducking and trying to get on with making money was the default position

36. Reblogged this on J.R. Johnson and commented:
    Terrific roster and well-deserved wins!

37. I’d like to see a category for best f/x or best ‘achievement’ in dramatic presentation, something to recognize the technical wizardry that is going into movies nowadays. Since s/f and fantasy are such a huge part of the film industry nowadays, maybe the Hugos should give that a bit more recognition. jmo

    my nomination would be for –

38. Chris

    From previous citation:

    “Women were admissible into every trade or craft Guild. There was nothing, moreover, to prevent a single woman being bound apprentice in the City until the year 1407, when a statute was passed forbidding parents to put out a son or daughter as apprentice unless they (the parents) had 20 shillings a year in land or rent. (fn. 141) The Act proved abortive in the case of a son or daughter who bound themselves apprentice without consulting their parents, (fn. 142) and in 1429 was repealed upon petition of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City. (fn. 143) Widows of freemen were admitted to the Guild of their late husbands, and allowed to carry on the trade or craft exercised by the deceased. Thus it is not an uncommon thing to find women enrolled as members of Guilds where one would least expect them, such as the Armourers, (fn. 144) the Founders, (fn. 145) and the Barber-Surgeons. (fn. 146)”

    In fact, according to the annals of the Barber Surgeons:

    “From the earliest times, we are told, the custom has prevailed of admitting women to the freedom of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company mostly by apprenticeship but also by patrimony, and these freewomen bound their apprentices, both boys and girls, at the Hall.”

    Those freewomen were not, apparently, admitted to the Livery, but in 1417 the Guild of Brewers seems to have gone rather further since it recorded 39 freewomen wearing its livery.

    That is a lot more than the 3 women you found in your research, which isn’t terribly surprising because you weren’t looking in the right place: I do not in any way impugn your honesty, but it does seem to me that your unwillingness to accept that there are other sources which one would expect to provide rather more in the way of relevant data is not exactly a demonstration of disinterested scholarly rectitude.

    And if you’ve spent the last 20 years wandering around telling people that there were only 3 women admitted to the Guilds in Medieval London then I can certainly see why you and others have managed to completely mislead yourselves, which takes us back to our starting point…

39. We may be going a bit off topic, here.

40. There is a VERY frustrating paragraph in the book “Woman’s Work in the Civil War” which was published in 1867, almost immediately after the Civil War:

    MILITARY HEROINES.

    The number of women who actually bore arms in the war, or who, though generally attending a regiment as nurses and vivandieres, at times engaged in the actual conflict was much larger than is generally supposed, and embraces persons of all ranks of society. Those who from whatever cause, whether romance, love or patriotism, and all these had their influence donned the male attire and concealed their sex, are hardly entitled to a place in our record, since they did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for men; but aside from these were not a few who, without abandoning the dress or prerogatives of their sex, yet performed skillfully and well the duties of the other.

    You can tell that they talked to those women, or to people who knew them, and that in the authors’ opinion there were a lot of them, but the authors refuse to tell us anything about the women who “put on men’s attire” and fought.

41. I am especially pleased by the combination of Kameron Hurley’s Best Related Work Hugo and Vox Day’s placement below No Award.

    Some may remember that Vox Day has written posts deriding women in combat as unrealistic, bad for the military, ahistorical, pure fantasy in every way–essentially, his argument is that women have *never* fought and never *will* fight, with perhaps the exception of a very few dismissable exceptions.

    The Hugo results seem like the final word on that argument.

42. If Vox’s argument was *never*, then I don’t suppose we need to go too much farther than the Gulf War. I didn’t know that Vox had written on the subject.

    That said, how are Hugo results the final word on the argument? Hurley doesn’t have to be right, merely popular, and the results for Vox’s category are even less relevant. I should revisit Hurley’s piece; I was in a bit of a hurry.

43. Mike

    I agree that it’s a popularity contest, but in support of Kameron we can go a lot further back than the Gulf War, say, 2600 years.

    One of the many things that VD is ignorant of is the evidence from Sarmation/Scythian burials north of the Black Sea area; women’s skeletons with bowed legs, reflecting long years in the saddle, and the characteristic damage to the finger bones caused by prolonged use of a bow, were buried with all their weapons. One skeleton still contained the arrowhead which had killed her.

    I had hoped to visit the archaeological sites on a cruise in the Black Sea this summer but alas the political climate forced us to keep in the south of the Black Sea; our onboard archaeologist was disheartened by the missed opportunity…

44. Mike

    Oh, and I forgot to mention the height of the women; averaging around 5ft 6 inches, much, much taller than the usual height of the time, which may explain at least part of the reason the Amazon Myth described them as giants…

45. Ok John, subject dropped.

    I’ll wander off, as apparently that’s what I do.