An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton

Now these posts, lightly revised, have been gathered into this book, along with a small selection of the comments posted by SF luminaries such as Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, and the late David G.

Walton’s cheerfully opinionated and vastly well-informed posts provoked valuable conversation among the field’s historians. Her contention was that each year’s full set of finalists generally tells a meaningful story about the state of science fiction at that time.

They are widely considered the most prestigious award in science fiction.īetween 20, Jo Walton wrote a series of posts for Tor.com, surveying the Hugo finalists and winners from the award’s inception up to the year 2000. The Hugo Awards, named after pioneer science-fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, and voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society, have been given out since 1953. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers.Īn Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Waltonįormat read: eARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Delany Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Cherryh the field’s many approaches to time travel the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field’s most ambitious series.Īmong Walton’s many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge the question of what genre readers mean by “mainstream” the underappreciated SF adventures of C. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading-about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems.

Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book DepositoryĪs any reader of Jo Walton’s Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books.

Genre: nonfiction, books and reading, science fiction, fantasy What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Waltonįormats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook

An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton