The Hugo Award is one of the most prestigious speculative fiction literary awards. Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favourite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. Between the announcement of the ballot and the Hugo Award ceremony at WorldCon, these works often become the centre of much attention (and contention) across fandom.
But there are more stories loved by the Hugo voters, stories on the longer nomination list that WSFS publishes after the Hugo Award ceremony at WorldCon. The Long List Anthology collects 21 tales from that nomination list, totalling almost 500 pages of fiction by writers from all corners of the world.
Within these pages you will find a mix of science fiction and fantasy, the dramatic and the light-hearted, from near future android stories to Steampunk heists, too-plausible dystopias to contemporary vampire stories.
There is something here for everyone.
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[Going into the mountains had never been easy THE BREATH OF WAR BY ALIETTE DE BODARD]***
(@diabolicalplots, 15 December 2015, 495 pages, e-book, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2020, an anthology, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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This is an impressive collection of stories that fit into the speculative / science fiction / horror / fantasy genres, often straddling multiple. I was familiar with some authors such as Elizabeth Bear, T. Kingfisher and Scott Lynch but there are a host of writers I've never read / heard of before. What impressed me is the diversity and range of stories on offer, no two are alike and each one offers something completely unexpected and different. Most anthologies contain one or two dud's. Not so here. Every story is excellent. My favourites were When It Ends, He Catches Her by Eugie Foster, Covenant by Elizabeth Bear, A Kiss With Teeth by Max Gladstone and The Devil In America by Kai Ashante Wilson.
