[UPDATE: Reactions and commentary on the finalists here!]
It’s been a whirlwind year for the Hugo Awards. From the general feeling of unease and speculation all the way back in early 2023, to the oblivious bliss between the announcement of the finalists and the actual ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon, to the WTF-ery of the nominating stats released in January, to the major media coverage of how it all burned down. More and more continues to come to light, but I think it’s safe to say that the Chengdu Worldcon will go down in history as an ignominious blight on SFF, and not even for the reasons many suspected.
It turns out it was a single asshole who wielded what he felt was a cosmic and limitless power as head of the Hugo committee to disqualify most works by Chinese authors based on the perception that a recommended voting list on which they appeared constituted slate voting, which itself is not against the rules anyway. Then, of the English-language works that received the most votes, he ruled some of them ineligible based on an invented, erroneous criteria he felt, in a Messiah-like fervor, would bring balance between the Eastern and Western worlds. He even enlisted his acolytes on the committee to assemble dossiers on each potential finalist according to said criteria. It wasn’t until one of the committee members stepped forward with receipts, after being exposed, that the SFF community finally figured out the extent of the perfidy.
The kicker? As the current rules stand, there’s nothing to stop it from happening again. There’s no system of accountability, just a good faith that everybody will act with decency. Which, honestly worked for a long time, and would probably continue to be the case for the most part. But now that that faith has been violated, everybody has a different solution to fix things. The Business Meeting at the upcoming Glasgow Worldcon is bound to be a spectacle.
Anyway, that’s in the past. In the midst of the drama, the Hugos continued. Voting for the 2024 awards opened and closed quietly. The finalists will be announced in the next month or so, and Glasgow has vowed transparency. Over the past year I’ve employed my secret sauce for predicting those finalists. It’s historically been pretty accurate, even if last year was kind of a bust due to the shenanigans. Who knows how this year will turn out, especially because all of the disenfranchised Chinese voters are eligible to vote again, and I have no way of factoring works into my formula that don’t appear on any of the predictors I track.
For what it’s worth, here’s what I came up with. The Nebula finalists announced earlier today were the final predictor. As with last year I’m including a bonus seventh slot for both categories in the event that one of the predictions declines a nomination.
Novel:
| Starling House | Alix E. Harrow |
| Witch King | Martha Wells |
| Translation State | Ann Leckie |
| The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi | S.A. Chakraborty |
| Some Desperate Glory | Emily Tesh |
| System Collapse | Martha Wells |
| Starter Villain | John Scalzi |
Novella:
| Mammoths at the Gate | Nghi Vo |
| Thornhedge | T. Kingfisher |
| The Mimicking of Known Successes | Malka Older |
| The Crane Husband | Kelly Barnhill |
| The Lies of the Ajungo | Moses Ose Utomi |
| Lost in the Moment and Found | Seanan McGuire |
| Untethered Sky | Fonda Lee |
Notes:
- It’s a pretty sure thing that Martha Wells would decline a nomination for System Collapse, if earned, as she did with the Nebula Awards, so we can generally consider Starter Villain an official prediction.
- Just to make it clear, these lists are not a representation of the works I think should be finalists, or even the works I think will be finalists, they’re the result of predictive modeling based on data. My gut sometimes disagrees with the predictions.
- Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if these lists end up being pretty accurate. Other likely novels are sequels to previous finalists, He Who Drowned the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan and Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see works from authors who are historically popular among Worldcon voters such as Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher, or any of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s works (most likely Children of Memory or Lords of Uncreation). Other popular works from 2023 include Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett and In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune.
- Alternate novella finalists include works by popular authors among Con-goers like Rose/House by Arkady Martine and And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky, or other widely read books like The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw and Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo.
What have I gotten wrong? Let me know!