How I would vote now: 2015 Hugo Award (Best Novel)

The Nominees

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu, trans.

The Actual Results

1. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu, trans.
2. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
3. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
4. No Award
5. Skin Game by Jim Butcher
6. The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson

How I Would Have Voted

1. Skin Game by Jim Butcher
2. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu, trans.
3. No Award
4. The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson
5. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Explanation

All right, I’ve read enough books now that I’m back to doing these “how I would have voted” posts for the Hugo Awards. And to kick things off, I thought I would start with one of the most infamous years in the history of the Hugos, the year of the Sad Puppies. Of course, I was around back then—in fact, it’s when China Mike Glyer of File 770 discovered me, and has been cross-linking to my blog ever since (I guess whenever the sci-fi news week is slow, or whenever he thinks that my posts would make good chum for his own readers—all twelve of them, not counting the Chinese bots).

The main reason it took me so long to get to 2015 was because I had never read any of the Dresden File books, up to this point. And I still haven’t read books 1-6 yet; in an interview on the Writers of the Future podcast, Jim Butcher said that book 7 is actually the best place to start the series. So I did that a few months ago, and I have to say that it’s been an amazing whirlwind read so far. Really great reading experience. Every one of these books has been either a 4-star or a 5-star, especially Changes, which is probably the best urban fantasy book I’ve ever read.

I haven’t finished Skin Game quite yet, but I’ve already read enough of it to know that I definitely would have put it at the top of my ballot if I had been stupid enough to give the snobby asshats and petty wannabe tyrants who run Worldcon any of my money. Sadly, I wasn’t so smart in 2011, but I have since repented, and I can tell you right now that these blowhards will ever see another cent from me. But more on that later.

The Three-Body Problem was the book that actually won the award, and I have to say that I sincerely enjoyed it. There’s a lot of really amazing science fiction coming out of China these days, which makes it an absolute shame that so many Chinese writers and fans were arbitrarily blocked and denied in 2023 for the high crime and misdemeanor of “slate voting,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Seriously, the Hugos need to die. But I digress.

The Three-Body Problem was a fascinating book. It was a little heavy on info dumps, but that’s probably because Chinese fiction has slightly different conventions than English fiction. In any case, it was fascinating enough to keep me reading, and the story itself was terrific. Also, as an American reader, I found it particularly refreshing to read a book that was written outside of our woke cultural moment. There were a lot of references to Chinese communism, especially the Cultural Revolution, but none of the insane wokeness that permeates our American culture.

Those were the only two books that I managed to read to the end. All of the other ones I DNFed, though for different reasons.

I wanted to like The Dark Between Stars, not the least because Kevin J. Anderson is a great guy, and a deserving writer—his Star Wars books were some of the first science fiction I ever read, and definitely influenced my decision to become a writer. But after the first chapter, which had an interesting set up with some characters I felt genuinely interested in, I felt like the book started throwing new characters at me, and lots and lots of boring information about the universe, as if the story itself had stopped cold and I was suddenly reading a history book. Way too many info dumps. Maybe I’ll try reading it again at some point, but I just couldn’t get into it.

The Goblin Emperor had a similar problem, though it wasn’t necessarily the info dumps that got to me, so much as sheer boredom, and the fact that the only fantasy element in the book was that the characters were all goblins—though the author could have said they were humans, or elves, or aliens, and it wouldn’t have changed the story hardly at all. Also, the political intrigue was not very intriguing. I’ve played games of Crusader Kings 2 where the political machinations were more interesting. And since the story itself was entirely focused on the political intrigue and machinations, I didn’t finish it.

As for Ancillary Sword, I DNFed that series with the first book, which follows the adventures of a sentient space ship who is obsessed about what its pronouns are. Seriously, that’s about 80% of the book right there, and the reason why Anne Leckie is a favorite of the Hugo crowd. Pronouns. Give me a break. For the 2024 Hugos, another one of her books in the same universe is on the ballot, and it took me all of one paragraph to give it a hard DNF. Pronouns, pronouns, pronouns. What are your pronouns? Did you know that you can make up a word and call it a pronoun? Let’s make up some pronouns together, kids! Just remember to vote as many times as you can in the upcoming election, otherwise Literally Hitler will blow up the world—never mind that our current leader is a nasty old dimentia patient whose face is a public service announcement for the side effects of botox, and his heir apparent is a cocksucking DEI hire who likes to cackle about school buses and Venn diagrams. It’s amazing how far you can get in today’s world with a pretty face and some high-quality knee pads.

It is impossible to mock these people too much. If they had the power to do so, everyone who opposes them would be rounded up in a cattle car and buried in an unmarked grave. The Sad Puppies were basically a prelude to the Trump revolt, just like Gamergate the year before. And what did we learn from it? That the people who control the institutions—in this case, Worldcon and the Hugo Awards—hate us. They knew that all the accusations of “racism” and “white supremacy” were all false. They knew that all those dirty smear tactics were just a means to an end. It’s not about good and evil, it’s about power, just like that line from the Acolyte, which is a perfect example of how they deliberately vandalize everything, especially a beloved franchise like Star Wars. Everything that’s happening in the broader culture right now, with multi-billion dollar entertainment companies like Disney that are going woke and broke, happened in science fiction first. The Puppies tried to push back against the rising tide of woke insanity, but the rot was too deep, and the cancer had already metastasized. All they managed to do was prove was that the Hugos are beyond saving.

2015 was a watershed year for science fiction, not because two of its most prolific and beloved authors lost to No Award, but because Worldcon lost the plot and the Hugos were revealed to be a farce. Jim Butcher is bigger than the Hugos, and so is Kevin J. Anderson. So are most of the Chinese authors who were excluded in 2023 (but guys, it’s the Puppies who are the racists). The reason I’m doing these “how I would have voted” blog posts has less to do with any respect I might have for the Hugo Awards, and more to do with the fascination of watching a massive pileup on a frozen interstate. I want to go back and rewatch it from the moment it all began—which, so far as I can tell, was sometime in the late 60s. But I’ll save that rant for another time.