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Even more awards

SF/F awards season is upon us

Even more awards
Quintuplet Cluster Image: NASA

The award season for the SF/F community is in full swing, and we've already seen the winners for the Bram Stoker, Locus, and Nebula Awards, as well as the nominations for the Hugos. Also, as a bit of a programming note, I've added a new tag, "Awards" that'll gather up the coverage here in one place. It's barebones at the moment, but I'll be going back into the archives to add the tag to prior posts soon.

In the last week or so, conventions and organizations around the world have released their picks for the finalists for their respective awards. Here's a roundup of some of the bigger ones.

First, earlier this spring, I did another one of these awards roundups, and it's time for an update. I did a post for the Bram Stoker Awards (linked above) but the other two have issued their results:

The British Science Fiction Association announced their winners in April:

  • Best Novel: When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift
  • Best Shorter Fiction: “The Apologists” by Tade Thompson
  • Best Short Fiction: “Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike” by E.M Faulds
  • Best Collection: Blood in the Bricks by Neil Williamson
  • Best Fiction for Younger Readers: Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution by Una McCormack
  • Best Long Non-Fiction: Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid
  • Best Short Non-Fiction: “Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other” by Eugen Bacon
  • Best Translated Short Fiction: “Liecraft” by Anita Moskat, translated by Austin Wagner
  • Best Artwork: Fractal Series (12 book tessellated cover) by Nick Wells
  • Best Original Audio Fiction: The Dex Legacy Series 3 by Emily Inkpen

And The L.A. Times selected Luminous by Silvia Park for its winner for the Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction category.

Okay, here are the latest handful of finalists:

Ignyte Awards

First up, the Ignyte Awards announced their finalists for 2026.

This award was founded in 2020 alongside FIYAHCON, as an "attempt to correct representative gaps in traditional spec lit awards and have grown into a coveted and cherished addition to the awards landscape." These awards honor the "vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre."

Here's a selection of this year's finalists:

Outstanding Novel: Adult

  • A Song of Legends Lost by M.H. Ayinde
  • Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
  • Motheater by Linda H. Codega
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
  • Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi

Outstanding Novella

  • The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas
  • Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill
  • The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
  • Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce
  • "Descent" by Wole Talabi

Outstanding Novelette

Outstanding Short Story

You can see the full list of finalists here. Anyone can vote in these awards, and you can do that until August 16th here.

Arthur C. Clarke Award

Next up, the Arthur C. Clarke Award announced its finalists for this year's award.

This prize has been handed out annually since 1987, and it honors the best works of science fiction published in the past year, which are selected by a panel of jurors. The winner gets a trophy and cash prize (£2026.00; which started at 2001 and which has risen incrimentally since).

Here are the finalists:

  • Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
  • The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
  • Luminous by Silvia Park
  • There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
  • When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift
  • The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson

The winner of this year's award will be announced on Wednesday 12th August 2026.

Shirley Jackson Awards

On the horror and dark fiction front, we have the Shirley Jackson Awards, which announced their finalists for 2025.

These awards seek to recognize "the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing" by honoring "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." The nominees are selected by a jury of writers, editors, critics and academics.

Novel

  • Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
  • How to Fake a Haunting by Christa Carmen
  • The Lamb by Lucy Rose
  • Moonflow by Bitter Karella
  • Old Soul by Susan Barker
  • Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix 

Novella

  • The Cold House by A. G. Slatter
  • The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella
  • DuMort by Michelle Tang
  • The Glass Garden by Jessica Lévai
  • Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce

Novelette

  • The Confirmed Bachelors by Stephen Volk (Black Shuck Books)
  • “Emily” by Vanessa Santos (Make a Home of Me)
  • Letter Slot by Owen King (Amazon Original Stories)
  • “The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine Issue Sixty-Seven)
  • “The Severity of Things” by Mo Moshaty (Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment)

Short Fiction

  • “Bitter Skin” by Kaaron Warren (Night & Day)
  • “Lapse” by Kirsty Logan (Unquiet Guests)
  • “Mother’s Mother’s Daughter” by Audrey Zhou (Silk and Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora)
  • “Room 24” by Caroline Kepnes (The End of the World As We Know It)
  • “Silver Boots” by Donna Lynch (HOWL: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror)

The winners will be revealed on Saturday, July 11 at Readercon 35 in Burlington, Massachusetts.

2026 Finalists for the Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award

Next up, we have the Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award, which is issued by The Center for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University. This prize has been handed out since 1987, and it honors the best short fiction in the prior year.

Here are the finalists:

The winner will be announced later in the summer, and will be honored as a guest of honor at the annual Sturgeon Symposium, which will take place on October 15th and 16th.

Dragon Awards

Nominations for the annual Dragon Awards are now open. This year marks their 10th anniversary – they were founded as the literary award for Atlanta, Georgia's DragonCon in 2016. These awards recognize a broad range of science fiction, fantasy, horror, YA comics, games, literature, movies, and television shows.

They're nominated and voted upon by attendees and the general public, and voting has since opened for this year's award. (It'll be open through July 12th). The winners will be announced at this year's convention, which will be held between 3rd and 7th.

Seiun Awards

And finally: Japan's Hellcon has announced the winners of this year's Seiun Awards. This award is the Japanese equivilent of the Hugos, and it's awarded every year to not only Japanese fiction, but also translated works.

Best Translated Novel

  • The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks and translated by Yasuko Kawano
  • Babel by R.F. Kuang and translated by Yoshimichi Furusawa
  • The Book of Elsewhere by China Miéville & Keanu Reeves and translated by Masayuki Uchida & Rei Yasuno
  • The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler and translated by Hiroshi Kaneko
  • Eversion by Alastair Reynolds and translated by Naoya Nakahara
  • Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh and translated by Hiroshi Kaneko
  • The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart and translated by Ken Mogi
  • Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow and translated by Masayuki Uchida

Best Translated Short Story

  • “After Zero” by Greg Egan and translated by Makoto Yamagishi (Hayakawa SF 2/25)
  • “Hémisphères” by Tristan Garcia and translated by Kei Takahashi
  • “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachel K. Jones and translated by Chiori Sada (The Silverfish Notebook 8/25)
  • “Two Truths and a Lie” by Sarah Pinsker and translated by Izumi Ichida (A Place That Once Existed Somewhere)
  • “Security Check” by Han Song and translated by Tachihara Touya (Hayakawa SF 10/25)
  • “Blowout” by Wole Talabi and translated by Masato Naruniwa (Hayakawa SF 12/25)

Here are the rest of the winners and finalists. The awards will be presented at this year's Hellcon, Japan SF Convention in Oita, Japan, which will be held in July.

That's a lot: I'll probably do an update later in the summer for some of these. In the meantime, it's another good list of books and shorter stories to check out.