The Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy have been dominated once again by women, with American writer Martha Wells taking the top prize for best novel.
Wells took two accolades at what is considered the most prestigious awards ceremony in the science fiction calendar, winning best novel for Network Effect and best series for The Murderbot Diaries. Network Effect and its predecessors follow the adventures of a sentient killing machine known as Murderbot, which develops human traits and would rather make friends and watch TV soaps than fulfil its programming. Wells’ latest novel sees Murderbot intervening between warring factions of alien-controlled humans on a distant colony world.
This is the sixth year that a woman has taken the best novel award, with Wells following Arkady Martine last year, Mary Robinette Kowal in 2019, and – for the previous three years – NK Jemisin.
It’s a far cry from the first Hugo winners roster announced in 1953, an all-male lineup in which Alfred Bester won for his classic The Demolished Man. It was not until 1970 that the first woman would win best novel, when Ursula K Le Guin took home the award for The Left Hand of Darkness. The prize had previously been dominated by writers such as Robert A Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, Philip K Dick and, in 1966, Frank Herbert for his novel Dune, recently filmed for the second time.
Announced at the weekend at the annual Worldcon convention in Washington DC, the Hugos also saw Nghi Vo awarded best novella for her fantasy story inspired by Chinese and Vietnamese culture, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, while Two Truths and a Lie, an eerie mystery about a half-remembered TV show by Sarah Pinsker, won best novelette.
Other awards this year went to T Kingfisher – a pen name of American writer and children’s book creator Ursula Vernon – for best short story with Metal Like Blood in the Dark, which appeared in Uncanny magazine. The Best Related Work category was won by Maria Dahvana Headley for Beowulf: A New Translation.
Worldcon, the traditional host of the Hugos, is a travelling convention, with a new location every year. While next year’s has been settled on as Chicago, the 2023 convention was at the weekend awarded to a bid from the city of Chengdu in China, which has caused some disquiet because of the country’s human rights record.
Two-times Hugo winner Jeannette Ng, born in Hong Kong and living in Durham in the UK, tweeted that her previous acceptance speeches “would have gotten me arrested in China”. Ng had said that John W Campbell, whose name was previously given to the best new writer award, was a fascist who set a tone “of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White”, and called for a “free Hong Kong”. The prize was later renamed the Astounding award.
