[arjie]

Haha, very interesting. I hadn't thought about the mechanics of it all but from the title I suspected it might be something like this. There's no objective measure after all of what a good book is. It's not bad for the process. The top few universally seem pretty good.

I have noticed that the Hugo Awards appear to have declined somewhat in quality. The Murderbot series is enjoyable, yes, but it's a winner just like Dune and I think that's odd. Perhaps it's my tastes that are changing or my tastes are stagnating and the world is evolving. Ah well.

Oh and, about the cronyism angle in literary prizes, I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Nobel_Prize_in_Literature is a good read. They picked members of their own academy that year and eventually one of the winners killed himself (perhaps over it).

[zeroonetwothree]

The Hugo awards have had a lot of weak winners in the past as well.

For example: They’d Rather Be Right, The Wanderer, Stand on Zanzibar (some people might disagree), Harry Potter, Hominids, etc

And have had many winning books that are enjoyable without “big ideas” as well.

In the end it’s just a fan voted award and subject to marketing and politics. Judged awards are perhaps a bit more consistent in reflecting quality? (Though maybe not)

And not every year gives us a Dune or A Fire Upon the Deep :)

[arjie]

Haha, Hominids! That was definitely one where I was left thinking "Oh that's it?" haha. Fair point fair point. I do think Harry Potter is like the Murderbot series. And to be clear, I really enjoyed Harry Potter when I was young. Can still recall getting the book at my maternal grandparents' place as a present.

[autarch]

Murderbot was 2021. I would defend it as a winner, but take a look at other recent years:

* 2020 - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - a science fiction story set in a future Aztec space empire - quite inventive and odd. The sequel won in 2022.

* 2024 - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - basically a story about growing up as a terrorist in a sci-fi setting, with some wild turns.

* 2025 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Bennett Jackson - a very bizarre Holmes & Watson take set in a land constantly invaded by sea kaiju, and where there's "magic" (or is it science) based on harvesting the dead kaiju's bodies.

These are all excellent books, each of which has something different to recommend them.

Are they as good as Dune? Well, it's very hard to say _now_. Assuming humans still exist in 60 years, will they still read them like we read Dune 60 years from its publication? Maybe.

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land won in 1961. I've read it, and I don't think it's aged very well. It's certainly not Dune.

How many people are still reading the 1969 winner, John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar? I _have_ read it. It's good, but nowhere close to Dune. And how about 1978's winner, Gateway by Frederik Pohl? It's ... fine. It's not even in the same category as Dune, IMO.

Dune is an outlier among _all_ winners. It's one of the best SF books of all time, with a voice that still seems fresh today. Most Hugo (and Nebula) just don't live up to this standard. There are a few that do, like Left Hand of Darkness, Ender's Game, Hyperion, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (better than Dune, IMO). But those are outliers just like Dune.

[arjie]

I haven't yet read the last few ones because I found the Aztec ones underwhelming. The Calculating Stars to A Desolation Called Peace was when I started feeling they were not so strong and decided I'd go read prior years instead. But I suppose the vagaries of 'winner' vs. shortlist probably take this. It is true that all those others you're talking about are much stronger. I do think that The Ninefox Gambit, The Fifth Season, The Three Body Problem are all just as strong as the ones you've mentioned.

Having read Network Effect and compared it to Piranesi, the two seem simply leagues apart. Perhaps the real thing here is that I'm over-indexing on taste instead of some object measure of quality. Piranesi was otherworldly in the way of Strange and Norrell but Network Effect was Yet Another Story in comparison.

And it's true what you say. Some of the past winners were also relatively weak. Downbelow Station seemed incomplete though I think Neuromancer was unbelievable.

It's just that when I went back and just picked old winners to read it felt like banger after banger after banger. The one where I only remember Kallikantzaros or Lord of Light or Dune or The Left Hand of Darkness. Ringworld I could see people being put off by, but it had this whole thing with the ringworld and the trifold symmetry thing and all that.

Then again, everything that comes now has to avoid everything that came prior, sort of O(n) problem. You can't be new when much has been written.

[autarch]

I love both the Murderbot books and Piranesi. I think they're excellent for _very_ different reasons.

With Murderbot, the "corpos control everything" scifi future setting is nothing new. I think the brilliance is in its portrayal of the main character, primarily through its inner voice. Murderbot is a really unique character and it is written very well.

Conversely, in Piranesi, the main character is basically a cipher. He doesn't know who is, and we don't learn a lot about him or his psychology for most of the book. I felt like he was mostly there to let us experience the world, which as you put it was otherworldly and quite unique. The brilliance of the book is the prose and the world, not the character.

But like I said, I think comparing anything to Dune is pretty tough. Dune is a landmark work that still influences modern writers, and that modern audiences still enjoy reading. The recent movies have translated it to the big screen and captured an even larger audience (an amazing feat given how weird the books are).

Very, very few SFF books have had a similar impact. There's Tolkien, who is arguably the most influential SFF writer of all time. What other SFF works from the 60s or earlier are still as widely read and influential as Dune and LotR? Almost none, except Le Guin's Earthsea books, which barely squeaks in with a 1969 release for the first book.

[arjie]

Hmm, the inner voice didn't feel particularly novel and had a young-adult feel to me, but ah well. Quibbling now. Apparently just a matter of taste.

[vintermann]

Young Adult is a marketing term. It's a really terrible idea to leave classification to marketers.

As it is you've been given a way to respectably say "I'm more mature than you" and you've leapt at the opportunity, it seems.

[gnabgib]

Murderbot Diaries (the eight books) start in 2017[0], Murderbot series (TV) started in 2025[1]. Where are you getting 2021 from?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderbot_Diaries

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderbot_(TV_series)

[autarch]

Murderbot won the Hugo for best novel in 2021. This is the first _novel_ in the series. The previous publications were novellas, and so not in the same category. I suspect that the award may have been in part for the series and not this book specifically. We see this in other years, for example with N.K. Jemisin winning the Nebula for Stone Sky, the third book in a trilogy. Was Stone Sky better than the first two, or was this just a way to recognize a great overall series?

I really like that the Hugos added a Best Series category in 2017 to hopefully avoid this sort of thing. It seems like a great series is a different beast than a great single novel.

[gnabgib]

The Murderbot Diaries, you mean? Won best series

All Systems Red won (Novella) in 2018, Network Effect (book) won in 2021, and The Murderbot Diaries (series) won in 2021. Wells and Hugo have a .. cantankerous relationship

[autarch]

I was just referring to Network Effect in 2021 and looking at what other novels won in nearby years.

[gnabgib]

So.. what I said?

[TurdF3rguson]

Agreed on Murderbot, it's a fun read but there's no big new ideas there and that's what Hugo used to be about.

[arjie]

That's exactly how I feel, but perhaps as others point out, I have simply tinted my glasses rose.