Popular Vote Genre Award Goes To “gender challenging literary work”

The Locus Poll results are out and Ann Leckie’s sequel to her unprecedented award-winning debut novel – Ancillary Sword – has won the Best Science Fiction Novel category.

Ann’s novel is one of the non-slate recommended Hugo Award nominees for this year;  her debut novel – Ancillary Justice (which won the Hugo, the Nebula and a bevy of other international awards) has been roundly criticized by slate-mongers as being the kind of literary leaning, SJW message fiction they are protesting against, and justifying those protests by claiming that novels such as Leckie’s would never win an award of the majority of SF readers were allowed to vote for awards.

Ahem.  The Locus Poll is the closest thing to a People Choice style award for genre fiction we have.  Anyone can vote (though subscribers to Locus magazine get two votes to every single vote for non-subscribers) and participation is likely drawn from the exact constituency that the protesting puppies claim to represent.

The Locus Poll results put yet another nail in the coffin of the Puppy arguments.

Incidentally, the Best Fantasy Novel winner is The Goblin Emperor, another non-slate Hugo Award nominee.  In times past, the results of the Nebula and Locus Polls picks have been a good indication of likely Hugo Award winners for Best Novel.  Here’s hoping that Sword and Goblin don’t split things up to the point that a slated novel takes the honors, though it is a distinct possibility.

Full list of winners and finalists below:

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Peripheral, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (Tor)
Lock In, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)
Annihilation/Authority/Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

FANTASY NOVEL

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
Steles of the Sky, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway; Jo Fletcher)
The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman (Viking; Arrow 2015)
The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley (Angry Robot US)

FIRST NOVEL

The Memory Garden, Mary Rickert (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Elysium, Jennifer Marie Brissett (Aqueduct)
A Darkling Sea, James L. Cambias (Tor)
The Clockwork Dagger, Beth Cato (Harper Voyager)
The Emperor’s Blades, Brian Staveley (Tor; Tor UK)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Half a King, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Voyager UK)
The Doubt Factory, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
Waistcoats & Weaponry, Gail Carriger (Little, Brown; Atom)
Empress of the Sun, Ian McDonald (Jo Fletcher; Pyr)
Clariel, Garth Nix (Harper; Hot Key; Allen & Unwin)

NOVELLA

Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon”, Cory Doctorow (Hieroglyph)
We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
“The Regular”, Ken Liu (Upgraded)
“The Lightning Tree”, Patrick Rothfuss (Rogues)

NOVELETTE

Tough Times All Over”, Joe Abercrombie (Rogues)
“The Hand Is Quicker”, Elizabeth Bear (The Book of Silverberg)
“Memorials”, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s 1/14)
“The Jar of Water”, Ursula K. Le Guin (Tin House #62)
“A Year and a Day in Old Theradane”, Scott Lynch (Rogues)

SHORT STORY

“The Truth About Owls”, Amal El-Mohtar (Kaleidoscope)
“Covenant”, Elizabeth Bear (Hieroglyph)
“The Dust Queen”, Aliette de Bodard (Reach for Infinity)
“In Babelsberg”, Alastair Reynolds (Reach for Infinity)
“Ogres of East Africa”, Sofia Samatar (Long Hidden)

ANTHOLOGY

Rogues, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, ed. (Bantam; Titan)
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-first Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin’s Press)
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, eds. (Crossed Genres)
Reach for Infinity, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Head of Zeus; Tor)

COLLECTION

Last Plane to Heaven, Jay Lake (Tor)
Questionable Practices, Eileen Gunn (Small Beer)
The Collected Short Fiction Volume One: The Man Who Made Models, R.A. Lafferty (Centipede)
Academic Exercises, K.J. Parker (Subterranean)
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Nine: The Millennium Express, Robert Silverberg (Subterranean; Gateway)

NON-FICTION

What Makes This Book So Great, Jo Walton (Tor; Corsair 2015)
Ray Bradbury Unbound, Jonathan Eller (University of Illinois Press)
Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!, Harry Harrison (Tor)
The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore (Knopf)
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better: 1948-1988, William H. Patterson, Jr. (Tor)

ART BOOK

Spectrum 21: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, John Fleskes, ed. (Flesk)
Jim Burns, The Art of Jim Burns: Hyperluminal (Titan)
The Art of Neil Gaiman, Hayley Campbell (Harper Design)
Brian & Wendy Froud, Brian Froud’s Faeries’ Tales (Abrams)
The Art of Space: The History of Space Art, from the Earliest Visions to the Graphics of the Modern Era, Ron Miller (Zenith)

ARTIST

  • John Picacio
  • Jim Burns
  • Shaun Tan
  • Charles Vess
  • Michael Whelan

EDITOR

  • Ellen Datlow
  • John Joseph Adams
  • Gardner Dozois
  • Jonathan Strahan
  • Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

MAGAZINE

  • Tor.com
  • Asimov’s
  • Clarkesworld
  • F&SF
  • Lightspeed

PUBLISHER

  • Tor
  • Angry Robot
  • Orbit
  • Small Beer
  • Subterranean

– See more at: https://www.locusmag.com/News/2015/06/2015-locus-awards-winners/#sthash.RlkTuaab.dpuf

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