This blog is a brief study of the demographics of the Hugo Award for Best Novel nominees and winners. You can find my detailed study of just the winners here. A general parent page for my work on the Hugo demographics is here. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: April 2015
The Rocket Crew
Unless you’re a hermit or living under a rock, you’d know that here has been a huge amount of talk(*) about the Hugo Awards lately. Arguments about the award have filled my feed for weeks.
I’m curious, so I started to have a look for some data. When I couldn’t find anything useful I pulled together a basic demographic study on Best Novel. Once that post was up a few people wrote to me and asked me to have a look at the other categories, so here they are. I’ve only done the creative writing ones, sorry.
I’m not an expert in this field, so if you see any errors, please just let me know. I’ll have a bit more of a play soon. Right now I’m a bit sick of both the Hugos and Excel.
Best Novel is awarded to the best science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more published in the prior calendar year. My little study is here. <Added, April 21st > With significant help from a mystery benefactor we’ve also now produced a study on the demographics of Best Novel’s nominees. You can find it here.
Best Novella is awarded to the best science fiction or fantasy story of between 17,500 and 40,000 words published in the prior calendar year. My little study is here.
Best Novelette is awarded to the best science fiction or fantasy story of between 7,500 and 17,500 words published in the prior calendar year. My little study is here.
Best Short Story is awarded to the best science fiction or fantasy story of less than 7,500 words published in the prior calendar year (different criteria before 1967). My little study is here.
(*) Calling it talk is probably being generous.
Hugo Demographics – Best Short Story.
In this post I look at the demographics (sex and nationality) of the winners of the Hugo Award for Best Best Short Story.
I originally only intended to cover Best Novel, so sorry if things are a little disorganised. You can find a parent post for these little studies here. Continue reading
Hugo Demographics – Best Novelette.
In this post I look at the demographics (sex and nationality) of the winners of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
I originally only intended to cover Best Novel, so sorry if things are a little disorganised. You can find a parent post for these little studies here. Continue reading
Hugo Demographics – Best Novella.
In this post I look at the demographics (sex and nationality) of the winners of the Hugo Award for Best Novella.
I originally only intended to cover Best Novel, so sorry if things are a little disorganised. You can find a parent post for these little studies here. Continue reading
Whose rocket?
< Edit. I’ve now conducted brief demographic studies on Best Novella, Best Novelette and Best Short Story. Main page for these little studies is here. >
On Twitter today I made a remark to the talented Mary Robinette Kowal about the demographics of the Hugos. On reflection I wasn’t confident that my conclusion was actually borne out by the numbers. I had no real idea (despite Sad Puppies and Bad Puppies and all the other fracas swallowing my feed) of what the demographics of the Hugo winners really looked like. I had a quick Google and couldn’t find anything helpful, so I thought I’d chuck some stuff together. Hope someone, somewhere is interested. Continue reading
War and fantasy
Tolkien’s Battle of the Five Armies and War of the Ring and Lewis’ battles against the White Witch set the warlike tone in the early days of the fantasy genre. Not much has change since then. Warfare is still an integral part of many modern fantasy writers’ repartee. Myke Cole, Joe Abercrombie and (of course) George R R Martin are examples of writers currently hitting the complexity of warfare superbly.
Unfortunately they’re a minority. Continue reading
One eyed scribe 