2016 Locus Recommended Reading List

Locus has put up their recommended reading list:

NOVELS – SCIENCE FICTION
Company Town, Madeline Ashby (Tor)
The Medusa Chronicles, Stephen Baxter & Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Saga)
Take Back the Sky, Greg Bear (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Visitor, C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
Babylon’s Ashes, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Europe in Winter, Dave Hutchinson (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
False Hearts, Laura Lam (Tor; Macmillan)
Death’s End, Cixin Liu (Tor; Head of Zeus)
The Corporation Wars: Dissidence, Ken MacLeod (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Into Everywhere, Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
Faller, Will McIntosh (Tor)
After Atlas, Emma Newman (Roc)
The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisalo (Black Cat)
Occupy Me, Tricia Sullivan (Gollancz)
Rosewater, Tade Thompson (Apex)
Central Station, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
Icon, Genevieve Valentine (Saga)
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Doubleday; Fleet)
Alien Morning, Rick Wilber (Tor)
Impersonations, Walter Jon Williams (Tor.com Publishing)
Last Year, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Barren Cove, Ariel S. Winter (Bestler)
Underground Airlines, Ben H. Winters (Mulholland; Century)

NOVELS – FANTASY
The Spider’s War, Daniel Abraham (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
Summerlong, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
City of Blades, Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway)
Masks and Shadows, Stephanie Burgis (Pyr)
Breath of Earth, Beth Cato (Harper Voyager US)
A Shadow All of Light, Fred Chappell (Tor)
Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, Paul Cornell (Pan)
Four Roads Cross, Max Gladstone (Tor)
The Regional Office is Under Attack!, Manuel Gonzales (Riverhead)
Will Do Magic for Small Change, Andrea Hairston (Aqueduct)
Eterna and Omega, Leanna Renee Hieber (Tor)
Roadsouls, Betsy James (Aqueduct)
The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Perdition Score, Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)
Children of Earth and Sky, Guy Gavriel Kay (NAL; Viking Canada; Hodder & Stoughton)
The Wall of Storms, Ken Liu (Saga; Head of Zeus)
The Seer, Sonia Orin Lyris (Baen)
Kingfisher, Patricia McKillip (Ace)
An Accident of Stars, Foz Meadows (Angry Robot US; Angry Robot UK)
The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville (Del Rey; Picador)
Medusa’s Web, Tim Powers (Morrow; Corvus UK)
The Gradual, Christopher Priest (Titan US; Gollancz)
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Trees, Ali Shaw (Bloomsbury Circus; Bloomsbury USA)
The Last Mortal Bond, Brian Staveley (Tor; Tor UK)
The Nightmare Stacks, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
The Liberation, Ian Tregillis (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Necessity, Jo Walton (Tor)
Cloudbound, Fran Wilde (Tor)

Interesting that Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead made the SF list—outside of SFF circles, that’s the biggest “literary” novel of 2016, and it’ll be interesting to see how much of an impact it makes on the 2017 awards. Do we have a Chabon situation here, like when The Yiddish Policeman’s Union won the Hugo/Nebula?

They also have a first novel category, which is where something like Ninefox Gambit winds up.

FIRST NOVELS
The Reader, Traci Chee (Putnam)
Waypoint Kangaroo, Curtis Chen (Dunne)
The Star-Touched Queen, Roshani Chokshi (St. Martin’s)
The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig (Greenwillow; Hot Key)
Roses and Rot, Kat Howard (Saga)
Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
Arabella of Mars, David D. Levine (Tor)
A Fierce and Subtle Poison, Samantha Mabry (Algonquin)
Devil and the Bluebird, Jennifer Mason-Black (Amulet)
Infomocracy, Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing)
Everfair, Nisi Shawl (Tor)
Vigil, Angela Slatter (Jo Fletcher)
Azanian Bridges, Nick Wood (NewCon)

Most of the eventual Hugo and Nebula nominees show up on these lists. That’s not a great accomplishment, given there’s more than 50+ on the lists, but helpful to narrow things down. So the snub of Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning is notable. Note that Connie Willis’s Crosstalk nor Loius McMaster Bujold’s Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen didn’t make the lists either. Those books haven’t been particularly well received, and it’ll be interesting to see how that impacts the Hugo.

On a personal note, I certainly haven’t been posting much; I’ve been too busy at work, and you’ve got to do the job you get paid for first. Still, it’s going to be a very interesting year, because all the rule changes will throw out a lot of what we previously knew about the Hugos. Thinking of this more as a year for sitting back and observing—no one can really know what’ll happen in the awards, but it’ll be intriguing to watch.