I may have been away from the writing world for the past few months, but that doesn’t mean the writing world stopped.  The Hugo Awards were announced in August at Loncon 3.  The Hugo Awards have always been one of my favorites. When I started to take my science fiction reading seriously, I read every Hugo Award winner I could get my hands on (I’ve read every winner from 1953 through 2007), and I was seldom disappointed.  This year’s Hugos had some additional intrigue as some of the categories wound up “politically” charged and generated a lot of debate about judging stories versus judging the author of those stories.  I don’t know what actually came of it in the end, and to be honest, I don’t really care because I prefer to stay out those types of discussion.  That said, on to the awards.

Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice grabbed the prize for Best Novel, giving her the double win with both the Hugo and Nebula.  Like most of the other recent winners in the novel category, I haven’t read Ms. Leckie’s book yet, but it is on my to-read list, and when I get around to catching up on my Hugo reading, this one might be at the top of my list.

In the short fiction categories, Tor.com swept up the awards, which is interesting because it might be the first time an online publication took home everything (I haven’t looked it up, but that’s my recollection), and it’s another sign of the change times in the speculative fiction publishing industry.

The Hugo for Best Novella went “Equoid” by Charles Stross.  I haven’t read much of Mr. Stross’ short fiction, but he’s an excellent novelist, and I’ve heard his novellas are also fantastic.  I’ll likely not get around to this one (I don’t read many novellas), but I might have to find the time to read it.  Mary Robinette Kowal won the Hugo for Best Novelette with her story “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” and John Chu’s “The Water that Falls on You from Nowhere” took home the Best Short Story honor.   All of these stories are available for free reading online at Tor.com.

The award that I was most pleased to hear, however, was Lightspeed Magazine winning the Hugo for Best Semiprozine.  As anyone whose spent time around here knows, I’ve published several stories in Lightspeed and with its editor John Joseph Adams, so I may be a little biased when I say this was a well-deserved recognition.  It’s an honor to have had my work published in Lightspeed, and I’d like to think that maybe my stories—”Thief of Futures” (2011), “Dreams in Dust” (2012), and “The Schrödinger War” (2013)—helped Lightspeed finally take home the rocket ship.