Hugo Award for Best Novel

She's a historian of the Byzantine Empire and a city planner who serves as a policy advisor for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department's Office of the Secretary.

This book, though, won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Compton Crook Award for 2020 as well.

So it is the first in a series.

I think it's a trilogy.

Even in an era where sci-fi completely dominates the global box office and the gaming industry, the cultural weight of the genre still resides in the written word.

The vanguard of SFF literature is found in the best novel and best series categories.

The bedrock of the whole thing.

And looking at the nominees for best novel this year, the sheer density of talent is staggering.

It really is an incredible list.

This isn't just a list of good books.

Oh, absolutely.

Because she represents a phenomenal statistical anomaly this year.

So if we're going to look at this sort of by chapters, it is a book about his life, but it is honestly much more about his life in the context of science fiction and fantasy.

And interestingly, I think that this book was finished and published before he won his first Hugo for Best Novel.

He'd won Hugos for other things, for short story and for editor titles.

but he had not won for novel until after this.

I also think that in his early career, he focused so much more on short stories because he was editing and writing for the Pulps.

His first time on the ballot, he was 53.

Well, and again, that's one of the interesting things about this book is he writes this entire retrospective about his career in science fiction, but it's before he ever won the Hugo for Best Novel.

That's because I think he was a fan first.

So this was published in 1990.

In 1991, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and it was also nominated for a Locus Award.

So this was very heralded when it came out.

Mm.