The Kaiju Preservation Society a Locus Award Finalist + Final Two Days For Hugo Nominating
Posted on April 29, 2023 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
First things first: Kaiju is a 2023 Locus Award finalist, in the category of Science Fiction Novel. This delights me, both for itself, and for the company it keeps. Here’s the full list of finalists in the category:
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
- Sweep of Stars, Maurice Broaddus (Tor)
- The Red Scholar’s Wake, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz; JABberwocky)
- The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor; Solaris UK)
- Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf; Picador; HarperCollins Canada)
- The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher)
- Goliath, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tordotcom)
- The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)
- Eyes of the Void, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
- Neom, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
- Eversion, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Orbit US)
I’m not going to complain about that peer group of novels and novelists. There are excellent finalists in the other categories as well, many friends and people I admire, plus terrific work. Congratulations to everyone! The winners will be announced late June, so we all get a couple of months to bask in our finalosity. I’m going to have a donut to celebrate. If you nominated me for the Locus Award this year, thank you!
On the subject of nominations, second things second: If you’re a member of this year’s Worldcon, you have until this Sunday evening to nominate for this year’s Hugo awards, so get to it if you have not already. In January I posted what of mine is award-eligible this year, but if you don’t want to click the link the relevant work for the Hugos are Kaiju for Novel, Travel by Bullet for Novella, and “Three Robots: Exit Strategies” for Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. However, as always, if there are things you want to nominate more than my stuff, nominate those things, please.
This year’s Worldcon is in China and I’m curious to see if there will be Chinese work/authors on the Hugo finalist list this year (I expect so, but to what extent remains to be seen), and what English-language work will show up. It’s kind of exciting to contemplate.
In any event, nominate if you can and we’ll see what happens from here.
— JS
I loved KPS, but I have to say that Eversion is truly extraordinary. Both fall under the broad umbrella of Science fiction, but it is apples and oranges to compare the two books. Read both! I would want to vote for both.
Wow. I’m glad I’m not a Locus Award voter, because I would agonize between your KPS and MRK’s The Spare Man.
As for ‘Travel By Bullet’, I bought it but I haven’t read it yet. When you posted about it, I realized that I had been waiting for ‘Murder By Other Means’ to go on sale, and I didn’t actually need to wait for that any more, so I bought both. ‘Murder…’ was just as delightful as I expected.
Many people are reporting issues with the Chengdu Hugo nominating website. The current advice is “keep trying.” So don’t wait until the last minute to nominate.
Congratulations on your nomination. It is a big deal. I’m surprised by a few of these. Not that they aren’t well written but that they have been nominated. I’m glad they are getting the exposure.
Best to you.
There have been some technical problems reaching the nomination site hugo.chengduworldcon.com
What worked for me was a suggestion made at File770 to use the VPN in the Opera browser set to “Asia” – or presumably any VPN with a similar setting.
This may be regional – I’m on the east coast and the suggestion also came from someone on the east coast. A relative in CA had no problem with the site.
(Whatever the issue is, it does not affect the other chengduworldcon.com subdomains.)
I know a number of people who have been using a VPN and setting it to a European country to get the Hugo voting site to work. In my case I didn’t have that problem because while I kept timing out at home, that problem went away when using the free WiFi at the Holiday Inn I’m currently staying at.
Personslly, given the huge number of Chinese fans with memberships, I’m expecting all the Hugo finalists to be Chinese works or writers. I’m also expecting them to exercise their nominating rights next year and therefore am expecting most if not all of the finalists at the Glasgow WorldCon to be Chinese/Chinese language as well.
Congrats to our host.
I was able to vote with no hassles yesterday.
My bet is that the categories for shorter fiction will be dominated by Chinese supporters.
As for novel, what we might find out is what Western authors have a brisk following based on pirated content! My bellwether for this is whether or not Rebecca Kuang makes the short list.