What it’s like to lose a Hugo Award

tl;dr It’s pretty darn great.

Ten days ago, I was in Helsinki, Finland, on a whirlwind trip to WorldCon and the Hugos. I only had four days of vacation left for the year. With travel days, this gave Alyx and me exactly four days on the ground. A lot of expense for such a brief trip, but I wasn’t going to miss my chance to attend the Hugo Awards as a finalist.

As the Hugo administration keeps reminding us, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is technically not a Hugo. But it’s pres...