2026 Hugos - my reading/recs so far

[psocoptera]

I haven't read much short fiction yet. Maybe soon. Here's what is (and isn't) in my likely nominations so far though.

Novel: The Incandescent, Snake-Eater, This Princess Kills Monsters

Also read: The Tomb of Dragons, A Drop of Corruption, Where the Axe Is Buried, Hemlock & Silver, Katabasis, When We Were Real, Harmattan Season, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, Motheater, Awake in the Floating City, The Martian Contingency, Honeyeater. (Some of these I liked more or less than others and would be more or less happy to see on the ballot, but The Incandescent is by far the front-runner for me and my nominations will at least somewhat be about gaming that. _This Princess_ is not going to come within ten places of the ballot - it's not even on the Locus list - so why not. I would pick Snake-Eater over Hemlock and would disapprove of getting both, although I kind of suspect we *will* get both unless Vernon declines for one of them.)

Novella: The River Has Roots, Automatic Noodle, Cinder House

Also read: Don't Sleep With the Dead, The Summer War, Murder By Memory, A Mouthful of Dust, What Stalks the Deep. (I am leaning towards not nominating series installments even if they were really good. Standalone supremacy, rah.)

Graphic: Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor

Also read: Second Shift, In the Land of Simplicity. (I guess I could nominate both if I don't find anything else I like better just to make a vain stab at getting something interesting on the ballot. Also Nefarious Nights is a sequel, so so much for promoting standalones, but in comics I feel like something more or less has to be a series or franchise or tie-in to get enough traction to get anywhere.)

Lodestar: Among Ghosts

Also read: Starstrike

Dramatic Long: Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters.

Also watched: Leviathan, Superman. (I would like to see Superman on the final ballot so I can give it my third-place vote and also displace something worse but I think it has a good chance of making the ballot without my nomination and thus would rather not dilute my nom for KPDH.)

Comments

[glassonion]

You made me nervous about timing, so i checked. https://www.lacon.org/hugos/ says, "Nominations will close on Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 9:00am Pacific Time / 12:00pm Eastern Time / 4:00pm GMT."

So we still have some time!

[psocoptera]

Oh, yeah, it just opened, like, today, I just thought I'd think about where I was so far.