Best novella was Nnedi Okorafor’s African-flavoured space opera Binti (Tor), while best novelette was Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu. Best novel went to NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season (Orbit), a tale of an earthquake-afflicted and wasted world that functions as a powerful fable of ecological collapse while also reconfiguring fantasy in more ethnically and sexually diverse directions. This year’s Hugo winners were not only great books, they were pointers for the direction in which the genre as a whole is moving. In 2016 these angry activists proved much less destructive. Over the last couple of years this prize was more or less hijacked by the “Sad” and “Rabid Puppies” – groups opposed to the more progressive and liberal iterations of SF. Take, for instance, the Hugo, the genre’s most prestigious award. This was the year in which western audiences began to wake up to the excellence and diversity of genre voices from around the world. It wasn’t a question of success – both genres have been globally successful for many years – but of provenance.
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