Toronto area-authors
Robert J. Sawyer and
Robert Charles Wilson are facing off once again for science-fiction's top international honour, the
Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year.
Sawyer's
Wake (published by Viking Canada / Ace USA / Gollancz UK) and Wilson's
Julian Comstock: A Novel of 22nd Century America (Tor Books) are two of the six finalists for the Hugo, which will be awarded Sunday, September 5, 2010, at a gala ceremony as the highlight of the 68th annual
World Science Fiction Convention, which is being held this year in
Melbourne, Australia.
Wake tells the story of Caitlin Decter, a blind 15-year-old math genius in Waterloo, Ontario, who discovers a nascent intelligence lurking on the World Wide Web.
Julian Comstock is a satiric Victorian-style novel set in a post-apocalyptic Christian-fundamentalist United States.
The full list of Best Novel nominees, announced April 4, 2010, in Melbourne, Australia:
- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
- The City & The City by China Mieville
- Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
- Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
- Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
- Julian Comstock: A Novel of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
(Bacigalupi, Priest, and Valente are Americans; Mieville is British.)
Sawyer shares an additional Hugo nomination this year in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for "No More Good Days," the pilot episode of the ABC TV series
FlashForward, scripted by Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer and based on Sawyer's
novel of the same name.
The Hugos also honour short fiction, and in the novelette category
"The Island" by Toronto's
Peter Watts is a finalist. In addition, the Hugos honour work in fan categories, and three Canadians are competing there:
Lloyd Penney of Toronto and
James Nicoll of Kitchener for Best Fan Writer, and
Taral Wayne of Toronto for Best Fan Artist. All nominees in all categories are listed
here.
Sawyer's
Wake is also currently one of five finalists for the
Aurora Award, Canada's top honour in science-fiction, for Best English Novel of the Year. Wilson's
Julian Comstock is expanded from his earlier novella
"Julian: A Christmas Story," which was a previous Hugo finalist.
Both Sawyer and Wilson are previous winners of the Best Novel Hugo: Sawyer took the prize in 2003 for
Hominids, and Wilson won in 2006 for
Spin. Sawyer and Wilson — known as "Rob and Bob" in science-fiction circles — have faced each other on the best-novel Hugo ballot twice before: both were nominees for the award in 1999 and in 2004. This is Wilson's 6th Hugo nomination, and Sawyer now has 13.
Previous Hugo Award-winning novels include
Stranger in a Strange Land by
Robert A. Heinlein,
Dune by
Frank Herbert,
The Dispossessed by
Ursula K. Le Guin,
Ender's Game by
Orson Scott Card,
A Canticle for Liebowitz by
Walter M. Miller, and
Neuromancer by
William Gibson.
Watch, the sequel to Sawyer's current-finalist
Wake, is being launched this Tuesday, April 6, at 7:00 p.m., at
Dominion on Queen pub, 500 Queen Street West, in Toronto; the event, which kicks off Sawyer's 14-city cross-Canada book tour for
Watch, is free and open to the public.
Robert J. Sawyer, 49, was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario. Robert Charles Wilson, 56, was born in Whittier, California, and lives in Concord, Ontario; he became a Canadian citizen last year.
LINKS:Publication-quality photo: Sawyer (left) and Wilson (right) with their previous Hugo trophies (photo by Carolyn Clink)
The Robert J. Sawyer websiteThe Robert Charles Wilson websiteSawyer award statistics via
Locus, the science-fiction trade journal
Wilson award statisticsThe Hugo Awards official siteThis year's World Science Fiction ConventionRobert J. Sawyer online:
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Labels: Awards 2010, Hugos, Wake
