The Hugo Awards get underway this week! The annual convention honors the best Science Fiction and Fantasy media of the year, covering everything from books to TV to movies and more. The awards are usually held in August, but are being held in December this year as part of DisCon III.
We're covering three different categories below - the nominees for Best Novel, Best Novella, and Best Series. These nominees cover books released in the 2020 calendar year. Check out these books to see the best that Sci-Fi and Fantasy to offer, and check back to this post throughout the week to see who the winners are!
'Piranesi,' by Susanna Clarke
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house--a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
'The City We Became,' by N.K. Jemisin
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six.
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.
In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
And they're not the only ones.
'The Relentless Moon,' by Mary Robinette Kowal
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
Mary Robinette Kowal continues her Hugo and Nebula award-winning Lady Astronaut series, following The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, with TheRelentless Moon.
The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened.
Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.
'Harrow the Ninth,' by Tamsyn Muir
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
Harrow the Ninth, an Amazon pick for Best SFF of 2020 and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station.
She answered the Emperor's call.
She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.
In victory, her world has turned to ash.
After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath ― but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.
Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?
'Black Sun,' by Rebecca Roanhorse
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.
A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.
'Network Effect,' by Martha Wells
*BEST NOVEL NOMINEE*
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.
―
I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.
When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
'Finna,' by Nino Cipri
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
Finna is a rambunctious, touching story that blends all the horrors the multiverse has to offer with the everyday awfulness of low-wage work. It explores queer relationships and queer feelings, capitalism and accountability, labor and love, all with a bouncing sense of humor and a commitment to the strange.
When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store -- but not that one -- slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.
To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.
'Ring Shout,' P. Djèlí Clark
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
'Upright Women Wanted,' by Sarah Gailey
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."
Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.
'Come Tumbling Down,' by Seanan McGuire
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
Come Tumbling Down picks up the threads left dangling by Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones--it's both a standalone delight and a treat for longtime fans of the series.
When we Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister--whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice--back to their home on the Moors.
But death in their adopted world isn't always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome.
Eleanor West's "No Quests" rule is about to be broken.
Again.
'Riot Baby,' by Tochi Onyebuchi
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
Ella has a Thing. She sees a classmate grow up to become a caring nurse. A neighbor's son murdered in a drive-by shooting. Things that haven't happened yet. Kev, born while Los Angeles burned around them, wants to protect his sister from a power that could destroy her. But when Kev is incarcerated, Ella must decide what it means to watch her brother suffer while holding the ability wreck cities in her hands.
Rooted in the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is as much an intimate family story as a global dystopian narrative. It burns fearlessly toward revolution and has quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.
Ella and Kev are both shockingly human and immeasurably powerful. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by racism. Their futures might alter the world.
'The Empress of Salt and Fortune,' by Nghi Vo
*BEST NOVELLA NOMINEE*
With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.
A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.
Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.
At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.
'The Daevabad Trilogy,' by S.A. Chakraborty
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: The City of Brass
- Book Two: The Kingdom of Copper
- Book Three: The Empire of Gold
Step into The Daevabad Trilogy, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty, an imaginative alchemy of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and Uprooted, in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts.
'The Lady Astronaut Universe,' by Mary Robinette Kowal
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: The Calculating Stars
- Book Two: The Fated Sky
- Book Three: The Relentless Moon
On a cold spring night in 1952, a meteorite falls to earth and destroys much of the eastern seaboard of the United States, including Washington D.C. The Meteor, as it is popularly known, decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth’s efforts to colonize space, and allows a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process.
This series also includes several short stories!
'The Poppy War Trilogy,' by R.F. Kuang
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: The Poppy War
- Book Two: The Dragon Republic
- Book Three: The Burning God
A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.
'October Daye,' by Seanan McGuire
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: Rosemary and Rue
- Book Two: A Local Habitation
- Book Three: An Artificial Night
- Book Four: Late Eclipses
- Book Five: One Salt Sea
- Book Six: Ashes of Honor
- Book Seven: Chimes at Midnight
- Book Eight: The Winter Long
- Book Nine: A Red-Rose Chain
- Book Ten: Once Broken Faith
- Book Eleven: The Brightest Fell
- Book Twelve: Night and Silence
- Book Thirteen: The Unkindest Tide
- Book Fourteen: A Killing Frost
- Book Fifteen: When Sorrows Come
October Toby' Daye, a changeling who is half human and half fae, has been an outsider from birth. After being rejected by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the Faerie world, retreating to a 'normal' life. Unfortunately for her, the faerie world has other ideas. The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby must resume her former position as knight errant and renew old alliances.'
'The Interdependency,' by John Scalzi
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: The Collapsing Empire
- Book Two: The Consuming Fire
- Book Three: The Last Emperox
“The Flow” — the naturally-occurring highway humans use to travel between the stars — is breaking down. It’s up to a starship owner, a scientist, and the Emperox of the Interdependency to race against the clock in order to salvage political control over the remaining connected human colonies. Snappy dialogue, dynamic action sequences, and political skullduggery — The Interdependency sequence is a galaxy-spanning science fiction adventure for the ages.
'The Murderbot Diaries,' by Martha Wells
*BEST SERIES NOMINEE*
- Book One: All Systems Red
- Book Two: Artificial Condition
- Book Three: Rogue Protocol
- Book Four: Exit Strategy
- Book Five: Network Effect
- Book Six: Fugitive Telemetry
The Murderbot Diaries, by bestselling author Martha Wells, is an action-packed, cerebral science fiction series about a self-hacking robot searching for the meaning of life.
Last Modified April 24, 2024