Inspired by the all time best Hugo Award winner thread (which was inspired by the all time best Newberry Award winner thread) how about your favorite Hugo nominees that didn’t win? After all, there are many more of those.
Since there are (typically) four losers for every winner, I’ll make the question a little easier and let you pick four losers. Still a very hard question, and my answer would probably change with my mood, but I’ll go with Iron Sunrise, Blindsight, River of Gods, and Learning the World.
Y’know, on looking at the list of runners-up, it’s funny first, how many of them I haven’t read, and second, of those I have, how many were just really bad. I mean, seriously, who ever nominated Macroscope?
Davy by Edgar Pangborn Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold Titan by John Varley (the book that changed my life)
I would say Flowers for Algernon, except that it a) won the Hugo as a short story in 1960, and b) was much much better as a short story than as the novel (more impact from the concept).
Slaughterhouse-Five The Years of Rice and Salt Protector The High Crusade Friday
Titan by John Varley Deathworld by Harry Harrison Glory Road by Robert Heinlein The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin The Mote in God’s Eye by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
His Majesty’s Dragon, most fun I’ve seen with the Napoleonic wars, and I’m including Jonathan Strange in that assessment, though barely. Perdido Street Station, a major move forward for New Weird fiction, took my breath away. Red Mars, the first hard SF that I really appreciated (and IMO far better than its Hugo-winning sequels). Cat’s Cradle, the book that turned me on to apocalyptic fiction.
Some really big books have lost the Hugo, like Little, Big by John Crowley, and Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. And who remembers that Harry Potter book 2 beat out A Game of Thrones book 3?
But reading over the list reminds me of smaller books that normally you wouldn’t expect to make the final cut but are fondly in my memory.
The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson is the pinnacle of hippie psychedelic sf. R. A. McAvoy’s wonderful debut novel, Tea with the Black Dragon. George Alec Effinger’s private eye fantasia, When Gravity Fails (a Dylan reference). Thomas Disch’s brilliant On Wings of Song. James K. Morrow dead god oddity Towing Jehovah. No blockbusters, but wonderfully offbeat and individualistic writing.
And I think it’s fair to add The Martian, which never (due to it’s publishing history, IIRC) was nominated, but might be the best ‘hard’ SF of this young century.
I’d have to pick the two Wolfe novels - *Claw of the conciliator *and Sword of the Lictor. The Book of the New Sun is a special book, but clearly publishing it in four parts must attenuate its impact for winning awards. The Claw and Crowley’s Little Big being beaten out by CJ Cherryh’s *Downbelow station * in 1982 strikes me as one of the more risible award decisions. I’m a fan of Cherryh, read loads of her books, but come on now - a serious error of scale going on there.
I think The Scar is Meiville’s best written book (didn’t win in 03), but agree with Left Hand of Dorkness above that Perdido St Station (nominated 02) is breathtaking. For a first novel it is so impressive with a very original voice - seems like the type of precociousness that would win awards, but I’ve not read American Gods that won that year so don’t know how it stacks up
Small nitpick: Mieville wrote King Rat in 1998, two years before Perdido Street Station. It’s nowhere near as good IMO, and ends with a pun so strained and painful that it nearly ruins the whole book.
Gaiman is fun, but I don’t think he’s the astonishing author that so many others think he is. American Gods passed the time for me, no more.
Not everything he writes is a winner but American Gods is excellent IMO and I’ve re-read it several times. Anansi Boys, however, was more of a time-passer.
Arthur C Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust is an amazing book - scientifically precise and hugely suspenseful. It lost out to The Man in the High Castle, which is perhaps understandable. TMITHC is more sweeping and innovative. I suspect in a different year, Moondust would have won.
I always feel like Gaiman should be really good and is instead just okay. People whose taste I respect often love him. He just generally leaves me flat. The Graveyard Book was good, I thought. I haven’t read American Gods.
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