Seven authors shortlisted for the 2020 Hugo and Lodestar Awards! 🏆
The 2020 Hugo and Lodestar Awards finalists were announced this week and Pan Macmillan Australia was thrilled to see that eight works from seven of our authors were shortlisted. The award-winners were due to be announced at the 78th annual WorldCon in New Zealand starting on 29 July but amid growing concern over the COVID-19 global Pandemic and New Zealand’s current isolation laws, the convention will now be run digitally. This is only the second time the convention hasn’t taken place since it began, with the first instance caused by WWII.
Best Novel Nominations
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir 
New Zealand native Tamsyn Muir is a veteran of the Science Fiction community, with award-winning short stories receiving Nebula, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards.
Gideon of the Ninth House has a sword, a pile of dirty magazines and no time for the undead.
Follow Gideon who unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Follow a crazy cast of characters living in a fantastical solar system of necromantic worshipping planets. This incredible story is a daring Science Fiction journey that’ll leave your heart pounding.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Master fantasist, Seanan McGuire is the author of Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Award-winning Science Fiction novels.
Middlegame introduces readers to an America run in the shadows by the Alchemical Congress, a powerful society focused on changing the fabric of reality itself.
Meet Rodger and Dodger the twins obsessed with words and numbers. Meet Reed, the alchemic master who made them. He isn’t their father, but he plans to raise them to power.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Arkady Martine is a speculative fiction author who has previously been nominated for Nebula, Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial and WFSA Small Press Awards.
A Memory Called Empire follows Ambassador Mahit Dzmare who travels to the Teixcalaanli Empire’s interstellar capital, eager to take up her new post. However, when Mahit is arriving, she discovers her predecessor was murdered. But no one is admitting his death wasn’t accidental or telling her that she might be next.
As she hunts the killer she sinks deeper into an alien culture that is all too seductive, Mahit engages in intrigues of her own. For she’s hiding an extraordinary technological secret, one which might destroy her station and its way of life. Or it might save them from annihilation.
Best Novella Nominations
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Master fantasist, Seanan McGuire is the author of Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Award-winning Science Fiction novels.
This is the fourth entry in the Wayward Children series following Lundy, a girl who would much rather study and dream than become someone’s respectable wife.
When finding a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, Lundy thinks she’s found her paradise. But not all as it seems.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
P. Djèlí Clark is a science fiction writer who has had writing featured in Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Lightspeed, Tor.com and in print anthologies including Griots I & II, Steamfunk, Myriad Lands and Hidden Youth.
In an alternate Cairo, humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities takes care of the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed Nasr will show his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef the ropes when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car.
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, a novella included in Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang is the science fiction author behind many Hugo, Nebula and Locus award-winning fiction novels
This collection of short stories by science fiction master, Ted Chiang was his much anticipated second anthology. Exhalation asks a few simple questions; What is the nature of the universe? What does is it mean to be human? Why are we here?
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
Frances Hardinge is a British children’s author of UKLA Book, La Times Book, British Fantasy and Branford Bose winning books
This is a macabre YA adventure, with a touch of Lovecraftian steampunk! Underwater exploration, monsters of the deep, relic-based technology and questions of loyalty. What else could you need!?
Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer
Naomi Kritzer is a Locus Award and Hugo Award winner and a finalist for the Nebula Award
When threats from her past catch up to her, it’s up to Steph’s friends, online and IRL, to save her. A surprising, heartfelt near-future YA thriller about the topical issues of online privacy and out-of-control technology. Come explore the importance of making connections in an increasingly fragmented society.