The New Hugo Winners
A Walk in the Sun - short story by Geoffrey A. Landis Gold - novelette by Isaac Asimov Beggars in Spain - novella by Nancy Kress Even the Queen - short story by Connie Willis The Nutcracker Coup - novelette by Janet Kagan Barnacle Bill the Spacer - novella by Lucius Shepard Death on the Nile - novelette by Connie Willis Georgia on My Mind - novelette by Charles Sheffield Down in the Bottomlands - novella by Harry Turtledove
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
5people
2015–2023years
40% recommend60% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Bradbury.
[edit] also, if you like short stories and novellas, I found the New Hugo Winners series (in which Asimov had taken a back seat as editor, writing in his introduction, to paraphrase, “I do not understand these kids”) has a way higher average quality of writing than the older Hugo Winners series. The ideas didn’t seem a lot worse to me, either. But I’ve also read a lot more of the regular Hugo Winner series so maybe I just got very lucky with the New Hugo volumes I’ve picked up.
- TL;DR: Bradbury, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Vonnegut, sort of.
Bradbury, unreservedly.
I remember really liking Dune through God Emperor, but I read it so long ago that I recommend it only tentatively. I do recall that the one non-Dune book of Herbert's I attempted to read seemed like it was written while on acid, and not in a good way.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the best sci-fi novels I've read. Its author wasn't very active, though, so there's not much else from him. I haven't read any of the rest, but none of it has the reputation that Canticle does.
I'd put forward Vonnegut, but a) he's often not classed as a sci-fi writer for some reason, and b) I personally think he's at his best when his sci-fi tendencies are kept to a minimum (Dead Eye Dick, Bluebeard, Galapagos, which is as more fantasy than sci-fi if one must stick a genre label on it). I'd class Atwood as similar to Vonnegut in this regard, but even more so—her sci-fi work is just OK, from what I've seen of it, and I prefer her "straight" fiction.
If found Clarke's The City and the Stars deeply affecting (though, for long stretches, a bit of a chore), but the other couple novels of his I've read I wish I hadn't. A couple interesting ideas that stick, but not much substance. They were The Hammer of God and The Songs of a Distant Earth, for the record. They weren't even very entertaining. Both were late novels, so maybe his earlier stuff tends to be better? Mere speculation. I've been put off trying more of him by his current 1-for-3 record. I do like the movie 2001, though :-)
Bester's probably my biggest blind spot among the sci-fi greats—I've read nothing by him.
I can recommend The New Hugo Winners collections over The Hugo Winners, pretty much universally, if you're looking for short stories. Asimov all but sneers at them in his torch-passing introduction, but the reason he feels out of touch with those authors' work is because they're way better than what he was used to. However, I've yet to find a contemporary sci-fi author I can rely upon to deliver an entire novel that doesn't fall apart at some point, one way or another. I haven't tried Murakami, who seems well regarded and is, by reputation, my greatest remaining chance.
(Just to be clear, I enjoy plenty of other sci-fi in a guilty-pleasure, lazy weekend sort of way, in the same way that I genuinely like watching [some] crappy movies on Netflix)
- > 1. "Wow, have you read all these books?" means "I never read books."
There's a short story, I think in one of my New Hugo Winners volumes, in which a character responds to that question with something like, "who the hell wants a library full of books they've already read?!"
But yes, that's definitely the kind of question only someone who doesn't read much would ask. A great tell.
[EDIT] Or, I guess, maybe a kid from a certain kind of background, reader or not, which I think might have been the case in that story, but from an adult? Yeah, pretty good signal.
- The actual writing from a lot of the golden age and New Wave sci-fi authors is... OK at best, with a few exceptions (Bradbury's distinctively poetic and dreamlike prose, for example). Tons of modern sci-fi authors write stories with more literary merit, better clarity, better-conveyed action, more believable characters and dialog, and so on. The improvements there are really obvious when reading, say, an early 70s The Hugo Winners or collections of 1950s stories, and then a 90s The New Hugo Winners.
Whether their ideas and worlds stand up to Asimov and company, or happen to be appealing to a particular reader, is another matter, but the command of writing itself is overall better, I'd say. I don't think a modern author would have much luck getting novels or stories in major magazines published with Asimov-tier dialog & characterization, for example.
Plus those eras were full of tons of garbage, in addition to what we remember. New Wave (60s and 70s) in particular tended to some very special interests that I don't think have held up too well, with some exceptions. A lot of that era's stories are very in love with sex & drugs and not in a way that really translates into a good tale. Most of those aren't exactly well-beloved these days.
On the flip side, there are definitely some modern sci-fi authors that are among the most famous but have some serious problems putting together an entirely good novel. I'll refrain from naming names but among them is maybe the only author whose book has ever made me mad at them for wasting such a good idea, setting, and opening, by just having no damn follow-through and getting super lazy in the last 1/3 or so. They're probably a top-5 sci fi name, among active authors today. But I stand by the overall quality level being notably higher on at least some dimensions, and it's even true for that guy.
- King Solomon's Mines would count as fantasy-adventure, for its time period. It gets listed among influences on or precursors to 20th-century fantasy literature pretty often. I think it's 200ish pages, maybe 250. It's closer to Indiana Jones than to modern fantasy, though. You're not going to find a ton of "high fantasy" before Tolkien, if that's your thing. Mostly fantasy-adventure (as King Solomon's) or "low fantasy" (think: Conan the Barbarian) and a few works playing with folk-tale and fairy tale motifs.
Sci-fi is easy because it's a genre full of great short stories and novellas. Arguably, it's better suited to those than to novels. The New Hugo Winners collections showcase a lot of shorter works that tend to be a bit more "literary" (in an early Asimov-penned forward to one of these, he claims to have passed off editing duties on the "New Hugo" series because he doesn't quite understand the appeal of these newer stories). The chief difference is that older, less-literary sci-fi tends to focus on ideas, while in more recent material characters, theme, mood, and quality of prose take greater prominence. However there were authors working in that more literary space in the more classic-era of sci-fi like, as I mentioned before, Bradbury.
I'd hit up broad collections of classic sci-fi stories, which will mostly be good stuff and will give you an idea of the intentions and capabilities of a ton of authors, most of whom have large bodies of work to explore, and the New Hugo Winners series. Both kinds of book are readily found for very little money at thrift shops and used book stores. I'd avoid other annual collections (Year's Best, The Hugo Winners) until you've got a better idea of what you're looking for—get wide-ranging best-of collections and the New Hugos until then.
