Checking in with the 2016 Awards Meta-List
For this Meta-List, I track 15 of the biggest SFF awards. Since each award has its own methodologies, biases, and blind spots, this gives us more of a 10,000 foot view of the field, to see if there are any consensus books emerging.
As of early May we have nominees for 10 of the 15 awards. I track the following awards: Clarke, British Fantasy, British SF, Campbell, Compton Crook, Gemmell, Hugo, Kitschies, Locus SF, Locus Fantasy, Nebula, Dick, Prometheus, Tiptree, World Fantasy. I ignore the first novel awards.
Here’s the current results:
4 nominations: The Fifth Season, Jemisin, N.K.
3 nominations: Europe at Midnight, Hutchinson, Dave
3 nominations: Ancillary Mercy, Leckie, Anne
3 nominations: Uprooted, Novik, Naomi
3 nominations: Seveneves, Stephenson, Neal
2 nominations: The House of Shattered Wings, Bodard, Aliette de
2 nominations: Apex, Naam, Ramez
2 nominations: A Borrowed Man, Wolfe, Gene
Everyone else has 1.
As you can see, the top of that list correlates very well to the Hugo awards. Dave Hutchinson is very well-liked by the British based awards and largely ignored by American awards. With nominations in the Hugos, Nebulas, Kitschies, and Locus Fantasy, Jemisin is leading the way this year. Does this make her a favorite for the Nebulas this weekend? Or is she so neck and neck with Leckie and Novik that we don’t learn anything form this list?
No book has really broken out of the pack, like when Ancillary Justice took a huge lead a few years ago. I think we’ll have a close season with different books winning the different awards.
Here’s the whole spreadsheet, with links to every award I track.
3 responses to “Checking in with the 2016 Awards Meta-List”
Trackbacks / Pingbacks
- - May 11, 2016
Chaos Horizon 
I didn’t think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but Jemisin’s The Fifth Season is probably the frontrunner for the Nebula, no? It’s definitely one of the most talked about books of the year (along with Stephenson’s Seveneves. Or do you think it’s gonna be Schoen’s Barsk because he led the way in mentions before the noms came out?
I’m on track to do my prediction for Friday, but things are leaning towards Jemisin. This is going to be a great test year to see what matters most: Nebula history (Jemisin leads that category), raw popularity (Uprooted is substantially more popular than everything else), or leading the nomination list (Schoen).