2026 Hugo Awards: The Winners.

"Falcons get all their water from drinking blood."

T. Kingfisher, Hugo Awards Host

"Oh shit, I guess I should have attended WorldCon!" 

Jason Sanford's in absentia acceptance speech for Best Fan Writer, 
as read by Chris Barclay

Last night saw the presentation of the 2026 Hugo Awards at LAcon V, entertainingly and skillfully hosted by award-winning author T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon*) in a succession of increasingly absurd hats. 

The event suffered from a number of technical issues, but Kingfisher handled everything that happened with humour and aplomb.  (Sadly, her demonstration of grace under pressure was not rewarded by a win in the Best Novella category, but such is life.) My only minor criticism of her hosting performance is that, amusing though the obscure animal facts were, wouldn't trivia from the history of science fiction and fantasy have been more appropriate?  

Hugo Awards Administrator Tammy Coxen, who introduced the awards portion of the evening, mentioned that several of the awards were decided by a single vote, amplifying the degree to which the individual vote really is of importance.  

I was impressed by the number of noteworthy names that presented awards over the course of the evening: Neil Clarke, David Gerrold, Barbara Hambly, Ronald D. Moore, Tim Kirk, Colleen Doran, Stan Sakai, Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, and R2-D2 - well, to be completely accurate R2-D2 only delivered the Best Novel envelope to the stage, but still, impressive that he was there at all.  

The presence of R2-D2 aside, the Hugo Awards have traditionally been ignored by the television and motion picture community**, but this year's ceremony at least partially made up for the indifference of past winners. Although Ryan Coogler declined to accept the Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form award in person***, his absence was comprehensively compensated for by the Short Form winners for Murderbot: All Systems Red, who filled the stage with members of their team, including author Martha Wells and actor David Dastmalchian. 

As a group, the winners were eloquent and passionate in their comments about the ills that plague the world, particularly the United States, expressing a sense of concern and activism in their acceptance speeches that's shared by the community in general.  

And, without further ado, the 2026 Hugo Award winners are:

BEST NOVEL
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

BEST NOVELLA
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

BEST NOVELETTE
Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak

BEST SHORT STORY
In My Country by Thomas Ha

BEST SERIES
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

 BEST GRAPHIC STORY OR COMIC
A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel, written by Ursula K. Le Guin, adapted and art by Fred Fordham 

BEST RELATED WORK
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer 

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM 
Sinners, screenplay by Ryan Coogler, directed by Ryan Coogler 

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM 
Murderbot: All Systems Red, written by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz, directed by Roseanne Liang, based on the book All Systems Red by Martha Wells 

BEST GAME OR INTERACTIVE WORK
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, developed by Sandfall Interactive

BEST EDITOR SHORT FORM
Neil Clarke

BEST EDITOR LONG FORM
Diana M. Pho

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
John Picacio

BEST SEMIPROZINE
Uncanny Magazine, publisher and editor-in-chief: Michael Damian Thomas; managing editor Monte Lin; poetry editor Betsy Aoki, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

BEST FANZINE
nerds of a feather, flock together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla

BEST FANCAST
Hugo, Girl!, presented by Haley Zapal, Amy Salley, Lori Anderson, and Kevin Anderson

BEST FAN WRITER
Jason Sanford

BEST FAN ARTIST
Yuumei

BEST POEM
Hex Supply Customer Support Log by Elis Montgomery 

LODESTAR AWARD FOR BEST YA BOOK
Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee 

ASTOUNDING AWARD FOR BEST NEW AUTHOR (sponsored by Must Read Books Publishing)
Antonia Hodgson (1st year of eligibility) 

The full awards ceremony can be viewed on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyarB0EVaM

(Be warned, it's over three hours, you may want to make popcorn.)  

- Sid

* It took me a few minutes to figure out who she reminded me of: she has a remarkable resemblance to my friend Christi in both look and delivery - not an exact match, but perhaps the sister that Christi has never told me about.

** As per last year's "Shame, shame, shame" statement. 

*** The joke was that apparently the invitation did not specifically invite him into the venue - IYKYK.  

Seriously, though, it is weird.

Yes, I'm looking at you, The Raven Scholar and The Incandescent.

Regardless, I managed to finish off the remaining Best Novel nominee last night, and I've submitted my votes for the Hugo Awards.  I have to admit that I used the NO VOTE option for a couple of categories:  I hadn't read all of the Best Series books, or the Lodestar Award YA novel nominees, and I didn't wade through the Editorial options, either Long or Short Form.  

That being said, it was a challenging ballot - there's a lot of really solid work out there, and it was a struggle to rank the nominees from 1 to 6, especially in the Best Novel Category, duplicate amputations aside.  And now we wait: I'm still hoping that my Voting membership will get me access to the LACon Hugo Awards livestream on the 30th - fingers crossed!

- Sid

The Thief of Time.

While we're doing awards housekeeping, just a reminder that the voting deadline for the 2026 Hugo Awards is this coming Saturday, August 8th, at noon PDT.  Which means that when I finish this posting, it's back to the last novel nominee that I have to finish reading!

- Sid

2026 Hugo Award Nominees: This Download Could Have Been A Link.

Voting for this year's Hugo Awards opened this week - for anyone interested, the full list of finalists can be found at:

https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2026-hugo-awards/ 

Along with the list of nominees, the Hugo Awards Packet was also made available to voting members.  It's an impressive 17.7 GB download, a surprisingly large number considering that none of the Long or Short Form Dramatic Presentation nominees have included full copies of their selections, although Frankenstein has been generous enough to include a screener link and password.  Sadly, Best Novel nominees Robert Jackson Bennett for A Drop of Corruption, and Adrian Tchaikovsky for Shroud, also chose not to include full copies of their novels, as did Naomi Novik for her Best Novella entry, The Summer War*.  However, it's gratifying to see that, in addition to the ePub versions of their work, many of the other nominees have elected to add audio versions as well.

Looking over the nominees, I was a bit surprised by the Long Form selections - or rather, by the options that didn't make the list. The Long Form nominees are: 

• Andor (Season 2)
• Frankenstein 
• KPop Demon Hunters 
• Mickey 17 
• Sinners
• Superman 

I thought Bugonia might get a nod - and doesn't Weapons have a supernatural element?.  None of the Marvel options of Thunderbolts*, Fantastic Four, or Captain America: Brave New World made the cut, and the latest chapter in the Avatar series was also shut out. And, if the door is opened to entire seasons by the inclusion of the second season of Andor, it's surprising that the Season One of Murderbot didn't receive a nomination, given its popularity - especially considering that two Murderbot episodes are nominated in the Short Form category, and a third episode was withdrawn by the showrunners to comply with the episode limit for the category.**  Why not just put the whole season in for Long Form?  Or Pluribus, which is also structured as a single long narrative but only represented by a single entry in the Short Form list, as is Severance?  

In contrast, I'm fine with Doctor Who only having one nominated episode rather than the whole season, given its episodic nature and the varying list of writers, but Pluribus is very much Vince Gilligan's baby and could logically be treated as a single body of work.  (Interestingly, Andor is the product of four writers, which would seem to make it a better candidate for single episode consideration.)

All of this fails to answer the question of why the download is so large?  As it turns out, the Related Work category, which cover non-fiction work related to the genre, contains an epic 4.66 GB episode from The History of Westeros podcast - slightly ironically, given that unlike the Long Form entries, the episode is also available for free on YouTube.   

- Sid

* I appreciate that authors are concerned with uncontrolled distribution of their work, but honestly, that ship has already sailed - if any of these pieces are available in digital form, I guarantee you that they're already being downloaded for free. 

** There's also a nominated Murderbot novelette from Martha Wells, which I'm looking forward to reading, regardless of whether it gets my vote.

Worldcon 2026: Vcon?

I was intrigued to receive the following e-mail notification from LAcon V (the 2026 Worldcon), in my In box today: 

Obviously, as a voting member for this year's Hugo Awards, I would need access to the nominations, the voter's packet and subsequent voting, but the e-mail suggests that the membership includes "access to the online parts of the convention".  

Hmmm...according to the bullet point summary, program streaming is part of the access, and given that the Seattle Worldcon streamed several of its more high profile programs, it's possible that I will be able to watch some parts of the convention, and even participate to a certain extent by posting questions.

I immediately activated my account, and the Coming Soon section of the Member Portal has some promising options in the form of a Stream and replay button.

It's possible that access to the portal may be controlled based on type of membership, with non-attending members restricted from accessing all the options, but I suspect that the organizers will take the simpler route of just letting everyone with a membership access everything - after all, if the Seattle convention was typical, only a few of the events will be streamed.  As always, time will tell - and fingers crossed.

- Sid

 

"Science fiction’s most prestigious award."

I assumed that the Hugos were like the Oscars: Voted on by some sort of body to which one must be invited. I figured that this was an echelon of SFF to which I would never ascend, and was content to follow along with the winners, losers, scandals, controversies, and delights, like any other award situation.

But I was wrong. 

Molly Templeton, Anyone Can Vote in the Hugo Awards — And Here’s How 

This month's copy of the Macmillan Publishing Reactor* newsletter showed up in my In box this morning, and the first link was to an article on Hugo voting by Molly Templeton.  It's a well-written and comprehensive guide to not only the process for registering as a Hugo voter, but also the value that a larger pool of voters brings to the awards.

I gave it a bit of thought, and decided that after attending the Seattle Worldcon last year, I wanted to continue to be a part of the process, and signed up for a non-attending LAcon membership at $50 USD.

It wasn't entirely a casual decision: in the wake of retirement, I've done my best to control spending (with a few exceptions for travel and entertainment), but so far my modest investments have performed quite well**, and as such I'm willing to spend a bit of discretionary budget on this.  And, as pointed out in the Reactor article, the Hugos voter packet probably includes equivalent or greater value. (Last year's was an impressive 43GB download of long and short fiction, series episodes, review links, graphic novels and related content.)

I should also point out that it's not just a voting membership, non-attending members also have the ability to nominate entries for the various categories - Molly Templeton's article includes some useful guidelines for the nomination process. 

Depending on your degree of fandom, interest or financial security, you can register at:

https://www.lacon.org/register/

The deadline is January 31st - why not make your voice be heard?

- Sid

* If you're not already a Reactor subscriber, here's the subscription link:

https://reactormag.com/newsletter/ 

 It's a great source of news, reviews, and every issue includes a free piece of short fiction.

** A little bit of finger crossing accompanies this statement.   

Worldcon 2025: And the winner is...

2025 Astounding, Lodestar, and Hugo Award Winners

Astounding Award
Moniquill Blackgoose

2025 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger

Best Poem
“A War of Words”, by Marie Brennan

Best Fan Artist
Sara Felix

Best Fan Writer
Abigail Nussbaum

Best Fancast
Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, presented by Emily Tesh and Rebecca Fraimow

Best Fanzine
Black Nerd Problems, editors William Evans and Omar Holmon

Best Semiprozine
Uncanny Magazine, publishers and editors-in-chief: Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; managing editor Monte Lin; poetry editor Betsy Aoki, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

Best Professional Artist
Alyssa Winans

Best Editor, Long Form
Diana M. Pho

Best Editor, Short Form
Neil Clarke

Best Game or Interactive Work
Caves of Qud, Freehold Games

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Star Trek: Lower Decks: “The New Next Generation”, created and written by Mike McMahan, directed by Megan Lloyd

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Dune: Part Two, screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, directed by Denis Villeneuve

Best Related Work
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, by Jordan S. Carroll

Best Graphic Story or Comic
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way, written by Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio

Best Series
Between Earth and Sky, by Rebecca Roanhorse

Best Short Story
“Stitched to Skin Like Family Is”, by Nghi Vo

Best Novelette
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”, by Naomi Kritzer

Best Novella
The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler

Best Novel
The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

- Sid 

 

"This is a time to support each other."

The following message from Seattle Worldcon regarding the current situation in the United States appeared in my mailbox this afternoon - I think it speaks for itself.  Sadly, my wife and I have already discussed the possibility that I might need to cancel my attendance if things change even more for the worse, and I'm pleased to see how the convention is responding.

- Sid

Dear Worldcon Community,

I am writing this statement in order to share the status of Seattle Worldcon’s current journey through living up to our theme of Building Yesterday's Future—For Everyone. We have received a number of concerns asking how the convention will respond to orders and actions of the U.S. government, which we condemn, that create hostile conditions and travel barriers for LGBTQ+ members and international members.

We appreciate everyone’s concerns as we navigate the current political landscape together. As I stated when we won the bid, our theme is an acknowledgment that we have not successfully built the future we have aspired to, but we are also inspired by optimism for a better future—including the movements that have existed throughout history pushing us to build communities and pushing us to recognize our shared humanity. The personal is political, and our fandom lives cannot and should not be separated from that reality. 

We are not going to get everything right, and I am explicitly asking for your grace as we move forward, do our best, listen to feedback, and correct our course as necessary. 

We do not have a list of all the steps we are going to take in light of the political landscape right now, as it continues to shift rapidly. We know this is not a particularly satisfying answer in light of the many concerns that we have heard from you about our members who need to enter the United States and what they might encounter trying to cross the border. We are not minimizing those concerns. The situation is frightening, and we encourage our members to make the best decisions for themselves even if that means that we will miss you at our convention. At the same time we are committed to not cancelling the in-person Worldcon as some have suggested because it is even more important than ever to gather with those who are able to do so to discuss our theme and celebrate the power of SFF to imagine different societies. 

We are investigating what concrete actions we can take and offer to our members. Our Code of Conduct, Diversity Commitment, and Anti-Racism Statement provide the guidelines we are using in making these determinations. We would also like to remind people about what we are already doing.  

First, we have in place a Virtual Membership for people who determine that they are no longer safe traveling to the U.S or cannot attend for other reasons. As part of our program, we are partnering with groups from around the world to bring virtual panels to the shoulder hours (before and after in-person programming) every day of the convention to broaden our streaming offerings and include members from other parts of the world. We are actively working on this part of our virtual event and more announcements will be forthcoming. You also can participate in the Hugo Awards online – voting on the final ballot, and discussing Finalists with each other on our social media or in your own bookclubs. There is also the on-line Business Meeting as has been previously announced.  

Second, building on the work of other Worldcons and conventions, we will be having Safer Spaces Lounges available for members of marginalized communities who attend the convention in person. These spaces will be marked on convention maps.

Third, we will be drafting a resource guide to collate many of the wonderful resources that local organizations have already put together. In the interim, the ACLU of Washington has several Know Your Rights publications available, as does Northwest Immigrants Rights Project for individuals concerned about their rights while traveling.  

Fourth, we will be fundraising for the following nonprofit organizations at the convention: Books to Prisoners, The Bureau of Fearless Ideas, and Hugo House. All of these organizations do important work to promote literacy education in the Seattle area and help build community resilience.  

Finally, the political landscape is changing daily and impacting all of us in differing, but profound ways. Our staff is not immune. Many of our staff are deeply, personally impacted by the actions of the U.S. president, as his bigoted and hateful orders target our shared humanity. Many of us are federal employees who are now navigating what is happening to the civil service, terminations from our careers, and extreme uncertainty about our livelihoods. Many of us are also still dealing with the impact of the Los Angeles fires, Hurricane Helene, tornadoes, and other recent severe weather events on our families, loved ones, and friends. As citizens in the U.S. and around the world, we have many concerns, which are probably similar to yours. We all care deeply about our community and about Worldcon and are working diligently to navigate all of the waters that surround us, but we are also human with all the fallibility, blind spots, and competing demands on our time that entails. 

This is a time to support each other. If you have questions about how we can support you in deciding about your Worldcon attendance, please reach out to chair@seattlein2025.org.  

In solidarity,
Kathy Bond
(she/her)
Chair Seattle Worldcon 2025