How I Would Vote Now: 1992 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

The Nominees

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bone Dance by Emma Bull

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge

The Actual Results

1. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
2. Bone Dance by Emma Bull
3. All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
4. The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge
5. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
6. Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

How I Would Have Voted

1. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
2. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

Explanation

I have a confession to make. That girl from the XKCD comic who loves Xenocide more than the first two books in the Ender’s Game series? …yeah, that’s totally me. Ender’s Game is a science fiction classic, and one of the best books to ever win a Hugo Award (second only to Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, in my opinion), and Speaker for the Dead is a worthy sequel that is superior in many ways to the first book. But Xenocide totally blew me away when I read it back in college. The superintelligent AI Jane, who lives in the ansible connections between planets, is one of my favorite sci fi characters of all time. Also, the concept of the philotic web is one of the most fascinating and exciting sci fi elements I’ve ever wrapped my head around. I also thought it was really fascinating how the post-Earth humans have developed a heirarchy of alienation, and how that influences the ethical decision of whether to make peace or make war with the aliens they encounter.

In short, there was lots of really high concept stuff in Xenocide that blew my mind in just the right way. Also, the story had me hooked from the first page, and the characters are some of the best I’ve ever read. Orson Scott Card has a lot of strengths, but his greatest strength is in writing characters, and he was definitely on his A game with this book. So yeah, go ahead and slam the door in my face—Xenocide is my favorite book in the Ender’s Game series.

Barrayar is classic Bujold, and one of the best books in her Vorkosigan saga. Even though it doesn’t feature Miles directly, Cordelia is such a badass that she more than makes up for his not-quite absence (after all, she is pregnant with Miles while all the action goes down). The political intrigue is everything you’d expect from a good Vorkosigan book, and there’s no shortage of action or things blowing up. But the thing that makes it most satisfying is how everything ties into the later books—in fact, I would go so far as to say that Barrayar is the best place to start with the Vorkosigan Saga, followed by The Warrior’s Apprentice, and then maybe Shards of Honor just to get a little more background before going on with the rest of the series. I definitely wish I’d started with Barrayar. And if you can, listen to the audiobooks, because Grover Gardner’s narration of them is quite excellent.

So those were the books from this year’s ballot that I enjoyed. As for the others, I DNFed them all, though I didn’t even pick up The Summer Queen because I had already DNFed the first book in the series, for reasons that I’ve since forgotten. I’ll try to refresh my memory when I cover The Snow Queen in How I Would Vote Now: 1981 Hugo Awards (Best Novel). Maybe it’s one I should try to pick up again.

I also didn’t pick up All the Weyrs of Pern, because I DNFed that series with the second book. I read the first Dragonriders of Pern book way back in college, and thought it was okay, but it didn’t really hook me enough to read the rest of the series. Last year, I tried to pick up the second book, and was totally blown away by how overpowered the dragons are. Seriously—they can teleport anywhere instantaneously through space and time? How can anything possibly threaten them? Then the book started turning into a soap opera between the dragonriders, and I mentally checked out.

(As a side note, I would say that the Dragonriders of Pern books are the kind of grim-bright books that tend to do well in a second turning, and not a fourth turning. Even though the characters are literally saving the world as part of their job description, they’re so OP that the world is never really in any danger of falling, so the books are a lot more slice-of-life and cozy escapist fantasies. Check out my blog post on the generational cycles of fantasy and science fiction for a more in-depth discussion of this sort of thing.)

Stations of the Tide never really hooked me, and had some weird sexual content that turned me off pretty fast, if I remember correctly. Overall, it felt like the sort of book that was written primarily for the author, and not for any actual reader—kind of like how a movie studio will sometimes let a director make a pet project that no one but the director really likes, just so they can get them to make the blockbusters that everyone goes to see.

As for Bone Dance, it seemed like an interesting post-apocalyptic novel, but the main character was so androgenous that I just had no desire to read past the second chapter. I know this wasn’t typical of books written in the 90s, but these days it’s become so trite to write women who think, act, and look like men that I really have no desire to read that sort of thing. I’d much rather read about manly men and womanly women. Also, I don’t really want to read about lesbians in Minnesota. There’s a reason why Minnesota is now the California of the midwest.