Annotated 2019 Hugo Award Finalists

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Annotated 2019 Hugo Award Finalists

Update 11/3/19: Tagged 3 🏆World Fantasy Award winners (click link to highlight). (More)

Here is the annotated 2019 Hugo Award finalists list, merged with RSR's 2018 Best SF/F list (aka our aggregated list of "outstanding" stories) for the first time, with the finalists highlighted in red, and sorted by score.

Observations

In the six sections below, the links support the claims in the text by jumping to a view of the table that highlights the stories and data being discussed.

1. 💬Novellas

No surprises. Five of the six finalists are in the top 10 out of 30+ novellas in our Best SF/F list.
Four are also Nebula finalists, and one is also a Sturgeon finalist (out of three).
RSR recommended four finalists, was neutral on one, and disliked one.

2. 💬Novelettes

No surprises. Five of the six finalists are in the top 10 out of 100+ novelettes in our Best SF/F list.
Two are also Nebula finalists, and three are Sturgeon finalists (out of three).
RSR recommended three finalists, was neutral on two, and did not review one.

3. 💬Short Stories

Just two of the six finalists are in the top 10 out of 150+ short stories in our Best SF/F list. That's surprising compared to 2017 and 2016 when five of six finalists were in the top 10. Perhaps more finalists could rise to the top 10 as the remaining awards (Eugie, Locus, British Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy) and year's best anthologies (BASFF, PGuran, RHorton) are announced later this year.
As for overlap with other awards, three are also Nebula finalists, and just one is a Sturgeon finalist (out of five).
RSR recommended no finalists, was neutral on five, and did not review one.

4. 📚Publications

Most of the finalists were the top scoring stories of their magazines (Apex, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Tor Novellas).
The three Uncanny stories were more spread out among the 7 in our Best SF/F list.
Four finalists were from other publications we don't regularly review.