Now that the 2024 finalists have been announced, it’s time to get working on next year. It’s obviously way too early, but it’s fun. And by the time the finalists were announced last year and I posted my first prediction list, two of the eventual Best Novel finalists, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi and Some Desperate Glory, were already on there. Granted, it’s earlier in the year this time, and only a fraction of the total works that will be published this year have hit the shelves. I have very low confidence in these current lists because there’s not very much data yet.
Novel:
| The Tainted Cup | Robert Jackson Bennett |
| A Sorceress Comes to Call | T. Kingfisher |
| The Warm Hands of Ghosts | Katherine Arden |
| The Bezzle | Cory Doctorow |
| Those Beyond the Wall | Micaiah Johnson |
| Foul Days | Genoveva Dimova |
Novella:
| Ganger | Wole Talabi |
| The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain | Sofia Samatar |
| The Dead Cat Tail Assassins | P. Djèlí Clark |
| An Elegy of Soil | Natalia Theodoridou |
| Tusks of Extinction | Ray Nayler |
| The Brides of High Hill | Nghi Vo |
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I’ll update monthly-ish until voting closes next year. My plan is to edit this post throughout the year. I’ll carry over this methodology explanation from my previous posts.
I’m always open to answering questions and discussing.
Methodology:
The model I use to make the predictions is continually a work in progress and I regularly train it to make it as accurate as possible (although at this point it’s all just very minor tweaks).
As a disclaimer, I’m not a coder and do not use any sophisticated programming. I’m a pseudo-statistician who has researched predictive modeling to design a formula for something that interests me. I first noticed certain patterns among Hugo finalists that made me think it would be cool to try and compile those patterns into an actual working formula. I use a discriminant function analysis (DFA) which uses predictors (independent variables) to predict membership in a group (dependent variable). In this case the group is whether a book will be a Hugo finalist.
I’ve compiled a database of past Hugo finalists that currently goes back to 2008. Each year I use a dataset that includes information from the previous 5 years to reflect current trends that are more indicative of the final outcome than many years of past data (Pre-Puppy era data is vastly different than the current Post-Puppy era despite not being that long ago.) I also compile a database of books that have been or are being published during the current eligibility year. Analyzing those databases generates a structure matrix that provides function values for different variables/predictors. My rankings are simply sums of the values each book receives based on which predictors are present.
In my 2024 prediction databases, I ended up with 326 novels and 101 novellas. I tracked 31 predictors covering four general areas: “Specs” such as genre, publisher, and standalone/sequel; “Awards” meaning performance in other awards leading up to the Hugos; “History” meaning an author’s past Hugo history; and ”Buzz” such as inclusion on various reader lists, bestseller performance, and whether a book receives a starred review from a prominent publication.