2021 Hugo Awards - Best Novel

Typing is still a bit hard these days, so this will be brief.  My final ballot for the Best Novel Hugo Award for 2021 will be as follows.  I think.

1. Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press / Solaris)
2. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
3. Harrow The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
4. Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
5. No Award
6. The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books / Solaris)
7. [blank]

Unmentioned

• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Black Sun was a fantastic read.  It was infused with several mythologies from the pre-Columbian Americas.  The book also contained some elements of the grimdark sub-genre; a personal preference.  I was ignoring everyone so I could read more.  Ms. Roanhorse is a tremendous talent.  This book is a showcase for that talent.  Just read it.

Piranesi was also a great read.  It contained reality-bending elements that were reminiscent of Philip K. Dick.  A worthy nominee, but not quite as good as Black Sun.

An aside before we continue.  I have previously suggested that the pool of Hugo Award nominators appears to have a limited range of authors/topics/publishers that they will consider as suitable for their nominations.  I periodically encounter a modestly provicial attitude that this limited range of experience is suitable because "it's the Hugos".

The result of that attitude is that successive novels in a series end up being nominated even though prior entries nominated in prior years were not selected for the award.  My general experience is that the quality of successive entries in a series frequently declines as the series progresses.  That is partially the result of successive entries either relying on the reader being familiar with prior entries to fully engage with the current entry and/or the author creating a cliffhanger ending to encourage the reading of the next installment.  This award is for the "Best Novel".  A novel should be a complete piece of work.

I am considering the option of a personal rule that puts any novel from a series below No Award unless all of the prior entries have won for the years that they were nominated.  At the very least, I think the bar should be higher for a subsequent entry to win a Best Novel Hugo if the prior entry/entries did not also win the award.  Other people will make other choices.

Harrow the Ninth is the second in a series from Tamsyn Muir.  The first entry, Gideon the Ninth, was fantastic.  I had it in second place behind Middlegame on my ballot last year.  Harrow the Ninth was a fun and engaging book.  While it included most of the same characters as the prior entry, their relationships were substantially different.  One need not have read the first installment to enjoy this book.  Unfortunately, the book ends on a cliffhanger, so this isn't a complete story.  The entire book bends reality in so many ways.  The ending was a completely unexpected twist.  I will read the third installment eventually, but probably not when it comes out as I suspect that it will be heavily nominated for the Hugo Best Novel category.  If this were 2022, then I'd probably put it below No Award based on the principle discussed above.  I think this series would make a great Best Series nominee.

Network Effect is the latest entry in the Murderbot series from Martha Wells.  I read the entire series in one sitting last year.  It is a great series.  The series is nominated for the Best Series award and I have voted for it for that award.  However, there are a couple of reasons why Network Effect doesn't belong at the top of the Best Novel ballot.  First, as described above, the reader really needs exposure to the prior entries in the series to get the full effect of the novel.  The novel does not stand on its own.  As a separate plot flaw, our protagonist, Murderbot, still isn't wearing armor despite several entries in the series where a little armor would have been very helpful.  While Murderbot is continuing to develop in other areas, they simply haven't learned that part of their old existence, the wearing of armor, might continue to be useful from time to time in their new existence.  Again, if this were 2022, then I'd probably put this below No Award despite finding it to be a very enjoyable book.

No Award - this should be self-explanatory.

The Relentless Moon is the third entry in the Lady Astronauts series by Mary Robinette Kowal.  It continues the tradition of heavy-handed virtue signaling.  The reader is to take but one message from the book and no enjoyment of the book is to be permitted unless that message is received and accepted as gospel truth.  Also, the story involves a level of trust in the competence of the United Nations that has never been justified in the entire history of that clubhouse for national chief executives.  I noped out of this one early.

I am not mentioning The City We Became at all on my ballot.  The book began with a reference to the demonstrably false narrative that modern police in the US kill black men willy nilly without repercussions.  The facts do not support that narrative.  The facts do support a long-overdue national conversation about how police interact with all of our citizens.  The facts do support changing police culture so that Americans that are black are treated with the same level of trust and respect as all other Americans receive.  But no rational reading of the current statistics regarding people killed by the police justifies the narrative that the police are routinely killing American black citizens.  Shortly thereafter, the author included a signal that she doesn't care for white people to read her book.  I accepted her racist language on its face value and promptly gave it the Dorothy Parker treatment.  I rarely regret purchasing a Hugo Best Novel nominated work.  This is one such exception.