What’s the best Hugo award-winning book?
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Just as parents have favorite children, I have favorite Hugo-winning books. Check out these 16 sci-fi book recommendations I've ranked from worst to first - from the ones I wish I hadn't cracked open to the best books to read that won this amazing prize.
Delve into the realm of the unknown with books about UFOs that challenge your perceptions of reality. Immerse yourself in the epic magical battles of several fantasy book recommendations. And so much more!
I don't consider all of them books to read before you die - but you should definitely get to some of them ASAP!
Hugo winners mentioned:
00:00 Intro
00:36 To Stay Nothing of the Dog
00:52 The Gods Themselves
01:10 Ringworld
01:34 The Forever War
02:11 The Obelisk Gate
02:33 Doomsday Book
03:03 The Three-Body Problem
03:21 The Fifth Season
03:47 Speaker for the Dead
04:20 Redshirts
04:40 Dune
05:00 Rendezvous with Rama
05:36 Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
06:15 Hyperion
06:44 Ender's Game
07:18 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
A Harry Potter sequel won a Hugo? 😂 The Hugo is like the Grammy - it’s a popularity prize and not recognition of innovation in the field.
Occasionally yes, but generally, no. If you look at the list, Harry potter winning is an anomaly.
I love The Forever War. If I had two books to take on a desert island they would be The Forever War and She, A History of Adventure. Both books have a similar theme, the viewing of humanity over a long space of time.
I need to check out the second book you mentioned!
CS Lewis wrote about "She". The mythical status of She is indisputable. As we all know, Jung went to it for the embodiment of an archetype. But even Jung did not, I think, get to the centre. If his view were right, the myth ought to function only for those to whom Ayesha is a powerfully erotic image. And she is not so for all who love She. . . . Ultimately the life of the myth is elsewhere.
The story of Ayesha is not an escape, but it is about escape; about an attempt at the great escape, [‘The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard’, ‘On Stories’ and Other Essays on Literature, ed. Walter Hooper [San Diego: Harcourt, 1982], pp. 97-100)] logismoitouaaron.blogspot.com/2009/04/elder-nektary-cg-jung-cs-lewis-on-rider.html
@@KevinsNovelAdvice
Good shout for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, absolutely brilliant book. Also, if you didn't vibe with fifth season part 2, part 3 is considerably worse. You're not missing much.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire winning over ASOIAF Storm of swords is the greatest media award blunder OF ALLL TIME.
That definitely stood out as one of the strangest winners ever. Couldn’t believe a HP book won! 🤯
True and not just any asoiaf books it's storm of swords the greatest book in asoiaf and one of the best fantasy books overall
gof also is one of the best fantasy books @@mix-jk3ys
I know this is not (necessarily) how prizes work, but what is weird for me is that I found the two HP books before and after the Goblet of Fire more enjoyable than the Goblet.
Just starting ASOIAF after I finish a knight of the 7 kingdoms. Are there really that good? Happy potter was my favorite as a child and goblet of fire was definitely the best in my opinion
I’m shocked you ranked Rendezvous with Rama so high given your feedback on other books. I liked it, but it was slow and I don’t remember a thing about any characters. I rank it much lower, but everyone is different.
Great video!
Just came across your channel, and really enjoy your presentation! Subscribed!
Anyway, I haven't looked too closely at the Hugos, so I have no idea how many of them I have actually read. I attempted Three Body Problem and gave up. So, you are not alone in that. Kudos for finishing it. ;p
Redshirts was such a fun book and is a personal favorite of mine. I just read Dune and loved it. I really need to pick up Hyperion at some point. Great video!
Thanks! I couldn't believe that I had just so happened to read that many of them, so you'll probably be surprised, too.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is one of my favorite reads ever. If anyone reading this enjoys late 19th century style writing, this book is a must! But I think anyone could enjoy it. Highly recommended. Overall, a great list. Nice work Kevin!
This is a great video idea. I may have to copy you since most of our readings don't overlap. Or maybe go with the nebula award.
Where we do overlap you rate them as high as I do. Thanks for confirming my bias!
🤣
Wow! Never found someone who enjoyed Jonathan Strange as much as me!
Hmm … You must not have read PKD’s “Man in the High Castle” and “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said”. They both belong on any top ten list, and at least one of them ought to be in the top five.
And they are by no means his best!
No, I haven’t read either of those. I’ll have to check them out! Thanks for the rec 🙏
That was interesting, thank you.
Came for the ranking, subscribed for the self-deprecation 😂 Awesome video!
Fantastic video!
Great Video! My top 5 list (from the ones you mention) would be Hyperion, Dune, Three Body, Ender’s Game, and Rendezvous with Rama/Forever War.
🙌
Thanks! Ahh, so you “got” Three Body Problem. Wish I could’ve wrapped my head around it 😅
@@KevinsNovelAdvice I wouldn't go that far... Let's say, I enjoyed having my mind scrambled. 😂 Dark Forest (book 2) is my favorite.
Hyperion was really above your other ones. Rama is just a fairy tale about global warming.
I don't follow the Hugos, but I was surprised at how many of these that I've read. In fact, I just read Strange/Norrell earlier this year. I did a slow and steady-style read, which was probably the best choice for me with this book.
Right?! I wouldn't have thought that I read 16 of them. Or that so many of them would be what I considered "mainstream."
My favorite honestly... probably Hyperion. What a crazy book man. I have never been so enthralled and terrified of a story than the Priest and the Cruciform story in that book. I really think Goblet of Fire is a good book though and is not some anomaly, I think it was fitting of winning. A Storm of Swords was that year but truthfully, I liked the 1st 2 ASOIAF books more and if a book was deserving of it I would think it would be A Game of Thrones.
Hyperion is such an amazing book! You’re right. Total roller coaster ride.
Ive read most of these books and my highest recomendation is probably The Hyperion Cantos book 1&2. The first book grabbed i read through in 3 days, that has never happend before. It's like a collection of diffrent genres. Horror, noir, tragedy and at times even laugh out loud funny and always demanding of your attention.
Best reimagening of wizard of Oz ever.
Hmmm. Real science fiction? The kind that inspired youth with real possibilities for the future? Have Spacesuit Will Travel or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. But, the final volume of Skylark, the greatest space opera of all time, is on the list "Skylark DuQuesne".
The thing about Ender's Game is that it takes an idea from Heinlein's 'Citizen of the Galaxy' and expands it into a book. Plus when it came out it was just an idea everyone who played arcade video games had though about. AND there was a movie called "The Last Starfighter" where arcade games are used by aliens to screen for potential pilots, in 1984. And Ender came out in 1985. At the time everyone I knew thought O S Card was picking more stupidly low hanging fruit, and on eventually reading the book, indeed he was. Somehow among younger people it became great literature and is read in the high schools!
I think books read in someone’s youth, let’s say middle school and high school, can be some of their more significant (and memorable) reading experiences because it’s during their formative years. This can lead to new ideas, perspectives, or just “hey, that was really cool” moments.
So I agree. The love a person or generation feels for a book can often be due in part to when they read it. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment!
Haha! The Jonathan Strange book has been sitting on the bookshelf in the spare room for years. I'll have to pull it out and have a look.
Do it! It’s so good.
Yep. SC goes a bit OTT with the footnotes, though.@@KevinsNovelAdvice
Wow so insightful, strong arguments like I like it, I don’t like it, I’m dumb, yes you are indeed
Before reading To Say Nothing of the Dog, it's good to read the very funny Three Men in a Boat which is not sf. It's a very funny novel about three men taking a boat trip with their dog and inspired the sf.
Oh, good to know! I’ll have to check it out. Thanks! 🙏
It's by Jerome K. Jerome (Yes, that is correct). Be aware the humor is what used to be called droll. It's in the Wodehouse vein so a basic joke and one that inspires the boat trip is the narrator reads a medical book and decides he has every disease and symptom in the book.
WHAT! Ringworld is my all time favorite science fiction book!
I really liked the premise, but just couldn’t get into it. Did you read any of the sequels?
@DogWalkerBill
Three of my favourite Sci-Fi novels are Larry Niven's "Ringworld," "The Legacy of Heorot" and "The Mote in God's Eye."
@@RCSVirginia "The Mote in God's Eye" is on my TBR list! I hear it's one of his best. Can't wait!
@@KevinsNovelAdvice
It is one of his best, and it features one of the best alien creations ever. You should enjoy it.
I wish they wouldn't include fantasy in the science fiction awards. I know, I'm in the tiny minority, but I like SCIENCE fiction.
Looks like I will have to look up Hyperion.
When talking about Dune, you should always say “chosen one” in quotation.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: I respected the way that Susanna Clarke kept the Jane Austen style voice and tone throughout a story that would never have been written in the 1840s. I'm not going to read it again, but it really was a literary triumph.
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead were both great for me, as were the non-Hugo-winning Xenocide and Ender's Shadow. Good SF ideas, solid characterization and pacing that generally doesn't drag.
Rendezvous with Rama and Ringworld are Big Dumb Object books, where the main idea is 'hey look at this thing I thought up and then figured out how it might work'. I like them for the same reason most people do, but most of the time they don't bother with really interesting plots beyond 'what's the deal with this Big Dumb Object?' The fact that the numerous sequels to both of these points out that there's not much beyond the brain version of eye candy to them. (Still a lot of fun if that's what you're looking for.)
Redshirts was a fun, light and breezy read, but it winning a Hugo marked where I stopped taking the Hugos seriously as a literary award.
I liked The Forever War a good bit (though much like other books on the list, it had sequels with diminishing returns). I thought it had some interesting ideas about the potential directions that mankind could take over the centuries and I liked that it didn't have 'blow the enemy up' as its endgame.
Sounds like you’ve read a lot of these! And I like your Big Dumb Object theory.
You're not too dumb to get Three Body. I am just not into Three Body Problem, as a STEM professional. I love nuance in my science fiction, but I i felt like I was reading a physics essay.
Yes! Exactly.
Seems we both have the same reaction to Hyperion.
The way I hadn’t realised that some of these were Hugo winners 😂😂 to be fair I don’t really keep track of the awards
Very nice list tho!
Same! I was especially surprised that a Harry Potter book won it.
@@KevinsNovelAdvice the Harry Potter one feels very random compared to the others you’ve read
So a Harry Potter book won a Hugo. Not sure I see it as science fiction. Not sure why a Harry Dresden book hasn't won a Hugo.
Look at that, Wikipedia says, "In 2015, Skin Game [a Harry Dresden book] was a finalist for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
I saw the Strange/Norrell series on TV. It was interesting.
Agreed. It was a good series, and I thought the book was AMAZING!
Eto defeander's Game.....a revisit to Franciasco Pizarro's strategy to defeat Atahualpa the emperor of Peru when the odds whete about 20 to i against the Spaniards...Pizarro concentrated all his forces and together attacked Atahualpa's tent within all his army , took him prisoner , put him for ransom and ended up killing him......about 400/500 men defeated 10/20000 natives.....ater , ender didt he same....
The Hugo is more like a People's Choice Award since it's voted on by the members of World Con. The Nebula (voted on by the SFWA) is closer to the Oscar though it is somehow less prestigious than the Hugo (its also cooler looking).
I've a feeling that, based on the revelations of the last month, the prestige value of the Hugos is going into a very steep decline.
Good list. Unlike Dune (for me) and eg Enders Game, Hyperion really isn’t a stand alone book: all 4 books are meant to be one story. Having said that the 3rd and 4th books are different and not as popular.
Hopefully I’ll get around to reading more of the series one day!
As a book reviewer you really, really need to find something else to do 😮.
How about Chun Kuo??
I disagree with your rankings, but they're all good reads. If you want to put fey into your D&D campaign, Strange and Norrell is a must-read.
I totally get how Strange & Norell isn't everyone's cup of tea. What would you rank number 1?
Ender's Game....a repetition of Francisco Pizarro defeat of Atahualpa
Ugh. I did not finish Jonathan Strange. Got about 100 pages in, the French fleet was being conned, and I just did not care. Too slow.
As for the rest I loved Rendezvous with Rama, Dune and Hyperion. Ringworld is okay but it's just travel, travel, travel and... end. Not a lot going on there. There are a dozen other Larry Niven books I'd recommend before that one. Forever War is good, but I read it 30+ years ago and don't remember much about it. I loved Ender's Game but Speaker was only okay. The scientific mission and how it worked seemed ridiculous to me. I love John Scalzi and thought Red Shirts was pretty good.
The two best not on your list which I would recommend are Gateway by Fred Pohl and Startide Rising by David Brin. (Startide is the second in his Uplift series but read the first book so you can understand how the world is set up and works.)
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll have to check them out.
Glad to see Hyperion in the top 3!!!
OK, I can certainly go with the ranking of Hyperion. It's really good. As to Ender's Game . . . well, I really liked it when I first read it, when I was about 18 or 20 and had only recently left the embittering experience of being a nerd outcast in high school, back in the days when nerds really were outcasts. Ender the brilliant nerdy misfit doing horrible but oh, totally necessary things to crush bullies while defeating the enemy aliens totally turned my bitter nerd crank, and I didn't worry too much about the fascist takeover subplot. Then I looked at it again 20 years later and wow it's creepy. Finally, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell--well, I liked it. But I can't fathom how Kevin liked it and yet thinks To Say Nothing of the Dog is slow. Because honestly, it's a huge doorstopper, and a couple of things happen near the beginning, and then nothing at all happens for hundreds of pages until a bit more than halfway through things start happening again, sort of. This is a book that carries through purely on the strength of its amazing period-plus-faintly-mysterious atmosphere. That atmosphere was so awesome that I like it anyway, but I can't help thinking it would have been better if there had also been stuff happening.
Interesting. I suppose it's a matter of taste but, none of these would be on my top list. You missed: The Demolished Man; Starship Troopers; Stranger in a Strange Land; The Man in the High Castle; and the alltime winner, Neuromancer...
This is based only on the ones I’ve read so far. I need to get around to reading more (like the Hugo winners you suggested) soon!
@@KevinsNovelAdvice Ah. My mistake; sorry. Yes, there's always too much to read...
The opening two comments of this video sound very much like an Ayn Rand fan lmao. Good picks though.
The Forever War is a stone cold classic, as is Dune. Harry Potter is for kids. Man in the High Castle should be there.
I need to read Man in the High Castle soon!
The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson is another Hugo Award book that I would recommend. It’s under 200 pages long, so if you end up not liking it, you won’t have to spend too much time with it.
Oooh! Good to know. Thanks for sharing. 🙏
Where is Fahrenheit 451.?
Good point! The Hugos skipped that year (1954) and only gave it to F451 retroactively in 2004, so it’s recognized on some lists but not others.
Redshirts should never have won a Hugo. Even Scalzi knows that.
I can see that my taste is really quite different from his. I found Rendezvous with Rama really boring. You have a big dumb object, and you go into it, and you see it do some things, and then it leaves. That's it! Basically, nothing happens. Admittedly, the nothing happens in a mildly interesting way, but still. Plus, I can't remember any of the characters--did it even really have characters, or were they just viewers of the nothing that was happening? I cannot imagine rating this book higher than To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is brilliant and hilarious and touching and thought provoking and hilarious some more; it's like inspired SF meets Jeeves and Wooster. It's a work of genius and we are not worthy, and it's certainly fifty times as good as Rendezvous with Rama.
I found "Redshirts" really boring.
Yeah, I can understand how it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Hyperion has a very weak opening, and a very strange ending. The tales between are engrossing, almost like they were written by a different person...
The Susanna Clarke is a total bore. Couldn't get past the second chapter.
I can totally see why you’d say that. It was a surprise that I actually liked it and didn’t think it was way too slow.
I think the Hugo award is stupid so this stuff is just BS to me. Many books I READ have not made the the Hugo and the ones I have read are awful/ stupid either dramas or space soap opera.
think your ideas are puerile and not smart- please read more - like Martha Wells for instance
Dune.