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Hugo 2020 Eligible Novels
I noticed that several highly anticipated science fiction and fantasy novels were getting pushed from 2018 to 2019, so I thought I'd start this list early to make sure they don't somehow get lost in the shuffle -- and just to get a head start on next year's reading!
This list is for NOVELS published in 2019 that are eligible for the 2020 Hugos. "Novel" in this context means works over 40,000 words. However, note that some leeway is allowed in word count.
From the World Science Fiction Society Constitution:
3.2.8:The Worldcon Committee may relocate a story into a more appropriate category if it feels that it is necessary, provided that the length of the story is within twenty percent (20%) of the new category limits.
The text below is mostly copied from previous years -- thanks, list creators!
It's hard to keep track of all the science fiction and fantasy books published in one year. For those among us who nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards, I created this list. Let's add books and help each other remember especially the books that don't get a lot of buzz but may well deserve award recognition.
According to the Hugo Award FAQ, works are eligible if they were published in the calendar year preceding the year in which the vote takes place if published in the United States, and for the previous and current year if published in English outside the US. Works first published in languages other than English are also eligible in their first year of publication in English translation. Works eligible for the 2020 Hugo Awards are either first published in the US or first published in English translation in 2019, or first published in 2018 in English in a country other than the US if it did not make the ballot in 2018.
Complete eligibility rules can be found here: The Hugo Awards: The Official Rules
And remember, anyone can vote in the Hugos! Complete rules on Hugo voting can be found here: The Hugo Awards: I Want to Vote
Note: Some of the works listed here may actually be novella length. If anyone has specific word counts for works on the novel/novella borderline, please leave a comment. Thanks!
Check out the other categories!
2020 Hugo Eligible Novellas
2020 Hugo Eligible YA Novels
2019 Hugo Eligible Novels
2019 Hugo Eligible Novellas
2019 Hugo Eligible Series
2018 Hugo Eligible Works
2017 Hugo Eligible Works
2016 Hugo Eligible Works
2015 Hugo Eligible Works
This list is for NOVELS published in 2019 that are eligible for the 2020 Hugos. "Novel" in this context means works over 40,000 words. However, note that some leeway is allowed in word count.
From the World Science Fiction Society Constitution:
3.2.8:The Worldcon Committee may relocate a story into a more appropriate category if it feels that it is necessary, provided that the length of the story is within twenty percent (20%) of the new category limits.
The text below is mostly copied from previous years -- thanks, list creators!
It's hard to keep track of all the science fiction and fantasy books published in one year. For those among us who nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards, I created this list. Let's add books and help each other remember especially the books that don't get a lot of buzz but may well deserve award recognition.
According to the Hugo Award FAQ, works are eligible if they were published in the calendar year preceding the year in which the vote takes place if published in the United States, and for the previous and current year if published in English outside the US. Works first published in languages other than English are also eligible in their first year of publication in English translation. Works eligible for the 2020 Hugo Awards are either first published in the US or first published in English translation in 2019, or first published in 2018 in English in a country other than the US if it did not make the ballot in 2018.
Complete eligibility rules can be found here: The Hugo Awards: The Official Rules
And remember, anyone can vote in the Hugos! Complete rules on Hugo voting can be found here: The Hugo Awards: I Want to Vote
Note: Some of the works listed here may actually be novella length. If anyone has specific word counts for works on the novel/novella borderline, please leave a comment. Thanks!
Check out the other categories!
2020 Hugo Eligible Novellas
2020 Hugo Eligible YA Novels
2019 Hugo Eligible Novels
2019 Hugo Eligible Novellas
2019 Hugo Eligible Series
2018 Hugo Eligible Works
2017 Hugo Eligible Works
2016 Hugo Eligible Works
2015 Hugo Eligible Works
134 books ·
338 voters ·
list created October 18th, 2018
by Contrarius (votes) .
Contrarius
2222 books
102 friends
102 friends
Linguana
4431 books
189 friends
189 friends
Mark
1666 books
11 friends
11 friends
Mike
165 books
33 friends
33 friends
Molly
409 books
0 friends
0 friends
K.A. Doore
711 books
64 friends
64 friends
Heather
2446 books
320 friends
320 friends
Minerva
937 books
623 friends
623 friends
More voters…
Comments Showing 1-37 of 37 (37 new)
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Philip
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Mar 17, 2019 06:16PM
Anyone else feel like these lists have just become a forum for authors to self-promote their books by voting with sock puppet accounts? Just look at all the accounts that voted for Conjunction and Skull Flowers, currently in the 2 and 3 spots.
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Whilst these lists do have their fair share of entries that raise an eyebrow (and now that you've mentioned it, and I've examined the "People who voted on this list" section, the use of sockpuppets - as opposed to "real" social media friends/followers - is much more blatant than I thought) I still think these lists have a lot of value.My personal guidelines for interpreting these lists, are that if - by time official voting opens - you discard (a) anything with less than 1000 ratings and (b) stuff that is popular with a wide audience, but maybe not with the Hugo crowd, then they are a pretty good predictor of what will become a finalist (or ends up as a "near miss" when the full nomination stats are published after WorldCon.
My guess is that at this point in the year, not enough people have read enough 2019 books to make any meaningful impact on this list, hence the preponderance of dubious entries. I would hope this self-corrects as we get towards the year end - not that the dodgy ones will drop out completely, but by then it'll be clearer which are genuine contenders and which are not.
Philip wrote: "Anyone else feel like these lists have just become a forum for authors to self-promote their books by voting with sock puppet accounts?"They're also a forum for self-promotion by way of logrolling. :-/
Just look at the books The Fever King, Here and Now and Then, Famous Men Who Never Lived, and The Perfect Assassin from the list. There are currently 23 people total who voted for at least one of those books. Twelve of those 23 voters are GR authors--quite a high percentage.
Even more significantly, eleven of the 23 voters (seven of them authors, and one of them a self-described book and author promoter) voted for a combination of two or more of the books I named above. Every single one of those eleven voters either voted solely for some combination of the above four books, or voted for a longer list of books with some combination of those four books at the very top of their list.
Of course, not every vote for these books is illegitimate. Most (though not all) of the non-author voters look completely legit to me. Also, authors are obviously readers as well, and it's not the weirdest thing in the world for Author A and Author B to be mutual fans of each other's work, since people often write what they want to read and vice versa.
But there's also an inescapable financial incentive for GR authors to indulge in some mutual backscratching on Listopia, and given the incredibly suspicious pattern of votes detailed above, it seems obvious that something hinky is occurring here.
Good spot. A bit of Googling indicates that this might be a common connection:http://debutauthors19.com/meet-the-au...
They seem to have an associated Facebook group, but it looks like it's invite only, and in any case I'm not on FB.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/debut...
It's not the first time I've seen it on these lists, sadly.E.g. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1... had The Unseelie Prince at the top for a long time before more credible contenders overtook it.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much GR can (or will?) do about it.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate has "A Novella" on the cover; does anyone have a word count for it?Also, it looks as though the following books have had their publication dates pushed forward to 2020:
Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer
The Iron Season by Helene Wecker
Jain, well spotted on those changes. The Chambers only declared itself a novella recently, I definitely remember seeing it announced as a novel. I've adjusted my votes on it and some others, although some aren't from my votes and/or have others keeping them on the list.
I can delete the remaining 2020 books from the list later this week, if nobody presents evidence for keeping them. I just didn't want to do that without warning since GR's data isn't always infallible.
The remaining 2020 books have been deleted from the list.
Hexarchate Stories and Meet Me in the Future (currently at #58 and #59 respectively) are both collections, and so aren't eligible for Best Novel. (Perhaps they contain stories that are eligible for the other fiction categories, but I don't think that's what this list is for?)
ErsatzCulture wrote: "Hexarchate Stories and Meet Me in the Future (currently at #58 and #59 respectively) are both collections, and so aren't eligible for Best Novel. (Perhaps they contain stories that are eligible for..."Gone!
This Is How You Lose the Time War is 36,100ish words, so needs removing from the novel list. (I've voted it into the novella list instead).And for the record To Be Taught, If Fortunate was indeed novella length, at c39,700 words (but that's already been removed)
This Is How You Lose the Time War has been deleted.
No, guys, both of those belong on the list. The Hugo admins may allow as much as 20% leeway on their length rules, so both of those may end up being eligible for either category.I've added both back to the list.
In the introductory text at the top of the page, I've added the text from the WSFS Constitution which specifies that there's a 20% leeway on category word counts.
OK, yes, novellas of 33,334 words or higher are technically eligible in novel, and this is a list for technical eligibility - but for practical purposes I would never advise anyone to nominate a work marketed as a novella in novel, even if 47,999 words, because it won't have a chance. With no way to make notes against entries, I think there's a risk of confusing people.If the balance of opinion is to put them in then fine, I'll then suggest we maintain some sort of rolling list of works with dual eligibility (with word counts) in the comments here, and hope people scroll down.
I agree with what you're saying. But with regards to Listopia lists, Goodreads tells us: "Only delete books from the list that are totally miscategorized. "So I'm essentially erring on the side of caution. Books within that 20% leeway **could** be eligible for either category.
OK, in which case here is a list of technically eligible novellas, for the use of anyone who scrolls down this far. If anyone gets any more entries feel free to copy and paste and add to a new comment.------
The following are technically eligible in both Novel and Novella due to the “20% rule”. Recent experience suggests they are very unlikely to be successful if nominated as Novels.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, c39,700 words
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, c36,100 words
Desdemona and the Deep by C. S. E. Cooney, c41,000 words
The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold, c43,150 words
The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch, c44,200 words
Perihelion Summer by Greg Egan, c41,800 words
Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett, c40,100 words
Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, c38,000
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire is likely to be a similar case but I don’t have a word count for it
(Also, in case it comes up, Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher is over 48,000 words and therefore ONLY eligible in Novel)
Hi. I voted in a few notable releases for this year that were missing. Feel free to remove any of them if you think I've added them in error. :)
False Value (Rivers of London, #8) by Ben Aaronovitch has been bumped to 2020 (booo!) if someone would remove it please.
Mark wrote: "False Value (Rivers of London, #8) by Ben Aaronovitch has been bumped to 2020 (booo!) if someone would remove it please."I’ll do it when I’m back at my laptop. Remind me if I forget!
Mark wrote: "False Value (Rivers of London, #8) by Ben Aaronovitch has been bumped to 2020 (booo!) if someone would remove it please."So has The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley. I've just deleted both.
**Updated**The following are technically eligible in both Novel and Novella due to the “20% rule”. Recent experience suggests they are very unlikely to be successful if nominated as Novels.
Ormeshadow by Priya Sharma, c32,500 words
The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall, c40,100 words
Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky, c35,000 words
The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde, c35,500 words
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, c39,700 words
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, c36,100 words
Desdemona and the Deep by C. S. E. Cooney, c41,000 words
The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold, c43,150 words
The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch, c44,200 words
Perihelion Summer by Greg Egan, c41,800 words
Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett, c40,100 words
Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, c38,000
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire is likely to be a similar case but I don’t have a word count for it
Thanks for posting those numbers!
What about the Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern?
Cathy wrote: "What about the Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern?"What about it? Add it if you like it! :-)
I did, but it's not shown. Do you only show 90 books?
It's there, currently at #84. :-)
I added two excellent sff books by Tade Thompson, published in 2019.
I don’t even think Correia should be allowed on this list considering all the garbage he and his friends stirred up around the Hugos a few years back
Heh.If he weren’t allowed, then he could claim that he would be at the top of the list if we would just let him on it. Better to have him on the list and show everyone how much more popular other books are!
A song for a new day (Sarah Pinkser) appears to be on the list twice.
Contrarius wrote: "I'm only seeing it once?"Sorry, I ran a duplicate check yesterday thanks to Anna's comment, but forgot to comment myself saying I'd done it.
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