I've been voting for the Hugo Awards for a while now. This year will actually be the tenth anniversary of my first Worldcon (MidAmeriCon II). In all that time I have never actually opened a Hugo Voter Packet. I was aware that they existed, but most years by the time voting rolled around I had already purchased all the best novel nominees and other works that I was going to consume, and I never felt compelled to seek out the Voter Packet. The Voter Packet contains all the materials that nominees send over to help voters make an informed decision, inluding full books, games, and audio files.
This year I've also already purchased all the best novel nominees, but I saw a note about the Voter Packet in the LACon email and got curious. The packet is 17.74 GB on disk. What could possibly be in there?
After downloading and unzipping, here's the list I see:
01-Novel
02-Novella
03-Novelette
04-Short-Story
05-Series
06-Graphic-Story
07-Related-Work
08-Dramatic-Presentation-Long-Form
09-Dramatic-Presentation-Short-Form
10-Game
11-Editor-Short-Form
12-Editor-Long-Form
13-Professional-Artist
14-Semiprozine
15-Fanzine
16-Fancast
17-Fan-Writer
18-Fan-Artist
19-Poem
20-Lodestar
21-Astounding
all-contents.docx
Hugo-Packet-overview.docx
So they've got folders for each category. Looking in the Hugo-Packet-overview.docx and all-contents.docx files, I see that this 17 GB is jam-packed with epubs, pdfs, mp3s, even a 4.5 GB video of what appears to be a 2.5 hour monologue about Westeros by someone called "Ashaya and Aziz", kudos to them.
Going through the novels first, looks like all the novels are available in full versions except for Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. That's too bad, because Shroud was my favorite novel from last year (in a few weeks I'll do a separate Hugo Best Novel ranking post like I do every year). Interestingly some are provided in ebook format and some just have a link to NetGalley. There are even audiobooks here for The Incandescent by Emily Tesh and The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson.
Short stories, Novelettes, Novellas, they're all here. I haven't read some of the Novellas, so I'll have to dig into those later. Shout outs to Tia Tashiro, Isabel J. Kim, Thomas Ha, and H.H. Pak, you've really made this an incredible year for short fiction and made my job as a voter extremely difficult.
The Best Series folder is a jackpot. It's got full novels of every book in every series except for Emily Wilde, which are excerpts.
The Graphic Story category has all the nominees in PDF format. This is going to be really useful to me for evaluating what my next Comic Book Club nomination will be.
Looks like some bangers this year, I'm glad Inventing the Renaissance was nominated even though the link to SFF is a little tenuous.
In the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long-Form category Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein went all-out, providing not only the movie script but a link and password to watch the movie. Sinners snubbed the Hugos altogether, sending nothing.
If you have an interest in screenwriting, most of the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short-Form nominees have full scripts. Nice opportunity to take a look at the Murderbot scripts, I had fun watching those on Apple TV.
STEAM CODES for the Best Game or Interactive Work category. For some people this alone would be worth the price of admission. I haven't played all of these yet, but I really enjoyed Hades 2. Looks like Team Cherry snubbed the Hugos, they're the only developer who didn't even send anything even though Silksong was nominated.
The Best Editor categories mostly have Editoral Statements and a selection of the works they edited, that's nice, I didn't know about this. For short form editor I'll be voting for Neil Clarke, who has really been killing it for the last 20 years at Clarkesworld. Looks like for Long Form Editor Joe Monti and Diana M. Pho went all-out and provided the full works of five books they've edited, I'll have to take a look.
Art samples for the Best Artist category are welcome to see.
I cannot stop laughing at the number of people listed in the Best Semiprozine category. I feel like every year there are more people listed, and they get so mad if they're not all mentioned on the Hugo stage. I have no issue with this, I just think it's really funny. Best Fanzine is a toned-down version.
I'm not familiar with all the Best Fancast nominees, but Meal of Thorns and Coode Street are excellent.
Hey Jay, if you're reading this, high five on your nomination for Best Fan Writer!
Another shout out to H.H. Pak who is nominated for both the Astounding Award as well as Best Novelette!
Thanks for following along with me tonight as I dug through this packet, maybe there's something interesting in here that will prompt you to get one of the Worldcon membership tiers and participate this year. I'll be there in LA, it'll be the only SFF convention I attend. Feel free to reach out if you're attending, I'd love to say hi.
Joe