Hugo & Nebula Awards: Spreadsheets and more!

[Harmony]

thanks! I copied 2020 into mine, and nearly all the formulas are endless columns, no need to modify, works great!

[Joe]

Joe wrote: "Try as I might, I was unable to resist looking through the sheet... I suspect there's a few on there I have read and don't recall, but going off the top of my head I've read 104/579 books on the li..."

Thanks for the update! I realized I hadn't checked anything off since last I looked at this thread, so I went though and marked off the books I've read with you all since then (Which was quite a few) as well as a couple others I read that happened to be on the list... up to 130 out of the now 594 items :)

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I put the new ones into mine and it upped my percentage. I'm at 36%. This is because I've read all but two of the new ones.

[Jeff]

Hello! I am looking into collecting/reading Hugo Nebula winners and nominees plus other award winning books. Is there a list somewhere that I can download into goodreads? The spreadsheet is great, but I think I need ISBN numbers? I would like to be able to do quick lookups via an app when I go to book sales. Or any other resources used? Thanks!

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Jeff wrote: "The spreadsheet is great, but I think I need ISBN numbers? ."

Different editions of the same novel will have different ISBN so search by title is preferred

[Allan]

Jeff, I created GR shelves for Hugo/Nebula nominees & winners so that I can tag all the books on the list. Then it’s a simple matter of looking them up by title.

I developed my own version of the spreadsheet, if you think you might find it useful, although I don’t have ISBN numbers. I’ve gradually sourced all 602 books, marking them as read, on my home shelf in paper, Kindle or Audible; what’s available at my library, or the Open Library online (a great place to find a lot of the older, obscure titles). I only have a few unsourced. As I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the spreadsheet, I pretty much know titles when I see them at book sales. But knowing what’s available for free is invaluable!

I’ve also got sorts there by title, author & page count. Maybe if I get a chance, I’ll add ISBN, but it’ll take me some time.

For everyone, I’ve been working on a list of H/N novellas in that file, because I’ve started delving into them the last couple years & I want a guide. Haven’t done anything with novelettes & short stories though. I’ll post an update tonight for anyone interested. I’ll warn you that I’m a total spreadsheet nerd, so there are a number of tabs where I just fiddle with the data, and one where I have various charts & graphs.

[Larry]

The spreadsheets for Hugo/Nebula nominees & winners are incredible resources. And the additional work that you did, Allan, to point us toward sources for these shorter works is even more valuable.

[Allan]

Thanks, Larry! Of course I did it selfishly but anyone can go in and mark their own sources. I just like knowing where I can find a title when I decide to read it. I try to focus on downsizing all the paper I’ve got at home though.

[Larry]

Allan wrote: "Thanks, Larry! Of course I did it selfishly but anyone can go in and mark their own sources. I just like knowing where I can find a title when I decide to read it. I try to focus on downsizing all the paper I’ve got at home though. ..."

Allan, I bet over the last 15 years, we have gotten rid of at least 4,000 books ... with most of them going to our local library as donations. We still have probably 3,000 books. But these days, 90 percent of my reading is on a Kindle Paperwhite, so I've slowly started giving my son books telling him to keep them or to sell them.

[Allan]

We did the same but I still have about 300 paperbacks & hardbacks, many of them H/N nominees. I get rid of them as soon as I read them unless it's something special. I still love paper, it's my first choice when reading, but I'll read on Kindle phone app or Libby e-book app when I don't have another option. A few books I found in pdf form, which you can pull into Kindle easily. I really ramped up my reading rate with audio books during the pandemic, listening while walking my dogs.

[Larry]

Here's another comment about the value of reading nominees and not just winners. One of my friends, Robert James, has written four books which explore over four time periods (spanning the years 1927 to 1970), which movies, actors, directors, etc. won Oscars and which movies or people SHOULD HAVE WON. There is a lot of humor buried in the footnotes. (Rob has a Ph.D. in English and an appreciation for footnotes). I've posted a link to the first one ... WHO Won?!?: An Irreverent Look at the Oscars, Volume 1: 1927-1943.

Rob's interests go well beyond cinema. Rob found and helped publish Robert Heinlein's long lost first novel, For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs. He wrote the introduction to the book. He has confided that the work was written really before Heinlein hit his stride in storytelling.

I also like Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos ... and the way she gets into what she thinks the winners should been also. I wish that Walton had gone beyond 1953-2000.

[Allan]

There's been a LOT of discussion among the group on those topics. Personally, I think it's very true that often the best doesn't always win or even get nominated. One book often cited is Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which a few of us just read. We have read some real clunkers in the full H/N list, regardless of the year or even decade!

[Kalin]

Hi everyone, given last week's announcement for the Hugos we have the full H/N slate for 2022. I've updated my personal spreadsheet but I don't access to the master.

If you want to quickly add the new nominees to your own version, you can copy/paste from mine here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

And if any group mods want to take it and add to the master, that'd be swell too. :)

[Allan]

I’ve done the same on my personal version. If no one else does it, I can do it tonight.

[Antti]

Thanks, Kalin!

[Kalin]

I can't remember in which thread it was discussed, but we were talking about creating a spreadsheet to track H?N novellas. Acorn has a bare-bones one but I decided to start plugging books into the same template we use for novels. I've created a master version which, when done, people can copy to track their own novella reading (even though it's not officially part of the group's goal).

I'm working backwards in time, so far I've done 2016-2022 (inputting Nebula nominees by year they were awarded, not year as listed on their website, to match up with Hugos). If anyone wants to pitch in that would speed up the process a lot. Just request edit access from the google sheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

[Allan]

Kalin, I did much the same thing in starting my own version, and I started at the early end. So I might be able to fill in the whole thing, as I have the full list that I was transposing into the table. My version might be a little different with some color coding & stuff but the basics are there. I got frustrated a bit by the years and got stalled, but maybe you can help me reconcile it. I’ll jump in tomorrow morning (US Central time for me) and see what I can do. At worst I can put my sheet out there to copy from.

[Kalin]

That's great! Your list should help me a lot, the thing slowing me down the most is making sure authors are listed alphabetically in each year, so if you've sorted them already it will be easy to plug in.

As for the years, since I'm going backwards in time I started with this year's Nebula awards as 2022 (year they're awarded, not published) and stuck to that, so all the years are out of sync with Nebula website but in sync with the Hugos in the list.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Wow! Thanks, you guys! I don't know much about novellas before a couple of years ago because I had not read them. I will be delighted to see what you come up with

[Rebecca]

Awesome, thank you both! Like Kate, I discovered novellas somewhat recently and they have become my favorite audio reads. They have also helped me through some reading slumps. Smart that you are starting from current day and working backwards. I’ve tried to find some older novellas and haven’t had much luck so my reading is pretty biased towards mostly newer stuff. Thanks again!

[Kalin]

I think more recent novellas are a lot easier to access (thanks Tordotcom!) than older ones, so it's no surprise I'm in the same boat as you folks. A lot of the older ones were published in print magazines, I'm not sure where everything is available so I want to add a column for "originally published in" and "currently available in" so we have that information for novellas that aren't their own publications. That's definitely a longer term project though.

I also agree they've been some of the best reads for me, and one of the interesting conclusions from Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos is that the novella category, throughout the history of the Hugos, has consistently been one of the strongest categories, with fierce competition. But since they aren't part of that special category "The Novel", they don't stay available as easily.

[Allan]

Ran into an issue with my computer (using my work laptop now but I can't get to google drives with it), I will get it out there as soon as I have it resolved.

Authors alphabetically...I assume that means your naming convention is last name first then?

[Kalin]

Yeah I was copying the format of the Novel tracker as closely as I could, so last name, first name.

[Larry]

Rebecca wrote: "Awesome, thank you both! Like Kate, I discovered novellas somewhat recently and they have become my favorite audio reads. They have also helped me through some reading slumps. Smart that you are st..."

I love good novellas. I always thought that Zelazny was at his best in shorter formats, both short stories and novellas.

Recently, I read two books by mystery writers, with each book containing three novellas. The first was by James Patterson. It was The Family Lawyer. He collaborated with three separate writers in writing the thee novellas. They were all good but not great. But the second book was great. It was John Grisham's Sparring Partners. Each of the novellas was so well crafted and a pleasure to read and then to keep on thinking about.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Larry wrote: "I love good novellas. I always thought that Zelazny was at his best in shorter formats, both short stories and novellas."

I thought that about Larry Niven. Some of his short stories are the best.

[Larry]

Kateblue wrote: "Larry wrote: "I love good novellas. I always thought that Zelazny was at his best in shorter formats, both short stories and novellas."

I thought that about Larry Niven. Some of his short stories are the best ..."

I totally agree.

[Allan]

@Kalin: I finally got my other PC up and running and put my expanded version of the spreadsheet out there. There are two novella tabs: one is set up with the structure of the novel tab and a number of years are complete at the older end, up to when the Nebulas came in and messed up the years. That's where I stopped. Ignore the page count and anything else but the titles. It does place an automatic X in the complete column when the "Read" flag at the right is set to 1.

The 2nd tab has the complete list that I was transposing from. I copied it from the Wiki listing and was integrating the two lists together. Use anything you need from there. Pay no attention to the other tabs, they only betray my nerdiness.

[Kalin]

Hi Allan, can you link to it?

[Allan]

Sure, when I get home from work today. I fixed the names too.

[Allan]

Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

I just noticed that I didn't change the names around for the Retros. I can do that and re-load or if you want to do it, that's fine.

[Kalin]

I didn't understand what you meant by Nebulas messing up the years, but holy shit. 1996 - 2005 is a complete disaster. Stupid SFWA.

[Kalin]

Okay, I have done a lot of work to sort out the Nebula mess.

The spreadsheet authors/titles are all input as correctly as I can get them, for the full range from the retro hugos to this year. But it can't be perfect because of the SFWA choice not to follow a calendar year for the nominations.

Since Nebulas titled their awards after year of publication and Hugos after year of award recognition -- but Nebulas introduced nasty chaos in the 1990s -- the year in the spreadsheet follows the Hugos as first choice.

Because of the Nebula chaos, there are some years 1996-2005 where it LOOKS like there are extra winners, but there aren't.
For example, in 2001 Jack Williamson's The Ultimate Earth won both the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella, but it also looks like Linda Nagata's "Goddesses" also wont the 2001 Nebula. It didn't -- it won the 2000 Nebula. But "Goddesses" was kept in 2001 in an attempt to keep it together with the actual works it competed against, which were 2000 releases recognized by the Hugos in 2001.

But this wasn't universally possible. Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life is probably the most glaring example:

Story of Your Life was first published in November 1998 in the anthology Starlight 2.
It was nominated in the 1999 Hugo Awards which were given out on Sept. 6, 1999.
It was also nominated in the 1999 Nebula Awards, which were given out on May 20, 2000. Yep, a book from 1998 was given in the Nebulas recognizing works from 1999, given in the year 2000. It doesn't make sense. So "Story of Your Life" is listed under 1999, because the Hugos at least make sense.

The Nebulas at this period make even less sense though. Take this example:

"Loose Ends" by Paul Levinson was published in May 1997 issue of Analog. It was nominated for the 1998 Hugos, and the 1997 Nebulas (awarded May 2, 1998).

However, "Ecopoiesis" by Geoffrey A. Landis was also published in May 1997, in the zine SF Age. It was nominated in the 1998 Hugos, but the 1998 Nebulas (awarded May 1, 1999).

I defy you to make sense of it.

All this to say -- the spreadsheet isn't perfect, but neither was the Best Novel spreadsheet. But it's more or less ready to be copied for personal tracking, should anyone want to do that. It works the same way as the Novel tracker -- you have to rate a book (or give the "no rating" rating) so that the Summary page will track your Stats by Decade and Average Rating by Decade. I don't think Page Stats will work in this spreadsheet -- page numbers simply aren't available before the advent of independent novella publishing by Tordotcom & co.

The link is here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

[Kalin]

p.s. Allan, your spreadsheet boggles the mind -- but I'd recommend using this version for your Novella tracking. There were some gaps and titles missing from the chaos period in yours.

[Allan]

Kalin wrote: "p.s. Allan, your spreadsheet boggles the mind -- but I'd recommend using this version for your Novella tracking. There were some gaps and titles missing from the chaos period in yours."

LOL, a little glimpse into the darkness.... But remember I started my spreadsheet to track my reading before I joined the group. The group tracker was an add-on & I just automated parts & integrated it into my tracking. Some tabs got added when I became an admin & others because I use Worlds Without End to create reading challenges. The one I often find most useful is the "Sorts" tab, where the 611 HN books are sorted by title, author & page count. It's a very quick way to answer questions, such as "how many nominations does Clifford D. Simak have?" Some tabs are just me noodling.

I'll either pull your version into my main spreadsheet or modify mine. The gaps you're talking about are where I threw up my hands and quit, so I knew it wasn't complete in that stretch. I may add page counts gradually & maybe sources if that info is available.

At any rate, great work, Kalin! Thanks for all your efforts.

[Kalin]

I'm dreading doing short stories but if we ever get started on Acorn's suggestion of reading them in chronological order we'll probably want a tracker...

[Allan]

I can get that started & work on it gradually, like I did the novellas. I don't think it will take that long to put together. They're already in list format in various places on the net.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I just got denied access to the spreadsheet. Is there a way to fix that? Thanks

[Kalin]

Kateblue wrote: "I just got denied access to the spreadsheet. Is there a way to fix that? Thanks"

Sorry; fixed it, so it should work now.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Thanks. Looks great!

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I finally entered books from 2020-2022 to my novels spreadsheet. My percentage is still about the same. 35.49%

I have not been reading from our list as much as I used to. I have read 6 of 9 for 2020 and 7 of 8 for 2021, but for 2022, I have only read 2 of 9. Ah, someday! :-)

[Kalin]

Based on today's Nebula finalist announcement I've updated the master Novella tracker spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Still can't find an updated master Novel tracker to edit.