SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I'm looking for the books that were on the list but didn't win, or that didn't even MAKE the list for prominent awards like

Hugos: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-hi...
Nebulas: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/awards-by-year
Locus Awards" https://www.sfadb.com/Locus_Awards
World Fantasy Awards: http://www.worldfantasy.org/awards/wi...
Philip K Dick Award: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_...
Astounding Award (Formerly John Campbell Award): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W....
Otherwise Award (Formerly James Tiptree Jr Award): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherwi...

There used to be an article based on books that didn't win the Hugo in a given year or decade. I'd like to compile your thoughts on winners, short lists and dark horses and provide an SFFBC retrospective. Give me your thoughts, and get a credit in anything I send! What do you think of the nominees and winners between 2001 and 2010 for each or some subset of these awards? What other books should have made the shortlists?

Thank you!!

I like this idea and wish the 'sort by date first published' feature actually worked. The only thing that comes to mind at the moment is The Lost Steersman, the third and best book in the Steerswoman series.

Going through the lists I see that these are years where I haven't read much, so there is only a very fragmentary impression from me.

All in all for those years I'm always astonished that Brandon Sanderson is left out of everything. I only found him mentioned in the astounding award.

I'm definitely missing a mention for Vita Nostra (2007) somewhere. Another one I would have loved to see on the nominees is Carpentaria (2004) - but that's a very niche book for my niche taste, so I understand that it isn't widely known.



- Hugo award:

2001 - read 3 of the nominees, out of those only Midnight Robber would be an award book imho - most certainly not Harry Potter

2002 - read 4 of the nominees, all strong books, American Gods was an okay winner, my vote would have gone to either Perdido Street Station or Passage.

2003 - only read 2 of the nominees (Scar and Years of Rice and Salt) Years of Rice and Salt would have been my choice

2004 - I've only read the winner, Paladin of Souls, which I loved

2005 - only read 2, didn't like the winner (Norrel and Strange) very much, my vote would have gone to Miéville's Iron Council

2006 - read 3, the winner, Spin, was okayish

2007 - read 4 of the nominees, the winner, Rainbow's End, was horrible, both Eifelheim and Blindsight would have deserved the win

2008 - only read the winner, which I didn't like

2009 - only read the winner, The Graveyard Book, which was okay

2010 - The City and the City as winner is totally okay with me, Windup Girl somehow as well (I didn't like the brutality of it, but I can see why it is liked), Boneshaker was a joke.



- Nebula award:

2001 - read 3 of the nominees (2 identical with Hugo nominees of that year) - the winner "Quantum Rose" was a joke imho.

2002 - same as Hugos for this year

2003 - only read The Other Wind by UKLG

2004 - read 3 books, would have voted for Paladin of Souls as well

2005 - only read 2, didn't like the winner much (see Hugo), my vote would have gone to Cloud Atlas, which was outstanding

2006 - read only 1, but that should have been the winner anyway, because Terry Pratchett

2007 - didn't read any of the nominees

2008 - only read the Chabon and the Hopkinson and definitely prefer Hopkinson to the winner

2009 - read the winner, Powers, which was deserved, and of course loved the Pratchett, didn't read anything else

2010 - winner okay, Boneshaker meh, read nothing else


- Philip K. Dick award

If I saw it correctly I've apparently read none of the nominees or winners in those years. ^^'
I have to correct this, because in the last years where I was following this award the nominees were more to my liking than the usual suspects in the Hugos and Nebulas.


- same goes for the Otherwise Award. I haven't read any of the winners. In this case it is often a case of availability. The books sound interesting, but often aren't available to me at decent costs.


- World Fantasy Award

2001 - read 2 - did not like Amber Spyglass, but loved Perdido Street Station, didn't read the winners

2002 - read 3 (American Gods, Curse of Chalion, The Other Wind), liked all of them

2003 - only read The Scar

2004 - read none of the nominees

2005 - read 2, as with the H/N awards I wasn't fond of Norrel and Strange and would have given the award to Iron Council

2006 - only read the winner, and since it is Haruki Murakami he has my yes

2007 - Only read Lies of Locke Lamora which I wasn't fond of

2008 - only read the winner - but I can't recall anything of Ysabell ... which means it wasn't that impressive ^^'

2009 - only read the Graveyard Book

2010 - Only read the winner, which I liked.


- Locus Award (only the winners, the nominee lists are always so long)

SF

UKLG, Connie Willis, KSR and Dan Simmons winning the first years are completely good for me, those four are outstanding authors.
On the other hand Boneshaker, Rainbow's End and Yiddish Policemen's Union were all disappointing for me.

F

With the exception of Kushner's Privilege of the Sword I've read all of the winners and all of them deserve an award imho (even if I didn't like some of them so much)

Allison wrote: "I'm looking for the books that were on the list but didn't win, or that didn't even MAKE the list for prominent awards like

Hugos: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-hi...
Nebulas: https://neb..."

I'm getting a page not found on the Nebulas link

CBRetriever wrote: ".I'm getting a page not found on the Nebulas link
"

Same and the link to the wikipedia article on the Otherwise Award is also bad. It should be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherwi...

I'll fix it in a bit sorry!

Fixed!

Some notable things not on the lists (will update slowly):

Pubbed in 2000:
Spindle's End
Son of the Shadows

I would have thought there'd be more SF books published in a year than this list has.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categ...

For sure. This looks like what some rando read in 2009. One Star Wars novel? If you include one you have to include the 20 others published in that year. Not to mention Star Trek. I’m sure there are at least 3 times that many SF books published in a year.

Well, I like that the list is easier to read, without multiple entries of the series.

It did remind me of Robert J. Sawyer because it mentioned WWW: Wake. I don't know which of his books won which awards, but I've enjoyed most of what I've read by him and I hope he's gotten some significant critical acclaim.

Ryan wrote: "I would have thought there'd be more SF books published in a year than this list has.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categ..."
Can Locus help with that?

You could use Amazon's advanced search for one year at a time, though the genre field combines science fiction and fantasy.