The Nominees
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The Actual Results
- A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
- Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
- A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
- The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
How I Would Have Voted
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
- No Award
Explanation
Project Hail Mary was a fun read, and a really good hard SF novel. There were a couple of minor things that made me roll my eyes, but the story itself was solid, and the science was fascinating. Also, the ending really stuck with me for several days. I don’t think it was better than Hyperion or Ender’s Game, but it certainly was deserving of a positive vote for best novel.
I DNFed everything else on the ballot. Normally, that alone wouldn’t be a reason for voting No Award, but some of these books were just insanely woke: in particular, Light from Uncommon Stars was full of transgender madness (and judging from the author bio in the back, the author herself is caught up in the madness as well).
I didn’t read A Desolation Called Peace or The Galaxy, and the Ground Within because I’d already DNFed the first book in the series, mostly for the “all true love is LGBTQ love” trope (I should do a blog post dissecting that particular trope), so I can’t speak to the relative wokeness of either of those titles. But it says something that I tried and DNFed the series.
But the most infuriating read for me was She Who Became the Sun, since by all indications it should have been right up my alley, what with all the steppe nomad warriors and all. The writing was pretty good too, and the setup was fantastic. Yes, there was some gender bending stuff, but for the first half of the book I generally didn’t find it any more offensive than Mulan. I forget why I decided to skip to the last chapter, but the ending was so infuriating that it put this author solidly on my blacklist, just like The Fifth Season did for N.K. Jemison (more on that when we get to 2016’s Hugo ballot). I can’t say much without spoiling the book, but it has to do with what many conservative and alternate media commentators rightly call the death cult. Really infuriating.
As for A Master of Djinn, having traveled across Egypt and the Middle East, the worldbuilding was so fundamentally broken that I just couldn’t swallow it. The author basically created a steampunk Middle East that embraces several tenets of modern wokism. The only alternate reality in which the main character wouldn’t be tossed off of a high building for being a lesbian is a reality where the source code of Islam has been rewritten so entirely that it isn’t really Islam anymore. Which I suppose is fine for a pulpy escapist fantasy, but this one just didn’t appeal to me.
