Friday, July 6, 2007

Hugo Awards' stories

Listing below is by year (most recent first), then category of award.
PS: I don't very religiously update this list. Raw list of Hugo posts will usually yield more entries.

Note these key definitions used by Hugo awards: short story is less than 7500 words; novelette is 7.5 to 17.5 thousand words; novella is 17.5 to 40 thousand words; & novel is bigger than 40 thousand words. In all cases, there is a 20% leeway at the boundaries.

I don't list all stories here; only the ones I have read.

Category links list all stories nominated plus the winner(s).

  1. 2009: short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels.
  2. 2008: short stories, novelettes, novellas.
  3. 2007: short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels
I don't have category listings for the years of the following stories yet:
  1. Eric Frank Russell's "Allamagoosa" (A), online, 1955 winner in short story category: Humor. A line manager fixes books to pass a bureaucratic inspection, & ends up causing chaos.
  2. Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man" (A); short story nominee in 1968: Chilling implications of human organ transplant technology.
  3. Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" (A); novel winner 1986: Dramatization of leadership & winning attitude.
  4. Arthur Clarke's "A Fall of Moondust": nominee in novel category in 1963. Excellent shipwreck & rescue story - at a very exotic locale.
  5. Arthur Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama": 1974 winner in novel category. Humans explore an alien spacecraft passing through Sol.
  6. Larry Niven's "The Borderland of Sol" (C); Analog, Jan 1975: 1976 winner in novelette category. Space pirates are robbing commercial traffic on busy interstellar routes with a novel weapon. Our heroes are out to hunt them down.
  7. Frederik Pohl's "Gateway" (A); 1978 winner in novel category: A reluctant hero is feeling survivor's guilt.
  8. Larry Niven's "Ringworld" (B); 1971 winner in novel category: A very interesting type of space habitat is described. This would have been a great story, but for innumerable tangents & plot complexity.
  9. Arthur Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise": 1980 winner in novel category. A device to reduce the cost of space travel.
  10. Arthur Clarke's "2010 Odyssey Two": nominee in novel category in 1983.
  11. Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress": nominee in 1966 & winner in 1967 in novel category. A colony fights for & wins its independence.
  12. Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land": 1962 winner in novel category. A somewhat satirical look at religious cults.
  13. Walter M Miller, Jr's "A Canticle For Leibowitz" (A): 1961 winner in novel category. Demise of human society to dark ages following a nuclear war, its slow rise back to civilization over two millennia, & then another nuclear war... And heroic efforts of a group of Catholic monks to preserve bits of knowledge through dark ages. Extremely tedious read if you are not from a Biblical faith. And generally a very dark book.
  14. Hal Clement's "Uncommon Sense" (A); Astounding Science Fiction, September 1945: Retro Hugo winner for 1946, actually awarded in 1996, in short story category. A man's curiosity saves his life on a weird world.
  15. * Kage Baker's "The Empress of Mars" (B); download; Asimov's, July 2003; novella nominee 2004: A woman of grit refuses to be cowed down by powerful establishment.
  16. Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search" (B); Analog, October 1967; fantasy; novella winner 1968: Description of human society on an extra-Sol world that has lost contact with mother world, & has fallen to barbarism. Quite readable. If you are into dragons, feudal lords, & some magic, you will probably enjoy it more than I did.
  17. C M Kornbluth's "The Little Black Bag" (A); Astounding, July 1950; science fiction; retro novelette winner in 2001: A medical doctor going through a bad patch finds a magical medical kit from future that helps him find a purpose in life.

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