Hugo Winners Face Off: Narrowing it down

Okay, suppose you look at the following pairs of winners:

In this corner, from 1961: A Canticle for Leibowitz. And in this corner over here, from 1966, Dune! Who wins? Personally, I think that one is obvious.

How about this trio: From 1970, The Left Hand of Darkness goes up against The Dispossessed (1975) and The Forever War (1976).

And another trio: Startide Rising (1984) goes up against both Neuromancer (1985) and Cyteen (1989).

Then we have A Fire Upon the Deep (1993) against Mirror Dance (1995).

Getting close to the present day, lots of tight contests gives us a four-way face-off between A Deepness in the Sky (2000), Paladin of Souls(2004), Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell (2005), and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (2008).

And finally, it seems only fair to pit Ancillary Justice against last year’s winner, Three Body Problem. This is the first appearance of Three-Body Problem, which had no group to join since 2015 would have started a new group of five years. So bringing it in now, how do you think it matches up?

I can certainly pick my winners easily in most cases:

1. Dune

2. No vote because I only read Left Hand

3. Cyteen

4. Umm, okay, not easy in this case, but A Fire Upon The Deep.

5. Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell is the one I’d pick, even though I liked Paladin of Souls better.

6. Ancillary Justice walks away with it considering I didn’t actually like Three-Body Problem.

How about you all? Would you pick the same ones or not if you tighten up the contest like this?