Locus Online has released the list of 2017 Locus Award winners.
See if you can spot a pattern.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
- Death’s End, Cixin Liu (Tor; Head of Zeus)
- Company Town, Madeline Ashby (Tor)
- The Medusa Chronicles, Stephen Baxter & Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Saga)
- Take Back the Sky, Greg Bear (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Visitor, C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
- Babylon’s Ashes, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- After Atlas, Emma Newman (Roc)
- Central Station, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
- The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Doubleday; Fleet)
- Last Year, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
FANTASY NOVEL
- All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
- Summerlong, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
- City of Blades, Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway)
- The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Children of Earth and Sky, Guy Gavriel Kay (NAL; Viking Canada; Hodder & Stoughton)
- The Wall of Storms, Ken Liu (Saga; Head of Zeus)
- The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville (Del Rey; Picador)
- The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
- The Nightmare Stacks, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- Necessity, Jo Walton (Tor)
HORROR NOVEL
- The Fireman, Joe Hill (Morrow)
- The Brotherhood of the Wheel, R.S. Belcher (Tor)
- Fellside, M.R. Carey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones (Morrow)
- The Fisherman, John Langan (Word Horde)
- Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Dunne)
- HEX, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor; Hodder & Stoughton)
- The Family Plot, Cherie Priest (Tor)
- Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff (Harper)
- Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Paul Tremblay (Morrow)
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
- Revenger, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Orbit US ’17)
- Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo (Holt)
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin)
- Lois Lane: Double Down, Gwenda Bond (Switch)
- Truthwitch, Susan Dennard (Tor Teen; Tor UK)
- Poisoned Blade, Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
- Burning Midnight, Will McIntosh (Delacorte; Macmillan)
- Goldenhand, Garth Nix (Harper; Allen & Unwin; Hot Key)
- This Savage Song, Victoria Schwab (Titan; Greenwillow)
- The Evil Wizard Smallbone, Delia Sherman (Candlewick)
FIRST NOVEL
- Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
- The Reader, Traci Chee (Putnam)
- Waypoint Kangaroo, Curtis Chen (Dunne)
- The Star-Touched Queen, Roshani Chokshi (St. Martin’s)
- The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig (Greenwillow; Hot Key)
- Roses and Rot, Kat Howard (Saga)
- Arabella of Mars, David D. Levine (Tor)
- Infomocracy, Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing)
- Everfair, Nisi Shawl (Tor)
- Vigil, Angela Slatter (Jo Fletcher)
NOVELLA
- Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
- The Lost Child of Lychford, Paul Cornell (Tor.com Publishing)
- The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, Kij Johnson (Tor.com Publishing)
- Hammers on Bone, Cassandra Khaw (Tor.com Publishing)
- The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Tor.com Publishing)
- This Census-taker, China Miéville (Del Rey; Picador)
- The Iron Tactician, Alastair Reynolds (NewCon)
- The Dispatcher, John Scalzi (Audible; Subterranean 2017)
- Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling (Tachyon)
- A Taste of Honey, Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com Publishing)
NOVELETTE
- “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay”, Alyssa Wong (Uncanny 5-6/16)
- ‘‘The Art of Space Travel”, Nina Allan (Tor.com 7/27/16)
- “Pearl”, Aliette de Bodard (The Starlit Wood)
- “Red as Blood and White as Bone”, Theodora Goss (Tor.com 5/4/16)
- “Foxfire, Foxfire”, Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/03/16)
- “The Visitor from Taured”, Ian R. MacLeod (Asimov’s 9/16)
- “Spinning Silver”, Naomi Novik (The Starlit Wood)
- “Those Shadows Laugh”, Geoff Ryman (F&SF 9-10/16)
- “The Future is Blue”, Catherynne M. Valente (Drowned Worlds)
- The Jewel and Her Lapidary, Fran Wilde (Tor.com Publishing)
SHORT STORY
- “Seasons of Glass and Iron”, Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood)
- “The Story of Kao Yu”, Peter S. Beagle (Tor.com 12/7/16)
- “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies”, Brooke Bolander (Uncanny 11-12/16)
- “A Salvaging of Ghosts”, Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/17/16)
- “The City Born Great”, N.K. Jemisin (Tor.com 9/28/16)
- “Seven Birthdays”, Ken Liu (Bridging Infinity)
- “Afrofuturist 419”, Nnedi Okorafor (Clarkesworld 11/16)
- “Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee”, Alastair Reynolds (Bridging Infinity)
- “That Game We Played During the War”, Carrie Vaughn (Tor.com 3/16/16)
- “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers”, Alyssa Wong (Tor.com 3/02/16)
ANTHOLOGY
- The Big Book of Science Fiction, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Vintage)
- Children of Lovecraft, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Dark Horse)
- The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin’s Griffin; Robinson as The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 29)
- Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Mikki Kendall & Chesya Burke, eds. (Crossed Genres)
- Tremontaine, Ellen Kushner, ed. (Serial Box; Saga ’17)
- Invisible Planets, Ken Liu, ed. (Tor; Head of Zeus)
- The Starlit Wood, Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe, eds. (Saga)
- The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
- Bridging Infinity, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
- Drowned Worlds, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
COLLECTION
- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu (Saga; Head of Zeus)
- Sharp Ends, Joe Abercrombie (Orbit US; Gollancz)
- Hwarhath Stories: Twelve Transgressive Tales by Aliens, Eleanor Arnason (Aqueduct)
- A Natural History of Hell, Jeffrey Ford (Small Beer)
- The Complete Orsinia, Ursula K. Le Guin (Library of America)
- The Found and the Lost, Ursula K. Le Guin (Saga)
- The Best of Ian McDonald, Ian McDonald (PS)
- Dreams of Distant Shores, Patricia A. McKillip (Tachyon)
- Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds, Alastair Reynolds (Subterranean; Gollancz)
- Not So Much, Said the Cat, Michael Swanwick (Tachyon)
MAGAZINE
- Tor.com
- Analog
- Asimov’s
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies
- Clarkesworld
- F&SF
- File 770
- Lightspeed
- Strange Horizons
- Uncanny
PUBLISHER
- Tor
- Angry Robot
- Baen
- DAW
- Gollancz
- Orbit
- Saga
- Small Beer
- Subterranean
- Tachyon
EDITOR
- Ellen Datlow
- John Joseph Adams
- Neil Clarke
- Gardner Dozois
- C.C. Finlay
- Jonathan Strahan
- Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
- Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
- Sheila Williams
- Navah Wolfe
ARTIST
- Julie Dillon
- Kinuko Y. Craft
- Galen Dara
- Bob Eggleton
- Donato Giancola
- Victo Ngai
- John Picacio
- Shaun Tan
- Charles Vess
- Michael Whelan
NON-FICTION
- The Geek Feminist Revolution, Kameron Hurley (Tor)
- Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981-1990, Mike Ashley (Liverpool University)
- Octavia E. Butler, Gerry Canavan (University of Illinois Press)
- Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction, André M. Carrington (University of Minnesota Press)
- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin (Liveright)
- The View From the Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline)
- Time Travel: A History, James Gleick (Pantheon)
- Words Are My Matter: Writings about Life and Books 2000-2016, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
- The History of Science Fiction: Second Edition, Adam Roberts (Palgrave Macmillan)
- Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Fairwood)
ART BOOK
- Charles Vess, Walking Through the Landscape of Faerie (Faerie Magazine)
- Yoshitaka Amano: Illustrations, Yoshitaka Amano (VIZ Media)
- Kinuko Y. Craft, Beauty and the Beast, Mahlon F. Craft (Harper)
- Kinuko Y. Craft, Myth & Magic: An Enchanted Fantasy Coloring Book (Amber Lotus)
- Spectrum 23: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, John Fleskes, ed. (Flesk)
- Stephanie Law, Descants & Cadences: The Art of Stephanie Law (Shadowscapes)
- Ralph McQuarrie, Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie (Abrams)
- Spaceships: An Illustrated History of the Real and the Imagined, Ron Miller (Smithsonian/Elephant Book Company)
- The Art of the Film: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Dermot Power, ed. (Harper Design; HarperCollins UK)
- Shaun Tan, The Singing Bones: Inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Allen & Unwin 2015; Arthur A. Levine; Walker UK)
If you said, “An overwhelming plurality of the winners either are, or are associated with, Tor Books,” good eyes. Give yourself a pat on the back.
Tor Books has taken home the Locus Award for Best Publisher 25 years in a row. This year, they captured 7 out of 16 total categories.
You might say a winning streak like that is a mark of excellence. If you did, it means you have no sense of proportion. No, Tor’s perennial domination of trad Sci-fi’s trade magazine awards is a mark of an industry that’s more inbred than Arabian royalty. Their talent pool is shallower than an Atacama birdbath.
Before anyone gets up in arms about me lobbing insults at colleagues, I’m here to tell you that these people definitely are not my colleagues. Long gone are the days when venerable masters of the craft wove tales that kept junior high kids up reading past lights out. The current crop of Grievance Studies majors being feted by the gatekeepers in Manhattan are more interested in working out the intersectionalities of marginalized demographics (in the future!) than they are in telling fun stories.
These are the folks hawking SF for people who hate SF.
In other news, Penguin Random House is closing one, possibly two, of its imprints.
Reminder: The market always wins.
The award-winning, reader-pleasing Soul Cycle is on sale for less than $9.00 for four more days.
