The 26th Galaxy Award Ceremony was held in Beijing on Sep 15, 2015. The Galaxy Award is one of the most prestigious prizes for Science Fiction in China. This year, there are two winners for the best novella/novelette and three for the best short story. Other categories include the best new writer, the best artist, the best editor, the best original SF book, the best imported SF book, the best related work, the most popular foreign author, and the special contribution award. The winner for 73th Hugo Award best novel, Liu Cixin, received the special contribution award for his quality works, including the highly acclaimed trilogy, the Three-Body Problem.
The full list of the winners are as below. The plot summaries are provided for the categories of novella/novelette and short story.
The Best Novel
(Vacant)
The Best Novella/Novelette
The Ravenous, by Zhang Ran(张冉)
Plot summary: In the beginning of the 18th century, an isolated island in Japan was contaminated with a diabolic plague. Whoever caught the disease would show a fiendish appetite for meat so strong that the meager output of animal products from the little village on that island was far from enough to satisfy the patients. And the fact that the illness could be transmitted through air made the situation worse. The village became a carnivorous hell… Three hundred years later, during a seemingly harmless gathering in a small farm in the heartland of the US, the agent that had caused the terrible disease was released again. Humanity was in danger of extinction but most people in the world were ignorant of it.
Everyone Loves Charles, by Bao Shu(宝树)
Plot summary: What if human conscious could be broadcasted and everyone else could experience whatever feelings the host of the conscious senses? Would that mean the conscious rider lives the same life as the host? Naohito was a programmer who had been addicted to conscious riding. He spent all his hard earned money on the conscious broadcast of a celebrity shuttle racer, Charles. But Charles had to face his own problems. Under the influence of a female police officer, Charles became rebellious against the giant commercial syndicates that sponsored his career and that was the beginning of real trouble.
The Best Short Story
The Twelfth District of Jinling, by Gui Gongzi(桂公梓)
Plot summary: Everyone lives in Nanjing knows that the city consists of eleven districts. But when an illegal taxi driver picked up a nervous passenger, he was told that there was a twelfth district after all. The passenger claimed that he was a secret government agent, or at least had been one. The reason that sent him on the run was astonishing. The obscure twelfth district presented a dire threat to the entire humanity, and he wanted to let the story out before it was too late.
Printing a New Earth, by Wu Yan(吴岩)
Plot summary: A professor received a phone call in the middle of the night from an old acquaintance, who insisted on meeting him immediately. When he finally made up his mind and went to the appointment, the other man told him a story that sounded like cloud-fancy. In order to let the college he had been working in survive a reform of the national education system, the man and his colleagues had embarked on a journey that no one else in the country had ever dreamed of.
The Cavendish Trap, by Chen Zijun(陈梓钧)
Plot summary: An expedition ship was destroyed in the mission by some unknown force, leaving one survivor stranded on a planet composed of cold iron. The survivor found that he was in a strange environment – not just the planet itself, but also the astronomical bodies around it. It turned out that he and his ship had fallen into some kind of a trap and, worse still, the same trap would also pose a lethal threat to a generation ship heading this way.
The Best New Writer
Suo Hefu(索何夫)
The Best Artist
Wang Anni(王安妮)
The Best Editor
Yang Guoliang(杨国梁)
Yang Feng(杨枫)
The Best Original SF Book
The Tombstone of the Universe, authored by Han Song(韩松), published by Shanghai People’s Publishing House
The Best Imported SF Book
The Book of the New Sun, authored by Gene Wolfe, published by New Star Press
The Best Related Work
Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, authored by Fredric Jameson, published by The Yilin Press
The Most Popular Foreign Author
Ken Liu
The Special Contribution Award
Liu Cixin(刘慈欣)
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