2016 Locus Awards finalists

Locus Magazine announced the 2016 finalists for the annual Locus Awards today. Winners will be announced during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 24-26, 2016.

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi (Borzoi; Orbit UK)
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

FANTASY NOVEL
Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard (Roc; Gollancz)
Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand (PS; Open Road)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK
Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Harper Voyager UK)
Half the World, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey)
Harrison Squared, Daryl Gregory (Tor)
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)

FIRST NOVEL
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Ace; Macmillan UK)
The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK)
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com)

These are just the categories for novels. There are short fiction categories and many others, too. These are quality nominees throughout, which represents an antidote to the Puppy-pooped-upon Hugo nominations, where readers have to step cautiously through noxious material to find a few quality candidates.

I'm particularly pleased to find Aurora and A Borrowed Man in the sf novel shortlist. Other favorites of mine include: Signal to Noise and The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps in first novel, and The House of Shattered Wings and Wylding Hall in fantasy novel. Many of the others are on my to-be-read pile.

For the complete list of all the categories, follow here.

2011 Locus Award winners announced

The winners of the 2011 Locus Awards were announced today in Seattle:

Science Fiction Novel: Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Spectra)
Fantasy Novel: Kraken by China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey)
First Novel: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
YA Book: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
Novella: "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
Novelette: "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains" by Neil Gaiman (Stories)
Short Story: "The Thing About Cassandra" by Neil Gaiman (Songs of Love and Death)
Magazine: Asimov’s
Publisher: Tor
Anthology: Warriors by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Tor)
Collection: Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories, Fritz Leiber, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Charles N. Brown (Night Shade)
Editor: Ellen Datlow
Artist: Shaun Tan
Non-Fiction: Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1: 1907-1948: Learning Curve by William H. Patterson, Jr., (Tor)
Art Book: Spectrum 17, Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood)

Reactions:
This looks like a good result. I have significant problems with the choice for science fiction novel (see review), but was not surprised by the win. I haven't read Kraken, although I have read China Miéville's most recent novel, Embassytown, which is science fiction and I liked it quite a bit. Hopefully I will have a chance to post a review soon. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was good. Ship Breaker was exceptional, as was "The Lifecycle of Software Objects." I liked "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains" and haven't read "The Thing About Cassandra." Asimov's magazine is certainly having a good run. Most of the rest I can only claim a browsing familiarity. Still, it looks strong, and Datlow and Tan are deserving winners.

2011 Locus Award finalists announced

The top five finalists in each category for the 2011 Locus Awards have been announced. Below are the novel categories. The winners will be named in Seattle WA, June 24-26, 2011.

Science Fiction Novel
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
Zero History by William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Pyr; Gollancz)
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Spectra)

Fantasy Novel
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Canada; Roc)
Kraken by China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey)
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
The Sorcerer’s House by Gene Wolfe (Tor)

First Novel
The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer (Night Shade)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz; Tor)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (Pantheon)

Young Adult Book
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones (HarperCollins UK; Greenwillow)
I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; HarperCollins)
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

A good looking list. I've read eight of the 20 novels listed and all of the ones I've read have been strong entries.

Related link:

Complete list of the finalists for the 2011 Locus Awards

Edited to add:
I changed a "label" search term to make this blog post easier to find, anticipating the upcoming Locus Awards announcements. Blogspot decided to change the date to the present day, instead of leaving it back in May or whenever it was. Live and learn.

Locus Awards Results and Reactions

The 2010 Locus Awards winners were announced June 26.  Here are the novel-length categories:

Science Fiction Novel: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)

Fantasy Novel: The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
First Novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)
Young Adult Novel: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Congratulations to the winners. As reported in the July issue of Locus. There were 680 valid ballots. Of these 36 were paper ballots, and the remaining 644 were electronic submissions. Locus subscribers cast 306 votes, or 45 percent of the vote. Since 2008, when online voters outnumbered subscribers, Charles N. Brown changed the system, doubling the point value of subscriber votes to better reflect Locus readership.

Then comes this quote: "It didn't make a difference in the winner of any category this year." That may be true, strictly speaking, regarding the revised point system, but what were the Locus subscriber results? Aren't there two polls going on here with quite different sensibilities? In describing the SF novel results: "Subscribers put the Robinson first by only 100 points, not enough to dent the large lead non-subscribers gave the Priest." That's Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream. That's the poll I want to know about. Priest's novel is a fine young-adult steampunk adventure novel, but really rather slight. I am surprised it was on the short list, much less the winner. (For the SF Strangelove review of Boneshaker follow here.)

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, which won the Nebula Award, placed only 15th among Locus Poll SF Novels. What they don't mention is that it wasn't part of the pull-down list of SF novels that the online voting form offered as choices. Every vote for The Windup Girl for SF Novel was a write-in vote, which couldn't help but reduce the number of votes it received. Since it was a first novel, that was the only category where it appeared in a pre-built list in the online form.

The Locus Poll is interesting and rather complicated. As I've already mentioned, there are two polls here that have been mashed together: the subscribers and the non-subscribers. Why not report them separately? The numerous categories are sometimes ill-defined. Isn't Boneshaker better listed as a fantasy novel or a young-adult novel? Is The City & The City really fantasy and not science fiction? Why shouldn't The Windup Girl have been present in the list of SF novels built into the online poll?

For a brief overview of Locus Poll results, follow here.

2010 Locus Awards Short List

The top five vote-getters in each category of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Unlike the Hugos there is no second round of voting. Winners will be presented during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 25-27, 2010.

Science Fiction Novel
The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker (Subterranean; Tor)
Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress (Tor)
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperVoyager; Ballantine Spectra)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

Fantasy Novel
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
Drood by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)

First Novel
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (Penguin)
Soulless by Gail Carriger (Orbit US)
Lamentation by Ken Scholes (Tor)
Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout (Ballantine Spectra)

Judging from the few that I have read (so far) these are fairly strong lists. The SF Strangelove Locus Awards ballot included The Windup Girl on both First Novel and Science Fiction Novel categories. Five out of six Hugo Awards Best Novel Finalists appear on the Locus Awards short list. Only the Hugo Finalist Wake by Robert J. Sawyer does not appear above.
Full Locus Awards short list.

The Graveyard Book

The Hugo Award for best novel was given out this past weekend to The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008). I should say up front that it wasn’t my top choice. I was a voting member, even though I didn’t attend Anticipation in Montreal, and my top vote went to another novel. Still, The Graveyard Book is a fine book, and already the winner of the Newbery Medal.

It’s a variation on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), in which a boy, Mowgli, is raised by the animals of the jungle. In Gaiman’s book, a boy, Nobody Owens, is raised by the undead denizens of a graveyard.

Gaiman hits all the notes you might expect: the threat of death from both earthly and supernatural causes, an amusingly off-kilter education, a touch of childhood romance, an array of charming characters, growth and change, and a nudge out the door toward adulthood. It’s well done throughout.

For me it was spoiled a bit by Gaiman himself. The anthology Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkley Books, 2007), led off with “The Witch’s Headstone” by Gaiman, which would later become a chapter in the novel. This was one of the strongest novelettes of the year and it won the Locus Award. It drops the reader immediately into the setting of The Graveyard Book and offers most of the pleasures of that novel in a more compact and intense experience. Next to “The Witch’s Headstone,” the novel’s many digressions and side-trips seem flabby and a bit hollow. The Graveyard Book is a short novel, but after “The Witch’s Headstone” it seems overlong.

The Graveyard Book is the sort of book that lends itself to visual interpretation. The edition in front of me has a generous number of excellent illustrations by Dave McKean. I am not surprised to learn that it’s been picked up for a film. In the fantasy and science fiction genre, Gaiman is on a pace to rival Philip K. Dick for the most film adaptations of his work.

I’ll discuss the novel I did vote for in another post (follow here).