2015 HUGO AWARDS: The Nominees Are Announced, Controversy Ensues

The nominations for the 2015 Hugo awards were announced at 12noon PDT on Saturday and were immediately engulfed in controversy. The issue is that apparently some group calling itself Sad Puppies came up with a slate of how people should vote for the Hugo nominations and they have been overwhelmingly successful this year. They were able to get three of their five books on the best novel list and dominated several of the "lesser" categories. (Frank J.  Wright has three of the five nominations in the Best Novella category, for example.)

Regardless, for better or worse, these are the nominees for Best Novel:

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos (47North)
• Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

Both Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword and Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor are also on the list  of nominees for the Nebula award, which may be why they broke up what is apparently intended to be a hegemonic slate of straight white males. I have read and loved Leckie's Imperial Radch series and her  first book Ancillary Justice won last year. I tried to read The Goblin Emperor and just could not get into it enough to finish it. I hope Leckie gets the rare Hugo-Nebula win, again for the sequel. Since Kevin J. Anderson is half-responsible for the execrable faux Dune books co-written wit h Brian Herbert set in the universe of Frank Herbert's masterworks I seriously hope he doesn't win. I have heard great things about the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher but never read any. I have never even heard of Marko Kloos.

The Hugo awards are voted on by the attendees of WorldCon and there is the very likely possibility that "No Award" will sweep categories where the list of nominees is identical to the Sad Puppies slate.