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- especially considering that two Murderbot episodes are nominated in the Short Form category, and a third episode was withdrawn by the showrunners to comply with the episode limit for the category.**  Why not just put the whole season in for Long Form?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.

May the 4th: Shooting Stars.

Somebody once asked, "Could I spare some change for gas?
I need to get myself away from this place"
I said, "Yep, what a concept, I could use a little fuel myself
And we could all use a little change"

Han Solo, Star Wars: A New Hope.

Another May the Fourth, another post...

- Sid

P.S. Full disclosure: not my work, and it was unattributed on the page where I found it.   

 

"Is that my name?"

Hi Love, 
I thought this article might interest you!  I wonder how much you'd agree. 

https://ew.com/doctor-who-best-episodes-ranked-11956344 

Love you, 
Karli*

Since Doctor Who's 2005 revival - the "modern era" of the article's title - there have been either 196 or 199 episodes: internet sources vary.  Regardless, picking the best 50 from the catalogue means that you're selecting about one in every four episodes for your list, which is a pretty coarse filter.  Interestingly, the list only contains a single Ncuti Gatwa episode - surely Dot and Bubble** or Boom qualify as top 50 selections - but I accept the subjective nature of this kind of list.

That being said, I do take strong exception with one of the EW decisions:  how could The Doctor's Wife only be at number 38??! 

It's such an excellent episode that I would have expected to see it in the top five, if not in the running for first place.  The story stands alone as a thoughtful and touching examination of the relationship between the Doctor and the TARDIS, and the BBC paid it the ultimate compliment of not attempting to cash in on its success with a return visit from Idris, the human avatar of the TARDIS, as so perfectly portrayed by Suranne Jones.  

A small part of me wonders if the ranking somehow reflects episode author Neil Gaiman's #MeToo moment from last year, but I would think that if that were the case, the episode would have gone completely unconsidered for the list.  Although, with that taken into account, it really doesn't age well that Gaiman's Doctor christens the embodiment of the TARDIS as "Sexy".

- Sid

* It is such a pleasure to be married to someone with this kind of respect for my hobbies and interests - thank you, Karli!  

** Dot and Bubble is arguably a bit Doctor-light, but then so is Blink, which they rank as the number one episode - no argument with that choice, by the way.