2018 Hugos Week

The 2018 Hugo Awards, the literary awards voted on by the public, were awarded Sunday, August 19, and 50% of the winners had some robot theme (see list here)! This week we will review the Hugo Award nominees that involve robotics in each category, essentially the RoboHugos! There are two best novel nominees with robots: Ann Leckie’s Provenance and Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee. Martha Wells origin story of snarky MurderBot, Artificial Condition (see review here), was the only robo-nominee in the best novella category and deservedly won. The heartwarming The Secret Life of Robots by Suzanne Palmer was the only robot novelette and took home a Hugo; look for the review on Thursday. There are two short stories about robots that were nominated for Hugos: the amusing take on social media in Fandom for Robots by Vina Jie-Min Prasad and the wistful Carnival 9 by Caroline M. Yoachim; reviews will be posted on Friday. There was no robot-centric entry in the best book series category. We will start the week with a review of Provenance, followed by reviews of the other entries and links to where magazine editors have made the short form nominees available online for free.