2020 Hugo Awards (SF Award)

I did manage to read all the fiction nominees and some of the nonfiction. On the whole the novel and novella ballots were very strong - I had a hard time choosing among them.

Awesome! What was your favorite?

Having read Ten Thousand Doors, I’m still sticking with Gideon the Ninth, but only by a hair: Ten Thousand was very, very good. But it didn’t stick with me quite as much.

Middlegame and A Memory Called Empire were top picks, but I also liked Ten Thousand Doors and Gideon. I was a bit meh on the other two, but may go back and reread them to see if there was something I missed in the rush to read everything before the vote.

I have a question about A Memory Called Empire (which seems to have won the Hugo this year): is the narrative style similar to that in Banks’ Culture novels or Rajaniemi’s Flambeur novels? I prefer a show-don’t-tell style narrative.

I wouldn’t say A Memory Called Empire was much like either of those - but definitely closer to Banks.

Here’s an excerpt of A Memory Called Empire.

Thanks; difficult to tell much from such a brief snippet but I’ll see if I can find it at my library and give it a proper go.