Hugo Award Winners

For best science fiction novel

The Hugo Award, also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award, are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”), for work that appeared in the previous calendar year.

2023 -- Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

If Marra can complete three impossible tasks, a witch will grant her the tools she needs. But, as is the way in stories of princes and the impossible, these tasks are only the beginning of Marra’s strange and enchanting journey to save her sister and topple a throne.

-- Amazon.com Description

2022 -- A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it.

-- Amazon.com Description

2021 -- Network Effect by Martha Wells

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction?

-- Amazon.com Description

2020 -- A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident—or that Mahit might be next to die

-- Amazon.com Description

2019 -- The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process.

-- Amazon.com Description

2018 -- The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin

The third book in an award-winning trilogy, along with The Obelisk Gate and The Fifth Season.

-- Amazon.com Description

2017 -- The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

The second book in an award-winning trilogy, along with The Fifth Season and The Stone Sky.

-- Amazon.com Description

2016 -- The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

The first book in an award-winning trilogy, along with The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky.

-- Amazon.com Description

2015 -- The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

-- Amazon.com Description

2014 -- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away.

-- Amazon.com Description

2013 -- Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship's famous senior officers. Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to realize that ...

-- Amazon.com Description

2012 -- Among Others by Jo Walton

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle.

-- Amazon.com Description

2011 -- Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis

In Blackout, three Oxford historians travel back in time to World War II England. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission. In All Clear, the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war.

-- Amazon.com Description

2010 (tie) -- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko, the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being.

-- Amazon.com Description

2010 (tie) -- The City & The City by China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investigate, Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to its equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the vibrant city of Ul Qoma. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them more than their lives.

-- Amazon.com Description

2009 -- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

A delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing, the tale of Nobody Owens is told in magical, haunting prose. A child marked for death by an ancient league of assassins escapes into an abandoned graveyard, where he is reared and protected by its spirit denizens.

-- Amazon.com Description

2008 -- The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose.

-- Amazon.com Description

2007 -- Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it.

-- Amazon.com Description

2006 -- Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. A space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future. Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse.

-- Amazon.com Description

2005 -- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved.

-- Amazon.com Review

2004 -- Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

2003 -- Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

The first book of The Neanderthal Parallax, a trilogy that will examine two unique species of people. They are alien to each other, yet bound together by the never-ending quest for knowledge and, beneath their differences, a common humanity. We are one of those species, the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they, not Homo sapiens, became the dominant intelligence. In that world, Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but is very different in history, society, and philosophy. During a risky experiment deep in a mine in Canada, Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe, where in the same mine another experiment is taking place. Contact between humans and Neanderthals creates a relationship fraught with conflict, philosophical challenge, and threat to the existence of one species or the other-or both-but equally rich in boundless possibilities.

-- Amazon.com Review

2002 -- American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations.

-- Amazon.com Review

2001 -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) , by J. K. Rowling, Mary Grandpre (Illustrator)

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling offers up equal parts danger and delight--and any number of dragons, house-elves, and death-defying challenges. Now 14, her orphan hero has only two more weeks with his Muggle relatives before returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yet one night a vision harrowing enough to make his lightning-bolt-shaped scar burn has Harry on edge ...

-- Amazon.com Review

2000 -- A Deepness in the Sky , by Vernor Vinge

This is a prequel to Vernor Vinge's 1993 Hugo Award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It takes place in the same Zones of Thought universe as Fire, but some 30,000 years earlier. In this era, humanity has colonized the stars, but the light-speed barrier has effectively isolated the various planetary systems from one another. Worse still, most civilizations reach a technological plateau and then fall back into barbarism, a vicious cycle that a man named Pham Nuwen would like to break.

-- Amazon.com Review

1999 -- To Say Nothing of the Dog , by Connie Willis

From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel... Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then a fellow time traveler inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era -- not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.

-- Amazon.com Review

1998 -- Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman

Here is Joe Haldeman's triumphant return to the thoughtful science fiction that made his The Forever War a multiple award-winner. In the year 2043, the Ngumi War has raged for eight years. Julian Class is a "soldier boy, " and for him war is indeed hell. For Julian it might be worth dying just to stop living. But he and his lover have made a terrifying scientific discovery that could literally put the Universe back to square one. For Julian the discovery is tempting.

-- Amazon.com Review

1997 -- Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson

The final volume of a trilogy that began with Red Mars and continued with Green Mars, Blue Mars completes the story of the "First Hundred," a pioneering group of explorers who have overseen a terraforming project that has transformed Mars from a lifeless planet into a world habitable by humans. An anti-aging breakthrough has kept the First Hundred alive for three centuries and in that time, their motives, desires, and passions have evolved in ways that parallel the changes on Mars itself. Conceptually complex and daring, the publication of Blue Mars marks the completion of a modern science fiction masterpiece.
-- Amazon.com Review

1996 -- The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

Decades into the future, near the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians, by making an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer."
-- Amazon.com Review

1995 -- Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles Vorkosigan faces more than his share of troubles as the protagonist in Mirror Dance. Not only is he deformed and undersized but he has a cloned brother who gets into a jam in the free enterprise plague spot known as Jackson's Whole. Miles tries to help his brother but ends up injured, placed on cryogenic suspension and then lost in intergalactic limbo. And that's just in the first 100 pages. The following 300 pages add a wealth more to this fantastic tale that's both humorous and finely written. Mirror Dance won the 1995 Hugo Award for Science Fiction.
-- Amazon.com Review

1994 -- Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson has earned a reputation as the master of Mars fiction, writing books that are scientific, sociological and, best yet, fantastic. Green Mars continues the story of humans settling the planet in a process called "terraforming." In Red Mars, the initial work in the trilogy, the first 100 scientists chosen to explore the planet disintegrated in disagreement--in part because of pressures from forces on Earth. Some of the scientists formed a loose network underground. Green Mars follows the development of the underground and the problems endemic to forming a new society.
-- Amazon.com Review

1993 (tie) -- A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge

1993 -- Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

1992 -- Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold

1991 -- The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold

1990 -- Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

1989 -- Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh

1988 -- The Uplift War, by David Brin

1987 -- Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

1986 -- Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

1985 -- Neuromancer, by William Gibson

1984 -- Startide Rising, by David Brin

1983 -- Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov

1982 -- Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh

1981 -- The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge

1980 -- The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke

1979 -- Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre

1978 -- Gateway, by Frederik Pohl

1977 -- Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm

1976 -- The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

1975 -- The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin

1974 -- Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

1973 -- The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov

1972 -- To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer

1971 -- Ringworld, by Larry Niven

1970 -- The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

1969 -- Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner

1968 -- Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny

1967 -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein

1966 (tie) -- ...And Call Me Conrad, by Roger Zelazny

1966 -- Dune, by Frank Herbert

1965 -- The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber

1964 -- Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak

1963 -- The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick

1962 -- Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

1961 -- A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

1960 -- Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

1959 -- A Case of Conscience, by James Blish

1958 -- The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber

1957 -- No Award

1956 -- Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein

1955 -- They'd Rather Be Right, (currently sold as The Forever Machine) by Mark Clifton

1954 -- No Award

1953-- The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester