I love Hugo Award time.  It brings me back to my formative years when I read a lot more science fiction than I do now.  In my late teens, I decided I wanted to read the best science fiction and fantasy novels I could, so I downloaded a copy of the Hugo Award winners all the way back to 1953, and started my quest to find and read them all.  It took nearly 20 years to find some of the more obscure titles, but I’ve read every single winner through 2007, before life got too busy for me to read many novels (although most of the 2007-2013 winners are in my to-read pile).  I didn’t care for a few of the books, but most were exceptional, and a few are among my all-time favorites.  Good memories there . . . .

But back to the present.  The nominees for the 2014 Hugo Award were announced last week.  I missed the announcement when it first came out, but I figured it out when I saw some congratulatory posts flying around the interweb earlier this week.  You can find a complete list of the nominees in all of the categories here, but here’s who has been nominated in the novel, novella, novelette, and short story categories (with links to online versions, if available, for the shorter works):

Best Novel:

• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross
• Parasite by Mira Grant
• Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia
• The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (yes, the whole series!)

Best Novella:

• “The Butcher of Khardov” by Dan Wells (Privateer Press)
• “The Chaplain’s Legacy” by Brad Torgersen (Analog)
• “Equoid” by Charles Stross (Tor.com)
• “Six-Gun Snow White” by Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean Press)
• “Wakulla Springs” by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages (Tor.com)

Best Novelette:

• “Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day (The Last Witchking)
• “The Exchange Officers” by Brad Torgersen (Analog)
• “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette (Tor.com)
• “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
• “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)

Best Short Story:

• “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky (Apex Magazine)
• “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor.com)
• “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)
• “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu (Tor.com)

Congratulations to all of the nominees.  The winners will be announce on August 17, 2014.