Introduction

Welcome to Blogging the Hugo Winners. The idea here is that I will read my way through the works that have won the Hugo Award for best novel given by the World Science Fiction Convention.

I recently saw a list of the Hugo Award winners (for Best Novel) and realized that many of the books on the list were books that I had long wanted to read - some had been on my list for decades. I decided to start working my way through unread books on the list, more or less chronologically.

I grew up on science fiction – I read a ton of Asimov and Heinlein, some Clarke and Bradbury, before moving on to Vonnegut, Stephen King, Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephenson and several authors that often straddle the line between literary and speculative fiction. Along the way I missed some important work though. In the past two or three years I’ve developed a renewed interest in science fiction, so I guess that Hugo list showed up at just the right time.

After reading a couple of books and spending a fair amount of time processing what I was reading, I thought of doing this blog. How cutting edge (7 years ago)!

The idea is to post little mini-reviews of the books as I go. I’ll also post thoughts and remembrances of the dozen or so Hugo books I read (some of them long ago). I may add some Nebula winners for the sake of comparison, and I may add tv or movie reviews if the spirit moves me. This is all mostly for my own edification, but if anyone ends up reading this thing, I’d love to hear comments and maybe even have a discussion.