Sunday, January 20, 2019

An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton



It is not so much a history of the Hugo awards, but rather a history of Hugo winners and nominees (and about what else might have been worthy of nominating).

There have been very many books and stories I have somehow missed. There also are many books I have read, enjoyed and almost forgotten and which are ripe for a reread - I tried to be selective, but I ended up with a fairly long list of books to read and reread. The author has a tendency to abandon any author if the first book she read has been mediocre - and in a few instances her choice is laudable, but in other cases, she has missed some worthy books. The book is based on the blog posts the author has written, and every year includes some commentaries by some prominent anthologists and other science fiction personalities. Little editing has been done to those: even the numbers of the comments are left and, in a few cases, there were some comments which apparently reference other comments on the blog, comments which haven’t been included in the book. Some editing might have been nice. It is a good reference book, which I most like will return to.

576 pp.

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