Edmonton-based book club that reads and reviews new books in science fiction in an effort to contribute positively to discussions about Hugo Award nominating and voting. An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog was established and is maintained by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk. Most posts are co-authored by Olav and Amanda with input and/or collaboration from other book club members. Guest posts are welcome.
This summer, a man claiming to be a 5,900-year-old alien warlord from the planet Sigma IX will contest a byelection in the British seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea on August 13. The performance is among the most ludicrous works of science fiction of 2026, and could end up being the one with the most real-world impact. It should be recognized by the Hugo Awards. When one BINdividual citizen stands up…
National identity is the result of a personal and unstable alchemical mixing of history, myth, social conditioning, and imagined landscape. This is not some fixed point, but rather a disputed, illusory, and ever mutable interpretation of one’s relationship with the country they live in. Some people have a devotion to their country that can only be described as religious, as their beliefs seem…
Set in a world devastated by war, plague, and pestilence, Suzanne Palmer’s new novel Ode To The Half Broken is the story of a solitary robot with a dark past who has hidden itself away from the woes of the world, living in a small shack and studying the lives of insects. In the opening chapters, the robot (who has no name) is knocked out of their routine due to an attack by bandits and is forced…
Over the past few years, there has been a spate of novels focused on the fate of robots who have been left behind after a cataclysm has mostly wiped out humanity. Examples include C. Robert Cargill’s western Sea of Rust , Charles Stross’ adventure yarns Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood , and Adrian Tchaikovksy’s comedic romp Service Model . This is not an entirely new premise — one only needs…
This blog post is the thirty-fifth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . It was the 50th World Science Fiction Convention, and to celebrate this milestone, the Hugo rocket was electroplated gold for the first and only time. In Hall A of the Orange County Convention Centre, air conditioning struggled to keep up with the…
It’s unsurprising that Children of Time remains Adrian Tchaikovsky's best-known science fiction novel. It has sweeping ideas, a unique perspective on the future, and a well of empathy. It’s a Clarke Award-winning space opera about a dying earth, hyperevolved jumping spiders, and cross-species communication. It’s an impressive feat of worldbuilding -- and of exploring alternate cognitions. Children…
Over the past decade, Nnedi Okorafor has earned a reputation for challenging and culturally nuanced works of science fiction. Along the way, she’s been shortlisted for five Hugo Awards and won two, earned two Lodestars, and taken home a Nebula trophy. With Death of the Author , she has penned her most ambitious work yet. Cover of Death of the Author (Image via Goodreads) The book explores the…
This blog post is the thirty-fourth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . All Hugo Award winners receive the same “rocketship” trophy, regardless of category. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the cultural norm of ranking some Hugo categories as more prestigious than others has extended to the presentation of the actual…
The following list will be updated over the next few months as we read, watch, and listen to Hugo-eligible works for 2027. These are not necessarily what we plan to nominate, but rather works that at we enjoyed and believe to be worth consideration. We appreciate any additional suggestions in the comments. Updated on July 8, 2026 Novel The Subtle Art of Folding Space - John Chu Sublimation -…
In his Hugo-winning 1998 personal history of science fiction The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of , Thomas M. Disch wrote “America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend to believe." This observation rings troublingly true when it comes to immigrants and…
This blog post is the thirty-third in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . The 48th World Science Fiction Convention held in The Hague, Netherlands was the most international Worldcon to date. Fans arrived from 31 countries, flying in from five different continents. The United States still represented the largest number…
In a year that saw concerted attacks on Canadian identity, it is particularly troubling to see that one of the country’s important literary institutions — On Spec Magazine — shut its doors and published its final issue . The magazine’s impact cannot be overstated, but somehow, neither the magazine nor its editors have ever appeared on a Hugo Award shortlist. Given that its final issue was…
In a year that has been difficult for many in North America, Naomi Kritzer’s new novella Obstetrix reminds us of the solace and strength that can be found through stories. The book, which bills itself as a rebuke to fundamentalist interpretations of religion, is at its core a celebration of the importance of literature (and fantastical literature in this instance) and how it can keep us grounded…
This blog post is the thirty-second in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . The Hugo Awards ceremony held the evening of Saturday, Sept. 2, 1989 at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Boston was one of the most lavish to date. Given that it was the 50th anniversary of the first World Science Fiction…
This review contains mild spoilers for the book Outlaw Planet M.R. Carey's latest novel is the third (and best) in his Pandeminium series. M.R. Carey’s Outlaw Planet features an anthropomorphic dog gunslinger striding across a post-apocalyptic Wild West-analogue landscape wielding a talking gun and fighting anthropomorphic bear outlaws and anthropomorphic raccoon military bad guys. The result is a…
We are pleased to welcome a guest column by 2025 Worldcon Poet Laureate — and friend of the blog — Brandon O'Brien . He is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been short-listed for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine ,…
Three months ago, right-wing billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance Media bought Paramount, the venerable and storied studio that is the home of SpongeBob SquarePants , Mission Impossible , and of course Star Trek . As Variety has recently reported , Ellison’s short tenure at Paramount has already brought significant changes to the company. Management directives have included everything from hosting…
This blog post is the thirty-first in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . Confusion about program item locations, registration difficulties, and a convention committee that seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis. These are some of the reasons that the 1988 World Science Fiction Convention is remembered as a largely…
The Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work presents the Hugo voter with a conundrum: should the works be judged based on the quality of the gameplay, or on the merits of the storytelling as science fiction or fantasy. As an example, Donkey Kong Bonanza might be one of the best video games of 2025, but its story is uninspiring. Consequently, for some, it is difficult to put forward as a Hugo…
(This is one of two blog posts discussing nuclear war depicted in cinema and television. The other one is about fallout shelter stories in the 2020s and was posted simultaneously.) With the Cold War in full swing, and fears of nuclear catastrophe looming large, there was a moment in popular culture in which mainstream cinema and television grappled with what impacts an atomic war might really have…
(This is the second of two blog posts discussing nuclear war depicted in cinema and television. The other one is about a flourishing of Atomic War fiction in the 1980s and was posted simultaneously.) From Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth (1964) to Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember (2003), post-apocalyptic narratives set in bunkers often reflect how humans create, respond to, and survive…
This blog post is the thirtieth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . It had been an unusually cool August in Brighton , the English seaside town that hosted the 45th World Science Fiction Convention. But on the day of the Hugo Award ceremony the weather had turned pleasant. The Brighton Metropole Hotel, site of the…
Warning: Semi-Spoilers Contained Within There is a trope in genre literature set in a wizarding academy that long predates Harry Potter . However, most books published over the past two decades that lean on this setup seem to be responding in some way to Hogwarts and to J.K. Rowling. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Image via Goodreads) Lev Grossman’s excellent The Magicians trilogy used the…
Hot Take (noun): a deliberately provocative heterodox opinion article that seems intended to attract detractors and invite debate. In 1921 at Max Ernst’s first Dadaist exhibition, the poet André Breton proclaimed that photography had dealt a mortal blow to traditional modes of technology-enabled expression. André Breton was often referred to as the Pope of Surrealism. (Image via Wikipedia) Breton…
This blog post is supplemental to a series of blog posts examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here . Of the ten top-grossing film franchises of all time , nine of them have had at least one movie earn a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation. The remaining franchise is clearly science fiction, having featured at various times a…