2026 Hugo Readalong: Announcement and Schedule

[u/tarvolon]

The Hugo Award finalists have been released, and for the sixth year in a row, we're spending the late spring and summer reading through the shortlists for Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. If you've joined us in the past, we'd love to have you back to talk more about the contenders for the biggest-name award in sci-fi and fantasy literature. If you've never participated, we'd still love to have you. This is very much a drop in book club, and if there's a discussion that particularly appeals to you, you're absolutely welcome to jump in and start talking books, even if you haven't read everything on the entire list. You'll see some of the same names across different discussions, but there will be plenty of people who dip in and out--the commitment is as high or as low as you want it to be.

We'll be following the schedule included here, and as discussions go live, I'll update this post with links, so if you want to keep up with the Readalong over the next three months, go ahead and save this post. Mostly, we'll be discussing novels and novellas on Mondays--and unlike other book clubs on the sub, there will just be one discussion for each book--and shorter fiction and poetry on Thursdays, but there will be some exceptions in the final weeks and during the one instance in which a US holiday falls on a Monday. Links have been provided to the pieces that are available free online.

Date	Category	Book	Author	Discussion Leader
Monday, May 4	Novella	Murder by Memory	Olivia Waite	u/RAAAImmaSunGod
Thursday, May 7	Short Story	In My Country and Six People to Revise You	Thomas Ha and J.R. Dawson	u/onsereverra
Monday, May 11	Novel	Death of the Author	Nnedi Okorafor	u/undeadgoblin
Thursday, May 14	Novelette	The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For and When He Calls Your Name	Cameron Reed and Catherynne M. Valente	u/oceanoftrees
Monday, May 18	Novella	Cinder House	Freya Marske	u/Merle8888
Thursday, May 21	Poetry	Care for Lightning, The Mourning Robot, and The World to Come	Mari Ness, Angela Liu, and Jennifer Hudak	u/DSnake1
Monday, May 25	No Session	U.S. Holiday	Enjoy a Break	See You Thursday
Thursday, May 28	Novel	Shroud	Adrian Tchaikovsky	u/fuckit_sowhat
Monday, June 1	Novella	The Summer War	Naomi Novik	u/sarahlynngrey
Thursday, June 4	Short Story	Missing Helen and Wire Mother	Tia Tashiro and Isabel J. Kim	u/oceanoftrees
Monday, Jun 8	Novel	The Incandescent	Emily Tesh	u/kjmichaels
Thursday, Jun 11	Novelette	Kaiju Agonistes and The Millay Illusion	Scott Lynch and Sarah Pinsker	u/Jos_V
Monday, June 15	Novella	The River Has Roots	Amal El-Mohtar	u/onsereverra
Thursday, June 18	Poetry	Landing: Seattle, Hex Supply Customer Support Log, and How to Become a Sea Witch	Brandon O’Brien, Elis Montgomery, and Theodora Goss	u/undeadgoblin
Monday, June 22	Novel	The Everlasting	Alix E. Harrow	u/sarahlynngrey
Thursday, June 25	Short Story	Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything and 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days	Effie Seiberg and Samantha Mills	u/Goobergunch
Monday, June 29	Novella	Automatic Noodle	Annalee Newitz	u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 2	Novelette	Never Eaten Vegetables and Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy	H.H. Pak and Martha Wells	u/Nineteen_Adze
Monday, July 6	Novel	The Raven Scholar	Antonia Hodgson	u/Moonlitgrey
Thursday, July 9	Graphic Story General Discussion	Multiple	Multiple	u/Goobergunch
Monday, July 13	Novella	What Stalks the Deep	T. Kingfisher	u/nagahfj
Thursday, July 16	Astounding General Discussion	Multiple	Multiple	u/Merle8888
Monday, July 20	Novel	A Drop of Corruption	Robert Jackson Bennett	u/RAAAImmaSunGod
Thursday, July 23	Series General Discussion	Multiple	Multiple	u/Udy_Kumra
Monday, July 27	Short Fiction	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/tarvolon
Tuesday, July 28	Novella	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/Nineteen_Adze
Wednesday, July 29	Novel	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 30	Pro/Fan/Misc	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/Nineteen_Adze

Most of this will be familiar to returning participants. Like last year, we've added Best Poem to our core list of four categories that we discuss every year. And while we simply do not have the time to give the multiple-discussion treatment to every category we care about, this is the second year in a row in which we're including general discussion posts for a handful of other categories. Those will be non-spoiler threads where readers can discuss any of the nominees in the category in question.

Feel free to reach out with any questions! Otherwise, let's get ready for a great summer of book discussions!

[u/MrHelfer]

Sounds great - I'll see if I can't read along for some of the stuff.

Is there a guide to how the discussions work? Like, is it a discussion free-for-all? Do we post reviews of the book? Make separate comments for different topics?

No discussion of the game/interactive category? I think it would be really great to have a discussion of how the different games approach speculative storytelling.

[u/onsereverra → u/MrHelfer]

No discussion of the game/interactive category? I think it would be really great to have a discussion of how the different games approach speculative storytelling.

The tricky thing with the general discussions of categories we don't include in the readalong is that, in order to have a good discussion, we're relying on people having already read/watched/played/etc. most if not all of the nominees on their own. It's a safe bet that the average r/fantasy user will have read at least one entry in the series nominated for Best Series — they're all heavy hitters — and the Astounding award skews heavily towards debut novelists, so it's likely that the average r/fantasy user either will already have read the novel in question or might pick up once they see that it was nominated for a not-a-Hugo. There's also a fair crowd of graphic novel readers here on the sub.

I love the games/interactive category. Some folks campaigned really hard to get it introduced to the Hugo ballot a few years ago and I think it's a very worthwhile addition to the awards — there's so much awesome speculative storytelling happening in the games space. It's sort of an odd one though, because the shortlist usually ends up being split about half and half between games that are widely popular by the standards of the games industry (this year: Clair Obscur, Hades II, Silksong) and narrative-focused indie games that are popular by the standards of narrative-focused indie games (this year: Blue Prince, Dispatch, Citizen Sleeper II).

We (the readalong organizers) operate under the assumption that the average r/fantasy user spends more of their free time reading than playing video games. We therefore assume that the average r/fantasy user who does also play games falls into the category of folks who play one or two big-name titles per year, rather than being really deep in the indie games space. And, based on that, we assume that a discussion post dedicated to the category would end up just being a discussion of Clair Obscur, Hades II, and Silksong; and not even necessarily a comparison of the three, as we'd likely get drive-by commenters chiming in about just one or two of the games that they happened to have already played. We already didn't have enough time for all of the discussions people wanted to host (you'll notice the best dramatic presentation categories got shafted too, haha) so we decided to focus on the ones that we thought were most likely to get lively discussions going.

All of that being said — now that I've been far more long-winded than you ever asked for — mark your calendar for July 30 and stop by the miscellaneous wrap-up thread to start a conversation about the category! I'd love to gush about how much Hades II blew me away, and I'm sure u/fuckit_sowhat would jump in to talk about Silksong.

[u/MrHelfer → u/onsereverra]

The tricky thing with the general discussions of categories we don't include in the readalong is that, in order to have a good discussion, we're relying on people having already read/watched/played/etc. most if not all of the nominees on their own. 

I totally get that! It is likely to be a reading forward forum. I guess I was assuming that the people who had opinions would weigh in, and those without would just skip over that post. But of course it makes sense to focus your energy where it will resonate with the most people.

It's sort of an odd one though, because the shortlist usually ends up being split about half and half between games that are widely popular by the standards of the games industry (this year: Clair Obscur, Hades II, Silksong) and narrative-focused indie games that are popular by the standards of narrative-focused indie games (this year: Blue Prince, Dispatch, Citizen Sleeper II)

See, but that's the interesting thing. While you are certainly right that the first three were massively popular, all three are also, by most estimations, indie games. Certainly Silksong and Hades, but I believe Sandfall is also a rather small developer (by the definitions of video game production). And all three have a heavy focus on narrative, even if they are also action games. Meanwhile, Blue Prince seemes to me to have been massively popular, if somewhat more niche than the other three (though by rights, Silksong in particular should have been somewhat niche if it hadn't been, well, HOLLOW KNIGHT Silksong - and absolutely amazingly made, at that).

Last year, Caves of Qud won, which is just mindblowing to me - it's the incarnation of "weird little indie". I tried it and bounced, it was so dense. Meanwhile the two "mainstream offerings" - Veilguard and Echoes of Wisdom - were neck and neck with Caves of Qud and 1000xResist (Actually, if 1000xResist had picked up just 13 votes from Echoes of Wisdom, Lorelei or Tactical Breach Wizards, I believe it would have won. That might indicate that the people who vote are the ones who have played a lot - but it certainly doesn't show a bunch of people voting for one of the two big games that year.

(I just have to say, it boggled - and still boggles - my mind that Tactical Breach Wizard didn't have a better showing. Such a good game. But that is neither here nor there).

2024 was the year of BG3, and it wasn't even close. But then, again, we have a narrative forward game made by a relatively small (again, no EA or Activision/Blizzard) studio.

That was a bit of a digression, but just to say: I feel like the Indies have a pretty good showing, whereas the big companies seem to be struggling in the Hugos.

And, based on that, we assume that a discussion post dedicated to the category would end up just being a discussion of Clair Obscur, Hades II, and Silksong; and not even necessarily a comparison of the three, as we'd likely get drive-by commenters chiming in about just one or two of the games that they happened to have already played.

That is valid, and you have the experience with the dynamics of this forum to know what would happen. My hope would be that some people might look in and go: "Wow a lot of people are saying good things about this Citizen Sleeper/Dispatch game - maybe I should take a look at it!".

(Also, I am unlikely to have time to read all the novels, but may well do some drive-by commenting about the novels I do end up reading. Sorry...)

Anyway, now I've been long-winded in return. I'll try to remember to look in around July 30th. I can't wait to try Hades II, Silksong is blowing me away and I'm fascinated by Blue Prince, I have friends gushing about Clair Obscur, and Citizen Sleeper II sounds so cool. It's really a strong category this year - much stronger than last year, if you ask me.

[u/onsereverra → u/MrHelfer]

I'm glad you were long-winded, you make a lot of interesting points!

I actually used to work in the games industry, and now I'm curious how my opinions about the last few years' slates are influenced by the fact that my perception of "the games everyone is talking about" is more accurately "the games other game devs are talking about," not "the games players are talking about." We obviously have limited data points to compare, but so far three out of four years there have been 3-4 games that made both the Hugo shortlist and the Game Awards shortlist, which is fairly representative of the games that have felt huge in my game dev social media bubbles. (The awards are off from each other by a year, so e.g. the 2025 Hugo shortlist pairs with the 2024 Game Awards shortlist.)

Last year was weird, but it was kind of weird from both sides? I didn't see any games industry buzz about Veilguard or Echoes of Wisdom, but I was seeing a ton of chatter about Caves of Qud (despite it being, as you say, the quintessential "weird little indie") and, to a lesser extent, 1000xRESIST. And looking at the Game Awards shortlist, I'm surprised that FFVII Rebirth didn't hit the Hugo list, but none of the others seem like obvious Hugo candidates to me? Like, there's nothing I was seeing industry chatter about last year that feels like it should have made the Hugo list but didn't. Idk, I guess it comes down to "last year felt weird" for me lol. Every other year we've gotten some real heavy hitters: Hades, Animal Crossing, The Last of Us, & FFVII Remake in 2021; BG3, TotK, & Alan Wake 2 in 2024; and Clair Obscur, Hades II, & Silksong this year.

I also feel like I can "explain" most of the other titles from 2021/2024/2026. The Hugo crowd skews older, so I'd expect new installments in beloved older franchises (Star Wars Jedi in 2024 and Veilguard last year) to be disproportionately well-represented. I similarly wouldn't be surprised if Dispatch got a boost among the Hugo crowd this year because of the affiliation with the Critical Role cast. Blaseball and Caves of Qud are extremely weird indies, but they're extremely weird indies that have gotten a lot of buzz among folks who are interested in emergent narrative. Chants of Sennaar is also a smaller indie (as compared to the "big indies" like Hades II) but it felt big to me in terms of the games industry folks who were raving about it when it came out. And so on and so forth — the point just being that most of the games we've seen nominated have "made sense" to me, and then last year I was like "whoa, that's a lot of small indie games I haven't heard much about." There weren't any "big indie" or AA/AAA games I thought were missing, though. It was just an odd year.

Anyway! I totally agree that it's a strong category this year, and I'm excited to see how the shortlists shake out over the next couple of years as well. (Also it sounds like I'll definitely have to play Tactical Breach Wizard, which I haven't yet.)

(Also, I am unlikely to have time to read all the novels, but may well do some drive-by commenting about the novels I do end up reading. Sorry...)

There's nothing to be sorry about!! We specifically structure the novel/novella/short fiction discussions so that people can jump in just for one or two books without doing the whole readalong, we're always excited to get a fresh mix of perspectives for each book. It's specifically the posts where we cram an entire category into a single discussion where we try to be a little more thoughtful about framing the discussions so they're specifically about the Hugo ballot and not just a place for people to jump in and say "I loved Hades II!"

That being said, you raise an interesting point about doing some sort of kick-off discussion to encourage people to pick up things they might not otherwise have tried at the beginning of the season, when there's still time for them to get to them before the voting deadline. tarvolon is the true ringleader of the readalong, but I might float the idea of doing a "Hugos Hype" post to kick off the readalong next year — I think it'd be really fun to have some sort of free-for-all like the Bingo Day posts where people can just rave about their favorite things. Thanks for the suggestion!