This year’s World Science Fiction Convention (the 81st) is happening in Chengdu, China, from October 18-22.

That’s later than usual.   Nominations for the Hugo Awards opened later as well, but they DID open on March 1.  They will close April 30, so you have a month and change left to nominate your favorite books, stories, fanzines, writers, TV shows, and movies from last year.   That is, assuming you hold a membership in the Chengdu worldcon.   Both attending and supporting members are eligible to nominate, so you don’t actually need to be planning on a trip to China to take part.

If you are eligible to nominate, I urge you to do so.   The Hugo Awards are our field’s oldest and most prestigious awards… and they are a FAN award, given by readers and viewers, not by a jury.   It is a huge honor to win one… and a proud and noble thing to lose one too.   I speak from experience.   I’ve won a few, and lost a lot more, even helped found the Hugo Losers Party with the late great Gardner Dozois.

It has been a few years since I last did one of these “eligibility posts” that have become so common in the past decade or so.   In large part, that’s because I did not put out anything that was eligible… aside from various Wild Cards stories and books, which qualified me in the “Editor – Short Form” category.    That’s true for 2022 as well.    FULL HOUSE, a hardcover collection of Wild Cards stories from Tor.com, came out in mid-year, and a number of older volumes in the series were reprinted in trade paperback and mass market.   We also released the American edition of THREE KINGS, a Wild Cards mosaic novel edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass, so she is eligible in Editor as well.

I might also mention that Tor.com featured two more Wild Cards originals during the year:

GROW, by Carrie Vaughn https://www.tor.com/2022/07/20/grow-carrie-vaughn/

HEARTS OF STONE, by Emma Newman https://www.tor.com/2022/05/18/hearts-of-stone-emma-newman/

Lovely stories both, and they are also eligible for nomination.  You can read them — for FREE — at the links above.

Editing was not all I did in 2022.   I also did some work in television as an executive producer and co-creator of a new series on HBO.   You may have heard of it.   It was called HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.

The series debuted in August and ran until late October, making it eligible for nomination in either of the two Dramatic Presentation categories in the Hugo Awards.    Either… but not both.   The rules there are a little complex.   Fans can nominate the show in both Short Form and Long Form, but it won’t appear on the ballot in both categories; if a series gets enough votes in both categories, one has to make a choice.   (This happened to GAME OF THRONES twice, as it happens).

The entire first season — ten episodes, each approximately one hour long — can be nominated in Long Form, where it will compete against the year’s biggest movies (or possibly seasons of other TV shows).   The first season of GAME OF THRONES was nominated in Long Form.

The usual category for television shows is Short Form, however; there it is individual episodes that are nominated, not entire seasons or the show as a whole.    It helps to know the titles of the episodes if you want to nominate your favorites.

Here the first season episodes of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON:

101    The Heirs of the Dragon
102    The Rogue Prince
103    Second of His Name
104    King of the Narrow Sea
105    We Light the Way
106   The Princess and the Queen
107   Driftmark
108  The Lord of the Tides
109  The Green Council
110  The Black Queen

You can nominate as many episodes of a series as you like… but these days, only three will make the ballot.   (In decades past, there were years when a popular series would completely fill the ballot, but that’s not allowed any longer).   All the listed episodes were first televised in 2022, so they are all eligible.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON was adapted from portions of FIRE & BLOOD, Archmaester Gyldayn’s history of the Targaryen dynasty from Aegon’s Conquest to the regency of Aegon III.    Unlike the various volumes of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, FIRE & BLOOD was not a novel, but rather an imaginary history.   Though it is still in print, it was first published in 2018, and is not eligible for a Hugo.   However, in November 2022, my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic released RISE OF THE DRAGON.

RISE, if anything, is even harder to categorize than FIRE & BLOOD.   Definitely not a novel, it covers the same period and the same events as Archmaester Glydayn’s history, but in far less detail.  Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson of the Westeros website did the abridgement.   The text is only a small part of the book, however.   RISE OF THE DRAGON is a lavishly illustrated coffee-table sized volume featuring 150 original paintings by fantasy artists from all over the world.   Myself, I think it is gorgeous, but then, I am hardly objective.

The Hugo Awards have no category for art books, and RISE does not fit in novel… so if you would like to nominate it, the appropriate category would be RELATED WORK.    That’s a bit of a grab bag category that in the past has included not only art books, but critical studies, biographies, speeches, memoirs, and… ah… other, stranger stuff.

Bottom line, though, you should nominate  what you love best.   That’s what gives the Hugo its meaning.

Nominations close APRIL 30.

And remember, only worldcon members can cast a ballot.

The rocket rules.