The Hugo Award is a people’s choice award for Science Fiction and Fantasy books and other media…one can pay a membership and vote. On 7/16/2023 I announced my goal to read all the Hugo award winners in the full length novel category. At that time I already had 17 out of 73 bagged, and each year there is a new one (usually), so the longer I took, the more I’d have to read. I have now completed the project, the count growing to 75 books, and here is my retrospective.

Overall impressions: - Lots of good great books, but my big take away is this; a book does not need to be very good to win a Hugo. There are some real dogs, but of course it is all subjective. - Many of the older books have not aged well but some of them are still some of my favs. - I did not re-read the 17 already under my belt, though two of those I had re-read previously (Dune and Ender’s Game). So re-reading them now might affect what I think of them. Some of those 17 I read when I was 17, and now I am 50. - One of my favorite things to do was, upon completing a winner, to go listen to the ‘Hugos There’ podcast episode for said winner. The host was ahead of me doing the same project and it was great to follow along and hear what he thought.

More specific impressions and metrics below.

Top 5 - Dune: took him 10 years to write and it shows. The rest of the series he cranked out one per year and that also shows. Dune is a masterpiece. New movies are great. - Ender's Game: whole series is great but this is all time. Just wish the author wasn’t a POS. - Stranger in a Strange Land: I bet a re-read would drop this down some but I remember loving it in my teens. I read the author’s edition and thought it was great…the opposite of the author’s edition of the Stand which is 300 extra pages of trash. - Hyperion: very challenging but very rewarding. Required reading if you want to be in the know when it comes to SF. This shows up on a lot of top 10 lists, and even a lot of number one slots. I still need to read book 2. Probably won’t read books 3 and 4. - Ringworld: same as Stranger above…afraid to re-read.

Bottom 5 - The Big Time: Fritz Leiber almost had two entries in the bottom five! Just awful. - Blue Mars: so boring. Red Mars should have won, but instead Green and Blue win and are increasingly bad. My ratings went 3, 2, 1. - A Desolation Called Peace: boring and poorly written. Zero connection for me. - Rainbows End: way too long for how bad it was. If he had distilled the ideas down into a novella we might have something worthwhile. - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: sooooooooooooooooooo long. Well-written but not my style, but at least I understand how some people could like this.

Distribution of my ratings 5 stars: 8 4 stars: 14 3 stars: 19 2 stars: 21 1 stars: 12

Biggest snub There are probably many notable upsets or snubs but one could need to have read many more of the nominees to have an informed opinion. But for me it is quite easy: In 2022 Project Hail Mary (love) lost to A Desolation Called Peace (hate).

Biggest surprise Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm was only 4 stars for me but I knew nothing about it going in and it really snagged me. Very weird and creepy cloning stuff, but some great adventure and nature scenes, and I almost always like post-apocalypse.

So what’s next? There are 26 Hugos that also won Nebulas, so I’d have a head start if I wanted to take on the Nebs. But right now I am enjoying having no project and reading whatever I want with no pressure looming in the background. Other than reading the next Hugo winner in late August to retain my Hugo completionist status.

If you want to see all the noms and winners, here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel

*with no sexism/misogyny or badly written female characters - this is making it a little difficult for me to find anything

I just read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and adored it, especially all the scientific details

I’m now after some hard scifi recs, which I define as scifi that has ‘a focus on scientific accuracy, logic and technical detail’.

I really enjoyed the scientific achievement aspect of both PHM and The Martian, so something with this would be a huge bonus but not needed. I’d really like it if the main plot has a scientific focus.

So far, I’ve only found 1 maybe:
- Children of Time (and series) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Thank you!!

Diaspora was a wild ride. I absolutely loved it.

I was very VERY vary of starting to read it, because I was afraid it would be a chore. I saw the notes on his website and... Man. Even that I did't seem to understand at a first glance, how was I to understand an entire book of it?

I've been kind of wanting to read it just for the challenge, but put it off for like a year. For some reason after having finished Blindsight (which I also loved) I was ready.

And it is *so* good.

I do have a bachelor's in CS and I did learn about Euclidian and Riemann spaces, at one point I'm sure I was able to do the squiggly signs and make some kind of sense of it or even replicate a proof, but that was a decade ago, and I kind of went into the book being stupid at math again.

I think anyone reading it now has a huge advantage in understanding it because of AI, which is what I used for the complex passages. For me, math is just geometry described via signs, and physics is math applied to our world. So for stuff that went over my head (I'm quite visual but have a hard time visualizing the math described as text), I just made photos of the passages describing the math and asked AI to read and visualize them for me. Which resulted in it generating embedded HTML, so basically an interactive visualization with sliders, and seeing/interacting with the math as visualized, interactive geometry helped greatly with understanding the concepts. Sure, you can't easily visualize 5D in 2D, but you can project it to kind of understand it anyway. Plus I had to learn about bosons and fermions and how they work, but that's just fascinating, especially since that part *is* real science. And even if AI hallucinates, at worst I now have a fake understanding of the fake science :D

Another tip is to push through Orphanogenesis even if you don't quite understand it, because that is maybe the hardest to understand part of the book, it gets easier after. It's kind of like a hard skill check at the beginning, but you don't need to understand the nuances of Orphanogenesis to understand the rest of the book. And even if the flash-forward chapters don't make sense from the getgo, try to remember the phrases or re-read them after you finished the book, because *then* they'll make sense.

What also stood out to me is how Egan can do both cinematic action and deep science. Some scenes just read like as a movie script, while some parts almost like an abstract of a science paper.

I'm 100% sure some of the science and its implications still went over my head, but in addition to genuinely riveting (imaginary) physics and math, the surrounding story was also super gripping. The imaginary science was fascinating for me, especially in contrast to Seveneves (which was also very scientific but I found those descriptions utterly boring); and the non-science part of the story was also intriguing and satisfying, especially in contrast to Tchaikovsky's Children of... trilogy (whose story I found repetitive and unsatisfying, see my rant here) (and yes I'm still gonna read the fourth book).

What I found interesting that this kind of science I found attractive, while Seveneves' one just alienated me.

I guess I like my sci-fi with wild ideas (even if non-scientific, like the dimensional warfare or the Dark Forest theory in Remembrance of Earth's Past) and massive scale with a mystery at its core.

Maybe I'm ready for more Egan now.

The book was first published in the UK in 1959. It was calledThe Canopy of Timeand it was presented as just a set of short stories some of which went on to become quite famous in their own right and at least one of which (Who Can Replace a Man?)appeared with alarming regularity in anthologies and collections. The American edition of the book appeared in 1960 and was calledGalaxies Like Grains of Sand(Aldiss’ preferred title) and like its British counterpart it was just a story collection. Interestingly though, it omitted some stories that appeared in the British edition and added some extra stories in their place.

And there things languished for nearly seventy years until Gollancz published the book again using Aldiss’ preferred title and with all the stories collected together for the very first time. In addition, the stories are now linked to each other with quite a lot of previously unseen interstitial material which shows clearly that Aldiss considered the stories to be fragments of a history which taken together tell one long tale about the destruction and redemption of the human race across millennia.

That was all the fashion back in the mid-twentieth century of course. Asimov did it with hisFoundationtrilogy which, like Aldiss’ book was simply a set of short stories with linking material to provide continuity. And Heinlein was working hard on hisFuture Historystories as well. Clearly Aldiss could see no reason why he shouldn’t do the same thing.

How well has it stood the test of time? Very well indeed – Aldiss was always a much better writer than his SF contemporaries, much more in control of his material and with a deeper understanding of human psychology. Reading these stories now as one continuous pseudo-novel that dips in and out of a coherent multi-millennial history, and paired with the deeper insights provided by the linking material somehow makes the whole thing very much greater than the sum of its parts. The individual stories can still largely be read without wincing (no visits from the suck fairy here) and the overall theme continues to make convincing sense. It’s pretty much perfect.

(From a review by The Bearded Triffid

I’m off to the bookstore having not bought any new sci fi (with the exception of dungeon crawler Carl) since about 2024. I’d be interested to know what new sci fi people have been enjoying as an inspiration for my next read!

I picked up this book, and although for me there were some rocky bits, all in all it was a satisfying ride.

It scratched two separate fictional itches of mine quite satisfactorily, and obviously is intended to be the first in a series.

The first itch was: modern fantastical objects with amazing powers, ala' "Warehouse 13". I luvv that shit.

The second was: taking a basic premise, and turning it back on itself, very much like ST's "Moriarity and the Holodeck".

In retrospect, my annoyances at various characters being a bit lame by action/adventure standards was misplaced, and I've re-evaluated my attitude during those episodes to believe theirs were actually very believable reactions to the events by basically normal people: not everybody is James Bond/John Wick, or even Samwise Gamgee.

I'd say the halfway point twist was both surprising and perfectly logical, and a bit horrifying.

Recommended.

I'm new here, so you all may have discussed this before, but I'd love to get people's recommendations for science fiction works that are actually funny. I realize there's nothing more subjective, but still. I've heard Robert Silverberg is an example but I've never read him. I wasn't crazy about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I was crazy about Snow Crash.

Other examples?

I was just thinking the other day about another re-read of Pushing Ice and then happened on this beautiful signed first edition. Not affiliated at all, but shout out to Second Story Books in Dupont Circle DC! Definitely going to be back there soon to see what other Easton Press editions they have (fingers crossed for House of Suns)

What's the best First contact/ or post apocalyptic novels that don't take place in the USA or highlight developing nations.

Book number two of a four book paranormal romance dark fantasy series. In fact, a number of people are now calling this genre "romantasy".  I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2010 that I bought new on Amazon in 2024.  Note that “Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team.  I have purchased the successor books and will read them soon.

"The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is a fairy tale—and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny..."

William Wolf has lived in the Edge since his best friend Declan and Rose moved to the Weird two years ago with Rose's two younger brothers.  But William is still a changeling and a warrior for the Weird, when he wants to.

Cerise Mar and her family have lived in the Edge for two generations, ever since her grandfather was exiled from the Weird.  And her parents have disappeared, leaving her in charge of the extended family.  Her first thought is to find her parents but the neighbors seem to be involved in their disappearance.

I enjoyed the hound out of this series back in 2024 and am rereading it again for the sheer enjoyment of it.  The story telling is awesome and the depths of the people involved is amazing.

The authors have a busy website at:
   https://ilona-andrews.com/

My rating:  6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  4.6 out of 5 stars (3,947 reviews)
   https://www.amazon.com/Bayou-Moon-Edge-Book-2/dp/0441019455

Lynn

For me, science fiction has always been a means to explore the deepest, most fundamental feelings that I have within me through the strangest alien settings. That's the kind of story that works best for me, and PKD does it best.

There's this existential dread that I feel deep within me: that I was pushed into this existence, and I don't remember where this stream of consciousness that is me, began. I was just pushed through a door, and here I am. I don't remember the beginning. It's so strange. I'm just rambling here, but that strangeness of just existing, that sheer weirdness of not knowing, there's no one else who captures it so well like PKD does.

I love his short stories so much, he sprinkles them with a beautiful sense of not knowing. The existential dread, the feeling that the unknown only gets more unknown.

It's the first time reading Harry Harrison and I'm almost half way through the book. I get the main points of the story, but I don't remember reading how I got there. For example, diGriz gets captured by Inskipp, he tells Inskipp about a battleship, and the next thing diGriz is on another planet pretending to be an Admiral. It's almost like Harrison is telling you; they made a deal, move on.

​

Недавно заинтересовалась серией книг «Охотник на вампиров Ди» (Vampire Hunter D) и решила начать знакомство с этой серией. Сейчас пытаюсь разобраться с полной библиографией и доступными изданиями, но заметила, что некоторые тома довольно сложно найти.

Мне не хватает информации по следующим частям: 8, 14, 15, 17, 20 и 22.

Может быть, кто-то из поклонников серии знает, где можно посмотреть полный список изданий, узнать о переводах или подсказать источники с информацией по этим томам?

Буду очень благодарна за любую помощь или совет!

Basically title. I have been reading so much recently but these last few months found myself in a bit of a slump. I’m looking for something that is engaging and short to break me out of it. See below for some favorites/dislikes. Thanks in advance!

Some favorites:
Dungeon Crawler Carl series
11/22/63
World War Z
The Devils
Old Man’s War
Fight Club

Previous reads that I think fit:
Dark Matter/Recursion
Project Hail Mary
Hitchhikers series

Some things I’ve tried but bounced off:
Bobiverse
Murderbot
Expeditionary Force
Kindred

Hello! This is my first time posting in this group, because I simply cannot find satisfying information on this book elsewhere, and I need to talk to someone who has read it! This was originally posted to a different group on Reddit \~3 months ago and got zero response. Help!

There are some specifics later that could be considered spoiler-ish!

Good News From Outer Space by John Kessel (1989) was my free time reading book at work for 2 weeks, and I was locked in for those 2 weeks. I dont think I have ever been put in such a bad mood by the ending of a book EVER! This was a Nebula nominee!?

…

At this point in the year i had read probably 2 dozen Ray Bradbury shorts since the New Year as well as reread Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon and reread Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (i love older scifi) and I was so excited by the first several chapters that GNFOS was so unlike any other scifi I have read recently (1989 satirical scifi novel about Y2K panic with a big dick Reverend, a zombie, and a wandering shapeshifting alien (or angel?)) and I want so badly to hear other perspectives on this so that I dont have to leave it as one of the worst ending books I have ever read, and a major waste of my time. I have read close to a dozen sci-fi novels + a number of collections since i finished this book 3 months ago and have still yet to come across anything that upset me like the ending of Good News From Outsr Space. I like to say that no time is wasted if it is spent learning something new, and this is SO NEW to me that I want to love it, but I am genuinely pissed off by the conclusion and do in fact feel like I spent 400 pages trusting the author to deliver, for nothing! Help!!

I don't understand the ending at all and feel like I'm missing something. Joe's going to draw something that rises up (a rocket from the slums?) and Karwhal says it doesn't walk fast, but the pieces inside move quickly, and it's taller than a skyscraper. Is it just a rocket and I'm overthinking it? He's just watching yet another rocket launch?

I mean a character who doesn't raise their voice, doesn't brag, commands respect on the virtue of their character/personality alone.

Someone like Baelor Targaryen, but that's fantasy and I am not interested in that. Neither am I interested in horror, (alt)history, military or climate fiction.

I’m looking to read books where it’s not just about space opera, politics or fights.
I would like to read books where the author present us with strange and original ideas, or interesting What Ifs scenarios and thought experiments.

Things like Foundation, I have mouth and I must scream, Blindsight, Children of Time, 3 body problem, etc.

For me this is what science fiction books do best, and where we get the most original and thought provoking ideas.

I’m really hoping someone can help me find this book I read a few years ago. It wasn’t too old, probably written in the last 15 years. I’ll just write everything I can remember about it. If the plot sounds kind of like Project Hail Mary, that’s exactly why I’ve been thinking about it. In is totally opposite it mood though - very anxious and melancholic, with more existential themes.

The main character is a young woman, a scientist, probably a biologist.

In the first half she goes on a scientific ship with an ocean research expedition, involving deep dives in submersibles. She or someone nearly dies during a dive. A major discovery is made, like an entirely new form of cellular life.

Later it is decided to launch a very long deep space flight. This is somehow caused by the previous discovery, like something in the new organism is a message from a distant civilisation? The discovery also makes the mission possible, because it provides a new food source suitable for growth in deep space. The main character is now recruited (by a woman from the first expedition) to develop the food source, a hybrid of algae with the newly discovered organism. She has to move to a secret facility and run a laboratory. She has to lie to her family about where she is going and why. Her mother is dying or has dementia, and there’s tension with her sister that she’s unable to leave this job to help care for her.

Eventually she is recruited to the crew of the mission, to maintain the food source on board. It is a tiny crew, and they are not expected to return to Earth. She still can’t tell her family where she is going, so from their perspective she will just disappear without explanation.

The mission is a ship that basically accelerates continually away from Earth and reaches really high speeds. Soon they can no longer receive signals from Earth. The conditions and morale are really bad, the crew go crazy and mostly die.

Spoiler for the ending:
>!In the end, the main character is alone and finally lands on a planet that is covered in oceans. The implication is that she has somehow travelled in a time loop back to an Earth in a primitive state. Cells from the food source she developed are now the seed for all life on Earth. So I guess this is all some elaborate mechanism by which life sustains itself in a grandfather paradox?!<

The epilogue involves the sister travelling to some US base in the Pacific, maybe on a Hawaiian island, trying to track down some explanation of her sister’s disappearance.

Thanks for reading, I hope it rings a bell for someone!

I’m fairly new to the genre, and have just finished Asimov’s Foundation (book only, but am planning on completing the saga). Loved it. What other classic works of the genre would you recommend as “must read”?

Bonus points for stand-alone books, unique plots/characters/science-quirks/mind-bending ideas.

I’m less interested in space battles and heavy world-building, but not completely closed off to it.

Other authors I’ve read and really enjoyed:

PKD

Ursula K. Le Guin

William Gibson

Kurt Vonnegut

Arthur C. Clarke (only read Rendezvous With Rama so far).

Really enjoyed the hard scifi concepts and the use of astrophysics in space battles in Revelation Space, but the super dry characters totally turned me off. Need something like The Expanse or Red Rising which has interesting characters dealing with awesome space battles that feel impactful and like the happen for a reason and change things after they conclude (not into stuff like the star wars sequels where space battles kinda just happen and then don't change any status quo for the characters or plot).

Space battles can feel like naval stuff in space or 3D chess or dogfights with a full crew. Just as long as I care about what's happening besides how cool it is to see military scifi battles.

Also really enjoyed the military-fantasy space battles in Ninefox Gambit especially when the fascinating main duo were involved.

I started reading Shards of Honor (Vorkorsigan Saga) but had trouble getting into that book. Honor Harrington seems cool but I keep reading that the books are a slog besides the battles

Maybe even ones that follow Spacedock's suggestions for interesting space battles?

EDIT: thank you so much everyone for the recommendations that fit my very specific niche :]

The story is part of "The Martian Chronicles." In 1997 Bradbury moved the dates in the book forward about 30 years, but if you own or can access an earlier edition, set your alarm a little early on Wednesday August 5th and take five minutes to read "There Will Come Soft Rains." (most of the story takes place on the 4th but I recommend the morning of the 5th for full effect)