WWAC’s coverage of the 2022 Hugo Awards continues with reviews of the last two Best Novelette finalists: “O2 Arena” by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and “L’Esprit de L’Escalier” by Catherynne M. Valente…
2022 Hugo Awards: Colors of the Immortal Palette/Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.
WWAC’s coverage of the 2022 Hugo Awards continues with reviews of two more Best Novelette finalists: “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim and “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” by Fran Wilde…
2022 Hugo Awards: That Story isn’t the Story/Bots of the Lost Ark
Welcome back to WWAC’s coverage of the 2022 Hugo Award finalists. Having reviewed the six finalists competing for Best Short Story we now move on to the Best Novelette category, starting with “That Story isn’t the Story” by John Wiswell and “Bots of the Lost Ark” by Suzanne Palmer…
2022 Hugo Awards: Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather/Unknown Number
Our coverage of the 2022 Hugo Awards continues with a look at the final two contenders for Best Short Story: “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker and “Unknown Number” by Blue Neustifter.
2022 Hugo Award Reviews: Tangles/The Sin of America
Welcome to the second part of WWAC’s 2022 Hugo Award review series. This instalment shall be covering two more Best Short Story finalists: Seanan McGuire’s “Tangles” and Catherynne M. Valente’s “The Sin of America”…
2022 Hugo Award Reviews: Proof by Induction/Mr. Death
Starting today is Women Write About Comics’ annual review series covering the latest round of Hugo finalists. To kick things off, here are two of the contenders for Best Short Story…
2021 Hugo Awards Celebrate Imagination, Wonder, and an Arms Manufacturer
On Saturday the Hugo Awards were presented at DisCon III, the 2021 iteration of the international science fiction and fantasy convention Worldcon. A new set of winners were selected for genre immortality by a voting base of Worldcon members — and another round of debate raged on social media. Martha Wells’ much-loved Murderbot Diaries series,…
2021 Hugo Award Review: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Young necromancer Harrowhark, the secondary lead in Tamsyn Muir’s earlier novel Gideon the Ninth, now has the rank of Lyctor. This role involves travelling with an interplanetary God-Emperor between worlds and using her abilities as a necromancer to navigate the various hazards thrown in her way. After all, this is a universe where vast monsters…
2021 Hugo Award Review: Network Effect by Martha Wells
Martha Wells’ Murderbot series must surely be counted among the biggest hits of contemporary science fiction. The story of an artificial being – half-machine and half-clone – who became a freelance bodyguard was originally told over the course of four novellas: All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy; with Network Effect, it…
2021 Hugo Award Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
A man inhabits a vast building containing reams of hallways and innumerable statues depicting various mythological figures. His sole companion is a man he refers to as the Other; in return, the Other refers to him as Piranesi. This bewilders him, as he does not identify with that name — at least, not until he…
2021 Hugo Award Review: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Black Sun’s prologue introduces us to Serapio, a boy who is groomed by his mother to become the avatar of a Crow God — a process that entails being ritually blinded. All of this is to prepare him for a specific date in the future: the day of Convergence, when the sun shall turn black…
2021 Hugo Award Review: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
In her 2016 short story “The City Born Great” N. K. Jemisin introduced us to a homeless youth who was actually the avatar of New York City. The City We Became is a novel that takes the original short story as its prologue and proceeds to expand on the premise: the city’s avatar has gone…