2020 Hugo Award Finalists Announced

Last night, the finalists for the 2020 Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult book, and the 1945 Retrospective Hugos were announced via webcast. Due to COVID-19, the 2020 WorldCon convention, including the Hugo ceremony, have been moved from New Zealand to a 100% virtual con in order to protect everyone’s safety.

Many Book Riot favorites appear on the final ballot, narrowed down from 27,033 nominations from 1,584 people. A selection of the finalists is below.

Best Novel

• The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (Alix is also nominated for Best Short Story for “Do Not Look Back, My Lion” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which was one of my favorite stories last year)

Best Novella

• “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” from Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• The Deep by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
• In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Best Series

(Links go to either the first book in the series or to a box set, when available.)

• The Expanse by James S. A. Corey
• InCryptid by Seanan McGuire
• Luna by Ian McDonald
• Planetfall by Emma Newman
• Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
• The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson

Best Graphic Story or Comic

• Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles
• LaGuardia written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin
• Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda
• Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker, letters by Joamette Gil
• Paper Girls, Volume 6 written by Brian K. Vaughan, drawn by Cliff Chiang, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher
• The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: Okay by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

• Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer
• Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
• Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
• Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher
• Riverland by Fran Wilde
• The Wicked King by Holly Black

Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines

This is the award previously known as the Campbell. If you have not watched/listened to/read a transcript of Jeanette Ng’s speech when she won the award last year, you absolutely should. (Holy Hera, she wrote it on her phone while sitting in the audience!)

• Sam Hawke (2nd year of eligibility)
• R.F. Kuang (2nd year of eligibility)
• Jenn Lyons (1st year of eligibility)
• Nibedita Sen (2nd year of eligibility)
• Tasha Suri (2nd year of eligibility)
• Emily Tesh (1st year of eligibility)

The full list of finalists is at Tor.com.

More on the Hugo Awards:

The 2019 Hugo Award Winners

Why the John W. Campbell award was renamed The Astounding Award